The Companion Show, featuring The Doctor

A greater man than I introduced me to this phrase, and it neatly encapsulated an issue I'd been feeling for a while. This is something that really started with Amy Pond, but for a couple of seasons now the clear focus of Doctor Who has shifted away from the titular character and onto the companion. Why exactly?

Show runner Steven Moffat has made it clear how he feels about this, saying:

Doctor Who is more the story, in a way, about the companion. It’s her take on The Doctor, it’s her adventure she goes on with the Doctor. It’s a story that you tell because the companion, the other character, changes more than the Doctor ever does.

And this does sort of make sense in a way. However surely it's possible to show us the Companion change as a person without making the whole show about them. It is their experiences with The Doctor that cause this change, and it is those experiences that should be the focus.

Unfortunately what we are seeing is the Companion become the driving force behind whole plotlines. They are spending so much time showing the development of the Companions that the adventures in time and space are becoming secondary. How can adventures in time and space be the secondary focus of a show about a man with a spaceship capable of time travel?

Here in Australia, we got the Season 6 pre-title rider of Amy Pond introducing the show:

And now on ABC1, The Amy Pond Show

It's my understanding that this was there mostly for the burgeoning US audience to sort of catch them up. Unfortunately it also helped to skew the focus further away from The Doctor. It was the opening for The Amy Pond Show.

Now this has been taken a step further, with the entire focus of the second half of Season 7 being on who Clara Oswald is. There's still time for them to tone it back, but that will be difficult without The Doctor completely ignoring the entire reason Clara has interested him in the first place. It has quite literally become The Clara Oswald Show, featuring The Doctor.

Can we fix it?

Companions are a funny thing, and can be quite divisive amongst fans. Of course I love Amy Pond, but that's more because Karen Gillan is smoking hot and I am in no way ashamed of admitting that. It's clear Moffat wants to ensure the companion remains a hot, young female, and that's fan-service as much as anything else, despite how he may justify it. Regardless of how young, hot and female they are, they don't need to be the driving force behind the show.

Moffat has said:

I think when you start with a character who’s going to be a companion, who’s going to be on the TARDIS, you can’t think of the word ‘companion.’ You can’t think that they know that they’re a supporting character on a TV show.

So he clearly understands that the character are supposed to be supporting The Doctor, but at the same time wants to make them more than that. This is the mistake. I'm not saying the Companions have to be one-dimensional arm-candy for The Doctor who exist solely to get into trouble and be saved by him. Hell, if you don't get so caught up on them having to be hot young girls with a crush on The Doctor they have a better chance of adding value and, you know, supporting him.

Ideally we should not really notice the development of the Companion unless they get thrust to the fore for whatever reason. Perhaps we should be left wondering why they agreed to go travelling with The Doctor for their whole tenure. We should end up re-watching the first episode with a Companion and only then realise, "Wow, they've changed a lot."

So in short, Companions should be introduced in the context of their first story, given a simple reason for joining The Doctor (please not just that they want him), and spend their time with him gradually changing from a naive earthbound dreamer into a tough and seasoned time traveler. In stories they should be there to assist The Doctor with whatever skills they have, and in season arcs they should be more or less the same thing, but with the option of being more instrumental if dramatically appropriate.

And they need to stop kissing The Doctor.

Seriously.