Did "The Time of the Doctor" Cancel Out the Impossible Girl? · 6:43am Jan 22nd, 2014
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It's been almost a month since The Time of the Doctor brought an end to the Eleventh Doctor's era and the episode still remains very divisive among the fans with half of them loving it and the other half deeming it an unworthy end to Smith's time as the Doctor. However, I'm not here to talk about that. I'm here to talk about something that's been making me think and hypothesize since before the episode aired.
I'm sure many of us remember The Name of the Doctor, right? The episode that brought an end to the Impossible Girl arc, started the "Matt Smith Swansong Trilogy", and introduced us to John Hurt's War Doctor. We were shown Trenzalore for the first time since its mention back in Series 6. We saw the Doctor's grave. We saw a time rip which led to all points in the Doctor's life and we saw Clara jump through to save the Doctor and fulfill her role as the Impossible Girl. However, The Time of the Doctor brought about a change that has shaken things up. The Doctor didn't die on Trenzalore. Thanks to Clara's intervention, the Doctor gained a new regeneration cycle and (once again) escaped his death. However, this provides us with an interesting and puzzling dilemma. If the Doctor didn't die on Trenzalore...then what did Clara jump into? What about the time tear and the TARDIS tomb the Doctor and Clara visited in order to save the Paternoster Gang from the Great Intelligence? What about Clara's role as the Impossible Girl? Has The Time of the Doctor cancelled out The Name of the Doctor? If so, then what about all of the Clara copies the Doctor encountered in his life? It was because of copies Oswin and Victorian Clara that the Doctor went on to meet modern Clara, which ultimately led to her jumping into the tear to create the copies that would eventually lead the Doctor to her past modern self, an endless paradox. If The Name of the Doctor got cancelled out then everything with the Impossible Girl arc should fall apart, right? Well...no. I have a few theories that could explain this.
Some of my theories are simple while others are more...well...timey-wimey. My first theory is that the grave we saw was originally the grave of the Eleventh Doctor, who was originally going to be the final Doctor, but when history changed the grave changed as well. Now, the grave in The Name of the Doctor is that of the final incarnation of the Doctor who simply returned to Trenzalore once he was ready to perish, brought his TARDIS down in the graveyard created in honor of those who died in the Siege of Trenzalore, and allowed himself to die thus creating the time tear for the GI, Clara, and the Eleventh Doctor to eventually jump through.
My second theory is that the grave was always that of the final Doctor. My third theory (this is where the timey-wimey starts to come in) is that The Name of the Doctor did get cancelled out but the events still happened. Basically, this theory involves the timeline of Doctor Who from the very first episode back in 1963 all the way to now basically being one, massive, linear timeline constructed out of many smaller, non-linear timelines. All of the paradoxes and changes the Doctor has encountered still happened and exist within the larger timeline but no longer exist within the smaller, non-linear timeline the Doctor is currently traveling on. My fourth and final theory is that Clara is still living up to her name as the Impossible Girl. She is a living paradox. Her changing the Doctor's fate on Trenzalore should ultimately wipe her copies from existence and reset her meeting of the Doctor...and yet nothing changes. She is the Impossible Girl and not even changing the Doctor's death can get rid of her.
And those are my theories. I have a feeling that this little plot point was left open to interpretation like the identity of the woman in the shop who led Clara to the Doctor (my vote's on Donna). So what do the rest of you think? Do you agree with any of my theories or do you have some theories of your own?
You know I didn't realize any of this until you brought it up just now.
I think it's because I've always just assumed your theory number 2. I never believed the Doctor was going to finally die. At least not at this point. But I kind of like your third and fourth theory too.
My theory is that Steven Moffatt is a hack writer who sees no problem in directly contradicting the fundamental point of the previous work when writing his current one.
Who knows, Clara was shown to be a Time Lady once. Maybe an unseen version of her was in the crack, and that version convinced the Time Lords to give extra regenerations.