Meta/theory: And if I grow to be half the man that you are, Clara Oswald, I shall be happy indeed.
I have written other Clara theories. I started out thinking she was the Doctor's granddaughter. I also had lots of thoughts on whether she was a [Gallifreyan] egg or a bird or something. Possibly a TARDIS. (See my Clara Who tag.) This theory, however, has appeared/worked its way to the top of the pile, quite simply by being so gosh darn constant (from her first appearance to her latest), and by being so blatant that I worry I'm imagining things. Is it all co-incidence or Moffat trolling? (Well, whatever the case, he is a troll. The Top Troll of all time.)
But onwards. If you've been following my meta, this should not be much of a surprise. I think...
ETA: WELL THAT GOT DEBUNKED QUICKLY! Although I did have a good point...
"When I first wrote Clara, I thought, “Oh, this is fun. If the Doctor were a young woman living in contemporary Britain, it’d be a bit like her.”
Moffat
(Unless he's lying with the truth. Again.)
Doctor Who?/Clara Who?
PROFESSOR YANA: An orphan in the storm. I was a naked child found on the coast of the Silver Devastation. Abandoned, with only this [fobbwatch].
Utopia
My theory is terribly simple: Clara is [/could possibly be] a [future] fobwatched Doctor. Presumably Thirteen.
It would handily explain all the duality, the leaf, that thing on the tree that might be a Time Beetle. Mind you, I don't know WHY. I never worry about why - or even how, although that's easier. What I'm wondering at is what I called the 2D/3D stuff in my Death in Heaven meta. This is me digging through the 3D stuff.
Here, let me highlight a few things I have dragged out before:
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.
~
RORY: Who killed all the Daleks?
DOCTOR: Who do you think?
[Ultimately - it was Clara]
Asylum of the Daleks
~
DOCTOR: Clara who?
CLARA: Doctor who?
[...]
FRANCESCA: Is it one of your stories? Your definitely true ones?
CLARA: Ha! All my stories are true.
DIGBY: Like how you were born behind the clock face of Big Ben?
CLARA: Accounting for my acute sense of time.
FRANCESCA: And you invented fish.
CLARA: Because I dislike swimming alone.
The Snowmen
~
WAR DOCTOR: And if I grow to be half the man that you are, Clara Oswald, I shall be happy indeed.
Day of the Doctor
~
DOCTOR: Well, I would say that that person would be an egomaniac, needy, game-player sort of person.
[...]
CLARA: Yes, you placed the ad, I figured it out. Impossible Girl, see? Lunch.
DOCTOR: No, look, the Impossible. That is a message from the Impossible Girl.
CLARA: For the Impossible Girl.
Deep Breath
~
DANNY: Clara, why are you talking to him like that? Why are you using words like chronodyne? Was that thing a space thing? Oh. Oh, my God, you're from space. You're a spacewoman. You said you were from Blackpool.
The Caretaker
~
DOCTOR: What, you don't want to live?
CLARA: Of course I want to live. I just
DOCTOR: What?
CLARA: Don't make me say it.
DOCTOR: Say what?
CLARA: I don't want to be the last of my kind.
In The Forest of the Night
~
CLARA: Clara Oswald is a cover story, a disguise. There is no Clara Oswald.
CYBER-SKAROSA: Identify.
CLARA: Oh, don't be so slow, it's embarrassing. Who could fool you like this? Who could hide right under your nose? Who could change their face any time they want? Hmm. You see, I'm not Clara Oswald. Clara Oswald has never existed.
CYBER-SKAROSA: Identify.
CLARA: I'm the Doctor.
Death in Heaven
And I've not even included Flatline, where she 'becomes' the Doctor for the whole episode. (Or any other examples.) The thing is, Moffat has a tendency to hide truths in plain sight:
AMY: Is River Song your wife? Because she's someone from your future, and the way she talks to you, I've never seen anyone do that. She's kind of like, you know, heel, boy. She's Mrs Doctor from the future, isn't she? Is she going to be your wife one day?
DOCTOR: Yes
The Time of Angels
DOCTOR: I'm not dead.
TESELECTA-AMY: You're dying.
