Companions past and present

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  • #15816
    OsakaHatter @osakahatter

    oh, and welcome back @shazzbot 😉

    #15819
    Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip

    @MadScientist72 – he wouldn’t have noticed his wife going missing if – say – the real Amy nipped out to the shops and the Ganger Amy came back with the washing tablets.

    Or she went out to work and the Ganger Amy came back.

    Or Rory was on a night shift and they nabbed her while she was asleep.

    Or, or…

    #15825
    Anonymous @

    @osakahatter – thank you, and glad to be back!

    You have two corkers in your comment 15813 :

    he’d taken both his grandchildren to the Rings of Akhaten

    what if Clara is her own mum?  It would explain why her mum is always with her (and can always find her)

    I’m still watching The Pandorica Opens, just wanted to say hi again, and point out some great things from your post.

    #15826
    stevethewhistle @steve-thorp

    Welcome back @Shazzbot

    I just want to point out that the Doctor’s theory of when Amy was abducted and replaced with the ganger wasn’ t necessarily correct. He does make mistakes.

    #15827
    Anonymous @

    stevethewhistle – thank you for the welcome back!   Ahh, but there’s the rub … does the Doctor really know, or was he guessing?  And is this material any more, now that Amy’s gone?  I suspect any ambiguity was simply Moffat’s idea of how to make us theorise until we reach the idea he had in his own mind.  🙂

    PS really great post on Ghostlight.

    #15828
    Anonymous @

    @stevethewhistle – good point (and The Doctor also lies).

    While I believe The Doctor is right about when Amy was taken it doesn’t make sense for them to abduct her (i.e. the Ganger) again from Astro-Melody’s room at the orphanage. What would be the point? It wouldn’t be so they could lure The Doctor into a trap, they’d already planned where/when he would die.

    The only answer I can come up with is that they were worried ‘reality bleed-through’ would give the game away and so they took her in for some sort of ‘maintenance’ to prevent it but she was rescued before they could implement the changes.

    #15829
    Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip

    @SteveTheWhistle

     it doesn’t make sense for them to abduct her (i.e. the Ganger) again from Astro-Melody’s room at the orphanage. What would be the point?

    Amy had just spotted the photo of herself with a baby. She was, therefore, getting perilously close to discovering her real situation.

    #15860
    janetteB @janetteb

    I think that Amy became “flesh” sometime between her telling the Doctor that she is pregnant and telling him that she isn’t which means it happened while in the U.S. As @stevethewhistle points out, he was only speculating on when she was taken by the silence. There was plenty of opportunity for her to be captured by the silence in the time between TIA and DotM.

    cheers

    Janette

     

    #15865
    Anonymous @

    janetteB – I’m slightly confused (it’s just my bonkers theory brain still in warm-up mode) –

    Flesh Amy was being controlled by Real Amy, right?  Could Flesh Amy insist on not being pregnant (i.e., could Real Amy have thought that)?  Or, is this harkening back to The Almost People where the gangers started thinking for themselves separately from their originals?

    I ask because the latter was caused by a massive electrical surge which the Doctor witnessed; would the Silence even know this was possible?  And wouldn’t the Silence consider it dangerous to have a Flesh Amy with independent thought?  I would think so, because if Flesh Amy started acting differently to what the Doctor expected, the Doctor would have been suspicious much earlier.

    #15867
    Anonymous @

    FatManInABox blenkinsopthebrave @janetteb @scaryb @htpbdet @bluesqueakpip @MadScientist72 @osakahatter stevethewhistle (and anyone else I’ve forgotten, sorry!)

    It occurred to me with all this talk of ‘is River pregnant?’ and ‘when did  Amy become a flesh avatar?’ that our Saturday Steven Moffat Retrospective viewing schedule has this coming soon to your Doctor Who Forum screens:

    31/08/13 – “The Impossible Astronaut”
    07/09/13 – “Day of the Moon”
    14/09/13 – “A Good Man Goes to War”

    I’m so not being Topic Nazi (!), as the conversations are all about the Companions; I just wanted to remind y’all that we’ll have a chance soon to re-view and review and bonkers theorise all over again.

    #15868

    @Shazzbot

    Real!Amy wasn’t ‘controlling’ Flesh!Amy, merely supplying its consciousness (while unconscious). She was much more advance tech than the Almost People. This was made pretty clear in-show, when the doc glooped fake Amy revB);

    When Flesh!Amy RevA discovered the photos she was glooped, leaving behind the Little Red Talky Thing (which was not part of the original duplication);

    Doc/River/Rory then rescued a new Flash!Amy, RevB. The Doctor suspected this and heading of to Almost People to do some research;

    It is pretty clear that the Doc suspected something was amiss at the picnic (actually he knew something was amiss because he had planned his death by then – it was Tesa-doc, not real doc).

    Moffatt does not waste time on long-winded explanations – if the Doc says it was before Utah, that is it unless Moff changes his mind for “cool idea” reasons.

    Wibbly spacey timey wacey

    #15869
    Anonymous @

    @pedant – I had a bad choice of word *slaps own wrist*.  When I said ‘controlling’ I really did mean what you said, ‘supplying consciousness’.  In which case, if Real Amy knew she was pregnant, a Flesh Amy couldn’t know differently.

    But you’re right, this Flesh Amy was promoted as being much more sophisticated technology than what we would later see in RF/AM and independent thought could easily be part of that tech.

