People would turn off in droves if they did that (imo of course). There's only so many monster-of-the-week stories that can be told before they become repetitive. I think the show hits the right balance of self-contained stories and an ongoing arc and it's done that quite well since it returned in 2005 (though the resolution of some of those arcs are questionable ).

I've got the opposite view, I think part of the problem is that the show is too safe. There's too much of the status quo in the show, people aren't afraid to miss an episode anymore. I haven't even seen the last three episodes of this series yet (been away) and yet I've not avoided the internet and I've not immediately watched those episodes when I got back home. Contrast that with Game of Thrones. If I missed an episode of that I wouldn't be anywhere near the internet until I'd seen it because stuff happens in that show, spoilers are everywhere and they geniunely spoil the surprise. I can't recall the last time Doctor Who surprised me. Its just too safe.

And perhaps that's just the nature of the show but I can't help wonder if people aren't tuning in because there's no surprise anymore, it's all feeling exactly as the Doctor said at the start of the series "Same old, same old, just The Doctor and Clara Oswald in the Tardis".

Season 7a episodes (Amy and Rory) had an average audience of 7.96m viewers. But season 7b (Clara) dropped to 7.11m - that's a 0.85m drop.

Season 8 (Capaldi's first) saw a slight rise to 7.26m, but this is helped by the fact the opening episode (Deep Breath) received a big boost in viewers (9.17m) compared to 8.33m for the premiere of season 7a and 8.44m for the start of season 7b. Otherwise, season 8 would have come in the same as 7b.

I'm not suggesting Clara was the main turn-off for viewers but I think (as some of the other forum members have alluded to) Steven Moffat 'companion formula' was getting a bit stale by season 7.

Perhaps Clara would have been better for the show if she had just been an ordinary girl thrown into the Doctor's mad world, rather than the Impossible Girl (and then all the other nonsense).

Certainly, I said at Christmas 2014 that I thought keeping Clara for season 9 was a mistake, and that Capaldi's Doctor needed the energy of a new companion. I certainly think that has proven to be true. Clara's gloomy role in Season 9 didn't help a relatively doom-laden season.

There's nothing safe about the last 3 episodes.

I'm not sure the Zygon Inversion can be called safe either.

Probably my four favourite episodes of the series, along with 'Witches Familiar) and no, I don't personally think they were playing safe.

In fairness, I would probably add 'Sleep No More', which was very divisive, but trying to do something different for Who. Graham Kibble-White (who isn't a oohh, they're all great! sort of reviewer) gives it something of a rave review in DWM. Might turn out to be a Capaldi equivalent of 'Love and Monsters'? (ie Didn't go down too well generally, but those who like it *really* like it.)

I agree with you. Clara was a plot device that lasted beyond her storyline and she should have left last year. She wasn't helped by the break year (i.e. 1 series spread over 2 years) which makes it feel like she was around longer than she was.

Amy/Rory - they were also a plot device but since their main arc was quite late in their run it never felt they outstayed their welcome.

But then look at the RTD companions. Rose and Donna were overplayed as the most important people ever in the Doctors life. Only Martha stands out as a normal companion and she's one of the least popular companions for some reason.

But yeah, it would be nice to have a companion that's not remotely important to the history of the show.

Sarah Jane is a great example from Classic Who. Someone who just mucks in, plays a key role in each adventure and then simply stays on earth, without leaving the Doctor in a state of mourning.

And then comes back 30 years later for a guest appearance.

Didn't she spend a year, travelling the Earth on her own, saving both the Doctor and all of mankind from an alternate future brought on by the Master? Donna may have gotten a bit of Time Lord in her at one point but I don't recall her ever doing anything quite so crucial or special.

Admittedly my memory for details has always been pretty awful

Goodness!
I must have missed that episode. And there was me thinking that she just wanted a mate, not, well, you know...

How can anyone after having seen Clara say that Rose and Donna's importance was overplayed?.

