So, how about that mysterious little exchange at the end of the latest episode:-

Clara: So, you must have thought I was dead for a while.

The doctor: Yeah.

Clara: How was that.

The doctor: Longest month of my life.

Clara: Can only have been five minutes.

The Doctor: I'll be the judge of time.

Blatantly this is teasing something, or giving some sort of clue to either Clara's demise or the larger story arc (or both).

Anyone got any thoughts? Theories? suggestions?

Maybe the Doctor has somehow foreseen the day when Clara departs from him. Maybe the Doctor's mind works a bit different to ours. Like, if it runs faster than ours going at say ten seconds at a time, not one second like ours goes.

We don't know exactly how an alien's mind actually works. Maybe it does work faster than ours. Who knows?

I saw it as nothing more than an implication that the grief the Doctor suffered when he thought Clara could be dead dragged on and on.

Clara said she'd been gone for about five minutes. The Doctor said it was a month. Neither are correct, and deliberately so - it's about how the progression of time feels to each character through their respective experiences.

Personally I saw no deeper mystery to it.

This is an astute interpretation. I was thinking it suggested that Clara has already "died" in the Doctor's timeline with these recent adventures being him going back to before the time she died but with him knowing what will come. So he has spent a month being around Clara since he has known he has already lost her. This, of course, has been speculated by others so I am partly influenced by these speculations with that. It is, however, a similar concept to River so doesn't quite feel right. Your take on it sounds good. It does seem like the Doctor knows something though but that could be due to something completely different.

He previously said he'd used the memory zapper 15 times.

It took a month to get to the point where DW, Clara, Kate and the Zygons all got into the box-room together without trying to kill each other.

To add to the above, while initially talking to Osgood the Doctor was under the impression that Clara had died (but was hanging on to hope).

The Doctor is like fire, ice and rage. He can see everything past, present and future, sometimes he knows more than he lets on.

My theory: Moffat put that in to get fans speculating on its hidden meaning in relation to life, the universe and everything, coming up with all sorts of theories that he can have a jolly good laugh at.

He does that.... a lot.

I took that to mean that there had been 15 previous zygon rebellions, each getting to the Osgood boxes. Aka, the peace will always break down, but they can always be talked out of war.

I can see that point of view, but at the same time, he was so solemn and pronounced when he said both 'longest month of my life' and 'let me be the judge of time' that it felt like the scene was designed to scream 'clue'


This is the kind of vibe I was getting also. Something similar to the Matt Smith 'different doctor' in flesh and stone, where some people were convinced the doctor with jacket discrepancy was just a production error, and that others were crazy to think anything more of it, when actually it was the doctor from the future all along.

He simply meant it felt like a month because he cares for her so much. It's not an uncommon saying ('felt like a month'). No need to look for anything more into it than that.

Rubbish. Don't you realise what this means?

The Doctor accidentally wiped his own memory in the Black Archive during the first attempt, at which point The Rani (who had been trapped in there ever since climbing out of the Time War painting) regenerated in to a Zygon and shape-shifted in to The Doctor - taking a month to complete that speech without fluffing his/her lines and prevent the war which would have prevented her/his escape in the TARDIS. The Doctor, meanwhile, is currently under that Mire helmet having the life drained out of him - making way for the shock regeneration in to Richard Madden in the finale and the Madden/Kingston sex storm at Christmas.

Harness and Moffat weren't sure about this idea, but Capaldi forced them to rewrite it after becoming an uncredited Executive Producer with the final say on scripts.

Go on then - ask me for sources.

I think it's a tiny bit more insidious than that.

I think he creates openings wherever possible - even if he's got no idea what to do with them - in the knowledge that he can fall back on them when he comes up with an idea that fits.

I agree that fans are often wasting their time speculating about it, though, because he probably has nothing planned when he actually comes up with them.

I can't say there is definitely anything more to the scene than what we saw, and it could well be that he meant that it felt like a month for him, but for me the month line, coupled with the 'I'll be the judge of time' said in a fairly prominent way definitely seemed like a hint to me.

I can see both points of view, either 'just a turn of phrase' or 'something in it' and no-one knows what will happen yet, so I don't see how some people can state with absolute certainty that there was nothing more, when you don't know that any more than the rest of us. At this point anyone can only speculate. No one can be sure.