DOCTOR: Well, at least I'm not a time travelling shape shifting robot operated by miniaturised cross people, which, I have got to admit, I didn't see coming.
Let's Kill Hitler
Now the thing about fobwatches, is that - from what we have seen - the fobwatched person is a person in their own right, pretty much. John Smith isn't the Doctor. Professor Yana is not the Master. (But the Doctor was John Smith, and the Master was Yana.) John Smith is... a bit rubbish really, being a perfectly ordinary human, who doesn't cope well in a crisis. Professor Yana is a kind-hearted old man, using his talents for helping people. (Both of them teachers - as is Clara.) And - they can all access knowledge they can't quite account for:
DOCTOR: Is this-?
YANA: Yes, gluten extract. Binds the neutralino map together.
DOCTOR: That's food. You've built this system out of food and string and staples? Professor Yana, you're a genius.
YANA: Says the man who made it work.
DOCTOR: Oh, it's easy coming in at the end, but you're stellar. This is, this is magnificent. And I don't often say that because, well, because of me.
Utopia
~
DOCTOR: How are you doing that, eh? This is Dalek technology.
OSWIN: It's very easy to hack.
DOCTOR: No, it isn't.
[...]
DOCTOR: Now, this place. The Daleks said it was fully automated. Look at it. It's a wreck.
OSWIN: Well, I've had nearly a year to mess with them, and not a lot else to do.
DOCTOR: A junior entertainment manager hiding out in a wrecked ship, hacking the security systems of the most advanced warrior race the universe has ever seen.
Asylum of the Daleks
~
JOURNEY: These are nanocontrollers. Once we're miniaturised, they take over the molecular compression. When the mission's over, hit the button. Are you sure you understand?
CLARA: Why wouldn't I?
JOURNEY: Because this is a dangerous mission and you look like a school teacher.
CLARA: I am a school teacher.
Into the Dalek
Of course Clara gets 'upgraded' by the spoonheads, and Oswin has been converted to a Dalek, yet Clara is very clever. She grasps things almost unnaturally quickly. Journey remarks on it. And it keeps happening. Here are some random examples off the top of my head:
CLARA: What's that noise?
DOCTOR: We're right under the primary fuel cells.
CLARA: So? So, so what?
DOCTOR: So, so the fuel's spilled out, so the rods will be exposed. Means they'll cool-
CLARA: And start to warp.
DOCTOR: And start to warp. Maybe even-
CLARA: No, you don't say it. Don't you dare say it.
DOCTOR: Maybe even break apart.
Journey to the Centre of the Tardis
(HOW DOES SHE KNOW? HOW?)
JOHN SMITH: And I'll admit mankind doesn't need warfare and bloodshed to prove itself. Everyday life can provide honour and valour, and let's hope that from now on this, this country can find its heroes in smaller places.
(A woman rings her bicycle bell as she peddles along. The men with the piano struggle as it dangles from a fraying rope. Then a woman pushing a perambulator comes around the corner.)
JOHN SMITH: In the most
(He sees a boy standing next to him, with a cricket ball in his hand. Some more of the rope frays and the piano drops a bit.)
JOHN SMITH: Ordinary of, of deeds.
(The Doctor grabs the cricket ball, throws it at the scaffolding outside the Ironmongers, which falls and hits a plank that sends a brick flying through the air to knock down a milk churn in front of the perambulator, stopping it just before the rope finally gives up and drops the piano to the ground mere feet in front. The piano falls to pieces and the baby starts crying.)
Human Nature
~
(The numbers on the photograph on Kate's phone include 231163. Clara grabs the vortex manipulator, puts it on and copies them into it.)
ZYGON: Prepare to dispose of one more human. We have acquired the device.
CLARA: Activation code, right?
(She hit a button and disappears.)
Day of the Doctor
ETA: From 'Last Christmas':
DOCTOR: (sotto) She's running interference. She's trying to distract herself. Three hundred and four minus seventeen.
CLARA: Sorry, what?
DOCTOR: Plus twenty. Just do it!
CLARA: Five hundred and seven.
DOCTOR: Minus fourteen, times four.
CLARA: One thousand nine hundred and seventy two.
DOCTOR: Stop being so good at arithmetic.
