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Well, that didn't last long...
Steven Moffat on Clara Becoming the Doctor in DOCTOR WHO Series 8.
"The thing about Clara is she thinks the show is called Clara. She really does. She has no idea she’s number two in the credits, which is why we did that joke in “Death in Heaven.” She’s got a high opinion of herself, not in a conceited way, but in a correct way. She knows she’s extremely clever and capable, and she doesn’t feel like she particularly fits in the world that she lives in.
[...]
When I first wrote Clara, I thought, “Oh, this is fun. If the Doctor were a young woman living in contemporary Britain, it’d be a bit like her.”
[...]
So, Clara’s not the Doctor; she’s not the same person as the Doctor, but – the traditional thing is to say the hero and the archenemy are mirrors of each other. Are they? Are they though? Not really. I think it’s more likely that friends are mirrors of each other. If you watch any close friendship, the extent to which they start to duplicate each other is quite interesting, even with Dr. Watson and Sherlock Holmes. While they’re different people, they have similar appetites.
So, that's my lovely theory out the window, but at least I wasn't far wrong...
"The thing about Clara is she thinks the show is called Clara. She really does. She has no idea she’s number two in the credits, which is why we did that joke in “Death in Heaven.” She’s got a high opinion of herself, not in a conceited way, but in a correct way. She knows she’s extremely clever and capable, and she doesn’t feel like she particularly fits in the world that she lives in.
[...]
When I first wrote Clara, I thought, “Oh, this is fun. If the Doctor were a young woman living in contemporary Britain, it’d be a bit like her.”
[...]
So, Clara’s not the Doctor; she’s not the same person as the Doctor, but – the traditional thing is to say the hero and the archenemy are mirrors of each other. Are they? Are they though? Not really. I think it’s more likely that friends are mirrors of each other. If you watch any close friendship, the extent to which they start to duplicate each other is quite interesting, even with Dr. Watson and Sherlock Holmes. While they’re different people, they have similar appetites.
So, that's my lovely theory out the window, but at least I wasn't far wrong...
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She knows she’s extremely clever and capable, and she doesn’t feel like she particularly fits in the world that she lives in. She’s a bit more like the Doctor in the first place. She’s not really very good at living a normal life. The other companions, like most people, like you and me, can be quite good at living normal lives. I’m very happy living my normal life, I’m sure you are too. Going to the shops seems fine for an adventure, but Clara’s not like that.
I think it's really interesting that Moffat says Clara is the one companion of recent times who really doesn't feel like she fits into the world she lives in - I would have said that applies much more to Amy. Certainly of the young Amy of S5, and even really of Amy in S6. She's so scared of living a domestic, 'normal' life, the Doctor has to convince her it will be an 'adventure'. She goes through a succession of very different jobs, almost gets a divorce due to S6-induced trauma, and even in her domestic bliss she always has one ear out for the Tardis engines. And then at the end, she DOES live a really great, happy, successful life….in a time period that is not really her own.
Meanwhile, Clara certainly DOES get addicted to the adventure, and certainly DOES see herself as the hero and not a secondary player (and good for her!) but she also has a small family she's close to, and family friends she will put herself out for (the Maitlands) and a job and her own flat (not one the Doctor has bought for her). Yes, it spirals out of control, and yes she lets her relationship fall apart because she wants the adventure more….but I see Clara as fitting in quite easily in this world. She may WANT more, she may be bored by the mundanity of daily life (and aren't all the Companions, at some point?! I remember Rose certainly was) but I don't think I interpret her quite the same way Moff seems to here.
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Oh he lies through HIS TEETH. But for now I shall accept his word. ;)
I think it's really interesting that Moffat says Clara is the one companion of recent times who really doesn't feel like she fits into the world she lives in - I would have said that applies much more to Amy.
I think there is a distinction to be made here... (Because I thought that too.) The Doctor & Amy were pretty co-dependent. 'Grew up together' as it were. He broke her and messed up her life and tried to put her back together and so forth. But in the end, if she had to make a choice she always chose Rory.
Clara, as he points out, loves Danny but still keep running away with the Doctor. (Of course the Doctor is also a jerk towards Danny.) BUT. What was my point again? Yes, Clara just has a normal life, uninfluenced by the Doctor, yet she becomes addicted to the lifestyle. As Moffat says, not because she loves the Doctor (Rose), and not because she craves validation (Donna, in great part)... She wants to run the show, as it were. Maybe that's why she keeps getting mirrored - she's no ones sidekick. (Thinking out loud here.) She becomes the Doctor, but it comes pretty naturally to her. Whether that's the Doctor corruptive influence, or her natural instinct... Well. But look at the echoes. They're desperate to get away.
