S33 (7) 11 – Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS

[Miapatrick @miapatrick]

@haveyoufedthefish– I can really imagine the conversation.

It does highlight the differences between the Clara’s- Victorian Clara would look for his name, she did insist on following him- she was a much more conventional kind of companion. Interesting…

[ardaraith @ardaraith]

Ok – which one of our Merry band proposed Clara as the TARDIS? I think…I think…I have just jumped theories. In the ‘heart of the TARDIS’, as they walk through the exploding engine, Clara puts her hand in the Doctors’ and what does he say when he realises the message? “fragile human skin, like parchment”

[wolfweed @wolfweed]

Check out Blogtor Who for a (BBC aired so not a spoiler) clip from The Crimson Horror & an interview with Diana Rigg.

http://blogtorwho.blogspot.co.uk/

 

[wolfweed @wolfweed]

US trailer

[thommck @thommck]

Just remembered the Doxtor talking to Clara at the cliff edge. He described it as a snarl. A trick an animal plays to protect itself. Is Clara a snarl?

[wolfweed @wolfweed]

[ardaraith @ardaraith]

Ok – yes, I am firmly going with it! Clara is a hybrid human / TARDIS! I suspect this hybridisation or mirroring is connected to the exploding TARDIS, which @haveyoufedthefish has wonderfully tied with several loose ends. Remember what Sexy said in TDW, regarding what they would need to fly the pieced together TARDIS? She kissed her finger, drew some of her own…sexy energy…and touched the machine – which made it fly. Sexy said the Doctor had all he needed – her. Imagine a Time Lord – human – TARDIS hybrid child, or race?

[PhileasF @phileasf]

I’ll try to keep it brief (that’s a struggle I sometimes lose). [On re-reading this just before hitting ‘Submit’ — I see I’ve lost it again.]

Sorry, I haven’t had time to read anything on this forum yet. By the time the episodes screen in Australia this place and the other (i.e. The Guardian) have about 400 messages between them. And some of them are as long as this one.

Well-spotted @bluesqueakpip (in the other place), re the changing photo. Everything seems to make sense in terms of conventional time-paradox stories, apart from that. The brother might have just got over being such a dick; Clara might have found the swimming pool again without remembering it. But the photo is unequivocal: what happened in the episode did not entirely unhappen just because it never happened. (Where’s that meta-temporal grammar when you need it?) There is a corner of reality in which it all still occurred, and from which consequences can leak out. (Consequences that hit the salvage team in the past, it would seem: about the time the ‘android’ brother was injured.)

So I think a lot of people who were disappointed by the ‘reset’ will be… re-appointed? soon.

‘So that’s who–‘ and the Doctor’s name. How fast can Clara read? She sees four pages of the book, and we see her eyes very quickly scanning the pages. On the last page she sees, her eyes don’t scan, she just looks, then looks closer and says ‘So that’s who–‘ From the way her eyes move I infer that the last page she saw contained an illustration. Would the show’s makers think through their clues right down to the level of eye movement? Can I really tell what people are looking at based on this? Maybe.

Later: ‘You were mentioned in a book.’ ‘I’m mentioned in a lot of books.’ ‘You call yourself Doctor. Why do you do that? You have a name, I’ve seen it, in one corner of that tiny–‘ The Doctor silences her with a finger to her lips. A surprisingly intimate gesture. And not nice.

I’m pretty sure the Doctor’s name wasn’t in the book, that she saw it somewhere else while running around in the TARDIS. Someone in the other place thought it was on the Doctor’s cot, which seems reasonable. As I recall, River could read the Doctor’s real name on it, but no-one else could. So… could Clara read it? Or could she just tell it was his name, without being able to read it? To recognise it as a name, and to recognise the cot as the Doctor’s, seem like vast leaps of intuition. Unless they were pictured in the book. ‘So that’s who slept in that cot.’

If ‘So that’s who…’ was not about the Doctor’s name, then what? ‘So that’s who killed Kennedy?’ ‘So that’s who gave mankind fire?’ ‘So that’s who threw that leaf at my Dad’s face.’ She recognises something, but is it a famous something, or a personal something. If it’s a personal something, what’s it doing in a book about the time war?

