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The Doctor spends nearly the entire story giving her mixed signals, some accidental, some very much deliberate. He'll do something comfortingly familiar, a bit of banter, a familiar turn of phrase, some glimpse of the man she already knows. Then moments later he'll do something that feels completely alien to her understanding of him. He gives away his favourite watch. He seems distant. Fresh out of the TARDIS he doesn't even recognize her, mistaking her for Drax of all people.

Every time Clara starts getting her footing, the episode yanks the floorboards out from under her.

So she's trapped in this strange liminal space.

She knows it's him.

She knows, intellectually, that this is the same person she's been travelling with.

But every piece of evidence arriving through her eyes and ears keeps arguing with that conclusion.

It's less "Is this really the Doctor?" and more "How am I supposed to fit this person into the shape of someone I thought I already understood?"

That conversation with Madame Vastra gets right to the heart of it.

VASTRA: He looked young. Who do you think that was for? CLARA: Me? VASTRA: Everyone. I wear a veil as he wore a face for the same reason. CLARA: What reason? VASTRA: The oldest reason there is for anything. To be accepted.

Because Vastra isn't really talking about regeneration.

She's talking about presentation.

About masks.

About the versions of ourselves we put forward because they're easier for other people to understand.

The Doctor spent centuries wearing the face and mannerisms of a charming young hero. The madman in a box. The fairy tale. 

Then suddenly that mask is gone.

And Clara does recognize him. 

CLARA: Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor. Last of the five good 'uns. Stoic philosopher. VASTRA: Superlative bass guitarist. The Doctor really knows how to put a band together. CLARA: And the only pin-up I ever had on my wall when I was fifteen. The only one I ever had. I am not sure who you think you're talking to right now, Madam Vastra, but I have never had the slightest interest in pretty young men. And for the record, if there ever was anybody who could flirt with a mountain range, she's probably standing in front of you right now. Just because my pretty face has turned your head, do not assume that I am so easily distracted.

The episode is often remembered as being about Clara struggling because the Doctor is older now.

But that isn't what she's struggling with.

In fact she's staring directly into the camera and telling the audience that's not what this is about.

Physical attractiveness is not the issue.

The issue is certainty.

The issue is that Clara knew exactly how to read the Eleventh Doctor.

She had a framework for him.

She understood the rhythms.

The smiles.

The eccentricities.

The performance.

She knew when he was joking, when he was lying, when he was afraid, when he was trying to distract someone with a speech and a grin.

She had learned the language of that face.

Now the face has changed and she's suddenly discovering just how much of her understanding was tied to the performance.

Not because she's shallow.

Because that's how people work.

We learn each other through habits and expressions and patterns. We build maps of people in our heads. Then one day the landscape changes and suddenly the map doesn't match the territory anymore.

And Vastra points out something else.

This new face is an act of trust.

The Doctor isn't showing Clara the version of himself designed to be accepted.

He's showing her what's underneath.

The sharper edges.

The older soul.

The parts that openly carries the scars.

Because Clara has already seen him at what he considered his worst.

She met the War Doctor.

The incarnation he spent centuries trying to bury beneath layers of guilt and self-loathing.

And she responded with compassion.

Not horror.

Not disgust.

Compassion.

She saw the old man on Trenzalore too. The man after the fairy tale had run out of pages. The man after the speeches and adventures and applause. The version of himself he probably sees as closer to the truth than the bow ties and youthful grins ever were.

So when he becomes Twelve, part of what the episode seems to be suggesting is that he no longer feels the need to hide behind the young hero.

Not with Clara.

A part of him trusts that she already knows what's underneath.

That she has already looked behind the curtain and stayed.

But then the episode twists the knife.

Because the very first major thing this face does is abandon her.

She watches him walk away from the larder door.

She watches this face leave her standing there.

She watches THIS version of the Doctor disappear when she needs him most.

And that image doesn't vanish just because she later learns why he did it. It doesn't go away because he came back.

People don't work that way.

First impressions are stubborn little things. They build nests in your head and refuse eviction.

So now Clara is stuck holding two completely contradictory truths at the same time.

This is the face that abandoned her.

This is also the face that trusted her enough to leave her alone in a room full of monsters and assume she'd survive.

This face trusted her to look as it does. 

This is the face that feels cold.

This is also the face vulnerable enough to stop pretending.

This is the face that seems distant.

This is also the face placing an enormous amount of faith in her.

Clara spends the entire story trying to decide whether the mannerisms of stranger is still the Doctor.

And the Doctor is trying to answer a different question.

Can Clara still accept him if he stops being the version of himself that was easiest to be with?

Can she still recognize him when all the familiar signposts have been ripped out of the ground?

He's trusting her to survive.

He's trusting her to understand.

He's trusting her to look past the packaging.

He's trusting her to accept that the man standing in front of her is the same one who's always been there.

Older, perhaps.

Sharper around the edges.

Less interested in performing the way he was.

But still him.

And in the end, despite all the contradictions, despite all the confusion and hurt and uncertainty, Clara manages to do what the audience is being asked to do alongside her.

She starts recognizing the person.

That phone call from Eleven doesn't convince her that Twelve is the Doctor.

She already knew that.

What it does is give her permission to trust what she already knew.

The episode begins with Clara trying to figure out whether the Doctor has changed.

It ends with her realizing that the question was never whether he changed.

Of course he changed.

He always changes.

The real question is whether she can trust the person who remains after the change is still the one that cares about her.