10 Most Depressingly Realistic Lessons From Doctor Who

1. You Don't Always Know When You've Hurt Someone

Before Clara's final goodbye in Series 9, she had been given an embarrassment of riches in not one, but two goodbye scenes that any companion would have been proud of. Consider poor Dodo, and how absolutely thrilled she would have had either of those goodbyes. While the goodbye scene at the end of Last Christmas would have easily made it onto the top five departures ever list (so perfectly pitched that it's a genuine tragedy that Nick Frost came in and gave them a get out of jail loophole), it's the café scene at the end of Death in Heaven that really breaks new ground. Clara, believing that the only thing preventing the Doctor from going home to be happy with his own people is his sense of obligation to her, lets him believe that Danny is still alive so that he'll leave her behind. The Doctor, believing that the only thing keeping Clara from staying with Danny and being happy is a sense of obligation to him, lets her believe that he has a people to go back to so that she won't feel badly about leaving him. Then they hug (just a way to hide your face) and we see that they are both utterly, completely heartbroken, and desperately trying not to let the other one see it. That's a reason for a companion departure that we've never seen before and probably never will again. They both hurt each other trying to be kind. That's not something every show can achieve.