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Clara Oswald
(2012 - 2015) |
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 Of all The Doctor's companions, Clara Oswald is unquestionably one of the most distinctive. Not only did she interact with all thirteen of The Doctor's original incarnations - albeit through an indirect manner - but she was also responsible for saving The Doctor's life by arranging for him to be given a new set of regenerations when his original twelve were exhausted.
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| Asylum of the Daleks |
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From The Doctor's perspective, he originally 'met' Clara when she was going by the name Oswin Oswald, working as the junior entertainment manager of a starship that had crashed into the Dalek Asylum, the planet where the Daleks kept those Daleks so mentally damaged that they were dangerous even to other Daleks ("Asylum of the Daleks"). The Doctor's subsequent attempt to save her revealed that Oswin had been transformed into a Dalek by the Asylum's nanite security network, but she was able to hold on to her humanity long enough to not only shut down the Asylum's defences and destroy the planet, but also hack the Dalek network and erase their collective knowledge of The Doctor, her last words being to ask The Doctor to run and remember her. After the departure of his companions Amy Pond and Rory Williams ("The Angels Take Manhattan"), The Doctor retired to Victorian London for a time, remaining in isolation despite the efforts of the Paternoster Gang to get him involved in life once more, only regaining his interest when he ran into a young barmaid/governess called Clara Oswald, as the family that she worked for was being stalked by Walter Simeon, the human identity of The Doctor's old foe the Great Intelligence ("The Snowmen"). Although Clara died during the confrontation, little details about her, such as her interest in souffles, her use of Oswin's last words as she died, and The Doctor seeing her middle name of 'Oswin' on her gravestone, helped him realise that she was another version of Oswin (Which he hadn't realised earlier as he never saw the original Oswin in person), prompting him to set out to find another Clara and learn the truth about the woman who had died twice.
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| The Snowmen |
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After some time searching with no trace of success, The Doctor relocated to an old monastery in the twelfth century to give himself time to think, until the TARDIS phone received a call from Clara Oswald, a young woman in 2013 who worked as a nanny for her family friends, the Maitlands, after their mother died while she was staying with them for a week before taking her planned trip around the world ("The Bells of Saint John"). Although confused at how Clara got the TARDIS number - which had been given to her by a woman in a shop and described as 'the best help-line in the universe' - The Doctor tracked her call back to its source in time to save her being 'hacked' and 'downloaded' by the new wi-fi created by minions of the Great Intelligence, which was 'harvesting' humans by downloading their minds so that it could feed on their knowledge. Aided by the computer skills the Intelligence's minions had downloaded into Clara, The Doctor was able to find their base and force them to return all humans to their original bodies - or at least release those whose bodies had already died, leaving him to solve the mystery of Clara Oswald as the Intelligence departed Earth.
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| The Bells of Saint John |
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In stark contrast to most companions - with the obvious exception of the Third Doctor's companion Jo Grant, who defined herself as a member of UNIT first and The Doctor's companion second - Clara managed to retain her original life on Earth throughout her time with the Time Lord, feeling that she couldn't abandon the Maitlands when they still needed her. Where companions typically remain with The Doctor full-time through either choice or necessity - the latter due to The Doctor's piloting skills preventing him from simply taking them home when they asked - Clara maintained her regular life and job even after meeting The Doctor, only agreeing to go on trips with him every Wednesday rather than becoming a full-time companion who only occasionally returned 'home' (Although it was unspecified if The Doctor travelled anywhere between Wednesdays or if he simply went straight to next week after Clara left). Part of the reason for this approach was the fact that the TARDIS apparently disliked Clara - most likely due to her paradoxical nature, the same reason for its dislike of Charley Pollard when she travelled with the Sixth Doctor after travelling with the Eighth ("The Girl Who Never Was" and "The Condemned") - with Clara's initial attempt to stay in the ship hampered by the TARDIS deleting her bedroom and twisting timelines when Clara went exploring so that multiple versions of her ended up in the console room ("Clara and the TARDIS").
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| Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS |
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During his early travels with Clara, although he took her on more casual trips such as an interstellar market or Las Vegas in the 1980s ("Cold War") - even if these invariably went wrong due to The Doctor's usual 'luck' - The Doctor was also attempting to find the reason for his previous encounters with her other selves, such as taking her to visit a prominent Earth psychic to see if the woman could determine any ulterior motives Clara might have ("Hide"). Despite The Doctor's efforts, even discreetly observing Clara's childhood before their first trip together failed to reveal any sign that she was anything more than an ordinary young woman ("The Rings of Akhaten"), leaving him with no further clues about how he could have encountered her twice before. After a direct confrontation in a pocket universe that was subsequently erased from Clara's memory, The Doctor confirmed that she had no idea how he had met her other selves, allowing him to open up and treat her more warmly now that he had confirmed that Clara wasn't a deliberate trap ("Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS").
