Clara Meta: Schrödinger’s Companion
Good morning! Would you believe it, but I have FINALLY finished my Clara meta. I think I began talking about it at Christmas? I hereby declare the Meta Café open once more!
So far all my Clara meta has been mostly speculative, because we didn’t know who/what she was. This is the opposite. Trying to look at what we know, and how she works. What is her function within the ‘verse?
I’ve said that everything she is (or rather, everything in this meta) is summed up in my icon. So for the purposes of this post I made a bigger version with labels, so you can see what I mean. (Below the cut.) I shall go through all the different aspects one at a time. (Which is difficult because they’re all linked. But that’s Moffat Who for you. Everything is connected. Circles, circles everywhere.) Anyway - subheadings. Hope I've made it easy enough to follow. :)
As always, half of this is promethia_tenk's. Thank you for... just being you! ♥
And there are SPOILERS for the whole of Eleven's era!
As prep, I'd suggest watching purplefringe's Never Look Away and niyalune's The State of Dreaming.
Manic Pixie Dream Girl
If you have never come across the term before, then the 'Manic Pixie Dream Girl' is a trope often employed by TV shows to get a broody hero to once more embrace life and love. From the TV Tropes definition:
Let's say you're a soulful, brooding male hero, living a sheltered, emotionless existence. If only someone could come along and open your heart to the great, wondrous adventure of life... Have no fear, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl is here to give new meaning to the male hero's life! She's stunningly attractive, high on life, full of wacky quirks and idiosyncrasies (generally including childlike playfulness and a tendency towards petty crime), often with a touch of wild hair dye. She's inexplicably obsessed with our stuffed-shirt hero, on whom she will focus her kuh-razy antics until he learns to live freely and love madly.
And Doctor Who has its own entry:
- The Doctor has been a (usually) non-romantic Manic Pixie Dream Man to all his companions. While all of the Doctors have been this to some degree, Eleven really takes this trope Up to Eleven. (Ha ha).
- The Snowmen saw this invoked by Madam Vastra with Clara. In the Cold Opening, Vastra claimed that by stopping to talk to Clara, the Doctor had inadvertently found a new companion, and that said companion might just bring him out of his slump. The Doctor denied and outright defied it for the most part, but it turned out Vastra was right.
- In fact, in a rare twist, Clara is the Manic Pixie Dream Girl towards the Doctor. Clara has come in to his life three times now, a mystery in itself. The Doctor can't resist a mystery.
At this point, you can go watch He Said, She Said, which touches on this exactly:
CLARA: One day you meet the Doctor. And of course, it's the best day ever. It's just the best day of your life. Because, because he's brilliant, and he's funny, and mad, and best of all, he really needs you.
~
DOCTOR: From the beginning, she was impossible. The Impossible Girl. Saved my life [twice], by giving her own. But now she's back and we're running together, and she's perfect. Perfect in every way for me. Except she can't remember that we ever met. Clara. My Clara. Always brave, always funny, always exactly what I need. Perfect. Too perfect.
You could say that Rose fulfilled this role after the Time War, and you’d be right. But Rose wasn’t a mystery in her own right - her strength was her very ‘ordinariness’. Her role was to stay grounded, an anchor for the Doctor and audience alike.
But Clara is different. It isn't just Clara's pretty face that drags him down off his cloud - and the first time they met, he of course never even saw her face - it's the fact that a) she is very insistent (he is a mystery, she wants to find out more) and b) he discovers that she is a mystery. So he in turn becomes insistent... Ouroboros. (As always with Moffat Who.)
But what does it all mean? Who is Clara? Because she is much more than just a girl with a million echoes scattered across time... Or rather, there is a reason this particular story had to be Clara's.
Quantum Leaf
I blew into this world on a leaf. I'm still blowing. I don't think I'll ever land.
Now leaves are not a new thing in Moffat Who. We all remember Amy’s prayer leaf, and ‘The only water in the forest is the river’, translating ‘Melody Pond’ into River Song.
Of course leaves tie in with trees, forests, books (and the pages in books are called leaves...) - the connotations are endless. But Clara’s leaf is something different.
Have some quotes:
DAVE (Clara's father): Because this exact leaf had to grow in that exact way in that exact place so that precise wind could tear it from that precise branch and make it fly into this exact face at that exact moment. And if just one of those tiny little things had never happened, I'd never have met you. Which makes this the most important leaf in human history.
~
CLARA: Well, I brought something for you. This. The most important leaf in human history. It's full of stories, full of history. And full of a future that never got lived. Days that should have been that never were. Passed on to me. This leaf isn't just the past, it's a whole future that never happened. There are billions and millions of unlived days for every day we live. An infinity. All the days that never came. And these are all my mum's.
~
CLARA: What's wrong? What's happening?
DOCTOR [OC]: I'm inside my own time stream. It's collapsing in on itself.
CLARA: Well, get out then.
DOCTOR [OC]: Not until I've got you.
