Doctor Who EP 7.13: The Name of the Doctor

This review post is really late but here you go anyway. If for some bizarre reason you're reading this and still haven't watched the episode yet, there are spoilers ahead.

clara saving the universe and all that. caps from here

Episode Summary: The Great Intelligence has returned to rewrite history and destroy the Doctor, threatening not only him but also his friends, at the final resting place of the Doctor - Trenzalore.

"I blew into this world on a leaf. I don't think I'll ever land. My name is Clara Oswald. I'm the impossible girl. I was born to save the Doctor."

The finale was mindblowingly amazing, particularly in comparison to some of the previous episodes of series 7, which have kept Clara's mystery secret but have lacked character development (Clara, the Doctor, and some of the villains). Throughout this series we have seen Clara die in several different timestreams, leading not only the Doctor, but also the audience, to wonder how this could be possible if she's an ordinary human? I think this contributed to my annoyance with the series because at times Clara was positioned as a mystery to be solved, a plot device - "You are the only mystery worth solving" - rather than an actual person.

i really want to know more about the whispermen

Clara finally became aware of past conversations with the Doctor that had wiped from her memory, and she realised that she had only one choice to save the Doctor and the universe from being rewritten - namely, stepping into the the Doctor's timestream after the Great Intelligence (GI) so that, she too, could be split into a million pieces and be scattered across time and space to save the Doctor from the GI's plan to destroy everything he had done. I remember reading a Clara theory that I agreed with on a discussion forum early in the series that suggested Clara was similar to that of a Horcrux, that parts of her soul had been scattered across time and space for some reason. I think it's safe to say that this theory has in essence proved to be true and that we now know the reason behind it - to save the Doctor.


As we are reaching the 50th Anniversary Special, it was really good to be able to view the inclusion of Classic!Who footage and past regenerations of the Doctor, alongside Clara's timey wimey storyline. And then there was the dun dun dun mystery regeneration of a past Doctor who did not or could not take on the name of the Doctor because he did terrible things that contradict the value of this name. At the moment there is speculation this may be a regeneration that occured between the Eighth and Ninth Doctor's when the Time War happened or alternatively, it is a dark/evil regeneration from the future known as 'the Valeyard' that occurs between his Twelve and final regenerations. I think that both of these ideas would be really interesting to explore but I would want it to be explored in depth, perhaps even over several episodes, with strong scriptwriting.