I'm so happy.
I'm so, SO happy!
That was wonderful, joyous, delightful, emotional meta glory. I cried. That's the SECOND TIME Doctor Who has made me cry this season, and that's frankly setting dangerous new precedents.
Ok, so I have Thoughts as usual, but they're vague, waffly, as-yet-unformed Thoughts, because it's 1 o'clock the morning after the episode aired and they haven't had time to properly percolate yet. But I figure if I put them here it will at least get them out of my head, and allow me to think about other things. So:
Oh Clara, my Clara! As much as I *loved* the life that old!Clara had dreamed for herself, I'm so very glad that she is still young, that the Doctor did not accidentally miss 62 years of her life (as he did with Reinette, whose episode was referenced back in Deep Breath - what beautiful foreshadowing!). Clara and Twelve have grown so much together, and slot together so perfectly now that I can't wait to see more of their adventures together. They have both come such a long way. Yet they are both still recognisably the characters we met in their respective first episodes.
Clara, for example - I love all the little character notes that have got more developed but remained so constant. Her complete breakdown under the table as the Dream Crab was coming for her was wrenching and perfect. Clara has always been good - very, very good - at conquering her fear when faced with an enemy she can actually, well, face. She is so often 'more scared than she lets on' but is pretty good at controlling that fear when there's someone to talk at - the Cybermen in Death in Heaven, the Half Face Man in Deep Breath, the evil sun in Rings of Akhaten and Skaldak in Cold War. She is much *less* good with nebulous nasties - the possibility of a ghost in Hide, the potential monster in Listen, Skaldak once he's escaped from his armour and could be lurking anywhere on the submarine ready to trap her - Clara needs to be able to face her fears, literally, to best deal with them. And this is important for…meta reasons I will get onto later. Clara and faces is an important theme.
As for Darling Twelve…well, I know some people have struggled to warm to him, and he definitely hasn't made it easy. But Listen showed the truth about why is is as he is, and I think this episode reinforced it: he's just so frightened. He's at his most abrasive when he knows something is wrong, but doesn't know how to deal with it - see his abrupt 'bye' departure after he thinks they've all woken up the first time. He can still feel that 'ice cream headache', and so some part of him KNOWS there is still something wrong at that point, but he hasn't figured out what it is yet. Then he DOES figure it out, but has no idea how to deal with it, and he rushes back in and pretends to have 'deleted' everyone's name because they're probably all about to die now anyway. The post-Time War Doctor, as we have CONSTANTLY seen, is a little ball of trauma and rage and fear etc etc, and he deals with it in different ways. Nine was volatile, simmering, all this anger and grief just below the surface of his leather jacket, hidden by a veneer of ridiculousness and big grins, but very much there. Ten pushed it deeper inside, him and dealt with it by pretending to be human. But he very much needed his human friends to ground and steady him - without them, it all came bubbling back up in an explosion of self-denial and self-righteous anger. The Time Lord Victorious. Most recently, Eleventy repressed it deeper still, down beneath a childlike exterior, but it came out when he was very angry or under great pressure.
Twelve, however, has dealt with the Time War to some extent - he now knows he DIDN'T blow up his planet, and he has somewhat reconciled the War Doctor as part of himself. BUT Gallifrey is still missing, and there's the question of what state it will be in if and when he finds it, and if they will even welcome him back. Not to mention the trauma of the 900 years on Trenzalore which lead to his regeneration. Way back in the day, Ten gave a whole speech about how if you live long enough you get 'tired of losing everyone you love. Tired of watching everything turn to dust'. That was when he was a mere 900-and-something years old. He's waaaaay older now, and has lost so much more. Imagine spending 900 years in one place, watching children grow up, loving them, and seeing them die, generation after generation? Normally the Doctor would move on, literally move away, meet totally different unrelated people, and have new adventures that would allow his old friends to sleep peacefully in his memory (and whilst he's seen a LOT of death, very few of his actual companions DIED in his company, before Amy and Rory and River.) That was not possible on Trenzalore, so it's no wonder this next regeneration is so afraid, and manifests it in a deliberately rude, abrasive exterior which does not encourage closeness. He will only hold Clara's hand (<3). He professes to 'delete' people the moment they are safe and out of sight (we KNOW this is not true). He pretends to forget people's names, he insults them - perhaps then they are less likely to get close, to ask to come with him, less likely to leave him again. He knows now that he is nobody's 'boyfriend' (as his Tenth and Eleventh incarnations sometimes let themselves believe) and he is tired of loving people and losing them. He is like the grief-stricken and brooding Eleven on his cloud in The Snowmen, pushing people away. But he doesn't have Eleven's natural optimism to buoy him up - he's tired, from nearly 1000 years fighting a war. Nevertheless, we know, because this episode told us, that subconsciously the Doctor wants to be Santa Claus. He only lets himself relax into that role right at the end, when he believes Clara and everyone else is safe - and oh my god his JOY at flying the sleigh was the most beautiful thing ever - and then again when Clara agrees to travel with him, and they go skipping off to the Tardis. THAT, I really believe, is who Twelve is on the inside. It's who he would like to be. It's the version that slips out, just a little, through the cracks in the ice when he's overwhelmed with wonder or happiness ('the moon's an egg!', his little dance in Flatline, his 'robbing a bank, robbing a whoooole bank!' glee in Time Heist) but most of the time he's afraid and covers it up with rudeness.
Er. Anyway, that got rather more headcanon-y than meta there. I'll get on with the meta now, and as usual it's about EYES.
"We've been seen." The episode begins with Clara waking up as Santa crash lands on her rooftop, but her involvement in the story doesn't begin until one of the elves says that line - 'we've been seen'. Until that point, until Clara *sees* them, it doesn't matter what Santa and his elves are doing because as far as everyone else is concerned, they don't exist. They only conclusively start to 'exist' (as it were, in an episode all about dreams) when Clara SEES them. And so, here we are again. Right back to EVERYTHING I have previously said in two separate meta essays about seeing and existing in Doctor Who. And it also sets up everything that is to come in the rest of the episode.
"They can't see you until you see them". "They can hone in on their own image in someone else's brain...Third party perception" In a similar vein to the Weeping Angels and the Silence, here we have monsters that aren't monsters until you see them. Clara and the Doctor spent the past season becoming co-dependent to an EXTREME level, to the extent that Clara almost *became* the Doctor, and the Doctor was never sure of who or what he was unless Clara was there to witness him (again, see Listen). They looked into each other's eyes and souls and became each other, even looked THROUGH each others eyes via 'hacked optic nerves' (a phrase Moffat clearly likes - seriously, between Deep Breath, Flatline and Last Christmas I think Twelve must have said 'optic nerve' more than all the other Doctors put together) and the season ended with Clara's eyes replacing the Doctor's in the credits, in the most meta showrunning move to ever meta. At the end of Death in Heaven, Clara takes her eyes off the Doctor, as they part ways seemingly forever. And when she does…well, it's like she blinked. The next thing she - and we the audience - know is that her whole life has disappeared. On a Doylist level, Clara really DOESN'T exist without the Doctor - no Doctor Who, no Clara. Unless she were to get her own spinoff, if the show were to be cancelled, she would be cancelled too. We know nothing of what she has been doing between the end of Death in Heaven and the start of Last Christmas because the show wasn't on air. But this is true for all the companions - what makes this specific to Clara is that she has ALSO lost her whole life - 62 years pass in a dream, not really lived, because the Doctor wasn't there to see them.
