Actually, I don't think Rose and Clara are that far apart. Both are ordinary girls (I accept Emma Grayling's statement re Clara in Hide) who become something extraordinary through taking an extreme action to save the Doctor: Rose looks into the Time Vortex and becomes Bad Wolf, Clara leaps into the Doctor's timeline and becomes the Impossible Girl. But neither is a permanent transformation. When the Doctor removes the Vortex, Bad Wolf becomes Rose again. River Song says that the million copies of Clara aren't really her; I believe that she emerges from the timeline as her original and ordinary self.
When Clara says "I'm the Impossible Girl; I was born to save the Doctor" as she's falling through the timeline, I think that's true of the Impossible Girl, the million other selves who were born of Clara's action. I don't think it's true of Original Clara; the leaf isn't a magic leaf, it's just a symbol of the random series of events which bring us to life.
Of course, I may read things this way because I don't want the companions to be Special People; I was annoyed at one point when someone (was it Rose?) suddenly claimed that there had been special signs around Donna since birth, because what I liked about Donna - what I like about most of the companions - is the idea of the ordinary person who rises to the challenge of life with the Doctor. (I never forget E. V. Rieu's introduction to his translation of the Iliad, when he draws attention to Pedasus, the mortal horse yoked with the immortal horses of Achilles - an ordinary horse who keeps up with the immortal pair.) I don't see Madge as an archetype; I see her as an ordinary mother who discovers extraordinary resources within herself when her children require them.
I'm not sure that RTD and Moffat can be divided quite as sharply as we tend to think. I don't have enough data on companions to be sure if there's a significant difference; Rose and Donna were separated from the Doctor against their will, but Martha chose to leave him while taking up a new career influenced by her experiences with him. Amy was forced to make a choice, and chose Rory, as she always did. Ironically, her departure was closer to what I originally expected for Rose; I thought Rose would choose to stay in the AU because it could offer her the one thing the Doctor could not, her father. What I disliked about Rose's exit was the sense that she felt worse off as a result of losing the Doctor, rather than stronger as a result of her time with him, though this did seem to be corrected by the later glimpse of Rose as a capable agent of AU Torchwood. Similarly, School Reunion initially gave a negative impression of Sarah Jane's feelings about life without the Doctor, but The Sarah Jane Adventures presented a much more positive picture of a woman who had learned to save the world single-handed. And Donna... well, the only thing to do with Donna is fix it!
When Clara says "I'm the Impossible Girl; I was born to save the Doctor" as she's falling through the timeline, I think that's true of the Impossible Girl, the million other selves who were born of Clara's action. I don't think it's true of Original Clara; the leaf isn't a magic leaf, it's just a symbol of the random series of events which bring us to life.
Of course, I may read things this way because I don't want the companions to be Special People; I was annoyed at one point when someone (was it Rose?) suddenly claimed that there had been special signs around Donna since birth, because what I liked about Donna - what I like about most of the companions - is the idea of the ordinary person who rises to the challenge of life with the Doctor. (I never forget E. V. Rieu's introduction to his translation of the Iliad, when he draws attention to Pedasus, the mortal horse yoked with the immortal horses of Achilles - an ordinary horse who keeps up with the immortal pair.) I don't see Madge as an archetype; I see her as an ordinary mother who discovers extraordinary resources within herself when her children require them.
I'm not sure that RTD and Moffat can be divided quite as sharply as we tend to think. I don't have enough data on companions to be sure if there's a significant difference; Rose and Donna were separated from the Doctor against their will, but Martha chose to leave him while taking up a new career influenced by her experiences with him. Amy was forced to make a choice, and chose Rory, as she always did. Ironically, her departure was closer to what I originally expected for Rose; I thought Rose would choose to stay in the AU because it could offer her the one thing the Doctor could not, her father. What I disliked about Rose's exit was the sense that she felt worse off as a result of losing the Doctor, rather than stronger as a result of her time with him, though this did seem to be corrected by the later glimpse of Rose as a capable agent of AU Torchwood. Similarly, School Reunion initially gave a negative impression of Sarah Jane's feelings about life without the Doctor, but The Sarah Jane Adventures presented a much more positive picture of a woman who had learned to save the world single-handed. And Donna... well, the only thing to do with Donna is fix it!
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