Hell Bent

[tardigrade @tardigrade]

@ozitenor

3. This is what REALLY confuses me…

I’ll have a shot at explaining what could have happened…

Perhaps Clara dropped the Doctor’s tardis off somewhere remote, so that it’s out of the way and to stop UNIT finding it and dragging it off the dark archives or something daft, and left the Doctor somewhere near it in the US. The Doctor can remotely track the tardis, so he knows it’s not where he left it. Still piecing together his memories, he hasn’t been in a hurry to find it and felt a greater need to find a guitar instead to help him put what he can of his memories together. When he’s does go looking for the tardis, Clara nips back, materialising around it to have a last encounter with him. As to why its placement didn’t seem odd to him and he doesn’t seem to recognise it, perhaps that could just be attributed to his distraction.

The Doctor should remember to change the locks on the tardis- he lost a key back in Trap Street and who knows who ended up with that. (He carries spare keys, so can get in OK.)

[geoffers @geoffers]

@ozitenor

why is it that the dial ends up being out in the dry lands of Gallifrey when the Doctor exits it?

i’ve reasoned it out this way, for my own satisfaction:

because the doctor exited the dial in a most unique, unintended way (by physically breaking it), that the fracture in the wall opened in a random place, but not a random time. if the time lords had let him out, he would still be on gallifrey, near the end of the universe. but breaking the dial created a “back door” in space, which (luckily) was only a little ways from the city…

when the doctor emerged into the desert, it then reverted back to its original form. so it physically disappeared from wherever it was being kept. it came with him to gallifrey, the long way (via the hole/back door in itself). this explanation works for me, especially when i consider that there’s a black hole being stored inside the tardis… 🙂

 

for everyone else, it seems that some here aren’t convinced the prophecy of the hybrid has been fulfilled. i have to point out (don’t think anyone else has mentioned it), that whether the hybrid is ashildr/me, or the doctor, or the doctor and clara… whomever it is… they meet at the end of everything, in the ruins of the cloister room. the doctor clearly says to clara that he’s moving the stolen tardis forward in time only, not space. and you can see the remains of the blue cables everywhere (but not blue anymore), when the doctor and ashildr/me are talking. so, the hybrid DOES stand in the ruins of gallifrey (well, on the “last remaining ember,” anyway)… but DIDN’T CAUSE the ruin of gallifrey. time, alone, did that…

(and perhaps the “destruction of a billion, billion hearts” was fulfilled by the doctor’s time inside the confession dial?)

so i don’t think the hybrid will still be a “thing” next series. it has been wrapped up, along with clara’s “impossible” run…

 

 

[geoffers @geoffers]

@ countscarlioni

when the Doctor travels to meet Me, he does not say how much farther forward in time he’s travelled (or did I miss it?).

he does. he specifically says that it’s the last few hours of the universe, and that the time lords won’t be able to track him there. he also says to ashildr/me “go to hell, by my calculations you’ve got about five minutes…”

upon reviewing this scene, i did find it odd that ashildr/me remembers the events of “face the raven” so well, given her terrible retention. perhaps the time lords brought her forward in time, as well, and those events aren’t all that long ago to her, now? (but that doesn’t explain how she’s remembered everything while waiting for the doctor. it’s clearly been a long, long time since gallifrey crumbled…)

[Anonymous @]

@ozitenor

Okay, I think -with respect to the diner in the middle of Colorado or Utah  -Utah, fixed space in time. He knows it, he’s drawn to it because of Amy, Rory and his wife, the Hair.  🙂

Have you been to these countrified locales? In the middle of nowhere there’ll be a pretty scrappy looking diner with a bun flask full of bitter hot coffee and after the first cup it’s free.

They sit…just….sit there, these diners waiting. six bucks for eggs and pancakes: squeaky seats.

Anyway, yes, as for how he long it was before he went to see her….it could be any amount of time I think because the coat looked like it needed a good dry clean. Then again, the black board on which she’d written the words “be a doctor” looked relatively fresh. Chalk usually just falls off eventually but who knows? But then tardigrade’s  is a good response to this confusion we find ourselves in.

@tardigrade

yes, it is a bit confusing: did they muck up the universe then? Possibly. I didn’t even notice like Ozitenor that the guitars were different! Golly gosh another rewatch required.

Still, I gotta say, you really want Clara to die right away don’t you? 🙂  Goodness, we know that’s coming. We know she’s saved the Doctor countless times and his various iterations countless times, that should be good enough?  A teensy wheensy bit? A tiny dot on the microscope of time, bit? Also, she’s looking after Ashildr who frankly needs a nanny and to top it off her best friend can’t remember her. Death? Hunh! Death is nothing by comparison. 🙂  She a has a tiny weeny amount of wiggle room -a blipblip and she’s raven ( my new word for death!)

Kindest,

Puro and Son

[geoffers @geoffers]

oi! and i’d forgotten…

was the gruesome statue of liberty, by the door, a moffat troll of everyone who complained about it in ‘angels take manhattan,’ or am i reading too much into that addition to the diner?! (i don’t think it was there in ‘the impossible astronaut.’)

🙂

[geoffers @geoffers]

post #48947 should be @countscarlioni

i need a tardis to edit my old posts…

[misterhoo @misterhoo]

With the Doctor losing his memory of Clara, the Claricles can get back to saving him without the Doctor noticing them.

[Anonymous @]

@misterhoo

brilliant observation -yes, I suggested that too -or the boy of the hybrid did (oi, Son, where art thou? Come back ‘ere now!) but I’m not sure. The claricles did say “I don’t know where I am. I keep saving the Doctor and he doesn’t even know me”. Mmm. I think, in the end a few ppl called that.

Those were the clever folk who said that Clara is not a ‘prime’ but another claricle -I think she fell into something in the middle? Kind of ? Maybe?  <<*\*>>

Ach, this is all too clever for us. We go eat meat and hunt!

Come hither Son of Puro let us get drink from Pub (well, not you Son, you can have lime cordial)

@goeffers doffs cap: also brilliant. So he moves the Tardis forward a bit more each time until the 4 knocks (enter Listen) and until the only thing left is one immortal watching all the stars go out. This is amongst the ruins of Gallifrey because it’s also dying and vanishing. The universe is collapsing in on itself and everything is therefore closer (hell being “5 mins away”). Who should be outside except Ashildr?

*head exploding* (I guess if the universe is collapsing in everything that’s left is a short walk to everything else?).

*head exploded*

 

[tardigrade @tardigrade]

@geoffers

upon reviewing this scene, i did find it odd that ashildr/me remembers the events of “face the raven” so well, given her terrible retention. perhaps the time lords brought her forward in time, as well, and those events aren’t all that long ago to her, now?

