Moffat Explains “Clara Who”
Steven Moffat has explained playing around with the concept of Clara as the Doctor in Series 8.
Speaking to Nerdist he said: “The thing about Clara is she thinks the show is called Clara. She really does. She has no idea she’s number two in the credits, which is why we did that joke in “Death in Heaven.” She’s got a high opinion of herself, not in a conceited way, but in a correct way. She knows she’s extremely clever and capable, and she doesn’t feel like she particularly fits in the world that she lives in. She’s a bit more like the Doctor in the first place. She’s not really very good at living a normal life. The other companions, like most people, like you and me, can be quite good at living normal lives. I’m very happy living my normal life, I’m sure you are too. Going to the shops seems fine for an adventure, but Clara’s not like that.
He continued: “When I first wrote Clara, I thought, “Oh, this is fun. If the Doctor were a young woman living in contemporary Britain, it’d be a bit like her.” Clever and presentable and funny but also thinking when is something interesting going to happen? The interesting thing between the Doctor and Clara is she can sort of play the same game he does. She can absolutely do that, she’s terribly clever, she’s got a wayward ego. Her botched love affair with Danny is heartbreakingly proof of that. He’s a lovely man with a traumatic secret, and she just screws it up because she doesn’t really give it enough attention. It’s just a little bit less exciting than running off in the blue box. You have to be a bit of a loony to think that way. I think for the first time, the Doctor’s traveling with someone who’s a bit of a loony like him, and that’s quite fun.”
Moffat also spoke about their final scene in Death in Heaven and if he viewed it as a sad goodbye.
“It wasn’t so much the sadness, it’s that both the Doctor and Clara are people who think they know better. That’s what they are. The Doctor always thinks he knows better; Clara always thinks she knows better. So what they do at the end is a perfect summation of their relationship. They lie and endure pain and loneliness in order to protect the other because they think they know better. Amy would never have done that; she’d have told him what happened. But, people who are more controlling than that think they know what’s good for everybody else aren’t like that.
“So, Clara’s not the Doctor; she’s not the same person as the Doctor, but – the traditional thing is to say the hero and the archenemy are mirrors of each other. Are they? Are they though? Not really. I think it’s more likely that friends are mirrors of each other. If you watch any close friendship, the extent to which they start to duplicate each other is quite interesting, even with Dr. Watson and Sherlock Holmes. While they’re different people, they have similar appetites. So, yeah, it was the perfect way to say goodbye in that episode; each one doesn’t think the other can cope with the truth.”
