Maybe The John Hurt Doctor isn't real but somehow a blip in The Doctor's timestream.

Got my theory on that - I think he's an unused regen (perhaps a "warrior personality" that the Doctor was going to use to end the Timewar until he decided to sacrifice Gallifrey instead). By "thinking" of using "him", the personality was created and exists as a "soul" but it was never "made flesh" in the "real world".

The John Hurt Doctor looks sad rather than a warrior personality. The Doctor's sadness, locked away in the timestream and maybe once the sad Doctor is released, the Eleventh Doctor is regenerated. Maybe Clara will find a way to do that, by her tears of rain that fall for The Doctor.

I'm thinking that timelords have a similar "relationship" with their regenerations - they exist as "memories" and remain sentient even though they are non-corporeal.

If you've read the Dune sequels, you'll know of Alia being "possessed" by the "memories" or "souls" of her ancestors - dominated by her evil grandfather. Her nephew and niece have the same "voices" but are able to handle them because their mother is present as a memory and her "goodness" massively outweighs the evil. In both cases, they are able to converse with and even share feelings with their deceased ancestors - it's like a pyschic link with their "spirit"

If there's an unused (or even a future) regen in there, he could cause some grief

I think no matter what we postulate, Moffat is going to make us look like fools on Nov 23.

Grief to whom?

I'm looking forward to Nov 23 and I'm no fool.

I am with you there! But it is going to be weird watching it at Noon time here in Las Vegas but there is that timey-wimey stuff working for us.

Timey-wimey can just get in the way sometimes.

I thought that was made clear by the description of Alia's insanity (and the fact that it's inside the Doctor's head) but...

If a Timelord's mind contains the personas of previous (or all) incarnations as distinct "voices" - and if one or more of those persona's is "troubled" or even "bad", it could cause problems if any circumstance or event allowed that "voice" to overshadow the others.

If there is a regeneration persona that was never "made flesh" or which was but has since been rejected by The Doctor, that negative or even dangerous persona might be surpressed - until now.

I'm not entirely sure I followed all that but, if by wasteland, you mean the place inside the Doctor's timestream at the end of the Name of the Doctor then, yes, that is the original Clara. I also get the impression that it's all the other Claras as well since she has now been reintegrated with all of her Shards.

No Claras were ever 'assigned' to John Hurt's Doctor. Clara, after her reintegration remembers all 11 Doctors but not the John Hurt one.

They are not in 'purgatory' they are in some nebulous place representing the Doctor's time stream (but presumably outside of space and time) in which all Doctors exist.simultaneously.

The way I see it, the GI shards targeted all the Doctors he knew about and the Clara shards followed the GI to undo whatever the GI did. Since the GI didn't know about the JH Doctor he never visited him and so neither did Clara.

Incidentally, if there really were millions of shards of Clara as mentioned by the narrative then each Doctor would have been assigned a lot more than 3 each. More like 100,000 each!

The reason I mentioned "AT LEAST three Clara's" for the 11th Doctor is that is all we KNOW have existed - anything else being pure guesswork - but I said "at least" to show that I understood the possibility of their being more.

I'm not sure where you get the assertion that the GI specifially KNEW all of the key-points in the Doctor's timeline - he actually became part of it.

A timeline is not a collection of events like chapters in a book - it is the whole thing - every infinitesimal fraction of a second of the Doctor's entire existence - all existing at hte same time (like a roll of film). The GI existed in all of it (as if added to every single frame of that "film") - as would Clara and the Doctor himself.

I don't see that ANY Clara's were "assigned" at any point to any one. She simply existed throughout all of the time that the Doctor did - from the at least the second of his birth to at least the second of his death. That manifested itself as different people who were not aware of the existence of each other.

You have to remember that ALL of the events where Clara "made a difference" BEFORE the exact point at which 11 "rescued her" from that wasteland had already taken place - and WE had witnessed them or the outcome of them - that's the whole point of the plot. We'd seen a couple of storie showing two of those other Clara's in 11's "past" (relative to where he is now) but we also now know that the only reason we' even met The FIRST Doctor is that "a Clara" was on Gallifrey hundreds of years ago.

