Ephemeral Hologram

It isn’t a coincidence that the face of the British soldier is cast as a Black man — not a person in a position of privilege in the racialized, imperialist state in which he lives and which he has fought for. The show has no interest in exploring that further.

Twelve’s run of Doctor Who is a lot more unflinchingly critical of the military and militarism in terms of its sci-fi scenarios, in episodes such as “Into the Dalek” and “The Zygon Invasion”/“The Zygon Inversion” especially. But in terms of Britain’s actual imperialist agendas in the Middle East, Danny Pink and his mindset are treated with a lot more compassion and he is able to be redeemed, to undo his mistake. He pays for it with his life, of course, but he is able to clear his soul and prove that he is good, that the common soldier is good, and ultimately capable of being innocent. His guilt is centered, not the life of the child he killed, and it’s yet another example of Western media making its soldiers the real victims of their own war crimes.

Danny himself seems conflicted about his role in the army. In “The Caretaker,” Clara attempts to defend Danny to the Doctor, reminding him that Danny is a maths teacher, not a soldier. But Danny refuses to be defended. “One thing, Clara. I’m a soldier, guilty as charged,” he says. “You see him? He’s an officer…I’m the one who carries you out of the fire. He’s the one who lights it.” His point about the Doctor being an officer is an interesting one, and we can argue all day about the degree to which it’s justified. That’s kind of what season eight, with all its heavy-handed writing, is for. But Danny still believes that the job of a soldier is to carry a person out of the fire, that it’s got “a moral dimension,” as he says in “Into the Dalek.” It’s an identity he doesn’t quite want to let go of, and that extends beyond the posturing that he and the Doctor are doing in “The Caretaker.” 

But it isn’t that simple, of course. After all, after the events of “Kill the Moon,” we get this exchange between Danny and Clara:

DANNY: I think I’ve seen this look before.

CLARA: No, you haven’t. This is new for me.

DANNY: No, not on your face. On mine.

CLARA: What did you do?

DANNY: I left the army.

CLARA: You loved the army.

DANNY: Yep. And then one day I didn’t.

He killed a child, by accident, and that persuaded him that he didn’t belong there, that being in the army had changed him in a way he didn’t like. Of course, it’s the officers that are to blame, as he hints at at the end of “The Caretaker” when he expresses his concern that Clara followed the Doctor’s orders without question or fear, comparing it to his experiences with officers during his time in the army. Now, that is one criticism of Clara that does not seem fair, to be honest. “Listen” and “Dark Water” come to mind. But the more interesting point is what it says about Danny. His clear criticisms, the idea of killing anyone, including yourself, because you’re told to, and turning into someone you’re not, are exactly the same as the Doctor’s. In this respect, they do understand each other. It’s just that they assign the blame a little bit differently. The Doctor has been an officer, in Danny’s terms, but he has been a soldier, too. The Doctor’s anger at Danny and all soldiers is pointed just as much at himself, but like Danny, he excoriates himself for it in private, and everyone else for it in public. It makes both of them honorable, and both of them hypocritical. And of course, much of the fandom chooses to take a more dichotomous interpretation, on racial lines.

Because it also isn’t a coincidence that yet another left-behind love interest is cast as a Black person (see Mickey Smith, Martha Jones, even arguably the young adult Melody Pond). It isn’t a coincidence that yet another person the Doctor underestimates and belittles is cast as a Black person. No, the Doctor doesn’t do it because he’s Black, he does it because he’s a soldier. But the Doctor isn’t real. Steven Moffat and Russell T. Davies and everyone else who made that choice are real, though, and are allergic to treating Black characters with care.

I do not understand how the fandom can consider Danny to be pushy or controlling. He never once asks her to leave the Doctor. In “The Caretaker,” all he asks is that she tell him if being with the Doctor ever stops feeling good, “because if you don’t tell me the truth, I can’t help you. And I could never stand not being able to help you.” Clara ends up meaning to leave the Doctor, but then backtracking, but deciding to deceive Danny, because she, internally, has a sense that she is doing something wrong by not breaking her relationship with the Doctor off. When Danny finds out in “In the Forest of the Night,” he tells her once more, “I just want to know the truth. I don’t care what it is. I just want to know it.” He doesn’t leave her. He forgives her, and wants to help her, once again. He just doesn’t want to be lied to. And as we see in “Dark Water,” Clara really would have told him the truth. She is capable of it. 

Danny is not a bad boyfriend. Danny is an incredibly good boyfriend. The problem is that he and Clara are not compatible, and that even as he challenges her, she doesn’t challenge him. He helps her, but he kind of just. Exists to help her. He exists to send her a message, to give her an opportunity to become less like the Doctor, more grounded, more human, but honestly, she’s already too far gone. From “Listen” to “Flatline” to “Dark Water” to “The Girl Who Died” to the culmination of “Face the Raven” and “Hell Bent,” we know that Clara will become the Doctor. I love her for it. I love how she and the Doctor are so evenly matched, how they push each other to be braver, kinder, stronger, but more arrogant and reckless and caught up in one another and their big-scale adventures and saving the universe. All things that don’t leave them much time to stop and think and stay. 

