Moffat Era Rewatch: Notes on "The Rings of Akhaten"

·      This is a really lovely episode, criminally underrated. In the 50^th anniversary DWM rankings, it was ranked in the bottom ten least popular episodes, alongside stories like “The Twin Dilemma” and “Fear Her”, which, really? I think that ranking says more about the Doctor Who fandom than it does about the quality of this episode as a piece of television. I think it’s one of the best episodes in series seven.

·      A large part of its success comes in its pacing, and the time it takes to soak in the atmosphere of the alien world. There’s unusual amount of time devoted to this, resulting in an unusually skewed pacing, but that works here in a way it doesn’t in the similarly oddly paced “The Power of Three” – mostly because it helps give us one of the best fleshed out alien cultures in the New Who. We learn about Akhaten’s history, culture, and religion, and these things are all key to the story’s resolution – it’s a story about understanding a new and strange world in the classic Doctor Who tradition, and is the kind of thing I love to see Doctor Who doing.

·      Another thing worth exploring in this episode is the question of perspective. I’ve seen it said the Doctor is more of an audience identification figure than Clara throughout this season, but I’m not sure I agree with that: we see the impossible girl mystery from his perspective, but most of the season, the early episodes in particular, is still told through Clara’s perspective. This is particularly obvious here: we’re getting to understand the experiences and worldviews that shape her while learning about the world of Akhaten alongside her.

·      The Doctor, meanwhile, is very distant in this episode, even in the scenes told through his perspective, or where we catch hints of his internal world that Clara is not privy to. Examples of this include him wearing Amelia’s glasses, a sweet moment that actually makes him asking Clara for her mother’s ring less sympathetic: he’s visibly lying when he says the sonic is the only thing of sentimental value he owns. Another example is the line “people we found again, against all the odds”, and the opening sequence, both of which show the Doctor trying to understand Clara’s “impossible girl” status. Otherwise, the Doctor is filtered through the lens of other characters, disappearing from the narrative for ten minutes while Clara meets Merry. Even his two big speeches:,the “cabbages and King’s” speech, and the I’ll tell you a story” speech, are at least in part about how Clara and Merry react to what he says, rather than being about his perspective on the story. Throughout this episode, the Doctor’s perspective is hidden from us, and when we are privy to his thoughts, namely the moments he’s trying to understand Clara, he is framed as being disturbing and untrustworthy. Between this and Clara’s “I won’t be a bargain basement stand in” – a wonderful moment in which Clara calmly asserts her worth, and right to be treated as her own person, the narrative is clearly framing the “impossible girl” mystery as the wrong way to understand Clara’s character. The season arc is remarkably up front in its intentions.

·      Instead, Clara the character reacting to and learning about the world of Akhaten: as most companions do in their first adventure. The scene of Clara waiting on the steps in anticipation of the TARDIS is a wonderful moment, and a nice moment the show’s able to have thanks to the “Travels with the Doctor on Wednesdays” aspect of Clara’s character that is specific to her. This typical “companion’s first adventure” storyline is mashed together with another early example of the Doctor role (I’d argue the companion and Doctor roles are more blurred than many think, particularly in New Who). Like the eleventh Doctor, she is clearly established as being good with kids: helping Merry by empathizing with her and talking to her with respect, but on her level. It helps that Coleman works just as well with child actors as Smith. On top of this, Clara gets the Doctor’s role of figuring out how this world works, and using what she learns to figure out how to save the day: understanding that the power of potential stories and lost days have more power against the sun god than the Doctor’s expansive personal history.

·      Add to this a greater fleshing out of Clara’s past, as we learn about the history of her parents, and her childhood fear of being lost – loss of control and fear will crop up again as struggles Clara has throughout her time on the show – and this is one of Clara’s most significant episodes, particularly for a non Moffat written story. Much of the work done to establish her as a complex character who is misread if one tries to understand as a “mystery girl” is done in this episode.