DW 9.06. The Woman Who Lived
So, we’re pretty much at the half-way point, and yay, themes are emerging!
At the moment I can see three, although they are of course connected: Friendship, godhood (specifically in a father/creator sense) and loss.
I shall tackle them in that order.
The Woman Who Lived
Although first of all, a little sidebar or two.
I love how the time = water metaphor is still front & centre:
CLARA: No. You can change things.
DOCTOR: I can't. Even the tiniest change, the ramifications could be catastrophic. It could spread carnage and chaos across the universe like ripples on a pond.
Before the Flood
DOCTOR: I can do anything. There's nothing I can't do. Nothing. But I'm not supposed to. Ripples, tidal waves, rules. I'm not supposed to.
[…]
DOCTOR: I was angry. I was emotional. Just possibly, I have made a terrible mistake. Maybe even a tidal wave.
The Girl Who Died
Incidentally, then using saving Caecilius & family as his main example to remind him to save people? Clearly he never heard of what happened to Frobisher. (RTD is on record somewhere saying how Frobisher's death was as payment for saving Caecilius who should have died... This strikes me as possibly stretching the power of Fixed Points. But...)
And another thought - the Doctor feels very guilty over Ashildr's death, but - being perfectly logical about it - she was the one that brought the fight back to her village. Clara had successfully talked the Mire into leaving. Of course Ashildr was a child, and didn't understand what she was doing. I just want to point it out.
Also:
"What could be worse than losing your children?"
There are worse things… (Not that Ashildr is likely to have been in a situation like Children of Earth. But. This show does not shy away from brutal truths.)
Friendship
DOCTOR: He and I've known each other a long time.
OHILA: You've been enemies for all of it.
DOCTOR: An enemy's just a friend you don't really know yet. Sorry. What, was that me being cynical again?
OHILA: Aren't we friends, Doctor?
DOCTOR: That's different. I don't like you!
OHILA: (laughs) Which means you can trust me.
Prologue to Magician’s Apprentice
CLARA: Since when do you care about the Doctor?
MISSY: Since always. Since the Cloister Wars. Since the night he stole the moon and the President's wife. Since he was a little girl. One of those was a lie. Can you guess which one?
CLARA: He's not your friend. You keep trying to kill him.
MISSY: He keeps trying to kill me. It's sort of our texting. We've been at it for ages.
CLARA: Mmm. Must be love.
MISSY: Oh, don't be disgusting. We're Time Lords, not animals. Try, nano-brain, to rise above the reproductive frenzy of your noisy little food chain, and contemplate friendship. A friendship older than your civilisation, and infinitely more complex.
The Magician’s Apprentice
MISSY: In a way, this is why I gave her to you in the first place. To make you see. The friend inside the enemy, the enemy inside the friend.
The Witch’s Familiar
DOCTOR: So are we enemies now?
ASHILDR: Of course not. Enemies are never a problem. It's your friends you have to watch out for. And, my friend, I'll be watching out for you.
The Woman Who Lived
Apart from the rather tacked-on O’Donnell/Bennet and Cass/Lunn, we have not had any love stories at all this year. Instead the show has emphasised friendship - and enmity - and how these are often two sides of the same coin. Something beautifully illustrated in the character of Missy.
Of course it’s an old theme, one that goes back to the beginning. The Doctor’s friends, his companions, the ones who travel with him. (The ones who keep him to the mark.) The ones who get close to him, and therefore make him vulnerable...
DOCTOR: Oh, you remember Clara, do you?
ASHILDR: Of course. I take particular note of anyone's weaknesses.
And we saw in the S8 finale how the closer someone is, the more they can hurt you - and also how deeply the Doctor values their friendship:
DOCTOR: Do you think I care for you so little that betraying me would make a difference?
Love is a psychopath. And I don’t think that refers to only romantic love…
Odin (cont.)/Allfather/Gods
Basically, the Doctor created another god in Ashildr. (Or ‘Immortal hybrid’, if you like that term better.) And it’s interesting that this time it was all on him...
- River was literally a hybrid, a human with Time Lord DNA, created as a weapon in response to the Doctor.
- Jack was more like a comic accident, created by a child with god-like powers that she could not control.
But Ashildr was created by the Doctor, and he was aware what he was doing.
