DW 9.12 Hell Bent
Meta café time! Hi! And Happy Easter (again). :)
This (as many metas before it) goes down the mirror route. I'm cutting out a lot of stuff to focus on the main mirrors, so if you have any thoughts of your own, please share. I could have kept writing and had something 10 times longer, but I'm going back to work tomorrow and would like to feel like I've accomplished something... Plus, this is 4 months late.
(With many many thanks to promethia_tenk for being my hybrid-brain. *g*)
DAVROS: How far we have come to go home again
Doctor Who (like many other serialised shows, such as Buffy) usually build up a season slowly. The Big Bad might be glimpsed at the beginning, and cryptic clues are often laid out.
See ‘Bad Wolf’ from S1, the Saxon posters from S3, the crack in Amy’s Wall in S5 and so on. In S8 (which is pretty text book in this regard), episode 1 ended with Missy serving tea to the newly deceased Half-Face Man, leaving us all to guess who and what she was.
S9 is different.
It opens with a whole gallery of Big Bads, not only giving us Missy, but Daleks, Skaro and Davros too! But then… nothing. (Apparently.) There were villains aplenty, but the usual structure fell away…
Or rather, this time round what we got were metaphors: Missy, Davros, the Daleks and even Skaro - they were all mirrors for the real ‘Big Bads’ to come…
Let's start from the end, and I’ll show you what I mean.
Skaro & Gallifrey
MISSY: We're on a planet. And that is not a space station. That is a building. And the rest of the planet, the whole thing, is invisible.
(Clara dances around.)
CLARA: That's ridiculous.
MISSY: Well, yes, of course it is. I mean, how would you ever find your glasses? Or the little girl's room? And what if you kissed an ugly? Unless, when you're part of the atmosphere, you start syncing with the spectrum.
CLARA: Why would anybody hide a whole planet?
MISSY: That would rather depend on the planet, dear.
(The space station is revealed to be just one of many similar shaped buildings on a desert planet: Skaro)
MISSY: No.
The Magician's Apprentice
The lines in bold being the important ones… Skaro was just the forerunner, the mirror, the thing to clue us in to the fact that Gallifrey was back too, just hiding:
GENERAL: Gallifrey is currently positioned at the extreme end of the time continuum, for its own protection. We're at the end of the universe, give or take a star system.
Hell Bent
The planets bookend the season, and in many ways we travel from one to the other…
Daleks & Time Lords
And with their planets, the inhabitants also return. Of course the Daleks have been back for ages, but the parallels are spelled out very carefully:
DOCTOR: My people are alive. They didn't die. I brought them back. I found a way.
DAVROS: Is this true?
DOCTOR: Gallifrey is back in the sky. I don't know where, I may never know. But Gallifrey is back and it is safe from both of us.
DAVROS: Doctor, my most sincere congratulations.
DOCTOR: I'm sorry?
DAVROS: This is wonderful news. Beyond all hope. I congratulate you.
DOCTOR: Why are you saying that?
DAVROS: A man should have a race, a people, an allegiance. A man should belong, Doctor. Believe me, please. I am happy for you. So happy.
The Witch’s Familiar
And the Doctor goes from being surrounded by Daleks, to being surrounded by his own people. Finally. He has been through hell, but no one can argue that he does not deserve to find his home.
Of course it’s not the home coming he had once hoped for. He cares about the ordinary people, but he is furious with the leadership…
RASSILON: What is he doing? What does he want? Revenge?
OHILA: The Doctor does not blame Gallifrey for the horrors of the Time War.
RASSILON: I should hope not.
OHILA: He just blames you.
Hell Bent
Which brings me to this…
Davros & Rassilon
Rassilon is to the Time Lords as Davros is to the Daleks… (Yes, yes, Omega, I know, but he’s lost in another dimension.)
And the Doctor deposes both of them, literally taking their seat:
And notice how in both cases he’s watched Clara die, is grief stricken and furious, and wants her back… In S8 he rejected the power given to him by Missy, refusing her army and rather unhappy about Earth declaring him their emergency President… No such qualms here. He readily grasps the power available to him, as now he has a use for it.
MISSY & THE HYBRID
The red thread through S9 is Clara’s death. She dies, or her life is in imminent danger, or she dies ‘by proxy’ in every episode/two-parter… (Apart from Sleep No More? Which I plain forgot existed until this meta was about 90% done. Well, she goes in the pod thing…) Anyway the Doctor’s response is what's interesting. Let me show you what I mean. I have bolded the most relevant parts.
Opening two-parter:
DOCTOR: Because if Clara Oswald is really dead, then you'd better be very, very careful how you tell me.
MISSY: Listen to that. The Doctor without hope.