The mystery surrounding Clara was finally resolved when the Great Intelligence returned, capturing the Paternoster Gang and trapping them on Trenzalore, the site of The Doctor's future tomb, intending to enter the scar tissue left by The Doctor after he died and thus attack his entire timestream, undoing The Doctor's every victory at the cost of the Intelligence's life ("The Name of The Doctor"). Despite knowing what could happen to her, Clara entered The Doctor's timestream to negate the Intelligence's influence on his history, creating the two other versions of herself that The Doctor had encountered previously along with countless other Claras, including a Time Lady version who directed the First Doctor to steal the right TARDIS before he left Gallifrey ("Lungbarrow" and "An Unearthly Child"). Despite being lost in The Doctor's timestream, she was eventually rescued and brought back into existence by the Eleventh Doctor, who followed her into the timestream and carried her back to reality… but not before she witnessed The Doctor's greatest secret, in the form of the incarnation known as 'the War Doctor', who fought in the Time War and abandoned the name of 'Doctor' to be the soldier he believed the universe needed ("Night of The Doctor").
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| The Day of The Doctor |
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At some point after their visit to Trenzalore, Clara moved on from the Maitlands to become an English teacher at Coal Hill School (It is unknown if The Doctor had any role in her new job, although the fact that his old companion Ian Chesterton is listed as a school governor may be suggestive). Continuing her life of travelling with The Doctor on Wednesdays while living on Earth, Clara was present when The Doctor was asked by UNIT to investigate strange events in the National Gallery, resulting in The Doctor joining forces with his immediate predecessor and the War Doctor (The Doctor who actually fought in the Time War) to save Earth from a Zygon invasion. Not only did they help Earth draw up a human/Zygon peace treaty, but the three Doctors - realising that the War Doctor was from the time just before he destroyed Gallifrey - inspired by Clara's plea that The Doctor remember his vow to be a doctor rather than a soldier, joined forces with their other selves to save Gallifrey by sealing it in a single moment in time instead ("The Day of The Doctor").
Some time later, The Doctor asked Clara to accompany him when investigating a mysterious signal from an unknown planet, only to discover that the planet was Trenzalore and the signal was a message from Gallifrey on the other side of a crack in the universe ("The Eleventh Hour", "The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang"), the Time Lords seeking The Doctor to speak his name and confirm that it was save for them to return ("The Time of The Doctor"). With various other races surrounding the planet, The Doctor attempted to send Clara home in the TARDIS while he stayed to defend Trenzalore - the other races unwilling to let The Doctor speak his name in case the return of the Time Lords restarted the Time War and The Doctor refusing to abandon Trenzalore to be destroyed - but she was able to return to him twice, first by grabbing the TARDIS before it could dematerialise completely (Resulting in it returning to The Doctor after he had been trapped on Trenzalore for three centuries as the TARDIS had to slow down to protect Clara) and later when one of The Doctor's allies came to collect Clara as The Doctor began to die of old age, the Daleks now the only aliens still attacking Trenzalore after The Doctor had spent centuries fending off other assaults. With The Doctor's regenerations exhausted, he prepared to face the Daleks for the last time, but Clara was able to save his life by pleading with the Time Lords on the other side of the crack to help The Doctor change the future where Trenzalore was his grave, the Time Lords sacrificing the crack to send The Doctor the energy needed to begin a new regeneration cycle, the energy released as his body reset itself destroying the Dalek mothership.
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| Deep Breath |
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Following The Doctor's thirteenth regeneration into his twelfth incarnation, although disturbed at the new Doctor's colder, more distant nature, Clara decided to remain with him when she received a phone call from the Eleventh Doctor shortly before he changed, the past Doctor asking Clara not to give up on his future self ("Deep Breath"). Despite the Twelfth Doctor initially appearing hurt at Clara's new distance from him, telling her that she couldn't 'see' him even though he was right in front of her, his own attitude was still awkward; he once described Clara as his 'carer', claiming that she cared about things so that he didn't have to. However, he still valued her opinion, once asking Clara whether or not she thought of him as a good man, with Clara eventually replying that she wasn't sure if he was, but the fact that he was trying was what mattered ("Into the Dalek"). Regardless of his emotional distance, the Twelfth Doctor remained dedicated to protecting Clara; when she was briefly transferred into the mind of a Wyrrester - an alien resembling a giant scorpion - The Doctor risked allowing the Wyrrester race to reach Earth in order to reverse the switch and restore Clara to her body when he could have just destroyed their equipment ("The Crawling Terror").