The main difference's which made Rose and Donna completely likeable for me and Clara not, is that they started out as normal people, and their importance only grew naturally and organically as the relationship with the doctor grew. Plus the main reason I like Rose and donna so much is that they truly appreciated the once in a lifetime oppourtunity they had and fully embraced it.

In contrast, with Clara, not only did she not appreciate it at all, and for most of her time treated the doctors friendship as something to be squeezed into her schedule if there was time, but also, her entire time seemed like a long list of Moffat trying to force us to see her as important - Oh look Clara's the impossible girl throughout the doctors timeline/oh look Clara's all controlling and basically the doctor now/ oh look Clara visited the doctor as a child/oh look Clara is part of an ancient timelord prophecy about a hybrid. Her whole time on the show seemed like Moffat stamping his foot and demanding you feel she is important, and with every one of those insistence's it just seemed to make me dislike her more.

"If she's not going to be the most liked, I'll damn well make her the most important!"
Quote, Steven Moffat. December 2014 (probably)

She was.

As always, the companions are normal people made incredible by their adventures and their sacrifices.

Oh well, at least now the Doctor's forgotten her we won't have to put up with a whole season of him pining for her and whoever the new companion is won't suffer from being overshadowed in the same way that Martha was.

It was clearly implied that the Doctor was love with Rose (a teenage girl mind you - not judging ). I'm not sure you can get more important than that really, so much so that Doctor spent a series pining for her.

Likeability is subjective, I couldn't stand Rose as a character.

I've liked all the companions to varying degrees, but I really agree with this point. Martha being written as a 'rebound' companion, or 'Not Rose' really gets on my nerves when I rewatch those episodes (and Series 3 has some very good stuff in it.) She proved herself to be a resourceful, intelligent, caring person from the off, so all that 'Gets a key half way through the series', 'Rose would know what to do' (No she wouldn't!) stuff really doesn't work for me at all. Then she walks the Earth for a year whipping out her acoustic guitar to sing 'He is the Doctor' or 'Doctor in Distress' or rewriting lyrics to The Thompson Twins 'Doctor Doctor' to solve things and what thanks does she get?

Watching the Doctor hugging and crying over the bloke who treated her family as worthless slaves for a year and who are probably psychologically scarred for life.

No wonder she walked!

ETA Donna is my favourite C21 companion. Who pops up in her first 'proper' episode as a companion? Yup!

(We appear to have wandered a bit OT here. Ah well! )

Martha was also the only modern Who companion that didn't need a plot device to leave the show. It was almost a Classic Who departure where the companion just had enough. New Who makes a clear statement that travelling with the Doctor is the best thing anyone can ever do so why would anyone want to leave that life - which means they keep having to find ways to get rid of the companion when they leave (alternative universe, mindwipes, dropped in the past where the Doctor can't go for no reasonable reason whatsoever ). It glosses over the "it's pretty dangerous and each week you might die" aspect of travelling it the Tardis.

I blame Ace for this New Who uses her as a template for modern companions. She was the first companion whose own history became part of the Doctors own narrative and where the show really became a story of the companion (though Ian and Barbara probably had a bit of that too).

BTW. Going to drop out of this thread for a few days until I've watched the final few episodes of the series. Spotted a few minor spoilers so best I steer clear for a moment

I would really disagree there, johnnysaucepn.

I think I understand the point you are making, but its more about growing a character from scratch and then giving them the opportunity to be extraordinary.

From her first appearance (as a Dalek!) there was a significant and complicated story arc for Clara. She was already extraordinary.

I personally feel that with Rose, Martha and Donna the Bad Wolf, Mr Saxon and 'something on your back' stories were relatively light touch and didn't impact on their characters or travels with the Doctor until the end (or, indeed, on individual stories).

I think Amy's season 5 story imposed a little too heavily on the overall narrative, and the season 6 stuff with River consumed the whole show.

