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Danny Pink
(2014) |
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| Samuel Anderson |
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Samuel Anderson was born in 1984 in England. He is an actor and producer. He is best known for playing the part of Crowther in The History Boys (2006), Ross Kirk in Emmerdale (2007 - 2009) and Daniel in Trollied (2014 - 2015).
Other television roles include Gavin & Stacey (2007 - 2009) as well as various parts in Doctors (2003 - 2011) and Casualty (2009 - 2012).
He joined the cast of Doctor Who in 2014 playing the part of Danny Pink - school teacher and love interest for companion Clara Oswald. He played the part of Danny Pink in nine stories. |
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 A unique addition to the modern series, Danny Pink initially appeared to be the more successful version of Mickey Smith - the boyfriend of The Doctor's companion while she travelled with him - but he was soon revealed to have the notable difference that the companion genuinely preferred Danny over The Doctor as a romantic partner.
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| Into the Dalek |
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Shortly after the Eleventh Doctor's regeneration ("The Time of The Doctor") and Clara's return to her usual life as a teacher at Coal Hill School, she met up with Danny Pink, a new mathematics teacher, who attracted Clara's attention despite his initially awkward attempt to ask her out ("Into the Dalek"). It was revealed over the course of his relationship with Clara that Danny had been born Rupert Pink, but changed his name when he was older as he thought 'Rupert' was a stupid name, and lived in a children's home for a time. As an adult, Danny served in the army, rising to the rank of Sergeant and fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, but he eventually left the military after an incident where he unintentionally killed a young boy during a mission. This incident left him with a jaded view of life in the military, believing that generals simply sat back and issued orders while soldiers were the ones who had to actually fight and die to enforce those orders, leaving the army to become a teacher so that he could focus on helping people without the need for violence.
Although Clara continued to travel with The Doctor, she also began to go on dates with Danny when she had the time, although her life with The Doctor could sometimes intersect with her dates. After their first date went poorly due to Clara asking Danny some uncomfortable questions about his military background, she was then distracted when The Doctor came to ask for her help in investigating his new theory that the reason people sometimes felt like they weren't alone in a room was that there was a creature in existence that had evolved a system of perfect camouflage ("Listen"). During their search, not only did The Doctor and Clara briefly accidentally visit Danny's childhood self as 'Rupert' - requiring The Doctor to knock him out and edit his memory of their visit - but they also met a man named Orson Pink in the far future, the pilot of one of humanity's first time machines... and, it was strongly implied, the grandchild of Danny and Clara, given his strong resemblance to Danny and a reference to his grandmother that sounded like Clara.
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| The Caretaker |
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Despite this surprising possible glimpse of her future, Clara continued to try and pursue a normal relationship with Danny by keeping her dates with him and her trips with The Doctor separate, but these efforts came to an end when The Doctor took a job at Coal Hill School as the new caretaker ("The Caretaker"), trying to find an alien weapon known as the Skovox Blitzer that had been drawn to the school due to the artron energy in the area. Although The Doctor had intended to trap the Skovox Blitzer in a rift and banish it, Danny followed Clara and The Doctor when he saw them in the school after hours, with his interference disrupting The Doctor's first attempt to banish the Skovox Blitzer, merely sending it a few days into the future rather than trapping it in the Time Vortex as he had planned. Learning about Clara's history with The Doctor, Danny concluded that The Doctor was nothing more than another general who pushed people to their limit to make them stronger; although he helped The Doctor disable the Skovox Blitzer by distracting it long enough for The Doctor to hack and disable it, he made it clear that he didn't entirely trust The Doctor.