What we must also accept is that the "beam of light" we saw her (and the GI) enter was the Doctor's ENTIRE timeline and not just 11's past - so it MUST have included however many years and regenerations he lived AFTER the episode we were watching.

In other words, the GI wasn't only altering 11's past, he was also altering The Doctor's FUTURE (he had to - otherwise a future Doctor could have dealt with his meddling - no need for Clara). We saw some examples of Clara meeting with Doctor's 1>11 - but she must also have met 12>whatever.

The key - as far as the story stands at present - is that nothing done by Clara actually stopped GI BEFORE he entered the Doctor's timeline - that still happened. We don't actually KNOW that she's "finished the job" throughout the whole timeline - only that she appears to have managed it upto the point where 11 is safe and sound because he and his mates exist and appear to be unchanged (emphasis on "appear"). If GI somehow killed 12 or detroyed the universe "next February", for example - and "a Clara" failed to (or will fail to) prevent it - that has happened/will happen - unless they actually change history to prevent GO from entering the timeline in the first place (and if they do that - there's no impossible Clara and the Doctor is in deep doodoo - timewime,. loopy stuff)

In other words, if "Clara Prime" has that collective memory - she knows the Doctor's ENTIRE lifestory - and has met ALL of his regens, including future ones. If - therefore - she genuinely didn't recognise JH - he can't be a genuine Doctor - at least not one that ever existed physically.


PS - the whole set-up means that Clara is omnipresent. If she DOES have a collective memory, does she also qualify as omniscient and become "God" with a capital G?

PPS - we now have a companion that can appear in every episode with every Doctor - forever. Even if they kill Clara-Prime or she leaves to go to Manchester - she will still be in every plot - somewhere - always and forever - the ultimate, timetraveller.

PPPS - anyone want to vote for "a Clara" being that woman in white at the end of 10's stint?

PPPPS - anyone want to vote for "a Clara" accounting for the "half human" comment made by 8?

So she was lying to the Doctor (or at least not giving spoilers) when she specifically said she had seen 11 incarnations?




Nah, it was the 11th Doctor that the GI brought to Trenzalore hence he would only have targeted points in the Doctor's timeline that were before the 11th Doctor and Clara too would only have seen the timeline up to that point


If Moffat had wanted to indicate that Clara/Gi encountered Doc 12 and upwards then he would have added more unknown Doctors running about in the mist.

By opening up the doctors timeline it had unforeseen consequences. It revealed a version of the doctor buried hidden. 11 doesn't refer to JH as a " doctor" because he broke his promise.
Need to wait untill DOTD on Nove 23rd to find out more. How they are going to explain and try to fix it.

No-one said anyone was "lying" (and please remember that we are talking about a fictional character delivering a script).

The point you are missing is that one of the other questions I had asked is whether the Clara who encountered JH was the ORIGINAL Clara - the 20th century baby-sitter. There's little sense in the idea that she survived entering that energy flow - literally that her physical body was completely unharmed. So - it is at least POSSIBLE that the Clara we have now is just ONE of the many Claras - and happens to be one which does have SOME collective memory but not all of it.

If that's not true - there's no point watching any more DW because there never can be a 12 Doctor - or any others.

"Target points" etc - sorry but I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about there.

Are you saying that the Doctor's timeline ended BEFORE the Doctor's death - cos that makes no sense whatsoever. That timeline contained HIS ENTIRE LIFE and there is no logic in inventing the suggestion that Clara or GI could only visit events in part of it.

And no - Moffat would NOT show "future" Doctors running around - never happened and never will.

What you seem to be forgetting is that we don't know anything. All we have is conjecture based on the clues we've been given.

You seem to have missed the significance of my phrase "the way I see it". That's not an assertion, it's a theory. It's as valid as any other theory but, IMO, it fits the evidence better.