DOCTOR [OC]: Who's going to tell me? Who's going to go first?
[Sewers]
MISSY: Nobody is safe now.
DOCTOR [OC]: All the power Davros had is mine. Everything he had, I have. Who's going to tell me that Clara Oswald is really dead?
MISSY: He'll burn everything. Us too.
Lake/Flood two-parter:
DOCTOR: This isn't about saving me. I'm a dead man walking. I'm changing history to save Clara.
[...]
DOCTOR: Big day for you. Time travel, twice!
BENNETT: Whoa, really? When are we going to?
DOCTOR: Off the map. Out of the rule book. What if I don't die? What if I refuse? I'm going to go back to the base and I'm going to save Clara, because that's what I do. And I don't see anyone here who's going to stop me.
Ashildr/Lady Me two-parter:
DOCTOR: I don't mean the war. I'll lose any war you like. 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.
[...]
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. […] And if anyone happens to be listening, and you've got any kind of a problem with that, to hell with you! [Clearly meaning the Time Lords]
Zygon two-parter:
OSGOOD: You've gone quiet because I mentioned Clara. You think she might be dead.
DOCTOR: Yes.
OSGOOD: Are you okay?
DOCTOR: I don't know. I'm still in the hope phase.
OSGOOD: How's that going?
DOCTOR: Hell. Please talk about something else.
[...]
CLARA: So, you must have thought I was dead for a while?
DOCTOR: Yeah.
CLARA: How was that?
DOCTOR: Longest month of my life.
CLARA: It could only have been five minutes.
DOCTOR: I'll be the judge of time.
Face the Raven:
DOCTOR: Yes, it is, you can [fix it], and you will, or this street will be over. I'll show you and all your funny little friends to the whole laughing world. I'll bring UNIT, I'll bring the Zygons. Give me a minute, I'll bring the Daleks and the Cybermen. You will save Clara, and you will do it now, or I will rain hell on you for the rest of time.
CLARA: Doctor, stop talking like that.
ASHILDR: You can't.
DOCTOR: I can do whatever the hell I like. You've read the stories. You know who I am. And in all of that time, did you ever hear anything about anyone who stopped me?
ASHILDR: I know the Doctor. The Doctor would never
DOCTOR: The Doctor is no longer here! You are stuck with me. And I will end you, and everything you love.
[...]
DOCTOR: I was lost a long time ago. She was saving you. I'll do my best, but I strongly advise you to keep out of my way. You'll find that it's a very small universe when I'm angry with you.
Finale two-parter:
DOCTOR: If you think because she is dead, I am weak, then you understand very little. If you were any part of killing her, and you're not afraid, then you understand nothing at all. So, for your own sake, understand this. I am the Doctor. I'm coming to find you, and I will never, ever stop.
[...]
DOCTOR: No, General, I don't know that. Everybody, stay exactly where you are! No moving about. On pain of death, no-one take a selfie!
GENERAL: These people are unarmed.
DOCTOR: So are you.
GENERAL: Doctor, I will not let you leave here. That's the sidearm of the President's personal security. There isn't a stun setting.
DOCTOR: I will not let Clara die.
[...]
OHILA: You have gone too far. You have broken every code you ever lived by.
DOCTOR: After all this time, after everything I've done, don't you think the universe owes me this?
Now that last line rings a bell… From The Snowmen:
VASTRA: So then, Doctor, saving the world again? Might I ask why? Are you making a bargain with the universe? You'll save the world to let her live?
DOCTOR: Yes. And don't you think, after all this time and everything I've ever done, that I am owed this one?
VASTRA: I don't think the universe makes bargains.
Clara has, since her beginning, been the thing he clings to. In The Snowmen she’s the one who drags him off his cloud where he’s been grieving after losing the Ponds, and there’s a sense that this one he’ll get to ‘keep’.
And if he loses her… He’ll echo his Ponds right down the line:
OLDER AMY: I am going to pull time apart for you.
The Girl Who Waited
DOCTOR: River, no one can help me. A fixed point has been altered. Time is disintegrating.
RIVER: I can't let you die.
DOCTOR: But I have to die.
[...]
RIVER: I'll suffer if I have to kill you.
DOCTOR: More than every living thing in the universe?
RIVER: Yes.
The Wedding of RIver Song
And goodness, doesn’t that mirror things beautifully - except with the Doctor as River:
CLARA: What if one last heartbeat is all I've got? What if Time isn't healing? What if the universe needs me to die?
DOCTOR: The universe is over! It doesn't have a say any more! We're standing on the last ember, the last fragment of everything that ever was. As of this moment, I'm answerable to no-one!
