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@blenkinsopthebrave  I was actually just thinking the same thing.  It might have been in the mysterious book from my childhood that I will get when I’m home over Christmas and reread, but I actually always assumed Susan wasn’t a Time Lady.  She’s certainly Gallifreyan and was very clever but I don’t know if it was ever established that she actually had a regeneration cycle.  As per the end of Listen, it seems that Time Lords and Ladies attend The Academy in order to bear the title, so it’s entirely possible that Susan didn’t attend, or may even have left with The Doctor before she was able.

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Hmmn, I’m probably late to the party but I notice a few comments about the Teller’s attempt at reading Clara and, though I hadn’t thought much about it at the time, it does make for interesting theories.  I’ll have to watch the scene again but I suppose you could just pass it off as her being a rather unique individual, disjointed and scattered into all those Claricles.  Who knows what’s locked deep in her psyche, little tidbits that she doesn’t quite remember but can’t quite forget.  It does make me think too, though I don’t know if I’m a fan of the idea or how it would all work in, that a chameleon-locked Timelord would probably confuse the Teller too.  It does really feel like we’re meant to find out something about Clara by the end of this series and I am still wondering if their hush-hush on whether or not Jenna is leaving is because she is but Clara isn’t.  If there really is a family connection in all of this, we may have a regenerating companion on our hands.

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@thommck  Oh don’t get me wrong, I like that Clara has a separate life!  I even like that it’s being fleshed out a bit more and being given substance.  I only meant that surely we don’t have to see every week what he goes through to convince her to join him THIS time.  Unless there’s a point to that.  Moffat makes me paranoid!

@purofilion  I’m not entirely sure if I made that connection.  I think I remember mentioning Horns of Nimon at one point, or what I just remarking on someone else saying it?  I’ll take credit! *lol*  (Unless it really was someone else.)

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@spider

Now, given that is a role for the companion fine..but really why was she there? Why didn’t the doctor leave her with his architect self.

I suspect this is along the lines of what’s been said about The Doctor’s neediness and also his confused sense of self.  Clara has become his designated ‘carer’, someone he trusts, someone he believes knows who he is and can help him rediscover that for himself.  I think he keeps her around simply because, without her, even The Doctor is struggling to figure out what that name means anymore.  It’s arguably another sign of the egocentric nature of this incarnation, that he would continually risk her for his own benefit, though it could just as easily be said that it’s kind of nice that The Doctor is recognising he needs help.  This is, after all, the same man that kept trying to ditch her not too long ago.  He needed her help then, just as he needed her help countless times throughout his lives as the Claricles stepped in to preserve his timeline.  Maybe the difference now is that he’s finally acknowledging it.

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Another one I’m going to have to rewatch!  Overall, I enjoyed it.  It had a slightly different feel to it, mostly because as someone mentioned, it seemed a fun little stand-alone with no over-dependence on story arc.  I am sure there were clues embedded, a little trail throughout the series is exactly Moffat’s style, but it was nice to see something that can also be self-contained.  I also liked that The Doctor seemed front and centre perhaps more than he has in other episodes.  It’s almost as if, as he becomes comfortable in his new skin, he steps further into the spotlight.

It’s also kind of cute that he displays moments of jealousy.  I no longer think it’s about romantic interest in Clara but more that dependency on her to keep him on the straight and narrow.  After all, he phoned her from a long way away to ask her to stay and help him be less scared.

One thing that did stand out, however, is that it’s getting a bit old watching the many ways he pleads with Clara to drop her plans and go with him.  I guess most companions in the past have traveled with him full-time and it’s being made very obvious that Clara is trying to have a normal life running parallel to her extraordinary one.  I don’t mind that but I do wonder at the necessity of watching him try to convince her all the time. (Though knowing Moffat, that’s no accident.)  The Robots of Sherwood episode just started with them in the TARDIS and that seemed to work just fine!

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@purofilion  After a day of school concerts, in which we performed the same 2.5 hours show three times, and having just crawled home at 11:30pm, I can safely say I am too tired to do battle.  *lol*  And I don’t mind people saying that they were disappointed when Tennant changed and wished he hadn’t, that’s sort of normal fandom, I think.  It’s the people that seem to honestly, genuinely believe that actors should be able to come back and take over the role as if this has suddenly turned into a daytime soapie, (Roman Brady isn’t dead, someone else is just playing him for a while and then the original person will come back!), that bug me.  I feel there’s a group within perhaps the newer fans that have missed out on the underlying ethos of the show being in constant motion and undergoing constant change and reinvention.  I get why they might try to apply their expectations from other shows onto Doctor Who, I just wish they wouldn’t.