CLARA: I don't even know who I am.
DOCTOR [OC]: You're my Impossible Girl. I'm sending you something. Not from my past, from yours. Look up. Look.
(A dead leaf comes floating down.)
DOCTOR [OC]: This is you, Clara. Everything you were or will be. Take it. You blew into the world on this leaf. Hold tight. It will take you home.
So what does the leaf mean? As you can see, it’s twofold...
1) Infinity/infinite possibility - all the days Clara's mother didn't live, and, tying into that, all the Clara echoes' lives. She is scattered across time and space - [almost] infinite, impossible.
2) A fixed point (in her own personal time) - her parents’ first meeting without which she wouldn’t even exist. Infinite possibilities narrowed down to a single moment. Without that leaf, the whole narrative would unravel.
So is the leaf one thing or is it the other? The two would seem to be opposites - infinity and fixed point. Well, it could be either, but it only becomes true when you look.
I’ll get back to this is a moment.
Which Leaf?
Because what’s been making me poke the show ever since ‘Rings of Akhaten’ is the fact that - as far as I can tell - the leaf changed. Please look at these images and tell me if I’m just imagining things:
The first leaf, the one the Doctor finds in Clara’s book in Bells of St John, strikes me as significantly different than the ones in Rings of Akhaten/Name of the Doctor.
And then we get this still from the 50th trailer:
It’s the original leaf once more. And considering that the fact that the Doctor wearing a jacket [in a single shot] after he had it stolen by the Weeping Angels turned out to be a big plot point, I’m hesitant to dismiss the leaf as ‘just production issues’. Here’s a cap of the leaf itself (the second leaf from Rings of Akhaten) on the tree. The other green leaves look a lot more like the first leaf...
And then there’s this:
That still looks far too much like a Time Beetle for my liking. A Time Beetle on a tree. (Credit to me_llamo_nic for first spotting it!) Is someone manipulating/controlling Clara’s life? If so, why? Not to mention who. She is Souffle Girl, and the souffle is the recipe. But is someone interfering?
Although if the leaf is *her*, then it makes sense that someone would manipulate her through her origin.
But that's was a tangent. Let me get back to what the leaf means:
Schrödinger’s Companion
There could be two leaves? Are there two Claras? Oh yes.
Continually.
The thing that comes immediately to mind is quantum mechanics and the idea that things only become fixed when they are observed. There's this sense with Clara that her reality is unfixed and shifting and unknown: she's a girl and she's a Dalek, she’s a barmaid and she’s a governess, she’s a perfectly ordinary girl and she’s impossible, existing in a million pieces dying over all of space and time and she doesn't know it.
There is a duality to her, right from the start. This is where purplefringe’s vid (Never Look Away) really helped pinpoint the main issue - the Doctor looks at Oswin and sees the truth of what she is. Yet she is both - the Dalek, and the girl.
Similarly she is a barmaid, and a governess, existing in two worlds simultaneously.
Like the cat in Schrödinger’s box, that is both alive and dead... And the only way to find out is to open the box.
So she is unfixed, unless someone is watching. And even then - she is both, at the same time. So she is Schrödinger’s Companion - many things at the same time. Opposites existing simultaneously:
She is a leaf, flying, never landing, a million copies across time and space. Yet she is also just an ordinary girl. Infinity and a fixed point all in one.
So yes, the leaf is the perfect symbol for her. (This is why I call it a 'Quantum Leaf'. It is the physical representation of the idea, and takes symbolism to a wonderful new height.)
Now I’m going to step sideways for a bit, because here’s the thing - Clara has (just like in her Manic Pixie Dream Girl status) taken the Doctor’s usual MO, all the echoes moulding themselves to what they need to be/the Doctor they need to save:
"And one of the interesting things about writing the Doctor is that he's so responsive to the people around him. It's almost like left on his own his personality would slowly disintegrate. He becomes what people want him to be, a little bit. So he's Amy's Raggedy Doctor. With a different companion he becomes a slightly different man. He dresses differently."
Steven Moffat (x)
We saw that ‘disintegration’ in The Snowmen. The Doctor almost stops being the Doctor with no one around to observe him. (This can of course be tied in to Tinkerbell!Doctor and the War Doctor etc. etc.)
Then he finds Clara - and changes. We even see the process of him choosing who he is now when he finds her again. No more tweed, he is no longer Amy’s:
Because to be seen is to exist:
DOCTOR: Well, there's no point now. We're about to die. Just tell me who you are.
CLARA: You know who I am.
DOCTOR: No, I don't. I look at you every single day and I don't understand a thing about you. Why do I keep running into you?
CLARA: Doctor, you invited me. You said
DOCTOR: Before that. I met you in the Dalek Asylum. There was a girl in a shipwreck and she died saving my life, and she was you.
CLARA: She really wasn't.
DOCTOR: Victorian London. There was a governess who was really a barmaid, and we fought the Great Intelligence together. She died and it was my fault, and she was you.