Both the Doctor and Clara need to die in order for time to reassert itself. Remember how I talked about the monsters of the opening episodes being mirrors of the real monsters at the end… These episodes it’s like they’re playing musical chairs. With Clara in the Doctor’s role, the one who went to meet death calmly, and the Doctor as River, plain refusing to follow the rules and allow the one he loves to die like they should.
But River in turn was channelling someone else… Someone whose presence I was thrilled to note in The Girl Who Died, and I’m beyond delighted that he actually turned out to be the end-game:
Hello there, Time Lord Victorious, the Winner of the Time War. Let me go back and pull out the relevant quotes from my collection above. Because what sets him apart is his unaccountability (yay Handlebars - I can do anything that I want!):
DOCTOR: I'm changing history to save Clara. And I don't see anyone here who's going to stop me.
DOCTOR: I can do anything. There's nothing I can't do. Nothing. And if anyone happens to be listening, and you've got any kind of a problem with that, to hell with you!
DOCTOR: You know who I am. And in all of that time, did you ever hear anything about anyone who stopped me?
DOCTOR: The universe is over! It doesn't have a say any more! As of this moment, I'm answerable to no-one!
And here is Waters of Mars:
ADELAIDE: Is there nothing you can't do?
DOCTOR: Not any more.
Now we call him ‘The Time Lord Victorious’ (or in this case ‘the Hybrid’ - I’ll get back to that), but really, which character wants their will done, not caring about anyone else?
If you said ‘Missy’, well done!
In the S8 finale Clara was desperate to save Danny, and the Doctor is equally desperate in S9. But where S8 had Missy to act out Clara’s wishes, S9 doesn’t need her - the Doctor takes over both her’s and Clara’s role.
(Like I said, the characters play musical chairs. Missy was there at the beginning of S9, but the finale doesn’t need her - the Doctor is acting her part.)
And the Doctor’s role of being the voice of reason is taken by - Ashildr. (Odin’s Valkyrie! She has come to collect Clara, the fallen warrior…)
This is where hybrids and mirrors sort of end up in a glitterball.
Ashildr starts as a Clara mirror, and we see how reckless the Doctor can be when he wants to save someone he cares about. (Foreshadowing etc.)
But by her second episode Lady me has become a Doctor-mirror, except one holding him to account. There is very much a sense (for me at least) of Moffat going through the RTD era and retelling the same stories. Lady Me is an immortal much like Jack, and - like him - abandoned, but Lady Me gets to say her piece, and gets to rebuke the Doctor for his flaws and his tendency to play god with people’s lives.
And at the end of everything, she tells him in no uncertain terms that he needs to stop, and that he’s wrong.
However he has moved on from Waters of Mars. Where Ten plain refused to listen to Adelaide Brook (until she killed herself), Twelve eventually acquiesces to Lady Me’s point…
Now the interesting thing is why does the Doctor go down this path. Yes, he’s very very attached to Clara, something which goes both ways:
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
But more than that, Missy helps educate Clara on how the Doctor functions:
CLARA: Because he's clever.
MISSY: Yes, but there's lots of clever dead people. I love killing clever clogs, they make the best faces.
CLARA: Because he always assumes he's going to win. He always knows there's a way to survive. He just has to go and find it.
The Witch’s Familiar
It’s a lesson Clara takes to heart and goes on to use to great effect:
CLARA: …you're missing something.
DOCTOR: What?
CLARA: How you're going to win. You always miss it, right up until the last minute.
The Girl Who Died
And this becomes so ingrained that the Doctor can hear her voice even when she isn’t there:
DOCTOR: Do I have to know everything?
BLACKBOARD (CLARA): How are you going to
DOCTOR: Clara, I can't always
BLACKBOARD (CLARA): Win??
Heaven Sent
Except this a double-edged sword. In the end, the Doctor’s desperate need to ‘win’, to find a way out, means an inability to let go and accept the inevitable.
And yes, his face plays into it…
DOCTOR [memory]: Who frowned me this face? Why this one? Why did I choose this face?
CLARA: Doctor, what's wrong with your face?
DOCTOR: I think I know why I chose it.
DOCTOR [memory]: It's like I'm trying to tell myself something.
DOCTOR: I think I know what I'm trying to say.
DOCTOR: I know where I got this face, and I know what it's for.
CLARA: Okay, what's it for?
DOCTOR: To remind me. To hold me to the mark. I'm the Doctor, and I save people.
The Girl Who Died
The episode shows flashbacks to the Doctor saving Caecilius, and this gets mirrored in the finale in as literal a fashion as is possible. First the arrival of the TARDIS, its light so white it blinds those watching:
And then the outstretched hand, offering salvation.