At the end of Last Christmas…Clara needs to see herself in the mirror. She can't see herself through the Doctor, because she realises that the Doctor doesn't - can't - see her as she really is. Just as The God Complex showed us that Eleven always saw Amy as little Amelia Pond, Clara will always be 'his' Clara to the Doctor and even when she is 90 years old he still sees her with the face he knows. To be seen is to exist in the Doctor Who 'verse. That much has been made very clear. Just see me. If your friends don't see you, then who are you really? BUT. Perhaps we are now coming to explore the flip side of that? That you can't ONLY be seen through the eyes of others, or you can only ever be the person they want to see. "There is an alien organism wrapped around your face, keeping you warm and happy whilst it eats you"…this is….a rather extreme take on what the Doctor has done to Clara's life, but apt nonetheless? (And after all, as the Doctor actually SAYS in the episode because Moffat is a trolling troll, the Dream Crabs are ACTUAL "METAPHORICAL CONSTRUCTS") In order to be 'real' you simply can't see everything through the eyes/dreams of an alien metaphorical construct, you also need to see and recognise yourself. And Clara DOES, twice, in this episode when she examines herself in the mirror. I have no idea where Season 9 will be headed, and I'm giddily excited at the prospect of another season with my Clara and Twelve, but I hope that Gallifrey will be involved (hey, we are STILL getting glaring references to Christmas, Eggs and Lighbulbs, so I'm still clinging to that one!), and I hope that Clara and Twelve will continue to grow as a partnership and as individuals. I hope that Clara's transformation into the Doctor reached its apotheosis in Death in Heaven and we will now start to see her regain herself from her addiction to the Doctor, or perhaps reach a place (GALLIFREY) where her addiction can properly become her 'real life' and not a dangerous distraction from the ordinary.
A related theme to all of this is that of dreams v reality. The whole episode is a riff on Inception, dreams within dreams within dreams, stacked like Russian dolls, or perhaps like Clara's fragmented 'impossible' lives. The Dream Crabs 'alter perception', causing everyone to question 'is this real?' - a phrase that has cropped up many, many times in Clara's run. She's been surrounded by perception filters and altered versions of reality ever since Asylum. 'Does this look real to you?'. Clara's whole journey so far has been a quest for the 'real'. Who and what is 'real'? Does 'real' mean 'ordinary', and if so, does she really want it? From Oswin the Dalek who dreamed she was still a girl, to Victorian Clara, the barmaid who got herself a job as a governess, to our Clara, who rejected reality outright and demanded to go to hell to rescue her boyfriend, Ms Oswald has always been multiple. So what is 'real', and how important is it in Doctor Who? In a world with a time travelling police box, as the Doctor points out in this episode, reality is not easy to distinguish from unreality. The whole scene with Danny got me thinking about that lovely quote from the last Harry Potter book - 'Of course this is happening inside your head, but why on earth should that mean it is not real?'.
And, of course, what is 'real' for one person might not be for someone else. At the Doctor and Clara's last meeting, they lied to each other for their own good. For the last however long it's been for them, Clara's 'reality' has been that the Doctor is happily living on Gallifrey, and the Doctor's 'reality' has been that Clara is happily living with Danny. But those were both lies. They both hid their faces, hid their eyes, and lied to each other. The Dream Crabs are like the 'face huggers', they cover their victims' faces as they feast on them. They blind them, and stop others seeing their faces. They are masks. In order to survive, the mask must come off, must literally be torn off and crumble to dust, and then the truth can be visible again. This episode served to tear off the masks the Doctor and Clara wore for each other at the end of Death in Heaven. After the 'Danny is dead / Gallifrey is lost' conversation, the Doctor and Clara stare wordlessly at each other for long moments. Everything they were sure of since their last meeting has just been reframed. Even what they previously believed was the truth, in the 'real' world, has proven to be a lie. Their whole foundations have shaken up. Layers and layers and layers of masks came off, and as in the other Moffat-era dream episode, Amy's Choice, the Doctor and companion learn truths about themselves and each other by the end. 'Trust nothing, interrogate everything you see, in case it's a lie' (Amy's Choice: 'Trust nothing. From now on, trust nothing you see, hear or feel.')
At the end, when the Doctor has awoken Clara for real, he invites her back to the Tardis. He is nervous, excited, desperate, afraid, overjoyed, hopeful - you can see the emotions thrilling in his usually cold face. And he has no idea if she will say 'yes'. But their emotions clearly mirror each other's, just as their poses are a mirror for their very first meeting upon Twelve's sudden regeneration (no coincidence on the part of the director, I assume). The masks have come off. They are so happy to see each other again, to have a second chance. A new beginning. But it's not like the first beginning, with Clara and Eleven, when he was only chasing her mystery, or like the second beginning, with Clara and Twelve, when she was just trying to find her old friend. Now they know each other better, and they know themselves better. Now the Doctor knows who he is (just an idiot with a box!) and Clara has recognised herself in the mirror, and I am so full of hope for their journey ahead. <3
Ok, I'm pretty sure none of that made any sense because it's now 2am, oops.
Showing posts with label Eyes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Eyes. Show all posts
Friday, 26 December 2014
Thursday, 20 November 2014
Fearful Symmetry
What immortal hand or eye….?
I already talked about the theme of eyes, pre-finale. About how the-eyes-are-not-the-windows-to-the-soul-they-are-the-doors, and what that means for Clara's transformation into the Doctor (and vice-versa). About how to-be-seen-is-to-exist, and what that means for the Doctor's conception of his new identity (eye-dentity?). About all of the Doctor's comments on Clara's eyes ('Why are you all eyes?! Get them under control!' 'Don't do that with the eyes.') and all the eye imagery that has surrounded her all season ('Could you trust someone who looked back at you out of your own eyes?'). It's always, always been about the eyes.
Oh, look:
They only put her eyes in the goddamned title sequence.
That was it, that was the ultimate moment of Clara's Doctorhood, but also the ultimate moment of Clara being just Clara.
Let me explain.
Way back when, Ibishtar wrote a great essay on Clara as a metaphor for the show itself, which I always enjoyed, particularly as it dovetails nicely with my feeling that Amy represents fandom. This concept is taken to its natural conclusion with the use of Clara's eyes in place of the Doctor's in the title sequence - it is almost as if the title of the show itself has become 'Clara Who', the main question S7 (and the pre-finale weeks of S8) had us all asking. Audience and Doctor. It is almost indescribably meta! Clara, the companion through whose eyes we the audience are supposed to perceive events (that is the supposed role of the companion, is it not?) - she is now looking out at us. Clara the control-freak has taken over the show's titles, and thus the show itself. Clara, who has become almost addicted to Tardis travel, has become intertwined with the time vortex, seeing all of time and space. It's just a trick, a joke on the part of Steven Moffat, a momentary repeat of Clara's S7 arc - she's built up to be 'impossible' and it turns out she's just an ordinary woman who does an extraordinary thing - and yet the image is striking and works on a number of levels. And somehow feels much more organic to Clara's own story than it would have done for any previous companion.
