OH I laughed.

For me this is no different from William Hartnell, he was 55 when he got the part of the Dr. and I just googled Peter Capaldi the same age as William Hartnell and had a few good innings.

Once I try to forget he's been in it already (these things always bother me A LOT).....

 

Brilliant choice! Great actor! So glad they went for an older doctor so hopefully end the companion getting lovey dovey about him all the time (ok this hasn't actually happened in a while but still-hopefully they'll cut all the snogging) and it'll be a bit more like the relationships between the doctor and his companions from the old series.

 

It's hardly pervy for him to be so much older than Jenna, and I want them to cut the unneeded sex and innuendo currently cluttering the show anyway.

Laughing at all the fan-girls on Tumblr right now. They no longer have any eye candy. :lol:

Really disappointed :( I would rather they went for a ~40 year old who was also a relative unknown. As stupid as it sounds, it's kind of alienating the younger viewers as I can't really see him being a role model to them. HOWEVER, if I think about it, I can see him only doing it for a year and then leaving with Moffat at the end of the next series.

Edited August 4, 201311 yr by Rabbit Heart

it's odd getting used to an older actor after so many younger ones, but then they said the same about younger after so many older. I was 5 when I became a Dr Who fan, first episode, William Hartnell. Kids tend to focus more on the companions for role models if the doctor is older, so Jenna would be needed still....

A wonderful choice. It'll be interesting though, giving how much he's associated with playing Malcolm Tucker.

With the younger audience, not at all. That's why I didn't think there was any chance of Daniel Radcliffe or Rupert Grint getting it - they are too established as somebody else with younger viewers.

Aha, I'm glad I was wrong - Peter Capaldi is an excellent actor and I'm sure he will make a brilliant doctor.

 

He's most known for Malcolm Tucker yes, but he did play Sid's father in the first two series of Skins in which he was equally good IMO. It is also great that they have opted for someone a little older this time.

SO disappointed :( I was hoping for somebody much younger/an unknown, like someone said above, it's going to be incredibly difficult for younger viewers to relate to him and he generally looks like he has 'serial killer eyes'. Ugh.

Actually, he was quite angry in Skins too. But 'serial killer' eyes?? That's a bit harsh.

 

SO disappointed :( I was hoping for somebody much younger/an unknown, like someone said above, it's going to be incredibly difficult for younger viewers to relate to him and he generally looks like he has 'serial killer eyes'. Ugh.

 

His not Callum! :angry:

 

Great choice. Great actor.

 

Can't wait to see his interaction with Clara!

Best choice of all the people who were touted. A more serious tone could hopefully follow for the series. Then they should dump that bloody screwdriver, give Clara some actually personality and hopefully the scripts will improve

Great choice, a nice contrast to Matt and David I'm sure, without being too drastic a change (ie. a woman).

Best choice of all the people who were touted. A more serious tone could hopefully follow for the series. Then they should dump that bloody screwdriver, give Clara some actually personality and hopefully the scripts will improve

Hmm, I think the scripts should definitely improve. I think a lot of the writers will be able to relate more to Capaldi (and I'm starting to relate to him as the Doctor now :kink:). While most of the scripts [if not all] got Matt's Doctor on point, I don't think Matt's Doctor was really understood by some of the writers.

I just think the shows gotten quite dumb. It doesn't need to be complicated and I'm not expecting ultra serious Galactica stuff but it has lately been treating it's audience as 5 year olds too often. When my 9 year old son says it's childish and shallow you know it's not good for the show

I just think the shows gotten quite dumb. It doesn't need to be complicated and I'm not expecting ultra serious Galactica stuff but it has lately been treating it's audience as 5 year olds too often. When my 9 year old son says it's childish and shallow you know it's not good for the show

 

Not sure it's dumb as such but the BBC are obsessed with "targeting" age groups on TV and Radio One. Kids don't need to be "targeted", if it's good they'll enjoy it, and they're perfectly capable of enjoying adult TV and intelligent Radio presenters, not talked down to as if they're some sort of subhuman IQ-challenged trivia-obssessed separate species. Governors please take note...

