This week’s Doctor
Who saw the mysterious Clara Oswald defeat a soul sucking sun
with the most important leaf in the universe.
The episode begins with
the Doctor stalking an unknown couple that a brought together by a
falling leaf. It is soon revealed that this couple is the new
companion Clara’s parents. The Doctor then returns to pick up 2013
Clara and whisks off to The Rings of Akahten. Clara wanders off, as
companions often do and meets a strange little girl who calls herself
the Queen of Years.
The Queen of Years, also
known as Merry Gejelh, is nervous because she’s about to sing a
song to a god (as you would be) but Clara tells her a story about her
parents and it gives her the confidence to face her fears. Apparently
that wasn’t such a good idea because Merry Gejelh is taken by the
soul sucker and it’s up to the Doctor and Clara to save her.
There’s a space Vespa,
some hilarity about a heavy door and it turns out the soul sucking
monster is actually the giant sun. The doctor gives one of his big
epic speeches but the soul sucking sun/god is ultimately defeated by
Clara when she feeds it the leaf that led to her parents meeting.
Usually the second
adventure of the series is more monster of the week than series arch
driven but this episode manages to fall somewhere in the middle. All
the nonsense about the most important leaf in the universe is
important to the episode arch but something tells me that Clara’s
parents (and her mothers death) will be part of Moffat’s wibbly
wobbly timey wimey series arch.
The rest of the episode
is pretty predicable: the companion shows her compassion by rescuing
someone helpless and her ingenuity by defeating the monster of the
week thus proving herself worth of the Doctor’s attention. It does
make some comments about religion I guess but nothing that hasn’t
been suggested before in episodes like “The Impossible Planet”.
That said the adventure
was fun enough and Matt Smith acted the hell out the Doctor’s big
epic speech (that’s when he’s at his best) especially when you
consider he was talking to a green screen.
The main problem I have
is with Clara. I loved her at first, Jenna shines on camera oozing
charisma, but the more time we spend with this impossible girl the
less I like her. She’s just too perfect. All the best characters
have at least one fundamental flaw and we have yet to see Clara’s.
She’s all the good parts of pervious companions rolled into one but
without any faults she’s hard to relate to. Considering that the
companion is supposed to represent the audience’s way into the
Doctor’s crazy world reliability is an incredibly important trait.
Let’s hope that Clara’s
perfect exterior starts to crack soon because I really want to like
her.
Review by Yvonne Popplewell
More of Yvonne's works can be found at her blog.
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