We are debating the original comment not what has happened on screen. The person claimed they are almost identical. I doubt Victorian upbringing and upbringing in the late twentieth century will produce an almost identical human being.

It's obvious you don't really comprehend the conversation so I'll recap it by analogy:

Everyone else: it's possible that three cars from different manufacturers just happen to be the exact same temperature, like its technically possible they're exactly the same colour

You: it's more than just colour that affects car temperature; the outside environment would need to be identical for cars to be the exact same temperature

Me: it's unlikely but not impossible

You: you say it can happen but how can two cars with different outside environments be the same colour?

Me: it's established that they have slightly different temperatures; in addition your argument that outside environments must be identical is false

You: they must have an almost identical colour and almost identical outside environments

Me: experts in the field don't know to what extent each factor contributes, merely that temperature is a product of both

You: that doesn't prove that if you have a different outside environment then you will still have the same temperature if colour is the same

Me: no, it doesn't; that's not what anybody is saying

You: that's exact what they're saying and you are a liar

Me: you're being uncivil

You: that's it, I'm not talking to you any more

No you have got that wrong. You are making rude comments about me. Who says I know the difference between civil and uncivil behaviour. You don't know anything about me. I love it that you just make assumptions. Making comments relevant to my disability is unacceptable behaviour (I know you don't know I have a disability) but you cannot make assumptions. Luckily most of the time I don't deal with people like you. Plus your arguments don't make sense. If it is a product of both then to be similar both factors need to be similar or that the change in upbringing counters the changes in the DNA. Also some of your comments aren't what I said.

People of different genetic origins can look and act very similarly, just as (genetically) identical twins can be completely different.

Upbinging certainly has a big effect, both on the body's development due to nutrition and other physical environmental effects, and the emotional environment around the individual.

It's also been shown that individuals with the genetic markers and psychological personality traits of psychopaths don't necessarily turn out to be psychopaths if their upbringing was a normal loving environment.

Then there's the infuence of epigenetics, where even the nutritional state of the mother when she was in the grandmother's womb can influence whether certain genes are active or not.

Clearly an adult is the sum of their genetic makeup and their environment during development and memories and experiences throughout life.

The Clara's are not actually identical. They do act differently as has already been observed. Identical in this case does not literally mean identical. It just means "very similar".

I think we've covered that I don't agree but I assume we agree that the topic is exhausted?


I don't agree but it's probably safer to let the forum judge.


I haven't made any assumptions, I've made judgments based on your comments. You think my judgments are wrong. To have made an assumption I'd have had to say 'what you said is wrong, but then it would be because you studied Art History at Warwick' or something.


I agree.


I suspect none of us is a supermodel.


Based on the conversation above, I think we can all be happy that the world isn't made up solely of exchanges like these.


On the contrary, the product of 6 and 20 is 120. The product of 15 and 8 is also 120. The product is identical, the factors aren't similar at all. And the use of 'factor' and 'product' in maths just as in conversations like this isn't mere coincidence.


Well again I don't agree but again I suspect we basically agree that there's little to gain from delving too far into it.


That hopefully being that, I continue to think that the three Claras could technically be due to coincidence but I don't believe that such a coincidence is likely to occur during the lifetime of the universe, assuming that lifetime has an end (which, in Doctor Who, it does per Utopia). I also don't believe Moffatt would rely on coincidence for dramatic purposes.

Whether Mr. Saucepan's premise for the Clara plot is impossible, infinitely improbable, or even just rather unlikely in our universe is immaterial. We are, after all, discussing a television program about a time-travelling alien capable of regenerating into different forms when he dies and externally indistinguishable from a human (we presume-- 'what else does he have two of?'). Anyone care to give me the odds on such a being in the real world? Fun digression, though, TEDR and bp2.

Mr. Sausepan, I think you've hit it right on the nose. We plainly have three different human beings (we know for sure they weren't autons or anything--Clara 2 was even subjected to a medical scan by Strax), each of whom lived in different times and two of whom have died. So three humans, three births, but one shared appearance and (at least loosely speaking) personality.

As the Doctor says, "she's not possible" even in his universe (or is at least certainly improbable), so someone (almost certainly the Great Intelligence) has tweaked the laws of that universe to allow for her/their being. And I don't think that the focus on "the most important leaf in the world" in Rings would have been developed as Clara's back story for the sole purpose of defeating that episode's b-grade monster of the week.

Well done, Sir!

@TEDR

Very interesting that you are talking about numbers. Of course you know the probability of getting 15.000000000000000000000000000000000 (and so on) if the random variable is continuous.

Actually, I believe that's exactly what he would do. Or at least pretend to, and then find out there's a reason all along.

Oh my !!

Broadly speaking, DNA will affect physical characteristics; there is no gene for a predisposition to say "Run you clever boy, and remember", for liking Souffles, or having friends called Nina. There are, obviously genetic traits in hair/eye colour, height, prominance of cheekbones etc largely because these features are made under the control of proteins that the DNA molecules codes for. It is therefore difficult to see that nurture could "reset" a genetic change. To take a silly example, if a ClaraBlue was born who was in every respect identical to Clara except that she had blue eyes, then no amount of nurturing would turn those blue eyes brown. They are genetically coded and will stay that way. On the other hand, ClaraBlue baby is totally indifferent to idea of Souffles and if you feed her Souffles then she may well grow to love them.