OK, must run. And need to collect my thoughts into something coherent. ;)
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Clara also does seem to have a somewhat unusual approach to life (and other people). And just the fact that she's picked up traveling through all space and time as a *hobby* says a lot about her. For Amy, it seemed more like an escape (from making choices about her life)- you know, neverneverland- and eventually she no longer needs to escape. But Clara's motives...she does seem a lot more like the Doctor, just caught on the wonder and adrenaline and curiosity.
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Yes, that's it! Thank you for encapsulating it so perfectly!!!
But Clara's motives...she does seem a lot more like the Doctor, just caught on the wonder and adrenaline and curiosity.
Mmmmm. There seems to be a little 'stole a Time Lord and ran away' - it's always her choice, and she sets all the rules.
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Mmmmm. Yes, that is the key difference between them, you're right. Their journeys go in opposite directions. I just found some really great meta unpicking that a bit here: http://aflawedfashion.tumblr.com/post/105358530418 (you may have already seen it)
I think also possibly it's a matter of Moffat's perspective as an older, married, settled man vs the perspective of younger fans growing up in the economic crisis? Maybe? As a 20-something with no real idea of what I want to "do" with my life, I really strongly identified with Clara back in BOSJ - she had employment, of sorts, at the Maitlands, but was basically putting off 'real life' (getting a steady job, getting her own place, etc) and treading water. She was a bit bored, and procrastinating, but didn't feel so *completely* hopeless about it all that she had to ditch everything and run away, as Amy did.
To me, that feels absolutely accurate. It's not that she *doesn't fit* into the world she lives in, it's that she hasn't worked out HOW she fits into that world as yet...that's how I read it anyway. That's how I feel a lot of the time, and why I think she's such a great character.
Interestingly, by the time of the 50th anniversary ep, she's both more settled in the world - steady job, own flat, soon to get a boyfriend etc - and also LESS attached to it, as the adventure addiction is really starting to take hold and she always has one foot in the Tardis. By the end of S8 there's really very little holding her to her real life on Earth (besides her dad and her gran), and this is why I would love to see her ending up on Gallifrey...
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What I DO think Moffat has got bang on is that Clara secretly wants to be the Hero Of The Story - we KNOW she grew up reading Amelia Williams books, we know she's genre-savvy as a result ('good guys don't have zombie creatures') and I can well imagine that she would have daydreamed as a child about being Harry Potter, or Frodo or Lyra Silvertongue or any other fictional character with an Epic Destiny to fulfill. (again, I did. my childhood dream was to be Aladdin. Or Harry Potter.)
Amy, by contrast, had her whole childhood warped by the Doctor's crash landing in her garden, and we know that SHE grew up playing at having adventures *with* her Raggedy Doctor. But the difference is - she made Rory be the Raggedy Doctor. She would have seen herself as the friend of the Doctor, and probably at some point when she was older, the girlfriend of the Doctor. Whilst I have no doubt whatsoever that it was Amy rather than Rory who made up the narratives and the rules in their games, and she probably rescued the Raggedy Doctor a great deal, but he always featured. Her was her imaginary friend and hero. Whereas I doubt there was any magic space hero in Clara's childhood daydreams - *she*, the literature-loving bossy control freak would be the hero. That's how she reads to me. And so when she gets the chance, through the Doctor, to actually BE that hero...it's no wonder she gets hooked.
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Amy was, essentially, training herself up to the ultimate companion - but Clara was dreaming about her own adventures. And she was always so very independent, holding her own, and the Doctor - when he found her - so focussed on her (clearly she was doing him a favour by coming along), that it's no wonder she ended up where she did.
ETA: Actually, I think this might be the key to her? (Presuming she isn't the Doctor.) Right from the start she has been structured as 'the hero'. The whole Impossible Girl arc is about how she saves him. She's the companion who doesn't 'develop' into a hero and grasp some shining moment, but about the Companion who was always self-assured.
It's interesting to look at their last parting in the light of this. "You made me feel special." This is such an un-Clara-like thing to say - except of course that the Doctor then immediately returns the compliment, thus keeping them as equals.
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DOCTOR: You're thinking of stopping, aren't you? You and Rory.
AMY: No. I mean, we haven't made a decision.
DOCTOR: But you're considering it.
AMY: Maybe. I don't know. We don't know. Well, our lives have changed so much. But there was a time, there were years, when I couldn't live without you. When just the whole everyday thing would drive me crazy. But since you dropped us back here, since you gave us this house, you know, we've built a life. I don't know if I can have both.
