#and twelve. obviously. does this to clara. clara also does it right back. this is why they are made for each other alsjjfgjakdj.

[quietwingsinthesky]

the doctor is emotionally manipulative. he’s very good at it, and even better at justifying it both to himself and the people he’s doing it to. he can see when his approval, his affection, is valuable enough to someone that withholding it will be an effective way of getting them to do what he wants. this is one of his best flaws, that he’ll do this to people and do it to them for his own definition of what’s good for them.

(gestures vaguely) twissy.

[lizzy-bennet]

May These Memories Lead Us Home Can be read as a stand-alone or as a sequel to The Symbolism of Owls Fandom: Doctor Who Pairing: Whouffaldi Length: 3,700 words Rating: G   Also on Ao3

Once, he heard a story from a weathered old woman under some golden alien sky, that the things you love always find a way back to you in the end. And it is only a fairy tale, a shot in the dark, one odd in a billion.

And yet he hopes.

A post-Hell Bent AU.

Clara Oswald is lying dead on Trap Street, and Clara Oswald is alive, somewhere out there, living in the space between heartbeats. There are so many places in the world she could possibly be, but her flat isn’t bound to be one of them, and yet the Doctor finds himself there anyway.

And he doesn’t know why.

For a moment he just stands there, right in the middle of her living room, his black boots sinking into the beige carpet, feeling at a loss for why his unconscious muscle memory would land the TARDIS there.

And then he remembers:

It’s Wednesday.

The two-word thought is something like a sucker punch, or like being sucked into space with no suit on. It is mind-reeling and breath-stealing, and it shatters him, swallows him, and around him, the room spins as the realization circles around and around in his mind to rhythm of his heartbeats.

It’s Wednesday. It’s Wednesday. It’s Wednesday.

”Of course,” he says, and he sighs, runs a hand over his face and closes his eyes. “Stupid, stupid old Doctor.”

Where else in the universe could he possibly end up? Wednesdays were Clara’s days, and old habits were hard to break. He cannot remember the color of her hair or the cadence of her voice, but he remembers other things, like an Ice Warrior on a submarine and (apparently) the address of her flat and the fact that he must’ve loved her very, very much.

Which is why he stays in her flat that she’ll never come back to, and tries to reconstruct an image of the girl he once knew.

He starts with what’s in front of him, his eyes scanning shelf after shelf along her living room wall, trying to learn what he can about one Miss Clara Oswald. She was ridiculously short, he decides, from the placement of the items on her shelves. Her head couldn’t have come up much past the slope of his shoulders. But she was obviously well-read, judging by the weathered pages and worn spines on her myriad of books. And, he remembers significantly, as his eyes land on a bright white ceramic figurine, she had collected owls.

He stares at the ceramic, and a memory niggles somewhere in a dark corner of his mind of the day she brought that first owl knickknack home. The memory is fuzzy, all sort of soft and hazy, and he feels like he’s a sailor on a ship in a storm-swept sea, trying to see a lighthouse’s beacon through clouds of fog. But the fog is too thick, the waves too high, and he can’t remember exactly what she’d told him or what he’d said back.

But he knows the memory is important to him, somehow. And he thinks that maybe it was important to the both of them.

And maybe that’s enough for the plan he’s forming in his mind.

Once, he heard a story, from a weathered old woman under some golden alien sky, that the things you love always find a way back to you in the end. And it is a fairy tale, a shot in the dark, just a nearly nonsensical spark of hope.

Hope, he knows, can be the worst thing.

But, but, but:

Hope can also be the best thing.

And the thing about it is, it’s impossible to resist. So he raises his sonic screwdriver and points it at the owl, letting a glowing blue light wash over the white, putting a tracking imprint on it. The sonic hums, locking onto her leftover memories and fingerprints, and should Clara ever (anywhere, in all of time and space, just by chance) find and hold her owl again, the sonic will glow red and lead him to her.

So he finishes getting a tracking lock on the ceramic owl, puts it back on the shelf...

...and he hopes.

#

Somewhere out there, Clara Oswald is lying lifeless on Trap Street.

But right now, Clara Oswald (one-hundred-and-twelve and the pilot of her very own TARDIS) is also in a shop on the Embarcadero in mid-century San Francisco.

The idea that her body is somewhere out there, lying beneath a cold tombstone should probably bother her, she thinks, but it doesn’t. Not really. She’d already jumped into the Doctor’s time stream, after all, and has long since come to terms with the idea that the universe is filled with the many graves of Clara Oswald.

All that matters is that, right at this very moment, this version of herself isn't in one yet.

Which is why she’s enjoying herself now, browsing a little, kitschy shop in nineteen-fifty-nine, enjoying the quiet break.

(She’s just been busy saving an entire species of luminous fish in thirty-thirty-five and needs a relaxing change of pace.

Plus, the shopping prices are quite cheaper in the fifties.)

And that’s when she comes across a pair of owl salt-and-pepper shakers.

They are adorable and admittedly tacky, but they match the retroness of her faux TARDIS diner perfectly and Clara can’t help but stop and stare at them. She’d collected owls back in her own, original timeline and silly old habits were hard to break, even after years flying around all of time and space.

Clara picks up one of the owl shakers, runs her thumb over it, and thinks of the first owl figurine she’d brought home oh so many years ago, with it’s white ceramic feathers that nearly looked like furrowed brows and the odd, almost alien expression on its painted face. And then she thinks of him, because of course she does. The only reason why she’d even started collecting owls in the first place was because they reminded her of the Doctor, with his funny, angry owl-like eyes and his velvet coat that floated behind him like a pair of wings.

The one owl she can never have.

Because that is the thing about her and him, they loved each other a little too fiercely, pushed the universe a little too far, and this is the price they paid: she is here, breathless with too many memories of him, and he is elsewhere, living with none of her at all.

Slowly, the owl salt shaker in her hand starts to gloss over and blur, it’s outline all wavy and watery, and Clara has to take a second to purse her lips and shut her eyes and tell herself very sternly not to cry.

(The thing is, she can no longer breathe and her heart doesn’t beat, but she can still shed tears.

She doesn’t know if that bit of leftover humanity is a gift or a curse from the Time Lords.)

And then she shakes her head, clears her throat, and takes the miniature owls to the cash register.

Because decades of agelessly sailing the stars hasn’t done a thing to lessen her fondness for owls.

#

The Doctor is in Clara’s old room on the TARDIS, and he keeps finding owls. They are tucked away, hidden in corners and locked in drawers and pushed behind other knickknacks, so inconspicuous that he hadn’t even noticed them at first glance, but now he sees nothing but them.

There is a painted porcelain owl standing guard over a stack of silver rings, a discarded phone charm of an owl with outstretched wings, and then, sitting atop her nightstand, as if it was meant to keep vigilance over her while she slept, there is a tiny, grey owl with bright blue eyes. It is a plastic thing, a mere children’s toy, but obviously important to her. And as he picks it up and turns it over in his hands, he remembers it sitting atop the TARDIS console.

He cannot see Clara in his memories. Her silhouette is nothing but an indiscernible blur of colors, a nebula in the outline of a body, and her voice is all distorted, but he still remembers that, at one point, she’d pointed to an owl and said:

“He looks like you.”

And then, later, later, later:

“I love owls.”

His usually steady hands falter at the memory and the owl slips through his fingers, falling to the floor, and he knows he should be moving, reaching down to pick it up, but his hands are frozen and his hearts are hammering and he’s replaying her words in his head, over and over and over again.

When she said she’d loved owls, he wonders, had she meant that she loved him? Had she been telling him all this time and he’d just been too deaf and too blind to take notice?

The thought is too much. It is gut-wrenching and raging and and all-consuming, roaring in his mind like an exploding supernova that just won’t stop, and he sinks down to the floor and puts his head in his hands and tries not to scream.

She loved him. She told him right to his face and he hadn’t heard it.

And the thing is, he no longer knows the sound of her laugh or the curve of her lips, but he remembers how he feels about her. He remembers that he loved her, loved her enough to die every day for four-and-a-half billion years. Loved her enough to burn the universe and unravel time, and he knows that she was some sort of guiding force - a North Star and a touchstone and an anchor and something that meant home.

And she still means home.

He just has to find his way back to her.

#

Once upon a time, little Clara Oswald had clutched a book about one-hundred-and-one places to see and dreamed of going to them all.

And now Clara Oswald is over two-hundred and has been to them all and then more. She’s seen the birth and death of stars and the seven wonders of the ancient world back when they were new, she’s seen the Grand Canyon on Earth and the one up on Dreaminx, and more than just seen the universe, she’s saved it.

(Thousands and thousands of times. Because in all of time and space, there are Doctors running around with countless faces, but there is also her, and she is a one-woman storm, sweeping in and saving lives before the Doctor’s ever needed.)

And right now she is standing in the middle of a festival on a starship she’s just saved from crashing, and she’s surrounded by a sea of partiers and entertainers. There are brightly glowing balloons and dancers on stilts and jugglers that hover, and off in the corner, there’s a puppet show being watched by the children with rapt attention.

And Clara turns toward it, steps closer, like it’s slowly reeling her in on a string.

(She gets closer, you see, because the puppet being used in the show is an owl.

It is a black owl, and Clara almost expects to see a flash of red in the lining of its wings.)

By the time she gets near enough to hear, she’s missed most of the story, but from what she’s pieced together, it was about something that was lost.

“See?” the owl puppet says in a gravelly voice. “The things you love always find a way back to you in the end.”

And Clara wonders if it’s true.

#

The tracker on his screwdriver is still running, and sometimes the Doctor thinks that it will always be running, that he’ll spend an eternity chasing after phantoms all hoping they’ll turn out to be her. It was a mere chance, after all, one odd in a billion. He is waiting for one particular ceramic owl to find its way back to one particular girl, and he well knows the vastness of time and the sheer magnitude of the universe and how there’s billions upon billions of galaxies and myriads of stars and countless possibilities of where in all of time and space she could be.

But he can’t bring himself to turn the tracker off.

After all, she’s died before and he’s always found her. Again and again and again. 

All he needs to do is find her just one more time.

#

Clara Oswald is winding her way through an alien bazaar. She doesn’t look a day over thirty, but she’s well over three-hundred.

And she’s about to receive a gift from the past.

Because as she’s weaving through all the brightly colored booths and carts full of trinkets, she finds herself in front of a stall selling antiques, and in that stall, sitting on a stack of crates right at the level of her eye, is a small, white ceramic owl.

It is old and weathered, its paint is scratched and its horns are cracked, but it looks exactly like the very first owl she got, so, so, so many years ago.

(Clara has no way of knowing yet, but after her death on Trap Street, the ceramic owl and her other belongings were packed up and donated and put in a thrift shop and bought as gifts and eventually passed on in wills as antiques until the owl now sits here, some hundreds of years later, miles and miles and miles away from Earth, on an alien planet, simply waiting for her to find it again.

She also has no idea that somewhere out there, the man she loves is spending an eternity tracking it, desperately hoping he can follow it back to her.)

Carefully, Clara picks the owl up, smiling at its glowering beak and the grumpy look in its eyes.

“It’s a very old antique,” the alien vendor tells her as she runs her fingers over the carved feathers. “Made in the form of some Earthen creature.”

“It’s an owl,” Clara tells them, handing over her currency.

“An owl,” the vendor repeats, carefully rolling the odd word over its blue tongue. “What’s an owl?”

Clara smiles, holds the ceramic close, and she thinks.

She thinks of the shade of his eyes and the sound of his voice and the rare curve of his smile and the way he made her laugh.

And at over three-hundred years-old, she’s earned the right to be a sentimental old fool, so she smiles and says:

“It’s something wonderful.”

#

Clara Oswald is on a far-off distant planet, purchasing back her very own owl in a marketplace, and at the very same time, the Doctor is hundreds and thousands of light years away up in space.

And the tracker on the sonic screwdriver suddenly turns bright red.

#

He tries to follow the tracker to her, but the time zone and coordinates are always changing, the numbers and eras she’s in shifting and blinking away, the temporal displacement of two different TARDISES making it hard to get the tracking and timing exactly right. He finds he’s always landing just a step behind her, a day or a decade too late to reach her.

But whenever he lands, he always knows he’s in the right spot, because the traces of her are all around; in fresh sonic scorches on metal or in ancient songs about a girl who is the savior of a thousand worlds or in bedtime stories for children about a warrior queen who came down from the stars just to rescue them.

She is everywhere and she is nowhere, and nothing feels more bittersweet.

“She was scary,” one small child tells him, when he’s landed just an hour too late. “But she was kind. She drew a picture with me. Do you want to see it?”

And the child is confused as to why the Doctor looks like he’s about to both laugh and cry over a drawing of an owl holding a guitar.

#

Clara Oswald has just liberated a prisoner’s of war camp in a futuristic rainforest, and now she’s collapsed on a stool in her faux TARDIS diner.

There’s mud on her shoes and scratches on her skin, but she’s laughing, wired and exhilarated and high off her adventure, and as she laughs she places a small brown owl one of the newly free prisoners carved from the root of a tree for her onto the counter.

She sits it right next to the old, weathered (terribly antique by now) ceramic owl she’s got sitting on the counter, and she thinks of him and wishes he could’ve been there with her, and she smiles into the quiet darkness, and says:

“You would’ve loved it, Doctor.”

(And she pats the owl on the head, and she has no idea that somewhere out there, the Doctor’s desperately trying to use it to follow her home.)