Because whilst all the Doctor's companions are his best friends for the time they travel with him, and all try to put themselves on an equal footing with him as much as possible, Clara has taken that a step or two further. As many people have noticed and discussed, Clara has become ever more like the Doctor this season, more overtly and deliberately than any companion in New Who before her. But also more carefully. She wasn't 'ordinary companion' one moment and boom! Doctor! the next. Her whole, entire journey has been leading up to this. She has always been 'too perfect' for the Doctor. From every single perspective, her first appearance has foreshadowed this. Oswin, when we the audience first meet her, explicitly mirrors the Doctor:
DOCTOR [on screen]: How can you hack into everything? It should be impossible. You're in a crashed ship!
OSWIN: Long story. Is there a word for total screaming genius that sounds modest and a tiny bit sexy?
DOCTOR [on screen]: Doctor. You call me the Doctor.
OSWIN: See what you did there.
She echoes him in lots of other little ways, not least in the simple fact that she is not what she outwardly appears to be. But that exchange is the most obvious, and is the first little hint that we should expect more of this. (Side note: we also get, in the Nina conversation, an explicit mention of gender expectations, and gender-swapping, which became an important if subtle theme in S8, leading up to the Missy reveal. End side note.) In this episode, Oswin fundamentally changes the Doctor's existence by wiping him from the Daleks' memory banks. At the time, we thought 'who is she, to do this? Such a huge thing?' Little did we know back then that she would stop the Doctor destroying Gallifrey, or that she would save his whole timeline with her life, or that she would persuade the Time Lords to give him more regenerations, or that she would be the one to comfort the Doctor as a scared child. Little did we know the path she would take would lead her to become the Doctor. (Though some of us suspected! I remember writing about my desperate hope that she would follow Ace's intended storyline, and enter the Academy on Gallifrey...) But those first acts - the momentous memory deletion and Oswin's later self-sacrifice - they started a pattern that was noticeable at the time, but only visible in all its glory now we can see the whole tapestry.
The next time we see Clara is in The Snowmen, and this is arguably the first time the Doctor (as opposed to the audience) 'meets' Clara. He sees her face, he interacts with her physically, and it's through her that he discovers the link to Oswin and the mystery of the 'impossible girl'. And oh look what we get here:
DOCTOR: That was stupid.
CLARA: You were stupid, too.
DOCTOR: I'm allowed. I'm good at stupid.
GOVERNESS: That's the way to do it!
CLARA: Why does she keep saying that?
DOCTOR: Mirroring. Random mirroring. We need to get on the roof.
CLARA: This way!
DOCTOR: No, I do the hand grabbing. That's my job. That's always me!
'Mirroring. Random mirroring.' FFS, Moffat. Stop that. There's nothing 'random' about it! Clara and the Doctor are constantly mirroring each other, and here we have Clara performing an action that's 'always' the Doctor's role. She also demonstrates an almost uncanny ability to read and manipulate him already - I'm thinking of 'Pond' in the one word game here, and the umbrella-on-the-rooftop scene. Besides which, she is honoured with the Tardis-key-receiving ritual the very first time she steps in the Tardis! The first companion to have that. Also the first companion to try to destroy all the Tardis keys. The moment has been prepared for. Clara has always mirrored the Doctor, always been destined to become him.
We, the audience, see modern day Clara for the first time in the BOSJ prequel, which has young Clara and the Doctor mirroring each other on the swings, and Clara assuming the Doctor's role of giving advice to a lost soul. She got her mojo back, though (just as she Victorian!Clara reignites the grieving Doctor's zest for life, and Clara at Christmas gets him his life back).
In The Rings of Akhaten we see the first time Clara ever meets the Doctor, as a tiny child in the park with two hearts on her jumper. (She hits him in the face with a football <3) And, in TBOSJ, we see Clara meeting the Doctor properly for the first time as an adult. The first time she is really conscious of him. As in her previous two episodes, and as she continues to do for the rest of season 7, she is dressed in red and blue, the two colours most associated with the Doctor, with the Tardis and Gallifrey and the time vortex. Once again, she displays a preternatural ability to do things no 'normal' companion (as if any of them are ever 'normal') should be able to do to the Doctor, such as phone the Tardis without ever having met him. We now know, of course, that Missy gave her that phone number. From pretty early on, Clara sets herself up on an equal footing with him:
(Sitting at a round table, a la King Arthur and his knights, tugging a laptop back and forth)
DOCTOR: If I can't find them, you definitely can't.
CLARA: They uploaded me, remember? I've got computing stuff in my head.
DOCTOR: So do I.
CLARA: I have insane hacking skills.
DOCTOR: I'm from space and the future with two hearts and twenty seven brains.
CLARA: And I can find them in under five minutes plus photographs. Twenty seven?
DOCTOR: Okay, slight exaggeration.
CLARA: Coffee, go get. Five minutes, I promise.
(Who else once promised five minutes?)
Oh, and whilst we're on that particular scene, look at that building behind the Doctor, in Clara's first proper episode, an episode about human souls being trapped in a computer matrix:
There is so much foreshadowing, it blows my mind. (Oh, and to the people who say her 'bossy control freak' personality was not present until the Christmas episode when it became a minor plot point, to you I say 'come back tomorrow. Ask me again. Tomorrow I might say yes. Some time after seven?' But I'm getting side tracked.) There will be more examples from S7 - many more - and if I've missed any glaringly obvious ones please let me know. I haven't watched S7 since this time last year when I was vidding it, and have forgotten a lot. S7 culminates with Clara literally scattering her whole life throughout the Doctor's. She becomes insinuated into every part of his life. Equal and opposite to the forces that seek to destroy him. Clara binds his timeline together. (That we still don't know how she survived, or how she and the Doctor escaped from there is the one thing that still bugs me about S7…) This is, as we've seen, not unprecedented in her story as we the audience have seen it, but chronologically for her this is perhaps the moment her conversion to 'Doctor' takes a step up.
On to The Day Of The Doctor, and we have the first time Clara - whole, unfractured present day Clara - meets other versions of the Doctor. And the first time they properly meet her. She can open the Tardis doors with a snap of her fingers, and she demonstrates, once again, that she can read the Doctor like a book (has read him in a book, actually, in JTTCOTT). 'I always know. Those big sad eyes'.
And then there's this:
WARRIOR: And if I grow to be half the man that you are, Clara Oswald, I shall be happy indeed.
CLARA: That's right. Aim high.
