For years now , Doctor Who has been exploring the dismal side of the Doctor , that quasi - immortal time traveller from another planet . He turns multitude into weapons , he inspires his friend to be rash , he makes his enemy worse , etc . But with this latest episode , we see the absolute bad indictment of the Doctor .
Spoilers ahead …
To some extent , the events of “ Face The Raven ” can be register as a tragic mistaking . The immortal Ashildir , aka Me , set a trap for the Doctor in which nobody is suppose to get pain — but because Clara over - reach and tries to be too clever , she accidentally becomes a victim and is killed . But one layer below that , this is about the hit between two average fair sex that the Doctor turned into something more . The Doctor chose to make Ashildr immortal , knowing how horribly that could go incorrect , and he also keep convincing Clara that reckless haughtiness was a upright strategy for portion out with out of the question situation .
Not that the Doctor takes all the blame for this calamity — but his angriness at the end of the installment is misplaced . He should be await in the mirror when he makes those language about his righteous ira .
So basically in the mostly brilliant “ dread the Raven , ” the untried Viking that the Doctor made immortal back in “ The Girl Who Died ” is still alive in the present 24-hour interval , and she ’s create a particular asylum for aliens who want to veil out on Earth , many of whom are shroud from the Doctor himself . Ashildr / Me makes a deal with someone or something — my guess is Missy and/or the Daleks — to get the Doctor out of the way of life and obtain his Confession Dial ( the will and testament he produce at the jump of the season , containing his biggest arcanum . ) In return , this occult entity or mathematical group will secure shelter for the hidden alien sanctuary .
To that end , Me frame the Doctor ’s friend Rigsy for the slaying of Ahna , one of the aliens living inside the sanctuary — which is a hidden “ trap street , ” that ordinary humans ca n’t see — and invest a “ Chronolock ” on him . Basically , Rigsy has a tattoo on the back of his neck opening , which is a number enumerate down the number of min he has leave to live . ( Which is a really bully concept . )
The Doctor is guess to actualize that Ahna is in reality still alive , and just being held in stasis . And also that Ahna ’s “ son , ” Ahnason , is in reality a missy , with the same psychical baron that all the females of Ahna ’s species have . For the Doctor to unloose Ahna from stasis and prove Rigsy ’s innocence , though , he has to surrender his TARDIS key and also get trap in a teleport bracelet that will send him someplace far away . All of these things happen more or less according to Me ’s program .
But Me has miscalculated , because Clara has been getting cocksure late , ever since she started learn to be like the Doctor last class . Clara convinces Rigsy to transfer the deadly mark to her , on the theory that this could buy them more time to find out what really happened to Ahna . Clara is under Me ’s explicit tribute , so in theory the “ Chronolock , ” with its deadly Corvus corax , wo n’t harm her . Unfortunately , Me no longer has the mightiness to remove the “ Chronolock ” once it ’s been transferred from Rigsy to Clara , because the term of her trade with the quantum shade have been changed by Clara ’s action . Me no longer has any influence on the effect .
The issue ? Clara die out in front of the Doctor , who is then whisked away to some atrocious other place . Only Rigsy is lead behind — and even though the alien asylum normally wipes people ’s memories using the amnesia drug Retcon before allowing them to leave , Rigsy is apparently allowed to remember what ’s happened , because he turn the Doctor ’s abandoned TARDIS into a beautiful shrine to Clara .
The Doctor always wins?
We ’ve alreadywritten a lotaboutlast year ’s arc , in which Clara bulge out being a critic of the Twelfth Doctor ’s callousness and manipulative games , only to wind up imitating him and becoming a sort of surrogate Dr. . This was one of the most challenging thing medico Who has ever done , and tonight ’s episode grade its culmination .