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| Into the Dalek |
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While Clara had sometimes subtly implied that she was romantically interested in the Eleventh Doctor, her relationship with the Twelfth was noticeably cooler, most likely due to a combination of his new body's more distant nature and greater physical age reinforcing the gap between them. As a result, she began a new relationship with fellow Coal Hill School teacher Danny Pink, a former soldier and current Maths teacher, although she continued to travel with The Doctor on a more regular basis while trying to keep her lives with Danny and The Doctor separate. Her first date with Danny was interrupted after Clara asked him some uncomfortable questions about his military background and was then dragged along by The Doctor to help him investigate his new theory that the reason people sometimes felt like they weren't alone in a room was that there was a creature in existence that had evolved a system of perfect camouflage ("Listen"). During their search, not only did The Doctor and Clara briefly accidentally visit Danny Pink as a child, but they also met a man named Orson Pink in the far future, the pilot of one of humanity's first time machines... and, it was strongly implied, the grandchild of Danny and Clara, given his strong resemblance to Danny and his reference to a grandmother that sounded like Clara. An unintentional detour also resulted in Clara finding herself in a barn outside Lungbarrow back on Gallifrey during The Doctor's childhood, during which she overheard an argument between The Doctor's Cousins and offered comfort to the child that would become the First Doctor, assuring him that it was OK to be afraid (Although The Doctor was ignorant of her conversation with his past self as he was unconscious at the time).
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| Mummy on the Orient Express |
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Clara's friendship with The Doctor became particularly turbulent after The Doctor abandoned her to face the traumatic decision of killing an infant creature that was literally about to hatch from the Moon, The Doctor claiming that he had no right to participate in something that was fundamentally humanity's decision even as he admitted later that he had always suspected that the egg hatching wouldn't threaten Earth ("Kill the Moon"). Despite The Doctor's casual dismissal of her feelings at the time, Clara began to warm up to him again when he risked his own life facing an ancient alien entity known as the Forsaken to save various other passengers on a space train, accepting his argument that sometimes the only choice was one of various bad calls ("Mummy on the Orient Express"). When the invasion of the two-dimensional Boneless shrank the TARDIS's exterior dimensions so that The Doctor was trapped inside his ship, Clara was forced to take The Doctor's role in averting an alien invasion, armed only with the sonic screwdriver, the psychic paper, and an earpiece to communicate with The Doctor ("Flatline"). During their efforts against the Boneless, Clara realised that she was capable of making the same ruthless and pragmatic decisions that The Doctor often had to make, accepting that she had to leave some people behind in order to focus on keeping the others alive, as well as putting others at risk to try and delay their enemies. This became a particular issue for Clara as she experienced other encounters, such as when she allowed the arrogant Rudy Zoom to be attacked by The Umbra - a race of psychic predators who had been trapped in the Sun centuries ago - as she theorised that he was too arrogant and narcissistic to fall victim to the despair it induced ("The Eye of Torment"), prompting her to be disturbed at what she was capable of despite the necessity of her actions and the fact that the plan worked.
Just as Clara was preparing to make the choice to let Danny completely into her life, her plans were cut short when he was killed in a pointless car accident, prompting her to ask The Doctor to try and save him. However, when The Doctor tried to take the TARDIS to wherever Danny had gone after his death, they discovered the latest plot by the restored Master - now in a female incarnation going by the name 'Missy' as a shortened form of 'Mistress' - uploading the minds of humanity's dead into a stolen Matrix data slice and then reanimating their bodies as Cybermen, with Danny as the latest victim; Missy also revealed that she was the one who had arranged for The Doctor and Clara to meet by giving Clara the TARDIS phone number ("The Bells of Saint John"), believing that Clara was the ideal companion to capture The Doctor's interest and make it easier for Missy to emotionally manipulate him. Despite being restored as a Cyberman, Danny's love for Clara allowed him to retain his identity even with his emotions deactivated, prompting The Doctor to hand control of the Cyber-army to Danny when Missy tried to make The Doctor see that they were the same by giving the army to him. With Danny having sacrificed himself and Missy killed by the Cyber-resurrected Brigadier to spare The Doctor and Clara from having to do it, The Doctor and Clara spent some time alone to emotionally recuperate. When they met up again two weeks later, they each lied to the other in the belief that they were ready to move on, The Doctor believing that Danny had returned from the Nethersphere and Clara believing that The Doctor had found Gallifrey (In reality, Danny had sacrificed his chance to return to save a young boy he'd killed by accident, and The Doctor's latest clue to Gallifrey had met with nothing).
