S33 (7) 14 – The Name of the Doctor

[Whisht @whisht]

ah ha! @wolfweed!!

I just logged in to ask if you’d seen any Zelig-Claras!

or is that Clara-Zeligs?

good work!

[WhoHar @whohar]

Re: the point that Clara-in-Bits is the new hero of the show.

It’s possible that C-i-B was only running interference for the Doc. ie she stopped the GI before he (?) had the chance to prevent the Doc’s good deeds. So the Doc is still the hero as it was his actions that saved the day. C-i-B is just the facilitator.

But we saw the stars go out, Jenny die etc. etc. which implies the GI did his (?) worst. Not necessarily though because, if all time happens at once, then Clara prevented the GI from doing those deeds at the same time. What we saw was on screen was just a way to represent that process to us mere mortals. I think.

TBH we can cut this one up in several different ways – I suspect we won’t know for sure until the 50th. But we should keep on trying on our different bonkers theories for size. And, until 23-11-13, vive la difference mes amis!

[ScaryB @scaryb]

@whohar I think we mostly agree; it is fun trying to tease out the details though 🙂

However I do have to pick you up on your comments about the Tardis though –

Have you heard her – she sounds like an asthmatic water buffalo that’s just sat on a thistle.

Ahem! That’s because the Dr doesn’t know how to fly her properly! Leaving the brakes on and all 🙂

[SatsumaJoe @satsumajoe]

@whohar

if all time happens at once, then Clara prevented the GI from doing those deeds at the same time. What we saw was on screen was just a way to represent that process to us mere mortals. I think.

Basically, two positions flickering at super-infinite speeds?

[BadWulf @badwulf]

@bluesqueakpip:

@badwulf – no. We see little Clara’s mother, and it’s the same actress who plays Ellie Ravenwood Oswald in Rings. Plus, this little Clara Oswald has a heavy Lancashire accent, as does her mum.

I’ve just checked iPlayer, and at 35.20 there is part of Clara’s second montage showing a Victorian woman holding a baby Clara – this actress looks to me like Nicola Sian, who played ClaraPrime’s mother. I guess this means that we can’t assume that the Clara in tBoSJ: A Prequel is not a ClaraShard, despite her mother being Nicola Sian!

[WhoHar @whohar]

@scaryb

However I do have to pick you up on your comments about the Tardis though

I was going to put she sounds like a Yale key being scraped up and down a piano wire and then put through a synthesizer but that’s plainly ridiculous.
 

[WhoHar @whohar]

@satsumajoe

Basically, two positions flickering at super-infinite speeds?

Yowser!

[ScaryB @scaryb]

@whohar Now that would have been plainly ridiculous, hehe (and not half as funny as an asthmatic water buffalo)

@satsumajoe – GI/Clara  – 2 alternate timestreams – lightswitch ref – OOOOOOH! I like it 😀

[Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip]

Oh, and we may now know part of the reason for the Tenth’s shock on learning that River knows his name: if the Gallfreyan custom is that the name that locks your tomb is the birth-name, not the use-name – he knows he trusted River enough to make sure he was buried properly.

He told an archaeologist the password to one of the most famous tombs in the universe. 🙂

[thommck @thommck]

@badwulf Ooh that kind of goes with my theory of lots of older Clara’s being left throughout history, i.e. Clara is her own mother! The older version adopts the younger version.

@bluesqueakpip & @scaryb Do you think Clara is preventing the GI’s influence or physically helping the Doctor? I guess if there is a second timeline that shows why our 11 didn’t recognise ClaraPrime.

I have a feeling the Clara solution may just be swept under the carpet in the 50th as it actually doesn’t make sense. I read in a Neil Gaiman interview that Clara as a companion was originally always supposed to be the Victorian version before Moffat created the Impossible Girl arc. Moff then retro-fitted Clara into being in Asylum of the Daleks. This leads me to believe he thought of the whole arc just to be able to set the 50th in the Doctor’s timeline and didn’t think too hard about the details :S

[Anonymous @]

@bluesqueakpip and everyone else too –

I’m disturbed by the specifics of the canon we saw changed as per your comment – no Daleks survived Exxilon but in AotD we see Exxilon Daleks; and in Snowmen, the Doctor didn’t remember the Great Intelligence.

Just those two examples point to Fragmented Clara’s ‘fixes’ actually making things worse.  I mean, isn’t it worse that Daleks survived?  Isn’t it a bad thing that the Doctor didn’t recognise a very dangerous foe?

[ScaryB @scaryb]

Just thinking – after more caffeine injections – Clara’s mum presumably hadn’t a CLUE what she was promising when she said “I’ll always find you” LOL (Unless as in @thommck‘s suggestions Clara’s her own mum)

I think how deeply we go into the ramifications of this depends on whether the 50th is set in the Dr’s Timestream or not..

@thommck – I think that’s just the way writers’ ideas evolve, sometimes one step at a time, sometimes in leaps. Being the governess doesn’t mean he wasn’t planning for her to also be the Impossible Girl; maybe the plan was for her to turn up as the governess at different times, then he saw the opportunity/got inspiration from the AotD story/watching JLC. Gaiman’s probably just grumpy cos he’d already worked the kids in by then (noting the comment about not getting paid for rewrites, LOL!) 🙂

[ScaryB @scaryb]

@Shazzbot

At this point we don’t know!

