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And loved Clara in era-specific clothing when warning the various incarnations of the Doctor – especially the 80’s one!

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So…

The leaf wasn’t the actual leaf – the doctor must have substituted another leaf which Clara then offers up in the “Rings” – the planet/star/sun doesn’t feast on her mother’s potential but on Clara’s impossibility throughout time and space – and steals away some of her memories in the process, which is why she finds it hard to recall memories in the sub, or even when asked early on where she wants to go.

The Doctor gives her back the real leaf in this episode, her real past back again now she has saved him.

 

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I  reckon Mr Thursday is a nod to GK Chesterton’s The Man who was Thursday – the hero’s love interest in that very Kafka-like story is Rose (Rosamund).

Of course Chesterton also wrote The Paradoxes of Mr Pond…

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So if he had managed to get to London in 1893 rather than Yorkshire, was he planning to show Clara her Victorian doppelganger? Seems a bit brutal. Or to prove they were different beings if it turned out a time paradox wasn’t created?

 

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Plus Jenny wearing an Avengers leather catsuit – priceless.

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Thomas Thomas – victorian sat nav !

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Around about 15:00 or so, Clara only has two candles in the candlestick, having run down the stairs; a few seconds later there are 3 again.

Continuity slip, for sure.

 

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As noted by other here, we have blue and red balloons representing the two universes. The doctor blows up the blue one first to represent ‘our’ universe, the red second as the pocket universe.

He draws them together as he tells Emma she is the ‘lantern’ connecting the two, and makes her smile by letting the air out of one of the balloons. Except it’s our (blue) universe he lets down, not the pocket universe!

So, bow-tie theorists, which is the real doctor / real universe?

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“sliver of ice” line is a paraphrase of Graham Greene’s assertion  that;

“There is a splinter of ice in the heart of a writer”

He was writing in the context of the writer’s need to look at tragedy, or at least the suffering of others, without feeling pain. Something the empath of course, isn’t able to do.

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Sticking to my Clara as normal / impossible theme;

The Tardis comes up with the only image she thinks Clara will recognise from her vast database; Clara herself – again this suggests Clara has a very limited memory, or limited access to it. It’s certainly a great ‘Clara as digital Ghost’ foreshadowing…

Yet Jessica’s character describes Clara as a perfectly normal, more scared than she seems, girl when the Doctor asks.

This makes sense, in that she is an ’empath’ rather than a clairvoyant – she senses what Clara feels, but isn’t able to read her mind or perhaps lack thereof ( in the sense of free-will and memory ). Loved that her warning to Clara about the Doctor was ‘shard’ based!

Clara feels everything, we have been shown that each week, she too is an empath; her pain in the Tardis at her own (and her entire race’s) mortality is a lovely touch. She just appears to have a partial memory and requires other to need her to do something before she can act (cf. being an impromptu nanny).

 

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Another instance of Clara being unable to do something until prompted – she won’t follow the Doctor and go looking for the ghost, in fact clearly can’t follow him until he dares her (at her suggestion), then she’s up for the adventure.

As we see in the next week’s teaser, he’s even going to ask her point blank whether she’s a trap…

And yet she’s just an ordinary girl. I’m really enjoying this, the story arc is beautifully structured so far.

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So to recap (for myself as much as anyone)…

Phoenix / Firebird = Rebirth

Egyptology = Reincarnation

Looking Glass (Clara does the mirror image of the usual; “smaller on the outside” & “Anywhere in space” rather than time, to the doctor’s vague discomfort) = Reflections in time, fractured self

Power of Song = What exactly? Lots and lots of examples, from 80’s pop to spiritual lullaby for an angry (Sun) god.

Roses = to get everyone going about a favorite returning for the anniversary but not a whole lot else, IMHO.

Clara as cypher – a back story, a functional personality and yet empty; she has traits (nanny) but appears to exist in the ‘now’ with a fake past (Total Recall comes to mind).

Totally agree with @Juniperfish about narrative symmetry of the songs in this episode. Duran Duran famously sang the one of the worst lines in pop history (relates well to the episode, naturally) that “you’re about as easy as a nuclear war”…

 

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Egyptology count so far;

Camels, Pyramids, Mummy, Raiders of the Lost Ark

Any others?

