3. Clara Could Struggles With Her Identity After The Events Of 'The Name Of The Doctor'
For the next two options I'm going to take a different tact. Up to this point all the points I have discussed are viable and in keeping with the character we've grown. She's bright. She's clever. She's witty. And she's eager for adventure. The next two options...we'll they could happen and would certainly be interesting to watch, but they would take Clara in a new and darker direction. First up, let's consider again what happened to Clara in 'The Name Of The Doctor'. She jumped into the Doctor's consciousness and was scattered across time and space, saving the Doctor hundreds, maybe thousands of times, each time in a new life that more than likely resulted in her death. And imagine that she really does remember every moment? It would be dissociative identity disorder a hundred fold. How do you reconcile all these lives, separating your own experiences from the lives of those 'versions' of you that encountered the Doctor? This assault on her memories could be debilitating. Could she function? Would she have sleeping and waking nightmares? Would she struggle to separate those memories? Perhaps she would be forced to move into the Tardis just so the Doctor can keep watch over her. Furthermore, while the Doctor has done a lot of great things in his long life, he is responsible for so much death and destruction too, most prominently the genocide of the Daleks and his own people in the Time War. Sure they were the Doctor's enemies, but does that always make it right? Is this something Clara will be able to come to terms with? Or will she find him a monster as equally as he is a hero? And looking at the pictures I've seen of the filming of the upcoming Christmas special...she certainly seems smiley. But who knows what a regeneration of her Doctor will do? Even if she seems to function right now, we might see a Clara with PTSD as we head into 2014. And that may be as challenging as any enemy the new Twelfth Doctor might have to face.