#

When he follows the tracker and lands on Lumia Five, it’s like he’s entering the aftermath of a battle. There are white ashes dusting the ground like fresh snowfall and little burning red embers that look like fallen stars and sweeping plumes of smoke curling up against the clouds.

But all around him the alien villagers are cheering. They are hugging and kissing and singing, and as a group of alien children run by, screaming at the sheer joy of being alive, the Doctor grabs one of them by the shoulders.

“There was a girl here, wasn’t there?” The Doctor asks.

“She saved us,” the child tells him excitedly. “The sky was burning, but then she saved us.”

“What was she like?” The Doctor asks, desperate and proud and eager to hear. “Please, tell me, what was she like?”

And the child grins and says, “She was impossible.”

#

The year is twenty-fourty-nine and there’s a comet about to light up the Nevada night, so Clara’s landed her TARDIS on a dusty desert hill under a clear patch of sky.

The comet only passes once every fifty-seven years. It is a once in a lifetime thing.

(Unless you’re ageless or a time traveler, of course, of which Clara is both. She’s just been back to see it in nineteen-ninety-two and is in the mood for a rerun.)

And when Clara hears the soft ding of her diner’s door, meaning someone’s walked into it, she figures that it is simply another mistake. Nothing out of the ordinary.

She is wrong on both counts.

Because who she sees in her diner stops her right in her tracks, and it’s like the world‘s stopped spinning and time has stood still, because he is there, standing in her faux diner. The sight of him again is both breathtaking and heartbreaking, intoxicating and devastating, because he is not hers, not anymore, but he is beautiful.

(And Clara....Clara has seen nebulas that burn color into dark skies and suns that sweep patterns of light and glittering, curving constellations and diamond filled caverns and nothing, nothing, nothing compares to the elation at seeing him again.)

“Owls,” he says softly, and for the first time, she notices that he has not bothered to turn toward her, that he is concentrated instead on the collection of owls she’s got on the counter.

Clara stares at his side silhouette, but he doesn’t even spare her a glance. He still doesn't know her, she realizes. Maybe he’d just wandered in on a whim. It was the night of a historic comet, after all. She’d been reckless and foolhardy, thinking she could be a part of history and not ever run into him.

And once again, Clara silently, violently curses the entire planet of Gallifrey for making her ageless but leaving her with the ability to cry, because there’s a lump in her throat and there are tears stinging the corners of her eyes. And she’s torn between drinking in the sight of him and closing her eyes because it’s been over three-hundred years since she’s seen him and even after all this time she’s not sure she can handle another goodbye.

“You collect owls,” he says, interrupting her internal storm of thoughts, and his voice manages to sound both matter-of-fact and full of wonder.

“I love owls,” she says quietly.

And at her words, he turns toward her. His gaze first falls at her feet, and then slowly, (slowly, slowly, slowly,  as if he’s trying to scan a blueprint for a secret or piece together a puzzle) he looks up at her face.

And when his bright blue eyes lock onto her dark brown ones, it feels like everything has all come down to this moment, that maybe timelines changed and the universe rearranged and all that tragedy and heartbreak happened just to bring them both back to here, to now, to this very moment.

(She should not dare to hope, she thinks. She is hundreds of years old and she knows that hope is a dangerous thing, and yet she finds herself standing there, hoping and pleading and wanting and wishing.)

And then, in a rough Scottish voice that’s uncharacteristically, desperately, questioning and quiet, he says, “Clara?”

He is asking for confirmation. He is asking for information that once sent the universe burning. Clara stares, swallows hard.

“Dangerous question,” she says, and she means it.

But then he says, “What’s wrong with dangerous?”

And the next thing she knows, he is running to her, hugging her, his arms coming around her in a way they haven’t since Trap Street, and she is falling into him, collapsing against his chest and clutching onto his coat and swearing she’ll never let go, not ever, not again. His face is buried in her hair, and against her temple she hears him murmur something that sounds like her name, over and over again, and she gasps out a sob, tears falling onto the dark velvet of his coat. And for the first time, she’s happy that the Time Lords left her with the ability to cry. Because this...this is both joy and peace, exhilaration and serenity, every second of happiness wrapped up in something that utterly, unquestionably feels right, because falling into his arms feels like coming home.

“Clara,” he whispers against her hair. “My Clara.”

And she thinks that sometimes the things you love really do find their way back to you.

[yesokayiknow]

You can't say all that and then not tell us how Clara got her world ending superpowers (and also if this timeline Melody's will be born)

yeah yeah

okay, so, 2 years after the mass breakout, gallifrey finally comes after twelve. and, in the process of taking him, they kill danny.

now gallifrey aren’t expecting missy and clara to come right after them, figuring that they wouldn’t dare without the manpower. what they don’t know is that twelve is somewhat friendly with unit, and even tho they can’t do shit without an excuse (& it’ll take them a few hours at least to falsify one) they can still allow the other 2 to ‘steal’ weapons from their armoury (also missy maybe steals some bodies from their morgue but really they should’ve expected that).

(kate doesn’t think clara should go. she’s only a weak telekinetic with no combat training after all, she won’t get out of there alive. but clara insists, and as much as missy does like her, she’s p sure it’ll go easier for her with a human shield)

they split up after breaking in, clara insisting that it’ll let them find twelve quicker. which technically yeah, but that’s not why she suggests it. she waits until missy’s gone, and then, instead of staying on the holding cells level, she goes straight for the labs. and she finds some lab techs and she makes them give her everything they gave the doctors and masters.

missy can reanimate the dead. not perfectly, not in a way that could bring danny back, but still. all clara needs is for that ability to be refined somehow. increased.

twelve is rotting somewhere in this facility and if she had anymore clarity she’d be ashamed but. she still has danny’s blood on her clothes and she doesn’t care. she needs the experiments’ abilities. she needs to bring him back. 

but she isn’t one of the experiments, her cells haven’t been engineered specifically for this, her physiology hasn’t been modified to allow this to work. the only reason the lab techs agree to do this is bc they know that this concoction should kill her.

and it does.

it rips her apart, on a cellular level. every strand of dna and energy and radiation clashing to combine an implosion. and that should be it. except—

except danny was never the target. why would they care about him? twelve sure didn't. their original target was clara.

the easiest way to take down twelve is to make him use his abilities until he runs out of energy, so that's what they did. they killed clara, forcing twelve to loop. and they kept killing her, again and again and again with an ai they created just for the purpose of reading any qualities that twelve had changed so it could always change its plan in return (bc gallifrey is so gd bad at their job, this ai obviously gained sentience. it calls itself 'the great intelligence', but that's a different story). they expected twelve to use his abilities until he couldn’t (which he did) but he also pushed himself further than he ever has, bc this is clara. he looped and looped and looped until he physically couldn’t anymore. until he finally, for the first and last time, gave in and asked danny for help. he’d tried missy, who hadn’t been able to think of anything else, and clara, who’d told him to let her die. finally he asked danny, and danny— well.

and danny offered to die in her place. 

(twelve will never ever tell clara that)

so now clara is soaked in temporal energy and it wouldn't matter normally but twelve's time looping dna was in that cocktail, and it reacts violently. she splits and she reforms and she splits and she reforms billions upon billions of times and in the process the other abilities clash and combine and merge and what’s left isn’t quite clara.

(what’s left is entirely clara. clara oswald, tiny human who looks upon the world and doesn’t like what she sees. who decides to change it. she still can’t bring danny back, so what is the point. what is the point in a world where danny pink isn’t alive)

(the world would’ve survived if twelve had let clara die. he still can’t find it in himself to regret his choice)

[2ofswords]

Alexander Block ^^

Our dear Commander! This is going to be interesting, because I think he is pretty ambivalent in his role. Also I have to disclaim: I have not yet played the Changeling Route, so there probably is some information lacking. I will try my best though!

their biggest strength

All in all I wouldn’t say that we really see the General at his best here. Well… depending what kind of best we are talking about but the military at that point of the outbreak is pretty much useless unless for the ending itself and Block has no real way to handle the situation and it is really hard to pick a direct strength, because… well… he is not showing as many in a situation that really confines him. He looses control pretty quickly and almost becomes a bystander relying on other peoples judgement calls in both games. So I kind of cannot really judge him by his speciality (which would be how he handles the military but… you know… we don’t really see that) and also not by what his character strengths in general are, because he is just so out of his element that he has a very small time to react on his own and show strength. For example, I have no real idea about his skills as a tactician even if they could probably be real^ly good just by the merits of being a successful general. So direct skills like these kind of fall apart here) What I can do though is judge the way he holds himself up in the narrative and where he has the greatest and most positive impact. And I think his sense of justice is his biggest strength here and perhaps still stands strong disregarding the fact that my perception of his strength feels a bit limited. But while creating a mess at the last days of the game his flat out refusal to destroy everything is his biggest and most impactful choice in the game and the way he actually archives some form of agency, even if it puts him in a passive position for the rest of the game because he has no own reason to spare or don’t spare different things. This also kind of works in both games and also explains why Aglaya states fearing him specifically. Her words “hero of the people” elude to him being kind of popular but also having some sort of heroism. And even her naming him a “genius” kind of plays into what I am calling his sense of justice when she denies herself being a genius by calling herself a “machine”. While Aglaya acts according to her set parameters and goals even while actively fighting her fate, Blocks first move is actively denying set parameters and I think this is his biggest strength and what upsets the whole status quo in the first place. (It is also why he bonds with the Changeling who is all about finding a different miraculous outcome that straight up denies the dilemma.) And I would say this happens by him actively saying “No. This way isn’t right, and I will not act according to it.” Of course, he makes kind of bad judgement calls as well. The whole bone stake lot disaster happens by his orders after all and the way he handles the mutiny seems pretty messy. This is more about the concept of morality and less about judgement calls in specific situations. But his fame and the way he seems to be actively dangerous to the powers that be seems to come out of a strong sense of justice and the willingness and bravery to follow through with it, which is definitely something few people would archive.

their greatest weakness

I was thinking about writing his dependence on other peoples opinions here, but I am still not quite sure about that one. First there are instances in the first game where he does act pretty immediately and second we already discussed how this is kind of a good thing and while his “I don’t know, just tell me what to do” kind o frustrates me, we should know that authorities listening to medical experts may not really be the worst one can do… So I do not feel got to choose that one, even if I think he stays really passive while he stays but on the other hand I have no real idea, what he could and should do in the first place. As I said his own options are pretty limited. Maybe not burning people alive would be a good start… Hm… To me he feels absolutely clueless. He is even more out of it than Daniil who at least arrives before the disaster starts and gets a small town crash course. He just arrives in the midst of disaster, in Patho1 there is an elaborate murder scheme… thing planed behind his back that he just kind of shrugs away and he still orders the bull being burned because of the Bachelor’s words (and that guy in general talks a lot of bullshit that Block just kind of accepts. Which… as I said listening to experts is kind of good but mayyybe get like a second opinion? The changeling is standing right next to you, it’s fine you can talk to her! She knows better anyways, believe me…). He just doesn’t know what the hell is going on and I think this is his main problem and the actual reason he stays this passive and kind of just does what he is being told is logical at this very moment. Or you know… just gets locked up (maybe?) and then released again to just fuck of because he has no idea what the fuck he should be doing about this situation. He kind of tries to talk to the different healers and in Patho 2 he seems a bit more adamant about it but we have yet to see because the Haruspex has almost no interaction with him. And again I think most about it happens because he arrives at a time, where everything already escalated and the mess is so convoluted that I have no idea how he should even see through it. But in the situation this lack of knowledge kind of leads to him being used by kind of everyone to manipulate the outcome of the outbreak and him having no say in it aside from not wanting to murder everyone.

a headcanon about their childhood

I cannot imagine Block as a child for some reason. He just gets… smaller. It’s said that he is very young for his position and that leads me to believe that he is part of a military family… He seems like a person who doesn’t really know anything besides the front and his duties in the military and he seems to be a bit awkward about handling something that isn’t that… Or he might be the second or third child of a family where the parents were like “just go to the military can’t have our business” and he always kind of prepared for that. That would also make him being this sudden shooting star who climbed the ranks a bit more spectacular. Anyways no cute headcanons for Block. He just was always a military man, I am afraid… But I think it fits his angst of desperately wanting something good and human to happen in his life.  

a headcanon about their future (if they have one)

Firstly out of all the people sent by the powers that be I think Block is the most likely to survive the whole disaster and escape relatively unscathed. Even with going against his initial orders he kind of washes his hands off of it pretty effectively and with a war going on he still seems needed enough (and I guess pretty easy to dispose) after the plague happened. How his future turns out depends on the question, if Clara will leave town with him or stay and I actually do simply not know about the outcome there. I think he will just stay at the front and be on his way again, if she stays in town but I do not think, he would be irresponsibly enough to carry a child to the front, even if she is a miraculous saint. So he will probably go back to the capital and strategize and hold up appearances there and basically do exactly what the powers that be feared in the first place. Also I want to imagine that at one point he meets up with some fellow generals that he really hates and Clara advises him with a really elaborate, clever and very childish prank that involves great things like tying shoelaces together. It’s a good evening.

a small detail/scene that leaves a great impact

Hm… I wish I had his appearance in Patho 1 more in mind but I was really stressed out while playing the last days and without using any guide I also missed quite a few side quests (for example I never visited all participants of the whole Block murder thing on day 9)… So there are a lot of details that escape me right now. The scene that for me leaves the greatest impact and was also my first impression was the very first cathedral scene at the beginning of Patho 2. I think that interaction is pretty neat. Of course refusing to spare the town is a pretty horrible thing to do and say and after seeing what the army did the impression of their leader cannot possibly be a very positive one but on the other hand it feels like he genuinely wanted to give you a shot at convincing him and he rather mourns not having the means to stop the plague which… you know, they do not have at this timelime and even while I agree with Artemy that there obviously wasn’t enough time in the first place… after the twelve days there aren’t that many people to save, time IS running out (there are around 15000 people in town (the 5000 in the Termitary make up a third of the population according to Young Vlad) and in Patho 2 after ten days there are over 13000 total deaths. So… not that many people left on day 12… I don’t know the numbers in Patho 1 though…), so not having a solution right now becomes a big problem in the general’s eyes. It is still a cruel decision and one I would definitely disagree with, but… with being responsible to your own troupes, letting your own people die when you see something as a lost course… It’s still a hard decision and he seems mournful about the outcome… So he stands for and does very problematic things but is introduced in his humanity and suffering over his own obligation. I think this early and pretty short conversation establishes him exceptionally well as well as some very important themes that will haunt us through the entire game.

their philosophy/worldview (or part of it) described in one neat little sentence

Luckily there is an entire theatre play dedicated to explaining his worldview and stance in this whole play. So how about “Protecting something means to attack the right thing at the right time.” Pretty much summarizes his entire dilemma in the game and shows a destructive stance and course of action, while also wondering about what really is the right course of action and showing his desire, to actually help and protect.