 

phew! got that off my chest....!

I do think that Moffat and co. are trying a bit too hard to target their stories at children by making them seem complicated or frightening, or well-written to begin with (see Hide), and it's not going down well with older fans of the show, or they're trying to write stories for children, and completely FLOPPING (see The Rings of Akhaten, which is actually a rather beautiful story; just has a few flaws).

Neil Cross, who wrote The Rings of Akhaten and Hide has confirmed that he will be back for Series 8:

 

Cross told Stuff: “I am going back. I have got story ideas tucked away, but if I told you about them I would have to kill you. There’s a whole bunch of stuff I want to do. Steven is clearly very busy with the 50th anniversary special and Christmas special, but I have to find out from Steven what his intentions for the Doctor are and what sort of stories he wants me to write.”

 

Cross also spoke about Peter Capaldi’s casting: “I am really excited about writing for Peter Capaldi, and equally sad not to have the opportunity to write for Matt Smith again. I think Matt Smith has been the most outstanding Doctor to date.”

 

“I am familiar with Peter Capaldi’s work and I am looking forward to it. Peter has presence on the screen. I think he’s an outstanding choice. There’s something about his physicality, his image, his wit, that evokes the Doctor. There’s something about him that evokes classic Doctor Who.”

If he wrote The Rings Of Akhaten, I don't want him back.

OK, so I have written an article to be featured on a website (soon, hopefully), and I thought I'd post it here in the DW thread. If you even feel like reading through it (most if it's probably just pointless drivel anyway), please feel free to comment. ^_^

 

Do we really know who Clara Oswald is?

 

Clara Oswald was originally introduced to Doctor Who in the series 7 opening episode ‘Asylum of the Daleks’, where we knew her as Oswin, a feisty and cheeky young girl who was in desperate need of somebody who could rescue her from shipwreck.

Despite helping the Doctor to pave his way through the Asylum, she was really the one who needed saving. She was leading him to saving her throughout the whole episode – and the conclusion was that she was actually a Dalek; the maddest in the Asylum, and one that even the Daleks (albeit sane ones) themselves were frightened of. There was no way that the Doctor could save her for she had been fully converted into Dalek form – the Daleks needed a genius, and Oswin Oswald fitted the bill for them perfectly.

“Run you clever boy and remember” soon became a phrase to be remembered in series 7 after Oswin demanded the Doctor save himself as a result of Clara detonating the Asylum planet from the inside, which killed her – or the Dalek shell that she was living inside.

 

In the 2012 Christmas Special, ‘The Snowmen’, we met a very different and very human Clara Oswald. She was different to the ‘version’ that we had met in ‘Asylum of the Daleks’, although there were many similarities between the pair. The root personality – cheeky, bubbly, sensitive and fiery – was all still there, but this time she was a young Victorian woman, curious to learn about a man called the Doctor, whom she met outside her workplace after encountering a Snowman that had built itself in front of her.

After meeting Madame Vastra, her assistant Jenny, and the doting and sometimes stupid (or at least non-educated about humans) Strax, she wanted to solve the mystery of the frozen pond alongside the Doctor. Having defeated (or so the Doctor and Clara thought) the mastermind behind the freeze, the Doctor promised Clara the stars and beyond, and took her to his cloud and inside the TARDIS where she was amazed and bewildered. He even gave her a key, but it was not meant to be when she was dragged from the cloud by the Ice Governess, and fell to the ground, where she later died – but once again repeating the phrase that had become known, not only to the audience, but to the Doctor now, too, as one that would save him no matter where he went.

At the conclusion of the episode, we saw the grave of Clara Oswald, where she was buried in Victorian London – ‘Born November 23 1866, Died December 24 1892’.

