Top Five Big Damn Hero Moments: Clara Oswald (Doctor Who)

It might have been better to hold off on this post until I rewatched all of series 9, but whatever.  As it is, my choicest Clara moments are pretty frontloaded.  I feel like a lot of her big-ticket stuff from the Twelve era either 1) feels manufactured as a Big Moment rather than a natural action born from her character, or 2) comes at the expense of the Doctor’s competence, which just annoys me from a writing standpoint.  So, here’s what we have instead (spoilers.)

Comforting Merry (Series 7, Episode 8 – “The Rings of Akhaten”)

Not flashy, not world-saving, but wonderful.  On her first adventure to an alien planet, overwhelmed and temporarily on her own (the Doctor is off doing something else,) Clara sees a young girl in distress and helps her, just because she can.  Clara does more than just help Merry evade the shady-looking guys who are searching for her; she sits down, talks with Merry, learns what’s upsetting her, and shares a warm personal story to help reassure her.  Lovely.

Telling the Old God a Story (Series 7, Episode 8 – “The Rings of Akhaten”)

Here’s how much I love Clara in “The Rings of Akhaten” – two-and-a-half seasons on the show, and two of my favorite moments of hers come from this one episode.  True, Clara is probably just looking for more cherished memories to “feed” the Old God when she presents the leaf, hoping to turn its hunger away from the Doctor, but because she is offering it the potential futures lost when her mother died young, she’s able to glut it and make it destroy itself.  I love her strength in sacrificing something so precious to her, especially because her mom is not longer with her.

Jumping into the Doctor’s Time Stream (Series 7, Episode 14 – “The Name of the Doctor”)

An obvious one, and the story does feel pretty heavily steered to get her to this point, but I buy it.  Seeing the Doctor suffer, Clara can’t stand by and do nothing, and she knows the universe will be better with the Doctor in it.  So, she leaps.  If they had laid off the unpleasant “I was born to save the Doctor” stuff, it could have been a really compelling end for her character.

Interrogating with the Half Man (Series 8, Episode 1 – “Deep Breath”)

I like Clara’s smarts here, doing some quick thinking under a lot of pressure to turn the tables on the Half Man and make him answer some of her questions.  I especially like how visibly afraid she is throughout the whole thing, digging deep to push through her fear instead of being unrealistically untouched by it.

Recovering the TARDIS (Series 8, Episode 9 – “Flatline”)

Clara does a nice job “playing the Doctor” in this episode, and when she and the others are cut off from the Doctor, she really comes through.  In a pretty despairing moment, she figures out how to use the available resources to exploit the aliens’ power and restore the TARDIS to its full size, allowing the Doctor to come out and finish them off.