The book’s title. As I understand it, these days historians (and biographers) pay some attention to whether they should call such a work ‘the history’ or ‘a history’. To call it ‘a history’ is to acknowledge other points of view, the possibility that other, different, histories of the subject could be written. To call it ‘the history’ is to claim authority, to assume definitiveness. Historians are so aware of this issue now, it seems to me, that no academic historian would call a book ‘the history’ of something. I doubt the ‘the’ will come to mean anything, but it caught my eye. Probably Gallifrey’s historians believed in their authority as the definitive tellers of history.

Theories…

Clara criticises the Doctor for not being like a good guy in a story… Fodder for the notion that Clara is somehow ‘the show’. I still can’t quite see how this could work. If she were to end up telling the story of the Doctor’s life in a book (OK, lots of books), that might make sense… The universe forgetting about the Doctor was a bad idea, and Clara has to redress this by spending a few hundred years furiously typing. That’s why they need so many Claras… they’re the Doctor’s typing pool. Or the Doctor’s stories will all flow out of Clara’s head and into videotapes at the BBC  🙂

A lot of people are thinking that the arc we’re seeing relates not only to this season and the mystery of Clara, but to the whole Moffatt era. The reappearance of the crack sure seems to confirm this. Is it significant that the Doctor didn’t react very much, like ‘Oh no, the crack’s back!’? Could he have forgotten about it? Or did he just not want to explain. Did it never happen, because Amy made it unhappen when the universe was rebooted… but it can leak out of that unhappened reality? I’m warming to the possibility that the TARDIS exploding might explain the multiple Claras mystery.

Anyway, starting with this episode I’m starting to think that it’s more than just the last three years that are involved in the arc: that it reaches back to before the series came back in 2005. I presume the date of the series’ return is also when the first episode was set. Clara’s Mum died just before the show’s revival — the last casualty of the time war? ‘So that’s who… killed my Mum’?

My new theory: the time war is still going on, in a corner of reality that can leak, in the same way that a few things leaked out of the closed loop in this episode. In The End of Time (or was it Journey’s End?) the Doctor says that during the time war millions of people died and then died again, endlessly, as history was continually rewritten. And Clara keeps dying and dying again. Exactly how this could make sense in story terms is hard to imagine, as time-rewriting-wars make my head hurt. But it might imply that the Doctor is in a version of reality (a pocket universe?) where this kind of warfare is still going on.

Trivia:

The subtitles in the ABC’s ‘iView’ version of the episode identify the voices we hear when the console is dismantled. Neat.

At about 17 minutes 20 seconds you can just about make out the title of the book behind Clara. I suspect this is a real book used to dress the set, that we’re not supposed to pay attention to. The almost-legible part of the title seems to be ‘City of Canterbury’. Probably it’s some dreary old city council minutes picked up at a sale after they were chucked out by a library.

As I mentioned in my comments on Asylum of the Daleks recently, the TARDIS corridors seem to have been designed by Daleks.

Near the end of the episode, at the ‘snarl’: ‘We can’t die. This isn’t real.’ They could play this line back when it’s finally revealed that the Doctor’s a dreaming Dalek

I’m sure I heard a few notes of the Blake’s 7 theme when the salvage crew were introduced.

[wolfweed @wolfweed]

C.O. (Clara Oswald) can mean a Changeover Switch, a type of electrical switch with both types of opened/closed contacts. It could also stand for Certificate of origin; or for Conservation Officer.

I’d like Clara to be destined to become ‘The Papal Mainframe’, and that her future self is leaking back into her present self. Nobody expects …The Papal Mainframe!

[HaveYouFedTheFish @haveyoufedthefish]

@phileasf – I think moffatt has be nursing this gameplan for 20 odd years, and has refined it with RTD; it’s inevitable that there are roots right back in Rose (even if not, they can make callbacks that seem that way)

Agree that both the way she read the page and “in that tiny…” refer to an illustration. But it can’t be a picture of the doc, he had another face during the time war… So how did she know it was him? Best guess – an illustration which featured the tardis, perhaps?