    I’m so glad to be re-watching TIA/DotM soon, to remind myself of exactly what you said: the ‘wibbly spacey timey wacey’-ness of it all!

    #15870

    @Shazzbot

    I think Real!Amy’s subconscious slipping through occasionally accounts for Preggers-Not!Preggers binary – with Flash!Amy being physically aware that her body is not preggers, but sleepy Amy supplying cognitive dissonance on an epic scale – rather than independent thought.

    Remember, Real!<insert Amy or baby Melody> were out for the count, until glooping shocked Amy awake (or Kovarian said “Wake up” just before the baby glooping). Lot’s of scope for sub-conscious shenanigans.

    #15875
    ardaraith @ardaraith

    HTPBDET Imagine, though, that McGann does appear

    I recently saw McGann here in Dublin.  He was / is performing at The Abbey.  On an interview for Irish radio, he was questioned about his role as The Doctor, and how he gets roles, in general.  He replied that, “one never knows until the Eleventh Hour.”  (emphasis mine)  I immediately thought – he IS in the 50th!!

    @fatmaninabox @scaryb , et al. I am LOVING the theory about River as Clara’s mum, and especially the ‘morning sickness’ foreshadowing.  I always thought River was her parent, and with the new Doctor…. um, yea…… loving it!!

    #15880
    Miapatrick @miapatrick

    @ardaraith– that’s interesting- did we have conformation, before The Eleventh Hour, that McGann’s doctor was cannon? I almost cheered when I saw his face, because I thought he was badly let down by the film, but soldiered on brilliantly.

    (mind you, I am a massive Withinail & I film- though when I last watched it, I couldn’t help imagining Doctor Who with Grant/Withinail  as Doctor and McGann/Marlow(/&I) as companion, Bruce Robertson as showrunner- never again could anyone have called it a kid’s show!)

    @fatmaninabox, @scaryb– I do love that theory also… apart from the snog in The Snowmen. Snogging a woman who turns out to be your mother in law is funny. Snogging a woman who turns out to be a scattered through time version of your daughter is something that might turn up on the Gallafrayan equivalent of the Jeremy Kyle show…

    #15881
    Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip

    did we have conformation, before The Eleventh Hour, that McGann’s doctor was cannon?

    @miapatrick – I don’t think he was fired out of a piece of artillery, no- though I wouldn’t put it past the McCoy Doctor. 😀 But the McGann Doctor was canon (note the one ‘n’) because we saw ‘John Smith’s’ sketch of him in Human Nature, and also his face was one of the Doctors displayed in the Cybermen’s infostamp data.

    So he’s firmly down as someone who can claim ‘The Name of The Doctor’. 🙂

     

    #15883
    Miapatrick @miapatrick

    @bluesqueakpip– heh, I’m only as good as my spellchecker! (I still read your name as ‘Bluepipsqueak’ and my recently developed ability to write then/than correctly has made me more proud than (see?) is rational)

    OK, that is less of a conformation then (!).  But still interesting.

    I do think that part of the reason why McGunn is cannon and Cushing(?) isn’t is partly to do with the fact that McGunn is still around. And if anyone can work him back in properly, while undoing the Spookification of the Doctor  it’s Stephen ‘The Doctor Lies’ Moffat,

    #15885
    Anonymous @

    Careful @bluesqueakpip – you might be lumbered with the Spelling Dalek crown!

    I’m wearing so many already (Grammar, Topic **) that I’d not mind at all if you perched that particular one on your head, though.  🙂

    ** @scaryb tried to combine them into a single crown!  The cheek!

    #15886
    Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip

    @Shazzbot and @miapatrick – it’s the dyslexia. If I’m a Spelling Dalek (which I am), I’m the one facing River Song and going ‘Mercy! MER-CY!’

    Basically, to interpret what I read, I go by what a word looks like. Then I go by context. Matching by sound is the last thing my little dyslexic brain tries. And it’s not terribly good at it, because when I try to translate a visual image to a sound, my brain mixes the sounds up. If I can’t match the mangled pronunciation to a word I know, I’m in trouble.

    ‘Cannon’ doesn’t look like ‘canon’. It’s got six letters, not five. Its context isn’t the same as ‘canon’. One means a piece of artillery, the other an agreed selection of texts. To me, it just plain isn’t the same word. And every time someone’s spellchecker replaces ‘canon’ with ‘cannon’, I have to go through the entire process of ‘word does not compute. Context does not compute. Match word with sound. Can-non. Can-non. Intended word was Can-on.’

    Too much of this and I feel like I’m being slapped round the head. Apologies, @miapatrick, if you’re also dyslexic, but for those who aren’t, it’s difficult to explain how a misspelled word will drag my entire reading process to a screeching halt. There really is a distinct pause.

    Which tends to make me the Spelling Dalek, because I’ll stare at an entire screen full of text and go ‘you’ve spelt their, thier.’ Or  ‘you didn’t mean ‘conformation’. 

    (I’m guessing it was confirmation, and yes, I know it was a joke – but I had to think about it overnight to figure out what you did mean).

    Yours

    The Spelling Dalek

    #15887
    Anonymous @

    @bluesqueakpip – that’s a fascinating insight into dyslexia.  I’m not, myself, but I so identified with this from your comment:

    it’s difficult to explain how a misspelled word will drag my entire reading process to a screeching halt

    I’ll stare at an entire screen full of text and go ’you’ve spelt their, thier.’