@beezilla  So it’s okay, you’re entitled to your opinion and your sadness, no need to meet on the field at dawn.  LOL.  I’m still disappointed that Romana left so, you know, nothing changes.

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I managed to sleep!  Just.

All this movement through timelines still makes my head spin, but I am eager to find out how Clara was able to guide the TARDIS to a timelocked world.  It’s always been the assumption that Gallifrey is gone, completely taken out of the timeline, but then I suppose something like that would have catastrophic implications.  Look what Clara had to do in order to preserve The Doctor’s timeline to prevent stars going out and then imagine what would happen if a powerful race like the Timelords was taken out of the picture.  There is still room for that scene not taking place on Gallifrey but even that seems like a long-shot.  And though we don’t know for sure it’s The Doctor in the bed, I do tend to agree with everyone who thinks it probably is.  I have to admit that wrapping my head around the non-linear aspects of the show has always been my downpoint; I guess I’m a very point-and-shoot thinker!

I also wonder, can the TARDIS materialise inside someone’s memories?  *lol*  We have a weird pseudo-reality with a Gatekeeper dangled in front of us, and we’ve had CAL and the Papal Mainframe and all sorts of twisty-turny ‘other reality’ type devices.  I have no reason for asking other than it being another possibility for why that scene doesn’t take place on Gallifrey itself, just a version of it.

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I am about to watch this again on my iPad in bed before attempting to go to sleep.  I feel this might be a huge mistake but we shall see!

Also, on an entirely different note, I wanted to thank you all for being fantastic contributors to bonkers theorising rather than getting weighed down in the constant negativity some fans seem to thrive on.  I had to unsubscribe to Doctor Who on Facebook, I couldn’t take it anymore.  XD

Wish me luck!

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@saraoswald101

Fear is a superpower.
-Clara Oswin Oswald
Oh man, that just hurt my brain.  My first instinct was that The Doctor said that first to Rupert.  And then I realised that, technically, Clara said it to HIM first when he was a little boy.  But she said it because she heard The Doctor say it, right?

My brain just broke.

Also, interesting point about the TARDIS landing on Gallifrey, given that Gallifrey is technically lost in a pocket universe.  Of course, in the past it wasn’t, and we also don’t know for 100% sure that it was Gallifrey since we cannot 100% say that we know so much about The Doctor that we can guarantee he spent all his childhood there…

My brain just broke again.

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@purofilion  If you have a mobile device, download ABC iview for free and watch it, that’s what I do!  I see it when I wake up first thing on a Sunday, just a few hours after it’s been on television.  Even watch it in bed on the iPad, though I wish I hadn’t this morning!  Didn’t want to get out of bed after!

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Well, that was a twist I didn’t anticipate!  How bold of Moffat to show even a minor smattering of Gallifreyan culture, though we know he draws heavily on previous canon because The Doctor has already mentioned going to the Academy.  I think it’s Romana’s first episode, right, where they compare the size of their graduation scores?  *lol*  But I like the implication that only graduates become Time Lords, that’s veering more towards what I was banging on about regarding the book I had as a kid.

As for all the rest….bonkers theorising by the bucketload!  I can’t wrap my head around Danny/Rupert/Orson (I swear, I thought he said his name was Awesome), and how he’s related to Clara.  I feel like I know we’re being lead to believe one thing and yet I don’t trust that tricksy Moffat one bit.  And, as someone pointed out, the little toy soldier was given to The Doctor, and then it ended up in Rupert’s room.  And what was that thing on Rupert’s bed?  I don’t believe any kid would have hidden that quietly for that long, their impulsiveness and own fear at these weird people talking about spooky stuff would have given them away.  Could it have been The Doctor?  The toy soldier had to get there somehow and there was a big emphasis in the episode about not meeting yourself.

Another thing niggling in the back of my head is that we don’t know the little boy in the barn was The Doctor.  I agree it probably was, it fits that Clara would find him and be linked to him since that’s kind of her modus operandi, and clearly there was no way to identify the child without revealing The Doctor’s real name, but it still struck me as an assumption.  Moffat has made me paranoid enough to question those!

Overall, I loved this and am now going to watch it again!

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@brewski  Don’t get me wrong!  As a kid and even a teenager, (and even a tiny bit now), I would get hugely attached to characters that I liked in anything I watched.  I remember watching Star Trek and being impatient for the episodes that featured my favourite characters more than others, and though my experience with Doctor Who growing up was disjointed because of the way it was aired when I finally got into it, I remember having favourites there too.  I do understand the feeling of disappointment and the longing for more.