The point of her being at the end of time was that she was the last of the immortals- so if she time-travelled there, that’s lost completely. I did notice that her memory seemed a lot better than previously though. Perhaps she found some way of augmenting it, or organising it to hang onto key events- learnt a few tricks from the TLs?

@puroandson

Still, I gotta say, you really want Clara to die right away don’t you?

I’m not a Clara-hater- it was the story that I felt required her to die- not me :-). I’m over that now- as far as I’m concerned Clara can roam around as long as she feels the need, even if she is in practical terms a zombie- no bodily processes but still walking around.

[Anonymous @]

that’s for @geoffers above -pardon the misnamer (?)

[Anonymous @]

@tardigrade

No, no I was joking! I was smiley facing an’ all! I’m totally with you and get your point of view 100 %

Of course you’re no Clara hater -respect n’ all. Son of Puro claims you are a very good writer indeed. Very convincing and persuasive. Maybe your’re right. Maybe she should be making amends by dying or at least sending that idea into chaos?

🙂

This is Son speaking: if the pulse isn’t working then her heart’s not working then how does anything happen. For instance if she meets Danny and you know…..how does Orson….eerm happen? I don’t understand how, if something happened, she could even grow cells with no heart beating away. In fact, where’s her brain in all of this?

Confused!!

 

[tardigrade @tardigrade]

@puroandson

No, no I was joking! I was smiley facing an’ all! I’m totally with you and get your point of view 100 %

It’s all OK- I thought you’d pick up from me calling her a zombie that my response wasn’t terribly serious either 🙂

This is Son speaking: if the pulse isn’t working then her heart’s not working then how does anything happen. For instance if she meets Danny and you know…..how does Orson….eerm happen? I don’t understand how, if something happened, she could even grow cells with no heart beating away. In fact, where’s her brain in all of this?

It’s certainly tricky- without bodily processes, how can she lay down memories for one thing? Children would seem to be out of the question. This wasn’t a process that the TLs intended to be used long-term. So far from being immortal, perhaps through accumulation of damage that’s shes unable to heal, her body might fail her fairly quickly. Time for a last hurrah though.

Who knows- maybe Orson was one of the Claricles doing? I don’t think that’s a thread that’s going to be picked up again.

[Mudlark @mudlark]

@puroandson

if the pulse isn’t working then her heart’s not working then how does anything happen.

The answer to that seems to be that she is existing in a kind of personal time-bubble, and the time within it is a single instant of her life, indefinitely sustained.  Since she can interact with people and things in normal time and space, she could be thought of as living in a state of active stasis – which is a contradiction in terms, I know, and doesn’t make scientific sense within the frame of anything we currently understand about the nature of the universe. But we are talking Time Lord technology here, and who knows more about the relationship between space and time then the Time Lords?  Besides, as I think you commented earlier, Doctor Who isn’t really science fiction – at least not in the sense of the kind of science fiction which confines itself to what is plausible according to our current scientific knowledge, or extrapolations therefrom.

[Anonymous @]

@tardigrade

Ah Son here (mum is resting again). Yes, I love zombies. I will be seeing some Walking Dead soon -I don’t know it at all well.

So Orson could be a claricle involvement :face slaps: why didn’t I think of that? 🙂 Of course, it was a claricle who had a romantic entangle. Awesome idea.

Also Mum was riffing on and on and on about Clara being born near a clock and we will never see that answered. Was there a clock somewhere around? I suppose we are all born near clocks.

In the end those who thought Clara was the master in disguise, I guess, that’s a big no!

So if Clara has no pulse, she may not get cold or hot? I think this is something I have to stop thinking about. It will blow my small mind! Everyone who doesn’t have a pulse dies. So -she’ll die but we don’t know when? Maybe never?? No, I couldn’t handle another immortal: that would be three.: Capn Jack has already died as the Face of Boe billions of years even before that. I’m glad he was referenced this season that was a nice call back. We also understood why the Dr “frowned that face” -but not the main official in Torchwood, maybe?

[Anonymous @]

dear @mudlark yes, you’re right -it’s timelord tech so anything could be possible and also it isn’t sci-fi on its own  -it’s all sorts of other things mixed right in. I like that a lot.

[ichabod @ichabod]

@pedant post #48765 — yes yes to all of it!  Wonderful stuff.  And:

“. . . the Hybrid there was still no suitable explanation” — There was a perfectly clear (not sure what suitable means in this context) explanation: the gestalt entity that is Doctor+Clara.

A gestalt that has now been wrenched apart, so that each one can get on with their separate lives, one keeping the memories that she rightly claims belong to her, that she’s won with her courage and her quickness; the other with only faint echoes of someone gone, but also (IMO) past the huge obstacles of guilt and grief that he burned and crashed his way through in “Heaven Sent” so he can continue his life.  I don’t think any of those lost events can ever be reclaimed or reconstructed, because the root cause — Clara — has been erased from his mind.  It would be a bit like waking from a dream, with some tendrils of memory melting away as you turn your attention to them, leaving you with blurred outlines of people and actions but no identifying details of who occupied that “outline” that the missing person left.

Oh, and I have to point out that I called it too, somewhere up the spoilers thread, thinking that someone might obliterate Clara from the Doctor’s memory as a mercy to him (I mentioned Ohila, or maybe Missy — though she and mercy don’t mix) fixing him up so that he can move forward, free and clear, from the awful moments of Clara’s death (and leaving only us, the fans, to remember for him). What tipped me off was the bit of the trailer where he was asked the name of the song he was playing:”I think it’s called ‘Clara’.”  (Though I thought it was Rigsy asking him that, for some reason.)

I need to re-watch to see if there are signs that the Doctor does indeed set things up deliberately to destroy his memories of her rather than vice versa, releasing both of them.  He’s that clever, all right, but is he that perceptive?

Him not remembering Clara I find sad, but sadder still was the thought of *us* remembering when he doesn’t; and worst of all, that before long he won’t even remember that he doesn’t remember a chunk of his life that was so passionately significant to them both.  It’s the losing that gets me, more than the loss itself.  Kept me up most of Saturday night after the show, with a weird, tense discomfort in my midsection.  Come to think of it, we *need* Clara to survive to do any remembering that needs to be done in future DW stories — and more importantly, to make this something much better than the “it was only a dream” sort of ending that it could be otherwise.

 

 

[tardigrade @tardigrade]

@puroandson

Ah Son here (mum is resting again). Yes, I love zombies. I will be seeing some Walking Dead soon -I don’t know it at all well.

