Lle Llywela

I am coming to feel that part of the problem with Clara is that the writers are trying to make her be too many different things, and all those elements they are trying to jam together don't go, some of them are directly opposed to one another - like, she can't be both the person who understands him best in the universe because she's met every version of him AND the companion who is freaked out by regeneration and rejects him because he's different. Yet she has been presented as both and it doesn't work, it makes the character too inconsistent and destroys suspension of disbelief. I think...the concept of Clara was cooked up out of a bunch of different ingredients and requirements that didn't blend together well at all, because they didn't add up to a complete individual - and now that an actual personality is being built for her, it jibes with that original concept less and less. She wasn't well established last season and her development this season has been so extremely clumsy, which makes it hard to believe in her as an actual person. She is too obviously a construct, designed to suit whatever plot purpose she needs to fulfill now.

It is far more gratifying when the plot is driven by the specific characters involved in it, the way those personalities react and interact, rather than having the personalities of the characters involved shaped by the requirements of the plot.