I was mostly referencing some of the comments I’ve been reading through other forums and social media where people seem to be honestly trying to suggest that the best thing for the show is for it to become something it isn’t.  I can’t help but draw a correlation between that attitude and the breed of fans who still seem to be stuck on Rose and the space romance aspect of her series.  I have even spoken one-on-one to someone, in their mid-20s, who openly admitted she’d like the show so much more if it just kept on being Tennant and Rose. That drives me bonkers.  So I suppose I should clarify that it’s not everyone with a heart full of wishful thinking that I was talking about; nostalgia gets us all!  It’s a very specific sub-section of the fandom that seem to have missed the point.

I will also never speak out against bonkers theorising because I love it!

 

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@brewski   Whilst I don’t begrudge them their version of fandom and I do realise that the show is lucky to have attracted the huge numbers it has, we do seem to have a new generation of fans who are expecting things of the show that they would find in others.  I am hugely, hugely tired of reading comments about which character should come back and how Tennant should play the Doctor again because, whilst I’m sure a lot of it is wishful thinking, some of it clearly isn’t.  They really do think that it ought to be feasible for things to be reset.  It also gets tiresome to read comments that are stereotypically negative without really offering any sort of logical attempt to justify.  I believe it is possible not to like elements of the show, of course it is.  There’s been a lot about the show over the years that I haven’t enjoyed.  But one thing I’ve always appreciated about these forums is that, for the most part, people are polite, respectful and informed.  If they don’t like something, it’s not because of some emotional dependency on a storyline that’s had its day that they try to dress up as valid criticism.  I know I’m being a bit grumpy about this but it irks me.  The very essence of Who is that the lead changes, that characters come and go.  If people want The Simpsons-style stagnation where characters exist in a bubble and carry on with very little change or development to their situation, then they should…well, watch The Simpsons.  (Which I also enjoy, I’m just pointing out the very different premises.)

As for the remarks about the ending of this episode, they’ve either not seen a lot of Classic Who or they’re conveniently forgetting how often cheesy resolutions have been employed to wrap up a storyline.  Again, I feel this episode was really a very family-oriented one and a great addition for our younger fanbase, who deserve every bit as much enjoyment from the show as the adults who want it to meet their specific expectations week after week.  In their world, a golden arrow shot into the sky and miraculously saving the world sounds completely feasible, and why not?  It’s silly but I never got a sense that it was trying to be anything else.

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@whisht  The book I’m talking about was a non-fiction, A3-sized hardback about Timelords.  🙂  It had a chapter on Susan, Romana I, Romana II, The Rani, The Master, Rassilon etc.  It will still exist at my parents’ house, it’s just a matter of whether it’s still on a bookshelf or out packed in a case in their shed.

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@idiotsavon @bluesqueakpip  I agree.  I think he was competing but not in a romantic sense.  There will be residual feelings, he’s already admitted his previous incarnation probably had them, but what I think we’re seeing from this Doctor is a dependence on Clara to be his moral compass.  Just off the top of my head, a couple of notable instances of this are:

1.  The obvious, the Doctor asking her if he’s a good man.  This is a blatant and literal attempt by him to use her opinion of his character to answer an inner-conflict.

2.  “She cares so I don’t have to.”  A line that amused so many but it’s quite chilling if you think about it.  Here we have The Doctor practically telling us that Clara’s going to be the one worrying about the morality of things.  What is less certain is whether or not he’s actually pleased by that.  His agonising at times seems to suggest The Doctor is rather worried and, as he admits in “Deep Breath”, scared.  Timelords are a terrifying race in many ways.  Magnificent, yes, but still terrifying.  The havoc he alone could wreck if he wasn’t his own fiercest watchdog cannot be underestimated.  How frightening it must be to feel as if that watchdog has disappeared, it makes sense that he’d try to replace it with someone who knows him, someone he trusts.

3.  He goes back to get her in “Into the Dalek” because he ‘needs’ her.  He was certainly more than capable of acting on his own, but he went back to get her before he made any sort of choice.  Another sign that he doesn’t trust his own judgement.

4.  “Well, there is a bright side; Clara didn’t see that.”  Perhaps he was only pleased to have avoided more of her complaining, or perhaps he genuinely was pleased she wasn’t there to witness him still behaving like a school-boy.  Her opinion seems to matter to him.

There are probably others but my exhausted brain refuses to think.