We’re assuming it’s for the better, but we don’t know any of the ramifications yet. For all we know the entire universe could be collapsing at the start of the 50th anniv show, as a result of all these people rummaging about in the Dr’s timestream.

They key thing you have to remember is how the canon evolved – it was never an overall masterplan, it’s been contradicted many many times in the past 50 years, depending on the current creative team. As someone said elsewhere – created as a result of writers/directors/trade union strikes/technical necessities/long session in the pub/need a paycheck etc  Long term Who fans have become experts in explaining inconsistences 😉  But now we don’t have to!!

The important thing for me is that the current creative team  love and care for Dr Who probably even more than the team who originally created it.  I suspect that the reason for the reset is not so they can dive into the deepest recesses of the backstory in a series of What ifs, but more so they can move on with a lighter step and not dragging 50 years worth of convoluted, contradictory backstory (like various versions of angry daleks in a bag, arguing about which came first) behind them!

[OsakaHatter @osakahatter]

@davemorris316 –

Technically speaking, there are no changes to any of this. As with all time travel, you can’t actually go back and change time, because you already did. All time is happening at once. So therefore, Clara was always going to jump into the time stream, and therefore has always been there at every point through the Doctor’s history and future. She specifically states this, but that the Doctor doesn’t always hear her – in fact it appears that only 1 and 11 directly address her (and 10 in the 50th I presume).

I wouldn’t agree that everything must always have already happened. The assumption that everything has always happened and therefore must happen is just one theory on how the universe could embrace paradox.  The multiverse/divergent-convergent realities is another theory.  We can’t prove or disprove either in the real world, but we can see how the Whoniverse has been set up.

If everything that happened must already have happened, it follows that if I traveled back in time and killed my Grandmother, I must already have killed my Grandmother.  But then I can’t exist, so I can’t go back in time., so I can’t kill her.  This cannot occur in a universe where everything that happens has always happened, as I will always decide to time travel but my biological Grandmother cannot be both alive and dead at the same time.

Which is where the multiple realities theory comes in – essentially, the moment I murder my Grandmother, a divergent universe/reality has been spawned.  In the original reality, I am still born, still attempt time travel etc.  In the new reality, the woman who would have been my Grandmother was murdered.  We end up with masses of universes branching out from each other like a really expansive family tree.  With convergent realities, different events in different realities lead to the same overall result, merging 2 realities together – arguably, this is what Marty was actually doing in BTTF – he was forcing his new reality to merge with his original one so that when he travelled foward in time within that new reality, he would arrive home.

Canon already has it that there are multiple universes (Rise of the Cybermen for example) emerging to play out different events, and the fixed points in time are perhaps where realities converge again.  So up to now we have seen the path through the various diverging and converging reality threads the Doctor originally followed, and the experiences that have made him who he is.  Clara is trying to prod him down a similar path that will lead to him being much the same person.  From here on in, we are following the Doctor down his altered path, so things in his history may now not be as we originally saw them – in fact, we don’t yet know how successful she’s been in getting him back to the same place.  This could tie in with @ardaraith ‘s idea about the resolution of the time war being discovered to have changed when Clara and The Doctor emerge from the timeline (maybe because ClaraNanny makes Davros and Rasillon sit on the naughty step behind the timelock until they learn to get along 😉 )

[SatsumaJoe @satsumajoe]

@Shazzbot

I’m disturbed by the specifics of the canon we saw changed as per your comment – no Daleks survived Exxilon but in AotD we see Exxilon Daleks

I don’t know when they first showed up but is it mentioned when AoTD occurs? It could be a future for the civilisation Dalek Clara belonged to while human but the Doctor’s pre-Exxilon past? OK, maybe not that as they’re insane from meeting him. Could’ve got away with it if not for that!

Curious about it so snooped. The end of the original episode/serial has the universe’s wonders being reduced to 699; hello chess playing Cyberman 🙂

[PhileasF @phileasf]

Regarding Susan’s claim that she coined the word ‘TARDIS’, which seems to contradict the repair shop guys using the word in TNOTD.

This has been discussed since the original series, when it was established that the Time Lords generally call TARDISes TARDISes. (When was that? The War Games? The Three Doctors? At some time someone says that the Doctor stole _a_ TARDIS.)

In the very early days of the show, TARDIS (or Tardis) may have been intended  to be the name of the ship, not the type of ship. This is fairly explicit in the early novelisations by David Whitaker, the original script editor, where ‘Tardis’ is italicised. (In fact, the 1st chapter of Doctor Who and the Crusaders also mentions the Titanic, and italicises it, just like the Tardis.)

Yikes, flicking through that first chapter, I see that, in that book, Susan’s 21st century boyfriend was named David Cameron.

Anyway, back when I was a young(er) fan, someone came up with the idea that Susan had coined the word while still living on Gallifrey, and it had caught on and entered general use. By the time the Doctor stole his TARDIS, everyone was calling them TARDISes.