Of course, in Pompeii the Doctor was acting on the distraught Donna’s wishes (“Just save someone!”), whereas here he is - as stated above - working much like he was in The Waters of Mars, deliberately interfering in established events…
As Lady Me point out:
ASHILDR [on scanner]: How did you meet her?
CLARA: Missy!
DOCTOR: Missy.
ASHILDR: Missy. The Master. The lover of chaos, who wants you to love it, too. She's quite the matchmaker.
DOCTOR: Clara's my friend.
ASHILDR: I know. And you're willing to risk all of Time and Space because you miss her. One wonders what the pair of you will get up to next.
And Missy knew what she was doing:
DOCTOR: You put us together.
MISSY: I kept you together.
DOCTOR: Why?
MISSY: Cos she's perfect, innit? The control freak and the man who should never be controlled. You'd go to hell if she asked. And she would.
Hybrid is of course the watch-word we’re given off the bat, and we were wondering who it could be. It was assumed to be half-Time Lord, half-Dalek, although of humans are also something of a warrior race… It’s interesting to contemplate that both Clara & the Doctor end up inside Daleks in the opening episodes:
Again with the mirroring - the Dalek casings stand in for the later monstering, visible signs of what’s to come… Yes, there will be a Hybrid, but not the one they think:
CLARA: What happened to your coat? The velvety coat. I liked that one, it was it was very Doctor-y.
DOCTOR: I changed it.
CLARA: Why?
DOCTOR: Well, I can't be the Doctor all the time.
Writing this, I was reminded of a post I once wrote about the Tenth Doctor:
Meta: Why Ten is like Wesley.
The key sentence being this one:
His intentions are good but it hardly matters, because at the edge of his tolerance Ten would probably burn the world to reach them.
Mirrored in the season itself:
MISSY: He'll burn everything. Us too.
This is Twelve, in Hell Bent. (The episodes are beautifully named.) He’s not as broken as Ten, who always had that broken core, but apply enough pressure for long enough, and yes, Twelve can snap…
However, unlike Ten (who had to literally die), Twelve's fate was more symbolic and multi-layered. You can see it as a cosmic payback for Donna, but whichever way you read it, he tried to play god and it backfired. But the how is what's interesting.
"Run you clever boy, and remember me" - this was Clara's line, right from the beginning. I have talked before about how she tied into Gallifrey & the Time War from her first appearance in Asylum of the Daleks, her role to rewrite the story: Because of Clara Gallifrey is saved, and back.
But that also means that her part is done.
Clara: I was born to save the Doctor. But the Doctor is safe now. I’m the Impossible Girl, and my story is done.
The Name of the Doctor
It's not that her story is done, but her story with the Doctor. Moffat has been rebooting the show, slowly but surely, and Clara has been a major driving force in bringing it all full circle. Everything is as it was - Gallifrey has been found, and the Doctor is once more the renegade. But his ties to Clara still held him back, tethered him to the past and all the pain.
And so, in keeping with Greek mythology, he has to drink from the river Lethe, achieving forgetfulness. In the Aeneid, Virgil writes that it is only when the dead have had their memories erased by the Lethe that they may be reincarnated. Which means his fate was both punishment and cleansing.
So, we have basically achieved a complete re-boot by now. What that means for the future, however, I cannot say... Looking ahead to The Husbands of River Song (which I will not go into now), he certainly seems more able to accept loss.
I can come up with no grand ending, no big final point. It's not that kind of finale.
All I have is an old Time Lord, in a diner, telling a story... And as Clara learned on her very first adventure, the Doctor is composed of stories:
~~~
As for Clara, then the Magician's Apprentice was most definitely ready to take strike out on her own; had grown up and become her teacher's equal… Flying off to see the universe in a TARDIS of her own, ultimately heading for Gallifrey, the Doctor passing her the Doctor-y torch as he 'dies' in a scene almost too fitting for words.
For her, of course, her memories were something she was willing to die for. Clara of the infinite stories, who has lived and died over and over again - her story was always her own, and should never be erased. And thus, her 'fate' was absolutely perfect. Anyone who’s read my Clara Meta: Schrödinger’s Companion essay will know what I’m talking about.
Clara was always all the things, her quantum-ness inbuilt.
The fact that she is now literally Schrodinger’s Companion, neither dead or alive, makes me so happy I don’t quite know how express it. She blew into this world on a leaf, and she is still blowing...