    My bugbear on the latter is, ‘you’ve spelt their, there.’  Then I too have my text reading screech to a halt.  For me, it’s because I read groups of words at one glance and like you, apply context for comprehension.  And a mis-used homophone shatters that comprehension.

    Regular mis-spellings actually don’t bother me so much; there’s plenty of research into people (non-dyslexic, of course) understanding what they read when both the first and last letters are correct, but letters in the middle of the word are jumbled up.

    I can’t be the Topic Dalek until @craig returns to re-apply my Modship, so happily this conversation will remain right here!

    #15888
    Miapatrick @miapatrick

    @bluesqueakpip–  I’m dyspraxic, which means although I can read very fluently, I find it very hard to pick up on spelling mistakes. What would have happened is I think I probably spelt the word with one n, but used the wrong vowel, and when the spellchecker suggested ‘cannon’ I didn’t register that it was the wrong word.  When I say I’m only as good as my spellcheck I mean it literally. It’s really interesting how these conditions affect (effect?) the brain, but very frustrating too. I 

     

    #15889
    Miapatrick @miapatrick

    @bluesqueakpip– and yes I did mean confirmation. Vowels are tricky for me. I do try, honest!

    #15891
    janetteB @janetteb

    Sorry for going off topic but as someone who loves reading but can’t spell, I was interested in @miapatrick‘s comment. I hadn’t heard of dyspraxia before but suspect I would tick some of those boxes. Looks like we are in good company though, Danial Radcliff, the Bronte sisters..

    And so back to topic before @Shazzbot gives me a sound rap across the knuckles.. Struggling to think of something relevant, Amy as flesh. I always found the question of just when she was converted rather confused. It would seem that the Doctor scanned the human pregnant Amy and was comparing those scans to non-pregnant flesh Amy though I am rather surprised that the flesh would scan at all. Wouldn’t she be made of gloop and why didn’t she show up as gloop on the scanner? Assumably he scanned her after she told him she was pregnant unless the Tradis just automatically scans its’ crew which seems to be a rather invasive thing to do. (Reminds me of Black Books, the five minute retina scans “just to make sure you are still you”) If that was the case he would surely have known she was pregnant before she told him. All of which suggests to me that she is taken between episode one and two rather than “before America”. It probably doesn’t really signify just when she became flesh because one assumes the illness is morning sickness regardless of whether she is human or flesh and that River’s symptoms appear to be related.

    I do like the suggestion someone made in The Next Doctor thread that Clara is his granddaughter rather than his daughter which would leave him travelling with his granddaughter again. I just hope they don’t do a switch, instead of granddaughter and teachers it is granddaughter and “students”, ie the children she is nanny too. I thought the nanny role was a reference to her fate as carer for the Doctor but maybe it is a mirror role to Barbara and Ian.

    cheers

    Janette

     

    #15898
    Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip

    Vowels are tricky for me.

    @miapatrick

    Yes, they will be if you’ve got verbal dyspraxia, because so many English words use the neutral vowel (pronounced ‘uh’) when saying words aloud. I’ve got a level of dyspraxia, as well; I never did manage joined up writing.

    Anyway, back onto topic – I seem to recall that the Doctor first scans Amy after she tells him she’s no longer pregnant. Which would be a reasonable thing to do: if Amy’s either had a false pregnancy or a miscarriage, a scan is a very good idea; the facilities on the TARDIS are likely to be far in advance of our/Amy’s time.

     

    #15900
    Miapatrick @miapatrick

    @bluesqueakpip– I print! – can’t join up at all. Being sinistral  doesn’t help, though. (Or ambi-sinister as Pratchett once put it)

    Re: Tardis scan- didn’t the doctor deliberately go to see the flesh because he wanted to find out more about it, going to what would have been presumably an earlier point in its history? The pregnant/not pregnant scan did interest me. How exactly is she showing as both? I suppose the ganger copy was made from a pregnant Amy and that could give a confused result- or were the positives a case of ‘reality bleeding through’?

    I’d assume that the flesh is so good- in a stable state, and it’s reasonable to assume that by the time the Amy ganger was being made it was more stable- so as to fool a scan. Didn’t one of the gangers inherit her human versions heart condition?

    #15901
    Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip

    @miapatrick – right-handed for most things, but yes – ambi-sinister. Dinners with place settings are a bit of a nightmare because I eat and drink left-handed. (yes, I’m sorry, I did just steal your glass. Would you like the one on my right side? I’m not using it…)  And for some reason I automatically use my left hand for the London Transport Oyster Card – which is difficult, because they place all the card readers on the right.

    I would assume that the problem with Flesh!Amy was that the body-signals coming through were pregnant, but the Flesh either couldn’t simulate a pregnancy – or was having its ‘programming’ overridden so that ‘Amy’ didn’t know she was pregnant. Either the TARDIS scan was reading the real Amy’s signals simultaneously with the Flesh signals, or the Flesh kept trying to simulate pregnancy – and then either failing or having the pregnancy simulation shut down.

    Yes, the copies were so faithful that they also reproduced medical problems.

    #15936
    thommck @thommck

    So, the question still is “WHO IS CLARA!?”