DOCTOR: I was angry. I was emotional. Just possibly, I have made a terrible mistake. Maybe even a tidal wave.
I wonder if he has forgotten the words of Copper, from Voyage of the Damned:
COPPER: Of all the people to survive, he's not the one you would have chosen, is he? But if you could choose, Doctor, if you decide who lives and who dies, that would make you a monster.
I talked in my meta last week about the Doctor being Odin: a father-figure, a creator, and this is directly addressed.
The Doctor is mistaken for Ashildr’s father, and she - repeatedly - holds him responsible for creating her. And for the subsequent abandonment:
DOCTOR: Why should I be responsible for you?
ASHILDR: You made me immortal.
DOCTOR: I saved your life. I didn't know that your heart would rust because I kept it beating. I didn't think your conscience would need renewing, that the well of human kindness would run dry. I just wanted to save a terrified young woman's life.
ASHILDR: You didn't save my life, Doctor. You trapped me inside it.
And oh, he has made her in his own image:
ASHILDR: You should try my journals. I read them myself now and then. Drink pomace wine, have a little me time.
DOCTOR: You don't seem the nostalgic type.
ASHILDR: It's not nostalgia, it's curiosity. I can't remember most of it. That's the trouble with an infinite life and a normal sized memory.
DOCTOR: It can't have been easy, outliving the people you love.
ASHILDR: According to my journals, hell.
DOCTOR: Sorry.
He most definitely knows both the pain - and the loss, moreso than he lets on. Ashildr’s diaries echo a very old exchange:
VICTORIA: You probably can't remember your family.
2nd DOCTOR: Oh yes, I can when I want to. And that's the point, really. I have to really want to, to bring them back in front of my eyes. The rest of the time they... they sleep in my mind and I forget.
We see his forgetfulness in other ways. He forgot Reinette, and the whole clock-work story. He forgot Pompeii (until he remembered, last episode). Despite having a brain the size of a planet we know he keeps diaries.
ASHILDR: You'll have to remind me, what's sorrow like? It all just runs out, Doctor. I'm just what's left. In fact, I've done all I can here. I look up to the sky and wonder what it's like out there. Please, take me with you. All these people here, they're like smoke, they blow away in a moment. You don't know what it's like.
DOCTOR: I do know what it's like.
And he does…
DOCTOR: Immortality isn't living forever. That's not what it feels like. Immortality is everybody else dying.
Plus, there's this, from a recent Moffat interview:
We don’t know the extent to which he’s capable of real love. This is a thing we have to discuss sometimes on the set, about what he is feeling right now. What did he feel for River? What did he feel for Rose? The answer always has to kind of be, we don’t know. That’s all locked in a box somewhere. We know that he’s wired like any other Time Lord, and they all do that sort of thing. We know that as an incontrovertible fact that he’s been a father in his life, and it’s not something you can dismiss or ignore. He’s capable of all that. I think he just doesn’t. This is my theory, and just the fact that I write it right now doesn’t make it more important than anyone else’s theory. I don’t think he’s incapable of feeling real love at all, in fact I think he’s quite badly susceptible to crushes, but he doesn’t seem to do anything about it. He seems to have taken the position that that is no longer what he does. He’s something of a gentleman, really, and to do all that would mean proper commitment, in his book, and he’s not really good at proper commitment. He can’t even stay on the same planet. It’s hard not to assume that there’s tremendous heartbreak from way before we knew him, since we first encountered him traveling with his granddaughter and nobody else. It’s reasonable to assume that there’s something awful back there. The answer I tend to prefer is not that he’s incapable, but that’s he decided not to, but at times those hearts are at war with each other. He wants what he thinks he shouldn’t have. It’s much more dramatic if it’s that way. He’s made a decision that as much as he might fall in love now and then, he never does anything about it. I think you see him fall in love quite a lot. You don’t see him embark on a fool relationship and all that that entails. As far as we know. Heaven knows what he gets up to between episodes-I’ve never asked him.
He leaves her Ashildr the means to create herself a companion, but - as her chosen name implies - she does not want one, instead choosing a path very much like the Doctor's when it comes to relationships. She has clearly been burnt the same as he has:
ASHILDR: I call myself ‘Me’. All the other names I chose died with whoever knew me. Me is who I am now. No one's mother, daughter, wife. My own companion. Singular. Unattached. Alone.
