Was the horrific slow death of Doctor Who assistant Clara 'too traumatic' for family viewing? Fan fury at character's exit

• SPOILER ALERT
• Saturday night's Doctor Who episode was broadcast before the watershed
• It saw the tragic demise of one of the main characters on the show
• Show writer says children do not learn about loss from Doctor Who 

By Sam Creighton, Tv & Radio Reporter For The Daily Mail

Published: 07:10 EST, 22 November 2015 | Updated: 20:12 EST, 22 November 2015

Since it began 52 years ago today, Doctor Who has had a reputation for making children hide behind the sofa.

But it seems the series may have gone a step too far in Saturday’s episode, which saw the death of sidekick Clara Oswald.

The instalment, called Face The Raven, began almost an hour before the 9pm watershed and has been criticised for being too scary and upsetting for young viewers. 

Scroll down for video (WARNING: SPOILER ALERT) 

Facing the raven: Jenna Coleman has played the Doctor's companion, Clara Oswald, since 2012, but finally fell victim to the dangers that come with the job on Saturday

Farewell: Jenna Coleman's character is show lying on the ground after facing the raven

The claims follow the watershed row over ITV’s brutal Sunday teatime drama Jekyll And Hyde.

In Doctor Who Clara, played by Jenna Coleman, 29, was killed by a creature known as a quantum spirit. The Doctor explained that she could ‘flee across all of time and all of the universe’ but it would track her down.

The Time Lord could only look on helplessly as it flew into his companion’s chest before she silently screamed, with black smoke coming from her mouth, and then collapsed lifeless to the ground.

Steven Moffat, the series’ head writer, defended the dark themes, claiming children loved to be scared as long as it was kept within certain boundaries. 

He said: ‘You have to be responsible about it – that doesn’t mean it isn’t shocking or troubling. But it is not like children learn about the realities of people dying from Doctor Who.’

However, fans were unsettled by the episode, which was watched by 4.5million people, calling it ‘traumatic’.

One wrote on Twitter: ‘Still left staring blank at my TV after Doctor Who; too emotionally damaged.’

Another added: ‘Doctor Who just tore my heart into millions of tiny pieces then stomped on them. Somehow not feeling much love for Steven Moffat!’ 

Reactions: Doctor Who fans took to Twitter to express their feelings after Saturday night's episode

Farewell: The Doctor was powerless to protect Clara from her deadly foe in the episode's closing scene

Emotional: Fans expressed their sadness and sorrow on Twitter after the episode

This is the latest in a series of programmes that seem to challenge the 9pm watershed by showing graphic content earlier in the evening when children might still be watching.

ITV was flooded with complaints over Jekyll And Hyde. Its writer Charlie Higson was eventually forced to admit that it was ‘not suitable for younger children’.

The programme is currently being investigated by Ofcom over whether its violent scenes breach broadcasting rules. The inquiry began after 839 complaints were submitted to watchdog Ofcom and ITV.

Doctor Who has frequently courted controversy. Last year’s episode Dark Water saw the BBC receive 118 complaints after dead bodies were transformed into an army of Cybermen. At one point it was suggested that dead could feel the pain of being cremated. 

The BBC defended the show at the time, saying Doctor Who was ‘a family drama with a long tradition of tackling some of the more fundamental questions about life and death’.

Miss Coleman, who has played Clara since 2012, said that she could not stop crying when she filmed her final scenes. 

She told the Sunday People: ‘It was a surprise when I read the script. It’s really cool and different, and good, I think. And sad. It was ridiculous to get emotional. I’d planned all these things I wanted to say but only got two words out.’

The BBC declined to comment yesterday.

If this is the best Doctor Who writers can do – exterminate!

Christopher Stevens on last weekend's TV 

Doctor Who

Rating:

(no stars) 

Doctor Who has become Doctor What’s-The-Point? Once the Beeb’s best adventure series, it started to run low on energy five years ago, and for the past 18 months the whole franchise has been, despite its massive budget, practically bereft of ideas.

Under producer Steven Moffat, it has become needlessly complex and tortuously contrived. Stories make no sense, characters have no continuity and, instead of scaring and exciting us, the writers appear to be interested only in showing off how much arcane trivia they know from episodes 50 years ago.

Doctor Who has become a prime-time programme aimed solely at ‘Whovian’ geeks, the kind of people who don’t watch any other television but this — and who don’t seem to realise that the ancient episodes they revere, the ones starring Patrick Troughton or Tom Baker as the Timelord, were written to thrill children.

Brave face: Clara ordered her friend not to let what was to happen turn him into a monster

It’s a very long time since the Doctor entertained many viewers under ten. For a start, it’s on far too late — Saturday’s episode didn’t finish till 9pm.

Actor and writer Mark Gatiss has complained furiously about this, arguing that the Doctor’s rightful 6pm timeslot is currently occupied by Pointless Celebrities.

But there’s an excellent reason for this. Ordinary people like Pointless. And they are bored to distraction by Doctor Who.

Viewing figures have spiralled down to new lows this year, slumping below four million. Much of the blame lies with the dull, self-indulgent stories that are frequently impenetrable — such as last week’s tosh written by Gatiss himself, something tedious to do with sleep.

But the latest offering was the worst of the lot. It was static, it was a mass of childish contradictions, and it wasn’t so much unoriginal as a blatant rip-off of Harry Potter’s Diagon Alley, a magical, invisible Victorian street in London.

The scenes were a series of debates, characters standing in clusters and gabbing on about aliens and ethics. It was as dynamic as a parliamentary committee meeting.

One last hug: All the Doctor could say was 'Clara...' before she clung on to him in one last hug

Maisie Williams returned as the immortal Viking, Ashildr, though since we last saw her she had acquired supernatural powers, such as tattoos that turned to smoke, and the ability to kill by pointing ravens at people.

Why not? The Doctor has been reinvented as a guitar-wielding rocker, who can no longer open locks without a key — he’s chucked away his sonic screwdriver. The whole show feels as though uninterested TV executives are making it up as they go along.

But worst of all was the death of the Doctor’s companion, Clara Oswald, who suffered the most ill-judged demise since Cousin Matthew skidded into a ditch in the 2012 Christmas special of Downton Abbey. We’ve known for months that actress Jenna Coleman wanted to quit, and yet this was the best departure that Moffat could devise: Clara volunteering to suffer the death sentence imposed on a fellow character.

That doesn’t add up — why not just transfer the sentence to Ashildr or the Doctor (Peter Capaldi) — both are unkillable, after all, so no harm there?

Instead, because Coleman wanted to quit in real life, she chose to die. Capaldi gaped and sighed for about ten minutes, Clara got struck down by a raven, and that was that.

What an abject anticlimax. The series should be rebranded as Pointless Doctor Who, because that’s exactly what it is.

Building Hitler’s Supergun

Rating:

The tragic death in 1944 of pilot Joe Kennedy, future President JFK’s big brother, was uncovered in Hugh Hunt’s fascinating investigation into a deranged Nazi masterplan to win the war with sci-fi technology. 

Building Hitler’s Supergun: The Plot To Destroy London (C4) told how German engineers attempted to construct a cannon that could lob 300 shells an hour across the Channel, an assault potentially even more devastating than the Blitz.

Kennedy’s mission was to pilot a plane crammed with explosives targeting the supergun: he was to bail out before the aircraft was guided by radio control to destroy the weapon in its bunker. Instead, it blew up in mid-air.

Hunt’s eagerness to set off explosions sometimes sent him veering into Top Gear territory: he got supergung-ho, like Richard Hammond playing with a howitzer kit.

But the history was well told, without too many statistics. This was bang on target.

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