[Arkleseizure @arkleseizure]

Brilliant stuff! I suffer from over active ear wax glands, so it was rather spoiled last night by tinnitus. Still, I sorted my ears out this morning and watched it again on iPlayer, and it really is as good as I’d thought. Nicely scripted, beautifully designed, and top-notch performances from Matt and JLC. Wasn’t quite as impressed by the guest cast, although Ashley Walters was good. And the ending was signalled right from the start: absolutely not a Davies ex Machina.

One little thing I’d like to note: in the last scene Clara was wearing a new dress and had a towel over her shoulder to dry her hair. Basically, she’d felt the need to get cleaned up. Given how grubby she became in the episode, that would make sense, except that those events ultimately never happened. So was this an echo of those events seeping through? Or did she just manage to get messy in the moments before the Doctor hit the Big Friendly Button?

[Anonymous @]

Am I the only one who thought (after two viewings) that when Clara says, looking at the Time War book, ‘So that’s who …’

… ended with ‘I am’?

Some very blatant father issues in this one.  So, are we back to Clara being Jenny then?

I notice that the BBC site has JLC saying that she has met the Doctor more than three times.

[Anonymous @]

Oh, and I twigged that the ‘zombie’ was Clara in that library scene, when I saw a red glow from its right hand – the hand that Clara had hurt and had been smooing on.

And speaking of said smooing – I thought the way she repeatedly blew on that hand was very much like how the Doctor blew the crystals off his hand in Amy’s Choice.  Just sayin’ …

[HaveYouFedTheFish @haveyoufedthefish]

@wolfweed – the papal mainframe, a combination of 2 ideas: an obsolete, inflexible command and control structure serving as a centralised seat of absolute, infalliable power, without checks and balances and frequently a source of corruption. And a Pope.

Nothing like a weak IT joke to while away a Sunday afternoon…

[Anonymous @]

@Arkleseizure – my interpretation was that Clara was making use of the swimming pool she had ‘ooh-ed’ over earlier.  So yes, and to everyone else theorising about that – she definitely did remember wandering the Tardis, if only because she remembered finding the swimming pool.

And I thought the moment when the Doctor talked about her parchment skin was a direct connection to the brother who was [n’t] an android.  His brothers had told him he had living skin over a robot body, and the exact lines of the Doctor about Clara’s hand (I felt) echoed that sentiment.

I don’t think Clara’s a real girl, no matter what the empath in Hide said.

[Zaphod @zaphod]

@shazzbot I though the zombie in the library and the storage room was the Doctor zombie trying to prevent Clara from exploring things she shouldn’t.  The library zombie had a hand on its mouth the same as the zombie in the engine (?) room towards the end, mimicking the Doctor on the bridge.

In addition to the photograph that changes on the ship, the rag the Doctor is using to clean up at the end looks like the same cloth Tricky used in the beginning. That means..?

[ardaraith @ardaraith]

I don’t think Clara’s a real girl, no matter what the empath in Hide said.

@Shazzbot – me, neither!  But do we trust her? Is she really a trick?  One whacky idea I had – which I quickly dismissed because of my newly declared Clara/TARDIS support– was, what if Clara was about to say, “So that’s who …created them!”  (see @htpbdet ‘s Dalek theory on the Spoilers page)  What if Clara is a detective or something, traveling the universe to destroy the Daleks?  Yea…. it hasn’t got much going for it, as whacky theories go.  Besides, I am enjoying the thought of a human/TARDIS hybrid.

 

 

[Anonymous @]

That moment near the end, where the Doctor says ‘she’s always been there for me and now I don’t know what to do’ and Clara steps up pretty smartly and clasps his hand … and then the ‘doon-doon-doon—do-doon-doon-do’ music starts up as he turns over her hand …

My initial thought was like so many others on this thread, that Clara is an embodiment of the Tardis and she’s showing him (again!) what he needs to do to save himself.  But it could also be that Clara is learning what a companion is, and does; and a companion offers human solicitude to someone so very alone.