[Anonymous @]

@satsumajoe – of course, I’m thinking too linearally!  AotD took place in a future where humans have space travel including ‘Jr Entertainment Officers’;  but not knowing pre-2005 Who, I don’t know when the Exxilon episodes occured.

But if I recall, that Exxilon Dalek caused a stir when AotD first aired, making people wonder what the heck was going on – and after TNotD, it appears to be a confimation of the Doctor’s timeline being changed.

I checked the Snowmen blog on this site and something there pointed out that when the Doctor reads Simeon’s business card, he says something like ‘hmmm, Great Intelligence, rings a bell’ when he should have totally (like, totally; egads, I’m reverting to Valley Girl-speak!) remembered.  So this appears to have only one explanation, that Fragmented Clara changed something in the past so the Doctor now barely recalls the GI.  And that appears to be a not-good thing.

[Anonymous @]

Also – it’s bothering me that just before stepping into the Doctor’s timestream in TNotD, Clara says ‘well whaddaya know, I’m Souffle Girl after all.’  She hasn’t been fragmented yet – how does she know she calls herself that in AotD?

[Anonymous @]

@scaryb – “At this point we don’t know!  We’re assuming it’s for the better, but we don’t know any of the ramifications yet.”

But I want answers!  😀  Actually, I wonder if anyone has picked up on any other inconsistencies since we met Clara (Prime or otherwise).  I take your point about there having always been contradictions, but what I’m asking about are any other pre-2005 things which were different in the Clara episodes (like the Dalek and the GI business).

[Anonymous @]

@phileasf – eeek!  David Cameron! 🙂

I suppose it’s simply a common, British-sounding name, but that’s one thing I wish Clara had gone back to change.  😉

[SatsumaJoe @satsumajoe]

@Shazzbot We need an ex(xilon)pert! Sorry. GI forgetting – he’s seen a lot of stuff and is, well, old. Souffle Girl – like her mum, leaping into the way of cars/timestreams and ‘getting it right’.

@phileasf Some conspiracy there?

[Anonymous @]

@satsumajoe – I don’t buy that the Doctor’s forgetful.  He remembers in excrutiating detail just about everything else.  It would be an interesting addition to the ‘he’s getting old, and tired’ meme if throughout this series he forgot things here and there … but a foe against which he has fought?  And just this one?  The GI, who went into his timestream before Clara did … ?

Sounds suspicious to me!  Like it’s something the GI changed and Fragmented Clara did not manage to put right …  I hate waiting 6 months to find out why!

[Anonymous @]

ps @satsumajoe – would you like an avatar picture?  🙂

http://photobucket.com/images/satsuma/?page=1

[SatsumaJoe @satsumajoe]

@Shazzbot Yeah, that is an interesting angle. Could explain the ‘breaking TARDIS in’ comment from Cold War. I had thought of and looked for an avatar (mainly as having a load of consecutive faceless commenters can get confusing) but a picture of an orange was scrapped.

[Lula @lula]

Whoa!  Didn’t mean to open a can of worms with my Repair shop men/Susan/Tardis observation last night!  Especially since news coverage of the devastating tornado in Oklahoma has dominated my time and kept me from checking back in here.  But then again, that’s what this forum is for–and I’m glad I asked, even though I’m still confused.

As a newer, American fan (I started with Eccleston), there are things that I selfishly want to be “forever canon,” so to speak…if Susan came up with the acronym for Tardis, I want it to always be that way.  I hope the Tardis forever remains a blue police box, and the Doctor to always use the sonic as an extension of his arm.  Yes, I’m fully aware the sonic screwdriver wasn’t always a part of his tool shed–but it is now.  I don’t mind if future regenerations of the Doctor are female, ginger, African American, or any ethnicity–but this American always wants the Doctor to be English!   (It’s interesting that Americans don’t mind having Superman, Batman, and Spiderman portrayed by British fellas.  Meanwhile, we’re all, “Oh, hell no!” at the thought of an American Doctor.)  I want, I want, I want!  But I know it’s not about me, so I’m always willing to go with the flow and set aside selfish wants.  It’s the very nature of this show and one of the many reasons I love it.  (But I still want John Barrowman* to return to the Tardis one day, and I’m not ashamed of that.  He’s hosting–presenting, as y’all call it–a new singing show on ABC this summer.  We certainly do not need another such program on our airwaves, but I will watch that thing like it’s my job, solely for Barrowman!)

I thank all of you for your many discussion/explanations on this topic– @scaryb, @whohar, @Shazzbot, just to name a few.  @PhileasF, particularly this:

This has been discussed since the original series, when it was established that the Time Lords generally call TARDISes TARDISes. (When was that? The War Games? The Three Doctors? At some time someone says that the Doctor stole _a_ TARDIS.)

In the very early days of the show, TARDIS (or Tardis) may have been intended  to be the name of the ship, not the type of ship. This is fairly explicit in the early novelisations by David Whitaker, the original script editor, where ‘Tardis’ is italicised. (In fact, the 1st chapter of Doctor Who and the Crusaders also mentions the Titanic, and italicises it, just like the Tardis.)