Off topic, so I’ll keep it brief, but I much prefer the WD graphic novels over the TV series- the TV series was too drawn out and I gave up on it quickly. They diverge quickly in terms of significant plot elements (like who lives and dies), so I wasn’t going to try to keep two parallel stories straight. Many love the TV series though.

I suppose we are all born near clocks.

Yes, one of those Barnum statements (look it up), that could apply to anyone, so the writers may not have had anything specific in mind. I doubt we’ll see any more resolution of anything on the Clara front now. Would be tricky to use her character in future series in any meaningful way, with the Doctor not knowing her.

[jphamlore @jphamlore]

@geoffers: This would have been the end of the hybrid story except I speculate, by the laws of this type of storytelling, that Rassilon is going to try his best to create the horror he was supposedly trying to prevent.  So Rassilon is going to conduct unspeakable experiments trying to combine species for his army.

[tardigrade @tardigrade]

@ichabod

I need to re-watch to see if there are signs that the Doctor does indeed set things up deliberately to destroy his memories of her rather than vice versa, releasing both of them. He’s that clever, all right, but is he that perceptive?

He does look at the neural block, and might have known what it would actually do, but rather than making an openly unilateral decision, involves Clara and makes it seem random. After the wipe, he might not even know himself if that was the case.

It occurred to me that if he’s being less than completely honest, it could be that he’s faking memory loss. After all, Clara’s told him that she “reversed the polarity” on the neural block – let’s be honest – that means she put the batteries in backwards. In my experience that means a gadget just doesn’t work :-).

[ichabod @ichabod]

@avaris  I think Clara can only die when she goes back to the fixed point in Face the Raven. I am not sure if it is fixed anymore. Only Twelve witness Clara’s Death, yet Twelve forgets about Clara.

An excellent point — thank you!  If a tree falls in the forest and only the Doctor sees it happen — ?

@puroandson  Son of puro, Her death is waiting. To me the loss of the Doctor’s memories of her is a “fate worse than death”

Except, I think, that the one *worse* thing would be for her to lose her own memories of her time with the Doctor; so it’s got to be a consolation to her that she is now in possession of memories, as seen from her side at least, of traveling with him.  I also like it that somebody else here pointed out that just as the Impossible Girl did with SmithDoc, Clara has once again saved the Doctor many times, but when he looks back at those years he won’t see her as part of the action (his mind will paper over the missing bits, as minds do), so she’ll still be saving him without him noticing . . . !

@nerys  Who is the poster who predicted it would be the Doctor forgetting Clara? Bravo! You must be feeling quite chuffed about that.

Yes!  That was me, and pedant, I believe.  It just seemed like potentially the most poignant outcome and a nice bit of turnabout as well.

@mudlark  She has lost the Doctor, except in memory, but she no longer needs his presence, since she can continue, Doctor-like, to experience the adventures which had come to be her chief reason for being. To me that seems a fitting way to round off her tale, and not the anti-climax that a literal resurrection would have been.

Precisely.  She’s rewarded for her courage and tenacity, not punished after all by that misogynist old meanie, Moffat (as some noodle-brains were complaining on reddit, I think).  Loved this whole post of yours, above.

But when he leaves in the Tardis, the last we see of it is Rigsy’s painted memorial with the portrait of Clara flaking away, and the fragments scattered to the winds.

*Damn*, don’t remind me — that image hit hard, very hard.   He said he could hardly wait to see what Rigsy’s next piece of art would do — now he sees, but how much does he know?  Are you saying that he *does* remember Clara, in the diner scene, prompted maybe by their conversation?  So then when he enters the TARDIS and puts on his claret coat and squares up to stepping away from the past and into the future, does he remember consciously that the claret coat was Clara’s favorite?

Also I hadn’t caught the significance of his exiling not just Rassilon but the whole High Council as a revolutionary move designed to leave Gallifrey in the hands of its ordinary people.  Fastest revolution in history!   I though he was just repaying the lot of them for complicity in the events of Raven and Heaven, but I like the idea of the rebel Time Lord being so effective that he can overturn them just by showing up!  This also frees him to turn his back and go off and have non-Gallifrey adventures, which I think is another brilliant stroke by Moffat — we all know the Doctor makes a terrible President of anything, so it’s best anyway to leave the commoners to reconstruct their world without him sticking around.

Are we sure this is Gallifrey 4 billion years on, though?  If the Confession Dial experience was largely subjective, then maybe not?

[jphamlore @jphamlore]

@arbutus: The Doctor couldn’t help being irresponsible when it comes to Clara because she was specifically designed by Miss / The Master to be his earworm obsession.

Ashildr: Missy. The Master. The lover of chaos. Who wants you to love it, too. She’s quite the matchmaker.

[Mudlark @mudlark]

@ozitenor

For what it’s worth, my take on the issues raised in your post #48938 points 3 and 4. is as follows.  I read the initial sequence of events as you did: when the Doctor regained consciousness he was in a very confused state – waking up in the desert with no idea how he got there would be enough to ensure that, even without the after effects of the neural block – but it probably would not be long before he recalled the Tardis, and since his last memory of it was in London, he probably made his way back there to look for it.  The alternative suggested by @tardigrade is also very plausible, but I think if that had been the case, and he could sense it nearby in the desert, it is more likely that he would have headed straight for it instead of wandering around long enough to pick up a new guitar.

When he fails to find it in London he reasons that it must be somewhere in the desert, near to where he woke, so he heads back to Nevada and goes looking, having hitched a lift in the pick-up truck in which see him arriving at the diner.  How he paid for all this is anybody’s guess, though Clara and Me might have ensured that he had enough money on him for contingencies – or perhaps he earned it by busking.  The amount of time which passed while all this was happening is probably not important.  It would not have been difficult for Me and Clara to keep tabs on him – Me had been doing that for several centuries, after all, and without the benefit of a Tardis at her disposal as far as we know.

Clara could have left the Tardis near him and in plain sight when she dumped him unconscious in the desert, but she didn’t because, as I read it, she was doing all she could to ensure that the Doctor did not forget her entirely. So she set up the alternative scenario with the diner.  Maybe the choice of that form for her Tardis was random, a copy of the original chosen simply as an anomaly in the wilderness which would be likely to attract his attention, or maybe during their travels together the Doctor had told her about some of his adventures with Amy and Rory and mentioned it, so she chose that form as particularly likely to attract his attention.  On the other hand, since she and Me apparently did not know how to operate the chameleon circuit, the most likely possibility to my mind is that it was the choice of the Tardis itself – probably the Doctor’s Tardis if it was, as it seems to have been, stashed inside the diner-Tardis, but conceivably the diner-Tardis, since the Doctor had been inside the latter briefly, and it might have become slightly attuned to him in the process.