[Anonymous @]

First post so hi! Longtime fan who remembers the series as a kid (Pertwee onwards).

Noticed a correspondence between the appearance of the TARDIS in the scrapyard and Unearthly Child where the TARDIS is also in a scrapyard. Both episodes have a character saying that it ‘seems like it is alive’ or some such. Can’t be coincidence.

Also note the last few episodes mention geographical locations in Northern England. Significant?

[ScaryB @scaryb]

@phileasf that is certainly an epic! Some good points though.  Leaky Timelock etc

Re Clara in the Library tho – She says to the Dr at the end “You have a name, I’ve seen it, in one corner of that tiny–’” That description – tiny-  is hard to reconcile with the massive tome of the Time War History. If it was a tiny picture it’s surprising she picked up on it. The cradle isn’t really tiny either, it’s quite chunky by cradle standards. The only tiny thing I remember her encountering and examining is the model Tardis.   Maybe there’s a name on that that corresponds with something in the book.

She also picks up an umbrella (just before being chased by Dr-zombie)

[ardaraith @ardaraith]

@Shazzbot – yes, but why does the Doctor suddenly twig that her hand has a burn / writing on it?  They were holding hands in the corridor earlier, after her hand had already shown signs of the message.  This part…I don’t understand.  Unless she was ‘sending’ him the message – remember his, “Clara, speak to me.” at the beginning?

[ScaryB @scaryb]

@zaphod re the zombie in the Library,  and the cloth (we agree!) – see upstream for convo with @miapatrick – definitely the Dr.  The one that chases Clara round the console is her.  Looking again at what Bram’s zombie does – it seems to meld with him (after that very uncomfortable scene where the Tardis may or may not cause him to fall). Is that what they need to do – find their “twin” and fuse with them?

The salvagers’ story is interesting,  about teaching 2 bullies a lesson and coming to the aid of the brain-damaged/”android” victim.  They severely underestimate the Dr (and the Tardis) all the way along. You can imagine their strong-arm, clumpy boots intimidating attitude has worked before – and hey, what have we got here – a crazy fool on his own who thinks his ship’s defences (look! it doesn’t even have guns! it opens the doors when I threaten it with mine) will be a match for us. Ha!

One of them at least seems to have a learned a lesson by the end, and you hope Tricky’s life will be better.

[ScaryB @scaryb]

<waves @fulcanelli >

nice spot re junkyard Tardis

[Anonymous @]

@Zaphod – yes, I’ve seen that theory upthread.  I was so sure I was right – upon initial viewing and then re-viewing – that the hand-red-glow was a direct call-back to Clara’s injured hand.  {sniff}  However, I still call ‘gotcha’ on the writer because I just knew that the zombie chasing Clara was herself well before the final reveal.  (I’m inordinately proud of that because I simply never get these things usually.)

Also, because in the initial ‘chase scenes’, I was pining for previous companions.  Rose would’ve called out ‘What do you want?’  Martha would have nervously asked ‘How can I help you?’ Donna would have blurted ‘I’m the best temp in Chiswick!’ to cover her nerves.  And Amy?  Well, she probably would have assumed it was a Rory-monster come to get her.  (Really, I don’t get the love for Rory’s character nor for Amy and Rory’s relationship.  She had every reason to believe House’s horror story, that Rory died hating her guts.)

What I don’t understand is what caused the jar of Gallifreyen knowledge to tip over onto Clara’s head.  (Of course, the Doctor causes many things to happen which he wishes he hadn’t, but …).  There didn’t seem to be any reason for that bottle to un-cork itself, what with Clara crouching underneath and not bouncing anything.  So I’m stubbornly sticking with my Clara-as-time-zombie theory (at least until I’m proven drastically wrong!).

 

[Anonymous @]

@ScaryB – but there was a melded two-in-one zombie monster well before that last exciting sequence.  This is another thing I twigged (so ridiculously proud am I) because I knew that the dual-monster represented the salvage brothers.  (Looking at it from Sexy’s PoV, those salvage men were definitely monsters.)