(I witnessed it, therefore it is real.)
And it goes both ways.
It's all about identity. It's no accident that Clara is there for the reveal of the 'secret' Doctor. She says in DotD how the Doctor is 'always' talking about what he did. Because she has seen the War Doctor, and thus made him real - which means that the War Doctor is Schrödinger's Doctor! :)
Also, it of course ties back to the Library (everything ties back to the Library):
ELLA: Mummy, Joshua and me, we're not real, are we?
DONNA: Of course you're real. You're as real as anything. Why d'you say that?
JOSHUA: But, Mummy, sometimes, when you're not here, it's like we're not here.
ELLA: Even when you close your eyes, we just stop.
DONNA: Well, Mummy promises to never close her eyes again.
To be seen is to exist... But it's not just the fact of being observed. To have been seen is often enough...
Here both Clara and the Doctor break the fourth wall, watching us - and inviting us to watch *them*:
They are speaking to each other, but also to us. We watch, and they become real to us... Watch - and remember.
Of course the importance of memory is a long-standing one in Moffat Who:
Nothing is ever forgotten, not completely. And if something can be remembered, it can come back.
The Doctor remembers Clara, and so finds her again.
And all the Clara echoes remember:
I don't know where I am. It's like I'm breaking into a million pieces and there's only one thing I remember. I have to save the Doctor. He always looks different. But I always know it's him.
Memory is even a specific plot point in The Snowmen:
DOCTOR: Maybe it's snow that fell before. Maybe it remembers how to make snowmen.
CLARA: What, snow that can remember? That's silly.
All the Clara echoes are girls who remember - remember how to save the Doctor. They create themselves, just like the snowmen.
(Tangent: Briefly re. boxes... There have been a lot of boxes in Moffat Who, and a lot of people in them. River was defined by her boxes (TARDIS, Stormcage). But Clara is different. It’s not so much that there are no boxes, but - as I pointed out above - that she exists outside and inside the box simultaneously. And as a matter of fact the main box actively dislikes her. Now we don’t know why that is - yet - but she is almost defined by her lack of boxes. She’s a leaf, blowing. Infinite. And a blowing leaf can’t be put in a box. Clara is The Impossible Girl and can't be boxed in. *g*)
I hope all this makes sense. Because now we get to the heart of it.
Mirroring
I am using the word ‘mirroring’ very deliberately. Because Clara is not a mirror, she mirrors.
River was a mirror through and through, her life revolving around the Doctor from before she was born. His ‘bespoke psychopath’, the one who could outwit him, could fly the TARDIS - his equal. But Clara is just a normal girl, and (in many ways) the ‘ur-companion’. We see this very clearly in the trailer for the 50th anniversary. The image in the globe she holds (her mirror image) is Susan, the Doctor's original Companion. And she takes the place of/occupies the same spot as Sarah Jane, who is generally regarded as the Classic Companion.
So her *role* is that of reflecting things back. It’s the difference between what you are (River *is* a mirror), and what you do (Clara *mirrors*).
And she has done this since the very beginning. From Asylum:
OSWIN: Long story. Is there a word for total screaming genius that sounds modest and a tiny bit sexy?
DOCTOR: Doctor. You call me the Doctor.
OSWIN: I see what you did there.
We will later learn (Time of the Doctor) that all the Clara echoes blend in where they are, changing to fit the Doctor they are saving. Again, mirroring. (Which is a response to the Doctor mirroring/changing to fit her, as seen above. Like I have often said, this show is a hall of mirrors and endless refractions.)
RORY: Who killed all the Daleks?
DOCTOR: Who do you think?
The Doctor claimed the destruction for himself, but in the end it was Oswin who destroyed the planet - which was the task the Doctor had been given.
And again in The Snowmen:
DOCTOR: Clara who?
CLARA: Doctor who?
The mirroring theme starts in earnest with The Snowmen, and this is also the (re-)introduction of The Great Intelligence. The GI has no form, so it mirrors:
WALTER [memory]: I don't want to talk to them. They're silly.
SNOWMAN [memory]: They're silly.
DOCTOR: It just reflects back everything we think and feel and fear.
WALTER [memory]: I don't need anyone else.
SNOWMAN [memory]: Don't need anyone else.
~
DOCTOR: The snow emits a low level telepathic field.
CLARA: My snowman.
DOCTOR: It seems to reflect people's thoughts and memories and because it's unusual, somehow it carries a previous shape and-
CLARA: No, Doctor. My snowman.
DOCTOR: Ah! Interesting. Well, were you thinking about it?
CLARA: Yes.
(Another one appears, then others.)
DOCTOR: Well, stop. Clara, stop thinking about the snowmen!
(The nearest snowman breaths snowflakes at them.)
DOCTOR: Get down! Clara, listen to me. The snow's feeding off your thoughts.
CLARA: I don't understand.
DOCTOR: You're caught in their telepathic field. They're mirroring you. The more you think about the snowmen, the more they appear. Imagine them melting. Picture it. Picture them melted!