ETA: There may, at some point in the future, be a looong Clara essay about EVERYTHING CLARA, but since I've just written 4 Clara essays for the 101 Clara's project, I need a bit of a break. (Although those essays were what re-booted my meta-brain and got me writing this, so it's all swings & roundabouts...) Also, since I'm editing - have another vid! Cause there are so many gorgeous things going on:
This (as many metas before it) goes down the mirror route. I'm cutting out a lot of stuff to focus on the main mirrors, so if you have any thoughts of your own, please share. I could have kept writing and had something 10 times longer, but I'm going back to work tomorrow and would like to feel like I've accomplished something... Plus, this is 4 months late.
(With many many thanks to promethia_tenk for being my hybrid-brain. *g*)
DAVROS: How far we have come to go home again
Doctor Who (like many other serialised shows, such as Buffy) usually build up a season slowly. The Big Bad might be glimpsed at the beginning, and cryptic clues are often laid out.
See ‘Bad Wolf’ from S1, the Saxon posters from S3, the crack in Amy’s Wall in S5 and so on. In S8 (which is pretty text book in this regard), episode 1 ended with Missy serving tea to the newly deceased Half-Face Man, leaving us all to guess who and what she was.
S9 is different.
It opens with a whole gallery of Big Bads, not only giving us Missy, but Daleks, Skaro and Davros too! But then… nothing. (Apparently.) There were villains aplenty, but the usual structure fell away…
Or rather, this time round what we got were metaphors: Missy, Davros, the Daleks and even Skaro - they were all mirrors for the real ‘Big Bads’ to come…
Let's start from the end, and I’ll show you what I mean.
Skaro & Gallifrey
MISSY: We're on a planet. And that is not a space station. That is a building. And the rest of the planet, the whole thing, is invisible.
(Clara dances around.)
CLARA: That's ridiculous.
MISSY: Well, yes, of course it is. I mean, how would you ever find your glasses? Or the little girl's room? And what if you kissed an ugly? Unless, when you're part of the atmosphere, you start syncing with the spectrum.
CLARA: Why would anybody hide a whole planet?
MISSY: That would rather depend on the planet, dear.
(The space station is revealed to be just one of many similar shaped buildings on a desert planet: Skaro)
MISSY: No.
The Magician's Apprentice
The lines in bold being the important ones… Skaro was just the forerunner, the mirror, the thing to clue us in to the fact that Gallifrey was back too, just hiding:
GENERAL: Gallifrey is currently positioned at the extreme end of the time continuum, for its own protection. We're at the end of the universe, give or take a star system.
Hell Bent
The planets bookend the season, and in many ways we travel from one to the other…
Daleks & Time Lords
And with their planets, the inhabitants also return. Of course the Daleks have been back for ages, but the parallels are spelled out very carefully:
DOCTOR: My people are alive. They didn't die. I brought them back. I found a way.
DAVROS: Is this true?
DOCTOR: Gallifrey is back in the sky. I don't know where, I may never know. But Gallifrey is back and it is safe from both of us.
DAVROS: Doctor, my most sincere congratulations.
DOCTOR: I'm sorry?
DAVROS: This is wonderful news. Beyond all hope. I congratulate you.
DOCTOR: Why are you saying that?
DAVROS: A man should have a race, a people, an allegiance. A man should belong, Doctor. Believe me, please. I am happy for you. So happy.
The Witch’s Familiar
And the Doctor goes from being surrounded by Daleks, to being surrounded by his own people. Finally. He has been through hell, but no one can argue that he does not deserve to find his home.
Of course it’s not the home coming he had once hoped for. He cares about the ordinary people, but he is furious with the leadership…
RASSILON: What is he doing? What does he want? Revenge?
OHILA: The Doctor does not blame Gallifrey for the horrors of the Time War.
RASSILON: I should hope not.
OHILA: He just blames you.
Hell Bent
Which brings me to this…
Davros & Rassilon
Rassilon is to the Time Lords as Davros is to the Daleks… (Yes, yes, Omega, I know, but he’s lost in another dimension.)
And the Doctor deposes both of them, literally taking their seat:
And notice how in both cases he’s watched Clara die, is grief stricken and furious, and wants her back… In S8 he rejected the power given to him by Missy, refusing her army and rather unhappy about Earth declaring him their emergency President… No such qualms here. He readily grasps the power available to him, as now he has a use for it.
MISSY & THE HYBRID
The red thread through S9 is Clara’s death. She dies, or her life is in imminent danger, or she dies ‘by proxy’ in every episode/two-parter… (Apart from Sleep No More? Which I plain forgot existed until this meta was about 90% done. Well, she goes in the pod thing…) Anyway the Doctor’s response is what's interesting. Let me show you what I mean. I have bolded the most relevant parts.
Opening two-parter:
DOCTOR: Because if Clara Oswald is really dead, then you'd better be very, very careful how you tell me.
MISSY: Listen to that. The Doctor without hope.
DOCTOR [OC]: Who's going to tell me? Who's going to go first?
