Oh look, I have a blog. Let me attempt to write down my thoughts about the next Doctor Who companion in a vaguely coherent manner...
Ok, so - I am really, REALLY hoping that Oswin is the next companion. I mean, actually Oswin, Dalek Oswin, not some mysteriously-similar-looking relative. Because here's the thing: the doctor takes ordinary people and turns them into weapons. He doesn't *mean* to, of course, and mostly they are more confident and badass at the end of it. But still - it happens all the time, it is one of his biggest fears, one of the things he feels most guilty about, and one of the things at least one (possibly more?) of his worst enemies has accused him of.
In A Town Called Mercy, Jex is carefully designed to be a mirror for the Doctor - besides the whole killing/healing/running/bringing death in his wake parallels, he has also taken ordinary people and absolutely LITERALLY turned them into weapons. As Sherlock would say: so far, so obvious.
SO - what if the Doctor's next companion is a weapon who he turns into an ordinary person? "Give me a Dalek any day", he says - what if what he gets is Oswin, a woman who in a very real sense "carries her prison with her". What if he reverses his usual polarity and makes her NOT a weapon? This doesn't have to mean he literally de-Daleks her. But perhaps he helps her come to terms with being a Dalek, and helps her to more permanently overcome the killer instincts that lie dormant in her Dalek shell.
Speaking of shells - all these references to eggs and Christmas and lightbulbs - they're all very glaring symbols of rebirth, new beginnings, the advent of a saviour, etc. At Christmas this year, the Doctor may get something that wasn't on his Christmas list - a weapon - and help her to be reborn as a person. And in so doing, he is also reborn, just as the 'monstrous' Gunslinger became an Angel.
Of course, we've already seen him do this to some extent with River, who is another parallel to the most recent episode. The 'Ultimate Weapon' who became his wife. Which makes Jex a rather wonderful parallel for Madame Kovarian, who also took a person and turned her into a weapon, with the aim of wiping out a perceived source of evil in the universe. Of course, we *know* the Doctor, we know he's not the evil 'Predator', etc etc that his enemies see him as. But this does not change the fact that an awful lot of problems in the universe have stemmed from his existence - "we have grown stronger in fear of you", said the Dalek, echoing River's "all this, my love, in fear of you". 'Doctor' means 'warrior' in the language of the Gamma Forest. We are not meant to sympathise with Kovarian at all, but we are encouraged to do so with Jex - just as we are meant to applaud the Doctor's decision not to kill Jex, but conversely we also applaud Amy's decision to leave Kovarian to her fate. "This is not how we roll, Doctor", said Amy - but it was, for her, just once. What a confusing message.
But perhaps that's ok. Perhaps there is not supposed to be a definitive answer on this. Right and wrong are not always so black and white, as Jex himself points out in the episode. "Humans, you're so linear" - the Doctor is anything but. Especially the Eleventh Doctor. He is wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey, he is a cheat, a thief, a trickster, an escapist. Boundaries are not relevant (see - kissing all the Ponds!), which is why it is so hard for him to know what to do when he tries to force Jex over the physical demarcation line between good and evil, life and death, guilt and innocence, Mercy and the great desert beyond. Such lines are meaningless, and he should not try to pretend they really exist.
His prison is his guilt, which ultimately stems from his love of the universe and the people in it ("you care so much...") - and thus he carries his prison with him - as do Amy, Rory, River, Oswin, everyone - and it is also the thing that sets him free. The boundaries between his prison and his freedom are blurred. (Interestingly, Toby Whithouse's last episode was The God Complex, which is intricately associated in my mind with the Vienna Teng song 'Augustine' - "lead me now/I understand/Faith is both a prison and an open hand" - clearly this is a theme of his.) Which is why when he tries to act like the Tesselector, the "Judgement Death Machine" and push Jex over the line, he doesn't know what to do. Unlike Ten, who was always so confident in his actions, even when they were wrong, Eleven has grown enough to recognise the inherent uncertainty of things. Perhaps he has also grown enough to de-weaponise a Dalek, as Rose once did. We will see.
