Doctor Who: The Caretaker (8x06)

This is a good one! Funny. Although it is a lot more about Danny and the Doctor than it is about Clara, and you know how that irks me. Still, let's jump right in.

We start with a montage of Clara, struggling to live two lives - one with the Doctor, going on adventures, and one with Danny, as the two become closer and closer. One day, the Doctor declines to take Clara on an adventure, saying he must go deep undercover. He then shows up at Clara's school, Coal Hill, as John Smith - the new Caretaker.

He is tracking a dangerous creature: a Skovox Blitzer. He plans on using devices to propel it billions of years into the future where it won't cause a problem for anyone. He meets Danny, but doesn't know that he's Clara's boyfriend. He doesn't like Danny because he used to be a soldier. He meets another young man, and assumes this must be Clara's beau. He tells Clara that he approves.

Danny, who is suspicious of the Doctor's strange activities, sneaks around to see what he's up to. He inadvertently tampers with the Doctor's plans, so that when the creature turns up, it is only propelled three days into the future. Clara now has the tricky task of explaining the Doctor to Danny, and Danny to the Doctor. Although they all argue, they end up coming together to defeat the Skovox. They trick it into deactivating itself, rather than blowing up the whole planet. The Doctor grudgingly admits that Danny was helpful, and Danny tells Clara to let him know if the Doctor ever pushes her too hard.

Earlier, we had seen a policeman killed by the Skovox Blitzer. At the end of the episode, we see him awaken in the "Promised Land," where he is interviewed by an unfamiliar man, since Missy is apparently busy.

So. A couple of things to gripe about.

First of all, I'm curious about this whole plan to push the creature into the future. Because... well... it seems like a perfectly reasonable plan. So why isn't this the default? Something evil hanging out near innocent people? Just chuck it into the future! It seems silly to complain about something that makes perfect sense, so I guess I'm just complaining about why nobody's thought of this before.

Then there's the character stuff. Gosh, this episode was so close to being awesome. But instead of focusing on Clara's feelings about Danny and the Doctor, we focused on their feelings about her, and each other. When Clara said that she loved Danny, I was genuinely startled. Really? Because I certainly haven't seen much development of Clara and Danny's relationship. Clara is not enough of a character to even feel love. She's too bland and generic!

But there were good things in this episode, and we should most definitely talk about them.

For one, I like how prejudiced the Doctor is against soldiers. I think I complained about it a few episodes back, but now I think I see where they're going with this. Hopefully, the Doctor will get to know Danny more and more, and he'll be forced to re-evaluate his opinions and see that things aren't so clear-cut. In this particular episode, the Doctor was a total jerk - once he knew that Danny was a soldier, he wouldn't believe that he taught math, instead insisting that he must be a gym teacher. How rude.

Things became even more interesting when Danny said that the Doctor was like an officer. It's true, in a way - part of the Doctor's hatred of soldiers is because he's very similar to a soldier in many ways, and that scares the crap out of him. While I miss the Doctor as portrayed by Eccleston or Tennant, I will admit that there's a lot of interesting things you can do with the idea of the Doctor as a soldier.

I loved Courtney Woods. She was one of Clara's students, and a "disruptive influence." She becomes curious about the Doctor and the TARDIS, and she has this childish, immediate belief in the Doctor when he tells her that the box is a time machine. We do see her get a quick trip out to space, but she can't handle it, and she pukes. I don't know why, but I just like the idea of the Doctor being willing to give this girl a trip in the TARDIS for no real reason. (Although having a young girl aboard did remind me of those two kids that Clara was a nanny for. Why did we drop them out of the story? That sucks!)

The Doctor was quite funny in this episode. Even though I was annoyed with him over his prejudices against soldiers, he also had several moments of humor. I like how he thinks Clara is dating another teacher at the school because he looks vaguely like Matt Smith - i.e., the Doctor. So funny.

I think I'll leave off right there. This was a good episode that could have been a great one with a bit more focus on Clara. Oh well!

8/10