Aim high indeed. This is the moment that Ten and Eleven think the War Doctor is going to talk about *them*, and instead he talks about Clara. As she did in The Snowmen and Asylum, and TBOSJ, she subverts the Doctor/viewer's expectations by assuming the Doctor's qualities. Moffat has been playing a very long game.
In TTOTD, when Eleven regenerates - so now we're on Twelve's first 'meeting' with Clara, through his new eyes - the first thing he says directly to her is 'do you know how to fly this thing?!' With no idea who he is, he assumes she must be in charge of the Tardis. Once he's got a little more of a handle on things (but not much) he identifies Clara as 'the not-me one' - he's still not sure who she is, or how to define or distinguish her in any way, except that she (a)is not him, (b)asks questions, and (a) her name is a mystery. Seem familiar? Later on, in the restaurant, we get a wonderful dark reflection of the conversation between the Doctor and Oswin that I quoted earlier:
CLARA: Mmm hmm. Okay, so what sort of person would put a cryptic note in, in a newspaper advert?
DOCTOR: Well, I wouldn't like to say.
CLARA: Oh, go on, do say.
DOCTOR: Well, I would say that that person would be an egomaniac, needy, game-player sort of person.
CLARA: Ah, thank you. Well, at least that hasn't changed.
DOCTOR: And I don't suppose it ever will.
CLARA: No, I don't suppose it will, either.
DOCTOR: Clara, honestly, I don't want you to change. It was no bother, really. I saw your advert, I figured it out. I'm happy to play your game.
CLARA: No. No, no. I didn't place the ad. You placed the ad.
DOCTOR: No, I didn't.
They each mirror the other, and see their own qualities most clearly in the other person. But this time it's the negative qualities. The 'slightly sexy' 'total screaming genius' is now an 'egomaniac needy game-player'. And so begins the second half of Clara's 'becoming the Doctor' arc.
All Doctor Who companions become like the Doctor. All of them get braver, wiser, fiercer, kinder. All of them become more willing to fight for change. Sometimes they start to mirror some of his less desirable qualities too - a certain blasé reaction to danger perhaps - but none of them have becomes like him quite as wholeheartedly as Clara. And as she begins to mirror more and more of his negative qualities, instead of just the positive ones we saw in S7 (signs, along with her increasing abandonment of her 'Wednesdays only' rule, that she is becoming more 'addicted' to him and his lifestyle), this transformation is addressed ever more overtly. I don't need to discuss it much here, as it's treated pretty overtly in the text and has been discussed in detail by many people throughout this season (also I'm tired and there's a lot) but this transformation leads to Flatline, where she to all intents and purposes IS the Doctor in that episode (that is, in fact, the ep's whole purpose) and to ITFOTN where the mystery is, for the first time, more important to her than the lost children. This is a particularly telling moment, I think, as Clara has been fundamentally associated with both children and the need to stop people being 'lost' throughout her arc. It's one of the first things we learn about Victorian and Present Day Clara. And here, that quintessential spark of Clara-ness is briefly extinguished by her growing need to be the Doctor. It is also in this episode that Clara tricks the Doctor into going back to the Tardis, back to safety, just as he did to her in TTOTD.
And then on to the finale. The finale, where not just Clara's expected role as 'companion' but the whole natural order of things is subverted - the graves are 'giving birth', the dead are saving the living, rain brings death and fire saves everyone. Pain is a Gift. It's volcano day, and Clara and the Doctor wrest power back and forth (as they did oh so long ago in their tussle over the laptop at that little round table), both fighting for control of the situation. It turns out that the Doctor is still in ultimate control, but he then uses that control to do exactly as Clara wants him to, so who is really in charge? (I realise am talking about this scene quite coldly. I do not feel at all cold about it. I think it was one of the most moving moments I've ever seen on television, and it made mesob.)
Through two seasons of literal and figurative mirrors, of looking into each other's eyes ('If you want me to travel with you, that's fine. But as me.' / 'Just see me.') they have finally stepped through those doorways and Clara, at least, has the Doctor in her soul. And her eyes in the credits.
'Clara Oswald never existed. I am the Doctor.'
Of course, she isn't. Not literally. It's a clever lie. Just the kind of thing the Doctor would do.
And in the end, after the fighting is over and the Good Man who was also a Soldier saved the day - that victory belonged to Danny, not to the Doctor or to Clara - and after Clara had made her 'promise' in the form of her love for her cyber-soldier-man (just as the Doctor reaffirmed the 'promise' of his name in TNOTD - interesting, the echoes in those lines)…after everything, she and the Doctor independently come to the same decision, to lie to each other, to protect them. This is a kindness. This is such fearful symmetry.
I already talked about the theme of eyes, pre-finale. About how the-eyes-are-not-the-windows-to-the-soul-they-are-the-doors, and what that means for Clara's transformation into the Doctor (and vice-versa). About how to-be-seen-is-to-exist, and what that means for the Doctor's conception of his new identity (eye-dentity?). About all of the Doctor's comments on Clara's eyes ('Why are you all eyes?! Get them under control!' 'Don't do that with the eyes.') and all the eye imagery that has surrounded her all season ('Could you trust someone who looked back at you out of your own eyes?'). It's always, always been about the eyes.
Oh, look:
They only put her eyes in the goddamned title sequence.
That was it, that was the ultimate moment of Clara's Doctorhood, but also the ultimate moment of Clara being just Clara.
Let me explain.
Way back when, Ibishtar wrote a great essay on Clara as a metaphor for the show itself, which I always enjoyed, particularly as it dovetails nicely with my feeling that Amy represents fandom. This concept is taken to its natural conclusion with the use of Clara's eyes in place of the Doctor's in the title sequence - it is almost as if the title of the show itself has become 'Clara Who', the main question S7 (and the pre-finale weeks of S8) had us all asking. Audience and Doctor. It is almost indescribably meta! Clara, the companion through whose eyes we the audience are supposed to perceive events (that is the supposed role of the companion, is it not?) - she is now looking out at us. Clara the control-freak has taken over the show's titles, and thus the show itself. Clara, who has become almost addicted to Tardis travel, has become intertwined with the time vortex, seeing all of time and space. It's just a trick, a joke on the part of Steven Moffat, a momentary repeat of Clara's S7 arc - she's built up to be 'impossible' and it turns out she's just an ordinary woman who does an extraordinary thing - and yet the image is striking and works on a number of levels. And somehow feels much more organic to Clara's own story than it would have done for any previous companion.
Because whilst all the Doctor's companions are his best friends for the time they travel with him, and all try to put themselves on an equal footing with him as much as possible, Clara has taken that a step or two further. As many people have noticed and discussed, Clara has become ever more like the Doctor this season, more overtly and deliberately than any companion in New Who before her. But also more carefully. She wasn't 'ordinary companion' one moment and boom! Doctor! the next. Her whole, entire journey has been leading up to this. She has always been 'too perfect' for the Doctor. From every single perspective, her first appearance has foreshadowed this. Oswin, when we the audience first meet her, explicitly mirrors the Doctor:
DOCTOR [on screen]: How can you hack into everything? It should be impossible. You're in a crashed ship!