[girl-in-the-library]

Rambling about Doctor Who? In this economy?

I’m in the process of catching up with Doctor Who. I had stopped a while ago most of the way through Capaldi’s second season, after having stopped for a long time before watching his first season and a half.

Well, I just watched Capaldi regenerate into Jodi Whittaker and I have some things to say. This is primarily focusing on the end of Clara’s run as a companion and Bill’s story, because it’s been a while since I watched that first part of Capaldi and Clara, and even longer since I watched anything before that. I came back to catch up because I’d been seeing gifsets of Nine and Ten, and I miss them so, so much. But I decided I wanted to catch up before going back and doing an entire rewatch of New Who (I have no idea anything about Classic Who, honestly...and there’s so much that’s missing and I have no idea where to get the rest of it anyway).

Point is. I have feelings. Some good. Some bad. And they’re going under the cut.

First things First: I hate Steven Moffat.

All his episodes are the worst! Whenever his name would come up as the main writer credit, the episode was trash! Of course, some were more trash than others, and some were good ideas, but they all got the Doctor so, so wrong.

Two egregious examples that I hated, both from Moffat written episodes:

In “The Husbands of River Song,” River gives this whole big speech about how she’s the woman who loves the Doctor, but he will never love her, because that’s like looking at a sunset and asking it to love you back...or something like that. The Doctor would never come for her, because she wasn’t important enough.

That’s wrong on two big levels. 1! The Doctor is the Doctor because he loves. Nine was broken because he was so hurt, and he had forgotten how to love. Rose taught him to love again, and brought him back from the brink of self-destruction. I dislike the idea of the Doctor and River being a couple because I think Steven Moffat wrote it very, very badly (just like...a random woman comes out of nowhere and claims to be the Doctor’s wife! And then she is...because she is?) However, she is, in fact, the Doctor’s wife, as written, and he /does/ love her. She /is/ important to him. And the fact that she doesn’t think so just proves a misunderstanding in character and out of character. The second point? That she’s not important enough? She’s obviously important enough for the Doctor...but the other point is that that shouldn’t matter.

Nine once said that he had never met anybody who wasn’t important. But later on in the episode about the Monks that had taken over, Bill asks why the Doctor puts up with humans if he finds them so ridiculous. And the Doctor says something about “every so often I meet one like you [Bill]” and that makes up for putting up with the rest. No! The Doctor loves humanity! AND EVERYONE IS IMPORTANT TO HIM.

The thing about the Doctors that Moffat has written...both Eleven and Twelve (and the War Doctor, I guess too) is that specific people are important to those Doctors, and the Doctor would do anything for them. Anything for Amy, for Rory, for River. For Clara. For Bill. And they fail, but they fail doing things to save these specific people, not necessarily for their sakes, but for his own. And then they would die, and he would be sad, but there would be no consequences for his actions. 

Nine and Ten loved Rose, but Ten left her behind /twice/ because he needed to. Martha got herself out. And Ten erased Donna’s memories to save her life. He lost them, in the end. And it hurt him. And he continued on, learning because of it. He died and regenerated twice because of his love for people. But there were still consequences for everyone around him, as well as himself. Sad things happened.

But Amy, Rory, River, Clara, and Bill? He hung on to them until they were burned away, but they were all fine in the end. Amy and Rory were there for a long time, but then the weeping angels sent them back, and the Doctor couldn’t see them anymore, but they were totally fine and grew old together. River died the first time the Doctor met her, but he clung to her for centuries (without proper character development, I tell you!) until she eventually died, but her whole life was centered around the Doctor. Clara he did everything he could to save, including break the laws of time. And he still lost her but also she was totally fine at the same time, traveling across time and space with Asheildr/Me in their Diner TARDIS. And Bill? Bill literally was turned into a Cyberman because of the Doctor’s hubris. He couldn’t save her. But she ended up okay anyway.Why? Because after she died as a human, then died as a Cyberman, she lived as something else, along with Heather, and got some sort of happily ever after (until she ultimately died again, but that’s off screen, we see her memories.) And then the Doctor got HIS memories of Clara back! So there were no consequences!

The Doctor as Moffat wrote them had no regard for life. They loved specific people, and specific conditions, except when Humanity was in Danger, and then he was The Big Damn Action Hero. But he also turned all of humanity into murderers when he basically brainwashed them into killing the Silence on sight, because otherwise they wouldn’t remember seeing them (this happened in Amy and Rory’s time, but it’s relevant).

In one episode, he tells the executioners to look up the Doctor under cause of death, and they flee out of fear for just how many people wound up dead because of him. In the next, he berates Missy for just how many people has she killed? It’s inconsistent.

The Doctor is a Perfect Hero, when he needs to be, and a Perfect Killer, also when he needs to be. “The Doctor of War” - as the glass memory people call him (I can’t even remember what they were called even though I just watched the episode) - isn’t who the Doctor is...but it’s who Moffat made him. 

And of course, almost every major plotline ends up with Moffat’s favorite trope: The Big Friendly Reset Button. Because what does it matter if things happen? There’s time travel and everything will be okay for Earth in general and the people we care about, even if it’s not actually okay.

I hate Steven Moffat. I do think he has some good ideas! The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances were some of my favorite episodes! I just think he can’t be allowed to be in charge.

I also hate Clara’s Magic Tears that make the Doctor do something he wasn’t going to do (that it would have made sense for him to do) just because she cried. Like...in the 50th. When she cried and told the Doctor that pushing the button wouldn’t be like him. That he couldn’t do that to his entire civilization. But the thing is...he already did. His character development was based on that. And it changed him. But then, Clara cried, and he didn’t. And it was like the Time War never happened. (What I think would have been great would have been if the three Doctors decided to push the button together. They had made the decision in the past as Eight/the War Doctor. Now, together, as the War Doctor, Ten, and Eleven...knowing everything they had been through and everything the universe had been through...they pushed the button to make the decision they knew needed to be made. But they didn’t do that. Clara cried and they didn’t do that. And then it wasn’t like the War even mattered anyway, because literally nothing changed). But I digress. There was another time or two that Clara cried and the Doctor did something stupid, but I forget the specifics right now.

Now, from the bad to the questions.

Why are the Time Lords? Where are the Time Lords? If they’re back, how come they’re not interfering more, especially as they were looking for the Doctor? If they’re not back, then why are they there?

What was with the orphanage thing on Gallifrey? Is that where the Doctor grew up? Is this a question that was answered in Classic Who, or earlier New Who that I just don’t remember, or did Moffat just shove in a confusing backstory then not answer questions about it?

Why was Missy being executed? And speaking of Missy, why couldn’t she still call herself the Master, just because she was female? 

Who was that child in the picture on the Doctor’s desk in the office at the university? The one in the frame next to River’s frame? I feel like this is something I just don’t know...not something that wasn’t explained.

How old is the Doctor? That’s been all over the place for a long time now. 

How did Bill survive the mind-thing with the monks?

I had more questions but I forgot them.

And from the questions to the good.

I liked Bill! I liked Bill a lot! I feel like I never got the sense that she developed any sort of relationship with the Doctor, that it was just like...she was a student and then suddenly they were super important to each other, but I guess that’s how it goes sometimes.

I actually really loved Capaldi! I thought he could be a great Doctor if he wasn’t hindered by the writing. But I definitely enjoyed this run and will miss him, which is honestly more than I can say for Matt Smith. Not that I don’t think Smith did a good job. I like Smith well enough, but not enough to miss him as the Doctor when he left.

The episode Hell Bent was really, really good.

And overall, I just enjoyed it.

I know I listed a lot of problems up there, and not a lot of good stuff down here...but I was having fun watching Doctor Who again! I was just taken out of it sometimes by the Moffat garbage fire.

But I cried when Bill died. I cried when the Doctor died. I cried when he said, “What about me? Don’t I get to rest?” I cried when he regenerated, though his speech to himself was stupid.

I liked Bill better than Clara, but Clara still had a lot of good moments!

I am /happy/ that I got back into Doctor Who. And I can’t wait to see what comes next.

[beclynn-herondale]

( based off of my dream I had )

"You came back"

She and her companions were running for the door, from the people who were chasing them, she never thought her life would come to this but here she was. She was running towards the house in the distance, as she was running for it she saw a familiar Face of the boy she missed so much, someone who she loved.

***

Jillian! she yelled and he turned around while trying to fight off some of the men that were now attacking him, she ran up to him and helped him fight them off. After that they helped fight off the rest and it was not easy but they did it and they couldn't have it it weren't for Jillian and his companions. There were bodies everywhere she couldn't believe that they had actually won, they were wounded but did it.

Elliana said Jillian how? Is it really you?, Yes she said it's really me. I've missed you he said I am glad I get to see you again, with that slight smile on his face that used to be bigger but over the years have obviously slowly faded and she couldn't blame him. His father disappeared right before they were separated in fact she was gonna help him find him and then she was taken and they hadn't seen each since, they were twelve then. Since then she was still looking for his father and had some new information although she didn't know if he already knew.

She shook away her thoughts and hugged him, it was an awkward hug she had to admit although they hadn't seen each other so for him it was probably strange but great that was her Jillian after all, Elliana.. he said and put his arms around her I missed you and I have been so worried, I thought you were dead. Said Jillian, I thought the same about you said Elliana.

***

They were in the house now and Elliana saw the familiar face of Jillian's little sister Clara she was probably about 14 now, and his little brother Luke and sister Jayce or Jay they called her both, they're twins they were probably about 12 now. And His other brother Raphael who was probably 10 now and the youngest Kayla who was a baby the last time she saw her which meant she was probably 6 now, wow you're all grown up now!, Elliana!! Said Clara and ran over and hugged her. Hey Clara said Elliana. I thought you were gone for good said Clara, well I am back now Elliana said.

Luke and Jay waved and said hi and that it's nice to see her although she knew they were probably being shy cause they hadn't seen her in so long, Raphael came up to her and said hi! Sorry Elliana I only remember a little bit but hopefully you'll stay now and we can make new memories. He said and smiled and she was amazed he was such a sweet boy and a little grown up for his age, Kayla stared at her for a couple minutes and then ran up to her and hugged, Odd she thought since she was a baby although they say that babies always remember the love you gave them and she would be lying if she said her and Jillian didn't spend as much time with her when she was as they could, and she kissed her head and hugged so many times and now she bent down to her knees and took the little girl in her arms.

I don't know if she'll stay so don't get your Hope's up kids. Said Jillian and Elliana felt a little hurt did he think she was going anywhere now? Did he not want her here? Why?, well I don't have anywhere else to he and the world is shit, so I think I will stay if it's alright with you all? Said Elliana. You can stay said jillian but you'll have to help out and not weigh us dow- jillian! Shouted Clara be nicer she's your best friend for fudge sakes, She was my best friend I don't really know her anymore said Jillian and Elliana felt her heart break a little, yeah I support we don't know each all that well anymore do we? Because my Jillian would never be so cold! Said Elliana. Well I have changed Elliana and so have you and when people Change they don't always work together anymore said Jillian. Elliana felt like this was unreal had Jillian really changed so much? And did he feel betrayed and abandoned by her? She wasn't sure but he was definitely try to push her away.

Well I have stuff to do Said Jillian I'll be back later, Kylee he shouted keep an eye on the kids and the new person!, okay! Jillian said a girl with a sweet voice. New person? She said to herself it stung like nothing she had ever felt. Don't mind Jillian said Clara he's like that and thinks if he's cold to people he'll protect us and himself, his heart is fragile has been since you've been gone. What? Said Elliana, I know you two will figure it out said Clara so don't give up Elli.

***

Elliana was wandering the hallway of the the house she assumed these were bedrooms on the hall walls and she wondered which one was Jillian's or maybe his was in another part of the house, none the less she needed to talk to him alone and figure out why he was so cold to her and about his dad. She hadn't seen him since he left earlier that day, her and Kylee took care of the kids, Kylee seemed like a nice girl so that was good and she got along with her, Though she missed Layla her bestfriend who was going to be here tomorrow which she couldn't wait at least she have someone who knows who she is now.

