

You’ve written into your mind that he was a competitive asshole before the academy, but the entire point is he was not like that until he got to the academy. He had to be perfect for his parents, not an asshole. You’ve decided that perfect = asshole, but that is not supported. You can watch that episode again and listen to what he says about his parents.







To be pedantic, Ake was there, too. (She said the Doctor and Sam were not the only ones who spent 17 years on Kasq.)
But to be not pedantic, I thought the exact same thing. What kind of resilience building experiences could she have had in that environment? Falling and hurting her knee? I feel that one is the biggest tantrums (some) kids have are over food, and Sam doesn’t even eat. Reading does increase people capacity for empathy, so there is that opportunity for her, but even so, there’s a vast difference between sympathy and resilience.
I hope they actually fill this in in a reasonable way. Even though this episode was beautiful in some ways it still had some glaring problems.