The last reference I’ll make is the comments The Doctor and Robin share at the end, where Robin tells him of the stories Clara told and suggests that he is her hero.  The Doctor is very quick to rebuff the idea that he’s a hero, which corresponds to his previous mention of going into darkness to ‘fix’ things he’s done before.  What exactly does he mean by that?  Are we sure, with this Doctor, that he is talking about matters that he would traditionally worry over or is his darker side urging him to act on behalf of decisions that may be a little on the shady side?  The Doctor had the opportunity once to alter the Dalek’s history and was, in fact, sent by the Timelords to do just that in Genesis of the Daleks, I believe.  Back then, even knowing what they would become, he wasn’t happy with the thought of committing genocide.  He wasn’t happy with being the one to assume that kind of responsibility and power over something as enormous as wiping a race from the history books.

What if he’s changed his mind.

In the Waters of Mars, Tennant’s Doctor loses his grip on his non-interference rule.  Hurt’s Doctor was able to wipe out his entire race.  Both times, The Doctor was still able to feel the burden of responsibility and suffer remorse for his choice.  What if he’s losing that fight?  He is in a regeneration he shouldn’t have had, he’s been reset in a way that most are not, who is to say that the psychological strain of an additional regeneration isn’t having an impact?  Can a Timelord suffer from a variation of dementia?  What happens when a Timelord loses control over his own mind?

This is why I think he needs Clara.  He might deny being eligible to be her hero, but there is a strong theme so far in this series that it’s not what you are but what you try to be, or what you influence others to become, that matters.  He might not think he’s her hero, he might not think he’s deserving, but I still wonder if he doesn’t desperately need her to keep thinking that he is.  That would be enough to make a scared man panicked and jealous, without need for any romantic inclination at all.

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All this talk about The Doctor’s status on Gallifrey brings me back to my questions about the book I owned as a teenager!  I need to ask my mother if it’s still on her bookshelf, I want to read back over the part that suggests Timelords are “loomed”.  (Not sure I’ve recalled that correctly but I definitely remember the term.)  I’ve not seen a lot of the very early Doctor Who, I picked up mostly towards the end of Pertwee’s era.  I shall have to rectify that.

Also regarding Clara’s intuitiveness; I think, at least in this episode, it’s nothing very profound.  In the first instance, The Doctor was the one to first point out that they were behaving in an uncharacteristically ‘merry’ way, which would have got me thinking about it too.  But more than that, she obviously knows the story inside out and I merely interpreted her question to Robin as a way to draw out references to Marian, who was clearly her favourite character.  She was testing the story to see if it matched the one she loved.  No real telepathy there!

She does appear, overall, to be quite an empathetic thing though.  With all the speculation surrounding her very existence and what her psyche now looks like given she scattered herself across The Doctor’s timeline, it’s probably not a stretch to say that she’s just very observant and good at decoding behaviour.  In her own right, she’s very clever, (so says Miss Kizlet), is an avid reader, filled with wanderlust and enters The Doctor’s life this time around already proven to be someone who can self-sacrifice for the benefit of others.  There may be a larger purpose at work behind all that or she may just be a brilliant, talented human being.  They do exist. 😉

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@geoffers  I really enjoyed it too so maybe we can sit in the dunce’s corner together!  I think I can understand why it might not appeal to some people, it’s a different tone than we’ve had for a while, but I thought it was a good frolic.  Not perfect, more poignant than profound perhaps, and not a lot of tidbits that I saw to spawn more rampant theorising, but still enjoyable.

That being said, that “I’m as real as you are” line felt really, really significant in a way I can’t put my finger on.  Almost precursor material.

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I’ve watched it for a second time now!  I have nothing much else to add yet other than I really felt, as I watched this, that it would have been the kind of Doctor Who story that I would have absolutely loved when I was younger.  I can’t wait to talk with my young cousins who adore Doctor Who to see what they thought of it because, whilst I can agree it lacked the gravitas of the first two episodes, I kind of like that there was something that was a real stand-alone, family-oriented story.

After all, next week does not look like an episode the 5-year-old will be able to watch.  She’ll be disappointed but it just looks too scary.  (And I don’t mean she won’t be allowed, she will opt not to.  She loved Doctor Who but she’s still 5.)

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I just watched it and I’m off to watch it again.  My initial reaction was that it was a brilliant change in pace and clearly something very cleverly placed in the series given what next week’s looks like!  Holy balls, I’m already checking under the bed!

I will have more to say after I’ve watched it again, but I loved the light-heartedness, the poignancy and the humour.  The comparison between Robin and The Doctor was really nicely done.

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This is sort of a random but nearly relevant point, only because it’s something I remember reading in a book I had as a kid and I think it was in a chapter about Susan.  At the time, and I have no idea if this was ever made properly canon, the book was suggesting that Timelords were not the only inhabitants of Gallifrey and that there were a race of humanoids, simply called Gallifreyans I think, who were without the ability to regenerate and therefore lived a more ‘usual’ timespan.  The book claimed that Timelords were ‘loomed’, though I can’t remember details.