Not also that, but in the TARDIS Clara admitted that she liked making soufflés, and this only baffled the Doctor further, because at her graveside he finally started piecing together the clues that had been left for him. Oswin Oswald claimed to make soufflés from the centre of the Dalek Asylum, but the Doctor had no idea where she was getting the milk from in such a confined environment. He had worked out that Clara Oswin Oswald was Oswin Oswald from Starship Alaska and that she had died saving him – and she died, once again, saving him in Victorian London.

 

So what do we know about Clara Oswald so far?

 

• Oswin Oswald died saving the Doctor from the Dalek Asylum planet, after discovering that she, herself, was a Dalek. So not only was she his saviour, but she could well have been his downfall

• She repeated a phrase two times: “Run you clever boy and remember me”, which would later be explained in ‘The Name of the Doctor’ after viewers get a large glimpse at who Clara Oswald really is, or could be

• Clara Oswald from Victorian London was born on November 23 1866, and died on December 24 1892 – but how could she have been born then if she had been conceived in modern London by parents Ellie and Dave Oswald?

• Clara Oswald enjoys making soufflés in her spare time (much like Oswin Oswald, who was under the assumption that soufflés were what she was living on), and this only furthered the Doctor’s suspicions that he was encountering the same person, twice

 

In the first scenes of ‘The Bells of Saint John’, we see the Doctor in cave setting, clothed in Monk robes, and seated side by side with a canvas painting of Clara, scribed with the phrase that she had used twice – “Run you clever boy and remember”. Moments later, the bells of Saint John were ringing (the TARDIS phone), and it was Clara, calling the Doctor in 1207, from modern day London. She claimed that “the woman in the shop” gave her the TARDIS phone number – although did not know her name.

Before the Doctor arrived on Earth to meet Clara, Angie, the child whom Clara was a nanny to (and a family friend) said that she was going out with Nina, her friend. In ‘Asylum of the Daleks’, Oswin claims that a long time ago she had a crush on a girl named Nina, but that she also had a crush on a boy called Rory (which she admitted when she was guiding Rory, Amy Pond’s husband, through the Dalek Asylum). What prompted the Doctor to meet this modern day ‘version’ of Clara though was when he guided her with setting the Wi-Fi connection up. When asking Angie what the password was, she was told ‘RYCBAR123’. On the phone to the Doctor, she spoke out loud an acronym of ‘RYCBAR123’ – ‘Run You Clever Boy And Remember 123’.

 

The Doctor arrived on Earth, at Clara’s home, and declared that he had now met Clara Oswin Oswald for the third time, but in modern day. Clara denied that she had a middle name ‘Oswin’ but later in the episode we saw her with a technologically advanced and genius mind, hacking into software to bring about the demise of the evil behind the Spoonheads who were uploading people to a system via the use of Wi-Fi. She had to decide a password for an account to be made.

“Clara Oswald for the win… Oswin!”

This was a clever addition to Clara’s arc from Steven Moffat, and it only aroused more suspicion from the audience about how a modern day Clara could come up with the name ‘Oswin’, yet the ‘version’ of Clara in the Dalek Asylum could go by that name.

Another thing that triggered suspicion about Clara among the Doctor Who fanbase was that when she was uploaded to the server by Miss Kizlet and her devious team working inside the Shard, she repeatedly screamed “I don’t know where I am” and “Where am I?” If you re-jog your memory, you will remember that in a flashback scene in ‘Asylum of the Daleks’, Oswin screamed “I don’t know where I am” and “Where am I?” when she was being converted to Dalek form.

 

So what else have we learned about Clara Oswald?

 

• Clara was given the phone number for the TARDIS by “the woman in the shop”, which is a question yet to be explained or answered in any future episodes

• The password for the Wi-Fi in the house that Clara works is ‘RYCBAR123’, which Clara translated as ‘Run You Clever Boy And Remember 123’, in the form of an acronym – this was also said by Oswin Oswald in ‘Asylum of the Daleks’, and later by Clara (Victorian London) before she died in ‘The Snowmen’

• When Clara decided on a password for an account she made to bring about the downfall of the Spoonheads, and the work that was happening from inside the Shard, she made it ‘Oswin’, which is the name that she went by in the Dalek Asylum, or the middle name that never was (even if it said so on her grave in Victorian London)

• As well as screaming “I don’t know where I am”, and “Where am I?” in the Dalek Asylum, she also screamed the same thing when she was uploaded to the server in ‘The Bells of Saint John’

 

The pre-titles sequence of ‘The Rings of Akhaten’ was one to remember, and definitely a favourite. It explained everything we needed to know about Clara Oswald’s parents – Ellie and Dave, and it also explained, ultimately, how Clara came to be in the first place.