That’s both interesting and useful information for a newer fan such as myself.  Thank you!  I’m off to read more bonkers theorizing…

*For those inclined:  http://insidetv.ew.com/2013/05/20/john-barrowman-debbie-gibson/ The title of this show is monstrously hideous–as is the concept.  I’ll still watch, no doubt.  It’s Barrowman!

 

[Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip]

 Fragmented Clara changed something in the past so the Doctor now barely recalls the GI.  And that appears to be a not-good thing.

@Shazzbot More likely the GI changed something, and whatever Clara changed back meant that the Doctor barely realised he’d been fighting the GI during the Yeti’s in the Underground – because if she didn’t change that memory, it would disrupt the time-line even further.

@satsumajoe – they picked that particular reference very carefully indeed – the Doctor’s meeting with the Great Intelligence in the Underground was also his first meeting with one Colonel Alastair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart. It’s one adventure he’s unlikely to ever forget.

[SatsumaJoe @satsumajoe]

@bluesqueakpip Ah. Had wondered why it was so important. Thanks 🙂

[brotherjohn @brotherjohn]

@Shazzbot –

Also – it’s bothering me that just before stepping into the Doctor’s timestream in TNotD, Clara says ‘well whaddaya know, I’m Souffle Girl after all.’ She hasn’t been fragmented yet – how does she know she calls herself that in AotD?

I think (correct me if I’m wrong) the doctor explicitly CALLS her “souffle girl” to her face.  It may be when he confronts her on the cliff edge outside the TARDIS control room, in JttCotT, but she has “remembered” events from theat deleted day when she says it.

Also, as several have expressed concern about…

Fragmented Clara changed something in the past so the Doctor now barely recalls the GI. And that appears to be a not-good thing.

I don’t think he’s so in the dark about who the GI is when he reads the card.  To me, he kind of slyly says something like “rings a bell”.  I think he knows.  If he had sorta kinda remembered it, he would have looked puzzled and tried to place the name, for at lest a second or two.  But he just glances at it, says “rings a bell”, and moves on.  I think that’s when he realizes “Oh, so that’s who you are!” but just doesn’t make a big deal about it.  He certainly doesn’t look puzzled; he looks more dismissive.  Besides, I think this was the “origin” of the GI, and he was realizing where he was in the timeline of the GI; and that’s also why GI didn’t know him yet.  What good does it do to say to the GI: “Oh, I know you!  I’m going to meet again you in your future! “?  (“You look so YOUNG!” 🙂 )

 

[PhaseShift @phaseshift Time Lord]

@bluesqueakpip – Just goes to show I must rewatch Buffy. 🙂 In my mind, they always seem a little Victorian. I’m pretty sure that in a box set extra feature they said they themselves were influenced by the film “Dark City” for the look of the Gentlemen? Or I may be misremembering.

[thommck @thommck]

@brotherjohn
So the GI, when infecting his timeline, would have to make sure they didn’t stop the Doctor defeating them in the past. Otherwise the Doctor would have died, meaning he could have never gone to Trenzalore, meaning the GI couldn’t have gone back to kill him.

Seems like they are more bent on revenge than actually beating the Doctor and taking over the universe :/

[PhaseShift @phaseshift Time Lord]

The conversation about how time works is interesting from one point of view but a dead end in another. Most of the models hinged on (and referenced here) are reflections of our understanding of how time works and are necessarily bound by our subjective viewpoint of time going forwards.

But, in the Whoniverse time has been shown to change.

In “Day of the Daleks” that Daleks changed the human future to something the Doctor did not recognise. He changed it back.

In “Genesis of the Daleks” the Time Lords want him to change the future, to avoid the possibility of universal domination by them. Even he didn’t know if his actions would avoid the “timeline” they foresaw .

In “Pyramids of Mars”, Sarah simply says they should leave because they know Sutekh never destroyed the Earth. He takes her forward and demonstrates that if they don’t intervene, he will leave the earth a cinder.

In “Fires of Pompeii” he and Donna change the time that is destined (and seen by Precogs) to something we are familiar with.

In “Waters of Mars” the Doctor changes the future at a so-called “fixed point” and we are shown Time re-arrange to accommodate it.

In “A Christmas Carol” we have the Doctor manipulating someone’s timeline and, again, there is a slow adaptation.

In “Journey to the Centre of the Tardis” changes to Present events, with foreknowledge of an aborted timeline seem to reverberate back in Time and be accommodated.

Those are just the ones that come to mind.

The “Wibbly Wobbly” model of the Universe probably isn’t taught outside Gallifrey 😀 , but according to one source may be true…..

Something interesting that the mighty @craig posted on the Sofa a while back.

[Craig intro] Have always loved Neil deGrasse Tyson. He’s such a great speaker. Now I love him even more. For those who don’t know, he’s one of the USA’s most preeminent astrophysicists – like a Stephen Hawking who can do talk shows.

I think it’s safe to say at one point he wishes he could just copy the Doctor and say “It’s complicated”.