~
VASTRA: He's dead. What happened?
DOCTOR: The snow mirrors, that's all it does. It's mirroring something else now. Something so strong, it's drowning everything else.
We see the same pattern show up in the The Bells of St John (a great big sign that The GI was involved):
CLARA: Hello.
GIRL: Hello.
CLARA: Are you a friend of Angie's?
GIRL: I'm a friend of Angie's.
CLARA: What were you doing upstairs?
GIRL: I was upstairs.
CLARA: I know you, don't I?
GIRL: You know me, don't you.
~
CLARA: I did it. I really did. I did it. I did it. I found them.
DOCTOR: You found them.
CLARA: The Shard. They're in the Shard. Floor sixty five.
DOCTOR: Floor sixty five.
CLARA: Are you listening to me, Doctor? I found them.
DOCTOR: I'm listening to you. You found them.
We also see the mirroring in 'He Said, She Said', the two of them walking through near-identical cornucopia of items, both of them with the same questions. Well, almost. Going back to the quote I pulled out at the beginning:
The Doctor: But now she's back and we're running together, and she's perfect. Perfect in every way for me. Except she can't remember that we ever met. Clara. My Clara. Always brave, always funny, always exactly what I need. Perfect. Too perfect.
Always what he needs. Because she mirrors him. Becomes what he needs. The echoes of course do this to a much greater degree, fitting into whatever narrative they’re thrown into, although usually keeping their core Clara-ness. (= the recipe). Original!Clara is a nanny, and becomes a teacher. Oswin is a Junior Entertainment manager, Victorian!Clara a Governess. And they're all going places.
She reflects back what others project - or what they need her to be, rather.
It's not just that she is only 'fixed' when she is observed, it's that she mirrors back what's needed. To the Daleks, she was a Dalek, able to hack their pathweb without them realising. To the Doctor (until he saw her, although he had a hunch), she was Oswin Oswald... To the barkeep she was Clara, the barmaid, to Capt. Latimer she is the perfect nanny - to the Doctor, she is the perfect Companion. I would go so far as to say that it's a fundamental part of how she functions. (And not always the strength it might seem - see how carefully she avoids falling in love.)
This mirroring is also important in the evolving story of the Doctor.
River is a contrast, something that pushes back, in many ways a dark message - she is the consequence of his actions; he created her and so she can point out where he is going wrong:
RIVER: Doctor. The word for healer and wise man throughout the universe. We get that word from you, you know. But if you carry on the way you are, what might that word come to mean? To the people of the Gamma Forests, the word Doctor means mighty warrior. How far you've come. And now they've taken a child, the child of your best friends, and they're going to turn her into a weapon just to bring you down. And all this, my love, in fear of you.
But Clara merely holds up a mirror. Reflects himself back to himself...
He pauses before pushing the button in 'The Day of the Doctor', because he is watching her. Clara is not like some of the more forceful companions who would loudly voice their objections. But he watches her. And she watches him. And can help him to see himself clearly:
CLARA: Look at you. The three of you. The warrior, the hero, and you.
DOCTOR: And what am I?
CLARA: Have you really forgotten?
DOCTOR: Yes. Maybe, yes.
CLARA: We've got enough warriors. Any old idiot can be a hero.
DOCTOR: Then what do I do?
CLARA: What you've always done. Be a doctor. You told me the name you chose was a promise. What was the promise?
DOCTOR 10: Never cruel or cowardly.
WARRIOR: Never give up, never give in.
She doesn’t tell him what to do, or be. Instead she lets him answer his own question. And she does it again when she answers The Question in 'The Time of the Doctor':
CLARA: You've been asking a question, and it's time someone told you you've been getting it wrong. His name, his name is the Doctor. All the name he needs. Everything you need to know about him.
She holds up a mirror, answers the question by reflecting it back.
And so, if we want Eleven’s story through his companions, then Amy and River change him (heal him, help him to move on from the pain of the Time War, restore him), and Clara changes his world.
So, like I've been saying for... years now, Moffat has been rebooting the show:
"In Matt Smith’s final episode he spent a thousand years on a planet watching everybody else age to death, while he ages very slowly. The Doctor is being taught a lesson. He’s not a human being, however much he larks around pretending he is. He is different and it’s time to stop play-acting. He goes back to being the trickier version of the Doctor, the fiercer alien wanderer. He’s not apologising, he’s not flirting with you - that’s over. That’s what the Doctor was like after the Time War but he’s not like that any more. He’s gone back and he’s changed it. Now he can go back to being a bit more Time Lordy."
Moffat
What will the mirror now reveal? Eleven was created around Amelia/his Ponds, bright and new, ready to begin to let go [of Ten's regrets]. Twelve will be created around Clara, The Impossible Girl, someone with access to/containing/witness to everything he is, from Gallifrey to Trenzalore.
