Post-Pond Era: The Doctor Becomes A Man
In The Snowmen, the Doctor is behaving like a god. He lives in the sky, looking over humanity and refusing to intervene. Hes decided that since the universe doesnt care what happens, neither does he: put another way, if God doesnt care what happens, then why should a god? Madame Vastra said of the Doctor he stands above this world and does not interfere in the affairs of his inhabitants. He is not your salvation, nor your protector. If one end of the god spectrum was 10s intervention, his embrace of power, the 11th Doctor had shifted over to the other end of the god spectrum. He refused to help, only observing. It is the prerogative of a god to not interfere, and that was what he decided to do. He no longer demanded worship, he no longer demanded sacrifice. He was just there. Until Clara came along.
When told the above about the Doctors godliness, she refused to buy it. She said they were just words. When told why the Doctor had retreated from the world, she thought and said man. She didnt wait for the Doctor to help her, she went to find him. She told him to come upstairs when she saw him outside. And the story she told her kids about the Doctor was that he was a man who lived on a cloud, keeping children from having bad dreams. Hardly godlike. Clara didnt worship him. Not a jot, ever. Instead, Clara demanded some worship from him, some sort of faith. He had to take her with him on trust, not knowing what she was or what she was capable of. She didnt wait for him, she told him when to come and pick her up. He had to follow her instructions, or she wouldnt travel with him. And he needed her with him.
If the Doctor is a god, Clara was his protector god. In her mortal form, she connected him to the world, gave him someone to believe in (which he hadnt had since Rose left). In her time vortex form, she spread herself through time and space, doing the impossible, to save him. She sacrificed her life for the Doctor, but it was not an act of faith in him. She had no expectation that he would find a way to save him. It was an act of faith in herself. The Doctor of the latest series was a Doctor who had lost all three of his Ponds, but that was for the best, really. Theres no one who worships him now. He has come face-to-face with the limits of his own powers and his reliance on another living being to save him. Left without this, without the protection of his secrets, without the prerogatives of a god, the Doctor who walked away from us at the end of The Name of the Doctor is perhaps more human than the Doctor has ever been. And thats good, because nothing good comes of the Doctor being all-powerful, or worshiped.