She does not define herself in relation to anyone else, instead standing aside from the world, watching it pass by as she stays the same. Interestingly it's almost the exact opposite of the Doctor, who acknowledges that his name is not even a simple description, more like an aspiration, or a story:
DOCTOR: There's no such thing as the Doctor. I'm just a bloke in a box, telling stories. And I didn't come here because I'm ashamed. A bit of shame never hurt anyone. I came because you're sick and you asked. And because sometimes, on a good day, if I try very hard, I'm not some old Time Lord who ran away. I'm the Doctor.
Names are important. River Song was Melody Pond. The Doctor’s real name is unknown - and so is Captain Jack’s. But this episode made it crystal clear that Lady Me’s original name (Ashildr’s = Odin’s Valkyrie) was most definitely not chosen at random.
The Valkyries brought fallen warriors to Valhalla, which is pretty much exactly what Ashildr vows to do:
ASHILDR: Someone has to look out for the people you abandon. Who better than me? I'll be the patron saint of the Doctor's leftovers.
The Valkyrie aspect is even inherent to the episode’s plot-related thingamajig:
DOCTOR: Look, why would an alien artefact resemble the Eyes of Hades, King of the Underworld? An ancient Greek talisman which wards off evil and protects those in death on their journey to an afterlife?
What the Doctor gives her - or rather, what she finds for herself - is a purpose. A little like how the Doctor stayed in Christmas, protecting it (and the crack) against anything the universe could throw at it, so Ashildr will protect the Earth. She - like him - is stuck, but in this episode she learns to make something imposed on her, into her own choice.
Also, it’s very interesting that she is, essentially, creating her own little, very personalised Torchwood, for basically the same reasons Queen Victoria does centuries later…
Loss
ASHILDR: So what's wrong with Clara, then?
DOCTOR: There's nothing wrong with her.
ASHILDR: Why haven't you made her immortal?
DOCTOR: Well, look how you turned out.
ASHILDR: She'll die on you, you know. She'll blow away like smoke.
Last season was all about the Doctor dealing with his regeneration - a whole season dedicated to something usually dealt with in a single episode.
The same applies here. Clara’s departure is front and centre, although - I now realise - it was partly disguised at the beginning by using her mirroring qualities, and the fact that in S8 we were firmly in Clara’s POV as she tried to grapple with his new persona, as well as falling in love - and then, of course, she lost Danny, something she did not cope well with. (/understatement) So it makes sense for us to start with her side of it. She’s still coming to terms with last seasons’ loss, and she does not deal well with the Doctor’s apparent imminent death:
DOCTOR: I'm sorry.
CLARA: Don't apologise. Make it up to me. There, see? Ha. Now you have to come back.
Magician’s Apprentice
DOCTOR: I've got to go sometime.
CLARA: Not with me! Die with whoever comes after me. You do not leave me.
DOCTOR: Listen to me. We all have to face death eventually, be it ours or someone else's.
CLARA: I'm not ready yet. I don't want to think about that, not yet.
DOCTOR: I can't change what's already happened. There are rules.
CLARA: So break them. And anyway, you owe me. You've made yourself essential to me. You've given me something else to, to be. And you can't do that and then die. It's not fair.
DOCTOR: Clara.
CLARA: No. Doctor, I don't care about your rules or your bloody survivor's guilt. If you love me in any way, you'll come back.
Before the Flood
However now we have switched back to the Doctor’s viewpoint, much like in S7. Then she was someone he’d found, but was unsure of. Now she’s someone he knows he will lose; he will live on, and she will blow away like smoke…
DOCTOR: Every time we do something like this, I keep thinking, what if something happens to you?
Because as we know, the Doctor isn’t going anywhere. Clara is. Not just from the fact that the press releases have said she’s leaving, but because the show is dropping hints as subtle as a brick:
DOCTOR: I've missed you, Clara Oswald.
CLARA: Well, don't worry, daft old man. I'm not going anywhere.
