- “All the Clara echoes are girls who remember - remember how to save the Doctor. They create themselves, just like the snowmen.” – Again, nothing really to add here. I just loved your use of that quote from The Snowmen about it being ‘snow that fell before’. Of course Oswin (‘I snow’) is snow that has fallen before. It’s a beautiful line drenched in dramatic irony and I had completely forgotten about it until you brought it up here. Kind of unrelatedly, I love how this links to Bad Wolf Rose (and now the Moment) – I’ve really enjoyed following all the parallels between Clara and Rose. But the idea of ‘I Create Myself’ is one that I really enjoy - not just in the wibbly-wobbly time-travel-paradox sense that Clara ‘Oswin’ and Bad Wolf Rose (and, I guess, River) embody, but also in the sense that all the Doctor’s companions ‘create themselves’. Davros and others seem to enjoy telling the Doctor that he ‘makes’ his companions into what they become – whether you see that as ‘weapons’ or ‘heroes’ or something else – but I prefer the idea that the Doctor just acts as a catalyst, and that Clara and Amy and Martha and the others make themselves into the amazing people they become. (…sorry, that got off-topic a bit.)
- “The Doctor almost stops being the Doctor with no one around to observe him. (This can of course be tied in to Tinkerbell!Doctor and the War Doctor etc. etc.)” - Yes, absolutely. See also The Waters of Mars. This is also one of the reasons I was convinced that Gallifrey was due to come back – the Doctor’s companions and friends observe him on a small scale, but without Gallifrey at his back there is no bigger picture to place him in. He is ‘running away’ from something that is no longer there for him to run from, he is a ‘rebel’ against something that does not exist and so cannot be rebelled against. I’ve seen people complaining about the Doctor’s seemingly changeable attitude towards the Time Lords, but for me it’s all quite easy to reconcile. He needs them to be there, so they can see him, to make him real and so he can rebel against them once again, with them all watching. Of course, something else might be watching and pulling strings… the Valeyard has been mentioned, and might be due to show up (I’m not as up on my Classic Who as I would like to be, but the 4th / 5th Doctor’s sort of equivalent to the Valeyard was called ‘The Watcher’, wasn’t it?)
Ok, this all got quite long, and I still think I didn’t say everything I wanted to. But I said the main thing, which is I LOVE YOUR BRAIN.
ETA: Remembered what else I meant to say! Your piece about Clara acting as a mirror, and the Doctor constantly looking at her to see how to act...it all ties in v nicely to Moffat's other major obsession (alongside eyes, boxes and memory) which is how to define a 'Good Man'. We see Twelve asking Clara in the trailer 'Tell me...am I a good man?'. It's been a theme of the last could of series, and looks like it's v much set to continue. And the Doctor doesn't know himself, so he looks to Clara to show him...looking forward to a lot more on this!
ETA 2: Re. The thing in my previous comment about how looking at someone is a two-way process that can change both participants: "The eyes are not the window to the soul, they are the doors" -> "A door, once opened, can be stepped through in either direction." (The Girl In The Fireplace) (...that's just struck me. I'll stop ETA-ing now. Probably.)
Re: Splitting this into two comments because it got vvv long...Part 2!
- “The Doctor almost stops being the Doctor with no one around to observe him. (This can of course be tied in to Tinkerbell!Doctor and the War Doctor etc. etc.)” - Yes, absolutely. See also The Waters of Mars. This is also one of the reasons I was convinced that Gallifrey was due to come back – the Doctor’s companions and friends observe him on a small scale, but without Gallifrey at his back there is no bigger picture to place him in. He is ‘running away’ from something that is no longer there for him to run from, he is a ‘rebel’ against something that does not exist and so cannot be rebelled against. I’ve seen people complaining about the Doctor’s seemingly changeable attitude towards the Time Lords, but for me it’s all quite easy to reconcile. He needs them to be there, so they can see him, to make him real and so he can rebel against them once again, with them all watching. Of course, something else might be watching and pulling strings… the Valeyard has been mentioned, and might be due to show up (I’m not as up on my Classic Who as I would like to be, but the 4th / 5th Doctor’s sort of equivalent to the Valeyard was called ‘The Watcher’, wasn’t it?)
Ok, this all got quite long, and I still think I didn’t say everything I wanted to. But I said the main thing, which is I LOVE YOUR BRAIN.
ETA: Remembered what else I meant to say! Your piece about Clara acting as a mirror, and the Doctor constantly looking at her to see how to act...it all ties in v nicely to Moffat's other major obsession (alongside eyes, boxes and memory) which is how to define a 'Good Man'. We see Twelve asking Clara in the trailer 'Tell me...am I a good man?'. It's been a theme of the last could of series, and looks like it's v much set to continue. And the Doctor doesn't know himself, so he looks to Clara to show him...looking forward to a lot more on this!
ETA 2: Re. The thing in my previous comment about how looking at someone is a two-way process that can change both participants: "The eyes are not the window to the soul, they are the doors" -> "A door, once opened, can be stepped through in either direction." (The Girl In The Fireplace) (...that's just struck me. I'll stop ETA-ing now. Probably.)