[Sewers]
MISSY: Nobody is safe now.
DOCTOR [OC]: All the power Davros had is mine. Everything he had, I have. Who's going to tell me that Clara Oswald is really dead?
MISSY: He'll burn everything. Us too.
Lake/Flood two-parter:
DOCTOR: This isn't about saving me. I'm a dead man walking. I'm changing history to save Clara.
[...]
DOCTOR: Big day for you. Time travel, twice!
BENNETT: Whoa, really? When are we going to?
DOCTOR: Off the map. Out of the rule book. What if I don't die? What if I refuse? I'm going to go back to the base and I'm going to save Clara, because that's what I do. And I don't see anyone here who's going to stop me.
Ashildr/Lady Me two-parter:
DOCTOR: I don't mean the war. I'll lose any war you like. 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.
[...]
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. […] And if anyone happens to be listening, and you've got any kind of a problem with that, to hell with you! [Clearly meaning the Time Lords]
Zygon two-parter:
OSGOOD: You've gone quiet because I mentioned Clara. You think she might be dead.
DOCTOR: Yes.
OSGOOD: Are you okay?
DOCTOR: I don't know. I'm still in the hope phase.
OSGOOD: How's that going?
DOCTOR: Hell. Please talk about something else.
[...]
CLARA: So, you must have thought I was dead for a while?
DOCTOR: Yeah.
CLARA: How was that?
DOCTOR: Longest month of my life.
CLARA: It could only have been five minutes.
DOCTOR: I'll be the judge of time.
Face the Raven:
DOCTOR: Yes, it is, you can [fix it], and you will, or this street will be over. I'll show you and all your funny little friends to the whole laughing world. I'll bring UNIT, I'll bring the Zygons. Give me a minute, I'll bring the Daleks and the Cybermen. You will save Clara, and you will do it now, or I will rain hell on you for the rest of time.
CLARA: Doctor, stop talking like that.
ASHILDR: You can't.
DOCTOR: I can do whatever the hell I like. You've read the stories. You know who I am. And in all of that time, did you ever hear anything about anyone who stopped me?
ASHILDR: I know the Doctor. The Doctor would never
DOCTOR: The Doctor is no longer here! You are stuck with me. And I will end you, and everything you love.
[...]
DOCTOR: I was lost a long time ago. She was saving you. I'll do my best, but I strongly advise you to keep out of my way. You'll find that it's a very small universe when I'm angry with you.
Finale two-parter:
DOCTOR: If you think because she is dead, I am weak, then you understand very little. If you were any part of killing her, and you're not afraid, then you understand nothing at all. So, for your own sake, understand this. I am the Doctor. I'm coming to find you, and I will never, ever stop.
[...]
DOCTOR: No, General, I don't know that. Everybody, stay exactly where you are! No moving about. On pain of death, no-one take a selfie!
GENERAL: These people are unarmed.
DOCTOR: So are you.
GENERAL: Doctor, I will not let you leave here. That's the sidearm of the President's personal security. There isn't a stun setting.
DOCTOR: I will not let Clara die.
[...]
OHILA: You have gone too far. You have broken every code you ever lived by.
DOCTOR: After all this time, after everything I've done, don't you think the universe owes me this?
Now that last line rings a bell… From The Snowmen:
VASTRA: So then, Doctor, saving the world again? Might I ask why? Are you making a bargain with the universe? You'll save the world to let her live?
DOCTOR: Yes. And don't you think, after all this time and everything I've ever done, that I am owed this one?
VASTRA: I don't think the universe makes bargains.
Clara has, since her beginning, been the thing he clings to. In The Snowmen she’s the one who drags him off his cloud where he’s been grieving after losing the Ponds, and there’s a sense that this one he’ll get to ‘keep’.
And if he loses her… He’ll echo his Ponds right down the line:
OLDER AMY: I am going to pull time apart for you.
The Girl Who Waited
DOCTOR: River, no one can help me. A fixed point has been altered. Time is disintegrating.
RIVER: I can't let you die.
DOCTOR: But I have to die.
[...]
RIVER: I'll suffer if I have to kill you.
DOCTOR: More than every living thing in the universe?
RIVER: Yes.
The Wedding of RIver Song
And goodness, doesn’t that mirror things beautifully - except with the Doctor as River:
CLARA: What if one last heartbeat is all I've got? What if Time isn't healing? What if the universe needs me to die?
DOCTOR: The universe is over! It doesn't have a say any more! We're standing on the last ember, the last fragment of everything that ever was. As of this moment, I'm answerable to no-one!