    Just when we thought we had it all figured out she becomes even more of a mystery!

    IIRC did somebody do a list of who/what Clara could be from earlier on in the series? It would be good to revisit that if anyone can retrieve it.

    My only issue with Clara being related to the Doctor is that she doesn’t regenerate when she dies. Of course, this could be because whenever we saw her die it was just a Claricle or she was Chameleon-arched, meaning her time-ladyness was removed. Even so, the Doctor seems to have done as many background checks on her as possible so I think he would’ve had an inkling. The Chameleon-arc and ganger’s are both annoyingly convenient answers to things so I’d prefer to not see them again.

    I think the more likely explanation is the one in plain sight (and one I think I have discussed previously). Clara is his “Nanny” i.e. hired help to look after the Doctor. She started off as normal but was steered/trained into meeting the Doctor by outside forces. I’m hoping the outside forces would be the Doctor’s mother. Knowing she can’t take care of him from her time-locked prison, she manages to get someone else to. She could have set this up during her brief escape in the DT’s final episodes (I know she isn’t named as his mother but that is what I believe)

    On a side note, to all those speculating about River being pregnant, although it’s a nice idea I’m not buying it. Amy & Rory’s story-line seems well and truly over. It certainly feels like it was about a decade ago to me. I can’t see their family tree extending any more

    #15938
    Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip

    My only issue with Clara being related to the Doctor is that she doesn’t regenerate when she dies

    @thommck – well of course she doesn’t. She’s human.

    She’s incredibly human. She’s extremely human. We’ve seen her grow up human. We’ve seen one of her Claricles die proclaiming she’s human (rather than a dalek). She reads on a mediscanner as human. An empath has insisted that she’s ordinary (and human). She reacts to the Slug Venom of the Red Death in the way that a human does.

    She is extraordinarily human. I don’t think we’ve ever had a Companion who’s had their humanness mentioned in over half the episodes they’ve been in. She’s human, okay?

    That it is mentioned so often suggests that it’s important. It only needed to be in one episode to establish it; not this every-other episode insistence that Clara is an extremely intelligent but otherwise ordinary human.

    It doesn’t stop her, for example, being the Doctor’s great granddaughter. We know from Human Nature/Family of Blood that ‘John Smith’ could have had human children. If his granddaughter Susan had been chameleon arched, Clara could be her entirely human daughter. If she’s the Doctor’s daughter, she was chameleon arched as a baby.

    If she’s his ‘Nanny’ she doesn’t know it; she was certainly deliberately steered into becoming a Companion. But she thought she was contacting a computer help line.

    #15940
    thommck @thommck

    @bluesqueakpip so are you saying she’s human? 😉

    We know from Human Nature/Family of Blood that ‘John Smith’ could have had human children. If his granddaughter Susan had been chameleon arched, Clara could be her entirely human daughter.

    I never thought of that. If she was conceived by a chameleon-arched parent would she really be 100% human or be a timelord with some kind of biological chameleon arch?

    D’oh that has just made things MORE complicated!

    #15942
    Anonymous @

    @bluesqueakpip @thommck – what I love so much about our bonkers theorising ™ is that it’s so fluid.  Each new episode causes a re-think of what I thought before.

    For example, as Bluey points out, there were repeated assurances that Clara is human and that made me think at the time ‘the gentleman doth protest too much’.  She can’t be human simply because they keep insisting she is, I thought.  But what if she really, really is?  (non chameleon-arched, I mean)

    Thom, I’m sympathetic to your feeling that we’ve had closure on Amy and Rory.  I myself hoped we’d had closure on River with her good-bye to 11 in TNotD.  But as you say, Clara is still unexplained, and we certainly are going to learn who exactly she is.  If not in the Amy/Rory/River family tree … then who?

    And, speaking of those outside forces that manipulated her into calling the Tardis instead of a computer helpline, and seeing how @thommck you mention the mystery female Time Lord from 10’s run … could that woman indeed be ‘the woman in the shop’ who gave Clara the number to call?

    Or … and here’s my bonkers theory … what if that female Time Lord was chameleon-arched into Clara as a baby?  If she is indeed the Doctor’s mother as suspected, and she found a way to ensure that she could look after her son?  (although this still leaves the Shop Woman unexplained)

    #15943
    OsakaHatter @osakahatter

    @bluesqueakpip, @thommck, @Shazzbot

    Interesting thoughts on chameleon arches.  If I remember right, the Master ran from the time war and hid using a chameleon arch.  Not sure I like the thought of Susan hiding, but what if Clara’s mum’s ‘death’ was actually Susan coming out of her chameleon arched form and returning to fight in the time war?

    Oooh, bonkers theory ahoy – what if the 8th Doctor had gone back to see Susan and persuaded her to hide, but later became the Hurt Doctor and went on a recruitment drive, encouraging all hiding Time Lords (including his own grand-daughter) to come out of hiding to fight?   Maybe the Hurt Doctor was one of the last people to see Clara’s mum before she died and that’s who Clara saw in the time war book?  The realisation that that was actually the Doctor then caused her to faint at the end of TNoTD.

    #15944
    Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip

    @thommck and @Shazzbot

     If she was conceived by a chameleon-arched parent would she really be 100% human or be a timelord with some kind of biological chameleon arch?