Is there any substance to this or was it just a behind-the-scenes book that has since been de-canonised?

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@purofilion I think you’re right, wishful thinking often plays a part in people’s theorising,  me included! (See my desire for Romana to return. ) I am also aware that I am somewhat influenced by my own lack of interest in both Rose and River’s romantic relationship with The Doctor.  Not a reflection on their excellent portrayal,  I just didn’t feel anything about The Doctor’s apparent interest in them.  So I suppose I can’t point the finger but I still hope for new baddies!

And Romana.

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So I have a question: am I the only one sitting around waiting for Romana to put in an appearance?  I can’t remember if I have said it before but not only am I aware that she reappears in the books, there is also a time and place where she existed outside real space,  when she departed in Warrior’s Gate. For a storyline in which the Timelords are trapped elsewhere,  this seems…exploitable?  Plus I would love her back. Not bias at all!

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I am still not sure who I think Missy is but I am pretty certain that I don’t want her to be The Master or River. I feel this series deserves a new direction and new enemies.  I wouldn’t be against her being The Black Guardian or The Rani or some reappearance that hasn’t featured in the new series but not something already rehashed over and over again.  (I am genuinely sick of River.) Even the theorising about Claricles leaves me half hoping that we are close to a resolution.  It just feels like time for something else.

I am aalso pretty sure I can’t wait for Sunday!  The Robin Hood story looks fun!

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@silverman Added more to my comment.  >.>  I had to watch the damn episode again to get the quote. LOL.

@purofilion  I have always felt that there is something about The Doctor that is…hrm…predetermined?  It seems to me that the reason he has such limited control over his regeneration, (as opposed to, say, Romana, who we saw trying on bodies until she found one she liked), is because The Doctor doesn’t get to choose who is he.  He becomes what is needed.  And I am delighted by the notion that we are now at a point in his story where this Doctor is needed, because it’s bound to be scary as hell!

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@silverman  I was using snippets from both Capaldi’s episodes when I referenced that, sorry!  And admittedly, there is more evidence of it in “Deep Breath”, with his “”Well I’m cold too, there’s no point in us both being cold, give me your coat!” and “there’s no point in him catching us both.”  I understand that these seem to be intentionally ambiguous and, of course, he does come back to save Clara, but was that always his intention?  Or is it that his brain is misfiring, serving up these little moments with utter sincerity before something deeper kicks in and he winds up doing the ‘right thing’?  I’m not sure.

And yes, you’re right.  In Nightmare In Silver, The Doctor asked her to do it.  By doing so, he gifted her the knowledge that it would help and placed upon her the responsibility to use that knowledge when it was needed, even if he himself had lost the ability to see its merit. 😉  Keep in mind that The Doctor himself, immediately following the slap, is full of praise for her.

“Clara Oswald, do I really not pay you?”

“You couldn’t afford me.”

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@silverman  Whilst I can agree that The Doctor’s choices regarding Ross are not the only questionably-moral thing he’s ever done, his absolute acceptance that it was the correct course of action did seem a significant change in his recent personality, at least.  If we’re taking it purely from Clara’s perspective, which is the context I put it into, then this clearly isn’t a Doctor making the same sorts of choices as the man she first met and agreed to travel with.  There is a self-preservation streak coming through, even if it’s just ultra-pragmatism on his part because he’s the one in the position to move forward, and that has got to be astoundingly different to a man who gave up what he believed was the rest of his life to save a town called Christmas from extinction.  This is a man she watched, through three different perspectives, struggle to hold himself together over the sacrifice of his own people for the ‘greater’ good.  In her experience, these kind of judgement calls usually resonate very deeply with him and, wherever possible, I think she at least had come to expect that The Doctor she knew would have done anything, anything at all, to avoid using Ross in that way.  And, as someone mentioned, would have apologised when there was no other choice.

I really had meant my whole argument to be reflective of Clara’s point of view, since I was talking about it in regards to her slapping him.  There’s bound to be a heap of things we, as viewers, could point to and various other explanations, which I love reading.  I only meant to point out that Clara herself probably had reason to be very scared, and thus to overreact, to The Doctor suddenly treating people like chess pieces.

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@midnyt  Thank you, that’s the conversation I was recalling.  It’s the same conversation that I think at least gives Clara some precedent for believing a slap might jolt the Doctor’s think processes back into line.  I admit it’s quite out-of-character for her to suddenly strike out like that but it is a least fairly symptomatic of the huge changes that have taken place.  This is a Doctor who doesn’t even know himself if he’s ‘good’ and who has made a number of rather startlingly callous decisions.  Wanting to ‘reset’ him is an entirely understandable reaction, I think!