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| In the Forest of the Night |
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Although Clara contemplated leaving The Doctor after their last trip saw him leave her alone to make the impossible choice of killing an unborn creature living inside the Moon or putting Earth at risk when it hatched, Danny, after hearing her story, noted that he was certain she wasn't done with The Doctor yet as she was just too angry with him ("Kill the Moon"). Clara decided to continue her travels with The Doctor as her 'grand hurrah' saw him risk his life to save the passengers of a space train ("Murder on the Orient Express"), but she lied to both Danny and The Doctor about her decision, telling Danny that she had ended her travels and telling The Doctor that Danny knew and was fine with her decision. This deception continued until a sudden outbreak of trees all over Earth forced The Doctor to visit her directly while she and Danny were supervising a school trip ("In the Forest of the Night"), Clara leading her class to the TARDIS to keep them safe while The Doctor investigated the situation. Although it was subsequently revealed that the massive overgrowth was a natural phenomenon to protect Earth from a solar flare, when given the chance to observe the flare from orbit, Danny instead chose to stay with the children, concluding that he had seen enough impossible things in the military and preferred to focus on individuals now.
While talking with Clara on his mobile as she prepared to tell him everything about her life with The Doctor, Danny was hit by a car and killed, finding himself in a location that was presented him as the 'Nethersphere', allegedly an afterlife where he retained awareness of his body's condition. Although The Doctor and Clara were able to make contact with him, Danny terminated the connection, not wanting to unintentionally tempt Clara into trying to follow him, leaving him with the choice of erasing his emotions to escape the pain he would feel if his body was cremated. However, the Nethersphere was subsequently revealed to be part of a new plan arranged by the Master - now regenerated into a female incarnation known as 'Missy', short for 'Mistress' - where the minds of the dead were uploaded into the Nethersphere and their bodies subsequently revived as a new breed of Cybermen, with Missy keeping the Cybermen hidden until they had advanced enough to convert themselves into vast clouds of nanites that would convert the living and the dead into a new Cyber-army. Although he was subsequently 'reanimated' as a Cyberman, Danny retained his full individuality as he hadn't deleted his emotions before being transferred back to his body, resulting in him experiencing the full pain and agony of the Cyber-conversion process without a lack of emotions to numb the agony.
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| Dark Water/Death in Heaven |
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Although he was able to find Clara and rescue her from a group of Cybermen, he subsequently took her to a graveyard where he asked her to deactivate the inhibitor, forcing The Doctor to travel there for the final confrontation. As Missy revealed her true plan to hand control of the Cyber-army over to The Doctor, forcing him to either reject it and leave it in her hands or become a dictator enforcing his will on the universe, The Doctor instead handed control of the army over to Danny, recognising that he would never hurt Clara even with his emotions deactivated, trusting Danny to make the right decision and proving that he was not the general Danny had accused him of being. To ensure Clara's safety and the survival of the human race, Danny took control of every Cyberman present and flew them into the cloud, detonating them in the air to ensure that the Cyber-nanites were destroyed for good. Despite the destruction of his physical body, Danny was eventually able to make contact with Earth from the collapsing Nethersphere, but when he learned that the Master's control bracelet only had enough power for a single trip, he instead chose to send back the boy whose death he had been unintentionally responsible for, making contact with Clara only long enough to explain his reasoning and apologise for leaving her before the connection was broken for good ("Dark Water/Death in Heaven").
Danny briefly appeared to Clara when she was trapped in a dream by mysterious 'Dream Crabs' that sought to trap all of humanity in permanent dreams until their brains were consumed, with one stage of Clara's dream featuring a world where she and Danny were still together, but after The Doctor convinced Clara that she was experiencing a dream, her 'memory' of Danny encouraged her to move on, asking her to spare five minutes each day to think of him but wanting her to live the life that he died to give her ("Last Christmas").
Despite her apparent acceptance of his 'last request', when faced with her own death after an impulsive decision to save a friend backfired ("Face the Raven"), Clara speculated that she had been driven to take risks out of a desire to see Danny again, accepting her demise with the hope that she would be with him once more. While Danny's death eliminates the possibility that he and Clara were Orson Pink's ancestors ("Listen"), various sources have suggested that Orson may have been descended from another branch of Danny's family who had learned of his heroism from Clara after he sacrificed himself, giving hope that Danny's legacy will go on. |
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