    That really is up to the writer – because all we’ve seen so far is that a chameleon-arched parent can have children with a human. Since you can’t tell a chameleon-arched Time Lord from a human being, presumably the children will also be human. Definitely human. Couldn’t be more human.

    But they may have something hidden in their genetics that allows them to become Time Lords again. Human Time Lords, like River.

    I dunno. I keep going back to that empty cradle in the TARDIS; the one we first saw in A Good Man Goes To War. And Clara’s a Nanny; her job is to look after other people’s children. Both times we’ve seen her working as a Nanny, she’s been looking after kids who have lost their mother. But not their father.

    So who would be the ‘father’ if the Time Lords are lost, but their children are perhaps … not? The Doctor.

    If the Time Lords were guilty, if the Time Lords deserved to be shut behind a Time Lock forever, their children did not. That’s certainly something that would not be done ‘In The Name of The Doctor’; imprison children forever.

    An abandoned child (Amy). A stolen baby (River). An empty cradle (belonging to both the Doctor and his wife). Now there’s a Nanny, someone whose job is to look after the children. And the Doctor, consistently, keeps trying and failing to look after children. He wants to, but he can’t. Amelia, Melody, the Maitland kids, even that little boy in Cold Blood. They all trust in the Doctor, and they are all lost. What then happens is that they’re found again.

    Those Clerics in Time of Angels, the ones who are happy to work with the Doctor – they wear what I keep insisting is an ‘Alpha and Omega’ symbol on their uniform. Not just Omega (the end) but an Alpha, almost hidden inside. The End is also the Beginning. So The Last of the Time Lords might also be … ?

    #15951
    Nick @nick

    @Shazzbot @bluesqueakpip @thommck

    I always thought there was a general consensus that the Older (looking) female TimeLord we saw in the End of Time was the Doctors mother and the younger covered one was probably a relation (I suppose Mother/Sister/Wife/Daughter might apply to one or both of them given apparent age isn’t a factor). I wouldn’t be at all surprised if their relationship with the Doctor isn’t dealt with at the same time as Clara, although we can’t be sure of course. However, I think it may not be correct to assume that Clara’s arc will be dealt with this year. I’m sure I read one of the links attached to Doctor 12 thread saying that Jenna had been surprised into confirming the Clara’s arc would continue into series 8.

    Although I understood the narrative reasons, I’ve always thought it surprising (and rather unfair) that just about every significant Dalek (ie the Cult of Skaro, Davros, Dalek Emperor for sure) survived the Time War unscathed to show up in AG Who, but no Time Lord apart from the Master survived outside Gallifrey. Its quite possible that there may be other hidden TimeLords if that ‘s what Steven Moffat wants.

    However, it doesn’t seem feasible to me that either of the Doctor’s Mother/Wife/Daughter (or whatever RTD meant them to be) can be amongst them as they were clearly trapped on Gallifrey. However, we did see that the “Mother” figure could manifest herself outside the TimeLock anyway. She could therefore have acted to point Clara in the right direction in the shop.

    Since this is bonkers theory land, why not assume Hurt Doctor only played the baddy during his “not in the name of the Doctor” action and actually went on to save some Time Lords (maybe the Children by hiding them on Earth as apparent normal human children – I like your narrative idea around the children Bluesqueakpip) but buried the memory so deeply that subsequent Doctors don’t know he did it. You therefore have a Hurt Doctor redemption story in the anniversary show so that Hurt Doctor becomes a proper Doctor by name as well. Of course this can still be true because of the effect of D10 and D11 has on rewriting Hurt Doctor’s role in the Time War.

    Nick

    #15952
    Nick @nick

    @osakahatter

    What would bother me more if Susan turned out to be Clara’s mother would be

    1) her travelling back from the future (assuming David has died of old age) so from around 2225 to before 1995 and falling for Clara’s father (I don’t think this could happen if she was fob watched) and

    2) The Doctor failing to recognize/sense another Timelord when he sees one

    Nick

    #15954
    Anonymous @

    @nick @bluesqueakpip @osakahatter @thommck

    I said originally “Clara is still unexplained, and we certainly are going to learn who exactly she is” but I apologise, I didn’t specify that I don’t believe we’ll find out in the 50th nor at Christmas.  Because we’d really have a ‘what next?’ issue for her character.  We’re probably all in agreement on that.

    Bluey’s absolutely right that the general emphasis on family – especially children – couldn’t be more clear, and that it’s important that all of Clara’s jobs (bar waitressing) were nanny/governess/childminder jobs.  I think it’s cheeky of you, Bluey, to insinuate that the Doctor will become the start of a new line of Time Lords …  🙂

    Question, though, that perhaps none of us is qualified to answer:  if Susan was to be involved in the plot of 50th/Christmas, how would that be for newer fans (who don’t knock about on forums like this!)?  Do you think a quick flashback of Unearthly Child would do the trick?  Or perhaps they could use footage from Mark Gatiss’ special.  I’m liking the idea of chamleon-arched Time Lord children sprinkled about Earth, but unsure about the inclusion of Susan (no matter how much long-term fans would adore it).

    Good lord, I just had a bonkers thought – what if the Maitland children, and the Victorian children in Snowmen, are chameleon-arched Time Lords?  That’s why a Clara and a Claricle were looking after them!