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I’ve had a few busy days, still reading to catch up but I need to head to work so I’m just going to quickly throw in my two-cents about ‘the slap’.

My very first reaction to that whole scene was definitely that there was a deep resonance for Clara in the Doctor’s constant assertion that Daleks can’t be good.  It linked directly in my head to Oswin so much that I nearly expected the dialogue to reflect it.  The more I thought about it afterwards, however, the more I realised there are probably several layers to it.  I love the explanation up further, (sorry for forgetting who it was), that she also recognised how important it was to shake up The Doctor’s unrelenting opinion of his oldest nemesis if Gallifrey is ever to be saved.  I also think that, by now, she’s watched The Doctor make several truly out-of-character decisions that are downright in the morally-grey area, including using a man’s death to his advantage.  This comes after he abandoned her back in “Deep Breath” for much the same reason.  He seems to be swaying back and forth at the moment, agonising about his morality whilst at the same time displaying near-military pragmatism when faced with impossible odds.   The physical reality of a harsh slap is probably a mixture of her own offense and fear but also just an attempt to genuinely reboot his thinking processes.

After all, doesn’t he ASK her to slap him in Nightmare in Silver to help him regain control over his own mind?

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Well, I just watched it.  Going to need to see it a couple more times to absorb details but my initial reaction was that I enjoyed it.  Capaldi is really impressing me, this Doctor is just a bit terrifying and unpredictable and that makes me feel reborn again as a viewer because, even though he’s always been a little prone to eccentricity and one step ahead of us all, this time around he seems like he’s on an entirely different page.  A good Dalek indeed.

And yet, what a play on words that is.  Did it mean he would make a good Dalek in the traditional sense, where ‘good’ means ‘proficient’, or that he would be a GOOD Dalek, moral and able to go against his programming to make the right choices?  The ambiguity of the meaning of ‘good’ in that parting suckerpunch is open for debate, I think.

Clara’s slap is currently my favourite highlight.  You go, girl!  No good Daleks indeed; how deeply personal that is to you even if you don’t realise it, Oswin.

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@purofilion  Armageddon is usually reasonably big, it runs over the weekend.  I’ve not been for a couple of years and I’ve never been since it moved to the Showgrounds.  Should be interesting.

Just watched ‘Deep Breath’ again, always good for picking up new little details and for confirming others.  I don’t have any brand new theories to throw into the mix but I was left with a sense after this viewing that there really is something endearing and sweet about The Doctor and all his relationships.  He finds the best people to associate with!

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@purofilion @janetteb  Melbourne Armageddon is October 18th-19th at the Royal Melbourne Showgrounds.   http://armageddonexpo.com/au/

After speaking with my cousin tonight, it’s almost a foregone conclusion that I will be attending with a 9-year-old K9 and a 5-year-old Dalek.

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@purofilion and @janetteb  Oh gods.  I can see it now.  “Jenna, we at thedoctorwhoforums.com have this idea for an alternate version of Doctor Who where you will play your mother, your grandmother, your great-grandmother, your next-door-neighbour, your geography teacher and The President of the United States.  Would you be interested?”

Also, is it just me or is it starting to sound like Tasha Lem is getting swept into this Claricle debacle?  EVERYONE IS A CLARICLE.  THAT’S THE TWIST.

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@arbutus  I think either would be really nifty!  (And yeah, bring back the Gods of Ragnarok anyway!)  But it occurs to me that perhaps some of this speculation and cloak-and-daggers around whether Jenna is leaving the series or not is because there are spoilers wrapped up in it all.  Maybe Jenna is leaving but Clara is staying. In some form or another.  Perhaps as an insane woman with an umbrella.  LOL.

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@purofilion  You should come down to Melbourne in October to Armageddon and we can ask Jenna ourselves!  I can imagine the look on her face when we start theorising about her being her own grandmother.  LOL

Keep up theorising, guys!  I love reading it all, even if my brain struggles to keep up with the paradoxial loops.  I really am starting to like the idea of Missy having something to do with Claricles at least, whether it be harvesting and manipulating them as @bivium6 suggests, or if she just IS a little piece of all of them after they die.

@janetteb  I barely posted much back in January when I first joined, this has been the most I’ve really said and it’s only been in the past week, so I think you’re forgiven!

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@purofilion  Yeah, River says “a million versions of you, living and dying all over time and space.”  Or something like that.  Thanks for reminding me she said ‘million’ and not ‘thousand’, now my math-brain really is broken.  LOL.  But yeah, this is all a response to someone theorising that Clara’s mother could be a Claricle; meaning a Claricle would have reproduced to create its own creator…

I need to go lie down.

