Doctor Who 9.10 "Face the Raven"

There has been some grumbling about Clara’s exit from the series in the latest episode of “Who.” People are claiming that she didn’t get a realized story arch. All she ever amounted to was being a series of plot devices. That may be. It is a fate of multiple companions over the years.

My problem with the story, if her death indeed is the end of Clara on “Doctor Who,” (and there are reasons to think we haven’t seen the last of her.) is that hers was the textbook definition of a meaningless death.

It is the nature of the character-cycling on the show, and it was likely time for her to go, but in “Face the Raven” we got a death designed merely to move us emotionally. You might could argue that she gave her life for another, but the story underlines the fact that she was mistaken in her effort. She goofed up big time. And her pleas to the Doctor to not avenge her death sound noble at the time, but all they amount to is a declaration that she wants her death to mean nothing.

People hated Adric back in the seventies, and some may have secretly delighted in the fact that he died thanks to his own incompetence. But here we get an even more insignificant passing from a character that has meant a lot more to the show’s overarching mythology. Is Moffat seriously going to create a character that he had save every incarnation of the Doctor in every story of the series (a crazy conceit), and who caused the Doctor to correct his most terrible error (the Time War), and then just write her out in such an insignificant way?

I have hope that we haven’t heard the whole story here.