    #15955
    Anonymous @

    @osakahatter @nick

    Well, how many times can a Time Lord use the chameleon arch?  Could Susan have decided, after David’s death, to ‘un-do’ herself, then ‘did herself up’ again in a different, earlier era?

    Of course, she doesn’t have a Tardis, but maybe she met a time agent or otherwise got a time bracelet (hopefully off the wrist!) and that is how she was able to travel.

    It’s your bonkers theory, Osaka – do you think she met Clara’s father strictly as an accident?  Does he have any physical resemblance to David?  (We didn’t see enough of Clara’s father to decide if he is personality-wise anything like David.)  It makes logical sense to me that she’d end up in London in the late 80’s / early 90’s or so – she was familiar with early 60’s London and could have thought ‘let’s see how it’s changed in a few decades’.

    Nick, if Susan was re-fob watched as Clara’s mother, another Time Lord couldn’t identify her.  (As you know from Professor Yana.)  But I think your misgivings were based on the assumption that Susan wasn’t chameleon arched any more.

    #15957
    Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip

    Good lord, I just had a bonkers thought – what if the Maitland children, and the Victorian children in Snowmen, are chameleon-arched Time Lords?  That’s why a Clara and a Claricle were looking after them!

    @Shazzbot – you’re not alone in that one. It’s occurred to me as well, but I think I thought it too bonkers for even this forum. We’ve had an awful lot of kids in the Moffat run; it would be fascinating if some or all of them turn out to be ‘hidden children’.

    As for Susan – I don’t think you’d need dreadfully complex explanations. The Doctor’s said, several times that he’s a parent, he’s mentioned that he went to Akhaten with his granddaughter, we saw Susan herself in the Hartnell/Claricle clip. Given that, all you really, really need is some female Time Lord to say “Hello Grandfather,” the Doctor to say to Clara “This is Susan, my granddaughter” and Rassilon’s your uncle. Proceed with the rest of the plot.

    🙂

     

    #15958
    Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip

    Nick: for 1) The Doctor himself trying to keep her safe from the Time War, River with her time-bracelet because she knows Clara has to be born, or the Time Lords recruiting Susan for the Time War, then Susan ‘escaping’ or going undercover later on.

    For 2) See Utopia. As long as a Time Lord is chameleon-arched nobody, including other Time Lords, can detect them as a ‘hidden’ Time Lord. You have to find the fob watch or equivalent thereof, and then figure out a) what it is and b) who it belongs to. 

    #15959
    Anonymous @

    @fatmaninabox

    While I believe The Doctor is right about when Amy was taken it doesn’t make sense for them to abduct her (i.e. the Ganger) again from Astro-Melody’s room at the orphanage. What would be the point?

    Indeed. If they already had Amy, why lure everyone to 1969 in the first place? Wouldn’t that just put their whole plan at risk?

    @pedant

    When Flesh!Amy RevA discovered the photos she was glooped, leaving behind the Little Red Talky Thing

    The “Little Red Talky Thing”  was actually a recording device (nanorecorder) that the Doctor implanted in each of their (Amy’s, Rory’s, River’s, Canton’s & his own) hands in DotM, just before Amy & Canton went to the orphanage. Wouldn’t the Doctor have noticed if she was a Ganger when he injected the nanorecorder, something a little “off” about the implantation?

     if the Doc says it was before Utah, that is it

    As Bluey & FMIAB both pointed out, the Doctor said “They must have taken you quite a while back. Just before America.” That sounds pretty speculative to me. If he was sure, it would have been more declarative. something like “They took you quite a while back. Just before America” or simply “They took you just before America”.

    @bluesqueakpip

    If I’m a Spelling Dalek (which I am), I’m the one facing River Song and going ‘Mercy! MER-CY!’

    If you’re the spelling Dalek, shouldn’t it be “Mercy! M-E-R-C-Y-! Mercy!”? 😛

    And every time someone’s spellchecker replaces ‘canon’ with ‘cannon’, I have to go through the entire process of ‘word does not compute. Context does not compute. Match word with sound. Can-non. Can-non. Intended word was Can-on.’

    Are you sure you’re the spelling Dalek and not the Cyber Speller?

    @thommck

    She started off as normal but was steered/trained into meeting the Doctor by outside forces.

    The other day, I ran into a theory on the interwebs that the “outside forces” are actually Rose, in her Bad Wolf persona. According to the theory, Dalek Clara somehow survived the destruction of the Asylum & went on to become the Dalek Emperor seen in The Parting of the Ways. Bad Wolf Rose recognized the human essence within the Emperor & Scatters pieces of it throughout time and space to help the Doctor. (Note that she says “I can see the whole of time and space. Every single atom of your existence, and I divide them.” Divide, not destroy.) When 21st Century Clara jumps into the Doctor’s timestream, she activates those pieces of her that lie along the Doctor’s path, like some sort of trans-temporal sleeper cells. Alleged evidence of the Rose-Clara connection is seen in the frequency of rose images whenever a Claricle appears: Oswin (Dalek Clara) had one in her hair, Victorian Clara worked at the Rose & Crown, 21st Century Clara had roses in her room (tBoSJ), she wore a rose-patterned dress in NiS. Additionally, in Cold War, she sings Hungry Like the Wolf. Finally, Clara’s mother died the same day Rose met the Doctor (05March2005). One of the most “out there” theorists even speculated that Bad Wolf had somehow made it so that Clara would be her own mother (a la, “I create myself”).