This year ’s Clara spark has been much less fleshed out — to the tip where I was starting to inquire if the show had lead out of things to do with her . But now that we know how it ( belike ) ends , you may see the osseous tissue of the story in what ’s happened thus far this season . ( We do n’t know if Clara ’s going to stay dead , of course . )
In the opening two - parter , Missy seeks out Clara because she understands the MD better than anyone — and then in the second installment , Missy asks Clara just why it is that the Doctor always wins . Clara clear that the Doctor win because he always knows he ’s going to deliver the goods , and so he ’s always looking for the way that he ’ll make that happen . ( And this dovetail with the plot line where the Doctor tell Kid Davros that there ’s always a way to survive , until he realise this is Kid Davros . )
Of course , Clara is severalise Missy that the Doctor always wins in the vestige of the Dalek city , which is the symbol of the Doctor ’s greatest failures — both his failure to wipe out the Daleks in the Time War , and his failed mission to prevent the Daleks ’ foundation in “ Genesis of the Daleks . ” Plus I guess nobody ever told Clara about Adric , and last workweek ’s installment , “ log Z’s No More , ” was all about the Doctor recede as well .
But Clara believes that the Doctor always acquire , which imply in turn that if she can imitate the MD , then she , too , will be unvanquishable thanks to her astounding brightness . In “ Before the Flood , ” we see her gaming with other citizenry ’s lives , based on her own shrewd discount , and at various full point in the season the Doctor warns her that she ’s incur too foolhardy and enjoy these risky venture a second too much . The Doctor keep trying to tell her he has a “ responsibility of tending ” towards her , and he ’s distressed something will happen to her .
And meanwhile , the Doctor keeps face the possible action of Clara ’s death — he imagine she ’s dead in the time of year opener , and then again in the Zygon story , and it wrack him both times . And in “ The Woman Who live , ” Ashildr keeps razz him with Clara ’s short lifespan and the inevitability that she ’ll screw up away like smoke .
So “ Face the Raven ” is about the result of the Doctor ’s mentorship of Clara since the beginning . We ’re reminded , early on on that she ’s being too foolhardy and thrill - seeking , as she give ear out of the TARDIS over London .
And when she decide to take on Rigsy ’s death condemnation for herself , she frames it explicitly as a matter of being like the Doctor . ( It ’s a neat pinch that this story guest - star Rigsy , who previously met Clara in the story where she was actually pretending to be the Doctor , “ Flatline . ” ) She puts it in terms of “ Doctor 101 , ” “ talking the opposition into their own gob , ” and “ Doctor 102 : Never tell anyone your real plan . ” But also she preserve saying “ This is clever . ” ( A phrase that , as the Doctor abide by about something else , is ordinarily followed by a lot of screaming and things on ardour . )
She gets a courteous Doctorish bit about how they go around saving people — when she ’s not flirting up a storm with Jane Austen , whom she has apparently had a thing with .
So Clara really does fetch this on herself , by being massively cocksure and not consider things through . ( She does n’t stop to think about the implications of the idea that “ the death is lock in ” and ca n’t be cheated . )
As bleak as it is , Clara ’s fate is the consistent endpoint of her journey up to now .
“I’m the Doctor, and I save people”
Meanwhile , there ’s Ashildr . The Doctor bring her back from the dead because her ingenuous storyteller talent moved him , but also because of a moment of egomania and ego - shame . Back in “ The Girl Who Died , ” the Doctor clear where he ’s seen his current face before — Lucius Caecilius , the man he saved from the destruction of Pompeii by bend the rule of time . And this face is a monitor to him that he should forget the rules when it allows him to hold open people , because he ’s the Doctor and that ’s what he does . He ’s lose so many people and he just always go on , a prospect that fill him with bitterness .
In a sense , the MD ’s victories that Clara control as inevitable and double-dyed are really frustration in his mind , because so many people die to achieve them .
In any case , the Doctor prefer to sprain Ashildr into an immortal , in spite of bed how well these things mostly turn out , because of his own over - inflated sense of what it means to be “ the doc , ” and because he did n’t want to lose another individual — and this leads , pretty much directly , to him drop off Clara .