OSWIN: Long story. Is there a word for total screaming genius that sounds modest and a tiny bit sexy?
DOCTOR [on screen]: Doctor. You call me the Doctor.
OSWIN: See what you did there.
She echoes him in lots of other little ways, not least in the simple fact that she is not what she outwardly appears to be. But that exchange is the most obvious, and is the first little hint that we should expect more of this. (Side note: we also get, in the Nina conversation, an explicit mention of gender expectations, and gender-swapping, which became an important if subtle theme in S8, leading up to the Missy reveal. End side note.) In this episode, Oswin fundamentally changes the Doctor's existence by wiping him from the Daleks' memory banks. At the time, we thought 'who is she, to do this? Such a huge thing?' Little did we know back then that she would stop the Doctor destroying Gallifrey, or that she would save his whole timeline with her life, or that she would persuade the Time Lords to give him more regenerations, or that she would be the one to comfort the Doctor as a scared child. Little did we know the path she would take would lead her to become the Doctor. (Though some of us suspected! I remember writing about my desperate hope that she would follow Ace's intended storyline, and enter the Academy on Gallifrey...) But those first acts - the momentous memory deletion and Oswin's later self-sacrifice - they started a pattern that was noticeable at the time, but only visible in all its glory now we can see the whole tapestry.
The next time we see Clara is in The Snowmen, and this is arguably the first time the Doctor (as opposed to the audience) 'meets' Clara. He sees her face, he interacts with her physically, and it's through her that he discovers the link to Oswin and the mystery of the 'impossible girl'. And oh look what we get here:
DOCTOR: That was stupid.
CLARA: You were stupid, too.
DOCTOR: I'm allowed. I'm good at stupid.
GOVERNESS: That's the way to do it!
CLARA: Why does she keep saying that?
DOCTOR: Mirroring. Random mirroring. We need to get on the roof.
CLARA: This way!
DOCTOR: No, I do the hand grabbing. That's my job. That's always me!
'Mirroring. Random mirroring.' FFS, Moffat. Stop that. There's nothing 'random' about it! Clara and the Doctor are constantly mirroring each other, and here we have Clara performing an action that's 'always' the Doctor's role. She also demonstrates an almost uncanny ability to read and manipulate him already - I'm thinking of 'Pond' in the one word game here, and the umbrella-on-the-rooftop scene. Besides which, she is honoured with the Tardis-key-receiving ritual the very first time she steps in the Tardis! The first companion to have that. Also the first companion to try to destroy all the Tardis keys. The moment has been prepared for. Clara has always mirrored the Doctor, always been destined to become him.
We, the audience, see modern day Clara for the first time in the BOSJ prequel, which has young Clara and the Doctor mirroring each other on the swings, and Clara assuming the Doctor's role of giving advice to a lost soul. She got her mojo back, though (just as she Victorian!Clara reignites the grieving Doctor's zest for life, and Clara at Christmas gets him his life back).
In The Rings of Akhaten we see the first time Clara ever meets the Doctor, as a tiny child in the park with two hearts on her jumper. (She hits him in the face with a football <3) And, in TBOSJ, we see Clara meeting the Doctor properly for the first time as an adult. The first time she is really conscious of him. As in her previous two episodes, and as she continues to do for the rest of season 7, she is dressed in red and blue, the two colours most associated with the Doctor, with the Tardis and Gallifrey and the time vortex. Once again, she displays a preternatural ability to do things no 'normal' companion (as if any of them are ever 'normal') should be able to do to the Doctor, such as phone the Tardis without ever having met him. We now know, of course, that Missy gave her that phone number. From pretty early on, Clara sets herself up on an equal footing with him:
(Sitting at a round table, a la King Arthur and his knights, tugging a laptop back and forth)
DOCTOR: If I can't find them, you definitely can't.
CLARA: They uploaded me, remember? I've got computing stuff in my head.
DOCTOR: So do I.
CLARA: I have insane hacking skills.
DOCTOR: I'm from space and the future with two hearts and twenty seven brains.
CLARA: And I can find them in under five minutes plus photographs. Twenty seven?
DOCTOR: Okay, slight exaggeration.
CLARA: Coffee, go get. Five minutes, I promise.
(Who else once promised five minutes?)
Oh, and whilst we're on that particular scene, look at that building behind the Doctor, in Clara's first proper episode, an episode about human souls being trapped in a computer matrix:
There is so much foreshadowing, it blows my mind. (Oh, and to the people who say her 'bossy control freak' personality was not present until the Christmas episode when it became a minor plot point, to you I say 'come back tomorrow. Ask me again. Tomorrow I might say yes. Some time after seven?' But I'm getting side tracked.) There will be more examples from S7 - many more - and if I've missed any glaringly obvious ones please let me know. I haven't watched S7 since this time last year when I was vidding it, and have forgotten a lot. S7 culminates with Clara literally scattering her whole life throughout the Doctor's. She becomes insinuated into every part of his life. Equal and opposite to the forces that seek to destroy him. Clara binds his timeline together. (That we still don't know how she survived, or how she and the Doctor escaped from there is the one thing that still bugs me about S7…) This is, as we've seen, not unprecedented in her story as we the audience have seen it, but chronologically for her this is perhaps the moment her conversion to 'Doctor' takes a step up.
On to The Day Of The Doctor, and we have the first time Clara - whole, unfractured present day Clara - meets other versions of the Doctor. And the first time they properly meet her. She can open the Tardis doors with a snap of her fingers, and she demonstrates, once again, that she can read the Doctor like a book (has read him in a book, actually, in JTTCOTT). 'I always know. Those big sad eyes'.
And then there's this:
WARRIOR: And if I grow to be half the man that you are, Clara Oswald, I shall be happy indeed.
CLARA: That's right. Aim high.
Aim high indeed. This is the moment that Ten and Eleven think the War Doctor is going to talk about *them*, and instead he talks about Clara. As she did in The Snowmen and Asylum, and TBOSJ, she subverts the Doctor/viewer's expectations by assuming the Doctor's qualities. Moffat has been playing a very long game.
In TTOTD, when Eleven regenerates - so now we're on Twelve's first 'meeting' with Clara, through his new eyes - the first thing he says directly to her is 'do you know how to fly this thing?!' With no idea who he is, he assumes she must be in charge of the Tardis. Once he's got a little more of a handle on things (but not much) he identifies Clara as 'the not-me one' - he's still not sure who she is, or how to define or distinguish her in any way, except that she (a)is not him, (b)asks questions, and (a) her name is a mystery. Seem familiar? Later on, in the restaurant, we get a wonderful dark reflection of the conversation between the Doctor and Oswin that I quoted earlier:
CLARA: Mmm hmm. Okay, so what sort of person would put a cryptic note in, in a newspaper advert?
DOCTOR: Well, I wouldn't like to say.
CLARA: Oh, go on, do say.
DOCTOR: Well, I would say that that person would be an egomaniac, needy, game-player sort of person.
CLARA: Ah, thank you. Well, at least that hasn't changed.