CLARA: I can't help it!
I watched Day of the Doctor yesterday, which is what made me finally decide to actually write this up. Clara has never seen a vortex manipulator before. Yet she uses it without even thinking. Much like John Smith grabs that cricket ball and throws it with ability and precision a human couldn't hope for without extensive training.
And this stuff is everywhere. Often tiny things ("It's smaller on the inside!"), but it's time upon time upon time when she grasps stuff just a bit too quickly.
Now this doesn't negate her journey. We can see clearly how she learns to be the Doctor, especially over the course of S8. So - what if Clara's story is the story about the Doctor as companion? I don't know why the Doctor would be fobwatched into a human girl (and extremely thoroughly so), but if he was, wouldn't the result be something like Clara?
And just imagine - all these arguments about Time Lords being able to change gender, and now, after Missy, everyone saying how the next Doctor should be female... And in reality we've had a female Doctor for two seasons. You have to admit, it'd be a very Moffat thing to do.
But speaking of Day of the Doctor, there was another thing that struck me... The three Doctors, standing around The Moment, ready to destroy Gallifrey - and it's Clara who stops them. Clara who reminds them of who they are. Which ties in with this. From Name of the Doctor:
The Doctor looks forward to where a man is standing with his back to them.)
CLARA: Who's that?
DOCTOR: Never mind. Let's go back.
CLARA: But who is he?
DOCTOR: He's me. There's only me here, that's the point.
The barn is the Doctor's barn (far more so than we thought - just look at Listen). The Doctor's time stream contains only him. What if there is only ever him? Not three Doctors deciding Gallifrey's fate, but four. And only ever him in his time stream. (Yes it'd make everything horrendously convoluted. But not moreso than River's timeline. Or Jack's. It'd just be that the Doctor saved himself...)
Clara has, since her first appearance, had an incredible narrative power. The first thing she ever did was to delete the Dalek's knowledge of who the Doctor was. Who was she that she could do that? She went on to save Gallifrey and was the one to answer The Question and get the Doctor a whole new round of regenerations. She influences the young Doctor at a level we have never seen before in 'Listen' (not to mention that the TARDIS takes her to Gallifrey). She decides humanity's future in Kill the Moon. She is, right from the start, the Doctor's equal. And not just that - she is more deeply embedded in his life than even River. If the answer to all this is that she is the Doctor, it would make sense of all of this in the most beautiful way.
~~~
OTOH I rather like the fact that someone 'just human' could be this awesome. And there doesn't need to be another side. Like I said before, 'Just Clara' is brilliant. I could be talking out of my hat. But if I am, then the show is leading me on. It has embedded 3D stuff clear as day. Maybe it's trolling (Clara is only human, I'm reading too much into things), or maybe it means that there is another layer (the 3D images are deliberate, and can be seen when you concentrate).
The thing is, I want Clara to have a happy ending. I want Danny Pink to come back and for her to have children and grandchildren and for Orson Pink to be descended from her.
(Of course she could still have that, even if she was fobwatched. There could be a choice between staying Clara & becoming the Doctor again, and she would probably choose to stay Clara:
DOCTOR: Who said you're not important? I've travelled to all sorts of places, done things you couldn't even imagine, but you two. Street corner, two in the morning, getting a taxi home. I've never had a life like that. Yes. I'll try and save you.
Father's Day)
And the thing about Clara is that she has always been two [opposite] things, simultaneously. She is Schrödinger’s Companion, a quantum being. Being 'just Clara' AND the Doctor would fit with everything we know. (Clara is a leaf. A leaf that contains both infinity and a fixed point.) She is The Impossible Girl.
But if she gets shot and starts to regenerate - or finds a fobwatch in an old drawer - I want to be able to say 'WHAT DID I SAY!?!'
Hence this post.
*collapses*
This has taken hours to write, since I kept getting interrupted. Hope it makes sense. Seriously though, just look at my icon. She was the Doctor in the credits.
(Maybe she isn't fobwatched, maybe she just somehow gets 'Doctor'd' - like Donna, but without her head exploding. *throws hands up*)
ETA: For the Buffy fans among you - she could be Dawn! (For non-Buffy fans: Um, She is simultaneously a perfectly normal girl and also something like a Gallifreyan Egg.)