[PhaseShift @phaseshift Time Lord]

@lula – On the subject of Susan and the TARDIS, the Doctor never divulges where he and Susan are from to Ian and Barbara, and the reason he kidnaps them is he doesn’t trust them. You could easily say Susan told them enough to understand what a TARDIS is, without divulging any more information than needed. As a teenager, she naturally made it all about her.

[PhileasF @phileasf]

Did I really say (a million posts ago) that the time for theories was over? It all seemed so straightforward immediately after that first viewing. Then I thought about it, and read some posts 🙂

It isn’t so straightforward now.

So here are some post-second-viewing thoughts.

The Hurt Doctor

I agree with @janetteb that the JH Doctor is an alternate 11. On first viewing, I just assumed he was a future Doctor, perhaps the last. Now I’m fairly sure he’s a (sort of) past Doctor. The Doctor says ‘he is my secret’. Not his name, not the location of his tomb, but this guy. Which means the Doctor must have known about him before this episode, when he started talking about the value of secrets. (JTTCOTT?) By the way, that seems to be why the location and the name are secrets too: because they provide access to the timestream, which contains the real secret.

The Doctor hasn’t been into secrets very much in previous seasons (except maybe in season 25, but let’s assume those were different secrets…) Thus I think John Hurt is a fairly new secret.

So, the theory: Ten regenerated into John Hurt, who did Bad Things, then the next Doctor unwrote the Hurt Doctor from time by inserting himself in his place. He did this by… oooooh, ramming Ten’s TARDIS as he was regenerating, or something A sort of reneged regeneration. A renegeration. John Hurt now never happened. But our 11 still remembers being John Hurt, because he remembers unwritten timelines (a la JTTCOTT). Thus the exploding TARDIS, and the three TARDISs in the van Gogh painting: Ten’s, Eleven’s and other-Eleven’s.

Speaking of unwritten time, if the Doctor remembers it, his head must be pretty full by now, with multiple versions of his whole life jammed in there.

What did other-Eleven do?

I don’t think it will be ending the Time War. Mainly because that isn’t such a big secret — the Doctor’s told some people — and the Doctor watched his friends being killed without being moved to reveal this secret. This has to be something really bad.

Also, I think the Time War is old news; the show needs fresh stories.

What happened in the timestream?

Well no wonder we’re a bit confused, they tried to show us 1200 years of action-packed life in a few seconds… twice.

So, was the GI telling lies about the Doctor, torturing him, telling his enemies how to beat him, sending strongly worded letters to the Times about what a terrible waste of taxpayers’ money UNIT was? We just see him stand there and watch the Doctor go by; but somehow the Doctor’s life is undone.

Later we see much the same happening with Clara. She even says that she almost never meets the Doctor, she just crosses his path… The exceptions we know of are at the TARDIS repair yard, the Asylum and the Snowmen. And if she really had participated more directly in all his adventures, he’d remember her from a lot more than Asylum and Snowmen.

I think Clara and the GI weren’t arm-wrestling in the timestream. And I think Clara wasn’t somehow having complicated adventures where she undid the GI’s damage.  The impression I was left with, was that Clara displaced the GI just by being there. His version of the Doctor’s life was overwritten because she created another version of the Doctor’s life, the one where she was always close by, which replaced the GI version.

My evidence for this: we see what appear to be some of the same moments in the Doctor’s life: once with the GI, then with Clara instead. The implication is that the GI version of the events now hasn’t happened, rather than Clara and the GI both being present in the Doctor’s past.

The ghost

As I rewatched the episode I kept in mind the idea that the Doctor can see River whenever we can, and is pretending not to. It makes a big difference.

But how long has this been going on? Since the Library? Since the wedding? As others have pointed out, sending her to sleep with a kiss goodbye means she’s joining the rest of his family who sleep in his mind (a la Tomb of the Cybermen). Seeing her all the time, as a ghost… that must be what it’s like when they’re awake in his mind.

Random stuff

River was still in conference call with Clara when she jumped in the timestream. So has River now seen the Doctor’s whole life too?

Is our Clara ClaraPrime? Or is she an acausal loop, another splinter?

It looks like Clara has the same mother in all her lives. If every Clara gets a whole past and future, just like any other real person… then how much of the human population of spacetime exists because she does? It would mean the same people recur throughout space and time, so Clara can always descend from them..

River seemed a little harsh when she warned Clara that her splinters would only be copies. Pot. Kettle.

When the GI revealed there was nothing behind his face: very Omega at the end of The Three Doctors.

In case nobody’s mentioned it, April 10 2013 was a Wednesday.

At about 24 minutes, Clara staggers and almost faints — just like in Cold War, except this time the Doctor catches her. The Doctor explains: ‘The TARDIS is a ruin. The telepathic circuits are awakening memories you shouldn’t even have.’

At about 27.5 minutes, the Doctor calls the GI ‘Mr G Intelligence’. An odd thing to say… But not unlike Mr Clever.

When the TARDIS can hear River: I presumed this was because she was in conference call with Clara, who was telepathically linked to the TARDIS.