Both the Doctor and Clara need to die in order for time to reassert itself. Remember how I talked about the monsters of the opening episodes being mirrors of the real monsters at the end… These episodes it’s like they’re playing musical chairs. With Clara in the Doctor’s role, the one who went to meet death calmly, and the Doctor as River, plain refusing to follow the rules and allow the one he loves to die like they should.
But River in turn was channelling someone else… Someone whose presence I was thrilled to note in The Girl Who Died, and I’m beyond delighted that he actually turned out to be the end-game:
Hello there, Time Lord Victorious, the Winner of the Time War. Let me go back and pull out the relevant quotes from my collection above. Because what sets him apart is his unaccountability (yay Handlebars - I can do anything that I want!):
DOCTOR: I'm changing history to save Clara. And I don't see anyone here who's going to stop me.
DOCTOR: I can do anything. There's nothing I can't do. Nothing. And if anyone happens to be listening, and you've got any kind of a problem with that, to hell with you!
DOCTOR: You know who I am. And in all of that time, did you ever hear anything about anyone who stopped me?
DOCTOR: The universe is over! It doesn't have a say any more! As of this moment, I'm answerable to no-one!
And here is Waters of Mars:
ADELAIDE: Is there nothing you can't do?
DOCTOR: Not any more.
Now we call him ‘The Time Lord Victorious’ (or in this case ‘the Hybrid’ - I’ll get back to that), but really, which character wants their will done, not caring about anyone else?
If you said ‘Missy’, well done!
In the S8 finale Clara was desperate to save Danny, and the Doctor is equally desperate in S9. But where S8 had Missy to act out Clara’s wishes, S9 doesn’t need her - the Doctor takes over both her’s and Clara’s role.
(Like I said, the characters play musical chairs. Missy was there at the beginning of S9, but the finale doesn’t need her - the Doctor is acting her part.)
And the Doctor’s role of being the voice of reason is taken by - Ashildr. (Odin’s Valkyrie! She has come to collect Clara, the fallen warrior…)
This is where hybrids and mirrors sort of end up in a glitterball.
Ashildr starts as a Clara mirror, and we see how reckless the Doctor can be when he wants to save someone he cares about. (Foreshadowing etc.)
But by her second episode Lady me has become a Doctor-mirror, except one holding him to account. There is very much a sense (for me at least) of Moffat going through the RTD era and retelling the same stories. Lady Me is an immortal much like Jack, and - like him - abandoned, but Lady Me gets to say her piece, and gets to rebuke the Doctor for his flaws and his tendency to play god with people’s lives.
And at the end of everything, she tells him in no uncertain terms that he needs to stop, and that he’s wrong.
However he has moved on from Waters of Mars. Where Ten plain refused to listen to Adelaide Brook (until she killed herself), Twelve eventually acquiesces to Lady Me’s point…
Now the interesting thing is why does the Doctor go down this path. Yes, he’s very very attached to Clara, something which goes both ways:
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
But more than that, Missy helps educate Clara on how the Doctor functions:
CLARA: Because he's clever.
MISSY: Yes, but there's lots of clever dead people. I love killing clever clogs, they make the best faces.
CLARA: Because he always assumes he's going to win. He always knows there's a way to survive. He just has to go and find it.
The Witch’s Familiar
It’s a lesson Clara takes to heart and goes on to use to great effect:
CLARA: …you're missing something.
DOCTOR: What?
CLARA: How you're going to win. You always miss it, right up until the last minute.
The Girl Who Died
And this becomes so ingrained that the Doctor can hear her voice even when she isn’t there:
DOCTOR: Do I have to know everything?
BLACKBOARD (CLARA): How are you going to
DOCTOR: Clara, I can't always
BLACKBOARD (CLARA): Win??
Heaven Sent
Except this a double-edged sword. In the end, the Doctor’s desperate need to ‘win’, to find a way out, means an inability to let go and accept the inevitable.
And yes, his face plays into it…
DOCTOR [memory]: Who frowned me this face? Why this one? Why did I choose this face?
CLARA: Doctor, what's wrong with your face?
DOCTOR: I think I know why I chose it.
DOCTOR [memory]: It's like I'm trying to tell myself something.
DOCTOR: I think I know what I'm trying to say.
DOCTOR: I know where I got this face, and I know what it's for.
CLARA: Okay, what's it for?
DOCTOR: To remind me. To hold me to the mark. I'm the Doctor, and I save people.
The Girl Who Died
The episode shows flashbacks to the Doctor saving Caecilius, and this gets mirrored in the finale in as literal a fashion as is possible. First the arrival of the TARDIS, its light so white it blinds those watching:
And then the outstretched hand, offering salvation.
