Exactly. She is now the Deus ex machina which can (and, apparently always has) save The Doctor throughout all of time.

I could type out a wall of text rant here, but I won't bother. LOL!

But at the end of The Name of the Doctor, when she sees John Hurt, Clara says: "But I never saw that one. I saw all of you. Eleven faces, all of them you. You're the eleventh Doctor." Which makes me think there are 'Claras' scattered only through his life up until that point.

Or is is that, in that version of the Doctor's life, there were no more Doctors after 11? The 'TARDIS tomb' was based around his current model so perhaps the version of the Doctor's life that Clara was scattered throughout was one where he did die as the 11th Doctor.

Yes, that. That second paragraph

I can't believe I'm this lucid first thing on a Sunday morning!

no, she is only in the time stream up to that point, up to the end of the first regeneration cycle. She isn't in the time stream anymore.

Given the many hundreds, probably thousands of times the doctor has saved the day, and the fact that a Clara would have had to be at every single one to somehow put right the effects of the great intelligence's interference, the doctor must surely, in all those years have noticed her at least a handful of times. After seeing her 2 or 3 times in different times or places, the doctor we know would have noticed that she kept appearing in different forms, well before he got to his eleventh incarnation. Far from being brushed aside or being able to forget her, he would, in time, be obsessed with finding out who/what she is, just as we were shown with 11, but much surely much much sooner in his lives, if she kept popping up throughout them. Say for example he only noticed her once in each incarnation, surely by the fourth doctor he'd be saying, hang on a minute....

This is what I believe and one of the reasons why I believe that the events of name of the doctor were erased by the events of time of the doctor. I've heard all the different explanations from people who think those events still stand but for me, the idea that they don't is what makes most sense.

Guess we havery to have our own answers and opinon. BOSJ raised a question. Who gave Clara the tardis phone number. Suppose we won' t find out until her last episode. Few months and we see what is next for Clara.

I re-watched The Bells of St John last night. First time I've seen it since it was first broadcast. It did remind me that we still don't know who the mystery woman was that gave Clara the Doctor's number. And Clara didn't recognise River Song later in the season, so I guess that rules her out.

Also, faces repeat.

"Tell me, Gwen Cooper, are you from an old Cardiff family?"
"Yes, all the way back to the 1800s."
"Ahhhh, thought so! Spacio-genetic multiplicity."

Could be anyone who gave her the number. If you only saw or spoke to someone briefly would you recognise them if you saw them again ?. Up to mofat if or when he reveals the woman's identity. I think it will be either river or an older version of Clara herself.

We don't know why the TARDIS hates Clara, yet, either. Probably something she hasn't done yet - she always gets the past and the future mixed up. I'm sure it's on the way, that "woman in the shop" line stuck out too much to be inconsequential...

I wonder how many of us would recognise ourselves if it was possible to time shift and meet yourself in the future or past? My money is on the mystery woman being Clara herself overlapping the time stream, probably an older version of herself.

In terms of the Tardis not liking her, I think that its all to do with her being 'impossible' a bit like Capt Jack. She isn't phased with the universe and time as she should be.

All imo of course!

Completely agree - if I met an elderly me, I wouldn't think, "Hey, that must be me timetravelling from the future," I'd go, "Ha, that old guy's a handsome devil" and carry on living. It'd seem too implausible, you wouldn't entertain the idea.

Depend on whether they interact at all. I'm sure there's many, many people out there that have made decisions that have affected the path of my life without me ever seeing their faces or knowing their names - the administrator that processed my university application, the anaesthetist working during an operation, the programmers that wrote the software that got me interested in computers...

True, you don't necessarily have to directly interact with someone to affect their life, but in this instance, from what we were shown, she did directly interact with him. We Know fact that the first doctor had an interaction with her (with her somehow inexplicably knowing which TARDIS was the right one for him), and fair enough, one time is forgettable, but all the other scene's we were shown in the pre - credits montage were of the different versions of her running after or shouting at the doctor, intentionally trying to directly get his attention, so apart from the mystery of why he dosen't always notice someone running after him shouting his name, I would think, as I said earlier that out of the thousands of occasions she would have needed to interfere he would have at least had to have noticed her a few more times than the one's we were shown on screen and would have noticed something odd about this reoccuring face popping up in all different times and places well before he was 11.

Probably would have been better if they'd indicated or shown the different Clara's working from the shadows and never actually directly meeting him till 11, but that's not what we saw. I also think it would have been better if every copy of clara would have been a direct copy who, rather than having a whole life, just appeared at the right time, then disappeared when the job was done. Would have been simpler to put across as to why she always save's him. I get the idea that as it stood it that storyline that the unknowing Clara's just by fate, randomly saved him without knowing they were going to, but them actually knowing why they were there would have been better especially in terms of the scene with the first doctor for example.

I liked it to begin with, but then they just over did it. The Doctor called Clara his 'impossible girl' so often it lost any meaning and the whole storyline just would not end!

Being the doctors companion is not easy. Lots of weird and wacky thing things can and will happen to you. Word "normal" whatever that is kind of flies out the window. Clara will be around for a while yet so we just have to see what fate has in store for her.

Apparently, unfortunately, now, she has been with him all of his 1,000+ years and will be with him until he truly dies. She is there always looking for him, and helping him whether he ever sees her or not. She is now the quintessential stalker. Big Brother has now been replaced with Little Sister. Sigh.

No because Hurt's Doctor was BEFORE Smith's so she should have seen him. Essentially the explanation seemed to be he wasn't consider 'the Doctor' and therefore wasn't included in his time stream


Nope because 12 appeared in the 50th before Trenzalore. He shouldn't have existed there if Clara didn't change things until Trenzalore.

Basically the gist of it seems to be that Clara is supposed to be scattered throughout his whole life as a kind of guardian angel and eventually the Doctor WILL end up buried on Trenzalore. Just Moffat really isn't very good at writing these complicated time stories with clarity and he's created several plot holes that he himself can't account for.

It was ultimately in just over half of the 10 episodes Clara was in during the 7th series. How is that, never-ending?

Of all the linking theme storylines used (Bad Wolf, Torchwood, Vote Mister Saxon), it has one of the fewest actual references to it... Not really sure how that is overdoing it, either. Seems pretty frugal, in fact rather sparse to me.

Umm... Where do you get that from? It specifically states that she was only with 11 of the Doctors. From 12 onwards, and WarDoctor, she was nowhere around. I think you either missed it, or are being intentionally obtuse to be negative.

I suspect the latter, though...

It states that she saw 11 faces, but just as she had never seen The War Doctor (because we had not), she had also never seen 12 (or any further) because we had not. She is in The Doctor's Time Stream. As his time stream expands, she will always be there. It is horrible writing.

It is similar to the way that The Doctor doesn't remember adventures that he shares with a previous self because it doesn't happen with the previous self until the adventure is actually shared (man, that sounds weird).

No, that's not true. The GI travelled into the Doctor's past, Clara went into his past too. Not his future.

Maybe an opportunity arises where Clara remembers one day.

An example.

Clara- Doctor, I just remembered.
The Doctor-What do you remember Clara?
Clara-It's like, when you write on a piece of paper, something and you throw that piece of paper away and you didn't really need that piece of paper to remember.
The Doctor- A piece of paper?
Clara-What I'm trying to say is, there are more of you.
The Doctor-That's good to know.