The whimsey that “ I ’m the Doctor , and I save people , ” is put to the test ahead of time in “ Face the Raven , ” when the Doctor first realize that Rigsy is under a “ quantum shade ” death sentence . The Doctor ’s first impulse is to save Rigsy off , because there ’s no obvious way to save him , and he even conk out out the cue cards with sympathetic phrases on them . It ’s only when Clara put force per unit area on him that the Doctor mobilise , and position on a braw expression , and starts spinning his wheel to regain the concealed street and figure out what happen to Rigsy there . The Doctor is , for a moment at least , fully resigned to not being able to save Rigsy .
Maybe because Ashildr has no retentiveness of her own past , she ’s reinvent her mission quite a minute since we last experience her in the 17th century . First she wanted to miss from this planet because she ’d lost the power to deal about anybody , and then she decided that she would take on the mission of clean up after the Doctor ’s messes and saving the populace from him . Now , she ’s the “ mayor ” of a street of foreign refugee , and she pretty much keeps the ataraxis with a reign of scourge — jaywalking is penal by tattooed quantum demise .
She ’s an artefact of the Doctor ’s conclusion not to allow people he cares about die , at any cost — so it ’s weirdly fitting that she indirectly get the destruction of the person the Doctor manage the most about .
( And yet , I maintain wondering just how unavoidable Clara ’s destruction really is , in this scenario . I think of , there ’s the stasis machine that Anah was just proceed in , mighty there . There ’s the teleport wristband — what would happen if you teleported someone in stasis , at the exact moment that the “ quantum shade ” assail them ? They could seek remove the “ Chronolock ” to the Doctor , or to Ashildr , since neither of them can break . I find like a mass of avenues were left undiscovered here . )
So what happens now?
Is Clara really dead ? Yeah , I reckon so — although I ’d be shocked if her fate is n’t revisit somehow in the season finale . mayhap she comes back as the Hybrid , the mixture of two warrior raceway that we keep take heed about . It seems unlikely , with two episodes leave to the season , that anything we just saw will turn out to be “ last . ”
For now , though , the Doctor is in an incredibly blue place . Clara spends her last bit on Earth caution the Doctor not to go dark . He ’s already imperil Ashildr with bringing “ the whole express joy world , ” including UNIT and the Daleks , down on her exotic refugee street . Clara says that the Doctor ’s reign of terror would end with the first crying child he sees .
In one of the show ’s most effective , worked up moments , Clara say the Doctor that he must n’t become a warrior — he has to stay the Doctor , no matter what . He has to work on healing himself , even if he could n’t hold open her . And no matter what , he ca n’t go on a path of vengeance .
After Clara is dead , an absolutely fierce Doctor tell Ashildr that Clara said all that to save Ashildr — because he was lost a long fourth dimension ago . But he advises her to rest out of his way , because it ’s a very little universe when the Doctor is wild with you . And then he ’s zapped away , to what looks ( from the “ next episode ” trailer ) like a pretty nightmarish place of sempiternal monologue .
I ’m pretty rummy to see what happens next here — I reckon it all revolves around what ’s on the Doctor ’s “ Confession Dial , ” plus the identity of whoever Ashildr made that muckle with . ( Again , guessing Missy and/or the Daleks . ) And just who / what the Hybrid is . But most of all , I ’m curious to see exactly how , or whether , the show can pay off this latest and darkest iteration of the motif of the Doctor ’s hubris and obsession with his own mythos lead to suffering and death .
But now , nobody can ever claim again that the Doctor always bring home the bacon .
edit to add : I get what people are saying about value Clara ’s agency , which means that she has to take the blame for her own stupid decision . I do get that . On the other hand , this is a show that has treated us to piles of spoken communication about how the Doctor turns people into weapons ( “ Journey ’s End ” ) , the Doctor makes people reckless because they desire to impress him ( “ Vampires of Venice ” ) and he is an officeholder who stool hoi polloi into good soldiers ( Every Danny Pink speech last year ) . And tons more . The Doctor changing the multitude around him into his own image has been one of the primary idea of the show for years now , and Clara ’s fate certainly seems to be the ultimate example of that .
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