We know that Clara said she'd only seen 11 Doctors. That means she didn't see the JH Doctor and it also means she didn't see the Capaldi Doctor or any other future Doctor.

As you say, the GI and Clara both entered the Doctor's entire timestream. There has to be a reason why she only saw 11 Doctors and not every Doctor that ever existed. My theory explains that. That's why I postulate it, not because we know it to be true.


That's just as much conjecture as my theory. We know the GI and Clara were split into numerous 'shards' but there's no reason to assume that these shards were equally spread throughout his entire timeline. Nothing in the programme said that and we have heard dialogue specifically contradicting that idea. This is why I believe that the GI directed his shards to the points in the Doctor's timeline where he knew he could do the most harm to the Doctor and Clara directed her shards to follow his.


No we don't know that. Again, it's conjecture and it doesn't fit the facts, IMO. We didn't see the universe start to unravel until after the GI jumped into the timestream. If this had already happened and Clara had already counteracted his efforts then it makes no sense for all the planets to be winking out and for the Sontaran to suddenly turn hostile, etc. etc.

Only after the GI jumped in did the universe unravel, therefore, only after Clara jumped in did any of the other things we saw her do affect the timeline. IMO, she never directed the first Doctor to the TARDIS in the first timeline. The GI's shard probably did something to prevent the Doctor from choosing the TARDIS after he jumped in and then Clara went back to rectify that by intervening herself to put the Doctor back on track.

That to me, fits what we saw better than assuming it had already happened.

Now I agree that Asylum and Snowmen had already shown multiple Claras but, IMO, those events are an anomaly that doesn't fit the final moments of Name.

I explain it with another theory. I believe this is the second time round the loop for the GI and Clara, in the same way that Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS featured a loop which changed the outcome for the better on each iteration.

My theory is that, the first time round Clara was just a normal companion who happened to meet the Doctor normally (no special telephone call or anything). The GI met the Doctor in Snowmen and the Abominable Snowmen and the Web of Fear and got defeated each time. He concocted a plan to get revenge at Trenzalore and dived into the Doctor's timestream, as did Clara, who happened to be his companion then.

The GI went back to the Victorian era and used his mental powers to put the Doctor into a morose state of non-interference thus enabling his actual self to succeed.

He also sent a shard back to Clara's time and influenced his internet mind trapping machine to target Clara so that she never meets the Doctor.

He also sent a shard back to kill the Doctor in the Asylum of the Daleks.

Clara, on the other hand, sent a Shard back to Victorian era to break the Doctor out of his malaise and motivate him. Counteracting the GI shard's efforts.

She sent a Shard back to her own time and was the woman in the shop who gave Clara the number to contact the Doctor, thus ensuring that the Doctor would turn up to rescue the original Clara. Counteracting the GI shard's efforts.

She sent a shard back to the Asylum to end up as a Dalek who would ensure that whatever the GI had done to trap the Doctor failed and he escaped. Counteracting the GI shard's efforts.

Then original Clara and original GI made their way to Trenzalore again and once again they both dived into the timestream. This time round they both split themselves into far more pieces and affected far more events as we saw happen.

This is all conjecture, of course, but I think it fits things better than the suggestion that it had all already happened.


As with all conjecture, anything's possible, but I find it very implausible. The narrative seemed pretty clear. Clara entered the timestream got split into millions of Claras who all lived their own lives and then reconstituted into the Clara in the wasteland. She remembered everything her shards had seen and made a point of not having ever met any Doctor other than the 11 we know about. The idea that she is just another shard or just partially reconstituted seems very unlikely and not at all what the programme seemed to be trying to convey.

YMMV but let's not try to pretend we can assume anything about what's going on. All we can do is guess and theorise.

What if one of the Clara's was living through all the Doctors timestreams until she came across The Doctor and time was switching, according to which part of time Clara was in, it would be explain how Clara behaved in previous episodes. She would be on a rollercoaster of a journey. There could even be occasions when she comes across a person who pretends to be The Doctor. "You are not the Doctor, who are you?"

It was Sally sparrow of course.