By the time he walked into the diner he has, as you say, had time to piece together his fragmentary memories and noticed the hole left by Clara, just as a Doctor shaped hole had been left in the universe after the Claricle in The Dalek Asylum had hacked into the records of him and erased them.  He even remembers the name Clara and says, significantly I think, that he would know her face anywhere, though there is no sign that he does when he says it.

By the time he had told his story and their conversation in the diner ended, he would, as I have said before, have to have been extraordinarily slow on the up-take not to have realised who it was he had been talking to, after the breadcrumb trail left by Clara, and all the hints and clues she had dropped.  I imagine it was like bumping into some stranger and starting a conversation, only to realise after you had been talking to them for some time, that this was someone you had heard or read a good deal about but not recognised from their description.

I got the impression that even when he first walked into the place he had some subliminal awareness of its significance, else why did he start picking out Clara’s theme and launch into his narrative?  And then, at the end, he played the theme in full, which again I think is significant.  And then he sees the diner dematerialise around him, and the portrait of Clara on his Tardis.  What could be plainer?

[ichabod @ichabod]

@bluesqueskpip  Love your post #48897, above — great.  This:  it’s the Doctor who thinks he’s playing the starring role in a tragedy. However, the universe – in the person of the current producer – knows he’s playing the starring role in a comedy.

And this:  When we see Face The Raven in hindsight, as the ‘regeneration’ story of Clara into Doctor Clara, it makes more sense (the Doctor’s regenerations often occur through sheer bad luck).  Clara’s death is, as the Time Lords know, a fixed point. But what they didn’t realise is why. It’s a fixed point because, without that death, Clara can’t become the human equivalent of a Time Lord.

@pedant  What was described was not a prophecy, drawn from rune casting or tarot, but a forecast made by technology and algorithms.  They weren’t being superstitious. They were scared.

Forgot all about that — thanks for reminder!

@tardigrade  having her return voluntarily to face the raven would have been an eminently appropriate conclusion IMO.

But she *is* returning voluntarily to face the Raven, just taking the long way round.  Oh, and glad to hear that Capaldi has won you over!  So good to enjoy his talents and his zest for this role while we’ve got him, since it won’t be forever and the future of DW itself is always in question.

@nerys  his memory of all that happened is still there. So I don’t think for a moment that he failed to learn from this. I believe he has learned.

Now I’ll have to go watch that again — I completely missed that: he tells her the story, so clearly he *does* remember the events themselves, and that this person he can’t remember was involved in them.   But how much can he have learned without knowing why he acted as he did — that his motives were so often about Clara?  Still thinking that over . . .

@jphamlore  I don’t agree that Clara’s death was due to “bad luck.” I think what is being portrayed is that the Doctor and Clara are in a “can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em” relationship, which is why it had to be broken by one of them forgetting about the other.

I agree — it had evolved into that kind of impossible situation; and this time it’s only fair that it’s the Doctor who gives up his memories, not the companion.

@lisa  He figured out that he had to part from Clara. So was he making it easier for her? Seems to me that he really didn’t loose a lot of his memory. I really get that feeling. The Doctor lies. Again.

Oh, lisa — well-spotted!  So do you think he was at least partially play-acting having forgotten Clara in those conversations in the diner?!  That would be a new level of lies, even for him!  Gotta look again.

[ichabod @ichabod]

@mudlark  I got the impression that even when he first walked into the place he had some subliminal awareness of its significance, else why did he start picking out Clara’s theme and launch into his narrative? And then, at the end, he played the theme in full, which again I think is significant. And then he sees the diner dematerialise around him, and the portrait of Clara on his Tardis. What could be plainer?

That’s pretty convincing, and would put a somewhat different spin on his final scene, inside the TARDIS, seeing the chalkboard writing and putting on the coat, all without a word.  What does he know?  What has he truly forgotten or lost, and what, exactly, does he still remember?

[IAmNotAFishIAmAFreeMan @pedant]

@arbutus

 “How can he remember she existed if she was completely wiped from his memory?” Well, obviously, she wasn’t completely wiped from his memory. Where did it say she was? I know it was suggested that she might be, but it clearly didn’t happen.

I think this was addressed in-text: he recognises that she existed because of the hole left by her. There is a person-shaped void in his memory. He recognises the absence, but cannot recall the exact person who filled. All he has is a song, as Clara hinted at the end – she is a song call Clara, so she is still a story, in the end. And I’m pretty sure that’s the idea she seeded in the Matrix. They had become a gestalt entity. Both knew what was coming, even if the details weren’t yet clear, and she made sure he wasn’t left totally bereft, a last act of devotion.

 

[nerys @nerys]

@ozitenor

1. Sunglasses: Clara gives them back to the Doctor who, later in the diner puts them on the countertop to connect his electric guitar to the speaker system. BUT, the diner and the furniture in it are all part of Clara’s shiny new TARDIS, so when she dematerialises to leave the Doctor alone in the desert with his old TARDIS, the sunglasses have stayed presumably on the diner counter, and are now in the ClaraTardis for use by Clara and Me in their future wiggle-room adventures.

Thanks, I missed this detail. Time for another rewatch!

@morpho

Was the coat Hurt’s? Didn’t recognise it out of context.

I thought Hurt wore a brown leather coat. Capaldi’s was fabric.

[tommo @tommo]

@rorysmith – you’re bang on with the Ashildr/doctor theorising scene. i totally imagine moffatt reading this very forum in prep for a scene like that. i think all those theories they bandied were posited on here at some point. it reminded me of that scene in Sherlock (series3) when he’s discussing how he escaped his jump from the hospital roof with that ex-cop character.

raid the forums for ideas? why the hell not?

@jphamlore

At some fundamental level, Clara and the Doctor simply can’t communicate with each other.

lest we forget, also back in series 8, when she stole the tardis keys and held them to ransom. a great example of the ensuing toxicity you mentioned re. their relationship development. reckless isn’t the word sometimes. this could well have been the beginning of the end for clara and the doctor.

@ozitenor – re. your no.3 query. it is not the necessarily the pilot that chooses the chameleon setting or destination but sometimes the ship itself. tardis’ are living things remember with conciousnesses of their own.  the pilot is just along for the ride so to speak….

re. the time discrepancy with ‘Utopia’, maybe that story was set in another universe, a ‘star system or two’ away possibly……? 😉

[Mudlark @mudlark]

@lisa  @ichabod

The Doctor lies. Again.