Elliana? Said a familiar voice behind her and she turned around and saw Jillian there, Jillian.. we need to talk. She said, about what? Asked Jillian. One about the way you're treating m- he grabbed her arm and led her to a bedroom his she assumed, it was nice and clean something new about Jillian, his bed sheets and blankets were grey along with his pillows, he had a desk in his room with skitch books, pens and pencils, paint brushes on it and notebooks and journals. Good she thought something that hadn't changed about him. He had a couple seats in his bedroom and a wardrobe and closet with clothes, he had several bookshelves. And paintings hung on the wall, and then her eyes went back to him and she looked at him all lean muscle and his dark brown hair with those green blue eyes that held so much, those beautiful hands he always had, he was tall now to and very handsome she had to admit a- Elliana two fingers snapped in front of her Face, what? She said, I said what did you want to talk about? Oh um about your father actually, I have some information o- What!! Said Jillian Why didn't you tell me sooner!?, well someone was being cold and an ass to me said Elliana. Yeah said Jillian so what's the information?, he was being held in Lakewood but he was moved but it may not have been far. She said

-

Jillian wasn't sure what to think Elliana was back and so were his feelings for her and she was beautiful my god she was beautiful and she was back, she was safe and alive and her golden Eyes were as beautiful and luminous as ever. Her black hair curling and lovely, she had the body of a woman now as well, she was muscular and lean and looked strong. But she also had information about his father and his heart stopped to know he was somewhere and she knew she knew and didn't go after him. Why didn't you try to get him! Jillian said and he knew he was snapping and it wasn't going to go good but he needed to do this, push her away so she didn't get hurt, What!? Said Elliana sorry I was only on a mission and almost killed and didn't have the supplies to do it anyways said Elliana and not to Mention,ni wanted you to Jil why are you being this way!? I thought you would be happy to see me! Said Eliana, and he was so so happy for her to be back but he also had his kids to take care of and he wasn't sure how to be around her and not touch her, for Jillian Elliana was the only girl he ever thought was beautiful, that he ever wanted to he with and he knew it was stupid because they hadn't seen each other in forever but she lit his heart on fire the moment he saw her again.

Well you can't expect me just to be like hi Elliana who has been gone for six years and go back to the way things were, Cause we can't we aren't those people anymore Elliana he said and he knew he was being horrible and unfair but he didn't know why but he couldn't stop. I missed you she said I missed you I missed you, you're what kept me going and the thought of seeing you again someday is what kept me alive, she walked up to him and looked him right in the eyes I thought you cared about me and wanted me back but I guess I was wrong and I hope you know I loved you and I still do said Elliana. Well he said I am glad I kept you going but like I said we aren't the same people we were! he told her, Geesus Jillian if you don't want me here say it she said with tears forming in her eyes and his heart was aching that she was crying but also for her, what do you want! Jillian said and he got closer to her face so close their faces were practically together, I want my Jillian back she said and started crying she broke down and he had never seen her do this before he never thought of her as delicate like this and he cursed himself for making her feel this way, You want me back!, Yes yes jill please be my friend again she whispered and he lost control, he kissed her a long deep kiss, he kissed her tears like he could take her pain away with kisses, he took her in his arms and she wrapped her arms around his neck and started kissing back which surprised him he thought she would push away but here she was kissing him back.

***

The next morning they woke up next to each other, they had fallen asleep talking about the adventures they had been on,after they stopped kissing, they just snuggled up together and enjoying each other's company and voices. It was peaceful something that they haven't had in the last six years, Elliana couldn't believe what happened, she had Kissed Jillian? But he had Kissed her first so does that mean that they thought of each as more then friends? Or was it just something that happened? And it was a mistake?.

After they got up Elliana headed to the bathroom to get dressed in fresh clothes and put her curly hair in a ponytail, she then headed down stairs to find that Jillian had made breakfast for everyone and the kids were at the table eating, Elliana! Called Clara come sit next to me she said cheerfully. Okay said Elliana, so how did you sleep? Was it alright for your first night here? asked Raphael, I slept good yes, thank you. She said.

Today is a get together of all the people on our side, it's a formal event by the way so you'll all have to dress up. Said Jillian I hope you have a dress Elliana he added, I don't said Elliana, Oh we can go shopping for one said Clara, you sure? Asked Elliana is it safe?, Yes I am sure and we'll be fine said Clara, Can we jillian pleaseee? Asked Clara. Alright fine said Jillian but don't be gone to long and finish your breakfast first I didn't cook in the kitchen for hours just to have you not eat said Jillian and Elliana laughed for the first time that wasn't with Layla. Can I come asked Jay, sure Jay said Clara we can make it a girls day.

Jillian gave a look mixed of regret with whatever, and Elliana just thought of how much she missed him but what about last night? No! She told herself you didn't come this far to be obsessed with a boy, finish your mission and do what you need to get done and then focus on it. But she would be lying if she said he wasn't handsome or that she didn't care she did care very much but if she let herself be hurt like that again she wasn't sure she would be able to come back, she wanted Layla here so bad so she could tell her and be comforted by her, come back soon Layla she said and finished her breakfast. Maybe I'll get a suit instead she thought.

( I had a dream the other night and I am going to write a story on it I think hopefully you enjoy it and it's kinda a action, fantasy, romance, comedy, supernatural kind of thing also slow burn and angst. )

( let me know if your interested and would like to see more and see what I imagine the characters would look like ) ( I am coming up with a name for the story and btw I know what the next chapter will be about because my dream had that much content in it ) and I will show you what I imagine the house to look like) again if anyone is interested. )

[myfandomrambles]

Donna's understanding of The Doctor

Donna has one of the most unique understandings of The Doctor throughout the whole show. I also think she actually one of the deepest understanding of The Doctor of the companions. Jack Harkness, The Master and other Immortals or one of the flirty companions like Rose or River are generally pointed to as having the deepest understanding, but I do think Donna has some more layers than them and is also stand out for being as close as she is without being an alien-like Romana or a love interest.

First off she is unique especially within New Who as not being infatuated or enchanted by The Doctor right off the bat. Rose, Jack, Martha, River, and Clara are all flirty with The Doctor to start off with. Donna is not meaning their relationship doesn’t have a romantic or dashing man leading lady dynamics that have become common. This was a distinct breath of fresh air after romantic subtext and unrequited love were the dynamics being used. Along with this is she also doesn’t have the same kind of starry-eyed dynamic between Amy and The Doctor or even Yas. She is not under as many illusions and she is absolutely not romantically attracted.

But I think the key to why Donna feels like a standout is she doesn’t need a disillusionment moment. A common beat in new who is when the companion sees how dark The Doctor really is, how much they are broken and hurting. Rose in Dalek, Martha in Gridlock, Amy in Victory of the Daleks/The God Complex, Clara in Hide/Journey to The Center of The TARDIS, Bill in Thin Ice. But Donna starts there.

Donna first meets 10 in one of his most bitter mindstates, he's showing how hated he is on the sleeve and it ends with him effectively committing genocide. She never sees him as a paragon, she does want the adventure and thinks he could be a good friend but he isn’t perfect in her eyes. Donna is choosing to travel with someone who is clearly dealing with some level of mental health issues and grief, yeah she thinks he’s special and can be a hero but not a paragon of any kind. This is in tandem with a lack of any crush makes her apart from much of the female companions.

It also varies from Romana or Jack who's understanding comes from having similarly long lives. But like River and Amy, they are a lot less likely to understand the ground floor reasons The Doctor is like this. And the confrontational stance Rory and Mickey come from, she knows he’s dangerous but doesn’t have a reason to see him as a personal threat or becoming the third wheel.

Missy and The Doctor are generally too similar I think to have the same ability to show compassion and understanding the same way. Their both these whirlwind forces influencing the whole world. They are also both broken and warped from the involvement in war and trauma up to an including being used as a tool by their own people. Neither is really as self-reflective as they ought to be and can choose to not face any of it. The understanding between them varies, but while it is one of the other most unique dynamics of the world but is not the same as Donna's.

But we really get to see how Donna did get a better understanding of him when they are in stressful situations later. She does make comments that are common like “don’t travel alone” that’s common for companions to tell him, but it does so much deeper than that. She handles his anxiety better than a lot of the others, In Partners In Crime she is the one who should be way more out of her depth but is calm and keeps 10 from freaking out when trying to fix the station. Another standout example is in Fires Of Pompeii, the way she talks him through and helps when he has to repay his own trauma by setting off mount Vesuvius. She is understanding and helps him with it. She does push him to be better and save a few of the other people but it shows a consistent understanding.

I’m not saying the other companions don’t try and be supportive and do push back but her ability to connected is stronger. We tend to see either a companion ditching and fixing whatever is wrong themselves or kind of shout The Doctor Down. they don't usually try to understand and use the traumatic events as almost a gotcha over a specific understanding.  While they can be intuitive and true it's usually used as almost manipulative or trying the shock them into action over talking it calmly. Martha telling him he deserves something to live for, Like Clara yelling about twelve "blood survivors guilt" or River telling 10 to not get emotional after losing Donna. It is coming from a place of compassion and love but lacks a deeper understanding or another way of working with him to keep meltdowns at bay. Even after clearly seeing how it is born from a specific event like Victor of the Daleks or Daleks in Manhattan, it doesn't seem to be part of why they know The Doctor can act out.

One of my favourite moments between them in any part is when The Doctor and Donna are trying to save the earth in the season four finales. She is able to push him along to ward off disappearing emotions. And then actually takes his hand when they see Davros. She doesn’t jump right to fighting but actually reminds 10 that (to her understanding) they are safe in the TARDIS and that Davros isn’t with them. Donna sees the kind of impending breakdown 10 is on, his body language, face and voice all telegraph the pain and she goes straight to calming it down. Even jumping over the “who is this dude” question most other companions do in places like this.

Donna doesn’t build up the ego of The Doctor to say nothing is wrong or just berate Him. Obviously, I do think people Like Rory have a point that The Doctor does hurt people, and he’s a good ego check but it doesn’t show as much internal insight to The Doctor. She is equal and does call his shit when necessary.

Honestly, Donna has one of the most beautiful and honest relationships The Doctor has. And it's is always beautiful to see them together.

[rumata-est]

Impossible Girl

Part one

Well, to summarize: when the Doctor met Clara Oswald, she was about 24, she was curious, brave, eager for adventures, very smart and fast. In "Deep Breath" she is 27, so she spent about 3 years with the Doctor and learnt a lot. She is very forthright but she also understands people's feelings very well that's why she knows when to stop and when to make the Doctor stop. She cares.

However, we rarely see Clara being really kind to somebody in particular. Is she kind? She obviously knows it’s necessary to be kind and sympathetic (never mind to whose advantage), and this knowledge defines most of her actions. It sounds very Machiavellian though pretty realistic, and such character type fits adventures and life in general very well.

What happens when the Doctor changes?

The thing is throughout the series 8 the Doctor is in the middle of his own “am I a good man” crisis, he shows off deliberately, he wants Clara’s attention, he parks the TARDIS in her flat, and they are actual roommates. From now on every day it's a roller coaster and a personal matter cause his argument to pull her into adventures is "I need you no matter how I treat you and other people" at any time. That’s annoying. But she says "fine". The Doctor is not the only one who changed: the veil lifted, she is not a young woman anymore, she has to accept bad choices exist, and sometimes (most of the time since you’re a Doctor) it’s you who make them, and it’s not an easy burden. 

Why does Clara want Danny Pink? Firstly, she hates to mess things up and she did so with Danny at first sight. She was trying to be funny but instead she said something unacceptable, and she needs to fix it immediately. Secondly, she is a carer, and Danny needs somebody to deal with his trauma. Thirdly, she’s eager to make her existence well balanced: job, domestic life, traveling, adventures. Her life’d better be amazing.

“Listen” is an extremely important episode cause Clara basically plays the Doctor’s part, and not the one shining with joy and glory. The way Clara treats Danny during their date is at least weird, but honestly, she is horrible to him. She brings the killing subject again though she doesn’t know the details and they both know it hurts him. She doesn’t apologize, makes an exit, and he doesn’t deserve it. When she got distracted, Clara and the Doctor end up in Danny’s childhood, and soon the Doctor gives a little boy a dream which will have a tremendous impact on his whole life. They don’t even know whether the monster under the bed is real. And it’s Clara’s fault. She feels guilty, and she cares so she tries to fix her ruined date (breaking the time travel rules), and she doesn’t succeed cause she is actually always “in a rush, in a state, and in space helmet”. Danny will spell it out quite neatly later: she is so busy saving the universe she can hardly see people right in front of her. Then she gets distracted again...

It's a perfect description of one of the Doctor's bad days in a nutshell: interfere, act weird, be charming, don't respect people's opinions, get distracted, mess things up, try to fix them, mess them up again...

...then have an insight, actually fix things, be charming, everyone's in awe, run away.

When Clara sees her friend and her hero as a crying little boy, she has to be a Doctor even for the Doctor, she tries to fix him. And then she wants her 2000 year old Doctor to feel that she really cares in every way. When he refuses (to hug her or whatever else), guess where she goes... underneath the strong facade she is vulnerable too. Both the Doctor and Clara are very good at hiding feelings and messing things up with people, but when you supress something it only becomes stronger. The Doctor never explains what is going on in his hearts, Danny will never know how scared, or vulnerable, or happy Clara really is. 

The great discovery is nobody’s perfect and everybody’s vulnerable. And even worse: the Doctor is vulnerable too. “Silly old universe, the more I save it, the more it needs saving”. True. Also, the truth is sometimes the universe works just fine until you interfere and screw up. 