DOCTOR: And I don't suppose it ever will.
CLARA: No, I don't suppose it will, either.
DOCTOR: Clara, honestly, I don't want you to change. It was no bother, really. I saw your advert, I figured it out. I'm happy to play your game.
CLARA: No. No, no. I didn't place the ad. You placed the ad.
DOCTOR: No, I didn't.
They each mirror the other, and see their own qualities most clearly in the other person. But this time it's the negative qualities. The 'slightly sexy' 'total screaming genius' is now an 'egomaniac needy game-player'. And so begins the second half of Clara's 'becoming the Doctor' arc.
All Doctor Who companions become like the Doctor. All of them get braver, wiser, fiercer, kinder. All of them become more willing to fight for change. Sometimes they start to mirror some of his less desirable qualities too - a certain blasé reaction to danger perhaps - but none of them have becomes like him quite as wholeheartedly as Clara. And as she begins to mirror more and more of his negative qualities, instead of just the positive ones we saw in S7 (signs, along with her increasing abandonment of her 'Wednesdays only' rule, that she is becoming more 'addicted' to him and his lifestyle), this transformation is addressed ever more overtly. I don't need to discuss it much here, as it's treated pretty overtly in the text and has been discussed in detail by many people throughout this season (also I'm tired and there's a lot) but this transformation leads to Flatline, where she to all intents and purposes IS the Doctor in that episode (that is, in fact, the ep's whole purpose) and to ITFOTN where the mystery is, for the first time, more important to her than the lost children. This is a particularly telling moment, I think, as Clara has been fundamentally associated with both children and the need to stop people being 'lost' throughout her arc. It's one of the first things we learn about Victorian and Present Day Clara. And here, that quintessential spark of Clara-ness is briefly extinguished by her growing need to be the Doctor. It is also in this episode that Clara tricks the Doctor into going back to the Tardis, back to safety, just as he did to her in TTOTD.
And then on to the finale. The finale, where not just Clara's expected role as 'companion' but the whole natural order of things is subverted - the graves are 'giving birth', the dead are saving the living, rain brings death and fire saves everyone. Pain is a Gift. It's volcano day, and Clara and the Doctor wrest power back and forth (as they did oh so long ago in their tussle over the laptop at that little round table), both fighting for control of the situation. It turns out that the Doctor is still in ultimate control, but he then uses that control to do exactly as Clara wants him to, so who is really in charge? (I realise am talking about this scene quite coldly. I do not feel at all cold about it. I think it was one of the most moving moments I've ever seen on television, and it made mesob.)
Through two seasons of literal and figurative mirrors, of looking into each other's eyes ('If you want me to travel with you, that's fine. But as me.' / 'Just see me.') they have finally stepped through those doorways and Clara, at least, has the Doctor in her soul. And her eyes in the credits.
'Clara Oswald never existed. I am the Doctor.'
Of course, she isn't. Not literally. It's a clever lie. Just the kind of thing the Doctor would do.
And in the end, after the fighting is over and the Good Man who was also a Soldier saved the day - that victory belonged to Danny, not to the Doctor or to Clara - and after Clara had made her 'promise' in the form of her love for her cyber-soldier-man (just as the Doctor reaffirmed the 'promise' of his name in TNOTD - interesting, the echoes in those lines)…after everything, she and the Doctor independently come to the same decision, to lie to each other, to protect them. This is a kindness. This is such fearful symmetry.
Friday, 24 October 2014
The Window To The Soul: Eyes in Season 8
In The Forest of the Night airs tomorrow - the last standalone Doctor Who ep before the two-part season finale. At this point last season, just before Neil Gaiman's Nightmare In Silver graced our screens, I posted my summary of Clara theories, which has now once more become relevant in light of the end of Flatline. This time, I was intending to write a succinct summary of all of the main themes and motifs of Doctor Who S8, along with speculation as to where they might be leading. Instead I got carried away thinking about Eyes, and so discussion of Soldiers, Robots, Naming Things and other themes will have to wait until my brain has recalibrated. Also, I am sure that there will be a LOT of meta to ponder after tomorrow's tree-filled episode. So in the meantime: Eyes!
Honestly, this is not a new motif. In fact, most of the motifs in this series are not new - they have been knocking around throughout the whole of Moffat's tenure so far (see also: Mirrors/Reflections/Doubles, Trees/Leaves, Books, Boxes, Memories, Puppets, Chess, Family and 'The Beast Below'). I mean, ten minutes into The Eleventh Hour we were faced with a gigantic eye through the crack in the wall (oh, such wonderful foreshadowing of The Time Of The Doctor, and the Timelords waiting and searching beyond this universe...). BUT! There have been an even higher number of Eye references than usual this season - from Deep Breath onwards, the Doctor is constantly imploring Clara to 'look at me', he's comments repeatedly on her appearance (more on this later) and in particular on her eyes - 'you're all eyes! You've got eyes out to here!'. Not to mention all the comments from other characters - 'how could you trust someone if they looked at you out of your own eyes?' (some VERY heavy foreshadowing there, and not just for the end of that episode.) In Into The Dalek, Clara really hits us over the head with it by wearing a whole shirt covered in eyes, as she enters the Dalek through its eyestalk. The optic nerve has been mentioned not once but twice, first in Deep Breath and then in Flatline when the Doctor 'hacks' Clara's optic nerve in order to see out of her eyes. And those are just the references I can think of off the top of my head. I know there are more. So what is this all pointing towards? I would say there are several meanings:
(1) Clara and the Doctor are studying each other, sussing each other out. And thus they are *becoming* each other. Of all the Doctor/Companion relationships of the new series, theirs (in my opinion) has been one of the most interesting because they have BOTH been mysteries to each other. Eleven seeks out Clara because she is an 'enigma', the 'impossible girl', and spends the first half of their time together covertly investigating her origins - is she 'a trick, a trap?' (a question that has become very relevant once again, in light of Missy's words at the end of Flatline)- and he stalks her timeline, foreshadowing Clara's later split throughout his own timeline. Meanwhile, Clara is sussing him out, as all the Companions do at first. Then, just as they have become truly comfortable together, they have really *seen* each other ('I always know…those big sad eyes')...BAM! Regeneration. And suddenly the Doctor has new eyes with which to see the world, and a whole new personality which Clara struggles to really 'see': she initially sees straight through him ('just see me') to the ghost of Eleven, just as he once saw through her and only saw Oswin and Victorian!Clara. I love and adore that scene at the end of Deep Breath, because it worked for me too - until that point, I had felt like I was seeing the echo of Eleven behind Twelve's every step and word and gesture, like watching the pair of them move in blurry parallel. One Doctor dead and gone, one Doctor too newly formed to feel *real*. Suddenly, with that speech, it was as if they both slid together and snapped into focus and I could 'see' Twelve as The Doctor and oh it was wonderful. I imagine it was the same for Clara (for all that she has lived other lives with other Doctors, Eleven was *her* Doctor). And for the Doctor - well, the pain of Clara seeing right through him made me stop and think. 