    @osakahatter

    Not sure I like the thought of Susan hiding

    Perhaps she was involunatrily chameleon arched?

    #15960
    Anonymous @

    @bluesqueakpip – seeing as how time ‘zone’ isn’t a problem for Time Lords hiding their children, could the little boy in Beast Below (and maybe his sister) also fit the bill?

    I thought of the little boy first because we’ve generally met very strong and very intelligent Time Lord characters, and it amused me to think that either

    a) one of them cleverly chose a ‘cover’ of a little boy who gets zeroes on his schoolwork, or

    b) there is a Time Lord around who himself didn’t do so well in Gallifrey’s Academy and so went with a cover story similar to his own.

    #15961
    OsakaHatter @osakahatter

    @nick

    1) her travelling back from the future (assuming David has died of old age) so from around 2225 to before 1995 and falling for Clara’s father (I don’t think this could happen if she was fob watched) and

    Well, it is a primarily bonkers theory, but say if the Doctor did turn up and persuade Susan to go into hiding, getting her to shunt back 300 years before she fob watched herself would be a pretty good way to do it.

    2) The Doctor failing to recognize/sense another Timelord when he sees one

    But he didn’t recognise the fob watched Master did he?  And given he couldn’t remember the GI in the Snowmen, D11 seems to be a little forgetful (or preoccupied.)

    I don’t actually think Clara will be anything to do with Susan, the above was just me what if-ing.  I do suspect that Clara will turn out to his Granddaughter though (but not Susan.)  So the next 50 years will start with the Doctor travelling with a Granddaughter again.  And if the anniversary is to cover the Time War, he could well be running away from Gallifrey with his Granddaughter again.

    #15963
    Anonymous @

    @osakahatter – “he could well be running away from Gallifrey with his Granddaughter again

    Yes, this is the conclusion that various theories gravitate toward, based on what Moffat has said (yes, yes, we all know, Rule 0 and all) about the show looking backward and looking foward post 50th.  But this is one thing I tend to think he’s not lying about.  And as much as I had misgivings mere minutes ago, the more I think about it, the more I like the idea of Susan somehow being involved.  Is she Clara herself?  Is she Clara’s mum?  Is she the woman in the shop who gives Clara the Tardis phone number?  Does she somehow assist with ‘waking up the sleeper cells’ of mooted chameleon-arched Time Lord children to fight in the Time War?

    See, if Susan was involved solely in either (or both) of the last two scenarios, then that is certainly ‘looking backward’ and obviates the need for the 12th Doctor to either be travelling with his grandchild, or to be running from Gallifrey.

    If Susan was Clara or Clara’s mum, then, I’m not so thrilled, because it’s more a re-tread or re-hash, and doesn’t really fit the ‘looking forward’ bill.

    And I don’t want the Doctor to be running from Gallifrey, nor only meeting ‘renegade’ Time Lords who want to kill him.  I don’t want to have a Time Lord Of The Week either; but it would be quite different, post 50th, to have a Doctor who’s more like ‘I hate my family when they turn up unexpectedly’ rather than ‘Fear me … I killed them all.’

    #15965
    OsakaHatter @osakahatter

    @Shazzbot

    It’s your bonkers theory, Osaka – do you think she met Clara’s father strictly as an accident?  Does he have any physical resemblance to David?

    Same name.  Both dark haired.  Um.

    I’d imagine that without any memory of her life as a TimeLord, she meets someone she falls for, oblivious to previous history.  Happy accident caused by a leaf.  Or by Clara throwing the leaf at them.

    The fact that she died occurred just before the start of the new series (and therefore around when the Doctor regenerated into CE and potentially the end of the Time War) could be used to support the idea she was called back to the time war.  Maybe the Doctor needed her help, but she didn’t survive?

    As for placing Susan for the AG generation, I’m not sure if it would be done, but it could be done – we just need to see the Hurt Doctor walking up to the actress who plays Ellie Oswald, saying ‘Susan?’ and she begins to remember, finds her fob watch.  New generation follow that she was a hidden Time Lady, older generation get to see who Susan became.

    #15966
    OsakaHatter @osakahatter

    @Shazzbot

    And I don’t want the Doctor to be running from Gallifrey, nor only meeting ‘renegade’ Time Lords who want to kill him.  I don’t want to have a Time Lord Of The Week either; but it would be quite different, post 50th, to have a Doctor who’s more like ‘I hate my family when they turn up unexpectedly’ rather than ‘Fear me … I killed them all.’

    Yeah, I’m not keen on family turning up unexpectedly either.  They always expect to be fed.

    I did wonder – and it’s probably more of one for the Next Doctor thread – whether the lack of Time Lords and the regeneration limit, rather than being reset in the 50th by Steven Moffat’s Great Big Continuity Eraser (trademark pending) will be a major arc in the next series or so?  After all, with the Doctor running out of regenerations and being the last of his kind, it would be understandable if he became more aware of his own mortality and responsibility as the last of a species.  Could he find a way to bring the species back, or to preserve himself?  Perhaps he’ll be trying with his Granddaughter, to run towards a new Gallifrey (possibly with the hidden timechildren as discussed above?)