Exactly!  Or, if not lying outright, he has been a bit economical with the truth.  If he intended the neural block for himself all along, it probably wasn’t programmed for a full erasure.  He said that once Clara was in your head she never left, and perhaps it was only this Clara-in-the-head he meant to remove.  When he first woke in the desert no doubt his brain was more than a little scrambled, but by the time he reached the diner the memories had started to reassemble – enough at the very least for him to spot the Clara-shaped hole and put a name to it.

It may be that he really did not recognise Clara at first and the gradual or sudden realisation of who it was he was talking to was in the manner I suggested in my response to @ozitenor ,  but I was watching Capaldi’s subtle changes of expression, and I can’t shake the feeling that from the first he was aware of rather more than he was letting on.  By the end, as I have said in earlier posts, all the oblique and coded references in their conversation and their body language left me with a strong feeling, if not certainty, that the Doctor and Clara had reached a mutual, if unspoken understanding. When they parted he knew perfectly well who she was, even though she was no longer ‘in his mind’ and his memories of her in his past were more like a story told, and she knew that he knew; and they were content in that knowledge.  So he reads her last message to him on the chalk board, picks up his ‘doctorish’ coat, and is ready to embark on the next phase of his life.

[nerys @nerys]

@geoffers

upon reviewing this scene, i did find it odd that ashildr/me remembers the events of “face the raven” so well, given her terrible retention. perhaps the time lords brought her forward in time, as well, and those events aren’t all that long ago to her, now? (but that doesn’t explain how she’s remembered everything while waiting for the doctor. it’s clearly been a long, long time since gallifrey crumbled…)

That same thought occurred to me, as well. But thinking about it a bit more, she probably wrote it down into a beautiful story, and she remembers the pain and beauty of it because she captured that in her story. Kind of like the Doctor transposing Clara into a lovely melody.

@ichabod Kudos to you for calling the Doctor’s Clara amnesia, as well!

[IAmNotAFishIAmAFreeMan @pedant]

@lisa @mudlark @ichabod

Nah. I works more strongly as the text showed. All the Doctor had was a hole, and the song seeded by Clara (no coincidence that he was playing it in blues style).

Of course the wildcard is River.

[Mudlark @mudlark]

@pedant   Fair enough.  The strength of the text and of the actors’ interpretation is that they accommodate different interpretations 😎

[IAmNotAFishIAmAFreeMan @pedant]

Lindalee has spoken, so now we all know what to think:

[Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip]

Okay, now working my way through page 2. 🙂

@avaris

I still think Clara should have died.

They didn’t earn a final death. Which makes considerably more sense now that we know it was ‘really’ a regeneration. For a classical tragedy, a death has to result from a fatal flaw in someone’s character. The ‘fatal flaw’ is presented as Clara behaving like the Doctor. She dies because she did what the Doctor would do.

At which point you go ‘hang on. Since when has acting like the hero been a fatal flaw?’ And it’s made worse because Clara didn’t get the ‘heroic’ death either. She was saving someone who, it turns out, quite possibly wasn’t in that much danger.

River’s death, in contrast, is earned. It’s also heroic rather than tragic; River dies to save both her husband and their life together, closing the loop that made ‘River Song’ out of ‘Melody Williams’.

Clara dies by sheer bad luck – but this is drama. There’s no such thing as ‘bad luck’; only authorial decisions. Her death is tragic – but it’s not classical tragedy. She meets her death heroically – but she didn’t get to die saving somebody else, so not classical heroic either. And the onscreen death of a full time companion in Doctor Who, something that happens very, very rarely, deserves either the heroic or the tragic death.

What Clara got was the Whovian equivalent of Danny’s death. Forgetting to check the road before stepping out in front of the monster. Now, they earned that for Rory. He was so fatal-accident-prone, it was completely believable that he’d make his exit by yet another fatal accident (that only killed him decades later). It was carefully set up that Amy would rather risk death than lose Rory.

But the set up for Clara was different. Clara always dies. And it’s always real. But it’s never the end of the Impossible Girl.

[IAmNotAFishIAmAFreeMan @pedant]

@bluesqueakpip

‘hang on. Since when has acting like the hero been a fatal flaw?’

That would be hubris.

Clara dies by sheer bad luck

Nope. Hubris.

But it’s never the end of the Impossible Girl.

Except when she realises it is. In fact, she realised it was the first time, but the Doctor wouldn’t let it happen. And when you’ve been pushed out of the way of death a few times, that might just make you think you are as invulnerable as your protector.

I rather liked the up-thread (or possibly the Graun) characterisation of Clara and Me as Thelma And Louise in Space. That ended in a way that was both beautiful and sad….

[Miapatrick @miapatrick]

@puroandson, @tardisgrade- re Orsan. We don’t really know he is descended from Clara. He behaved as though he felt he had some kind of family link with her, but all we can be pretty sure of, balance of probability, is that he is related in some way to Danny. Danny the orphan, who made no mention of any siblings or other family when she saw him in the orphanage,  but had to slip away at some point for ‘family reasons’…

[Rob @rob]

Rassilon Resurected sort of fulfills the prophesy too….

The Resurected bit implying he’s a hybrid

He definitely stood in the ruins of Gallifrey (the Timelords having been reduced to living in a pocket universe, hated as much as the Daleks and now hiding or is that teetering on the outer rim of the universe)

How many hearts did the Time War destroy ( a billion billion is 10 to power of 18, interesting set of numbers that wiki it peeps and even if the Doctor took 4.5 billion years he would have to punch that diamond wall 111,111,111.8 times a second to destroy that many hearts)

And then he nearly destroys the universe by ensuring the Master’s and Missy’s sanity is corrupted totally by the sound of drums.

Anyway @puroandson many people struggle with Who as our lives are so linear time wise we are always like Me living the long way round that to play with time is to redefine our whole existance, thus, totally understandably  , don’t get it.

Also we now have the absolute perfection of dropping into conversation

Clara and Me are off to vist the Ice Warriors of Mars soon

Or

The Doctor and Me are popping off to the Library to extract River from her death

It will annoy grammar teachers and those poor souls who are not Who geeks

 

 

 

 

[TheBrainOfMoffat @thebrainofmoffat]

So, I still need to get through this page’s posts, but two ideas crossed my mind, and they constitute a reasonable joint resolution to the Clara-still-needs-to-die-but-has-no-reason-to problem. First, presumably, the extraction program won’t remain active forever in local Gallifreyan time (do you really think it’s still going when Me and the Doctor are talking?). Assuming it’s connected to Clara in some wibbly wobbly way, we could treat her remaining time alive like a call from the TARDIS to someone’s phone in another time period: durations of time are equal on both sides as long as the connection lasts. In other words, if the extraction program can keep “Raven time” frozen for, say, 100 local Gallifreyan years, then Clara, whenever she is, would have that amount of time left to her from her own perspective before needing to return.

