View original postWe're one week away from the season seven finale now. I feel strange about this, for a couple reasons. The first is that the season arc has been muted and disjointed all year long. As far as I know, this is mostly a reaction by the show to fans who didn't like how arc-heavy season six was. I get that criticism, but I wish the show hadn't gone so far to the opposite extreme. Season five had a nice balance, I thought.
Unless the clues were so submerged and obtuse, I saw no thread through the season except for Clara, the Impossible Girl. Which is unfortunate, because I like piecing the puzzle together. I remember watching Season 4 and perking up every time a planet went missing (the Lost Moon of Poosh!), and though I could not have realized it led to Davros and a reality engine, it was still entertaining to find the clue
View original postOf course, she could still show up in future episodes after learning his name, but the longer she stays the more the show has to deal with the issue of her actor getting older when she shouldn't, and with the danger of her losing all relevance. Moffat won't be with the show forever either, and you figure he would want to wrap her storyline up while he can. He wouldn't be able to trust another showrunner to do it. I think her time has come.
But think about River's life. He was stolen by Madame Kovarian, raised by the Silence to kill the doctor from the very beginning. She is the little girl in the space suit in "Day of the Moon," that little girl is left homeless in NYC, and regenerates into "Mels," Amy Ponds best friend from a young age through and beyond high school. We meet "Mels" in "Let's Kill Hitler," where "Mels" regenerates into River Song as we know her now. All I'm saying is that it seems possible for a Time Lord to age. And really, who's to say River is full-on Time Lord anyway. She received all of that "power" after conceived inside the TARDIS. She may be like them but not completely like them. And she used all of her regenerative powers in "Let's Kill Hitler" to save the doctor, so as far as I'm concerned, she's mostly human now.
View original postIt seems as though Moffat is making an effort to tie a lot of things back to River Song's first appearance. In Silence in the Library and Forest of the Dead, there were a lot of references that seemed random at the time, but Moffat has followed through on quite a few of them. River mentions that she dated an android once — this was the Tesselecta in season six, when it was being run by the Doctor and they went on a picnic at the lake. River mentions that she's seen a whole army run away from him. This was in A Good Man Goes to War in season six. River mentions the wreck of the Byzantium, which happens in season five. He's going to tie River back into the end of her story as well, if he possibly can, and now might be the time to do it.
In "Silence in the Library," River convinces Ten to trust her implicitly by whispering the Doctors name into her ear.
Also, I just found this little nugget at Wikipedia on the page for River Song:
River will next appear in the series seven finale, broadcast in May 2013, entitled "The Name of the Doctor."[5] From River's perspective the events of this episode take place after the events of "Forest of the Dead."[6]
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't "Forest of the Dead" where the Doctor uploaded the dead River's conscious into CAL? [Footnote 5 is from the BBC, but footnote 6 is thus: "DWM Preview:The Name of the Doctor". Doctor Who Magazine (Panini Comics) (460). June 2013 So it appears to be a recent revelation.]
View original postBut what's the Doctor's secret? I have no idea. I can't even make a theory. Anything I could say would be a wild guess. If there's some secret behind his identity, two general ideas suggest themselves. One is that the First Doctor was not actually his first incarnation, and that whoever he was before was someone we would recognize (or he did something before stealing the TARDIS and running away, and that something is a secret). The other is that his name is tied to something important, such as the lock on the Time War or some ancient Gallifreyan deity. But it could be anything.
Which is why I'm not even going to bother theorising. All I wish for is that the Doctor's name is something simple, like Ethan or Tim. Though I will say in "Journey to the Center of the TARDIS" Clara reads the Doctors name in a margin of the book History of the Last Great Time War. Though her knowledge of the name causes no calamity, she never mentions it out loud (and subsequently loses it by episodes end). His name could be the password to unlock that war. Which would be frightening.
View original postIt's also possible that by answering the question, the Doctor is going to somehow unleash his dark side. This is something that ties back into the old series. I've never seen the pertinent episodes, but I've read about them. At one point an earlier Doctor met something called the Valeyard, which was described as a dark version of himself that potentially appears somewhere around his twelfth incarnation.
Well, we're sort of close to that now. All through Moffat's run, we've seen hints of the Doctor's darker side. We saw it in the Dream Lord in season five. We saw it in how angry he got in A Good Man Goes To War. And in the latter part of season seven, we've seen little allusions to the Doctor as a monster. The lady in Hide said that he has a sliver of ice at his heart, and that Clara should be careful with him. In The Crimson Horror, the blind lady names him her monster. In Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS, he becomes a literal monster as one of the burned bodies that came back through time to chase them. He killed all the Time Lords, and that's changed him, made him darker. Perhaps whatever happens at Trenzalor is going to unleash the Valeyard, and Eleven and Ten will need to team up in order to stop it. But this is still just random guessing.
I like this idea. We saw how the Doctor acts without a companion, particularly after Donna ends her companionship and before he meets up with the Master in "The End of Time." He can be a bit too clinical sometimes without that human element. To get an embodiment of his sinister half would be enjoyable.
View original postPart Two — The Impossible Girl
Clara's actor has stated that Clara has met the Doctor more than three times. This suggests that we've seen Clara somewhere else, in some other form. But where?
Some people think she's Jenny, the Doctor's daughter. The same chair was in Clara's pod in Asylum of the Daleks and in Jenny's pod in The Doctor's Daughter. That could be a coincidence of props, and I think it is. I see no way we could have seen Clara being born and growing up if she were Jenny.