So, Clara and the audience face the problem: to care about people you need to be kind, to care about the universe you need to be practical. It wasn’t so obvious before, but with Twelve it is. The thing is you’re a good man only if you manage to do both. Clara has to develop the concept of kindness. It’s not enough to be kind naturally, it has to be your moral choice. You have to explain how exactly you’re going to be kind to not mess things up. Unfortunately, this explanation usually includes tons of lying.

Rule One: the Doctor lies. Why? Vital survival skill, mainly for everybody around the Doctor. Clara lies too. Why? The same reason. For example, what can she possibly answer to Danny's question about the Doctor? Erm, lets see: the man who usually saves people and worlds saved my life once cause he was looking for me cause he had met kinda me twice and that kinda me had saved his life and died cause it turned out later I sacrificed myself for him and was divided into million echoes each of which was born to save him. But he saved me again, and then I helped him save his own planet which was very good cause he had been immensely traumatized by thinking he had destroyed it for the rest of the universe had survived. So, we travelled together, and saved the universe, and saw wonders, and then he changed, and now I have to get the bloody permission to hug him when he's upset. 

What the ........

It's too complicated to be explained. So Clara goes with the easiest part: he's an alien, and she sees wonders.

Saving the world isn't that easy cause there's never just black and white, you can't jump high enough, or call the Army, or name somebody "an officer". Basically, be kind. But it's quite difficult to apply these beautiful simple words to real life. Why? 

We can see it in “Kill the Moon”. We usually concentrate on things like Clara’s “clear off“ manifesto or the Doctor’s “ that was me respecting you”. But what about humanity? Why did everybody turn the lights off? Of course, that's an exagerration, of course, there would be some light on Earth. But the dark planet is a metaphor: even in the darkest of times, remember to turn on the light. Even if you’re alone never fail to be kind. And it’s a damn difficult job when all you want to turn your back on all these predictable silly little humans.

“I nearly got it wrong. I nearly didn't press that button”, Clara blurts. Ring any bells? Of course, it’s Gallifrey and the barn all over again. When there were three Doctors it was easy for Clara: she just had to tilt her head, cry a little bit and remind the Doctor to be a Doctor. But it’s not so easy when you’re in charge and your home's at stake. 

A little reminder: Clara is still about 27-28, has a regular job and a lot of cool outfits, tries to be a girlfriend and has to deal with very difficult philosophical problems and the Doctor who is a tidal wave and a walking philosophical problem himself. Don’t forget Clara is a control freak so avoiding any problems is not an option. Of course, it's too much for her.

“Mummy on the Orient Express” is all about who is in control. At first the Doctor and Clara talk about two different subjects: Clara wants to talk about her feelings and the Doctor wants to talk about his planets. Actually, each of them wants to persuade the other, it’s not just about feelings and planets. But they really have to talk about what is happening. The next scene in the corridor is a little bit better cause they are trying to talk (without bringing the real subject, of course). And the real subject is: I don’t want you to go but since I am a control freak I will stick to my “last hurrah” line. It’s more like juggling questions than a proper conversation. Clara is freaking out for fear of losing him. For fear of getting it all wrong.  

Clara hasn’t looked at the mechanism of being a Doctor like that before. We always assume the Doctor is so clever, he can push his luck and fix everything, even when it's absolutely impossible. But what if sometimes he really really can’t? What if sometimes people die on his watch, real people, no matter how hard he tries? And even worse: what if sometimes he really has grey areas? And you happen to be smart enough to notice all this? 

So, he isn’t a Deus ex Machina anymore, he is pretty real. All of this is revealed in their brilliant conversation on the beach. And then Clara asks the Doctor the same question Danny asked her: why are you doing this?

What can he possibly answer? It's his life and his hobby. It's the right thing to do and an addicition as well. And it's so beautiful Clara can't help but say "I love you" stay.  

I personally adore the way the Doctor answers Clara's question "Have you ever been sure?". He says "no", and there's a visible trembling happiness in his voice cause she really understands and accepts this part of his life now. 

A big change of heart happened. But it's a story for another day.

[dreameater1988]

Clara’s and Danny’s realtionship

I’ve been talking about the character of Danny Pink with several people lately and when S8 began, I have to admit that I didn’t like him very much. It took me years to understand what really bugged me but now think that it was the missed potential and the portrayal of the character on the show that made me dislike him. While working on several fanfictions, I started asking myself the question why Clara would be in a relationship with Danny and I think that eventually, I realised that we were shown the wrong sides of Danny on the show from the very beginning and even in S9, a lot of interesting details were omitted from the scripts that show us how important Danny Pink really was.

First of all, let’s start with the beginning of S8. The Doctor regenerated in front of Clara, throwing her into uncertainty. Her best friend, the man she has been in love with, changed his face and, by the looks of it, his character in a matter of seconds and Clara finds it hard to deal with that change. Why? Because the Doctor slipped out of her control. Even though Eleven was still unpredictable in a way, Clara knew where she stood with him, but she doesn’t know where she stands with Twelve because he doesn’t even know himself yet. For a control freak like Clara (and we’ll be coming back to that later), that’s a terrible situation to be in because she likes to know exactly what she’s getting into.

And along comes Danny Pink. He’s a maths teacher, he’s cute, he seems sweet and Clara is a young, gorgeous woman who has her life together. You can’t blame her for going after a nice guy who is single and seems to like her back. Danny is the complete opposite of the Doctor at that point because he’s stable and Clara knows exactly where she stands with him. Those are the qualities that drive her straight into Danny’s arms because the Doctor is certainly not nice to her and he certainly doesn’t give her a sense of security - both things Clara craves. Clara is not a person who is immune to a guy’s charms because she holds herself very high (the Doctor described her as an egomaniac) and she likes the confirmation, something the Doctor doesn’t exactly give her in early S8. Neither does Danny, at least not all the time, because their very first date ends in a complete failure. But how was Clara to know that?

Now, as I watched that date scene for the very first time, I knew that I would never have gone back to him after the disaster at the restaurant. But why did Clara? In Listen, the Doctor takes her to see small Rupert Pink and Clara obviously makes the connection to connection to Danny very early on. What is even worse, the Doctor takes her to the future where she meets one of Danny’s descendants who clearly seems to think that Clara is family. I could go on about how this was never really resolved, but let’s leave that aside because it’s not actually important. Clara gets what she craves: confirmation, security, control. She now “knows” that she and Danny are destined to be together and have children and that’s what makes her go back. When she is faced with Orson Pink, she suddenly “knows” what the future will hold for her, again giving her a sense of security and control, so Clara is determined to give Danny another chance.

I have to admit, even when I’m rewatching the scenes with Danny, I still don’t like him as much as I like the idea of what he could have been, of what he was to Clara in moments we just didn’t see. I often get the feeling that the show kept showing us the “worst" sides of Danny when really all he was was a lovely, normal boyfriend. Yet, he was set out as the Doctor’s rival quite from the beginning when he should have been more than that when it was obvious that the Doctor, the hero of the show, is not someone Danny could ever compete with.

Upon learning of the Doctor’s existence, Danny is anything but amused and I think that’s quite a natural reaction. Danny isn’t stupid, but when he follows the strange caretaker and discovers that he’s actually an alien who owns a time machine that sometimes steals his girlfriend, you can’t really blame him for holding a slight grudge. After all, his girlfriend lied to him about a very significant part of her life. And, having experienced danger, Danny is worried about her and rightly so. He is also worried that Clara might be in love with the Doctor, also rightly so, but he never stands between Clara and the Doctor. All he asks her is to be careful and to stop travelling with the Doctor when she feels it’s too much.

When the time finally comes in Kill The Moon and Clara is determined to leave the Doctor, Danny is actually the one to make her second-guess her decision. He encourages her to think about it and he encourages her during the phone call he and Clara have while she is on the Orient Express. Clara told him that she would leave the Doctor, but Danny never specifically asked it of her. I feel like a lot of people in the fandom are trying to view Danny as the person who tried to come between the Doctor and Clara when that’s something he never was. Danny isn’t the bad guy. Danny is the good guy and it was Clara who treated him badly even though she loved him.

Clara lies to him as well as the Doctor after the events on the Orient Express. Why? On the show, we never find out, but The Complete History books shed a little light on what Clara’s motives might have been. “In this version, when Clara looked at the Post-It Notes, she launched into speeches triggered by the notes, explaining to Danny over the phone how having secrets made her feel in control and show she fetishised hero figures.” Clara is a control freak and she always will be.

When Danny eventually finds out in ITFOTN that Clara has been lying to him, he is angry, but he isn’t angry about the fact that she is still travelling with the Doctor but because she lied to him. Danny doesn’t want to compete with the Doctor because he knows that it’s a competition he would lose, he only wants Clara to be honest with him. Danny was a normal, loving boyfriend and we only ever saw glimpses of his relationship with Clara on the show and in my opinion, they’re not always the right ones. Steven Moffat used Danny at the Doctor’s rival in the viewer’s eyes, but that’s not how Danny saw himself. He might not have been happy about Clara travelling with the Doctor through all of time and space, but he was willing to accept it rather than not be with Clara at all. Danny knew exactly that if he made her choose, he would be on the losing side, so he never did. Instead, he allowed his girlfriend to travel with a man he didn’t like (but respected) because he realised how much it meant to Clara. After the adventure in ITFOTN, Danny is no longer angry. He just wants Clara to be honest with him.

Danny’s death is a tragic event and just when Clara decides to come clean, he is torn from her life and even though she had a chance of getting him back, Danny still died and that was probably the most fundamental event in Clara’s life. It changed her as a person.

Those of you who have lost a loved one might understand her a little better than those of you who haven’t, but Danny’s death affected Clara a great deal and I’m very sad that very important pieces were cut from the S9 scripts and episodes. Danny was a young man, he was Clara’s boyfriend, she loved him, she thought they would get married and have children together - and he was torn out of life without a warning and without a chance to make it right. In addition to the natural loss, Clara’s control freak nature is very important in understanding why it changed it because that was something she had no control over whatsoever. Clara is not the type of person to blame herself for his death or to feel prolonged guilt over the way she treated him, but his death still had a huge impact on her character.

Because we never really saw the relationship of Clara and Danny unfold on screen, we can’t know what it was like and how much Clara really loved him (and she did, as is apparent from the omitted details in the S9 script), but with Danny, she didn’t just lose a boyfriend, Clara lost her ties to earth. When she thought she had lost not only Danny but the Doctor as well, she was even ready to commit suicide by staying in the dream world where both of them were still in her life. Luckily for Clara, the Doctor came to save her.

When S9 started, I was a little taken aback by Clara’s character, but it started to make sense to me. During S7 and S8, she already shows a tendency for risk-taking because she’s a brave woman when she gets scared, she gets all the more determined, but thanks to Danny, she always had one foot left on earth. With her ties severed, all she has left is her job and when she runs off at the beginning of The Magician’s Apprentice, it’s quite clear that UNIT and the Doctor are much more important to her.

Especially the first four episodes seem like someone cut Clara loose. She’s out of control. She’s reckless. She seems to be in good spirits, but underneath that, it’s still apparent that Danny’s loss cuts deep, something Clara would never admit to because she’s “trying to be perfect all the time” (The Complete History, Vol 77). Instead, she appears to have it all under control when the opposite is true. This is a very common expression of grief and Clara is still grieving. When in S8 it was the secrets that have made her feel in control, it is now the fact that she keeps on escaping death. She puts all of her faith in the fact that the Doctor is able to fix it all until they stumble upon a point when they can’t. Taking risks makes her feel alive up until the point it costs her life. In Face the Raven, when she finally mentions Danny, it seems to be out of the blue as if she had only suddenly remembered his existence. But that’s not really the case.

Danny was always with her and every time she mentions him, she does so very fondly and full of love. She has accepted his death, but she hasn’t healed yet. In Before the Flood, she tells Bennet: “After I lost someone, I thought my life was over. Because I knew… I know I can’t love again, and surely loving someone is what defines us. But it isn’t. The songs are wrong.” In an earlier draft of The Girl Who Died, she also bonds with a Viking woman (later Ashildr) over the loss of her husband by telling her about Danny. One remark even made it into the final script but was later cut and added in the deleted scenes.

Clara loved Danny even though she didn’t exactly treat him well in S8 and I feel like the show could have done a lot better to portray it. Danny was certainly not a bad guy and he was a loving boyfriend to Clara, but his meaning on the show was never so the viewers would want to see them together. Instead, he played the role of the Doctor’s rival and as such, he could only lose.

[the-desolated-quill]

The Magician’s Apprentice - Doctor Who blog

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. If you haven’t seen this episode yet, you may want to before reading this review)

I’ve had a few people sending me conflicting messages about Series 9. And I’m not talking the usual Moffat lovers vs Moffat haters type thing. A couple of people I know who don’t like Moffat actually like this series, and others who do like Moffat apparently don’t like this series at all. It’s weird.

Well, once more into the breach, dear friends. What have we got this time? A grey wasteland, a bi-plane that shoots lasers, and a soldier with both a sci-fi scanner and a bow and arrow. Yep, this can only be Skaro. Specifically the thousand year war between the Kaleds and the Thals. That made me sit bolt upright in my seat. I never thought we’d ever be coming back here. And it’s a pretty strong opening for the most part. The hand mines are pretty creepy and the reveal that the boy is actually a young Davros caused my jaw to drop.