The opener brought up the question of why the Doctor left Gallifrey. Why does he run? Promethia reckons he lost someone, and it’s hard to argue with that…
DOCTOR: I'm sick of losing people. Look at you, with your eyes, and your never giving up, and your anger, and your kindness. One day, the memory of that will hurt so much that I won't be able to breathe, and I'll do what I always do. I'll get in my box and I'll run and I'll run, in case all the pain ever catches up. And every place I go, it will be there.
The thing is, it’s been getting worse.
- After losing Donna, he decided to travel alone.
- After losing his Ponds, he decided to retire completely
Clara, his Impossible Girl, was what dragged him down from his cloud-based exile. Her mystery re-awakened his sense of wonder, and he’s kept her close ever since. But he knows time is running out, that their time together is limited.
That said, simple death seems to easy… What will her fate be? She was wearing a bird necklace again at the end of this episode, much like the one she wore in Bells of St John. She’s done so much, can even pull off ‘being the Doctor’ as we have seen repeatedly. Her ‘fairy godmothers’ are River and Missy. She’s been trained by the best.
Except like I say above the show is moving back to the Doctor’s perspective. And we don’t need another Doctor… However there is plenty of room for more gods, as Ashildr so ably illustrates.
Clara has always been the Impossible Girl, a ‘rebellious bird’. Living in stories, creating stories, watching over and looking after the Doctor.
If Ashildr (by name and by choice) is/has become the Doctor’s Valkyrie, the patron saint of those left behind, then Clara (=bright) Oswin (=god’s friend) Oswald (=god’s power) - his self-appointed patron saint when she jumps into his time stream - is, surely, destined for something… more than just death.
The season’s tagline is ‘Born to Save the universe’. And somehow that line was what sprung to mind during this exchange:
DOCTOR: Ashildr, I think I'm very glad I saved you.
ASHILDR: Oh, I think everyone will be.
We have themes. We also have plot points. The word ‘hybrid’ is attached to Gallifrey and Skaro, to Daleks and Time Lords.
We have players - the Doctor, Davros, Missy, Ashildr, Clara.
How will it all pan out? What has Moffat got up his sleeve?
And what will the Doctor do when he loses Clara…
DOCTOR [OC]: Who's going to tell me that Clara Oswald is really dead?
MISSY: He'll burn everything. Us too.
He doesn’t. But do not tempt a desperate man…
At the moment I can see three, although they are of course connected: Friendship, godhood (specifically in a father/creator sense) and loss.
I shall tackle them in that order.
The Woman Who Lived
Although first of all, a little sidebar or two.
I love how the time = water metaphor is still front & centre:
CLARA: No. You can change things.
DOCTOR: I can't. Even the tiniest change, the ramifications could be catastrophic. It could spread carnage and chaos across the universe like ripples on a pond.
Before the Flood
DOCTOR: I can do anything. There's nothing I can't do. Nothing. But I'm not supposed to. Ripples, tidal waves, rules. I'm not supposed to.
[…]
DOCTOR: I was angry. I was emotional. Just possibly, I have made a terrible mistake. Maybe even a tidal wave.
The Girl Who Died
Incidentally, then using saving Caecilius & family as his main example to remind him to save people? Clearly he never heard of what happened to Frobisher. (RTD is on record somewhere saying how Frobisher's death was as payment for saving Caecilius who should have died... This strikes me as possibly stretching the power of Fixed Points. But...)
And another thought - the Doctor feels very guilty over Ashildr's death, but - being perfectly logical about it - she was the one that brought the fight back to her village. Clara had successfully talked the Mire into leaving. Of course Ashildr was a child, and didn't understand what she was doing. I just want to point it out.
Also:
"What could be worse than losing your children?"
There are worse things… (Not that Ashildr is likely to have been in a situation like Children of Earth. But. This show does not shy away from brutal truths.)
Friendship
DOCTOR: He and I've known each other a long time.
OHILA: You've been enemies for all of it.
DOCTOR: An enemy's just a friend you don't really know yet. Sorry. What, was that me being cynical again?
OHILA: Aren't we friends, Doctor?
DOCTOR: That's different. I don't like you!
OHILA: (laughs) Which means you can trust me.
Prologue to Magician’s Apprentice
CLARA: Since when do you care about the Doctor?
MISSY: Since always. Since the Cloister Wars. Since the night he stole the moon and the President's wife. Since he was a little girl. One of those was a lie. Can you guess which one?
