But it's not all doom and gloom this year as the most recent episode, The Caretaker, showed. While going undercover (or, rather, wearing a different overcoat) as the janitor of Coal Hill School to stop a deadly robot, the Doctor got the chance to find out about Clara's new beau. Rather than solider-cum-maths teacher Danny Pink, he assumed it was the floppy-haired, bowtie-wearing Adrian. Wonder why that was. The proud fatherly glint in the Doctor's eye as he thinks Clara has picked a man like himself (as the old-fashioned notion goes, 'women marry men like their Doctors') is just as funny as his later indignation that he got it wrong - the look on his face when Clara says Adrian is 'not her type' is priceless. This moment shows us Peter Capaldi's comic timing is as spot-on as his dramatic acting (although we should never have doubted that after several years of The Thick of It) but also demonstrates the new relationship between the Doctor and Clara. Rather than romantic as most of the 21st century Doctor-companion teams have been, this is more of a teacher-student pairing. Although which is which is hard to decide.