Dave kept the leaf that blew onto his face, and forced him onto the road – before being saved by Ellie, and presented it to her at a later time. The leaf was kept in a book that had been handed down to Clara by Ellie – although in that book, she also kept a log of the ages that she was when she had the book. Ages 16 and 23 were missing from this list (this was first picked up on in ‘The Bells of Saint John’, although the book became a more prominent part of her arc in ‘The Rings of Akhaten’).

Later in the episode, when the Doctor faced the deadly threat the Old God, he gave away all of his memories in order to save the people of Akhaten, but it wasn’t enough to whet its appetite, so Clara decided to make the boldest move that she would make in her life (so far), and gave away the leaf that she had kept for all of those years, and which she referred to as “the first page” – the thing that she blew into the world on. The leaf, according to Clara, was full of the memories that never were, and the days that were never lived, and it was more than enough to fill the Old God.

 

More that we have learned about Clara Oswald?

 

• She kept a leaf in a book that was handed down to her by her mother, and that leaf was what ‘blew her into this world’, and united her parents, and sparked their relationship

• Clara kept a log of her ages as she grew older in the inside cover of her book, but missed out age 16 and age 23, for an as of yet unknown reason

 

In ‘Hide’, we saw the Doctor and Clara involve themselves greatly in a love story (originally a ghost story before the relative of Emma Grayling and Alec Palmer, but the real reason the TARDIS landed there was because the Doctor needed to try and retrieve vital information about Clara from the psychic that was – Emma Grayling. Emma reassured the Doctor that Clara was just an ordinary girl, although she seemed to suggest that she may have known more about Clara than she told the Doctor when she said “Why, is that not enough?” upon the Doctor asking if that was everything that was possible to be told.

The relationship between Clara and the TARDIS was also explored in this episode – which became a running theme with Clara’s presence as the Doctor’s companion. When Clara needed to take the TARDIS to where it needed to go to save the Doctor, it would not open its doors.

 

Anything else that we have picked up on about Clara?

 

• Emma Grayling claimed that she was nothing but an ordinary girl

• A conflict between Clara and the TARDIS developed, which would later be explained in precise detail in the series finale, ‘The Name of the Doctor’

 

Well into ‘Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS’, the Doctor decides to tackle Clara’s mystery head-on, and questions her – desperate to know if she is a trick, or a trap, but she has no knowledge whatsoever of his previous encounters with Oswin Oswald in the Dalek Asylum, or Clara Oswin Oswald in Victorian London, and to the Doctor’s relief, he finally thinks that he has settled the mystery, that she is an ordinary girl, and she has no relation at all to the ‘versions’ of Clara whom he has previously met.

 

In the final scene of ‘The Crimson Horror’, Clara returns home where she finds that Angie and Artie – the children whom she is a nanny to, have been looking through files on the internet, and discover that she has been travelling in time, that she has been on a submarine with the Doctor, and they also find a photo of Clara Oswin Oswald from Victorian London, but Clara claims that it is definitely not her, it is in fact, however, an echo of Clara. As she sees this photo, this clues her up about the past lives that she may have lived, and confirms he Doctor’s suspicions that he really has met her before, on more than one occasion.