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@purofilion  Possibly!  This is all getting hugely abstract and I just had to break my brain doing math.  LOL.  I think there’s definitely no doubt about it that there is a lot of paradoxical stuff going on with the creation of Claricles into The Doctor’s timeline and that, as a result, we are left with some very grey areas that are hard to explain.  Or hard for me to explain at least.  I certainly don’t have a strong feeling one way or another about who or what they are.

But interesting…might Missy be what happened to Victorian Clara after she died?  Or is she an amalgamation of ALL the Claricles when they die?  If they all die at about the same age, it might result in a degradation of sanity overtime.  There’s certainly a parallel to her existence with both Claricles that we’ve actually met.  She’s dressed as a Victorian governess, (or appears to be), and seems to exist in a Paradise all of her own devising, a.k.a. Oswin’s psychological haven.  Maybe Missy is the resolution of one woman’s soul when it finally comes to rest after being scattered across time and space.

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@arbutus  You could be right, but what is the implication then of seeing a baby and a young, dark-headed girl looking out of a window during Clara’s flashback recount?

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@purofilion  I’m honestly not certain.  I do like the idea that she gets to a certain age and that’s when she meets The Doctor and, through meeting The Doctor, she almost always dies.  It’s hugely tragic, (and would make a significant precursor to the fate of Clara Prime), but I’m not sure I can produce proof that this is the case.  It’s just an idea I like.  I think it minimises and concentrates her effect on the universe.

I do, however, think that it would be a bad idea for Claricles to have children because it creates a wild card element all the way through time and space.  Clara herself can be contained by an idea such as reaching a certain age, saving the Doctor and then dying, but would any offspring be bound to her destiny?  Or would they go off into the universe, creating their own paths, their own timestreams, their own stories…all having been essentially created in an instant?  If one person (Clara) can make a significant difference to the universe (through saving The Doctor and replenishing his timeline), then what impact would a sudden influx of children, grand-children, great-great grandchildren and all the ensuing branches on the family tree have on the universe?  There was a Claricle on Gallifrey; possibly a Time Lady.  If she married and had children, and then those children had children, and those children had children…  Timelords live a very long time; would not those offspring still be alive on the displaced Gallifrey at this very moment?

And that’s just one Claricle.

Logic dictates that, given the amount of time The Doctor surely spent on Gallifrey, there was probably more than one Claricle on Gallifrey, (especially if they have a limited lifespan.)  Was there a young Claricle that had to help him when he was still a boy?  One when he was still a teenager?  How many times did she have to intervene to stop the Great Intelligence?  Potentially thousands for all we know.  If even a portion of them had children, we’ve got one hell of a huge influx of people spreading throughout the universe and some of them would very likely be Timelords.  Some might be other humanoid species.  Some might be Terrans.  No matter what, the mathematics is reasonably simple.  (I think.)

1 Claricle has 1 child. = 1 additional person

That child has 2 children. = 2 addition people

Those 2 children each have 2 children. = 4 additional people

Those 4 children each have 2 children = 8 additional people

Those 8 children each have 2 children = 16 additional people

Five Generations = 31 additional people in the universe if 1 Claricle has 1 child and the reproduction rate then averages at 2 children.

Those 16 children each have 2 children = 32 additional people

Those 32 children each have 2 children = 64 additional people

Those 64 children each have 2 children = 128 additional people

Those 128 children each have 2 children = 256 additional people

Those 256 children each have 2 children = 512 additional people

Ten Generations = 1023 additional people in the universe if 1 Claricle has 1 child and the reproduction rate then averages at 2 children.

It’s not going to take many more generations for the figures to start to go through the roof.  (And I’m not even really very good at this kind of math, I’m probably missing something.)

Thousands of Claricles.  Thousands of offspring.  Hundreds of thousands, even millions, of relatives.  All erupting on the universe when Clara Prime enters The Doctor’s timestream.  I really kind of feel like that would have broken something.  Thus, I think the idea of her being able to have children is a bad one.

 

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@whisht  In the flashback of the Claricles saving The Doctor, the second time around after she’s actually jumped into his timestream, Clara herself says, “I’m born, I live, I die.”  And you see an implication of her being a baby in a mother’s arms, then a child standing at the window.  You can see it here.

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@bivium6  Sorry, I’m not sure I explained what I meant very well.  I agree that Clara herself seems to have a preprogrammed destiny that just loops around and repeats itself, possibly at around the same age.  My argument was against her having a family and reproducing because her children would be another matter entirely.  They might not be bound by the same kind of containment as Clara and would go on to have children of their own, who would have children of their own and that might get complicated, especially as the Claricles themselves keep on ‘resetting’.  I guess it’s not proof that it’s impossible, it’s more my argument as to why I don’t think it would be a good idea. *lol*

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@purofilion  I hope you start to feel better soon!