CLARA: He's not your friend. You keep trying to kill him.
MISSY: He keeps trying to kill me. It's sort of our texting. We've been at it for ages.
CLARA: Mmm. Must be love.
MISSY: Oh, don't be disgusting. We're Time Lords, not animals. Try, nano-brain, to rise above the reproductive frenzy of your noisy little food chain, and contemplate friendship. A friendship older than your civilisation, and infinitely more complex.
The Magician’s Apprentice
MISSY: In a way, this is why I gave her to you in the first place. To make you see. The friend inside the enemy, the enemy inside the friend.
The Witch’s Familiar
DOCTOR: So are we enemies now?
ASHILDR: Of course not. Enemies are never a problem. It's your friends you have to watch out for. And, my friend, I'll be watching out for you.
The Woman Who Lived
Apart from the rather tacked-on O’Donnell/Bennet and Cass/Lunn, we have not had any love stories at all this year. Instead the show has emphasised friendship - and enmity - and how these are often two sides of the same coin. Something beautifully illustrated in the character of Missy.
Of course it’s an old theme, one that goes back to the beginning. The Doctor’s friends, his companions, the ones who travel with him. (The ones who keep him to the mark.) The ones who get close to him, and therefore make him vulnerable...
DOCTOR: Oh, you remember Clara, do you?
ASHILDR: Of course. I take particular note of anyone's weaknesses.
And we saw in the S8 finale how the closer someone is, the more they can hurt you - and also how deeply the Doctor values their friendship:
DOCTOR: Do you think I care for you so little that betraying me would make a difference?
Love is a psychopath. And I don’t think that refers to only romantic love…
Odin (cont.)/Allfather/Gods
Basically, the Doctor created another god in Ashildr. (Or ‘Immortal hybrid’, if you like that term better.) And it’s interesting that this time it was all on him...
- River was literally a hybrid, a human with Time Lord DNA, created as a weapon in response to the Doctor.
- Jack was more like a comic accident, created by a child with god-like powers that she could not control.
But Ashildr was created by the Doctor, and he was aware what he was doing.
DOCTOR: I was angry. I was emotional. Just possibly, I have made a terrible mistake. Maybe even a tidal wave.
I wonder if he has forgotten the words of Copper, from Voyage of the Damned:
COPPER: Of all the people to survive, he's not the one you would have chosen, is he? But if you could choose, Doctor, if you decide who lives and who dies, that would make you a monster.
I talked in my meta last week about the Doctor being Odin: a father-figure, a creator, and this is directly addressed.
The Doctor is mistaken for Ashildr’s father, and she - repeatedly - holds him responsible for creating her. And for the subsequent abandonment:
DOCTOR: Why should I be responsible for you?
ASHILDR: You made me immortal.
DOCTOR: I saved your life. I didn't know that your heart would rust because I kept it beating. I didn't think your conscience would need renewing, that the well of human kindness would run dry. I just wanted to save a terrified young woman's life.
ASHILDR: You didn't save my life, Doctor. You trapped me inside it.
And oh, he has made her in his own image:
ASHILDR: You should try my journals. I read them myself now and then. Drink pomace wine, have a little me time.
DOCTOR: You don't seem the nostalgic type.
ASHILDR: It's not nostalgia, it's curiosity. I can't remember most of it. That's the trouble with an infinite life and a normal sized memory.
DOCTOR: It can't have been easy, outliving the people you love.
ASHILDR: According to my journals, hell.
DOCTOR: Sorry.
He most definitely knows both the pain - and the loss, moreso than he lets on. Ashildr’s diaries echo a very old exchange:
VICTORIA: You probably can't remember your family.
2nd DOCTOR: Oh yes, I can when I want to. And that's the point, really. I have to really want to, to bring them back in front of my eyes. The rest of the time they... they sleep in my mind and I forget.
We see his forgetfulness in other ways. He forgot Reinette, and the whole clock-work story. He forgot Pompeii (until he remembered, last episode). Despite having a brain the size of a planet we know he keeps diaries.
ASHILDR: You'll have to remind me, what's sorrow like? It all just runs out, Doctor. I'm just what's left. In fact, I've done all I can here. I look up to the sky and wonder what it's like out there. Please, take me with you. All these people here, they're like smoke, they blow away in a moment. You don't know what it's like.
DOCTOR: I do know what it's like.
And he does…
DOCTOR: Immortality isn't living forever. That's not what it feels like. Immortality is everybody else dying.
Plus, there's this, from a recent Moffat interview:
We don’t know the extent to which he’s capable of real love. This is a thing we have to discuss sometimes on the set, about what he is feeling right now. What did he feel for River? What did he feel for Rose? The answer always has to kind of be, we don’t know. That’s all locked in a box somewhere. We know that he’s wired like any other Time Lord, and they all do that sort of thing. We know that as an incontrovertible fact that he’s been a father in his life, and it’s not something you can dismiss or ignore. He’s capable of all that. I think he just doesn’t. This is my theory, and just the fact that I write it right now doesn’t make it more important than anyone else’s theory. I don’t think he’s incapable of feeling real love at all, in fact I think he’s quite badly susceptible to crushes, but he doesn’t seem to do anything about it. He seems to have taken the position that that is no longer what he does. He’s something of a gentleman, really, and to do all that would mean proper commitment, in his book, and he’s not really good at proper commitment. He can’t even stay on the same planet. It’s hard not to assume that there’s tremendous heartbreak from way before we knew him, since we first encountered him traveling with his granddaughter and nobody else. It’s reasonable to assume that there’s something awful back there. The answer I tend to prefer is not that he’s incapable, but that’s he decided not to, but at times those hearts are at war with each other. He wants what he thinks he shouldn’t have. It’s much more dramatic if it’s that way. He’s made a decision that as much as he might fall in love now and then, he never does anything about it. I think you see him fall in love quite a lot. You don’t see him embark on a fool relationship and all that that entails. As far as we know. Heaven knows what he gets up to between episodes-I’ve never asked him.
He leaves her Ashildr the means to create herself a companion, but - as her chosen name implies - she does not want one, instead choosing a path very much like the Doctor's when it comes to relationships. She has clearly been burnt the same as he has:
ASHILDR: I call myself ‘Me’. All the other names I chose died with whoever knew me. Me is who I am now. No one's mother, daughter, wife. My own companion. Singular. Unattached. Alone.
She does not define herself in relation to anyone else, instead standing aside from the world, watching it pass by as she stays the same. Interestingly it's almost the exact opposite of the Doctor, who acknowledges that his name is not even a simple description, more like an aspiration, or a story:
DOCTOR: There's no such thing as the Doctor. I'm just a bloke in a box, telling stories. And I didn't come here because I'm ashamed. A bit of shame never hurt anyone. I came because you're sick and you asked. And because sometimes, on a good day, if I try very hard, I'm not some old Time Lord who ran away. I'm the Doctor.
Names are important. River Song was Melody Pond. The Doctor’s real name is unknown - and so is Captain Jack’s. But this episode made it crystal clear that Lady Me’s original name (Ashildr’s = Odin’s Valkyrie) was most definitely not chosen at random.
The Valkyries brought fallen warriors to Valhalla, which is pretty much exactly what Ashildr vows to do:
ASHILDR: Someone has to look out for the people you abandon. Who better than me? I'll be the patron saint of the Doctor's leftovers.
The Valkyrie aspect is even inherent to the episode’s plot-related thingamajig:
DOCTOR: Look, why would an alien artefact resemble the Eyes of Hades, King of the Underworld? An ancient Greek talisman which wards off evil and protects those in death on their journey to an afterlife?
What the Doctor gives her - or rather, what she finds for herself - is a purpose. A little like how the Doctor stayed in Christmas, protecting it (and the crack) against anything the universe could throw at it, so Ashildr will protect the Earth. She - like him - is stuck, but in this episode she learns to make something imposed on her, into her own choice.
Also, it’s very interesting that she is, essentially, creating her own little, very personalised Torchwood, for basically the same reasons Queen Victoria does centuries later…
Loss
ASHILDR: So what's wrong with Clara, then?
DOCTOR: There's nothing wrong with her.
ASHILDR: Why haven't you made her immortal?
DOCTOR: Well, look how you turned out.
ASHILDR: She'll die on you, you know. She'll blow away like smoke.
Last season was all about the Doctor dealing with his regeneration - a whole season dedicated to something usually dealt with in a single episode.
The same applies here. Clara’s departure is front and centre, although - I now realise - it was partly disguised at the beginning by using her mirroring qualities, and the fact that in S8 we were firmly in Clara’s POV as she tried to grapple with his new persona, as well as falling in love - and then, of course, she lost Danny, something she did not cope well with. (/understatement) So it makes sense for us to start with her side of it. She’s still coming to terms with last seasons’ loss, and she does not deal well with the Doctor’s apparent imminent death:
DOCTOR: I'm sorry.
CLARA: Don't apologise. Make it up to me. There, see? Ha. Now you have to come back.
Magician’s Apprentice
DOCTOR: I've got to go sometime.
CLARA: Not with me! Die with whoever comes after me. You do not leave me.
DOCTOR: Listen to me. We all have to face death eventually, be it ours or someone else's.
CLARA: I'm not ready yet. I don't want to think about that, not yet.
DOCTOR: I can't change what's already happened. There are rules.
CLARA: So break them. And anyway, you owe me. You've made yourself essential to me. You've given me something else to, to be. And you can't do that and then die. It's not fair.
DOCTOR: Clara.
CLARA: No. Doctor, I don't care about your rules or your bloody survivor's guilt. If you love me in any way, you'll come back.
Before the Flood
However now we have switched back to the Doctor’s viewpoint, much like in S7. Then she was someone he’d found, but was unsure of. Now she’s someone he knows he will lose; he will live on, and she will blow away like smoke…
DOCTOR: Every time we do something like this, I keep thinking, what if something happens to you?
Because as we know, the Doctor isn’t going anywhere. Clara is. Not just from the fact that the press releases have said she’s leaving, but because the show is dropping hints as subtle as a brick:
DOCTOR: I've missed you, Clara Oswald.
CLARA: Well, don't worry, daft old man. I'm not going anywhere.
The opener brought up the question of why the Doctor left Gallifrey. Why does he run? Promethia reckons he lost someone, and it’s hard to argue with that…
DOCTOR: I'm sick of losing people. Look at you, with your eyes, and your never giving up, and your anger, and your kindness. One day, the memory of that will hurt so much that I won't be able to breathe, and I'll do what I always do. I'll get in my box and I'll run and I'll run, in case all the pain ever catches up. And every place I go, it will be there.
The thing is, it’s been getting worse.
- After losing Donna, he decided to travel alone.
- After losing his Ponds, he decided to retire completely
Clara, his Impossible Girl, was what dragged him down from his cloud-based exile. Her mystery re-awakened his sense of wonder, and he’s kept her close ever since. But he knows time is running out, that their time together is limited.
That said, simple death seems to easy… What will her fate be? She was wearing a bird necklace again at the end of this episode, much like the one she wore in Bells of St John. She’s done so much, can even pull off ‘being the Doctor’ as we have seen repeatedly. Her ‘fairy godmothers’ are River and Missy. She’s been trained by the best.
Except like I say above the show is moving back to the Doctor’s perspective. And we don’t need another Doctor… However there is plenty of room for more gods, as Ashildr so ably illustrates.
Clara has always been the Impossible Girl, a ‘rebellious bird’. Living in stories, creating stories, watching over and looking after the Doctor.
If Ashildr (by name and by choice) is/has become the Doctor’s Valkyrie, the patron saint of those left behind, then Clara (=bright) Oswin (=god’s friend) Oswald (=god’s power) - his self-appointed patron saint when she jumps into his time stream - is, surely, destined for something… more than just death.
The season’s tagline is ‘Born to Save the universe’. And somehow that line was what sprung to mind during this exchange:
DOCTOR: Ashildr, I think I'm very glad I saved you.
ASHILDR: Oh, I think everyone will be.
We have themes. We also have plot points. The word ‘hybrid’ is attached to Gallifrey and Skaro, to Daleks and Time Lords.
We have players - the Doctor, Davros, Missy, Ashildr, Clara.
How will it all pan out? What has Moffat got up his sleeve?
And what will the Doctor do when he loses Clara…
DOCTOR [OC]: Who's going to tell me that Clara Oswald is really dead?
MISSY: He'll burn everything. Us too.
He doesn’t. But do not tempt a desperate man…