At the end of “In the Forest of the Night,” Clara asks Danny to come with her and the Doctor to watch the solar flare, but Danny refuses. He tells her, “I was a soldier. I put myself at risk. I didn’t try too hard to survive, but somehow, here I am. And now I can see what I nearly lost. And it’s enough. I don’t want to see more things. I want to see the things in front of me more clearly. There are wonders here, Clara Oswald. Bradley saying please, that’s a wonder. One person is more amazing, harder to understand, but more amazing than universes.” That’s a beautiful philosophy. And it is one that Clara is utterly incapable of adopting at this stage. It’s good for her to hear, and leads her towards compassion, and she respects and admires Danny all the more for it, but she cannot emulate it. She has a sweet moment with him, but then leaves to see the solar flare with the Doctor. Meanwhile, she doesn’t try to persuade Danny otherwise. She doesn’t want to change him. In her eyes, he is perfect already. But that’s the problem. He’s perfect. He’s not really a fully developed character, he’s a symbol, and eventually he’s a motivation. But the Doctor on the other hand…well. He’s harder to understand but more amazing than universes, to Clara. 

That’s not to say that Danny is an uwu softboi. His feats of badassery in “The Caretaker,” “In the Forest of the Night,” and “Death in Heaven” are amazing. I once saw a meme on this very site of Danny and Clara as Clark and Malfina, and you do you, but…I wildly disagree. Danny is not just Some Guy. He is an incredibly self-aware, deeply thoughtful person with a hero’s skill set. He’s just not the type of hero that Clara is, and that the Doctor is. The Doctor Who narrative demands that either he change, or he leave. And for all the messiness of “Death in Heaven,” I am glad that he didn’t change. 

Even in the throes of her “Dark Water” rampage, Clara knows that she’s clinging to Danny as a symbol as well as a man. When she’s talking with Danny’s consciousness at the 3W institute, trying to get him to cooperate with her resurrection attempts, she tells him in desperation, “I have to be with Danny Pink.” Not with you, but with Danny Pink. The name means an entire life, a human life, that she realizes she’s cut ties with, that’s dead in so many ways. It’s selfish of her to see him that way. But it’s also understandable and complex and makes her a better protagonist, not a worse one (so many critiques of Clara are really anger that a female character is as complicated as the Doctor…). And in the end, she has to let him go, and let him die on his terms, repaying his debts. Meanwhile, Clara throws herself more into her Doctor identity than ever. She never attaches herself to another human in quite the same way (flippantly mentioned Jane Austen fling aside). She dies by trying to fill the Doctor’s shoes, by being too compassionate but above all too clever, too arrogant. It’s only when she realizes, once more, that she is mortal that she briefly calls on Danny Pink’s name, his identity to her, the symbol that she has made him into, one last time. 

DOCTOR WHO APPRECIATION WEEK Day 4 | Favorite Dynamic

Haha sorry if that's a really broad question. I've been through your Tumblr tag for the pairing already lol. For a more specific question, what do you like about Twelve more than the other Doctors? And how does the Doctor and Clara compare to other ships you ship? Hope you are having a great day, I love your blog!

Oh, so you've already seen my Whouffaldi Text and Subtext dissertation. When I read your first ask, I was going to lead with a link to that lol.

I don't know if you read all my tag rambles where I talked a bit about some of this, but I'll try to explain why it's such a Ship of Dreams for me. There was actually a hurdle I had to get over, because my parents raised me on lots of Classic Who, so it did feel really weird to ship the Doctor. Just because I imprinted on it super young and related to him as a kind of avuncular figure lol. I know there's a whole wank about this in the fandom and a lot of old school fans are hardcore NoRomo and regard him as a totally non-sexual being, but the show has never supported that reading. (The First Doctor is not only travelling with his granddaughter- who is never implied not to be his literal, biological granddaughter- he also dated an Aztec woman and even flirts occasionally. All the Doctors flirt with the possible exception of Two. Four/Sarah Jane is borderline explicitly romantic.)

Anyway. That reluctance aside, this pairing is very nearly tailor-made to be Relevant to My Interests.

Because it's the 'unlikely on the surface' thing where they are from such vastly different worlds and have such vastly different frames of reference. He's a nigh-immortal prickly alien who is a weird combination of selfish trickster god and ethical paragon, who is always some degree of abrasive and impatient in every version of himself despite the fathomless well of compassion he has for all forms of life. The Doctor is always both a child and an ancient world-weary old man, which makes him a very complicated person to have a serious relationship with, even a platonic relationship. Where Clara is a normal adult with a normal maturity level and a primary school teacher ability to turn on a friendly, upbeat, nurturing social persona. People take her to be sweet and simple at first glance.