 

The pre-titles sequence of ‘The Name of the Doctor’ is quite possibly one of the most beautiful moments in Doctor Who history, with Clara falling through a space-time vortex claiming, once again, that she does not know where she is. She also claims that she was born to save the Doctor. In this pre-titles sequence we also see Clara in many locations that the Doctor himself has been in his past. We see her meet the first Doctor, chase after the second Doctor, try to save the fifth and seventh Doctors, try to locate the sixth Doctor, and look on as Oswin Oswald at the tenth Doctor in the Library. The only Doctor to have noticed Clara, however, is the eleventh Doctor. He first noticed her in ‘The Snowmen’ after she chased him looking for answers about the Snowmen that had built themselves as if by magic.

Into the episode a little bit, Clara is in her cuisine, and she is making a soufflé. She talks about how Ellie told her that “the soufflé isn’t the soufflé, the soufflé is the recipe”, which she repeats alter in the episode.

When Clara is summoned to the conference call with Vastra, Jenny and Strax – she meets River for what appears to be the first time. The conference call is interrupted, however, when the Whispermen and Dr Simeon (now known as The Great Intelligence) interfere. River keeps the psychic link between herself and Clara open, though, and while they have left the conference, Clara still retains a psychic link to the coordinates of Trenzalore – the planet that the Doctor must never go to – which the Doctor takes from her and injects into the TARDIS. This is one possible explanation for the ‘beef’ between Clara and the TARDIS. Could the TARDIS have the ability to know that Clara is the one who possessed the information that would send the TARDIS to its death on Trenzalore?

 

Later in the episode, when the Doctor and Clara have landed the TARDIS on Trenzalore, River Song appears – she has kept the psychic link between herself and Clara open, and can communicate with her, and tells her where to go so that they can reach the Doctor’s tomb. The Doctor and Clara then make their way through catacombs having been told by River that the entrance was via her grave.

As Clara is walking through them, she remembers walking through the broken down TARDIS in ‘Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS’, and also remembers that the Doctor told her that he had met her two times previously. When they reach the entrance to the Doctor’s tomb, the code to opening it is the Doctor’s name, but nobody knows of this but River, who opens it just as The Great Intelligence demands the Whispermen stop Vastra, Strax, Jenny and Clara’s hearts. Clara has no recollection of the Doctor’s name, despite having read it in the Time War book.

 

What else have we learned by this point about Clara?

 

• She claims that she was born to save the Doctor, and while falling through a vortex claims not to know where she is, yet again repeating what she said in the Dalek Asylum while being converted into a Dalek, and in her home in ‘The Bells of Saint John’ while being downloaded

• In ‘The Name of the Doctor’, she is making a soufflé in the cuisine. This ties in with the fact that in the Dalek Asylum she thought she was living off of them, and she enjoyed making them in Victorian London

• A psychic link between herself and River is opened, and we are not given any indication as to whether it is closes or not, as River refuses to tell the Doctor – once again reverting to her phrase “Spoilers!”

 

As everybody entered the Doctor’s tomb, what became apparent was that in front of them was his own personal time tunnel – every single moment of his history, and everything that ever would or will happen to him, every memory, and every second. The Great Intelligence’s ultimate aim was to retrieve all information it possibly could about the Doctor, and to build its database more-so than it already had, because it is information; it feeds on information. The Great Intelligence entered the Doctor’s time tunnel, and became scattered across it, every single moment, he was there, watching the Doctor, and interfered with it, rewriting the Doctor’s entire history – and the only way that the Doctor could be saved is if he had a saviour.

His saviour was Clara.

Clara entered the Doctor’s time tunnel to save him, and to undo any damage that The Great Intelligence had done by entering, but she didn’t enter before, for the final time in the series, telling the Doctor what she had said to him two times before, in completely different worlds, and in completely different ‘versions’ of herself – “Run you clever boy, and remember me”. She entered, and she became Oswin Oswald, she became Clara Oswin Oswald, and she became the person who told the first Doctor to take a different space ship to the one that he was going to take. She became millions of splinters, scattered across the Doctor’s timeline, with only one intention – to save him. As she was scattered across his timeline, all of what she had said and done was too, and her memories, which is why she had a great fondness for soufflés in the Dalek Asylum, and in Victorian London, and which is why she didn’t ever seem to know where she was, and how she adopted the name ‘Oswin’.