I assumed it was a month for the Doctor between Victorian Clara dying and him meeting 21st Century Clara. Or maybe between Darlek Clara and Victorian Clara?

It amazes me that any emotion or feelings, scenes of grief in scenes of Doctor Who seem to pass some people and instead they fixate on the very literal meaning behind the words. Good job Abomination, I'm with you on this one

Apologies if this is a bit of a daft question but what episode is Clara meant to 'leave'?

Face the Raven

Einstein would agree with you there. He pointed out that whilst one hour with a beautiful woman seems to fly by in a minute, one minute in the dentist's chair seems to drag on for an hour. That, he said, is relativity.

Shes already dead?

It amazes me that after 10 years of hint dropping and teasing new who, people who have no idea what will happen in the finale or with Clara's death/leaving, can say with absolute certainty that a scene which seemed entirely set up for no other reason than to get those few lines out and make a point of the exchange, and was set up as the last thing in the episode we saw of them, as though we should remember it, definitely has no more to it than what we saw.

I was not an active member here during series 5, but I frequently followed the threads, and I remember the debate raging about the disrepancy about the doctors jacket in flesh and stone, and the fact that he seemed to walk away from Amy, then be with her a few seconds later. Then as with now, some felt there was something more to that scene, whilst others told them with absolute certainty that they were all imagining it, and it was obviously some sort of production error. Then when the finale came, the 'crazy theory' turned out to be right after all.

I'm not saying that I can say for sure that there was definitely some deeper meaning in the scene, but what I am saying is that all those who keep saying with apparent certainty that there isn't can't actually be any more certain than those who think their might be.

I'm certain there is more meaning to it. This isn't the first slightly odd exchange between the pair in the Tardis, this series. There was the one at the end of The Woman Who Lived when Clara gave The Doctor a hug:

Doctor: "I've missed you. Clara Oswald."

Clara: "Don't worry, daft old man, I'm not going anywhere."

And then the look The Doctor gave Clara - that was clearly a sign of something more. Played alongside this latest exchange, I'm sure these aren't just throw away scenes.
Either way, we'll know for certain in a matter of weeks.

So, if this is an older Doctor travelling back on Clara's timeline some time after witnessing Clara's death, what was his younger self doing while his older self was back with Clara? Had he gone off in a sulk (or perhaps to save the Universe) after one of the (many) fall outs in series 8? Maybe after Clara tried to hijack the TARDIS? And what does the older Doctor do when it comes time for Clara's death? Does he standby and let it happen (because he's already seen it (from another viewpoint)), or does he try to save her, knowing it would create the Clara inversion of the classic grandfather paradox.

If he saves her, he'd never experience the event that gave him the reason to go back in time and save her, so he wouldn't go back in time, so she would need saving, so he would go back in time, so she wouldn't need saving, so he wouldn't go back in time, etc, etc.

After travelling without Clara for some time, the Doctor hears she is in mortal danger and decides to visit the moment of her peril (maybe he thinks then he can avert it?), but is unable to save her and is surprised to see a version of himself with Clara in her final moments. Is it a Zygon clone? How come he has a TARDIS? He decides to go further back along Clara's timeline and finds evidence he's been with her all along. He decides to contact Clara to warn her that it's a duplicate Doctor, but decides not to tell her he's from her future (for obvious reasons). He travels with Clara, waiting for the duplicate to show up. That doesn't happen. His older self was the duplicate all along, and now he faces the choice of whether or not to save Clara all over again.

I'm not saying anything like that is right, but it would explain why he's relatively mild this season as compared to last.

He enjoys teasing the fans and setting up little mysteries for the fans to debate (as well he should, what with being the show runner an' all). Sometimes they pan out quite well, like the now infamous Doctor's jacket incident. Sometimes he sets things up.... and does nothing with them, like the future Amy and Rory waving across the valley.

The thing is, you can't really tell the red herrings from the real deal until the real deal is revealed. Good fun, though, isn't it?

Yup, this series has been full of lines which could be significant! The foreshadowing of death of both the Doctor and Clara, the ahem "Hybrid" references, the "Me" references, it makes trying to work out what the overall arc of the series quite difficult!