However, how is she to know that? The only ways she would go back to her death without this knowledge are as follows (and this part is the second of my two ideas): 1) she’s coerced into going back on pain of some worse consequence (e.g. perhap’s Me’s or the Doctor’s death); 2) her time travel adventuring forces her into a situation that would be paradoxical if she didn’t go back to die; or 3) the Time Lords are actively hunting her to ensure the absence of a paradox on the trap street. As you might be able to tell from my italicization, I really like the prospect of the third. However, any of the above three options would make for an excellent episode and a true logical resolution to the problem of Clara’s death created in Hell Bent.

What say you all?

[Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip]

Aaaand more of page 2 🙂

@misterhoo and @puroandson

Apologies if someone else has already replied to your query – but The General stated quite firmly that Clara’s physical death is a ‘fixed point’. We’ve seen before what happens when someone’s death is a ‘fixed point’ – Rory, who simply could not die until he finally reached the place and time he was supposed to die.

Which means that Clara has that final qualification for ‘Doctor’ status – like Ashildr, she’s no longer an Ordinary Human Girl (TM), but one of the distinctly non-fragile Immortals. Incidentally, when Ashildr says that ‘even the immortals are gone’, she’s probably giving a Moffat sized hint that Clara will eventually return to face the Raven. Ashildr would probably be gone herself – but someone has given her a ‘meet the Doctor here’ set of space-time coordinates (and quite possibly a lift).

My assessment of the time conundrum is that the Doctor’s 4.5 billion years takes place in a second or two of Galifreyan time (they’re Time Lords, time is their thing). So the Confession disc has its own time. Internally, 4.5 billion years take place. Externally, probably the time it took to be sent from Trap Street to Gallifrey.

Gallifrey has been moved in time, rather than in space, and is now hiding so far in the future that not even the Daleks have got there. The Doctor then moves on a few billion years further. But for the people of Gallifrey it’s two years since the end of the Time War; the people who live in that village have now moved back and the woman has just managed to get the barn back in shape. It seems the Doctor isn’t the only old boy who likes to visit.

The Sisterhood of Karn had the feel of characters being set up for later use. It may simply be that they want to set up the Sisterhood as a second string to the Paternoster Gang’s Doctor Support Group after Clare Higgins did such a stand-up job in Night of the Doctor – Neve McIntosh was awfully busy in 2015. I’d agree that Ohila seemed to be largely there to make sure whatever went down was witnessed (and she really does sound incredibly like the Doctor’s old headteacher).

@tardigrade

I’d really beware of that prophecy. Science mostly advances by exploding previous theories, and that ‘prophecy’ seemed to be carefully set up as a theory about the future. Additionally, last time we actually saw Rassilon (James Rassilon) in The End of Time, he was listening to the prophecies of the batshit crazy Priestess of Pythia. It wasn’t that her prophecies didn’t come true, it was more that they later got rewritten. ::cough:: The Moment ::cough, cough::

So Rassilon has a history of going overboard (in the mass murder, torture and abuse of small children sense of ‘overboard’ – he really is a monster) on the basis of a literal reading of prophecies that should not have been read literally.

@phaseshift

the corrective nature or counterpoint to Donna in this.

Yup. Absolutely. Whether the Doctor genuinely knew or not that his memory would be the one wiped, he effectively got karma’d for Donna’s fate. 😉

@agurk

The moment that the Dalek followed the ‘Exterminate!’ with ‘me’ was probably the most chilling bit of the entire Cloister sequence. Another reminder that there are people trapped inside those killing machines.

@variousposters
I really do have the feeling that Jenna Coleman and Maisie Williams may already be in negotiation with Big Finish…

@mudlark
I was kind of expecting there to be a post war revolution on Gallifrey, but it was lovely to see the Doctor and Clara kicking it off. The Doctor by exiling Rassilon and the remaining Council of Time Lords, Clara by telling The General and her soldiers, to their faces, that they’ve become monsters.

[Rob @rob]

Also during Rasillon’s visit to the barn he stated…..

How many regenerations did we give you, I’ve got all day

Strongly suggesting a more than just another full set

[AlexPond @alexpond]

So, stories are forgotten memories. Yes? And we are all stories in the end, just make it a good one, ey? Is the Doctor telling us that we all will be forgotten?

[Avaris @avaris]

@puroandson

Thx for answering my questions.  Those are the right answers which I find out when rewatching the episode with subtitles.  Still it is rather unsatisfying since I am expecting something more.  I think is Moffat’s writing has a bit of post-mordernism characteristic in it – being quite open-ended and deconstructing.

I still believe Clara is immortal now the last thing she needs to become the Doctor.  Remember in Heaven Sent, the loop theory is being studied.  Things in a room goes back to the original place if left unattended.  If Clara is hurt, time will heals her – her cells/atoms will return back to their original location if enough time past.  I think her immortality is very similar to Captain Jack.  They dying again will generate a paradox which the universe correct by reverting their deaths.

[Ozitenor @ozitenor]

@tardigrade:

After all, Clara’s told him that she “reversed the polarity” on the neural block – let’s be honest – that means she put the batteries in backwards. In my experience that means a gadget just doesn’t work :-).

Note the way that the sonic glasses work, as Clara explained to Ashildr when they first met. You just think the thing you want to be done, and the glasses (or screwdriver, as the case may be) will execute a task based upon your thought. So, even if Clara described what she thought when using the glasses as “reverse the polarity” what she was thinking at the time she reprogrammed the neural block gadget was more likely “make this work on the Doctor not me”. At least, that is my wild speculation! I doubt her thought was “reverse polarity” I think that’s just the shorthand used verbally (and I suppose inaccurately) to describe what she did.

[Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip]

@pedant

That would be hubris.

Ah. So the message you want Moffat to send to millions of small viewers is to not aspire?

Don’t be like Icarus, kiddies, all that flying close to the sun will only result in a fatal flaw. We should all trust in the Time Lord classes – they know how to do this stuff. All you have to do is say ‘Yes, Doctor’ and hand him his test tube. Pity that you weren’t born a Time Lord, but we can’t all go to Eton. 😉

I think ‘hubris’ was not, and never was the message. It’s not arrogant to aspire to be the Doctor – to be someone with an exciting life whose work is also genuinely important – if you’ve saved the Doctor and also helped him save Gallifrey instead of destroying it. It’s a perfectly reasonable aspiration (and it’s always been fascinating just how many posters in other places really, really object to Clara being like the Doctor).