The GI seems to think the Doctor has beaten him a lot. Maybe this is one of the changes in the new timeline. Either he succeeded in writing those encounters out of the Doctor’s life, or Clara’s purge of the GI from the Doctor’s life was pretty thorough. Maybe in the ‘pre-rewritten’ timeline, the GI was a more frequently recurring villain.

Up till now, our Clara always followed orders. But now she can disobey the Doctor (and his wife). Maybe the thought Clara carried into the timestream, ‘save the Doctor’, overrode whatever was making her so obedient. This presupposes that ‘our’ Clara is just as much a splinter as the others.

I now expect that in every episode until the end of the series, even long after JLC has left, we’ll see Clara, in a crowd scene, on a screen, peeking around a corner. Not participating in the episode, just being close by. (I don’t really expect this, but wouldn’t it be neat?)

[BadWulf @badwulf]

@phileasf

I now expect that in every episode until the end of the series, even long after JLC has left, we’ll see Clara, in a crowd scene, on a screen, peeking around a corner. Not participating in the episode, just being close by. (I don’t really expect this, but wouldn’t it be neat?)

Does that mean that the BBC should insert a Clara in every DVD reissue from now onwards, as a kind of where’s Wally/Waldo game for everyone? It might even get all the fans to buy a new set of DVDs!

I think that the Clara first encountered in tBoSJ is ClaraPrime – it just makes narrative sense to me that way, especially as in Hide etc. all the checks that the Doctor makes about her indicate that she is totally ordinary.

However, I am not convinced that SwingClara in tBoSJ: a Prequel is ClaraPrime, because she is having a helping-hand role there.

[NewSlang @newslang]

Hello!

 

I found what the Whispermen were saying by River’s fake grave really intriguing (and a bit mind bending).

 

This man must fall as all men must,

The fate of all is always dust.

 

This is of course after the TARDIS has literally fallen onto Trenzalore, opening up further speculation as to the meaning of the Fall of the Eleventh.

 

The man who lies will lie no more,

When this man lies at Trenzalore.

 

This is really clever, because there are so many different ways you can take it. Who is the man who lies? Which interpretation of the word should you use and in what order? It raises loads of different possibilities in my mind. It could reference Matt Smiths’ Doctor, John Hurts’, whichever version died at Trenzalore – it could be about finally telling the truth or some sort of resurrection (lie no more) or something else entirely! Very cleverly done and like much of the rest of the series to my mind. Tantalising, suggestive but ambiguous enough to keep you furiously guessing like there’s no November 23rd!

[BadWulf @badwulf]

Apologies if this has been suggested before:

Perhaps we have been treated to A variation on the bow-tie theories mentioned ever since Time of Angels:

Red: Timeline as messed up by the GI
Blue: Timeline as fixed by Clara
Patterned: Original timeline

This ties into the hue change seen in the control room after both the GI’s and ClaraPrime’s intervention leaps.

[mrtrebus @mrtrebus]

So I really put the cat among the pigeons on saturday!

https://twitter.com/JohnHurtDoctor

[davemorris316 @davemorris316]

I should point out that my point about time travel earlier was intended to say that Clara being present in the Doctor’s time stream doesn’t change anything he did, just stopped the GI interfering. The only occasions where Clara has directly saved the Doctor to a point in the story is AOTD and The Snowmen (outside of Clara Prime), but only because The Doctor heard her and interacted with her. I was just saying that we don’t have to worry about canon being changed.

I agree that time can be changed, but a decision to interfere with time in the future to come back and ‘change’ something is a paradox in itself, as despite the act of ‘changing’ you haven’t changed anything at all, as the ‘changing’ was part of the event anyway.

I also think that if you yourself travel in time, you become a paradox, and immune to personality changes and behavioural changes. The only thing you can affect is your physical self, such as killing your grandmother to stop you existing. But as this can’t happen, you can never do that. I think…

Anyway, I just think we don’t need to worry about canon, but we can speculate on what the GI attempted to do to the Doctor in each adventure, and what Clara did to stop it!

In other news, I think the Time War has something to do with HurtDr, otherwise why did Clara see the book, and recognise something? That was all linked to the identity of The Doctor, so fits in.

[Timeloop @timeloop]

@Bluesqueakpip “Oh, and we may now know part of the reason for the Tenth’s shock on learning that River knows his name: if the Gallfreyan custom is that the name that locks your tomb is the birth-name, not the use-name – he knows he trusted River enough to make sure he was buried properly.

He told an archaeologist the password to one of the most famous tombs in the universe. ”

What a great explanation =D Love it

[Timeloop @timeloop]

@osakahatter ”

 

@davemorris316 –

 

Technically speaking, there are no changes to any of this. As with all time travel, you can’t actually go back and change time, because you already did. All time is happening at once. So therefore, Clara was always going to jump into the time stream, and therefore has always been there at every point through the Doctor’s history and future. She specifically states this, but that the Doctor doesn’t always hear her – in fact it appears that only 1 and 11 directly address her (and 10 in the 50th I presume).