And I love a pairing where people on the outside can't imagine how it happened. I like when you can't judge the book by its cover. They slot into my broad Beauty and the Beast archetype (which I am obsessed with and which describes 99% of my ships in some capacity).

But even more so than that, they are this epic, all-encompassing, universe-destroying, can-be-contained-only-by-poetry, destinies entwined, deathless true love, Gothic Romance, out of hand soulmate thing. The Doctor endlessly incinerating himself and chiselling away a chunk of eternity for 4.5 billion years just for a potential opportunity to save her life? Not even be with her, just save her? Fucking ROMANCE. Clara's abject devastation that he would do that to himself, her equally insane antics to try to protect him, her realisation of being so overwhelmingly loved by this absolutely terrifying force of nature and her response to that being 'we're such idiots we should have talked about this, we're going to talk about this right now!' It takes until the very end, the utmost extreme, for Clara to recognise his devotion

(because both of them have been idiots about this throughout their entire relationship- afraid to be hurt, afraid of what it would mean, afraid to be rejected again, etc. etc.- and have been pining away in denial that their feelings are mutual)

but when she finally understands that he loves her, she has to wrestle with the Frightening Scope of Being So Loved and she rises to it, undiminished, boldly human and not needing to be any more than that to stand shoulder to shoulder with this profoundly alien personified time abyss who ushered in the end of all things to see her smile again. I'm breathless!!

I love that they're so different and there's such a massive disparity between how others see them, between the powers afforded them, yet they're also similar and complementary and equal. They're both caretakers who tend to be bossy and controlling in part as an expression of that caretaking, they're both quite self-absorbed egoists who are capable of absolutely staggering selflessness, they're both idealists who refuse to give up, and they have the same sense of humour. There's an intimacy and unspoken simpatico I think is unmatched by any other relationship the Doctor has ever had.

Anyway, I'm kind of rambling but I love Magical/Mundane pairings, I love Immortal Fae Being/mortal angst, world-crossing, layers of identity, Sarcastic Aloof Super Genius with Heart of Gold/Vivacious Practical Person, Physically Powerful Man/Emotionally Powerful Woman, etc. They're ticking a lot of boxes.

And I love Twelve so much because a) Peter Capaldi is the only person to ever play the Doctor who played all the Doctors. He doesn't just feel like he's in continuity with the other regenerations where there are core traits that carry over, he feels like he genuinely still is all of them in this uncontrived, magical way. That he can contain all those aspects, that he's really the same man. b) He and Tom Baker are the only two that, to me, genuinely felt alien in a way that gives me goosebumps. They convey this point of view outside and beyond humanity that's nearly impossible to portray convincingly.

c) my many rants about forgiveness and compassion and how series 9 is the most profound, demanding, and uncompromising study of those themes in the last twenty years of anglo pop culture. Just absolutely unflinching idealism, all the more powerful and heroic because it's coming from such a deeply flawed character who has done truly horrific things himself. That Twelve can be so clearly worn down by darkness both within himself and the universe, be such a burdened melancholy character weighed down by unspeakable guilt, yet be infused with so much childlike wonder and incorrigible curiosity, always excited to keep learning... always willing to hope.

Like I want to go on a whole side tangent about what a BRILLIANT cliffhanger Magician's Apprentice/Witch's Familiar is because the cliffhanger isn't about the plot or who will survive at all despite that being the ostensible stakes, it's about whether the Doctor will live up to his principles. And we know he's failed before. That's where the suspense is- vengeance and playing hero are temptations he's fallen to before. That the most brutally difficult mercy to give allowed for the possibility of victory is just...! Yes!!!

But also he's hilarious and one of my favourite favourite things about Twelve is that the story doesn't just tell us he's brilliant and move along. We don't get only the normal outsider perspective of him seeming to know almost everything or pulling random quick fixes out of nowhere. We get to see his mind at work. Heaven Sent actually walks us through his genius and not only how he thinks, but how he makes it look effortless. It's just... one of the best character studies in the history of television. It's a masterclass on the Doctor, who he is, who he wants to be, and why he's such an infinitely wonderful, fascinating character.

And it's also a study of grief, of perseverance, of despair and hope. It is the most triumphant tragedy I've ever seen and everything about it is just so beautiful and so romantic. The Doctor breaking down and exhausted and wanting to give in, but roaring through Hell to keep living and keep striving in his cloak of tattered idealism because the flame of hope in his heart will never go out. It is majestic.

Travelling with you made me feel really special. Thank you for that. Thank you for making me feel special. Thank you for exactly the same.