Character history
Meeting the Doctor and early adventures
Originally from Blackpool, Clara Oswald lost her mother when she was a teenager and aspired to travel the world in her honour. Ultimately, however, she found herself obligated to aid the Maitland family as a nanny for their two children. It was at this time that she first met The Doctor, who appeared to know her even as he himself was a complete, if intriguing stranger.
After sharing an initial adventure with the Doctor, Clara agreed to continue travelling with him, but only on her terms: he would visit her once a week, and the rest of the time she’d live a normal life. During this time the Doctor kept a secret from her: that he had met two earlier versions of Clara, both identical, and both had died.
Following more adventures (including one in which Clara briefly learned the Doctor’s real name), the origin of these doppelgangers is revealed: in order to defeat an entity called the Great Intelligence, that had attempted to corrupt the Doctor’s time stream, erasing him from history, Clara threw herself into the Doctor’s time stream herself. This splintered her into countless “echoes” – individuals living lives throughout time and space, all of whom possessed a drive to aid the Doctor, often from the shadows. The Intelligence defeated by Clara’s actions, the Doctor managed to retrieve the original Clara.
The schoolteacher
Clara subsequently became a schoolteacher at Coal Hill School, where the Doctor’s granddaughter, Susan, once attended. She shared an adventure with the Eleventh, Tenth and War Doctors that resulted in the Doctor being absolved of guilt for his actions in ending the Time War between the Time Lords and Daleks. Later, the Doctor was forced to spend 900 years on the planet Trenzalore to protect its citizens; he sent Clara back home to earth, but she continued to return to be with him (admitting, under a truth field, that she fancied him). Ultimately, she returned one last time to be with the Doctor – who had exhausted his regenerations – as he died. However, she made a plea to the Time Lords, begging them to grant the Doctor more life, and they did. The Doctor subsequently regenerated in her presence.
A new Doctor and a double life
The new Twelfth Doctor was older looking, colder, and less open to the romantic gestures Clara and the Eleventh Doctor had shared. She found it very difficult to adjust to the new Doctor as a result, and considered leaving him. However, the Eleventh Doctor, prior to his regeneration, phoned her in the future and convinced her to give the new Doctor a chance. She agreed and she and the new Doctor continued to explore space and time as she balanced her work as a schoolteacher and, soon after, she began a romance with a fellow schoolteacher, Danny Pink.
For a long time, Clara lived a double life, keeping her relationship with the Doctor, with whom she bonded again, from Danny. When Danny and the Doctor learned of each other, the two men did not get on. And soon after Clara found herself deciding to leave the Doctor after he forced her make a life-or-death decision that involved the fate of the entire Earth. Soon after, however, Clara and the Doctor reconciled and she once again began travelling with him, without Danny being aware. As her relationship with the Doctor deepened, so did her desire to become more like him, and in the duo’s first encounter with an alien race dubbed The Boneless, she got to stand in for the Doctor. “You were a splendid Doctor,” the Doctor told her afterwards. “But goodness had nothing to do with it.”
The death of Danny Pink in an automobile accident made Clara snap and attempt to blackmail the Doctor into breaking the laws of time. The Doctor, whose feelings for Clara had returned by this time, allowed her to play out a blackmail scenario before forgiving her and attempting to retrieve Danny’s consciousness – which had actually been transferred into the body of a Cybermen by the evil Time Lord known as Missy. Afterwards, Clara and the Doctor agreed to part company.
Reunited
Some time after, the Doctor, having rescued Clara from a perpetual dream state in which she had lived out more than 60 years of a life without the Time Lord, invited her to rejoin him, and she did. During the period that followed, Clara increasingly like the Doctor, a fact that concerned the people the met, and the Doctor himself. She also became more powerful with entities such as the Unified Intelligence Taskforce, gaining command authority and being allowed to act as the Doctor’s surrogate.
The Doctor, for his part, was growing more and more obsessed with keeping Clara safe, and more fearful of life without her.
Death, the long way around
Clara’s desire to become more like the Doctor had fatal consequences when she took on a death sentence intended for a friend, in the mistaken assumption that either she or the Doctor would be able to come up with a solution. After a tearful and emotional goodbye, much of it spent by Clara calming the Doctor down and urging him not to destroy those responsible, she went to her painful death, which was witness by the Doctor.
The loss of Clara sent the Doctor into an emotional downward spiral that was aggravated by the fact he was immediately abducted by those indirectly responsible for Clara’s death and placed in an elaborate confussion/torture chamber. There he spent 4.5 billion years (his body continually being “reborn” after being killed periodically by an entity called The Veil) punching through a harder-than-diamond wall with his fists in order to escape and return to Gallifrey and enact a plan to get Clara back.
Using an extraction chamber on Gallifrey, the Doctor pulled Clara out of her timestream one heartbeat before her death. She was now functionally immortal – unable to age and with most bodily processes frozen, though still to think and feel. And attempt to get her life functions started again failed and, in order to keep her safe from the Time Lords (who would be duty bound to return her to the time of her death), the Doctor attempted to erase her memory of him. Clara, however, refused, and instead she and the Doctor agreed to late fate decide whose memory would be erased. Ultimately, the Doctor lost most of his memories of Clara. And, after a final goodbye (and a failed attempt at sparking his memories of her), Clara – knowing she must some day return to the place of her death and allow time to continue – set off on her own adventures, with her own TARDIS and a fellow immortal named Ashildr as her companion.
