Doctor Who: Why Does the TARDIS Dislike Clara Oswald?

With Clara Oswald leaving Doctor Who, there are still plenty of unanswered questions about her in the Whoniverse.

We know that Clara will not be returning after her death on Doctor Who, as the splintered branches will not be making an appearance. However, that does not mean that other questions surrounding Clara have been answered. One of those questions is why the TARDIS seemingly dislikes Clara, to the point where it has locked her out and went insane when the Doctor attempted to teach her how to operate the machine.

It is a question that was posed to Steven Moffat over a year ago. In answering that question in Doctor Who Magazine, Moffat suggested that the TARDIS’ dislike of the current companion may be due to her sceptical nature and how she did not seem suitably awed by the Doctor’s spaceship. Or, as he said, “It’s almost like it’s all building to something… Oh! What’s this I’m writing today?”

Perhaps the moment that Moffat was referring to was when Clara threw the keys to the TARDIS into the liquid hot magma inside a volcano during Dark Water. However, it is possible that the dislike that the Doctor’s spacecraft has for Clara goes far beyond that point, to a different level entirely.

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While it could simply be nothing more than jealousy, the TARDIS did like Leela and was on good terms with Rose. If this was a matter of the craft looking to keep ‘her Doctor’ from forming attachments elsewhere, it would make more sense that those two former companions would have also been disliked. Perhaps there is just something about Clara that rubs the TARDIS the wrong way.

It could also be simply that the TARDIS does not like anomalies. Clara, by entering the Doctor’s time stream, splintered off into millions of other incarnations. She is, quite simply, everywhere that the Doctor has been. Given the TARDIS’ relative dislike of Captain Jack, it would seem as though these beings upset the craft. One has to wonder, if that is the case, how the TARDIS would react to Ashildr should they meet.

Next: Doctor Who: Flight Through Eternity Revisited

it is easy to dismiss the TARDIS’ feelings towards Clara as simply the craft being a solid judge of character, given the polarizing affect that she has upon fans of Doctor Who. However, there may be a lot more to the TARDIS’ dislike of Clara than that. Hopefully, this will be answered in the next two episodes, but that seems doubtful.