 

I wouldn’t agree that everything must always have already happened. The assumption that everything has always happened and therefore must happen is just one theory on how the universe could embrace paradox.  The multiverse/divergent-convergent realities is another theory.  We can’t prove or disprove either in the real world, but we can see how the Whoniverse has been set up.

 

If everything that happened must already have happened, it follows that if I traveled back in time and killed my Grandmother, I must already have killed my Grandmother.  But then I can’t exist, so I can’t go back in time., so I can’t kill her.  This cannot occur in a universe where everything that happens has always happened, as I will always decide to time travel but my biological Grandmother cannot be both alive and dead at the same time.

 

Which is where the multiple realities theory comes in – essentially, the moment I murder my Grandmother, a divergent universe/reality has been spawned.  In the original reality, I am still born, still attempt time travel etc.  In the new reality, the woman who would have been my Grandmother was murdered.  We end up with masses of universes branching out from each other like a really expansive family tree.  With convergent realities, different events in different realities lead to the same overall result, merging 2 realities together – arguably, this is what Marty was actually doing in BTTF – he was forcing his new reality to merge with his original one so that when he travelled foward in time within that new reality, he would arrive home.”

I agree with dave on this.  You do stay true to your timeline. That means you might cease to exist when you do your example (cant we change it to eating cake – your example is so brutal 😉 ) – however as time is relative to the lived history the past is not challenged by it. For example if you were to wait for your furture self for a conversation at a specific time and space and both of you stayed half an hour you both would always be there (see minisode last night). When the Doctor says he has to stay relative to the master (god knows when that was) even though he could just come back earlier to catch him he states he has to stay relative t his timestream. The Doctor does have a future and he has been with Amy at times where she was already gone. They progressively follow their timestream while all time happening at once. That means you always have the ready result even though you still have to forge the solution (River screwdriver)

[Whisht @whisht]

wow – that’s a whole hunk a burning bonkers theorising going on!

I don’t want to name everyone who I agreed with as I’ll leave someone out, so I’ll just mention @MTGladwell, @davemorris316 and @craignixon (who came up with The Hurt Doctor siding with the Daleks – now that’s a great theory) as I haven’t said Hi yet. I had similar thoughts but nowhere near as cogent (and not the siding-with-the-daleks to avert the insanity of the Timelords…. oooh!).

Obviously everyone else I loved your posts too (but you’re all barking).

😉

oh and the poetic @arkleseizure – lovely analogy of the Hurt Doctor like an ox-bow lake!

anyway, @Shazzbot – I’ll stand (a bit awkwardly as I’m a fully grown man) on your (giantess) shoulders…

“when the Doctor reads Simeon’s business card, he says something like ‘hmmm, Great Intelligence, rings a bell’ when he should have totally (like, totally; egads, I’m reverting to Valley Girl-speak!) remembered.”

Well, of course if the GI and Clara are constantly rinsing (was that MTGladwell??) backwards and forwards through his timeline, then the GI had wiped itself from the Doctor’s memory at that point. Clara-in-the-past (Zelig-Clara) hadn’t resolved that GI-ntervention.
And that’s how the back-canon can forever be “ah, well, of course the GI has just done something 100 years ago to cause that and Clara’s not stopped it… tsk”.

[MTGradwell @mtgradwell]

Bluesqueakpip

Or maybe it was a continuity error.

@mtgradwell – or maybe the Eleventh is the Final Doctor.

 

I think you’ve got something there. The Eleventh is the final doctor, at least as things Currently stand. His Tardis is even already parked conveniently close to its final resting place,  something which is unlikely to ever happen again. The final nature of the Eleventh will only change when the Doctor fixes up someone who is hurt.

[Pufferfish @pufferfish]

Perhaps the minimalist Tardis interior is ‘factory settings’ mode as well as the desktop chosen by 11 at that particular time.

[chickenelly @chickenelly]

It’s taken me ages to catch up on all the Bonkers theories™ above.  The problem about there being so much, I think of comments but have forget them by the time I reach the end.  Those I can remember are as follows:

1) Clara’s mother being replicated as Victorian mother of Snowman Clara.  It was the intervention of Clara’s mother which saved her father in 1981, is this feat also replicated down the ages? *polishes up pet ‘Boys from Brazil’ theory*.  On the other hand might the Doctor, Terminator style, distract 1980s Clara’s mother so she doesn’t save Clara’s father and therefore change Clara sacrificing herself?

2) ‘Summer Falls’ book.  I didn’t think the female character in the book (who saves the day it has to be said) was Clara due to the period, but as there are now multi-Claras knocking about it must be.  Plus she mentions souffles.

3) Paintings.  There is a painting in Summer Falls which is important.  Didn’t Matt say that a clue to the 50th was paintings?  We seem to have forgotten to add this into the current round of speculation®.

4) Hush’s Gentlemen v Whispermen.  I must admit I did see an influence, but the Gentlemen were far more scary.  Besides, when I saw that Buffy episode originally, I thought it was very influenced by Tim Burton.  However that could have been the Danny Elfmanesque music.

