She is able to project an age that is much more advanced than her eighteen years; there aren’t many people who could be so young and yet feel so old. Did they contain passages about certain people the Doctor had encountered throughout history? That said, he’s a character too who, it turns out, has struggled with loss. But the Doctor refuses, later quite reasonably explaining that she is the opposite of what he needs in a companion, and he is not what she needs either.
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During their last conversation about immortality, Captain Jack Harkness gets a shoutout and Me focuses again on the Doctor’s companions and how his relative immortality affects them. After all the agony of “does she or doesn’t she want to be with the Doctor?” last season, Jenna Coleman’s Clara and the Doctor have finally found what they want and need from each other. Also like Clara, her state is a outcome of the Doctor’s actions, though in this case it’s his actions from the past going forward, not his future affecting his past. Let us know your thoughts in the comments! Dozens, and that’s only counting the TV stories; it’s more when you count the audio stories, the comics those that we don’t yet know about.
This episode of DW was really fantastic, and it’s rare that the show delves this deep into such weighty issues. It was a girl that died, and whom the Doctor brought back to life.
But the episode wasn’t just about setting up Clara; it was about setting up Ashildr. This made her an “immortal hybrid”.
It’s easy to understand why Me has become a robber of renown, the latest in a long line of activities she’s becoming expert in, 10,000 hours at a time. Only, rather than paint her bedroom black, she’s taken the nihilistic moniker: Me. The Doctor reads Me’s journals, only to find ripped out pages – and tear stains – which reflects the horror that he has inflicted upon her in his attempt to do a good thing. To borrow a phrase from another franchise, may she live long and prosper. She has all but forgotten the very name “Ashildr”, and has let go of her memories of the Viking village.
So Ashildr has set herself up by the end of the episode to be an nearly anti-Doctor, in a way, protecting the world from the Doctor himself.
I suppose, given that the rhythm of this series is how famously the pair are getting on this year, there’s inevitably going to be less story to mine as Clara just gets on with being great at the hero job.
As awful as all this sounds, there’s more for the Time Lord to worry especially now that a “devilish betrayal” is at the brink of bringing Earth to ruins.
A leper colony? At least the Doctor has kept an eye on Ashildr, kind of sort of. Not that Williams didn’t knock it out of the park, I had just hoped for something a little more diverse from her and I know she’s capable of it. Regardless, she and Twelve hit it off fantastically and it all nearly seems too obvious for her to stick around as a companion.
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Meanwhile, the site speculated that Leandro (Ariyon Bakare), the man with a lion face, is an alien who could be the Highwayman’s target. Ashildr pays the executioner to make it a quick thing and then takes Sam Swift up on his offer to be his last kiss. That’s what we got. According to Cultbox, the Nightmare is no other than Ashildr, the girl whom the Doctor turned immortal. I’m not sure what it will do for me. I won’t spoil what happens in the end, because the Twelfth Doctor already did that, the jerk. The story echoes much of what we witnessed last season, and simultaneously demonstrates exactly how much this Doctor has grown since his regeneration (he, too, realizes it, I think). The adventure plot wasn’t the highlight but it was fine and worked well into the storyline. This is another strong conclusion to a series nine two-parter, building things thematically for the rest of the series.