We're all different people all through our lives. And that's okay, that's good, you've got to keep moving, so long as you remember all the people that you used to be.
And we shall watch; and remember.
So far all my Clara meta has been mostly speculative, because we didn’t know who/what she was. This is the opposite. Trying to look at what we know, and how she works. What is her function within the ‘verse?
I’ve said that everything she is (or rather, everything in this meta) is summed up in my icon. So for the purposes of this post I made a bigger version with labels, so you can see what I mean. (Below the cut.) I shall go through all the different aspects one at a time. (Which is difficult because they’re all linked. But that’s Moffat Who for you. Everything is connected. Circles, circles everywhere.) Anyway - subheadings. Hope I've made it easy enough to follow. :)
As always, half of this is promethia_tenk's. Thank you for... just being you! ♥
And there are SPOILERS for the whole of Eleven's era!
As prep, I'd suggest watching purplefringe's Never Look Away and niyalune's The State of Dreaming.
Manic Pixie Dream Girl
If you have never come across the term before, then the 'Manic Pixie Dream Girl' is a trope often employed by TV shows to get a broody hero to once more embrace life and love. From the TV Tropes definition:
Let's say you're a soulful, brooding male hero, living a sheltered, emotionless existence. If only someone could come along and open your heart to the great, wondrous adventure of life... Have no fear, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl is here to give new meaning to the male hero's life! She's stunningly attractive, high on life, full of wacky quirks and idiosyncrasies (generally including childlike playfulness and a tendency towards petty crime), often with a touch of wild hair dye. She's inexplicably obsessed with our stuffed-shirt hero, on whom she will focus her kuh-razy antics until he learns to live freely and love madly.
And Doctor Who has its own entry:
- The Doctor has been a (usually) non-romantic Manic Pixie Dream Man to all his companions. While all of the Doctors have been this to some degree, Eleven really takes this trope Up to Eleven. (Ha ha).
- The Snowmen saw this invoked by Madam Vastra with Clara. In the Cold Opening, Vastra claimed that by stopping to talk to Clara, the Doctor had inadvertently found a new companion, and that said companion might just bring him out of his slump. The Doctor denied and outright defied it for the most part, but it turned out Vastra was right.
- In fact, in a rare twist, Clara is the Manic Pixie Dream Girl towards the Doctor. Clara has come in to his life three times now, a mystery in itself. The Doctor can't resist a mystery.
At this point, you can go watch He Said, She Said, which touches on this exactly:
CLARA: One day you meet the Doctor. And of course, it's the best day ever. It's just the best day of your life. Because, because he's brilliant, and he's funny, and mad, and best of all, he really needs you.
~
DOCTOR: From the beginning, she was impossible. The Impossible Girl. Saved my life [twice], by giving her own. But now she's back and we're running together, and she's perfect. Perfect in every way for me. Except she can't remember that we ever met. Clara. My Clara. Always brave, always funny, always exactly what I need. Perfect. Too perfect.
You could say that Rose fulfilled this role after the Time War, and you’d be right. But Rose wasn’t a mystery in her own right - her strength was her very ‘ordinariness’. Her role was to stay grounded, an anchor for the Doctor and audience alike.
But Clara is different. It isn't just Clara's pretty face that drags him down off his cloud - and the first time they met, he of course never even saw her face - it's the fact that a) she is very insistent (he is a mystery, she wants to find out more) and b) he discovers that she is a mystery. So he in turn becomes insistent... Ouroboros. (As always with Moffat Who.)
But what does it all mean? Who is Clara? Because she is much more than just a girl with a million echoes scattered across time... Or rather, there is a reason this particular story had to be Clara's.
Quantum Leaf
I blew into this world on a leaf. I'm still blowing. I don't think I'll ever land.
Now leaves are not a new thing in Moffat Who. We all remember Amy’s prayer leaf, and ‘The only water in the forest is the river’, translating ‘Melody Pond’ into River Song.
Of course leaves tie in with trees, forests, books (and the pages in books are called leaves...) - the connotations are endless. But Clara’s leaf is something different.
Have some quotes:
DAVE (Clara's father): Because this exact leaf had to grow in that exact way in that exact place so that precise wind could tear it from that precise branch and make it fly into this exact face at that exact moment. And if just one of those tiny little things had never happened, I'd never have met you. Which makes this the most important leaf in human history.
~
CLARA: Well, I brought something for you. This. The most important leaf in human history. It's full of stories, full of history. And full of a future that never got lived. Days that should have been that never were. Passed on to me. This leaf isn't just the past, it's a whole future that never happened. There are billions and millions of unlived days for every day we live. An infinity. All the days that never came. And these are all my mum's.
~
CLARA: What's wrong? What's happening?
DOCTOR [OC]: I'm inside my own time stream. It's collapsing in on itself.
CLARA: Well, get out then.
DOCTOR [OC]: Not until I've got you.
CLARA: I don't even know who I am.
DOCTOR [OC]: You're my Impossible Girl. I'm sending you something. Not from my past, from yours. Look up. Look.