[Anonymous @]

@fulcanelli — welcome. And I love the avatar…

[ardaraith @ardaraith]

Before I forget: did anyone find it peculiar that Gregor’s sensor registered the burned Clara as, “animal DNA with a human core.”

[Anonymous @]

Hi ScaryB and JimTHe Fish! Good to be here!

[ScaryB @scaryb]

@Shazzbot – Yup, great call on the zombie spot. I didn’t work it all out till the reveal and a second viewing.  (Incidentally she’s rubbing her hand right back in the pre-titles sequence)

Thanks for the reminder re the bottle uncorking and spilling – it was Volume IV btw – any suggestions from anyone? (Can’t make out the voices, but other people thought they heard child or children mentioned. (T Baker off having a life none of us even dreamed of..??!))

At this point tho I do think Clara’s as “normal” as it gets in Who. Whatever she is in the plot, she’s still to become it. (Unless she’s just been split in this episode. And unless she’s chameleon arched)

[ScaryB @scaryb]

@fulcanelli

Also note the last few episodes mention geographical locations in Northern England. Significant?

They have indeed, particularly this week with Clara’s South Lancashire origins being mentioned several times (by the salvagers’ gadget)). And we’re heading “up north” next week, according to the trailer 🙂

[ScaryB @scaryb]

<waves @jimthefish>

Glad you liked my deus ex (NOT!) defence on t’other place   (Ignore the truclant one, you’ll be there all day!)

[Juniperfish @juniperfish]

@scaryb @zaphod and @miapatrick nice spot that there was also a charred zombie Doctor running about. Even more creepy!

@haveyoufedthefish nice combo of our earlier three TARDISes collision theory and Clara-is-scattered-in-time theory into one.

Not only that, but, as I mentioned up-stream, some of the liquid Gallifreyan Encyclopedia got spilled on Clara and, if time has not been entirely re-written by the Big Friendly Button, Clara may have been scattered into the universe with pieces of go-live Time Lord history about her person. More rebirth of the Time Lords possibilities? 

I’ve just posted on the other place that dalek line from The Pandorica Opens; “the cracks in time are the work of the Doctor”. This episode would seem to confirm that they are indeed.

@wolfweed and @whisht ……….. Eggs!

I think it’s significant that eggs have cropped up again in an episode where we see the Doctor’s Gallifreyan crib once more, with its call-back to Amy and her daughter River – the Doctor’s wife and the “child of the TARDIS”.  Clara is a Pond somehow or other, or I’ll be a lizard and a doubled-in-time fish no longer.

We can also remember that Madame Kovarian’s name was a deliberate reference to egg-harvester (ovarian). So I think the egg motif refers to rebirth (a la my Osiris obsession) but also signals something to do with the progeny of the Doctor.

I’ve been thinking about the egg-tree part of the TARDIS, “a machine that makes machines”, a self-replicating organism. The look of the thing puts me in mind of the many myths of the golden apples, which pleases me because it ties back into the apples the Doctor spits out in the Eleventh Hour and eats in The God Complex.  There’s a Bulgarian folk tale about three brothers and some golden apples but its quite convoluted.. <oh wait, that probably fits!>…

I was struck by the reference (by the Doctor) to the TARDIS as a “labyrinth” which calls back the ball of string from Cold War and the minotaur/ monster from The God Complex.

Given all the dark Doctor portents – do we have…?

The Doctor is a monster at the heart of a labyrinth and that labyrinth is the Time War?

So, over and above the genocide of his people (via their suspension in the Time Lock) what other crime did the Doctor commit during the Time War? Did he perhaps, sacrifice his daughter and flee with his granddaughter? 

Eggs = progeny of the Doctor and rebirth?

Flickering lights = the Silence and that switch between different time-streams/ realities which the Doctor talks about this episode?

Music = Song = pass-key to the Doctor’s memories/ Professor River Song?

Ok – I’m done for now 🙂

 

[Anonymous @]

@scaryb – now that I’ve had a further think on it, I’m wondering if the earlier dual monster wasn’t supposed to represent Doctor-and-Clara, Doctor-and-Tardis, or Clara-and-Tardis.

