First broadcast 30 March 2013.

When it comes to 21st century Doctor Who, the first episode of the year is usually an outstanding place for new viewers to jump on. In the case of 2013’s “The Bells of St John” it is actually the sixth episode of the season, but with the departure of long-running companions Amy and Rory and the introduction of their replacement Clara (Jenna Coleman, here credited as Jenna-Louise) it is in all respects but actuality a season premiere.

Clara Oswald (Coleman) is a young woman living in London struggling with her wi-fi, who receives a number to telephone for assistance from “a woman in the shop’. The call connects her to the telephone attached to the outside shell of the TARDIS, sending the Doctor (Matt Smith) to modern-day London, and a mysterious conspiracy to upload human minds to the Internet.

There is a slight product refresh on the Doctor here, adding to his revised TARDIS interior from the 2012 Christmas special with an all-new costume and companion. It has been a slightly complicated road to introducing Clara to the Doctor, since Coleman had by this point already appeared twice and unexplained alternate versions of the woman we meet properly here. As with Amy Pond, her introduction to the series is as a mystery for the Doctor to be solved and she is quickly dubbed “the impossible girl” due to her turning up multiple time across time and space.

And I hate her.

Okay that is needlessly dramatic, but the truth is that Clare Oswald represents a confluence of frustrating elements that dog the period of Doctor Who in which the character prominently features. At this early stage, much of the frustration lies with Coleman’s performance which feels rather mannered and in which she lacks sufficient diction for prime time television. That latter element improves over time. At first the BBC received a non-trivial number of complaints from viewers unable to understand her dialogue.

The mystery surrounding the character, coming straight after the mystery of Amy Pond and the cracks in her bedroom wall, feel like series showrunner Steven Moffat is replaying the same trick on an audience and expecting an equal reaction from them.

Frustratingly, and to a larger degree than Moffat’s previous female characters, Clara does not seem to talk like a real person but rather like an artificial character. She seems smart, funny, and flirtatious, but she never feels real. She seems incapable of being ordinary. Some of the series’ greatest companions have been straight-forward normal people experiencing the impossible. Instead Clara feels forced, as if the series is trying too hard to make her an interesting new character.

The actual narrative of “The Bells of St John” is a little under-developed and weak, but punctured throughout with some deliberately ‘big screen’ moments of action and adventure. A bravura sequence involving preventing a jet airliner crashing into Clara’s house is as good a scene as the Moffat years get, but the actual nuts and bolts of the storyline – and villain Miss Kizlet (Celia Imrie) – are dreadfully sparse and unsatisfying. Much of it seems geared at a shock last-minute twist that reveals the episode as a direct sequel to Christmas special “The Snowmen”, which somewhat undermines the new episode’s status as a jumping-on point. Director Colm McCarthy ensures it all has a nicely cinematic feel.

Good elements sit with bad ones, as do satisfying and unsatisfying moments. The final result is reasonably entertaining on a superficial level. Over the coming half-season there will be good episodes and poor ones, and Clara will begin to frustrate more and more.