Missy steps very hard on that aspiration, but Missy is the villain.

Hubris – if you believe someone else will always save you, that’s not hubris.

Clara: We can fix this. Can’t we? We always fix it.

That (with hindsight) is the traditional last moment of childhood. It’s the moment when you discover that you, personally, are really, really going to die – combined with the moment you discover that your parent isn’t all powerful, and can’t fix everything.

The hubris is the Doctor’s, if anyone’s. He let Clara think he is the Space Dad who’s able to fix everything, and he goes through a 4.5 billion year torture chamber – then risks the destruction of the universe – in order to fix everything. Then he wants to remove Clara’s memories, to keep her safe. He has ‘a duty of care’ – like a parent to a child, or a teacher to a pupil.

But she’s not a kid any more. 🙂

[Ozitenor @ozitenor]

Thanks to everybody for helping me with my questions. You are all excellent people, and I am most agreeable with the answers.

One more question, however, what do we think Clara actually did say to the Doctor in the cloisters? At the end Clara hints “What Clara told you in the cloisters … you said memories become stories when we forget them, maybe some of them become songs”. In the cloisters, it was right after she realized the Doctor suffered for billions of years for no reason other than to save her. She says “People like me and you, we should say things to one another, and I am going to say them now”. I wonder if it was just something simple and sentimental, an expression of gratitude and love. Anybody have any insights?

[Avaris @avaris]

@midnyt @lisa @mudlark

I don’t think the Doctor deliberately left the sonic glasses on the tardis panel.  He sort of throw them out of anger and despair.

I think the Doctor intended to use it on Clara up to the point which Ashildr and Clara change his mind.  There is a long pause before the line of “better than a coin toss”. This is the point the Doctor decides to erase his memory of Clara.  The Doctor can simply hold it backwards to use the neuron block on himself or change to human non-compatible (the doctor can think of something clever.).

@bluesqueakpip

Sorry, I am changed my mind 180 degree after re-watching and a bit thinking.  Face the Raven, Heaven Sent and Hell Bent are probably the best companion sent off in NuWho or even in Doctor Who as a whole.

The most important reason why I want Clara to die is to allow us audience to see the Doctor in agony and in madness when he losses his closest friend. Moffat showed us that in Heaven Sent and Hell Bent with Capaldi’s oscar-worthy acting and Talalay’s amazing directing.

I thought bring back Clara back again will feel cheap yet it is not there are consequence to her death experience.  I no think that the consequence should not limit itself to negative effects bought to the characters.  I think most NuWho companion departure just stay at his point.  Yet Moffat takes it to the next level by making the Doctor, Clara and maybe Ashildr too grow from Clara’s death in alley.  The Doctor finally ends his obsession of Clara ( from Eleventh), Clara accepting losses (smiling and calmly talk to the Doctor in the Dinner [compare it with Before the Flood ” Not with me! Die with whoever comes after me. You do not leave me.”] , Ashildr learns how to appreciate the beauty in things perishing. (It is no longer only about [me], Ashildr cares about other things [nice progression]).  “Wow” This is character development hidden very subtly in the script.  I think three of them become better person after the experience.

Hence, lastly this ending matches the theme of the Impossible Girl and the Doctor.  The Doctor manages to save Clara(giving her hope), Ashildr ( saving her from her death coz universe is ending) and himself from becoming the hybrid in the prophecy.  Clara Oswald is just magical like the opening of the episode. Clara Oswald has become the Doctor, there are just numerous references to that.  The manner she talks, the crazy amount of parallels (Clara/ Eleventh in that very diner cheated their supposedly certain death) , and at some point Twelve said “Clara Who”. Clara Oswald is a legend in Doctor Who.

I probably understand why Moffat refuses to kill characters off. “Always assume you are going to live/win”.  If you have a single breath left you still have “wriggle room” to change it.  Doctor Who is trying to bring hope in a dire situation.  But death is just it, nothing.

I begins to like bitter-sweet Moffat brings.  This series is written in a very cohesive manner, that requires rewatching, paying close attention and savoring to understand what is being told.

For instance,
MISSY: Since always. Since the Cloister Wars. Since the night he stole the moon and the President’s wife. Since he was a little girl. One of those was a lie. Can you guess which one?

Missy told the truth. the lie is the doctor was a little girl.

PS the Doctor and Clara is just the most platonic relationship.

[Anonymous @]

@pedant

Possibly, although”boys” is a bit specific. Presumably there would have been girls there too. I also can’t quite convince myself that it’s a coincidence that, in one episode, two different people referred to the Doctor as a “boy”. That seems significant to me.

@tardigrade

That would explain the Doctor and even River, but not the Master.

The regeneration process since the reboot has been a bit over-the-top, none more so than in Time of the Doctor. That said, in that same episode the actual physical regeneration part was pretty much instant (i liked it) and, correct me if I’m wrong, the General is the first regeneration we’ve seen since? I suspect the promise to set the regeneration effect in stone may have been broken…

@nerys

I didn’t think it looked like Hurt’s coat, but they did seem to make quite a big deal about it. Maybe it was just supposed to be reminiscent of Hurt’s to imply War Doctor mode.

[Anonymous @]

@lisa

My feeling was that the Doctor knew Clara would be listening in on his conversation with Me as well. The last test in How to Be a Doctor?

[Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip]

On the third page! 🙂

@Morpho
It sounds as if, having agreed to treat the Eighth Doctor’s audio adventures as canon, Moffat’s going full tilt for the audio canon explanation of the Sisterhood – which is that the Sisterhood aren’t just neighbours of Gallifrey, they’re exiled Gallifreyans. Rassillon didn’t like their religion, so they had to do a runner.

Regarding the barn, I’m guessing it’s either the Doctor’s old prep school, or alternatively, his old orphanage. The barn seems to have been the ‘safe place’ for the boys – at least, it was set up as a full scale bedroom in Listen. So, probably the place they all knew they could go to if they were miserable, homesick or being bullied, rather than having to sleep in the dormitory with the others.

So it became the place the Doctor went to when he was at his very lowest.

The soldiers seemed to exit the room sharpish while the regeneration was in progress. I’d guess that the Capitol may have regeneration-proofed-walls.

@puroandson

The fact that the Doctor, can’t remember his Clara is a classic tragedy.

