Clara Oswin Oswald
Clara Oswin Oswald was one of the many splinters which resulted from Clara Oswald stepping into the Doctor's timeline. She was a barmaid and governess in 19th century London.
Biography
Clara was born on 23 November 1866 in Victorian England. She claimed that her birth occurred behind the face of Big Ben and that the location accounted for her "acute sense of time". By 1892, she was working as a barmaid at The Rose & Crown. She also maintained a secret life (with a different accent) as "Miss Montague", a governess looking after the upper-class Latimer family after their last governess was drowned in the pond on their estate.
She met the Eleventh Doctor outside the pub's rear exit on 23 December, and they examined a snowman which had appeared from nowhere. Clara then chased the Doctor down the street when he left. The Doctor locked her in his cab and ordered Strax to get a memory worm to erase the last hour of her memory. After Strax kept forgetting to put on gauntlets, the Doctor got the memory worm himself, but then a Snowman attacked, followed by several more. Together, the Doctor and Clara caused the Snowmen to melt by imagining them doing so, and then the Doctor told Strax to take Clara back to the pub. Instead, Clara followed the Doctor to a ladder that led to a spiral staircase which took her up where the Doctor had parked the TARDIS. After knocking, Clara ran back down the spiral staircase when the Doctor came to investigate.
Clara returned to her job as a governess the next day and learned that Captain Latimer's daughter, Francesca, had been dreaming about her previous governess, who had drowned in Latimer's pond a year earlier, returning from the dead to kill her. Francesca's brother Digby suggested she needed a doctor, so Clara hurried to find the Doctor. While shouting up at his cloud, she caught the attention of Jenny Flint who took her to see Madame Vastra. Vastra and Jenny forced Clara to do the "one-word test", where she would only be allowed to use one word to answer whatever question Vastra asked. With several well-chosen words, Clara explained why she was interested in the Doctor and mentioned the word "Pond", the surname of the Doctor's former companion, as well as a clue to the mystery. Impressed, Vastra called the Doctor and told him what Clara had said. The Doctor decided to investigate while Clara went back to Latimer's house.
The Doctor arrived to investigate the pond that the former governess had drowned in meantime Clara discovers yourself as person with time sensitivity and then rescued Clara and the children from the Ice Governess, who had been created from the frozen corpse of the drowned woman. He melted her with his sonic screwdriver, but the Ice Governess recovered and chased them down the stairs, where they met Captain Latimer. The Doctor claimed to be Clara's "gentleman friend" in order to explain his presence in the house before Vastra, Jenny and Strax arrived to help. Jenny trapped the Ice Governess behind a force field, and everyone hurried into Latimer's office. The Doctor quickly explained the situation and then told everyone to stay in the office and left. Clara followed and kissed him. The Doctor then confronted Dr Walter Simeon at the front door, who demanded that he give him the Ice Governess. The Doctor and Clara led the Ice Governess up to the roof, where Clara used an umbrella to pull down the ladder that led to the TARDIS. They led the Ice Governess up the spiral staircase and the Doctor tried to trap her under the cloud supporting the TARDIS. He then showed Clara the inside of the TARDIS and she commented, "It's smaller on the outside" before asking if there was a kitchen, explaining that she liked making soufflés. When the Doctor gave her the TARDIS key, the Ice Governess attacked Clara from behind. She dropped the key and was pulled off of the cloud, falling to her death in the Latimer's courtyard.
The Doctor used his TARDIS to retrieve Clara's body and the shattered remains of the Ice Governess and took her into Latimer's office. Strax brought her back to life using the resurrection device, but only for a short time. The Doctor asked Clara to become his companion and she agreed. After the Doctor and Vastra confronted Simeon in his institute and, with help from Clara's tears and the tears of the Latimer family, defeated Simeon and the Great Intelligence, Clara died with the Doctor by her side. Her last words were "Run. Run, you clever boy... And remember" — the same as the last words of the original Clara before she entered the Doctor's time stream, and, by extension, of the incarnation that the Doctor met in the Dalek Asylum. The Doctor believed that Clara was somehow "the same woman" he had met in the Dalek Asylum. After Clara's funeral, he rushed off to investigate the mystery, leaving Vastra and Jenny looking at the gravestone and its words, "Remember me... For we shall meet again", in puzzlement. In the 21st century, her grave was unknowingly visited by her original self. By that time, the graveyard had become overgrown and the grave very worn. (TV: The Snowmen)
Legacy
When the Doctor found the original Clara Oswald, he noted that she was a nanny just as Clara Oswin. (TV: The Bells of Saint John) When the Doctor made more comparisons between her and Clara Oswin, Clara refused to be compared to her, insisting that she would travel with him only if she was her own person. (TV: The Rings of Akhaten)
The Doctor later brought up Clara Oswin to Clara when noting that he kept meeting her only for Clara to lose her memories of this event. (TV: Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS)
The Doctor later brought Clara to Victorian Glasgow, though aiming for London, due to Clara Oswin living there. When the Paternoster Gang met Clara, all three expressed confusion at Clara Oswin seemingly being resurrected. Angie and Artie Maitland later discovered a picture of Clara Oswin, among other pictures of Clara's time travel to force their nanny to take them on a trip in the TARDIS. (TV: The Crimson Horror)
While climbing through a wrecked future version of the Doctor's TARDIS, Clara regained her memories of the Doctor mentioning her echoes, allowing her to deduce that she had to enter the Doctor's timestream. (TV: The Name of the Doctor)
Behind the scenes
- Clara's headstone in 1892 states that she was born on 23 November 1866 and died 24 December 1892, meaning she not only shared the same birth date as Doctor Who itself but that she was also 26 years old when she died. This is both the same age as Doctor Who was when it was cancelled in 1989, and Jenna Coleman's age at the time of filming.
- Like Madame de Pompadour, Lynda Moss, Astrid Peth, Rita, and the Doctor's daughter Jenny, Clara was invited to travel with the Doctor, but died before she was ever able to take her first trip. Unlike the other four characters, however, the Doctor gave her a TARDIS key.
- The BBC show Dracula, created by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, included a reference to Clara Oswin Oswald when a letter from Mina Harker mentioned an "adorable barmaid" at The Rose & Crown.[1]
Footnotes
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