'Do you have any idea what that's like?' he asks her. Yes. Of course she does. That's how you saw her, Doctor, for most of S7. This is your comeuppance. Elisi has written some truly wonderful meta on Clara as 'Schrodinger's Companion', and how to be seen is to exist, in Moffat's Who. I won't try to summarise it all here because I absolutely won't do it justice. But you should read it, because it's extremely pertinent. Steven Moffat has long been obsessed with eyes, and seeing - think of the 'quantum locked' Weeping Angels, or the Silence who you only remember when you are looking at them. Think of Reinette, who is the proto-Schrodinger's Companion: young/old/alive/dead, her status is only fixed when the Doctor *sees* her, and once seen it can't be unseen and undone. (Remember that Moffat has been a Sherlock Holmes fan since forever - it is important not just 'to see' but 'to observe'. In the Sherlockian universe a person's whole life may be understood with little more than judicious use of eyesight.) Think of "The eyes are not the window to the soul, they are the doors. Beware what may enter there." (The Time Of Angels, one of my very favourite quotes) And this leads naturally to: "A door, once opened, can be stepped through in either direction." (The Girl In The Fireplace) Clara and the Doctor have been looking at each other, scrutinising each other for so long, they have stepped through the doorways into each others' souls. Clara is becoming ever more like the Doctor (a point hammered home in Flatline, but very much in place long before then - god, even the mirror she looks into so the Doctor can see her face in Flatline is eye-shaped. What an endless series of reflections.) Meanwhile the Doctor has taken Clara's place as 'The Impossible Man', the man twice dead - 'who frowned me this face?'. We're due an answer on this. Caecilius and Frobisher (from Torchwood) and goodness knows how many other people have worn Twelve's face before, just like all of Clara's time-split selves. (Whilst all of the Doctor's MANY comments on Clara's physical appearance have made me slightly uncomfortable this season, I am choosing to see it in a Watsonian light - his own face is clearly preying on his mind, and he is externalising this and projecting it onto Clara and what *she* looks like. This is very much the Doctor of Moffat's The Doctor Dances - 'Cuts himself shaving, does half an hour on life forms he's cleverer than.') He has become 'Schrodinger's Doctor', and needs Clara to 'see' him to be sure that he exists. Sure, he can bop around the universe without her, but he always keeps coming back for her. He can run around time and space observing things all he likes - see the beginning of Listen - but in order to make sense of anything he needs someone to observe *him*.
(2) Someone is observing both Clara and the Doctor. I should have posted this a few weeks ago, because now this seems like less of a revelation, though it's been clear for ages. Obviously, that someone is Missy - but who is she? To them? And is she working for anyone else? The predominant theory on the interwebs is that she is the Master, which I very much hope is true. So much of her demeanor points to this, as well as the obvious 'Mistress' connotations of her name, her garden which looks like a Tardis with the central column, and all of the throwaway comments on subverting ideas of gender that happened this season (See: Strax misgendering Clara, the female dinosaur, the female president in Kill The Moon, 'you're built like a man', etc etc). I have privately wondered if Missy might be a Tardis in human form (something I wondered a lot about Clara last season), as she seems to have abilities to pluck people from death that even Timelords shouldn't have. But that is probably too far-fetched. Other popular online theories are that she is - or is connected to - the Valeyard, the Black/White Guardians, the Great Intelligence, River Song, CAL, etc etc. And of course she could always be something new. But whoever she is, she has been *watching* the Doctor and Clara, and the implication is that she has somehow played intergalactic puppeteer or chess grandmaster (see that giant chess board Clara stands on in The Caretaker) and handpicked them for each other, making efforts to ensure they stay together. Possibly she even manipulated the Doctor's regeneration, somehow. Why? How? How long has she been playing this game? How is she watching them? What is her ultimate aim? How is she plucking people from death and what does she want them for? What is 'Heaven' or the 'Nethersphere' (and is it connected to the Timelord 'Matrix')? So much we still don't know, and I don't have many convincing theories to add to it all. Whatever the answers to all these questions, it's clear that Missy's eyes have been on Clara (literally, in the case of her Into the Dalek shirt!) for a long time.
(3) Clara as a Witness. This is more speculative, but I am wondering if the Doctor is - once again - going to be put on trial. Despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that Twelve is a more obviously aristocratic and imperious iteration of the Doctor than we've seen in a while, there have been more attempts than usual to undermine his authority. At least two characters have asked 'who put you in charge?' or words to that effect (in Time Heist and Kill The Moon) and in Flatline his role and title are taken wholesale by Clara. Danny - whose name means 'God has judged' - has taken issue with the Doctor's behaviour. Add to that the continued question of 'what is a Good Man?' as well as Psy's comment to Clara that she must have been with the Doctor for a long time because she is so good at 'making excuses' for him - is the Doctor going to have to answer for his actions before the gates of Heaven? Is he going to have to prove that he is a Good Man and will Clara be there to defend him or to prosecute him? Why her? Why now? I don't think Gallifrey is going to come back for good just yet - I think that's going to be next season's arc - so who or what is Missy working towards? When the Timelords are reinstated, there will always be someone Watching the Doctor and taking note of his actions. In the meantime, it's just Clara. She has become the authority on the Doctor, and likely that in either this finale or at Christmas, she will take her last look at him. The Doctor can see that she is turning into him, and knows that 'goodness has nothing to do with it'. One of them - and I very much hope it's Clara - is going to make the decision that they have to stop looking.
So...that's it for now. I will inevitably edit to add things later, as they strike me at inappropriate times. In the meantime - who has things to add?