DOCTOR: Why?
AMY: Because they pull at each other. Because they pull at me, and because the travelling is starting to feel like running away.
DOCTOR: That's not what it is.
AMY: Oh, come on. Look at you, four days in a lounge and you go crazy.
DOCTOR: I'm not running away. But this is one corner of one country in one continent on one planet that's a corner of a galaxy that's a corner of a universe that is forever growing and shrinking and creating and destroying and never remaining the same for a single millisecond. And there is so much, so much to see, Amy. Because it goes so fast. I'm not running away from things, I am running to them before they flare and fade forever.
DANNY: Why do you do it? Why do you fly off in the box with him? The truth. Please, just this once.
CLARA: Because it's amazing. Because I see wonders.
CLARA: Is it like-
DOCTOR: Like what?
CLARA: An addiction?
DOCTOR: You can't really tell if something's an addiction till you try and give it up.
CLARA: And you never have.
DOCTOR: Let me know how it goes.
CLARA: So, trip to space, anyone?
RUBY: I want my mum.
SAMSON: I slightly want my mum, too.
CLARA: Tell them, Mister Pink, what an educational opportunity
DANNY: You, you go. This. This is enough for me.
CLARA: What? Coronal ejections, geomagnetic storms. How often do you get a playlist like that?
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But at least we know he was thinking about it!
*BEAMS*
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HELLO IF YOU'RE OUT THERE YOU'RE AWESOME AND ALSO MY WRITING HERO OK.
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Both characters grated on my nerves for well the same reasons. LOL!
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Well hopefully acceptance is the first step towards embracing them! <3
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It does seem like the key point is her standing as the hero rather than the companion… and come to think about it, that might have been one factor as to why I personally connected with Clara less this season, though I still enjoyed her. We all connect more or less with characters depending on what we see in them, and one of the traits I enjoyed most in s7!Clara, beside the sharpness, wit and resourcefulness, was… the nanny side. Her subtle, instinctive insightfulness, and the instant way she related to children, protected and comforted them and communicated with them. Those traits did not disappear overnight, but they got less of a focus as her focus shifted to different things. To being in control, for one part. Rather than a Doctor who easily went along with that he wanted, but that she observed a lot—as he observed her—she had a Doctor who was harder to keep her footing with, but it wasn't about figuring him out as much. With other characters, she had insight moments too, but they seemed to take a less prominent place as she moved closer to the hero's place—and the hero is still a person who sees and relates to other people, but mostly they have got a greater responsibility that takes quite a bit of their focus. And with Danny—I will admit that I winced a bit at the parts about Danny, both in the interview here and at some times of the show, because they didn't fit with that image I had of Clara, sensing things, understanding people. But it is somewhat more understandable in the context of a story. Because love stories, big romances don't seem to be her kind of story. And she wants things to go her way, she wants to make it work out, but in a relationship, no one is the hero. She wants to write this story, yet it just doesn't fit her very well, and all too often she just doesn't seem to consider there's another protagonist in her story who might have to get more of a word in how they reach a happy ending. She loves Danny, and she means well, but half the time it's like she's not seeing him properly…
Mmmm. I'll stop rambling there, but it's enlightening… And very much personality-centred rather than all about plot, so as far as I'm concerned, there could still very well be a big plot thing regarding Clara that he's lying about! ;P
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But because Twelve is so much more distant and alien, she becomes that too - instead of being the softening influence that a Companion usually is, she changes as a response to him.
Rather than my Doctor, it the Doctor declaring her my Clara. And she is. Oooooh.
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Oh absolutely. He is completely folded around her. She shaped him as a child, showed him which TARDIS to steal, saved him at every point in his timeline, deleted the Daleks' knowledge of him, got him a new cycle of regenerations, and does a fantastic job of being him.
This is another reason I think there must be more to her... Not that I don't think an ordinary human could do all this, but that kind of weight - surely there's something Gallifreyan about her? River had a lot of narrative power, but that was due to who she was. And Clara is, apparently, just a normal girl...
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Yes and no? As in - yes she becomes more mythic after she jumps, literally becoming 'The Impossible Girl', but it's a single moment, and doesn't really get mentioned afterwards. She has a narrative power that's inherent, and that's from before she jumps. In her first adventure she tells the Doctor to pop off and fetch some coffee, she'll solve the problem.
(I'm not sure where I'm going with this, I'm just thinking out loud. Did you read my big Clara essay? Everything about the leaf is still relevant and something I wonder about.)
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