Whatever the case - Moffat is the biggest troll in existence:
WAR DOCTOR: And if I grow to be half the man that you are, Clara Oswald, I shall be happy indeed.
ETA: For more discussions, see the comments to this entry.
But onwards. If you've been following my meta, this should not be much of a surprise. I think...
ETA: WELL THAT GOT DEBUNKED QUICKLY! Although I did have a good point...
"When I first wrote Clara, I thought, “Oh, this is fun. If the Doctor were a young woman living in contemporary Britain, it’d be a bit like her.”
Moffat
(Unless he's lying with the truth. Again.)
Doctor Who?/Clara Who?
PROFESSOR YANA: An orphan in the storm. I was a naked child found on the coast of the Silver Devastation. Abandoned, with only this [fobbwatch].
Utopia
My theory is terribly simple: Clara is [/could possibly be] a [future] fobwatched Doctor. Presumably Thirteen.
It would handily explain all the duality, the leaf, that thing on the tree that might be a Time Beetle. Mind you, I don't know WHY. I never worry about why - or even how, although that's easier. What I'm wondering at is what I called the 2D/3D stuff in my Death in Heaven meta. This is me digging through the 3D stuff.
Here, let me highlight a few things I have dragged out before:
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.
~
RORY: Who killed all the Daleks?
DOCTOR: Who do you think?
[Ultimately - it was Clara]
Asylum of the Daleks
~
DOCTOR: Clara who?
CLARA: Doctor who?
[...]
FRANCESCA: Is it one of your stories? Your definitely true ones?
CLARA: Ha! All my stories are true.
DIGBY: Like how you were born behind the clock face of Big Ben?
CLARA: Accounting for my acute sense of time.
FRANCESCA: And you invented fish.
CLARA: Because I dislike swimming alone.
The Snowmen
~
WAR DOCTOR: And if I grow to be half the man that you are, Clara Oswald, I shall be happy indeed.
Day of the Doctor
~
DOCTOR: Well, I would say that that person would be an egomaniac, needy, game-player sort of person.
[...]
CLARA: Yes, you placed the ad, I figured it out. Impossible Girl, see? Lunch.
DOCTOR: No, look, the Impossible. That is a message from the Impossible Girl.
CLARA: For the Impossible Girl.
Deep Breath
~
DANNY: Clara, why are you talking to him like that? Why are you using words like chronodyne? Was that thing a space thing? Oh. Oh, my God, you're from space. You're a spacewoman. You said you were from Blackpool.
The Caretaker
~
DOCTOR: What, you don't want to live?
CLARA: Of course I want to live. I just
DOCTOR: What?
CLARA: Don't make me say it.
DOCTOR: Say what?
CLARA: I don't want to be the last of my kind.
In The Forest of the Night
~
CLARA: Clara Oswald is a cover story, a disguise. There is no Clara Oswald.
CYBER-SKAROSA: Identify.
CLARA: Oh, don't be so slow, it's embarrassing. Who could fool you like this? Who could hide right under your nose? Who could change their face any time they want? Hmm. You see, I'm not Clara Oswald. Clara Oswald has never existed.
CYBER-SKAROSA: Identify.
CLARA: I'm the Doctor.
Death in Heaven
And I've not even included Flatline, where she 'becomes' the Doctor for the whole episode. (Or any other examples.) The thing is, Moffat has a tendency to hide truths in plain sight:
AMY: Is River Song your wife? Because she's someone from your future, and the way she talks to you, I've never seen anyone do that. She's kind of like, you know, heel, boy. She's Mrs Doctor from the future, isn't she? Is she going to be your wife one day?
DOCTOR: Yes
The Time of Angels
DOCTOR: I'm not dead.
TESELECTA-AMY: You're dying.
DOCTOR: Well, at least I'm not a time travelling shape shifting robot operated by miniaturised cross people, which, I have got to admit, I didn't see coming.