5) Clara keeps fainting.  Rather like Mike Pratt in the original Randall & Hopkirk who got bopped on the head every week, Clara (when she isn’t popping her socks) is out for the count rather a lot.  See:

(a) Bells of St John (uploaded into matrix)

(b) Cold War (faints when trying to find the sonic screwdriver)

(c) Journey to the Centre of the Tardis (knocked out by crash)

(d) Crimson Horror (okay, she got turned into a waxwork)

(e) Name of the Doctor (nearly faints when walking through the catacombs, does faint at the end)

 

[Anonymous @]

@pufferfish – ooh, I like your ‘factory settings’ idea.  And you say ‘desktop’ …

One thing I found anachronistic in the psychic call scene was when Jenny – presumably just an East End girl in Victorian London – says upon waking ‘I like the new desktop.’  (Vastra replies that she was tired of the Taj Mahal.)

Interesting choice of words, that …

[Anonymous @]

@chickenelly – I hope that there’s a good reason for Clara’s fainting, as without exposition it could look like a parody of the helpless female trope.  Someone above said (and I’m with you, it’s all so wonderfully chaotic with theorising I forget who I want to respond to by the time I get ready to write a response!), 11 holds Clara in a similar pose as to how he held Amy in AotD.  In Amy’s defence, though, that wasn’t a faint.

And you bring up Clara being knocked out underwater in Cold War, something I also thought odd at the time.  Is that a Fragmented Clara in that episode?  Does it matter if she’s Clara Prime or not, with respect to going out cold at that moment?  What the heaving bejeepers was that all about – what did we miss until she awoke sitting up, and how much time had passed?

[Juniperfish @juniperfish]

Wow – I just can’t quite catch up to you all! So much timey theorising going on.

Lol @phaseshift to your poem. I confess it may have been me who started the Buffy/ Gentlemen comparison on the G-blog! And I’ll defend it too 🙂 Modern undertaker clothes or not @bluesqueakpip .  Nu Who has paid persistent tribute to Buffy/ Angel. The episode with the Gentlemen is almost as good as The Body – still on my list of “best television ever”.

@timeloop

He told an archaeologist the password to one of the most famous tombs in the universe.

Yes, that’s really glorious isn’t it and another fit for all the Egyptology and tales of discovered mummified Kings etc. Bet River wrote “The History of the TIme War”. It was probably her PhD thesis 🙂

If you go back and take a look at Ten’s face when River tells him his name in the Library – he really does look like a Time Lord who has seen a ghost.

@badwulf

Perhaps we have been treated to A variation on the bow-tie theories mentioned ever since Time of Angels:

Red: Timeline as messed up by the GI
Blue: Timeline as fixed by Clara
Patterned: Original timeline

Yay converts to the bow-tie theory! Amy’s Choice man, I am actually having a fit of fan-squeeing about how brilliant it was to put all that foreshadowing blatantly into an epsiode riff-ing on a fan trope about “sex pollen” back in Season 5 and then continue to riff on it (not the sex-pollen part) via various other doppleganger appearances and watery portals to other time-streams ever since.

A ++++++ for submerged arc narrative in the metaphors. I LOVE IT!

Yes I’m still going with blue as the messed up time-stream because of the colour symbolism – “ice in his heart” and all the red Clara has been wearing – red being for love. Plus when the Doc faced off against Mr. Clever, Mr. Clever’s half of the brain was blue.  I don’t think patterned is “original time-line” either – I’m still going with “spotty bow-tie = spotty Doctor” as he approaches the trauma of a confrontation with his shadow side the Hurt Doctor.

@phileasf and @janetteb

I like your theory that Hurt Doctor is Alt!Eleven, particularly as that fits literally with all the doppleganger metaphors. But if not the Time War, then a war is in the mix – the “blood of billions” is on the Doctor’s hands said the GI and Mme Kovarian talked about an “endless bitter war”.

I’m still going with the Time War myself, it’s just that we are going to find out the Doctor did something more terrible than we’ve yet explicitly come to know – sacrified whole civilisations of innocents in order to lock the Time War up, most probably, including his own daugher (mother of Susan).

Happy to see you’re reviving my three TARDISes collision theory too. I would very much like it if they tied it all together, so that Eleven’s TARDIS was indeed spinning out of control from that explosion when he first lands in Amy’s garden.

Does anyone remember that Prisoner Zero taunted Eleven then by singing “the Doctor in the TARDIS doesn’t know”. Does the Hurt Doctor have a “dark TARDIS” (visually, I’d love to see that!). Or is he “the Doctor without the TARDIS”?

Go Moff on your three season arc you beauty!

 

[SatsumaJoe @satsumajoe]

@chickenelly Oh yeah, that reminded me of that curious Cold War scene. Is it possible that Clara Prime was… paused for an echo to face Skaldak?

[Anonymous @]

@mtgradwell – “The final nature of the Eleventh will only change when the Doctor fixes up someone who is hurt.”

Hurt … as in John Hurt?

[Anonymous @]

@whisht – “I’ll stand (a bit awkwardly as I’m a fully grown man) on your (giantess) shoulders”

Oy!  I’m simply tall.  It’s just that JLC is a munchkin and the cameraman’s angle was cheeky.  😀

[Author]

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