From there however, The Magician’s Apprentice slides very rapidly downhill, headfirst, into a heap of compost. Why can’t Moffat ever just stick to one story and one location? Why does he have to constantly hopscotch to random times and locations in an effort to wrong foot us? It’s not clever or intriguing. it’s just annoying. On a second viewing it soon becomes apparent that the reason we’re jumping around all over the place is to pad the episode out for 45 minutes. Because if you stop and think about it, not a lot actually happens in this episode. It’s just all pointless and mindless prologue. Snake Guy is a prime example. It’s a great visual, but what’s actually the point of him? Couldn’t Davros have sent an email or something? We certainly didn’t need to see Snake Guy roller-skating along three separate planets performing the same scene over and over again.

From there we cut to what feels like a completely different story. All the planes in the sky have frozen in time, and this could have been an interesting premise to an episode in its own right, but it’s all pretty much chucked in the bin. Turns out there was nothing to worry about. It was just the Master sending a message to Clara. Again, utterly pointless.

Notice my total lack of surprise to see the Master alive and kicking after TOTALLY getting killed off last time around (in Moffat’s defence, it’s only painfully obvious if you’re not colourblind and were vaguely paying attention). I was however surprised to see the Master alive and kicking so soon, and now I’m worried that she’s going to become a recurring character like in the Third Doctor era. I really hope not. It was the classic series’ overuse of the Master that caused me to hate the character in the first place. But credit where it’s due, at least they’re showing some restraint this time around. While there’s still some sexist Moffat-y dialogue and mannerisms that ticked me off (like the Master fondling a Dalek’s balls), Michelle Gomez seems to have toned down the crazy this time around, so at least now we have a version of the Master that’s vaguely tolerable. What I’m less keen on is the way Clara interacts with her. While Michelle Gomez and Jenna Coleman do a great job playing off each other, I would have enjoyed it more if it had even a shred of believability. Considering that the Master was ultimately responsible for the death of her boyfriend, would Clara really be willing to trade quips with her?

From there we go back to Olde Worlde times for quite possibly the most cringeworthy part of the episode. The Doctor on a tank playing a guitar. Yes I know Peter Capaldi used to be in a punk rock band, but I’m not supposed to be watching Peter Capaldi. I’m supposed to be watching the Doctor. When are Moffat and co going to realise that this type of humour simply doesn’t work for this kind of Doctor? Matt Smith might get away with something like that, but when it comes to Peter Capaldi’s Doctor, it just feels so utterly wrong. Yes even the darkest Doctors have a light side and the best Doctors are the ones that can switch between dark and light effortlessly, but with Twelve it feels like Moffat is struggling to make anything that isn’t rudeness or brooding seem natural. It’s like watching your dad at a wedding trying to be all hip and cool for da kidz. It’s just painful to sit through. And what’s the reason behind the Doctor’s embarrassing display? Well apparently he thinks he’s going to die? But... why does he think that? He’s got no reason to think that as far as I can see. I mean, no offence, but it’s only Davros. Also, really Moffat? We’re doing the Doctor’s impending death AGAIN?!

And then it’s off to a space station to meet Davros, Except it’s not a space station. It’s Skaro. I legitimately don’t understand the relevance of this twist. Why trick the characters into thinking they’re in space? What’s the point? And why is everyone so shocked that they’re on Skaro. Where the fuck else would Davros be? Nando's? It just feels like a twist for twist’s sake. As does the Master, Clara and the TARDIS getting obliterated. Yeah, obviously the TARDIS can’t be destroyed and Moffat has done the death fake outs so many times now that this cliffhanger has no impact whatsoever. Wrong foot the audience too many times and we won’t trust a single thing you tell us ever again. If Clara and the Master are really dead, I’ll eat my Cuban heels.

Finally we venture back to what the episode should really have been about in the first place. The Doctor and boy Davros. I do like the idea of the Doctor’s refusal to save him maybe contributing to Davros’ poisonous worldview (and possibly even his medical condition) and it would help to fill in some of the blanks in Davros’ back story as well as take the Doctor down an interesting new avenue of character exploration. Unfortunately this all goes out the window when the Doctor suddenly points a gun at Davros Jr and seemingly tries to kill him. Now I do have issues with this, but I’m going to save it for my next review because I want to see where Moffat is going with this. But for the record, I’m very concerned about this (and considering the fucking disrespectful way Moffat treated the Brigadier in Death In Heaven, I think my concern is very much justified).

The Magician’s Apprentice is largely just a gigantic waste of time. There are whole segments of this you could just cut out and it wouldn’t make the slightest bit of difference, and the numerous twists and tangents are completely ineffectual because they’re either pointless or have been done to death. Not exactly a promising start to a two part series opener, is it?

[upslapmeal]

Twice Upon a Time

Right so I’m going to start off with a lot of Doctor-y stuff before I get to my usual yelling about the episode. Also surprise surprise it got a lil bit long so the yelling will be under a cut

Here’s a sentence I never thought I’d say: I’m glad Moffat was given one extra last episode to do. Why? Bombastic Moffat really isn’t my thing. At all. And so The Doctor Falls was....fine? But I’m glad it wasn’t Twelve’s swansong. Moffat does held-back a lot better, at least to me. And so I’m glad we got this quieter ep, Twelve dealing with his future while being presented with his past, and then dealing with the Captain and Testimony. There wasn’t much to it but I much preferred it that way. I also really liked that it wasn’t an Evil Villain™, I think Twelve was disappointed that he couldn’t keep the distraction up, putting off dealing with his future (#relatable) and I love how we see at the end Twelve makes a change to help save one extra person. It’s what I would expect from the Doctor but it does show how far he’s come since s8. He’s openly kinder and softer and he’d not keeping up a facade any more. This change was pretty much established by s9 but it was still nice to see, especially with the direct connection to Into the Dalek we got this episode.

Now since we’re talking about the Doctor, I have to talk about One, one of my favourite Doctors who I truly adore. And I’m going to try not to make this about...........The Problem. I’ve talked about the ~casual chauvinism~ and why it wasn’t One already (here and here and here and here) and @thefirstintimeandspace​ has said a lot more that is much better written so I don’t want everything I say about One here to be about that but just know I’m Mightily Annoyed And Unhappy and think the decision was really lazy writing. THAT BEING SAID, David Bradley did a wonderful job with what he was given. In terms of being a note-for-note imitation it wasn’t perfect, definitely could have done with a few twinkly Hartnell chuckles in my book, but the vast majority of the time the heart(s) in the acting was right. I liked how we saw the First Doctor scared of this first change. I mean the whole idea of it must have been terrifying! I felt devastated when he saw what Testimony showed about his future and then his final conversation with Twelve almost made me tear up. And his talk with Bill about looking for the truth in the stars, trying to find how goodness prevails, was absolutely wonderful. That’s not to say it made up for the character disservice and it makes me sad there may be people put off watching his era because of that, but there was a lot of good.

And now Peter. Oh Peter. The first episode I ever watched live was The Time of the Doctor. I thought it was an awful episode and so in my heart the first live episode I saw was Deep Breath but Twelve has been the only Doctor I’ve followed from week to week. So not only will I miss the character I love and Peter’s consistently superb acting but it’s the end of an era for me. I’m so excited for Thirteen (she’s keeping her accent we’re getting another Northern Doctor!!) but there there is definitely a Twelve-shaped hole in my heart. “Doctor, I let you go”. What perfect final lines. After he said this I had to pause the ep just to give myself a couple of minutes to let go too. In fact, the whole final speech (though Moff dude why are you so obsessed with the Doctor’s name) was wonderful. I’m just really going to miss him. A lot. Thanks Peter.

Ok general yelling below the cut:

actual clips from The Tenth Planet!!

LOVE! HATE! HAVE YOU NO EMOTIONS?

lol though surely they could have found someone shorter than Polly to play Ben? 

and got a wig for Polly that didn’t look like it was from poundland?

oh well it was only brief

‘your face it’s all over the place’

the this is my nurse joke would have worked so much better if the hadn’t continued

'obviously polly isn’t around any more’ 'in dire need of a good spring clean’ AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

(ok that’s it just assume my angry screaming applied to every sexist First Doctor moment)

One: *mentions the french*    me: nice reign of terror reference!!!!

THE DOCTOR’S THEME!!

also I’ve been listening to the unreleased soundtrack for this ep while writing this (thank you magic music people) and there’s All The Strange Strange Creatures! Doomsday! Eleven’s Theme!

a farewell tour of sorts for Murray Gold I suppose :(

BILL MY LOVE!!!!!!

I’m so happy we get to see her one last time!! 

(even if it’s not QUITE her)

Bill and Pearl were so wonderful and deserved to be in the show for longer but alas

I’ll really miss Bill she and Twelve made such a fantastic team

yes One! notice that asymmetry!

why didn’t Testimony just tell the Doctors that they collect memories? 

I mean that would have just got rid of the plot and Twelve probably wouldn’t have believed them I suppose

MARY BERRY!

ONE’S TARDIS!! complete with assorted furniture and ornaments :’)

I like how one wall was still different but not just a flat wall with roundels printed on lol

(shoutout to one of my posts I linked to earlier)

CORPORAL JONES! 

glad to know Twelve has watched Dad’s Army

lol well I can’t say I had expected Rusty to be back for Twelve’s final ep but I’m not complaining

'you’re the first Dalek to ever get naked for me’ was NOT something I needed to hear

so if Bill is part of Testimony then there are two Bills? 

and actual non-memory Bill doesn’t know that Twelve’s alive?

also does this mean that Testimony can just.....reconstruct literally anyone who has died?

also speaking of extraction at the moment of death I wonder how this worked for Clara?

was her Testimony extraction before or after Twelve extracted her?

we can just add this to Metacrisis Ten and the gangers in the whole ‘this is the real me! I remember everything!’ theme

Lethbridge-Stewart!!

the moustache should have been a giveaway

also this is extra nice since I’ve now finally met the Brig in my Classic Who watch

I love stories about the Christmas truce it’s one of my favourite historical things

‘impeccable dress sense’

(I actually have a post somewhere in my drafts where I was attempting to humourously document Twelve’s range of outfits lol I should find that)

CLARA!!!!

I WAS ALREADY EMOTIONAL FROM TWELVE AND ONE’S CONVERSATION THIS TIPPED ME OVER THE EDGE

AND THEN NARDOLE ROCKS UP AND TWELVE COMPLAINS ABOUT IT BEING WORSE THAN DYING WHATTA MOOD I’M LAUGHING

(I was actually surprised that I was happy to see Nardole again and then he had to ruin it by talking about nipples thanks I really didn’t need that)

'invisible hair’ was that from the fan show or had it been something in s10??? I can’t remember

just one more life won’t hurt, Twelve, and it’ll do the universe a world of good

the score during Twelve’s final speech is Breaking the Wall which is one of my absolute favourites and jUST MAKING IT MORE EMOTIONAL

THIRTEEN IS HERE AND THE TARDIS IS ON FIRE AND CRASHING AND IT’S BRILLIANT

Doctor, I let you go. And I can’t wait to see what your next self brings.

[thenotoriousscuttlecliff]

Moffat Era Rewatch: Dark Water/Death in Heaven

To save Danny Pink, the Doctor and Clara go to hell..

Warning: Spoilers Sweetie

So glad Moffat decided to go back to two-part finales. They just work so much better.

First Doctor Who episode directed by the amazing Rachel Talalay. Again, Chibs, you’re a fool if you don’t keep her on the payroll.  

Love that Jenny and Vastra get their own separate post its.

“Danny, I'll never say those words again. Not to anybody else, ever.”    Never say never, Clara. 

How does she not hear the car hit him?

Danny forgot to splink.

RIP Danny Pink. 

Why’d she change his pic?

We still don’t know Clara’s gran’s name.  

“It was ordinary. People just kept walking with their iPods and their shopping bags. He was alive, and then he was dead and it was nothing. Like stepping off a bus.”  

“It’s rubbish.” He’s having ‘Inferno’ flashbacks. 

"Danny Pink.” "Yeah?” "Is dead.” "And?” Doesn’t even pretend to care. 

“One last chance. And I don't care about the rules, I don't give a damn about paradoxes. Save Danny. Bring him back or I swear you will never step inside your Tardis again.”

This moment is somewhat spoiled by the fact they can both open the doors by snapping their fingers. 

Never play games with the Doctor. Don’t ever think you are capable of that.

“Do you think I care for you so little that betraying me would make a difference?” Closest he has ever come to saying “I love you” to her.   

This is my idea of hell, a dull, grey office where you are made to fill out lots of forms and drink shit coffee.

Okay, that’s ominous.

So was this planned from the beginning or did Missy just decide on the spot to pretend to be a robot so she can better mess with the Doctor? 

The little nose kisses have to be a Michelle Gomez original.

He’d rather face every Dalek in the universe wearing nothing but his socks than go through that again. 

I used to work with someone who looked exactly like Dr Chang. 

“You have Wi-Fi here?” The question we will all ask when we die.

Missy and Seb arranged for Danny to meet up with the boy he killed. Wow, that is just extra level mean. 

“I keep saying they should use this stuff in swimming pools." “Why?” "Think about it.” "I am thinking about it. Why?” The Doctor is one confused asexual. 

“Another government inspection? So soon? Why is there all this swearing?“

“Sounds like somebody left their body to science.”

Doctor Skarosa. Doctor Skaro-sa.     

“Can you just hurry up, please, or I'll hit you with my shoe.”

This is a disturbing concept I’m not surprised it upset a lot of people.

“I promise you this is not a con.” Except it is. 