Comics
Clara made her first appearance in Doctor Who Adventures #314 with the story The Mystery of the Mould. She subsequently appeared in comics published in Doctor Who Magazine in the UK and by IDW Comics and Titan Comics in the US.
TV
She is played by Jenna Coleman (formerly credited as Jenna-Louise Coleman). The original Clara (sometimes referred to by fans as Clara Prime) first appeared in the final minute of the 2012 episode “The Snowmen” and became a companion of the Doctor in 2013’s “The Bells of Saint John”. Coleman previously played two incarnations (or echoes) of Clara – Oswin Oswald and Clara Oswin Oswald – in the 2012 episodes “Asylum of the Daleks” and “The Snowmen”, respectively. The character last appeared on screen in the 2015 episode “Hell Bent.”
Novels
Doctor Who: Shroud of Sorrow
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It is the day after John F. Kennedy’s assassination and the faces of the dead are everywhere. PC Reg Cranfield sees his deceased father in the mists along Totter’s Lane. Reporter Mae Callon sees her late grandmother in a coffee stain on her desk. FBI Special Agent Warren Skeet finds his long-dead partner staring back at him from raindrops on a window pane. Then the faces begin to talk, and scream… and push through into our world. As the alien Shroud begins to feast on the grief of a world in mourning, can the Doctor dig deep enough into his own sorrow to save mankind? are trademarks of the BBC. A thrilling, all-new adventure featuring the Doctor and Clara as played by Matt Smith and Jenna-Louise Coleman in the spectacular hit series from BBC Television
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Doctor Who: The Blood Cell
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“Release the Doctor â or the killing will start.” An asteroid in the furthest reaches of space â the most secure prison for the most dangerous of criminals. The Governor is responsible for the cruellest murderers so he’s not impressed by the arrival of the man they’re calling the most dangerous criminal in the quadrant. Or, as he prefers to be known, the Doctor. But when the new prisoner immediately sets about trying to escape, and keeps trying, the Governor sets out to find out why. Who is the Doctor and what’s he really doing here? And who is the young woman who comes every day to visit him, only to be turned away by the guards? When the killing finally starts, the Governor begins to get his answersâ¦
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Doctor Who: Silhouette
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“Vastra and Strax and Jenny? Oh no, we don’t need to bother them. Trust me.” Marlowe Hapworth is found dead in his locked study, killed by an unknown assailant. This is a case for the Great Detective, Madame Vastra. Rick Bellamy, bare-knuckle boxer, has the life drawn out of him by a figure dressed as an undertaker. This angers Strax the Sontaran. The Carnival of Curiosities, a collection of bizarre and fascinating sideshows and performers. This is where Jenny Flint looks for answers. How are these things connected? And what does Orestes Milton, rich industrialist, have to do with it all? As the Doctor and Clara joint the hunt for thr truth they find themselves thrust into a world where nothing and no one are what they seem.
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Doctor Who: The Crawling Terror
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“Well, I doubt you’ll ever see a bigger insect.” Gabby Nichols is putting her son to bed when she hears her daughter cry out. âMummy there’s a daddy longlegs in my room!’ Then the screaming starts⦠Kevin Alperton is on his way to school when he is attacked by a mosquito. A big one. Then things get dangerous. But it isn’t the dead man cocooned inside a huge mass of web that worries the Doctor. It isn’t the swarming, mutated insects that make him nervous. With the village cut off from the outside world, and the insects becoming more and more dangerous, the Doctor knows that unless he can decode the strange symbols engraved on an ancient stone circle, and unravel a mystery dating back to the Second World War, no one is safe.
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Doctor Who: Royal Blood
 “The Grail is a story, a myth! It didn’t exist on your world! It can’t exist here!” The city-state of Varuz is failing. Duke Aurelian is the last of his line, his capital is crumbling, and the armies of his enemy, Duke Conrad, are poised beyond the mountains to invade. Aurelian is preparing to gamble everything on one last battle. So when a holy man, the Doctor, comes to Varuz from beyond the mountains, Aurelian asks for his blessing in the war. But all is not what it seems in Varuz. The city-guard have lasers for swords, and the halls are lit by electric candlelight. Aurelian’s beloved wife, Guena, and his most trusted knight, Bernhardt, seem to be plotting to overthrow their Duke, and Clara finds herself drawn into their intrigue… Will the Doctor stop Aurelian from going to war? Will Clara’s involvement in the plot against the Duke be discovered? Why is Conrad’s ambassador so nervous? And who are the ancient and weary knights who arrive in Varuz claiming to be on a quest for the Holy Grailâ¦?
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Doctor Who: Deep Time
 âI do hope you’re all ready to be terrified!’ The Phaeron disappeared from the universe over a million years ago. They travelled among the stars using roads made from time and space, but left only relics behind. But what actually happened to the Phaeron? Some believe they were they eradicated by a superior force⦠Others claim they destroyed themselves. Or were they in fact the victims of an even more hideous fate? In the far future, humans discover the location of the last Phaeron road â and the Doctor and Clara join the mission to see where the road leads. Each member of the research team knows exactly what they’re looking for â but only the Doctor knows exactly what they’ll find. Because only the Doctor knows the true secret of the Phaeron: a monstrous secret so terrible and powerful that it must be buried in the deepest grave imaginableâ¦
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