Let's Kill Hitler
Now the thing about fobwatches, is that - from what we have seen - the fobwatched person is a person in their own right, pretty much. John Smith isn't the Doctor. Professor Yana is not the Master. (But the Doctor was John Smith, and the Master was Yana.) John Smith is... a bit rubbish really, being a perfectly ordinary human, who doesn't cope well in a crisis. Professor Yana is a kind-hearted old man, using his talents for helping people. (Both of them teachers - as is Clara.) And - they can all access knowledge they can't quite account for:
DOCTOR: Is this-?
YANA: Yes, gluten extract. Binds the neutralino map together.
DOCTOR: That's food. You've built this system out of food and string and staples? Professor Yana, you're a genius.
YANA: Says the man who made it work.
DOCTOR: Oh, it's easy coming in at the end, but you're stellar. This is, this is magnificent. And I don't often say that because, well, because of me.
Utopia
~
DOCTOR: How are you doing that, eh? This is Dalek technology.
OSWIN: It's very easy to hack.
DOCTOR: No, it isn't.
[...]
DOCTOR: Now, this place. The Daleks said it was fully automated. Look at it. It's a wreck.
OSWIN: Well, I've had nearly a year to mess with them, and not a lot else to do.
DOCTOR: A junior entertainment manager hiding out in a wrecked ship, hacking the security systems of the most advanced warrior race the universe has ever seen.
Asylum of the Daleks
~
JOURNEY: These are nanocontrollers. Once we're miniaturised, they take over the molecular compression. When the mission's over, hit the button. Are you sure you understand?
CLARA: Why wouldn't I?
JOURNEY: Because this is a dangerous mission and you look like a school teacher.
CLARA: I am a school teacher.
Into the Dalek
Of course Clara gets 'upgraded' by the spoonheads, and Oswin has been converted to a Dalek, yet Clara is very clever. She grasps things almost unnaturally quickly. Journey remarks on it. And it keeps happening. Here are some random examples off the top of my head:
CLARA: What's that noise?
DOCTOR: We're right under the primary fuel cells.
CLARA: So? So, so what?
DOCTOR: So, so the fuel's spilled out, so the rods will be exposed. Means they'll cool-
CLARA: And start to warp.
DOCTOR: And start to warp. Maybe even-
CLARA: No, you don't say it. Don't you dare say it.
DOCTOR: Maybe even break apart.
Journey to the Centre of the Tardis
(HOW DOES SHE KNOW? HOW?)
JOHN SMITH: And I'll admit mankind doesn't need warfare and bloodshed to prove itself. Everyday life can provide honour and valour, and let's hope that from now on this, this country can find its heroes in smaller places.
(A woman rings her bicycle bell as she peddles along. The men with the piano struggle as it dangles from a fraying rope. Then a woman pushing a perambulator comes around the corner.)
JOHN SMITH: In the most
(He sees a boy standing next to him, with a cricket ball in his hand. Some more of the rope frays and the piano drops a bit.)
JOHN SMITH: Ordinary of, of deeds.
(The Doctor grabs the cricket ball, throws it at the scaffolding outside the Ironmongers, which falls and hits a plank that sends a brick flying through the air to knock down a milk churn in front of the perambulator, stopping it just before the rope finally gives up and drops the piano to the ground mere feet in front. The piano falls to pieces and the baby starts crying.)
Human Nature
~
(The numbers on the photograph on Kate's phone include 231163. Clara grabs the vortex manipulator, puts it on and copies them into it.)
ZYGON: Prepare to dispose of one more human. We have acquired the device.
CLARA: Activation code, right?
(She hit a button and disappears.)
Day of the Doctor
ETA: From 'Last Christmas':
DOCTOR: (sotto) She's running interference. She's trying to distract herself. Three hundred and four minus seventeen.
CLARA: Sorry, what?
DOCTOR: Plus twenty. Just do it!
CLARA: Five hundred and seven.
DOCTOR: Minus fourteen, times four.
CLARA: One thousand nine hundred and seventy two.
DOCTOR: Stop being so good at arithmetic.
CLARA: I can't help it!
I watched Day of the Doctor yesterday, which is what made me finally decide to actually write this up. Clara has never seen a vortex manipulator before. Yet she uses it without even thinking. Much like John Smith grabs that cricket ball and throws it with ability and precision a human couldn't hope for without extensive training.