“Who would harvest dead bodies? I feel like I'm missing something obvious.” *Cybermen theme plays*

Let us take a moment to appreciate that Missy chose to make the lift doors look like Cybermen. She is making no effort whatsoever to hide what is going on. 

“Humankind, bring out your dead.”

“And I'm not going to kill you until you say something nice.” She did warn him, say something nice and you’re dead. 

“The one you abandoned, Doctor. The one you left for dead.” Now is she talking about what happened in ‘The End of Time’ or ‘The Doctors Falls’? 

DELETE 

Penguin run!!! 

“I'm sorry, everyone. Another ranting Scotsman in the street. I had no idea there was a match on.”

“Well, I couldn't very well keep calling myself the Master, now could I?” This is probably the most important plot twist in modern Who history. If the show hadn’t pulled this off as successfully as it did, it’s doubtful we’d have Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor. 

Who you calling unimportant, mate? 

“Oh, don't be so slow, it's embarrassing. Who could fool you like this? Who could hide right under your nose? Who could change their face any time they want? Hmm. You see, I'm not Clara Oswald. Clara Oswald has never existed.” “Identify.” "I'm the Doctor.” This is basically Moffat sticking his finger up at those who complain about the show becoming Clara Who. 

“Nice bow tie.” “Bow ties are cool.”

“Kate Stewart. Divorcee, mother of two, keen gardener, outstanding bridge player. Also Chief Scientific Officer, Unified Intelligence Taskforce, who currently have you surrounded.” 

Since the Cybermen only just revealed themselves, Kate obviously had her PA dash back to the office, dig a battered Cyberhead out of the archive just so can look like an even bigger BAMF than she already is.

The Doctor, the Master and UNIT all together again. Oh this takes me right back to my childhood. 

Cybermen can fly now. 

“Queen of evil.”

I’d say this was the creepiest thing the show ever did with the Cybermen but Steven and Rachel topped it two years later with ‘World Enough and Time”. 

“Clara Oswald, your assistant?” "My friend.”

Seeing pictures of the Brigs always makes me sad. 

Doctor Who references Captain Scarlet and Thunderbirds. This really is my childhood in one neat little package.

“Well, gentlemen. Where to start? I was born on the planet Gallifrey, in the constellation of Kasterborous. I'm a Time Lord, but my Prydonian privileges were revoked when I stole a time capsule and ran away. Currently pilot a Type 40 Tardis. I've been married four times, all deceased. My children and grandchildren are missing, and I assume, dead. I have a non-Gallifreyan daughter created via genetic transfer. How much more do you need? I'm the Doctor.” So he told her all of that but not about Amy?

“Look, ask anybody who knows me. I am an incredible liar.” 

“We do have files on all our ex-prime ministers. She wasn't even the worst.” 

By offering Osgood all of Time and space, the Doctor sealed her doom. 

“Every cemetery, every mortuary, every funeral home, every hospital, the dead are returning to life as Cybermen.” That means not just the Brig but also Amy and Rory, Clara’s mum, Rose’s dad, I should stop before I make this worse. 

Our entire concept of the afterlife comes from one Time Lord trying to give another a really disturbing birthday present. 

“Hey, Missy, you're so fine, you're so fine you blow my mind. Hey, Missy. Hey.”

“I'm going to kill you in a minute.”

Those guards behind her are really useless. 

RIP Osgood. Or RIP Zygon Osgood. 

“Do you know, that was always my dad's big ambition, to get you to salute him just once.” “He should've asked.” And you would’ve told him to get lost. 

There’s something on the wing! 

She’s lucky she’s his oldest friend because most people who get that look don’t last very long. 

"What, you think I would give up the Doctor? Don't be daft. I would never, ever, give up the Doctor, because he is my best friend, too. He is the closest person to me in this whole world. He is the man I will always forgive, always trust. The one man I would never, ever lie to.” Talk about rubbing salt in the wound.

Michelle Gomez makes the best faces.

Since Clara didn’t recognise Missy she must’ve worn a typically over the top disguise when she gave her the TARDIS number. 

You don’t want to know how pissed off I was when I thought they had actually killed off Kate.

"Boys, blow up this plane and, I don't know, Belgium, yeah? Kill some Belgians. Might as well. They're not even French. Byeeee!”

Gogglebox Missy Style.  

The most Bondian moment in Doctor Who history. 

Doctor, he’s dead, at least call him by his real name. 

“I had a friend once. We ran together when I was little. And I thought we were the same. But when we grew up, we weren't. Now, she's trying to tear the world apart, and I can't run fast enough to hold it together.”

“And didn't all of those beautiful speeches just disappear in the face of a tactical advantage? Sir.”

“I wasn't very good at it, but I did love you.” At least she admits it. 

“I'm never going to say that again.” Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Clara. 

She’s Mary Poppins y’all.

“Happy birthday. Oh! You didn't know, did you? It's lucky one of us remembers these things. Happy birthday Mister President.”

“I need you to know we're not so different. I need my friend back.” And just like that you feel a sudden twinge of sympathy for Missy. 

“Thank you. Thank you so much. I really didn't know. I wasn't sure. You lose sight sometimes. Thank you! I am not a good man! I am not a bad man. I am not a hero. And I'm definitely not a president. And no, I'm not an officer. Do you know what I am? I am an idiot, with a box and a screwdriver. Just passing through, helping out, learning. I don't need an army. I never have, because I've got them. Always them. Because love, it's not an emotion. Love is a promise.” How ironic that it took the Master of all people to help the Doctor realise who he really is. 

Love this fusion of Eleven and Twelve’s themes. 

“This is not the order of a general, nor the whim of a lunatic.” “Excuse me?“ 

RIP Danny Pink. Again. 

“The current coordinates of Gallifrey. It's returned to it's original location. Didn't you ever think to look?” "You are lying!” Technically, she wasn’t.

No one has ever been this excited about being killed by the Doctor. 

“You win.” “I know.”

KATE LIVES!

I’d love to know how Clara explained this kid’s resurrection to his folks. 

“I've found Gallifrey.”

The despair of a Time Lord. 

This is one of those moment that could’ve only worked with Twelve. I can’t see Ten or Eleven being so angry and distraught they’d just punch the console with their bare hand. 

“Me and Danny, we are going to be fine.” Rule 1, Clara lies. 

One more awkward hug for the road. 

I’m so glad this wasn’t Clara’s end. It’s just too ordinary for her. Clara deserved a more epic farewell than this and she got one. 

And then Nick Frost shows up as Santa, unquestionably the most “What the fuck?” ending to a Doctor Who episode ever. 

Next Time: Last Christmas

[andersonsallpurpose]

ok that was the christmas special

i don’t have anything smart or analytical to say about it, but that won’t stop me from talking of course! under the cut.

I don’t like it when Moffat tries to Demonstrate Feminist Awareness because I never quite believe him. Some blurbs about the story had me believe there would be a lot more of Twelve Teaching One To Be Less Sexist, and I’m glad there wasn’t.

I feel a bit cheated that Bill didn’t really return, and particularly that this means we didn’t find out about anything that’s happened to her since ascending to a higher level of existence. Did things work out with liquid alien girl? After they went on like one date and then didn’t see eachother for about 15 years (Bill’s subjective timeline)? And also, when did the Testimony pick her dying memories, when she died the first time as a cyberman or at a later point? It must have been the latter, since she joked about pulling. Actually there’s probably a comic that explains all of that. Wait, sorry, I forgot - she actually says Heather came for her, so obviously she died later. So that explains that at least, and I guess for the rest you’d have to read that comic.

Clara was a bit of a cheat-out too, if that’s a word. About 5 seconds of screentime? And Twelve seemed pretty unmoved about suddenly getting his memories of her back. Well, he could have been yelling for all I know since I had the sound off as usual, but he looked pretty underwhelmed and there were no exclamation points in the subs. I was thinking how he looked more like someone pretending to like a present, and didn’t they just mention that? So maybe that was the point? “Oh thank you, fake Bill, some memories of fake Clara, how nice.” Does this mean that everything unpleasant gets undone in this show? That feels a bit unnecessary. (I also have the same questions about the extraction of her dying memories - it’s getting awfully crowded around her fixed-point moment of death, isn’t it? - but then again I bet there’s a comic that explains all of that too. 

There was some kind of plot too, idk? It all happened so fast. The Good Dalek made an appearance and then he went away again, I guess. I liked the scenery in that scene, though - it reminded me of the Cloisters in The One With The Confession Dial And The Barn, which I liked. They had this kind of great creepy children’s tv atmos to them. Maybe it’s the lighting.

Still think Capaldi did a great job of his final 5 minutes.

13 feels weird, but the new doctor always does. She could still be great, it all depends on the writing and acting and stuff. I’ve seen Broadchurch but I can’t extrapolate either from that, so I’m just crossing my fingers. As a superficial fangirl I’m kind of going to miss having a guy in the title role, but apart from that I’m googling synonyms for “very excited about this”. Finally! I’m still wondering how they’re going to pull it off though, because it’s such a male-coded role and I can see so many ways it could go wrong and not many it could go right. But that’s probably why I’m not a writer for the BBC. But I love that it they manage to make it work, Thirteen will be exactly the kind of character i would have loved to watch as a little girl. So that’s something I’m really looking forward to seeing. (Is this still a children’s program? Sort of?)

"If she survives that fall”, I was going to say, but that’s not even a joke because we know she will. (Is it just me or did they up the post-regeneration danger every time? What will they do for the next one?) And then we’ll get to see her new wardrobe for real! Personally I’m not sure about the suspenders/braces.

[anotheruserwithnoname]

Belated thoughts on The Doctor Falls

(Spoilers, obviously)

A late “review” owing to me being out of down and offline for the Canada Day long weekend. Now to make up for lost time...

I make no secret of nor do I apologize for the fact I was very disappointed with Series 10 as a whole. I stand by my opinion that it is - taken as a whole - the weakest season of 10 we’ve had since the series returned. BUT, in the 9th inning, Steven Moffat managed to score a home run, even though it was more of the “players fumbling to catch the ball” inside-the-park homer than a “knock it out of the park” blockbuster. It ranks a solid 3rd behind The Name of the Doctor and Hell Bent among Modern Era finale episodes and for the most part left me smiling (albeit a sad smile).

More thoughts after the break:

I’m going to get the negative stuff out of the way first.

I have mixed feelings about how Bill’s fate was handled (not the fate itself). I love the fact that Moffat managed to come up with a way to get Bill out of her dilemma and reunite her with Heather in such a way that promises future adventures (Big Finish and Chris Chibnall take note). It’s great that we finally got a pair of Moffat companions (including Nardole, though more on him in a moment) who basically survived their time with the Doctor. However, I wish Moffat hadn’t copied what he did with Clara and Ashildr in Hell Bent: making the companion immortal and sending her off on adventures with an immortal companion of her own (only difference being the romance direction: with Clara it was separation from her OTP; with Bill it was reunion with her OTP). I spoke to a few friends who watched it on Saturday and they were very upset by this. Not because they were Clara fans (believe me, they aren’t - in fact they pretty much hated Series 8 and 9) but because it was so similar to what happened last season. And I am annoyed at people saying that this is setting up the spinoff everyone wants, when that’s exactly the same thing they said with Clara and Ashildr in 2015! (That said, I agree with everyone who says getting the four together would kick ass. Big Finish, again take note.)

I also wish Heather had been referenced more during the season. If she was supposed to be Bill’s OTP, why was she basically forgotten for 10 episodes? As a result, while it was great to see Heather return, it still had a feeling of deus ex machina about it that was unfortunate. And any viewers who missed The Pilot and jumped on late - they were screwed figuring out what the heck that was all about with the woman made of water. 

One last negative was the fact we were left with no real resolution for Nardole. We saw him setting off with a bunch of kids and a girlfriend(!) but the impression given is they were still dead because they’d be spending their time moving up the ship and eventually the Cybermen would regroup and get ‘em. I hope Moffat plans to resolve this at Christmas because I felt the story wasn’t completed. This one I’d hate to have to leave to Big Finish to flesh out but perhaps they’ll have to.

OK - negative stuff over. Time for the positives.

Despite the fact I disliked World Enough and Time on the whole, I said I loved the opening and the closing minutes of that episode. Well, The Doctor Falls was basically all “opening and closing minutes,” (you can take that literally as virtually every scene felt like a teaser or cliffhanger and the longer running time flew by) and it was great and exactly the type of episode I was starved for this series. Had Series 10 had more of these I might have even joined the chorus of those calling Series 10 the best, even without Clara.

Despite the criticism I just stated, I loved how Bill and Heather were reunited (read my complaint again and the bottom line is I wanted there to be more of them) and Pearl Mackie gave her best performance ever as Bill. The character had a shaky start in my opinion, but Mackie was exemplary and Bill stands proud with the other iconic companions because of it. She’ll go far.

And Matt Lucas was great as always, and in some respects I’m going to miss Nardole more than Bill (ironic since I hated Nardole in the 2015 Christmas special). That’s nothing against Bill or Pearl Mackie, but even though he was shoehorned in to a good chunk of the season, Lucas just felt right once it was decided to make him a proper companion, and that was something that occurred to me way back in Return of Doctor Mysterio. I’d say Lucas would go fear but the guy’s already gone far. So I’ll just say he’ll go farther.