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Some  more things about Clara (am presuming you’ve all read others speculations and clue-assembly, so won’t repeat the basics);

Her Father is still alive (and, as the Doctor reports in his list of messages for Clara once she regains consciousness, is rather incensed by the Government) and keeps in touch.

The two missing years in her book are the years a) in which her mother dies,  and b) the mother of the kids she is looking after when we meet her dies. While the various specifics of those dates in the history of the TV series have been brilliantly documented here, it seems reasonable that the only two years ‘travel’ are not on her mind are due to major life traumas.

I thought the Doctor stalking her past was well done (Ghost Town being number one in the summer of 1981, Beano Annual) – I think the fact he returns  to the Tardis convinced that evidence suggests she’s a normal girl (though obviously impossible) means just that; there aren’t any secrets in terms of parents or upbringing. He acts much as anyone with an infatuation does in fact; wants to know everything about her, and treats her as both someone to impress while almost fearing how special she is.

…And when the time comes to save the world (someone else’s planetary system) it is her grasp of ‘the future of infinite possibilities’ that takes over when his supply of pasts begin to run out. I think this is the biggest clue of all, and perhaps now the doctor will stop looking back and enjoy the real journey of a relationship – what lies ahead. Clara’s putdown at the end is a classic of relationships,  isn’t it – not wanting to be a cypher for someone now gone, but be accepted on their own terms.  Leave the past behind.

 

 

 

 

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@bluesqueakpip

Agreed – I thought that ‘pond’ being the only word to get the Doctor’s attention was the perfect example of Moffat setting up any/all/none of the following; a good joke (since the old governess was in a pond), a potential plot line that could extended or forgotten, part of a running gag and a hint that Clara has access to information that she can use but doesn’t necessarily comprehend.

The last bit we’ve seen in detail during the recent episode; she finds him aged 9 and tells him to wait in a room until he remembers/finds what he’s lost, doesn’t appear to remember him aged 24 (fair enough) having called him in that room, and uses the code phrase (RYCBAR123) without being aware of it’s significance, just like she did ‘pond’.

So  Clara has sprung up 3 times now (her consciousness we might say), without the Doctor having any say in the matter (even when he was looking for her) and she has no direct access to the information with which she attracts him.

I liked the way he mentioned ‘destiny’ and she shot him down – the jokes are certainly many layered in modern Who.

 

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@ScaryB – yep, very much so. Although it required the Doctor to mention the ‘World Wide Web’ somewhat anachronistically when really it was wi-fi networks and the net generally that had been co-opted. Loved that Facebook status updates was the ‘we’d have gotten away with it if it was wasn’t for those darn kids’ moment…

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Looking at the Prequel again, it is most specifically Autumn – the camera makes a point of including a huge tree with reddish  leaves, leaves all around in fact;

So it’s the first page because Clara brings it home that day from the swings, having met the doctor. Aged 9.

And, she has a marked accent at that age – the one she slips back into on occasion, aged 24.

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Reposting this from the Series Blog over at The Guardian;

 

So did anyone else notice the camels? – one on Clara’s desk, a picture of one on the hall stairs and then, when they are about to set off on the motorbike the Doctor promises the South Bank crowd, “Tomorrow, Camels”…

I think the fluctuating accent is deliberate on Jenna-Louise’s part – she was after all masquerading in the Xmas special (bar girl / governess) and she is obviously not all (or rather not only) what she seems.

‘A leaf out one’s own book’ – or take a leaf out of my book perhaps? Certainly tasted wrong or out of place I suspect…

Love the idea of a leaf being the start of a (all) books as in The Forest / The Library. Moffat just loves to use the book as a signifier, amongst all the techno-fear of wi-fi and ipads.

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‘Summer Falls’ is surely just Amy taking her adventures with the doctor (Silence Falls) and writing them as a children’s adventure story, in the manner of Famous Five books (the cover has the heroine with her two boys behind her and a dog at her feet). Love that one of the boys holds a torch rather than sonic screwdriver!

As the Doctor says to Clara, the beauty of time travel is exactly the beauty of those stories, that one can have adventures all one likes and still be home in time for tea.

 

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