In doing so, she erased her embodiment from modern day, and it became trapped in the time tunnel. She saw every incarnation of the Doctor but one flash before her. How would the Doctor live with himself having a human sacrifice her whole life, the days that never were, or could have been, for him? He couldn’t, and so entered his time tunnel, and heavily persuaded Clara to let him save her, just once. And so she let him, but collapsed in his arms as the pair looked on at an as of yet unknown incarnation of himself who did not act ‘in the name of the Doctor’.

 

What else did Clara do?

 

• She erased all memory of the Doctor from the Daleks’ database, having the ability to hack into the software on the Dalek Asylum, and when he arrived back on the Dalek Parliament, they, obviously, had no idea at all as to who he was – Clara had turned the Daleks’ ultimate enemy into an unknown passer-by

 

BUT…

 

Is that all we know about Clara Oswald?

 

There are still questions to be answered:

 

1) Who was the woman in the shop that told Clara the TARDIS phone number?

2) Will the Doctor have the ability to save Clara from his time tunnel, or will she remain there, her ‘root version’ dead – and forever be splinters in his timeline, saving him at every given opportunity?

3) What is the meaning of the remaining psychic link between River Song and Clara?

4) Has Clara actually been able to prevent all of the doings that The Great Intelligence did by entering the Doctor’s time tunnel?

 

What can we expect from Clara in series 8? Her arc most definitely is not finished, and there is still a lot to be discovered about the character, and (as listed above) questions yet to be answered.

 

“I was born to save the Doctor” is a line that sticks. Was she really born to save the Doctor? In a literal meaning, this would mean that there is more to her birth than meets the eye. River Song was “born to kill the Doctor”, so could this be, yet again, another intricate trap set in motion by the devious and scandalous Madame Kovarian, who is a slave of the Silence? Are they preparing themselves to try and bring the Doctor down again? After all, there is still the fact that there is a psychic link between Clara and River, and would it be all that surprising if her arc is similar somewhat to River’s, and the same people are behind her upbringing and life as they were and are with River’s?

 

More about the echoes and ‘root version’ of Clara

 

There were, of course, similarities between the three ‘versions’ of Clara:

 

• She looked the same each time

Although the Doctor did not see Oswin’s face, he was able to identify having met Clara Oswin Oswald and Clara Oswald that she was the same person because they each had the same voice

• Her name was similar in every life

She named herself “Oswin Oswald” in the Dalek Asylum, “Clara Oswin Oswald” in Victorian London, and “Clara Oswald” in modern day – although only once have we seen her grave – and that is in Victorian London, most probably because it is the only location where it is likely she would have a grave

• Cleverness

All of the echoes of Clara were clever, and were able to adopt certain attitudes, and adapt to certain situations. Oswin was exceptionally clever at hacking into software, while Clara Oswald was given the ability to hack software by Miss Kizlet

• She worked with children in each life

Oswin was a “Junior Entertainment Manager”, while Clara Oswin Oswald was a governess, and in present day Clara Oswald was a nanny for the Maitland family

• The current situation that she was in was for one year

Before encountering the Doctor, Oswin was in the shipwreck of Alaska for one year; before encountering the Doctor, it was a year since the death of Captain Latimer’s previous governess

• She commonly spoke about big chins

Oswin stated that the Doctor had a big chin, while Clara Oswald stated that Alec Palmer’s love for Emma Grayling stuck out like a big chin

 

WHAT DO THE DATES MEAN?

 

• ‘Root Clara’ was born in 1989, the same year that Doctor Who was cancelled

• Ellie Oswald died on 5 March 2005, the same date that Rose Tyler met the Doctor, and it is also the date that ‘Rose’ was leaked

• Clara Oswin Oswald’s grave reads that she was born on 23 November 1866 and died 24 December 1892 – she shared the same birth date as Doctor Who itself, but she was also 26 years old when she died – the same age Doctor Who was when it was cancelled, and the same age Jenna Coleman was at the time of filming