Agreed. And in fact, that the Doctor can’t remember Clara is a tragedy resulting from his fatal flaw – arrogance. Not only was he, personally, responsible for Clara’s survival, but he, personally, would destroy the universe if he could only save her – and then he, personally, would decide what was best for her and remove her memories. Whether she wanted it or not.

So, as a result of all that, he gets his own memories removed. And it turns into a comedy – as you say, from the Doctor’s perspective this is both tragedy and comedy. Instead of the great Time Lord Victorious, moving time itself to save the girl, he ends up in a situation where Clara has bring him back home, find someone to look after him, fetch his TARDIS, give him a cup of coffee and listen to his sob story while he sorts himself out. 😀

@rorysmith
My headcanon is now that the diner in Impossible Astronaut was in fact Clara and Me’s TARDIS. They planted it there after being told in this episode that a) the Doctor had been in it before and b) it was on the other side of the road.

But they moved the control room and replaced it with a toilet.

@tardigrade

Interesting that you could view this as a comedy…

Yes, classical comedy. Dante’s Divine Comedy isn’t exactly a barrel of laughs, and Winter’s Tale is so dark at points that it usually gets lumbered with ‘tragi-comedy’. But in its ending, Hell Bent finishes with Rassillon banished, the soldiers told of their need to reform, the Doctor freed of his obsession with Clara, and Clara and Me running off together to get married.

Well, I might have extrapolated that last a bit. 😉 But it’s a classical comedy ending.

And Clara certainly hasn’t learnt responsibility- she’s off without proper adult (TL) supervision,

That’s the whole point. She no longer needs Time Lord supervision. It’s a classic comedy ending, where the child becomes an adult who no longer needs supervising. The apprentice is now herself the magician. She shows it throughout – once Clara returns to the story, she spots what’s wrong with the Doctor, she tells the Time Lords off (very accurately), she’s aware that staying alive could become a problem, she’s realised that staying with the Doctor is potential disaster – and she works out a solution to what is both her and the Doctor’s problem.

The Doctor, meanwhile, has an equally classic ending – he gets the equivalent of a magic potion in his eyes, to stop him turning the whole thing into a tragedy. Pure karma – that the man who forgets, who arrogantly deletes unimportant people’s names and faces from his memory, is forced to forget someone he wants to remember.

@jphamlore

I don’t agree that Clara’s death was due to “bad luck.”

Well, they certainly had to do a lot of work to make Clara die. Ashildr’s protection? Not valid. Ashildr’s ability to take off the countdown? Suddenly not valid. Transferring the thing again? Only works once. Ashildr has a contract with the shade? Yeah, sorry, there’s this exclusionary clause titled ‘Clara Oswald’.

Look at all that, and you suddenly realise that Clara wasn’t taking a stupid risk at all. She had Ashildr’s promise of protection, and Ashildr appeared to be in charge of the Raven. Take that into account and it would appear that Clara’s chance of survival was much better than Rigsy – and Rigsy had a family to think of.

Clara and the Capaldi Doctor were certainly in a hybrid relationship; they loved each other deeply, they were in many ways very good for each other. They kept each other alive. But they were both unable to walk away from the other – and in Moffat’s Who, if you can’t leave the Doctor, he will end up standing over your grave.

@ozitenor

why is it that the dial ends up being out in the dry lands of Gallifrey when the Doctor exits it?

Because he wasn’t supposed to get out through that particular exit – he was supposed to confess about the hybrid and have the Time Lords let him out (or, knowing Rassillon, not let him out). Exactly what the Wall of Wotsitium really represented in the circuitry is unknown, but if it was the ’emergency exit’, then I’d imagine part of its function would be to teleport the Confession Dial to a random and presumably safer location.

[DrBen @drben]

I’m chiming in even though I haven’t read all the comments, because otherwise I’ll never get the opportunity (absolutely slammed at work – never had the chance to comment on the thoroughly brilliant Heaven Sent last week).

I think this finale was wonderful.  It was not perfect — a fair amount of the story was unfocused, making it difficult to follow what was going on (the AV Club review sagely suggested that this was Moffat being coy about what the story was actually going to be about because Moffat likes being coy).  But the overall effect was brilliant, and the framing device at the diner was a wonderful setup leading to an even more wonderful twist.

I’m in the camp of those who agrees that this ending does not in any way cheapen Clara’s death-with-dignity in Face the Raven.  Rather, it is the culmination of her two-season arc to Become The Doctor — just like the Doctor has been at so many times, she was fully prepared to embrace death nobly BUT, having been presented with an out (or at least a delay), she takes it.  Nothing could be more Doctor-like.  And after all our comments from two seasons about Clara acting more and more like the Doctor, and bossing around her own companions (Rigsy, Jaq, the deaf woman from Before the Flood, etc.), Clara finally gets her wish — she is a mini-Doctor in a Tardis with her own companion!  Even with death looming someday (which it does for all of us), it’s the happiest of all happy endings for Clara.

I guarantee that someone even now is writing fanfiction for The Further Adventures of Clara and Ashildr in the Tardis Diner in which they visit Clara’s gal-pal Jane Austen for additional shenanigans.  It practically writes itself.

[lisa @lisa]

@Morpho                 @avaris             @ichabod                     @ozitenor

 

Ok so this is my bonkers thinking..    I think this reinforces the notion that the Doctor

might have a bit of Human in his DNA?    Because just like in the episode when Amy

uses the shock box to revive the 11th ( in Power of 3?)  I think that was working on his more

human of his 2 hearts. Now recall the setting on the mind wiper was human.   Therefore,

I can imagine this device only deleted the human ish  feelings from his more human heart?

Remember Missy told Clara in the Magicians Apprentice something to the effect that TL’s

are above all that emotional angst human thing and they value friendships. Maybe its just not

in their DNA?  I believe that the Doctor knew what he was doing. He remembered everything!

Except!  The emotional impact that plagued the more human heart over Clara.   I know that sounds

so romantic novel.  Ugh!  Yeah.  LOL

However,  I totally believe  the Doctor set this up for it to  shake out this way.   Really do!

Now they both can continue on.   He doesnt feel the ‘obsession’ any more.  He purged himself

of that part.   And Clara and Me as Thelma and Louise driving over cliffs!   Me gets the adrenaline

rush thing from the Mire and Clara came out of the Doctors time stream tainted with Doctor.

She became like him.  Including that craving for adventures.  IMHO that’s why ‘runners’  run.

So glad that at the end  Clara wrote on the chalkboard (SM added)  the message  –

‘RUN you clever boy’    AND    ‘ be the DOCTOR’ .

Yes!  He totally remembers her.  I just simply know this is so.

[Author]

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