Clara's Impossible Girl story was, for me, very heavy-handed. And as another forum member posted, Moffat just kept writing himself in circles with Clara after that, determined to make her story interesting - even when, by trying to do that, he actually achieved the exact opposite.

To an extent. The problem was that we the audience knew already she was unusual and significant. We'd seen her in space and in the 19th century. Unlike Rose and Martha (and most companions) she wasn't just an innocent bystander accidentally wrapped up in a scenario that otherwise had nothing to do with them. Everything about the series arc finale had already happened and we'd seen some of the outcome. When Rose, Martha and Donna's finales happened their specialness was contained within the context of that adventure (Bad Wolf graffiti aside). With Clara we already knew she was going to have a predetermined finale specialness. What she did between Bells of St John and Name of the Doctor was, in terms of character development, just filler to pad out the time! (I'm not criticising the stories here, just looking at it from how we saw Clara develop).

Then there was her unusual background. Working as a permanent live in nanny (out of the ordinary job, and to my mind not very realistically shown - I didn't buy it), motivated to do so because she was an orphan (Series 5 Amy and, again, notably out of the ordinary to lose both parents so young).

She was literally given the Doctor's phone number and called him - and he was waiting for her call. Again this signalled to us that she was already unusual and had already been selected to be a companion. Which we knew because we'd seen Victorian Clara already selected, but die.

Now, of course, we as viewers already knew Rose and Martha were going to be invited on board, but in terms of drama they were presented as relatively ordinary and got invited as a result of what they did in their first episode. With Clara it was all backwards - Moffat let us know that this woman was definitely already special and pre-injected with scifi magic.

Right from her first episode she was given magic computer skills, so even without everything else she was already not just a normal person when she boarded the Tardis.

Except Clara, who we are now told that, beside everything else above, had been psychologically profiled by The Master who selected her as a companion precisely because of abnormal character traits.

None of which is drastically wrong in and of itself (dramatically a bit weird and "off", but some people like that stuff). Rose just happened to work in that dept store, Martha just happened to work in the hospital and Donna just happened to be in wrong place at the wrong time. River, Amy and Clara were already unusual from the get go. Their plots had already happened to them before we, the viewers, got to see it unfold.

I disagree with this, while agreeing with the rest of your comments. Clara didn't have anything particularly special about her (yes, she had an uncommon family history, but that in itself held no significance) - she had a special destiny. The same applies to Donna - she was a temp from Chiswick, but destined to become a special hybrid due to events yet to unfold. And the only difference with Rose is that we weren't let on to the connection between her and Bad Wolf - she was still the reason that the references followed them around.

Sorry, just realised how off-topic this discussion is, had forgotten what thread we are in. Please ignore my comments.

It's all good, man! Quite a few of us have gone OT!

I wish the DS team would make it possible for us to set up our own threads about the topics we want to talk about.







Oh . . . wait . . . .

Heh. Maybe I'll start a 'Rose or Clara? Which Show runner was most obsessed by their creations?' thread. That couldn't end badly.

Clara wasn't an Orphan. Her Mother had died but her Father is still alive.

Well she was an orphaned genius working as a live in nanny for motherless children, which is kind of both a bit special (a genius) and unusual. But it's not so much about how literally 'special' she was in Bells - it was that we, the audience, had been pre-shown just how special she was going to end up being and the way she was introduced to the Doctor (specifically given his phone number before we'd even met her) showed just how already unusual she already was. Rose, Martha and Donna just happened to be where they were on the day they met the Doctor. Clara had been selected and we'd been told that right in her first story.

In series 1,3 and 4 it's only hindsight (and by series 3 familiarity with RTD's format) that we know. Dramatically they were much more 'normal' than Clara. No friends, no family, weird job, genius. In some ways, fine - the 'Rose' template would get boring if overused, but we haven't had a 'Rose' in 5 years now. Time for a bit of that, IMO.

And, er, something about ratings - erm.... did anyone notice they were a little bit down on last year?