Anyway, back to the OP. Whilst the "complete co-incidence" theory may be possible, I cannot see how it could be handled dramatically - We would have to see the Doctor realise that it was "just a co-incidence" and that realisation would have to come from some event or discovery that he makes. What could that be ? Surely the only thing that would convince the Doctor that it was just a co-incidence would be the absence of any other explanation - which won't be very satisfying dramatically (and could take a very long time )

Three separate women born across time and space who are perfect doppelgängers for each other: and as others have noted, even had someone impregnated three separate mothers with three separate genetically identical embryos, genetic expression for each would not likely result in their perfect indiscernibility as adults. How else to explain this besides someone tweaking the probability of potential outcomes? And given the focus on probability of potential outcomes in Rings, is it not the case that the writers seem to be telegraphing something like the theory in the OP?

Edit: And does it not make more sense to address the OP theory in terms of the story arc as presented, rather than to treat this as a maths and biology forum?

No character has yet said, or implied, that they are genetically identical. In fact, we've only ever seen two of them anyway. And besides that, there are subtle non-biological differences in them between 'eras', slightly different names, different personality traits. They're not identical, but they're freakishly similar.

Sorry Saucepan, not sure if your last post was intended for me (still feeling out the culture of this forum). If so, I meant to imply that a purely genetic explanation for the similarity of the Claras is not as satisfactory an explanation as the theory you posited in your OP. This is especially true given, as Prof. Travers reminded us, the repetition of the "Run you clever boy, and remember" meme. In the context of the universe, what could account for the Clara's? She's not an auton or a ganger or a nano-cloud Dalek (save, perhaps briefly, for her Asylum of the Daleks incarnation). She's almost like a meme that causality keeps spitting out. (Great Intelligence connection?)

I read in the Journey to the Center of the Tardis thread that



And given the fact that



I wonder if she might not be just that.

I do hate to keep harping on this, but I just did a Google site search of www.chakoteya.net, which has transcripts of every episode from both the classic and revived series, for "Eye of Harmony." It comes up in:

- The Movie
- The Deadly Assassin
- The Five Doctors
- Hide
- Four to Doomsday

(The transcript for JttCotT isn't up yet.). In not one of these episodes is it mentioned that TARDISes draw their power from the Eye of Harmony on Gallifrey. So where does the idea come from, and why is everyone so convinced of it?

Edit: oops, wrong thread...

Indeed, but see lookalike agencies (and, for argument's sake, pretend we're talking about good ones) — people's ability to discern the differences is finite. There's probably someone alive right now who I, as a third party, would perceive as looking exactly like you. Similarly there's probably at least two people who, to the extent of my ability to tell the difference, would react with the same instincts and motivations in the same circumstances.

It's defined to be 0, but it isn't really. It's just incredibly unlikely

I was once told that apparently, I have a doppelganger who lives in Leeds.

Poor man.

Apparently there's a straight male version of me, a female (lesbian) version, and a tall (sexuality undecided) version of me...

Oh, and I used to be told I looked like Anne Heche by a lot of people (I'm a male, btw...)

I was once told that I look like a Danish pop star, which naturally I took to be a very peculiar insult until they explained they meant a specific Danish pop star (and, presumably, *ahem* not one with traditional pop-star looks).

The most obvious solution for Clara would be a clone. Someone cloned an embryo three times. Travelled to three different time zones and impregnated three different mothers.

That someone turned up from time to time to suggest a name to her mother, introduce Clara to soufles and imprint "Run you clever boy" into her brain via hypnotic suggestion.

Simples

The Clara he met who was a nanny/barmaid in Victorian England...

...when she was under stress, she reverted to using her "common" voice rather than the posh one she was using as a nanny. Thing is, that Clara's accent was very specifically "cockney" - yet they made a very big neon-lit point of stressing that "current Clara" is from Lancashire.

If they are the same person, it would be odd for her to suddenly become all apples & pears when she was born all aye-up-me-duck.

Those two accents were polar opposites - and both were highlighted in the scripts.

Remind me - did the Akhaten episode explain how Clara's mother died? I'm wondering if she's the key, rather than Clara.

I assume that's because he lives in Leeds, not because he looks like you Johnny?

This is a fascinating subject - because, despite the monumental odds of a total stranger looking the same as you, we all know that it does happen. And some of these doppelgangers are a remarkably close match to the original. Of course their genetic make-up etc etc is going to be dfferent, but it's extraordinary that with all the millions of variables at work that anyone should ever look like anyone else at all. The chances are astronomical, yet it happens, and we all seem to know someone who is the spitting image of someone else, so it must actually be quite common.

In the God Complex, at the start the Doctor was absolutely amazed at how some aliens had made such a perfect reproduction of a 1980s hotel, especially the cheese plant in it. He did lots of sonic screwdriver analyses. Fast forward to the end of the episode and it was all just a hologram!

I have bad feeling, I'll be similarly disappointed with "Clara" and she'll turn out to be the default setting on a mass produced image translator (like in Vampires in Venice) sold to any alien visiting earth in disguise.

Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't "the Great Intelligence" try to make a copy of the drowned governess - and wasn't it pointed out that GI hadn't (at that time) made a very good job of it?

Since GI is still around, would it not make sense for it to have "perfected" the technique since then - and since it came into contact with what might be "the original" Clara in the Xmas special, could it have been (or still be) using her as it's "template".

The GI also "re-animated" R.E.G.'s corpse AND we've seen him (or at least an image of him) in a later episode - so the last Xmas special already showed us two re-incarnations.

An effective hologram is still a reproduction - knowing it's a hologram doesn't help you if it can still kill you!