    #15967
    Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip

    The images from Doctor Who aren’t terribly good, but this is Peter Fraser, who played David Campbell in another part:

    peter fraser

    And this is Michael Dixon in role as Dave Oswald:

    Michael Dixon

    Then we’ve got Carole Ann Ford in role as Susan Foreman:

    Carole Ann Ford
    And Nicola Sian in character as Ellie Oswald:
    Nicola Sian

    #15968
    Anonymous @

    @osakahatter – yes, with my Topic Dalek eyestalk on, a lot of this conversation could better sit in the 50th Anniversary thread.  But it all started with ‘who’ or ‘what’ Clara is, and she’s a companion.

    I like your “Steven Moffat’s Great Big Continuity Eraser“.  he he he

    Being the ‘last of his kind’ is an AG Who affectation (which isn’t even true, seeing as how the Master came back), invoked right from the beginning with Eccleston’s first episode, Rose.  But it’s such a departure from so many more years of BG Who history, that I’ll be glad to see the back of it.  Yes, there’s a certain frisson of character being ‘the last of the Time Lords’ but in my opinion, it’s edging into really dark Batman territory, and not staying true to what the Doctor, and Doctor Who, are all about as a full-family programme.  Adults may revel in the self-centred existential angsty aloneness of a Batman-type character, but a family programme needs to take into account, well, family.

    Having the odd Time Lord turn up to screw up / interfere with / bumble about trying to help with (and cadge food off 🙂  ), etc the Doctor’s adventures seems, to me, more in tune with a family programme.

    #15969
    PhaseShift @phaseshift
    Time Lord

    @madscientist72

    One of the main things about the Rose speculation is that there is a good fundamental case for it, especially if you consider Clara a (horror) “normal” girl.

    A lot of people said they wanted a companion a bit more like Rose, and not another mystery to unravel. If you approach The Clara story from her timeframe (Belles onwards, then Asylum and Snowmen) , then it is a bit like Rose. A normal girl, one a nanny, the other a shop assistant. Both rescued by the Doctor in really bizarre circumstances (one from the GIs Spoonheads, the other the Nestene Autons). They go on adventures and have experiences that form them, and tap their strengths, and then at a critical moment both make a dangerous act of self-sacrifice to save the Doctor. One absorbs the time vortex and nearly kills herself (in the act spreading her message to herself through time), one actually spreads herself through time. The Doctor intervenes to save them. Nine forcing a regeneration, and Eleven … to be continued. It’s also not clear if Clara is unscathed at the end.

    There are some curious parallels if you approach it this way. The main difference between the stories is that we meet a couple of the resulting claricles first, and that if she is a normal girl, he’s actually behaved pretty atrociously towards her by reducing her to a mystery. I can see the value in using Rose from series 2 in the 50th, if that was the direction they wanted to go in, because those girls have a lot to share. It may even turn out they collaborate in initiating contact between Clara and the Doctor, because they have had similar experiences, and wouldn’t change their decisions?

    I also see value in 10 and Rose because in Series 2 it was often pointed out what a couple of giggling irresponsible oafs they could be on occasion (Queen Victoria comes to mind), and both 10 and 11 have had moments or particular irresponsibility. If the 50th is about the subject of responsibility and what you do “in the name of the Doctor”, then that may lead to a situation where you have the natural opportunity for a more mature Doctor, perhaps with a more parental role for Clara (if he is carrying some guilt over side effects to her experience). There are lots of ways to go with Clara that arise out of this experience, rather than anything adding to it.

    #15970
    Anonymous @

    @MadScientist72 – I really laughed at this from you:

    Bluesqueakpip
    If I’m a Spelling Dalek (which I am), I’m the one facing River Song and going ‘Mercy! MER-CY!’

    .

    If you’re the spelling Dalek, shouldn’t it be “Mercy! M-E-R-C-Y-! Mercy!”?

    #15972
    Anonymous @

    @bluesqueakpip – I wondered where you’d got to!  Nice detective work on the photos.  I’m getting more and more suspicious that Susan has a ‘type’ of human male that is her favourite.  🙂

    Which means, I’m wondering if this afternoon’s bonkers theories about her returning to 20th century London after the original David’s death in the 2200’s has been lent more credence … and what that means for whether she is, or isn’t, Clara or Clara’s mum.

    Like I said earlier, I’d rather she wasn’t either of those; I’d rather the character Susan be involved in the 50th as part of the nod to the past, without her involvement meaning we have yet another version of the Doctor racing away in his Tardis with yet another version of his grand-daughter.  It’s just too much like a lazy remake, no matter how well it’s dressed production-wise.

    #15973
    HTPBDET @htpbdet

    @MadScientist72

    Interesting theory.

    Is there anything to support the notion that Dalek Clara survived the destruction of the Asylum?

    The constant references/allusions to Rose do seem to be leading somewhere…

    I do quite like the idea that before the Doctor sealed the Time War he sought Susan out to save her. And hide her. Its an interesting question – what happens to a chameleon arched TimeLord if they suffer a fatal injury? Because they are under the arch, they cannot regenerate?

    But, of course, if the Doctor did hide Susan then he would know who Clara really is. And, so far, that is the reason I don’t think we will find out that the Doctor had anything to do with hiding Susan, if hide her he did.

    I also quite like the idea that it is Rose who gives the telephone number to Clara in the shop.

    Either way, Clara is very different from Susan – so if she does turn out to be a relation then I’ll be fine with the notion – its the way it plays out that matters.

     

     

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