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Doctor Who: The Snowmen (2012)
Clara Who?
***Spoiler alert***
We all know that loneliness, or isolation, is dangerous to one's mind. But place that on top of loss and grief, and a deadly mindset of apathy sets its roots.
This Christmas special opens up with our main (human) antagonist, Dr. Simeon, as a young boy making contact with the main (alien) antagonist, who then spends the next fifty years of his life help the snow. Why? Spoilers.
We then meet our heroine, Clara (aka. The next companion), played by Jenna-Louse Coleman. The exact actress who was Oswin.... Coincidence? Clara comes across the Doctor in attempt to find answers about the killer snowmen popping up from nowhere. But the Doctor has lost his will to help, or make any connections to people he might lose.
The Doctor we all know and love is slowly melting away for self-preservation, but he lost himself it the process.
Well the episode continues to dance between the Doctor and Clara's life as the investigation proceeds on the malevolent ice crystals, making their paths cross more and more. When there is a disturbance in the children of whom she is the governess of, Clara sets out for the Doctor's help. She comes across Madame Vastra and Jenny. Vastra warns Clara that the Doctor was once kind, but that pain of loss changed him. But Vastra gave Clara the one word test. If Clara answered in one word that sums up what's going on, why she needs the Doctor, and why he should help her, then he will answer. The purpose of one word is tell only truth, for lies are, and I quote, " words, words,words". Clara's answer was "pond".
We all know what that means to the Doctor, but for Clara it means danger for many people. I thought it was brilliantly how the writers planned this part. It got the Doctor out of his own mind, and even gave the audience something to cheer about. The portrayal of this Doctor, isolated, sad, and apathetic, is realistic of someone who has lost their own purpose, self-worth, not wanting to die, but hating their life that they have to live.
This is true for all beings the thought of loneliness is poison that brings an eternal fear that only a person can take away. But the relief only lasts as long as the person giving it. That is what the Doctor, I think, fears the most. That the fear of the fall back into loneliness and the anticipation of the pain it brings.
After such an amazing change of heart, the Doctor comes back... As Sherlock Holmes! Just kidding, well he is any way. We see the Doctor as we know and love. Smart, brilliant, and handsome as ever. After assisting Clara in saving her friends, he takes her to the TARDIS in attempts to capture what the snowmen are after, a cranky ice woman. The snow needs her in order to have a human replica in ice form so that they can, guess what, take over the world.
Plans are working, success is in reach, when Clara is attacked, and both her and the ice woman fall from the TARDIS, smashing the ice and mortally wounding Clara. Infuriated, the Doctor goes to the snow and does not show mercy, getting back in time to say good bye to Clara. At her funeral, the Docter realizes that he had never seen her full name. Clara Oswin Oswald. If you can recall Oswin Oswald was the name of the girl who died in the episode 'Asylum of the Daleks'. The Doctor confirms them to be the same girl. And so we are left with Doctor on a mission to find out just who Clara is. This leaves me with one question.
Clara Who?