Clara Oswald The Impossible Girl
Best Episode: Asylum of the Daleks Run, you clever boy, and remember. To be fair, lets start with Claras good points specifically Asylum of the Daleks, The Snowmen, and Nightmare in Silver. She was incredible as Oswin in Asylum; I genuinely loved her character! She was brilliant, resourceful, full of sass, and exactly the kind of person the Doctor would love to have as a companion on the TARDIS. In The Snowmen she still kept some of the same spark but then in The Bells of St. John she lost that certain something that gave her a distinct personality. Its the same throughout Season 7; Clara doesnt really come into her own until Nightmare in Silver, which is the second-to-last episode in the entire season. Season 7 was chronically plagued with bad writing, and much of it was due to the horribly long, drawn-out process of finding out the mystery of who Clara is. It isnt even interesting like River Songs story is River pops in and out of the Doctors life from time to time, surprising and delighting us every time she does. But Clara is constantly there, and unlike Amy or River she has no back story to keep us interested in the mystery of her. She has a leaf, to tell the story of how her parents met; but a leaf is not a full back-story! Here is the River and Amy conundrum at its worst Clara is no one without the Doctor. Even the greatest mystery about her is that she has to save the Doctor over and over and over, it seems. She is a mystery wrapped in an enigma squeezed into a skirt thats just a bit too tight, as the Doctor says in Nightmare in Silver. Thats exactly my point; shes a mystery, a puzzle, not a person, and that stops us from caring about her when that mystery is dragged out episode after episode. She doesnt have anything memorable to say or do, besides the one act of jumping into the vortex to save the Doctor. With that act her mystery is solved, but is she any more relatable or accessible because of it? No. She doesnt kick the Doctor back in line when hes getting too cocky, which is what every companion has to do at some point. She never questions; she just follows. Even if what Clara and Eleven have could be somewhat of a romantic relationship, its not; Eleven actually acts quite possessive and selfish towards her, because he wants to have her with him, but hes afraid that she is some kind of trick or trap. This turns very quickly into a situation that is a bit awkward and also unfair to Clara. Even the Doctor doesnt treat her like a person; shes his precious possession to keep safe from the world and even the mystery of herself. To summarize, Clara is my least favourite out of all the New Who companions; hopefully her adventures with the 12th Doctor will make her a little more accessible! And there you have it the best and the worst companions of New Who. You may disagree, but dont think this wasnt a difficult ranking to do I changed my mind several times even as I was writing this article. Every companion has good and bad qualities, and I was incredibly sad to see each of them go although it remains to be seen how Ill feel about Clara!