@ardaraith – JLC as Clara gives the Doctor a very knowing look in that moment.  Almost as if she’s thinking ‘D’ya get it? D’ya?’  (start at 39:08 in iPlayer) But there’s enough pull-back as if the character is reminding herself to think, ‘look astonished! look bewildered! don’t give it away!’

I also think it’s significant that Clara says ‘we’re not dead!’ just before that moment.

[Anonymous @]

@Juniperfish– S Moffat is on the BBC site saying that we’re definitely, assuredly, most certainly getting what is promised in the final episode’s title.  Which means, of course, that it will probably be anything but!

But he’s also on record there for saying that everything will be turned upside-down and re-started absolutely.  Which is probably code for, no more River Song (and by extension, no more Ponds or Rose or Martha or Donna) and which I’m really, really, reeeaaallly hoping means that the next Doctor is female.  Which leaves us with Clara as the continuity – or a complete mind-blower like Dame Judy Dench (or even Imelda Staunton!) as the on-going Doctor.

Well, will it be a woman before an ‘ethnic’ man?  Mos Def as Ford Prefect in H2G2 didn’t seem to go down too well.  That having been said, Sam Rockwell as the Doctor would be perhaps too bizarre – but entirely entertaining.  (I just DO NOT WANT a Doctor with an American accent.)

[Anonymous @]

@thommck – “Just remembered the Doxtor talking to Clara at the cliff edge. He described it as a snarl. A trick an animal plays to protect itself. Is Clara a snarl?”

Are you positing that the Tardis has thrown up Clara as ‘a trick [a living thing] plays to protect itself’?  That’s quite interesting when thinking about the goings-on of the latest episode.  But why would the Tardis then scare herself/Clara with a zombie image of herself?  To keep her moving along, not stopping in any one place long enough to learn anything of value?  {hmmm, strokes non-existent beard}

[Anonymous @]

@Shazzbot

Might or might not be relevant re points you raise but I was just reading
this article – be careful though…probably in the SPOILERS category.

[Anonymous @]

@scaryb — yes, indeed, thanks for that. The old deus ex machine moan really grinds my gears. But we haven’t heard it aired too much since RTD moved on…

And, yes, RE. old truckles. I’m still convinced that TS is the newly regenerated form of Alexander…

[Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip]

Clara’s South Lancashire origins 

I think it was ‘Lancashire, sass’, not ‘Lancashire, South’. Blackpool is North Lancs, not South Lancs.

[badwolf99 @badwolf99]

Therefore its not a paradox and although it’s not impossible Clara willed a remote into being, that’s not necessary for the plot to work.

Technically that means every iteration of the loop creates an extra remote on the console room floor. Since they’re not awash with them, they can only have gone around the loop once before @scaryb

The Key that sets up the paradox (The Phrase Clara says, Isnt there a Big Friendly Button) Once she suggests that then its locked that that will save them! Everything revolves around those words 🙂

Then events  must occur that cause the existence of the device all at the right time and for the right use, what are the odds that they are random at that point ? (Its sort of becomes self-fulling then)

The events in the episode after that can be said to have occured  based on her  ability (subtle yet immense power). In this case just the suggestion as to what will happen. A button will be found to exist.

And most compelling and important 🙂    Her hand and the device even reads–(Big Friendly Button)

Exactly what she uttered —-too much of a coincidence for this viewer.

[Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip]

The Clara/hybrid TARDIS theory is interesting – but we do have a child of the TARDIS (River). And the TARDIS seems to think that the sun shines out of her little baby’s bottom. 🙂 So I’m doubtful; I can’t see why old Sexy would adore one ‘child’ and dislike another.

I think the sensor was ‘narrowing down’ with the ‘animal coating/human DNA’ thing. It was reading something extremely damaged and went for a computerised ‘animal, vegetable or mineral’. So that leaves us with – last week we were told she’s normal by the psychic, this week we’re told her DNA is human. I think we can say that – at the moment – she’s a normal human with high intelligence and psychic abilities. Doesn’t mean she’ll stay that way.

[Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip]

By the way, as a suggestion for the great and terrible secret: perhaps it’s not universe shattering at all. Perhaps it’s simply a terrible personal tragedy: the revelation that – when the Doctor’s real name is known – it will become obvious that he killed his own granddaughter.

[thommck @thommck]

@Shazzbot No, I meant a future Doctor created Clara as a Snarl to protect him from himself. I’m not really 100% on that though!

I think the Who in the book wasn’t the Doctor’s name, that just doesn’t make sense grammatically. Rather she found that out in the “tiny” bottle that she snorted in the library. That was actually gallifrayan whereas the book could be English.

Side note, do you think the BBC will publish the book after the finale?

[HolyMackerel @holymackerel]

Hello. Coming out of lurk to posit that Clara could be an embodiment of a TARDIS. In TDW Idris said she was thinking of all her sisters who were dead. What if Clara is one that has survived and somehow overcome the impossibility of inhabiting a human body? The Doctor’s TARDIS would have reason to be mistrustful and jealous of her. It could explain some stuff like why she thought Clara’s own image would be the only one that she would esteem, why Clara said that the library was just showing off, and also why Clara took his hand when he said that the TARDIS had always been there for him.

But whose TARDIS was she?

[ardaraith @ardaraith]

Holy Mackerel!! It’s @holymackerel

(sorry, I had to!!)  I’ve thrown my support behind the Clara / TARDIS concept, as well – for good or for ill.  There are so many possibilities–sometimes I think the writers are skipping about dropping them like posies– that at the end of the day, you just have to go with a theory and hope for the best.  Not long till we find out, anyway!  🙂

[Juniperfish @juniperfish]

Ah ha! There you are @holymackerel – all hail Omega-Fish etc. 🙂

Yes, there have been various iterations of the theory that Clara is the TARDIS or connected to the TARDIS or even that she is the Master’s TARDIS. This last one fits best with your thought:

whose TARDIS was she?

Frankly if she turns out to be the embodiment of the Master’s TARDIS that would be brilliant because its relatively left-field re where most of the theorising is taking place right now. As you say, if she is someone else’s TARDIS that would explain the antagonism of the Doctor’s TARDIS….

Although, remembering, as we have, that theTARDIS hates paradoxes (Jack Harkness and Old Amy) the aversion could be due to Clara’s timey paradoxical nature, which leads back to other ideas, such as @bluesqueakpip ‘s that she is a future incarnation of the Doc himself. 

It’s certainly striking that the Doctor is trying to teach her to fly the TARDIS, when previously we’ve been led to believe that only the Doctor and River can pilot her…

 

[Juniperfish @juniperfish]

@holymackerel P.S: Haha your avatar is brill you wag-fish you… God-Fish ahoy!

[HolyMackerel @holymackerel]

Here’s a comprehensive history of the Master’s TARDIS. Is it pushing it a bit to say that The Melkur has some echoes of burnt stone zombie Clara?

http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/The_Master's_TARDIS

 

[HolyMackerel @holymackerel]

Ooh, and The Melkur was fourth Doctor which would fit in with the series mapping!

[Juniperfish @juniperfish]

@holymackerel  I don’t think your link is working? But I found the page.

Huh – apparently in Logopolis the Master hid his TARDIS, disguised as a laurel bush, in the cloister room of the Fourth Doctor’s TARDIS. I’ve always loved that the Master has a working chamelion circuit.  

We do keep hearing the cloister bell go ding!

@htpbdet posited awhile ago that perhaps the Doctor and the Master were both related to Clara in some way .

No overt indications of the Master in the mix as yet, BUT as the 50th is coming up I suppose one does have to ask… is it possible to do the 50th without either the Master or the daleks?

Perhaps we will get them both…

[HolyMackerel @holymackerel]

Got it here in The Keeper of the Traken. tardis.wikia.com/wiki/The_Keeper_of_Traken_(TV_story)

One more bonkers theory about the complete game changer: The Doctor’s 12th incarnation is the Valeyard so he becomes the evil one and Clara is combined timelord/TARDIS protecting the universe from him.

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