The Master Twins were amazing and had terrific chemistry and while I don’t believe for one second that this is the end for the Master (the Missy incarnation, perhaps), it was a unique resolution to Missy’s arc that I’m sure had many going “why hadn’t we thought of that?” I also found it fascinating to see how the Saxon Master reacted to having a female incarnation (despite the Doctor’s comments last week, Saxon seemed to suggest Missy was his first/only female version). He wasn’t that thrilled about it, really, which caught me by surprise. It added an unexpected depth to their meeting. I only wish we saw Simm regenerate into Gomez but then maybe that opens the door for another incarnation, if Missy is truly the final Master. I kind of hope she is, because it would be great to think that in the end, after teasing the concept for 46 years, the show finally made good on the promise of redeeming the Master. Plus, let’s be honest, male or female, who could follow Michelle Gomez?

And then there was Peter. What can I say? I mean, his speech about kindness is one they’re going to be quoting for years. And I hope the other Doctor actors are ready because just as with the Pandorica speech and the Zygon Inversion speech, they’re going to be asked to recite it forever. I’ve given up on awards, but Peter Capaldi is in my opinion the best actor to ever pilot the TARDIS, and I’m not just saying that because he’s the incumbent and I liked Whouffaldi. No - all the actors who have played the Doctor were amazing (yes, even him - whoever you want “him” to be). But Capaldi is the best. And I am including Sir John Hurt as I say that, with no disrespect intended to the late legend (or any of the others).

The regeneration - I mean, wow. And to see him repress it. That’s new and will make the Christmas special absolutely fascinating to watch from a performance perspective, alone.

David Bradley as the First Doctor? I don’t know about that. This isn’t 1983 when Richard Hurndall could step into William Hartnell’s shoes because no one had DVDs of any of Bill’s episodes. Apparently we’ve already had some viewers state confusion on Twitter over who this old guy is. I’ve no doubt that David Bradley will do a good job, but recasting an earlier Doctor, especially one with such a different acting style... jury is out. Much as I like Bradley I actually would have been more in favour of Sean Pertwee appearing as his dad. Ask me again on December 26.

Finally, of course, me being a Whouffaldi fan I cannot end this without mentioning the Clara flashback. I can’t begin to express how important this was. For her to have been omitted ... while it might have worked from the memory block perspective, it would have made the sequence feel incomplete. Does it mean the Doctor remembers Clara? Actually, we know that he does to a degree already - he says so to Clara herself in Hell Bent that he remembers their adventure together and has been able to piece together a lot about Clara, and at the end of the episode he sees Rigsy’s portrait of her, so he now remembers her face and, thanks to the diner, her voice. But then again - he would remember her face and voice from the diner if it was a “fresh” memory, right? Instead, he remembers her as she was in Last Christmas. So is it possible that Bill’s tears did more than give Twelve a stay of execution? That they - or the fact the Doctor is mid-regeneration - have undone it. Time will tell. I’m aware of certain tabloid reports today (also mentioned on the BBC) and I refuse to get my hopes up. But maybe it was foreshadowing. Or Moffat simply realized that to leave Clara out of a roll-call of every Modern Era companion would have made him look like a dick. Either way, we got a final direct reference to Clara to end the season on. (And River fans got one too, so everyone’s happy.)

One of these days I’ll do a proper postmortem on Series 10, going into detail as to why I didn’t care for it as a whole. But for me the finale hit all the right notes and leaves me looking forward to Christmas, even though a sad milestone awaits.

PS: Because there seems to be a lot of people harping online about Clara’s appearing in the flashback and the potential for her to appear at Christmas (of the “don’t bring her back ever” variety) let me state for the record that as far as I am concerned Bill Potts and Nardole are welcome to reappear or be referenced any time. Hopefully they’ll get a nod at Christmas.

[abossycontrolfreak]

I was tagged by @haruspis, thank you for the tag and also the lovely words <3

Doctor you started with: Technically Christopher Eccleston back in 2005, but I got into fandom proper with David Tennant when I watched Midnight for Colin Morgan.

Favourite Doctor: Peter Capaldi, easily. He’s bang on the right mix of darkness and humour and joy, and he is such an incredible actor. 

Favourite Companion: Clara, obviously!

Favourite Episode: Midnight still absolutely does it for me, although Hell Bent is now really up there.

DW OTP: I’d say Whouffaldi although idk if it’s romantic or just crazy intense but they were going to destroy the universe you gotta love that. 

Favourite line/quote: I do love the bird speech from Heaven Sent. 

Favourite character that isn’t the Doctor or a companion: At the moment, Missy. Tends to change depending on which stories are interesting at the time. 

BrOTP: Also Twelve and Clara tbh, I just love them together. 

Favourite DW fic (if you have one): I don’t read DW fic

Favorite DW fanart/blog (if you have one): One? For blog @tillthenexttimedoctor because Julia is the best in all the ways, and for art it’s gotta be @cazdraws. 

If you could pick anyone to be the next Doctor, who would it be?:  Not a white man. It’s not an area of speculation I’m super interested in tbh. 

If you could pick anyone to be the next companion who would it be? (Why?): Same as above, although special mention to Ruth Negga who I love, although come to think of it she would make an excellent Doctor too. 

Favourite fan theory: That time I predicted Clara would die and also steal a TARDIS and run away and was right? 

Other fandoms: I’ve been reading a lot of MCU fic lately, and I’m planning a Wonder Woman cosplay, but I tend to fixate on one fandom at a time for the most part. Although if football counts, Port Adelaide is my heart and also my entire weekend. 

Tagging: @tillthenexttimedoctor, @cazdraws, @orelseatlastsheunderstoodit, @scriptscribbles, @deathchrist2000

[actual-bill-potts]

On the Nature of Whouffaldi

Last week, I wrote a meta about companions in Moffat vs Davies Who and how Moffat companions are defined mainly by their relationships. That meta was partly inspired by Clara: I find her a very difficult character to understand, but what I realized is that she comes into much clearer focus the more we see of her relationships with others. “The Time of the Doctor,” the first time we see her interacting with her family, is a good example of this. Her controlling tendencies and desire to maintain a certain image are instantly evident in the way she presents the Doctor as her boyfriend and obsesses over the turkey, insisting that everything be perfect.

A question that follows naturally from this realization is, of course, what is the nature of Clara’s relationship with the Doctor? Most of the other Doctor-companion relationships are clearly defined: Rose and Nine/Ten were a Romantic Couple (whether you think they were an actual item or just a bundle of sexually-charges longing), Martha had unrequited love for Ten, Donna and Ten were the Best Friends, and Eleven and the Ponds were a family. What was the Doctor’s relationship with Clara, then? Eleven and Clara seem pretty flirty, but then Twelve takes a hands-off approach. They’re friends, obviously, but it’s not the easy camaraderie of Donna and Ten; they push each at other. At times their relationship seems almost abusive, as he commands her and she goes to extreme lengths to control his actions, but they also have a lot of trust in and love for each other. What, then, are they defined by? The easy answer, of course, is that they are just the Doctor and Clara, and to attempt to define them further is to create too simplistic a model. There is a lot of truth to that in some ways, but it doesn’t satisfy me. So here’s what I came up with: the Doctor and Clara—particularly Twelve and Clara—are defined most of all by hero worship.

Let’s first take a look at Eleven and Clara to see how this plays out. Eleven certainly puts her on a pedestal: “My Clara,” he muses, “always brave, always funny, always exactly what I need.” He might treat her more like a mystery than a person, might be suspicious of her true intentions, but there is no question that he adores her.

Clara likes this, and likes him because of this. Everyone likes to be adored, and there’s an extra level of attraction for her because he provides her opportunities to be a hero. She also sees him as a hero, a wonderful man who drops from the sky. “Good guys do not have zombie creatures!” she scolds the Doctor in “Journey to the Center of the Tardis.” She views him as a storybook hero, and it is this belief that allows her to stop the destruction of Gallifrey; she cannot believe that the Doctor would look at 2.47 billion children and still press the big red button.

So far, they have a mutually-reinforcing cycle of hero-worship: he treats her with respect and gives her adventure, she acquits herself well, his admiration for her grows, she is motivated by that to do more and better, he is even more impressed, and so on. How does this relationship change when Eleven regenerates?

Well, Twelve is much more hands-off and self-contained than Eleven, so on its face Whouffaldi seems much different from Whouffle. Gone are the compliments, the kisses, the spins and giggles and flirty remarks of Eleven’s era. But beneath Twelve’s Grumpy Cat persona, there’s the same idealization of Clara. Look at his impressed “and you saw right through that” in “The Caretaker,” his “I had faith that you would always make the right choice” in “Kill the Moon.” His utter faith that Clara, when put to the test, wouldn’t really throw away the Tardis keys. He trusts her, he loves her (whether that’s platonic or romantic is yours to decide), but he does also idealize her. She is always right, always perfect, indestructible. He owes her his life twice over on Trenzalore. He may not call her that anymore, but to him she is still the Impossible Girl.

Clara, meanwhile, still sees him as a storybook hero. We see this in “Robots of Sherwood” (“When did you start believing in impossible heroes?” “Don’t you know?”), in “Listen” (“if you’re very wise and very strong…”) and most notably in “Dark Water,” where she completely believes that the Doctor can bring Danny back.

Their hero-worship cycle, then, is mainly intact in series 8. It’s a little darker, a little more ruthless, a little harsher as Clara abandons her perky heroine persona in favor of her true self—someone just as devious and dangerous as the Doctor. She, like Twelve, has become a character stripped down to the essentials. But they still believe in each other, hiccups like “Kill the Moon” aside.

I mentioned “Dark Water” earlier as an example of Clara’s faith in the Doctor. But that episode, and the ones following, are the turning point of Whouffaldi. Clara still believes in the Doctor and sees him as a great hero. After all, he did bring Danny back, sort of. And now Danny’s gone, so in series 9 she has no one besides the Doctor. She becomes increasingly dependent on the Doctor’s affirmation and has more of a need to be the Doctor, as she perceives the role, as she becomes detached from Earth.

But Twelve no longer sees Clara as his impossible, indestructible hero. He still loves her, still respects her, still trusts her—but his idealized version of her has been shattered by “Dark Water,” because she doesn’t make the right choice when confronted by seven keys and a volcano. Destroyed by grief, she betrays—or thinks she betrays—the Doctor in the worst possible way. Twelve still adores her, but now that image of her leaping into his timestream has been balanced by her throwing his keys into the fire. It’s not a coincidence that she’s wearing nearly the same outfit in “Dark Water” as she wears in “The Name of the Doctor.” In one, she becomes the ultimate hero for the Doctor; in the other, she becomes a villain, in action if not in his eyes.

This blow to her image is followed in rapid order by “Last Christmas,” in which the Doctor thinks he has come back for Clara too late and believes her dying. Her human frailty has been thrust in his face too many times to ignore, and so he starts to treat her more as a typical companion—someone, though capable in their own right, who needs to be protected—and less as a fellow soldier. Thus, just as Clara becomes very dependent on his approval, he stops approving her Doctor-ish actions.

The contrast is clear between series 8 and 9. Look at Twelve leaving Clara on her own with the clockwork droids in “Deep Breath” vs his “Please, please save Clara” in “The Magician’s Apprentice”; Twelve instructing Clara to shoot his sonic screwdriver toward the Skovox Blitzer in “The Caretaker” vs his promise to save Clara in “Before the Flood”; his faith in Clara to do the right thing in “Kill the Moon” vs his desperation to get her back in “The Girl Who Died”; and again, interestingly, his willingness to take her to “hell” in “Dark Water” vs his insistence on Me’s guarantee of Clara’s safety in “Face the Raven”. He still loves her, still trusts her, is still deeply grateful for everything she’s done for him—but he’s no longer willing to thrust her into danger and trust that she’ll land on her feet, for the simple reason that realistically, eventually she won’t land on her feet. He wants to keep her safe.

Ironically, though, this new solicitousness for Clara’s safety leads to a twisted version of the hero worship cycle they have in series 7 and 8. He is worried for her safety, and so responds with disapproval to her increasing recklessness, trying to get her to stop doing what he, until recently, has been encouraging. This only drives Clara to throw herself more and more into the role of the Doctor, trying to prove that she is just as good a hero as he is, trying to show that she doesn’t care that she’s not invulnerable. The more reckless she is, the more concerned Twelve becomes, which leads Clara to keep on trying to prove herself, and so it continues, spiraling Clara downward until she finally crashes into reality in “Face the Raven”.

The interesting thing about that cycle is that they’re at complete cross-purposes; his priority has become her safety, but she still expects it to be all about the danger and the thrill. She has decided that being the Doctor is worth her life, if it has to come to that; the Doctor doesn’t believe that anything is worth as much as her life, and responds to her actions accordingly. And of course, this leads to him being driven nearly mad himself as he fights to get Clara back and fulfill his duty of care, until finally, in a beautiful reversal of “Dark Water,” she makes him see that being a hero—that being the Doctor—is worth it to her and he lets her make that choice. So Clara, with all her faith in stories, receives her fairytale ending instead of the cold, realistic one she would have had if the Doctor hadn’t returned to his initial faith in her and given her back the decisions about her safety.

(It’s important to note, by the way, that it is not in fact misogyny for the Doctor to be concerned for her safety. What he says in FtR is true; he is less breakable than her, and she takes risks that he can only take because he’s a genius with twenty-four lives.)

The Doctor and Clara, though initially difficult to define, thus have a relationship that reveals new facets when viewed through their hero-worship of each other. It is the Doctor’s loss of that complete faith in Clara that drives her to suicidal recklessness, and it is his regaining of that which allows her to travel the stars and fully become the Doctor—Clara Who. This is, of course, but one interpretation of a relationship that in some ways is beyond words, but that is, perhaps, the true charm of Whouffaldi: there are many readings of it, and every one of them is true.