@thommck  I tend to agree, since I don’t think of the Claricles as being particularly well-formed individuals.  (Still on the fence myself about Missy being Clara.  That doesn’t somehow feel right.)  Each exists to rescue The Doctor and, as you mentioned, every incarnation we were shown was roughly the same age as Clara Prime.  The two other Claras we’ve met seem to live pretty independent lives, almost as if they’re intentionally (if not consciously) avoiding connections and complications.  If Claricles married and had children, those children are a creation of her paradox and cannot be contained to her sole purpose for existing.  It feels like that would have some pretty significant implications.

Then again, that could be the point!

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Firstly, completely unrelated in a sense but Jenna Coleman is coming to Armageddon here in Melbourne this October.  My 5-year-old and 9-year-old cousins are massive Doctor Who fans, (we raised them well), and they have just informed me that they intend to dress up as K9 and a Dalek to go have their photo with Clara.

How can I argue with that?

@pufferfish  There really does seem like there should be something more about Clara’s mother, doesn’t there?  Her entire family are mere glimpses through a window to us, I’m not even sure I actually know HOW her mother died.  Clara being her own mother, however, is just hurting my brain. *lol*  What a trip that would be!  (And also kind of gross.  Her poor father…)

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@abxy  Well, nobody said I wasn’t cheating a bit.  >.>  *lol*  I used an online generator to help and then got fed-up with it giving me silly things.  Plus, it doesn’t come up with “Cyberman”, can you believe it!

The more I think about it, the more I wonder if we’ve really found out what the whole phrase means.  Run and remember?  I mean, it could be passed off as her mantra, since her entire clarically-existence became that of making sure he stays out of trouble, but I’m too paranoid about Moffat’s massive arcs to trust anything to be actually over!

 

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Another attempt gets me “Cyberman” “Murder” “Everyone” with b o u l leftover.

I am going to go into anagram paranoia meltdown here.

 

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So new bonkers prediction fodder:

“Run, you clever boy, and remember.”

Currently trying to see what this reshuffles into.  So far, from a first try, I’ve got “Enemy”, “Murder”, “Reborn”, “Vale” with left-over letters u o c b y.  I suppose I could have “C.O.” for Clara Oswald.  Which would leave me with…”Buy”.  >.>

It suddenly occurred to me that it would be just like Moffat for us to think this little repeated warning from Clara has been resolved when, really, it hasn’t at all.

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@purofilion  Not to mention she was in Victorian England; she could have found a cloud to sulk on for a while to recover from the loss of a beloved friend but she didn’t.

 

 

That’s right, Doctor; I went there!  😀

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@barnable – It might have been grotesquely over-sized, but it could have been worse.

 

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@barnable  Not to mention that the guy who lost his eyes displayed disbelief that the dinosaur was even real and he was seeing it with his own, albeit-doomed, eyes.  Without any remaining evidence, how long before the story would start to sound too fantastical to be true?

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@purofilion  Yes, bronchitis paid its annual visit!  I am feeling much better than I was, I hope you feel better soon!

The Doctor certainly did sound ripe for a psychiatric ward there for a while!  🙂  I think the key to Clara’s reactions is not so much in what was blatantly put out there as an attempt to explain it but in analysing the nuances.  She wasn’t sure she wanted to stay with him because she didn’t know who he was anymore.  I don’t think that had anything to do with his grey hair and wrinkles.  What’s more, if her only inclination is towards good-looking versions of The Doctor, why did she virtually ignore David Tennant’s 10th but actively sought out Hurt’s?  She and 11 flirted like mad, in one of the little featurettes she mentioned having to not fall in love several times a day, but The Doctor himself was encouraging that.  Trying to isolate it as the only thing she cares about ignores too many other things she’s said and done, all with him in mind.

More than that, I think you hit the nail on the head; she loves him.  Romantic love, platonic love, or somewhere in between, Clara loves the Doctor.  She retains the ability to love him when he’s old and frail, enough that she pleads for his life and tells an entire race of arrogant Timelords off for not having done it sooner.  Her reaction to Capaldi’s Doctor seems more a mixture of panic that he’s somehow not ‘new’ enough, (and therefore not about to expire), and a distraught sense of loss that the personality she loved had been replaced by a guy with several bats in his belfry.  Sounds a reasonable shock to me. 🙂

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Take a shot every time I say “Vastra” in that last post, you’ll be drunk by the end.  I blame a long day and penicillin!

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