And they were two entirely different ships. What is the likelihood someone would bring with them a console chair from one ship to another. It's more likely that the chair is model #63592 for all small-class star cruisers.
View original postBut if Moffat is tying a lot of things back to River's first appearance ... what if Clara comes from that same two-parter?
Charlotte Abigail Lux. CAL.
The little girl programmed into the computer at the heart of the Library. She looks a lot like Clara, in a way, when we see her as a child. At the end of Forest of the Dead, River Song's neural pattern is uploaded into CAL's computer. But that means ... that River's knowledge of everything that happens in all the years she knows the Doctor.
This seems more likely if "The Name of the Doctor" truly occurs after "Forest of the Dead."
Also, did you know the original title for this season finale was called "The Funeral of River Song." Just throwing that out there.
View original postAt the end of Forest of the Dead, Charlotte says to River that she's a very clever girl. Clara's catchphrase is to call the Doctor a clever boy. In that same conversation, River says to Charlotte that the Doctor is an impossible man. Clara is the Doctor's impossible girl.
I quite like this symmetry, and had not noticed it before.
View original postI'm trying to tie this together by coming up with some crazy, clever way in which CLARA can be an acronym just like CAL was, but the closest I can get is Charlotte Lux And River, with nothing for the final A.
Allons-y! I know, wrong Doctor.
View original postBut the gist of the idea is that the various incarnations of Clara are all somehow projections of the Library computer, coming to help the Doctor in places where River's data ghost knows she'll be needed. How does that work? The only thing I can think of are the strange adaptive androids we saw in The Bells of St. John. The Doctor noted that they can look exactly like you think they should look, that they'll appear as something you're expecting. So they could be a baby, a little girl, and a grown woman all from the same construct. I don't think she even knows it. She thinks she's normal. But somewhere deep inside, that big old computer and all its knowledge is lurking.
A big computer with nigh limitless knowedge. Could one say she may be a Great Intelligence?
View original postAlso, we know that River needs to learn how to fly the TARDIS at some point. When this came up, she indicated that she learned from the best, but that the Doctor wasn't there that day. Might have just been a joke. But maybe she learns from Clara, who somewhere inside has access to River's own memories of learning from Clara. A delicious paradox.
Also, if the Doctor gives River the red setting sonic screwdriver to River, who goes back to "Silence in the Library" and gives the sonic screwdriver to the Doctor who then continues to use it, who ever made the screwdriver in the first place?
View original postReasons Why I'm Probably Wrong:
- The lady in Hide told the Doctor that Clara was a normal girl. She didn't sense any robotics going on. But maybe there's a real consciousness in there, and that's what the lady sensed?
Meh. She was from the 70s. Would robots even register as an option to someone, paranormal psychic or not?
View original post2. This idea doesn't use the Great Intelligence anywhere. Since it showed up in both The Snowmen and The Bells of St. John, two Clara-centric episodes, there's a strong possibility that it has something to do with her. There is absolutely no other reason for Moffat to bring it back as the bad guy in the second of those episodes, if it has nothing to do with the overall plot.
And in the preview for next weeks finale, Richard E. Grant is returning for the episode,and I believe I saw him in physical form, so it's extremely likely that Victorian Walter Simeon (played by Grant and under control of the Great Intelligence) is directly related to Victorian/present Clara.
View original postLooking at that second reason, there's a chance that Clara is actually somehow created or set into motion by the Great Intelligence as a way to specifically help keep the Doctor alive. Why? So he can get to Trenzalor, where he'll be forced to answer the question and reveal his secret. This is something that the Silence waged a war to prevent. Whatever happens when he answers the question, it's bad.
So maybe it's something that a bad guy, like the Great Intelligence, wants to happen.
How ironic that the most bad-assiest villians in recent Whovian history happen to be a group who may have been trying to save the universe.
View original postIn this theory, it's actually Victorian Clara who's the original. After she died helping the Doctor, the Great Intelligence used her as a basis for creating other Claras and placing them at points where they could help the Doctor so he would get to Trenzalor. Maybe to serve its own purposes, or maybe just as revenge, making sure the Doctor would come to the place where something's going to happen that's termed "the Fall of the Eleventh".
I like all of this except for the use of the android "Spoonheads." Incidentally, Spoonhead was my band name in college.
View original postBut there's still a third theory. There have been several hints that Clara is somehow connected to Rose. The color red comes up around Clara a lot, and she wore a rose in her hair when we first saw her in Asylum of the Daleks. We know that Rose is coming back in the 50th anniversary special, so maybe there really is a connection. Maybe it comes back to Bad Wolf, when Rose seeded things across time and space to help the Doctor. She might have seeded different versions of Clara as well somehow, into places where she could see she would be needed. If this makes Clara an anomaly, that may be why the TARDIS doesn't like her.
When I first saw this theory, I just felt it HAD to be the right answer. But as time passed, it just felt more and more disingenuous.
View original postOne week from now, I guess we'll get to see how wrong all these ideas are. Hooray!
And it will be an end to a rather mediocre half-season. Perhaps my filter is based on watching Doctor Who in large chunks to prepare for a new season. Maybe I wasn't used to sitting all week long and letting a previous episode fester and pick apart its weaknesses. But these past eight or so episodes just feel weak. Perhaps it's New Companion syndrome.
Either way, I'm still excited to see the impossible explained.