Of course, in Pompeii the Doctor was acting on the distraught Donna’s wishes (“Just save someone!”), whereas here he is - as stated above - working much like he was in The Waters of Mars, deliberately interfering in established events…
As Lady Me point out:
ASHILDR [on scanner]: How did you meet her?
CLARA: Missy!
DOCTOR: Missy.
ASHILDR: Missy. The Master. The lover of chaos, who wants you to love it, too. She's quite the matchmaker.
DOCTOR: Clara's my friend.
ASHILDR: I know. And you're willing to risk all of Time and Space because you miss her. One wonders what the pair of you will get up to next.
And Missy knew what she was doing:
DOCTOR: You put us together.
MISSY: I kept you together.
DOCTOR: Why?
MISSY: Cos she's perfect, innit? The control freak and the man who should never be controlled. You'd go to hell if she asked. And she would.
Hybrid is of course the watch-word we’re given off the bat, and we were wondering who it could be. It was assumed to be half-Time Lord, half-Dalek, although of humans are also something of a warrior race… It’s interesting to contemplate that both Clara & the Doctor end up inside Daleks in the opening episodes:
Again with the mirroring - the Dalek casings stand in for the later monstering, visible signs of what’s to come… Yes, there will be a Hybrid, but not the one they think:
CLARA: What happened to your coat? The velvety coat. I liked that one, it was it was very Doctor-y.
DOCTOR: I changed it.
CLARA: Why?
DOCTOR: Well, I can't be the Doctor all the time.
Writing this, I was reminded of a post I once wrote about the Tenth Doctor:
Meta: Why Ten is like Wesley.
The key sentence being this one:
His intentions are good but it hardly matters, because at the edge of his tolerance Ten would probably burn the world to reach them.
Mirrored in the season itself:
MISSY: He'll burn everything. Us too.
This is Twelve, in Hell Bent. (The episodes are beautifully named.) He’s not as broken as Ten, who always had that broken core, but apply enough pressure for long enough, and yes, Twelve can snap…
However, unlike Ten (who had to literally die), Twelve's fate was more symbolic and multi-layered. You can see it as a cosmic payback for Donna, but whichever way you read it, he tried to play god and it backfired. But the how is what's interesting.
"Run you clever boy, and remember me" - this was Clara's line, right from the beginning. I have talked before about how she tied into Gallifrey & the Time War from her first appearance in Asylum of the Daleks, her role to rewrite the story: Because of Clara Gallifrey is saved, and back.
But that also means that her part is done.
Clara: I was born to save the Doctor. But the Doctor is safe now. I’m the Impossible Girl, and my story is done.
The Name of the Doctor
It's not that her story is done, but her story with the Doctor. Moffat has been rebooting the show, slowly but surely, and Clara has been a major driving force in bringing it all full circle. Everything is as it was - Gallifrey has been found, and the Doctor is once more the renegade. But his ties to Clara still held him back, tethered him to the past and all the pain.
And so, in keeping with Greek mythology, he has to drink from the river Lethe, achieving forgetfulness. In the Aeneid, Virgil writes that it is only when the dead have had their memories erased by the Lethe that they may be reincarnated. Which means his fate was both punishment and cleansing.
So, we have basically achieved a complete re-boot by now. What that means for the future, however, I cannot say... Looking ahead to The Husbands of River Song (which I will not go into now), he certainly seems more able to accept loss.
I can come up with no grand ending, no big final point. It's not that kind of finale.
All I have is an old Time Lord, in a diner, telling a story... And as Clara learned on her very first adventure, the Doctor is composed of stories:
~~~
As for Clara, then the Magician's Apprentice was most definitely ready to take strike out on her own; had grown up and become her teacher's equal… Flying off to see the universe in a TARDIS of her own, ultimately heading for Gallifrey, the Doctor passing her the Doctor-y torch as he 'dies' in a scene almost too fitting for words.
For her, of course, her memories were something she was willing to die for. Clara of the infinite stories, who has lived and died over and over again - her story was always her own, and should never be erased. And thus, her 'fate' was absolutely perfect. Anyone who’s read my Clara Meta: Schrödinger’s Companion essay will know what I’m talking about.
Clara was always all the things, her quantum-ness inbuilt.
The fact that she is now literally Schrodinger’s Companion, neither dead or alive, makes me so happy I don’t quite know how express it. She blew into this world on a leaf, and she is still blowing...
Click to viewETA: There may, at some point in the future, be a looong Clara essay about EVERYTHING CLARA, but since I've just written 4 Clara essays for the 101 Clara's project, I need a bit of a break. (Although those essays were what re-booted my meta-brain and got me writing this, so it's all swings & roundabouts...) Also, since I'm editing - have another vid! Cause there are so many gorgeous things going on: