Y’know, Clara Oswald’s appeared in nine episodes now, but Rory’s ninth episode was The Impossible Astronaut, and at that point we knew much, much less about him than we know about Clara now. We’d only seen him at work once, we hadn’t even met his dad yet, and he barely passed a reverse Bechdel test: virtually all his conversations were about Amy.
And I love Rory. I love him to pieces. But guess how many people I saw calling him ‘boring’ or ‘bland’ or ‘barely even a character’ back then? If you guessed zero, you’re absolutely right.
I think what irritates me the most about this whole Danny Pink situation is the fact that Moffat apparently doesn’t think Clara can carry a season on her own. If bland, uninteresting Martha can have her own season and not have the show crash and burn, I guarantee you Clara could have as well. Twelve and Clara would’ve been the best season of New Who. I just know it. Instead Moffat’s taking away time for more of her character development because all of a sudden he just pulled a new companion out of thin air and now obviously has to introduce him. If on top of that Moffat adds a romance between Danny and Clara which leads to the most unnecessary love triangle in the history of time I may actually be done with the show until they get a new show-runner.
Can Danny just be Clara’s fab gay friend? There’s been a severe lack of homo vibes on this show without Jack. I’d be so okay with that and with a name like Danny Pink he really isn’t that far off anyway.
Also…can we drop the “He’s going to be awesome because he’s the first POC we’ve had since Martha!” I’m sorry, but since when does being a POC automatically mean you are a nicely-written, well-rounded, three-dimensional character? I’ve come across many terrible POC characters in my day. I’m all for inclusiveness and better representation of everyone in the media, but don’t start stanning a character just because of the color of their skin.
And now let’s count down the top ten BS singles in this post.
10. is Bland Uninteresting Martha with their hit single Did Shakespeare Hit On You? (Did You Walk The Earth?)
At 9. we have Clara Shalt Not Developfeat.Women Who Have Romantic Subplots Are Bad Women with the summer smash Only One May Have A Character Arc!
Coming 8. is the comeback kids Love Triangle with The Only Reason Danny Exists Is for Sexual Tension
Love Triangle also come in at number 7. with their second hit from their platinum album, Romance on TV is Girly and Therefore Stupid Because Everything Girls are Meant to Enjoy is Stupid
At number six it’s everyone’s favorite duo the Doctor and Oswald with their catchy Only Room for Two in the Whole Wide Tardis
Number five is a bit of a surprise with Canton and the Paternoster Gang delivering a gutsy ballad from their Album “Sever Lack of Homo Vibes” they’ve called SorryWe Didn’t Gay Everything Up Enough For Your Liking
Fab Gay Friend is the new hit sensation coming in at 4 with the song on everyone’s lips His Name Is Pink! He Must Be Gay!
Number Three is the Irritating Whovianwith their cover of Don’t Be THAT Fan’s beloved pop song Fetishising The Gays
Just being pipped for number one is Dismissing POCs with the addictively catchy Danny’s Existence aka To Early To Be Excited But Early Enough To Write Blog Post about How Much He Will Suck.
And the number One song on the BS Top Ten Singles post is…
He Hasn’t Even Been On The Show Yet with Judge Him? I Hardly Know Him!
His mother…left? Still not sure what happened there
His grandmother died and he blamed himself
Rose left and everyone blamed him
Literally everyone he ever cared about left him, he might very well have been going through his adult years feeling like absolute shit, and then he meets the Doctor and has to put up with a good few months of ‘ha ha you’re an idiot’ bullying from him as well (and even Jack is hostile on first meeting him! Why?) and basically he had every reason ever to undo or betray the Doctor, Rose, Jackie and everyone associated with them but he didn’t he kept helping them save the world and became best friends with the woman who’d spent a year harassing him and I JUST HAVE A LOT OF FEELINGS and they all revolve around “Doctor why the could you never see what a remarkable man was right there in front of you”
I’ve seen this argument a lot and I’ve never quite understood it. Madame Kovarian isn’t sexy, she’s a cruel vicious fanatic who never once does, says or wears anything sexy. Miss Delphox is a servile clone. Miss Kizlet is a little girl in the body of an adult being controlled by the Great Intelligence, and she likewise (thankfully) never does anything sexy. And (apart from River, sort of) none of them are strong women at all? Just cruel, unpleasant, one-episode villains. I don’t even know why River’s there – she fits into the pattern of ‘woman wearing black’, but that’s because she was dressed like Kovarian (the eyepatch and all) for Plot Reasons.
I don’t get what that image is saying – I honestly, geniunely don’t. Of Steven Moffat’s female villains, a lot of them wear black? Is that the argument? All of them are sexy (except they’re really not, for the previous reasons) – is that the argument? They’re all -apart from River, and presumably whoever the ‘real’ little-girl Miss Kizlet is- cruel and sadistic? Well, that one’s true.
There’s not enough variety in the female villains, I think that’s probably it? Well, this image leaves some of them – Missy, Gillyflower, Karabroxos – out. And River’s not a villain! She’s a bit snarky and trigger-happy and (sigh) keeps having the word ‘psychopath’ used in relation to her for some ungodly reason – but once she’s broken her conditioning she’s a perfectly good person, certainly nothing like Kovarian.
You absolutely could make the argument that there’s perhaps not a lot of variety in the costumes– for a start I do think Delphox’s/Karabraxos’s borrowed a lot from Kovarian’s, probably literally (I’ve been looking at screencaps and it looks like Karabroxos’s jacket is a modified version of hers) – but you’d need to take that up with Barbara Kidd and Howard Burden. And even then, Tasha’s space princess look is nothing like Kovarian’s futuristic business suit or Kizlet’s very basic modern-day look.
I mean I think a fairer version of the image would look like this-
But even that’s barely scratching the surface, especially when it comes to River.