Honestly, this is not a new motif. In fact, most of the motifs in this series are not new - they have been knocking around throughout the whole of Moffat's tenure so far (see also: Mirrors/Reflections/Doubles, Trees/Leaves, Books, Boxes, Memories, Puppets, Chess, Family and 'The Beast Below'). I mean, ten minutes into The Eleventh Hour we were faced with a gigantic eye through the crack in the wall (oh, such wonderful foreshadowing of The Time Of The Doctor, and the Timelords waiting and searching beyond this universe...). BUT! There have been an even higher number of Eye references than usual this season - from Deep Breath onwards, the Doctor is constantly imploring Clara to 'look at me', he's comments repeatedly on her appearance (more on this later) and in particular on her eyes - 'you're all eyes! You've got eyes out to here!'. Not to mention all the comments from other characters - 'how could you trust someone if they looked at you out of your own eyes?' (some VERY heavy foreshadowing there, and not just for the end of that episode.) In Into The Dalek, Clara really hits us over the head with it by wearing a whole shirt covered in eyes, as she enters the Dalek through its eyestalk. The optic nerve has been mentioned not once but twice, first in Deep Breath and then in Flatline when the Doctor 'hacks' Clara's optic nerve in order to see out of her eyes. And those are just the references I can think of off the top of my head. I know there are more. So what is this all pointing towards? I would say there are several meanings:
(1) Clara and the Doctor are studying each other, sussing each other out. And thus they are *becoming* each other. Of all the Doctor/Companion relationships of the new series, theirs (in my opinion) has been one of the most interesting because they have BOTH been mysteries to each other. Eleven seeks out Clara because she is an 'enigma', the 'impossible girl', and spends the first half of their time together covertly investigating her origins - is she 'a trick, a trap?' (a question that has become very relevant once again, in light of Missy's words at the end of Flatline)- and he stalks her timeline, foreshadowing Clara's later split throughout his own timeline. Meanwhile, Clara is sussing him out, as all the Companions do at first. Then, just as they have become truly comfortable together, they have really *seen* each other ('I always know…those big sad eyes')...BAM! Regeneration. And suddenly the Doctor has new eyes with which to see the world, and a whole new personality which Clara struggles to really 'see': she initially sees straight through him ('just see me') to the ghost of Eleven, just as he once saw through her and only saw Oswin and Victorian!Clara. I love and adore that scene at the end of Deep Breath, because it worked for me too - until that point, I had felt like I was seeing the echo of Eleven behind Twelve's every step and word and gesture, like watching the pair of them move in blurry parallel. One Doctor dead and gone, one Doctor too newly formed to feel *real*. Suddenly, with that speech, it was as if they both slid together and snapped into focus and I could 'see' Twelve as The Doctor and oh it was wonderful. I imagine it was the same for Clara (for all that she has lived other lives with other Doctors, Eleven was *her* Doctor). And for the Doctor - well, the pain of Clara seeing right through him made me stop and think. 'Do you have any idea what that's like?' he asks her. Yes. Of course she does. That's how you saw her, Doctor, for most of S7. This is your comeuppance. Elisi has written some truly wonderful meta on Clara as 'Schrodinger's Companion', and how to be seen is to exist, in Moffat's Who. I won't try to summarise it all here because I absolutely won't do it justice. But you should read it, because it's extremely pertinent. Steven Moffat has long been obsessed with eyes, and seeing - think of the 'quantum locked' Weeping Angels, or the Silence who you only remember when you are looking at them. Think of Reinette, who is the proto-Schrodinger's Companion: young/old/alive/dead, her status is only fixed when the Doctor *sees* her, and once seen it can't be unseen and undone. (Remember that Moffat has been a Sherlock Holmes fan since forever - it is important not just 'to see' but 'to observe'. In the Sherlockian universe a person's whole life may be understood with little more than judicious use of eyesight.) Think of "The eyes are not the window to the soul, they are the doors. Beware what may enter there." (The Time Of Angels, one of my very favourite quotes) And this leads naturally to: "A door, once opened, can be stepped through in either direction." (The Girl In The Fireplace) Clara and the Doctor have been looking at each other, scrutinising each other for so long, they have stepped through the doorways into each others' souls. Clara is becoming ever more like the Doctor (a point hammered home in Flatline, but very much in place long before then - god, even the mirror she looks into so the Doctor can see her face in Flatline is eye-shaped. What an endless series of reflections.) Meanwhile the Doctor has taken Clara's place as 'The Impossible Man', the man twice dead - 'who frowned me this face?'. We're due an answer on this. Caecilius and Frobisher (from Torchwood) and goodness knows how many other people have worn Twelve's face before, just like all of Clara's time-split selves. (Whilst all of the Doctor's MANY comments on Clara's physical appearance have made me slightly uncomfortable this season, I am choosing to see it in a Watsonian light - his own face is clearly preying on his mind, and he is externalising this and projecting it onto Clara and what *she* looks like. This is very much the Doctor of Moffat's The Doctor Dances - 'Cuts himself shaving, does half an hour on life forms he's cleverer than.') He has become 'Schrodinger's Doctor', and needs Clara to 'see' him to be sure that he exists. Sure, he can bop around the universe without her, but he always keeps coming back for her. He can run around time and space observing things all he likes - see the beginning of Listen - but in order to make sense of anything he needs someone to observe *him*.
(2) Someone is observing both Clara and the Doctor. I should have posted this a few weeks ago, because now this seems like less of a revelation, though it's been clear for ages. Obviously, that someone is Missy - but who is she? To them? And is she working for anyone else? The predominant theory on the interwebs is that she is the Master, which I very much hope is true. So much of her demeanor points to this, as well as the obvious 'Mistress' connotations of her name, her garden which looks like a Tardis with the central column, and all of the throwaway comments on subverting ideas of gender that happened this season (See: Strax misgendering Clara, the female dinosaur, the female president in Kill The Moon, 'you're built like a man', etc etc). I have privately wondered if Missy might be a Tardis in human form (something I wondered a lot about Clara last season), as she seems to have abilities to pluck people from death that even Timelords shouldn't have. But that is probably too far-fetched. Other popular online theories are that she is - or is connected to - the Valeyard, the Black/White Guardians, the Great Intelligence, River Song, CAL, etc etc. And of course she could always be something new. But whoever she is, she has been *watching* the Doctor and Clara, and the implication is that she has somehow played intergalactic puppeteer or chess grandmaster (see that giant chess board Clara stands on in The Caretaker) and handpicked them for each other, making efforts to ensure they stay together. Possibly she even manipulated the Doctor's regeneration, somehow. Why? How? How long has she been playing this game? How is she watching them? What is her ultimate aim? How is she plucking people from death and what does she want them for? What is 'Heaven' or the 'Nethersphere' (and is it connected to the Timelord 'Matrix')? So much we still don't know, and I don't have many convincing theories to add to it all. Whatever the answers to all these questions, it's clear that Missy's eyes have been on Clara (literally, in the case of her Into the Dalek shirt!) for a long time.
(3) Clara as a Witness. This is more speculative, but I am wondering if the Doctor is - once again - going to be put on trial. Despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that Twelve is a more obviously aristocratic and imperious iteration of the Doctor than we've seen in a while, there have been more attempts than usual to undermine his authority. At least two characters have asked 'who put you in charge?' or words to that effect (in Time Heist and Kill The Moon) and in Flatline his role and title are taken wholesale by Clara. Danny - whose name means 'God has judged' - has taken issue with the Doctor's behaviour. Add to that the continued question of 'what is a Good Man?' as well as Psy's comment to Clara that she must have been with the Doctor for a long time because she is so good at 'making excuses' for him - is the Doctor going to have to answer for his actions before the gates of Heaven? Is he going to have to prove that he is a Good Man and will Clara be there to defend him or to prosecute him? Why her? Why now? I don't think Gallifrey is going to come back for good just yet - I think that's going to be next season's arc - so who or what is Missy working towards? When the Timelords are reinstated, there will always be someone Watching the Doctor and taking note of his actions. In the meantime, it's just Clara. She has become the authority on the Doctor, and likely that in either this finale or at Christmas, she will take her last look at him. The Doctor can see that she is turning into him, and knows that 'goodness has nothing to do with it'. One of them - and I very much hope it's Clara - is going to make the decision that they have to stop looking.
So...that's it for now. I will inevitably edit to add things later, as they strike me at inappropriate times. In the meantime - who has things to add?
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