(A dead leaf comes floating down.)
DOCTOR [OC]: This is you, Clara. Everything you were or will be. Take it. You blew into the world on this leaf. Hold tight. It will take you home.
So what does the leaf mean? As you can see, it’s twofold...
1) Infinity/infinite possibility - all the days Clara's mother didn't live, and, tying into that, all the Clara echoes' lives. She is scattered across time and space - [almost] infinite, impossible.
2) A fixed point (in her own personal time) - her parents’ first meeting without which she wouldn’t even exist. Infinite possibilities narrowed down to a single moment. Without that leaf, the whole narrative would unravel.
So is the leaf one thing or is it the other? The two would seem to be opposites - infinity and fixed point. Well, it could be either, but it only becomes true when you look.
I’ll get back to this is a moment.
Which Leaf?
Because what’s been making me poke the show ever since ‘Rings of Akhaten’ is the fact that - as far as I can tell - the leaf changed. Please look at these images and tell me if I’m just imagining things:
The first leaf, the one the Doctor finds in Clara’s book in Bells of St John, strikes me as significantly different than the ones in Rings of Akhaten/Name of the Doctor.
And then we get this still from the 50th trailer:
It’s the original leaf once more. And considering that the fact that the Doctor wearing a jacket [in a single shot] after he had it stolen by the Weeping Angels turned out to be a big plot point, I’m hesitant to dismiss the leaf as ‘just production issues’. Here’s a cap of the leaf itself (the second leaf from Rings of Akhaten) on the tree. The other green leaves look a lot more like the first leaf...
And then there’s this:
That still looks far too much like a Time Beetle for my liking. A Time Beetle on a tree. (Credit to me_llamo_nic for first spotting it!) Is someone manipulating/controlling Clara’s life? If so, why? Not to mention who. She is Souffle Girl, and the souffle is the recipe. But is someone interfering?
Although if the leaf is *her*, then it makes sense that someone would manipulate her through her origin.
But that's was a tangent. Let me get back to what the leaf means:
Schrödinger’s Companion
There could be two leaves? Are there two Claras? Oh yes.
Continually.
The thing that comes immediately to mind is quantum mechanics and the idea that things only become fixed when they are observed. There's this sense with Clara that her reality is unfixed and shifting and unknown: she's a girl and she's a Dalek, she’s a barmaid and she’s a governess, she’s a perfectly ordinary girl and she’s impossible, existing in a million pieces dying over all of space and time and she doesn't know it.
There is a duality to her, right from the start. This is where purplefringe’s vid (Never Look Away) really helped pinpoint the main issue - the Doctor looks at Oswin and sees the truth of what she is. Yet she is both - the Dalek, and the girl.
Similarly she is a barmaid, and a governess, existing in two worlds simultaneously.
Like the cat in Schrödinger’s box, that is both alive and dead... And the only way to find out is to open the box.
So she is unfixed, unless someone is watching. And even then - she is both, at the same time. So she is Schrödinger’s Companion - many things at the same time. Opposites existing simultaneously:
She is a leaf, flying, never landing, a million copies across time and space. Yet she is also just an ordinary girl. Infinity and a fixed point all in one.
So yes, the leaf is the perfect symbol for her. (This is why I call it a 'Quantum Leaf'. It is the physical representation of the idea, and takes symbolism to a wonderful new height.)
Now I’m going to step sideways for a bit, because here’s the thing - Clara has (just like in her Manic Pixie Dream Girl status) taken the Doctor’s usual MO, all the echoes moulding themselves to what they need to be/the Doctor they need to save:
"And one of the interesting things about writing the Doctor is that he's so responsive to the people around him. It's almost like left on his own his personality would slowly disintegrate. He becomes what people want him to be, a little bit. So he's Amy's Raggedy Doctor. With a different companion he becomes a slightly different man. He dresses differently."
Steven Moffat (x)
We saw that ‘disintegration’ in The Snowmen. The Doctor almost stops being the Doctor with no one around to observe him. (This can of course be tied in to Tinkerbell!Doctor and the War Doctor etc. etc.)
Then he finds Clara - and changes. We even see the process of him choosing who he is now when he finds her again. No more tweed, he is no longer Amy’s:
Because to be seen is to exist:
DOCTOR: Well, there's no point now. We're about to die. Just tell me who you are.
CLARA: You know who I am.
DOCTOR: No, I don't. I look at you every single day and I don't understand a thing about you. Why do I keep running into you?
CLARA: Doctor, you invited me. You said
DOCTOR: Before that. I met you in the Dalek Asylum. There was a girl in a shipwreck and she died saving my life, and she was you.
CLARA: She really wasn't.
DOCTOR: Victorian London. There was a governess who was really a barmaid, and we fought the Great Intelligence together. She died and it was my fault, and she was you.
(I witnessed it, therefore it is real.)
And it goes both ways.
It's all about identity. It's no accident that Clara is there for the reveal of the 'secret' Doctor. She says in DotD how the Doctor is 'always' talking about what he did. Because she has seen the War Doctor, and thus made him real - which means that the War Doctor is Schrödinger's Doctor! :)
Also, it of course ties back to the Library (everything ties back to the Library):
ELLA: Mummy, Joshua and me, we're not real, are we?
DONNA: Of course you're real. You're as real as anything. Why d'you say that?
JOSHUA: But, Mummy, sometimes, when you're not here, it's like we're not here.
ELLA: Even when you close your eyes, we just stop.
DONNA: Well, Mummy promises to never close her eyes again.
To be seen is to exist... But it's not just the fact of being observed. To have been seen is often enough...
Here both Clara and the Doctor break the fourth wall, watching us - and inviting us to watch *them*:
They are speaking to each other, but also to us. We watch, and they become real to us... Watch - and remember.
Of course the importance of memory is a long-standing one in Moffat Who:
Nothing is ever forgotten, not completely. And if something can be remembered, it can come back.
The Doctor remembers Clara, and so finds her again.
And all the Clara echoes remember:
I don't know where I am. It's like I'm breaking into a million pieces and there's only one thing I remember. I have to save the Doctor. He always looks different. But I always know it's him.
Memory is even a specific plot point in The Snowmen:
DOCTOR: Maybe it's snow that fell before. Maybe it remembers how to make snowmen.
CLARA: What, snow that can remember? That's silly.
All the Clara echoes are girls who remember - remember how to save the Doctor. They create themselves, just like the snowmen.
(Tangent: Briefly re. boxes... There have been a lot of boxes in Moffat Who, and a lot of people in them. River was defined by her boxes (TARDIS, Stormcage). But Clara is different. It’s not so much that there are no boxes, but - as I pointed out above - that she exists outside and inside the box simultaneously. And as a matter of fact the main box actively dislikes her. Now we don’t know why that is - yet - but she is almost defined by her lack of boxes. She’s a leaf, blowing. Infinite. And a blowing leaf can’t be put in a box. Clara is The Impossible Girl and can't be boxed in. *g*)
I hope all this makes sense. Because now we get to the heart of it.
Mirroring
I am using the word ‘mirroring’ very deliberately. Because Clara is not a mirror, she mirrors.
River was a mirror through and through, her life revolving around the Doctor from before she was born. His ‘bespoke psychopath’, the one who could outwit him, could fly the TARDIS - his equal. But Clara is just a normal girl, and (in many ways) the ‘ur-companion’. We see this very clearly in the trailer for the 50th anniversary. The image in the globe she holds (her mirror image) is Susan, the Doctor's original Companion. And she takes the place of/occupies the same spot as Sarah Jane, who is generally regarded as the Classic Companion.
So her *role* is that of reflecting things back. It’s the difference between what you are (River *is* a mirror), and what you do (Clara *mirrors*).
And she has done this since the very beginning. From Asylum:
OSWIN: Long story. Is there a word for total screaming genius that sounds modest and a tiny bit sexy?
DOCTOR: Doctor. You call me the Doctor.
OSWIN: I see what you did there.
We will later learn (Time of the Doctor) that all the Clara echoes blend in where they are, changing to fit the Doctor they are saving. Again, mirroring. (Which is a response to the Doctor mirroring/changing to fit her, as seen above. Like I have often said, this show is a hall of mirrors and endless refractions.)
RORY: Who killed all the Daleks?
DOCTOR: Who do you think?
The Doctor claimed the destruction for himself, but in the end it was Oswin who destroyed the planet - which was the task the Doctor had been given.
And again in The Snowmen:
DOCTOR: Clara who?
CLARA: Doctor who?
The mirroring theme starts in earnest with The Snowmen, and this is also the (re-)introduction of The Great Intelligence. The GI has no form, so it mirrors:
WALTER [memory]: I don't want to talk to them. They're silly.
SNOWMAN [memory]: They're silly.
DOCTOR: It just reflects back everything we think and feel and fear.
WALTER [memory]: I don't need anyone else.
SNOWMAN [memory]: Don't need anyone else.
~
DOCTOR: The snow emits a low level telepathic field.
CLARA: My snowman.
DOCTOR: It seems to reflect people's thoughts and memories and because it's unusual, somehow it carries a previous shape and-
CLARA: No, Doctor. My snowman.
DOCTOR: Ah! Interesting. Well, were you thinking about it?
CLARA: Yes.
(Another one appears, then others.)
DOCTOR: Well, stop. Clara, stop thinking about the snowmen!
(The nearest snowman breaths snowflakes at them.)
DOCTOR: Get down! Clara, listen to me. The snow's feeding off your thoughts.
CLARA: I don't understand.
DOCTOR: You're caught in their telepathic field. They're mirroring you. The more you think about the snowmen, the more they appear. Imagine them melting. Picture it. Picture them melted!
~
VASTRA: He's dead. What happened?
DOCTOR: The snow mirrors, that's all it does. It's mirroring something else now. Something so strong, it's drowning everything else.
We see the same pattern show up in the The Bells of St John (a great big sign that The GI was involved):
CLARA: Hello.
GIRL: Hello.
CLARA: Are you a friend of Angie's?
GIRL: I'm a friend of Angie's.
CLARA: What were you doing upstairs?
GIRL: I was upstairs.
CLARA: I know you, don't I?
GIRL: You know me, don't you.
~
CLARA: I did it. I really did. I did it. I did it. I found them.
DOCTOR: You found them.
CLARA: The Shard. They're in the Shard. Floor sixty five.
DOCTOR: Floor sixty five.
CLARA: Are you listening to me, Doctor? I found them.
DOCTOR: I'm listening to you. You found them.
We also see the mirroring in 'He Said, She Said', the two of them walking through near-identical cornucopia of items, both of them with the same questions. Well, almost. Going back to the quote I pulled out at the beginning:
The Doctor: But now she's back and we're running together, and she's perfect. Perfect in every way for me. Except she can't remember that we ever met. Clara. My Clara. Always brave, always funny, always exactly what I need. Perfect. Too perfect.
Always what he needs. Because she mirrors him. Becomes what he needs. The echoes of course do this to a much greater degree, fitting into whatever narrative they’re thrown into, although usually keeping their core Clara-ness. (= the recipe). Original!Clara is a nanny, and becomes a teacher. Oswin is a Junior Entertainment manager, Victorian!Clara a Governess. And they're all going places.
She reflects back what others project - or what they need her to be, rather.
It's not just that she is only 'fixed' when she is observed, it's that she mirrors back what's needed. To the Daleks, she was a Dalek, able to hack their pathweb without them realising. To the Doctor (until he saw her, although he had a hunch), she was Oswin Oswald... To the barkeep she was Clara, the barmaid, to Capt. Latimer she is the perfect nanny - to the Doctor, she is the perfect Companion. I would go so far as to say that it's a fundamental part of how she functions. (And not always the strength it might seem - see how carefully she avoids falling in love.)
This mirroring is also important in the evolving story of the Doctor.
River is a contrast, something that pushes back, in many ways a dark message - she is the consequence of his actions; he created her and so she can point out where he is going wrong:
RIVER: Doctor. The word for healer and wise man throughout the universe. We get that word from you, you know. But if you carry on the way you are, what might that word come to mean? To the people of the Gamma Forests, the word Doctor means mighty warrior. How far you've come. And now they've taken a child, the child of your best friends, and they're going to turn her into a weapon just to bring you down. And all this, my love, in fear of you.
But Clara merely holds up a mirror. Reflects himself back to himself...
He pauses before pushing the button in 'The Day of the Doctor', because he is watching her. Clara is not like some of the more forceful companions who would loudly voice their objections. But he watches her. And she watches him. And can help him to see himself clearly:
CLARA: Look at you. The three of you. The warrior, the hero, and you.
DOCTOR: And what am I?
CLARA: Have you really forgotten?
DOCTOR: Yes. Maybe, yes.
CLARA: We've got enough warriors. Any old idiot can be a hero.
DOCTOR: Then what do I do?
CLARA: What you've always done. Be a doctor. You told me the name you chose was a promise. What was the promise?
DOCTOR 10: Never cruel or cowardly.
WARRIOR: Never give up, never give in.
She doesn’t tell him what to do, or be. Instead she lets him answer his own question. And she does it again when she answers The Question in 'The Time of the Doctor':
CLARA: You've been asking a question, and it's time someone told you you've been getting it wrong. His name, his name is the Doctor. All the name he needs. Everything you need to know about him.
She holds up a mirror, answers the question by reflecting it back.
And so, if we want Eleven’s story through his companions, then Amy and River change him (heal him, help him to move on from the pain of the Time War, restore him), and Clara changes his world.
So, like I've been saying for... years now, Moffat has been rebooting the show:
"In Matt Smith’s final episode he spent a thousand years on a planet watching everybody else age to death, while he ages very slowly. The Doctor is being taught a lesson. He’s not a human being, however much he larks around pretending he is. He is different and it’s time to stop play-acting. He goes back to being the trickier version of the Doctor, the fiercer alien wanderer. He’s not apologising, he’s not flirting with you - that’s over. That’s what the Doctor was like after the Time War but he’s not like that any more. He’s gone back and he’s changed it. Now he can go back to being a bit more Time Lordy."
Moffat
What will the mirror now reveal? Eleven was created around Amelia/his Ponds, bright and new, ready to begin to let go [of Ten's regrets]. Twelve will be created around Clara, The Impossible Girl, someone with access to/containing/witness to everything he is, from Gallifrey to Trenzalore.
We're all different people all through our lives. And that's okay, that's good, you've got to keep moving, so long as you remember all the people that you used to be.
And we shall watch; and remember.