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| The Magician's Apprentice/The Witch's Familiar |
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However, The Doctor and Clara were reunited when they were both infected by a 'dreamcrab', a neural parasite that trapped them and at least four other people on Earth in a dream, the two admitting the truth behind their lies when The Doctor talked about Danny flirting with other women to provoke an emotional reaction from Clara to break the crabs' influence ("Last Christmas"). Having experienced a dream of a world where he didn't return for Clara after their last parting, with Clara unmarried in her eighties as she was unable to find any man who measured up to Danny or The Doctor, The Doctor returned for Clara once again once they had both woken up, Clara accepting her second chance to resume her travels with The Doctor. During this new period of travel, Clara was able to accept her own guilt about the creation of her splinters when a trip to Snowcap University - an Antarctic research base built on the base where the First Doctor confronted the Cybermen ("The Tenth Planet") - resulted in her meeting splinter Oswin 'Winnie' Clarence, with Winnie actually surviving her attempt to save The Doctor's life, assuring Clara that not all of her splinters were doomed to die but could go on to have lives of their own ("Blood & Ice"). Although her relationship with The Doctor faced such unexpected threats as Missy's return and Davros's attempt to extend his own life ("The Magician's Apprentice/The Witch's Familiar"), The Doctor and Clara continued to be close, including The Doctor 'risking' changing history to stop the powerful Fisher King when he received faked information that Clara was 'destined' to be killed by their enemies next ("Under the Sea/Before the Flood"). When Clara was later abducted and replaced by a Zygon, she was even able to turn the tables on her duplicate while trapped in the mental landscape the Zygon used to access her memories, using their mental link to stop the Zygon shooting down The Doctor's plane until he could escape, and also hindering her efforts to simply take the information she wanted until The Doctor managed to talk the Zygon-Clara down and make her see that the conflict couldn't continue ("The Zygon Invasion/The Zygon Inversion").
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| Face the Raven |
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Despite his great affection for Clara, The Doctor was nevertheless troubled by the evidence that Clara was becoming more like him, taking such reckless action as trying to distract the Cybermen by pretending to be him ("Dark Water/Death in Heaven") or using a Dalek casing to infiltrate Skaro when forced to work with Missy to rescue The Doctor ("The Magician's Apprentice/The Witch's Familiar"). Her efforts to 'be The Doctor' came to a head when her old friend Rigsy ("Flatline") called the TARDIS after he found a strange tattoo on his neck that was counting down, eventually tracking his past movements to a hidden street populated by alien refugees, the mayor of the street being The Doctor and Clara's old immortal acquaintance Ashildir ("Face the Raven"). Learning that the tattoo was a chrono-lock that would kill Rigsy by sending an alien shade to claim his soul once time ran out, apparently set on him by Ashildir after he committed a crime on the street, Clara convinced Rigsy to pass the chrono-lock on to her, reasoning that she was under Ashildir's protection and would therefore be spared once the time ran down, regarding it as the type of plan The Doctor would concoct. Unfortunately, she failed to take into account that the chrono-lock required a death and couldn't be cheated, and the circumstances that led to the chrono-lock being passed on to Clara invalidated the deal Ashildir had made with the shade that would have allowed her to spare Rigsy (Aware of his contact with The Doctor and creating the mystery of the situation to lure The Doctor in), with the result that Ashildir couldn't take the chrono-lock off her now.
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| Heaven Sent/Hell Bent |
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With The Doctor unable to do anything to remove the chrono-lock, Clara accepted her imminent death, musing that she may have wanted to face her death in the same manner as Danny had, using her last moments to ask The Doctor not to let her loss change him into something other than The Doctor he always was before she was taken by the shade. When Ashildir's deal saw The Doctor being teleported back to Gallifrey - although he was forced to face a complex plot to try and make him confess his secrets before he reached his planet - The Doctor was able to depose the current President and trick the Time Lords into helping him save Clara by teleporting her away from the moment of her death ("Heaven Sent/Hell Bent"). With Clara now frozen between heartbeats despite the risk of changing history if she survived, The Doctor travelled to the end of the universe to try and find another way to save her, until the ancient Ashildir told him that he had to accept Clara's death. Talking with Ashildier,
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| Twice Upon a Time |
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The Doctor and Clara realised that the two of them together were the Hybrid that would destroy Gallifrey as each of them pushed the other to commit increasingly dangerous actions, speculating that Missy brought them together for that purpose. Faced with this revelation, The Doctor attempted to erase Clara's memories of him, only for Clara to modify the device to alter The Doctor's memories of her. With The Doctor remembering some of Clara's actions but not her appearance, he returned to his travels while Clara and Ashildir left in the TARDIS The Doctor had 'borrowed' to leave Gallifrey, Clara musing that she was still 'destined' to die and would have to return to Gallifrey to be returned to her moment of death, but deciding that she and Ashildir would exploit her lack of aging to take the long way round to get there.
Although Clara’s final fate is unknown, The Doctor regained his memory of her when the mysterious ‘Testimony’ - an organisation in the far future that collected the memories of those about to die to preserve them in some form - restored his lost memories of Clara as thanks for everything he had done to the universe, his memory of Clara encouraging the Twelfth Doctor to go on and not forget her again ("Twice Upon a Time"). |
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