Winter is Coming
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Doctor Who: Moffat’s double gift to Big Finish with Clara

By Robert Daniel

If Jenna Coleman were to return to the role of Clara on audio, what could be explored with the character? Perhaps a lot - enough for two spin-offs, in fact...(Photo by Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images)
If Jenna Coleman were to return to the role of Clara on audio, what could be explored with the character? Perhaps a lot - enough for two spin-offs, in fact...(Photo by Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images) /
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It doesn’t matter if you like her or not – Clara is a big opportunity for Big Finish, especially when it comes to their Doctor Who spin-offs. Let me make my case for it.

It’s really no secret that Steven Moffat loves Big Finish. From The Night of the Doctor canonizing the Eighth Doctor’s audio adventures (ever wonder why America isn’t really a Super Power anymore in those 60s Doctor Who stories? Listen to the Eighth Doctor and Lucie Miller audios to find out!), to purposely writing gaps in his stories that can be filled with Big Finish adventures, it’s clear that he loves their work.

Sometimes, he even specifically does it with his characters. Now, I’m sure nobody was expecting an “Adventures of Old Rory and Old Amy” faffing about in New York audio even before their actors both got too busy to come back, but Clara… Clara on the other hand…

You see, Clara is special. Intentional or not, (possibly not since we all know the rumor that she was originally supposed to leave during Last Christmas,) Clara has the potential for two different Big Finish series running at the same time. One at the end of her “life”, and one at the “start” of her… lives?

The Impossible Girl and the Immortal

As you recall, what I’m referring to is two major events that happened at the end of both series seven and nine. The Name of the Doctor and Hell Bent, respectively.

In The Name of the Doctor, (I think the closest we ever got to his name was that it was going to just be Theo, as mentioned in an unmade Doctor Who movie script, by the way. Rather low energy compared to the Master’s name being Koschei, I’ll admit,) Clara enters the Doctor’s timestream corpse the Great Intelligence had just entered, undoing his damage and further resulting in numerous incarnations of Clara splintering throughout the Doctor’s life. Each one helping him in different ways, most of them dying. (This makes sense in context.)

In Hell Bent, the Doctor, now on Gallifrey, uses their technology to pull Clara out from the millisecond before she was killed by a smoky bird, and then through a series of circumstances allows Clara to escape Gallifrey in her own TARDIS with the immortal Ashidr, who was living in a bubble at the end of the universe, off to have their own series of adventures. All of this while knowing that eventually, Clara will have to re-enter her time stream and allow herself to die. But, in both being taken out of time and knowing when and how she dies, Clara is essentially immortal. (This makes sense in context.)

The Clara Splinters as of now, outside of the television show itself, have only been explored in the rather good comic Blood and Ice (although, spoilers, a rather big deal was made of this being the first confirmed Clara Splinter not to die, despite the fact that I can’t think of a single reason why the Time Lord Clara that spoke to the First Doctor would be executed for telling him to pick a broken TARDIS over a working one); Summer Falls and Other Stories, and some small but cute references in The Doctor – His Lives and Times (they edit her into old stock photos). Her travels with Ashidr (I’m not calling her Me for clarity, I hope you realize,) is, as far as I can tell, not explored in the slightest anywhere.

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Unlimited potential

Maybe some of the American comics explored it too, but that’s not the point. My point is that both of these are basically hand crafted to become future audio adventures in space and time. Both her life and death in two separate Volume Ones. The story of the girl who dies and dies and dies to save the Doctor, and the story of the Immortal woman she eventually becomes. Two perfect segues into Big Finish.

Clara is a double gift to Big Finish. She is both a series for new adventures, and another for old ones, and perhaps this is the more interesting and frankly more likely one. (Whether you like her or not, Maisie Williams is rather in high demand as of now.)

And there are so many other members of the Doctor Who universe that she could meet along the way. Past Doctors, River Song, Abslom Daak – there isn’t a limit for a girl with a TARDIS, or her Splinters destined to live or to die in service of helping the Doctor. It just remains to be seen if Big Finish and Jenna Coleman’s willingness to do audios will ever allow for a chance to unwrap it.

After all, someone had to have opened that door for the Doctor in Image of the Fendahl.

dark. Next. The War Master will face the Unbound Master in his final series!

What do you think about my unlikely Big Finish product fan fiction idea? How many audios do you think they would do where she dies at the end saving the Doctor before they either realize she sometimes lives or someone complains? Should I have stuck to just writing about the novels? Let us know in the comments below.

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