And this stuff is everywhere. Often tiny things ("It's smaller on the inside!"), but it's time upon time upon time when she grasps stuff just a bit too quickly.
Now this doesn't negate her journey. We can see clearly how she learns to be the Doctor, especially over the course of S8. So - what if Clara's story is the story about the Doctor as companion? I don't know why the Doctor would be fobwatched into a human girl (and extremely thoroughly so), but if he was, wouldn't the result be something like Clara?
And just imagine - all these arguments about Time Lords being able to change gender, and now, after Missy, everyone saying how the next Doctor should be female... And in reality we've had a female Doctor for two seasons. You have to admit, it'd be a very Moffat thing to do.
But speaking of Day of the Doctor, there was another thing that struck me... The three Doctors, standing around The Moment, ready to destroy Gallifrey - and it's Clara who stops them. Clara who reminds them of who they are. Which ties in with this. From Name of the Doctor:
The Doctor looks forward to where a man is standing with his back to them.)
CLARA: Who's that?
DOCTOR: Never mind. Let's go back.
CLARA: But who is he?
DOCTOR: He's me. There's only me here, that's the point.
The barn is the Doctor's barn (far more so than we thought - just look at Listen). The Doctor's time stream contains only him. What if there is only ever him? Not three Doctors deciding Gallifrey's fate, but four. And only ever him in his time stream. (Yes it'd make everything horrendously convoluted. But not moreso than River's timeline. Or Jack's. It'd just be that the Doctor saved himself...)
Clara has, since her first appearance, had an incredible narrative power. The first thing she ever did was to delete the Dalek's knowledge of who the Doctor was. Who was she that she could do that? She went on to save Gallifrey and was the one to answer The Question and get the Doctor a whole new round of regenerations. She influences the young Doctor at a level we have never seen before in 'Listen' (not to mention that the TARDIS takes her to Gallifrey). She decides humanity's future in Kill the Moon. She is, right from the start, the Doctor's equal. And not just that - she is more deeply embedded in his life than even River. If the answer to all this is that she is the Doctor, it would make sense of all of this in the most beautiful way.
~~~
OTOH I rather like the fact that someone 'just human' could be this awesome. And there doesn't need to be another side. Like I said before, 'Just Clara' is brilliant. I could be talking out of my hat. But if I am, then the show is leading me on. It has embedded 3D stuff clear as day. Maybe it's trolling (Clara is only human, I'm reading too much into things), or maybe it means that there is another layer (the 3D images are deliberate, and can be seen when you concentrate).
The thing is, I want Clara to have a happy ending. I want Danny Pink to come back and for her to have children and grandchildren and for Orson Pink to be descended from her.
(Of course she could still have that, even if she was fobwatched. There could be a choice between staying Clara & becoming the Doctor again, and she would probably choose to stay Clara:
DOCTOR: Who said you're not important? I've travelled to all sorts of places, done things you couldn't even imagine, but you two. Street corner, two in the morning, getting a taxi home. I've never had a life like that. Yes. I'll try and save you.
Father's Day)
And the thing about Clara is that she has always been two [opposite] things, simultaneously. She is Schrödinger’s Companion, a quantum being. Being 'just Clara' AND the Doctor would fit with everything we know. (Clara is a leaf. A leaf that contains both infinity and a fixed point.) She is The Impossible Girl.
But if she gets shot and starts to regenerate - or finds a fobwatch in an old drawer - I want to be able to say 'WHAT DID I SAY!?!'
Hence this post.
*collapses*
This has taken hours to write, since I kept getting interrupted. Hope it makes sense. Seriously though, just look at my icon. She was the Doctor in the credits.
(Maybe she isn't fobwatched, maybe she just somehow gets 'Doctor'd' - like Donna, but without her head exploding. *throws hands up*)
ETA: For the Buffy fans among you - she could be Dawn! (For non-Buffy fans: Um, She is simultaneously a perfectly normal girl and also something like a Gallifreyan Egg.)
Whatever the case - Moffat is the biggest troll in existence:
WAR DOCTOR: And if I grow to be half the man that you are, Clara Oswald, I shall be happy indeed.
ETA: For more discussions, see the comments to this entry.