I’m holed up in Shropshire and unable to watch ‘Nightmare in Silver’ until – ooh, Monday, but never mind that for now. I have something far more interesting.
Forget Merlin.
Forget The Other.
Forget Chrístõdavõreendiamondhærtmallõupdracœfiredelúnmiancuimhne de Lœngbærrow.
Here’s the real answer to the First (and thoroughly tedious) Question.
The chief writer is insistent – absolutely insistent – that no one has the answer about Clara yet. This strikes me as the sort of arrogance that is typical of Moffat. What he should have said, perhaps, was that no theory he had read had the right answer (and that may in fact have been what he said, but I’m in a Moffat-bashing mood). The internet is a vast and mysterious place and a large amount of what’s actually out there doesn’t filter into Google – so I’d suggest that if you look hard enough, and search for long enough, the odds are you’re going to find someone who has got a decent approximation of what’ll happen in a week or so.
Put another way, if you give an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of typewriters the collected works of Shakespeare is going to be a long time in coming, but odds are they will, at least, be able to produce a nursery rhyme or two after some effort. That’s unless, of course, Moffat’s theory is so left-field and downright insane that no one out there thinks him stupid enough to do what he’s about to do. Well, it wouldn’t be the first time.
I’ve given up with the Mystery of Clara thing, and instead Gareth and I are ploughing all our efforts into deciphering the Doctor’s real name, because God knows YOU’RE NOT GOING TO FIND OUT NEXT WEEK. All right? I’m sorry to have to be the bearer of bad news, but it’s just not going to happen. Oh, it’ll be a vital-and-tedious plot point, for certain. That doesn’t mean you’re going to find out. Moffat may have spent the last year or two shedding any respect I may have had for him by the barrel-load, but he’s not stupid. This is just a very long game.
But. But. But! Gareth figured it out. Because it’s there, in plain English. Literally. I shall explain.
Those of you who’ve watched the excrement that was ‘Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS’ will recall the scene in which Clara wanders into the TARDIS library and discovers a great big book on a lectern in the middle of the room, and just happens to open the book at more or less the exact space where the Doctor’s name is mentioned in one corner. And she can read it. Which suggests that the book is in English, or that the TARDIS is translating Gallifreyan, or that she can read Gallifreyan, and NONE OF THIS IS IMPORTANT, ALL RIGHT? Stop with the memes and conspiracy theories. It’s perfectly feasible that the Time Lords got bored with speaking high Gallifreyan for millions of years and switched to a different language, just for the fun of it. God knows they’ve had nothing else to do since ‘The Invasion of Time’.
Anyway. Here’s what Gareth has to say.
“I haven’t seen the episode – with this big book in the library, do we see anything in it at all? Because I just imagined it like the front page of Clara’s book, with the ages listed and “this book belongs to”.
Maybe that massive tome just says
This book belongs to [name of Doctor], aged
8
9
10
11
…
449
450
451
…
703
704
…
953
954
…
900 (again)
…
1500
…
900 (again!)
…
which is why the book was so big. This might then suggest that the Doctor’s true name is ‘The Time War’ (assuming that it was ‘The Book of the Time War’). [Editor’s note: it was.]
That would certainly be a plausible name for him, and maybe we got our word for ‘war’ from him. (Like Moffat’s previous suggestion that his name is ‘Doctor’ and we got that word from him, and how it means other things on other worlds.)”
—
Me again. You see? IT ALL FITS. The Doctor is the oncoming storm. He’s the mushroom cloud. John Rambo said “To survive war, you have to become war”, and for the Doctor this is LITERALLY TRUE. And this isn’t a recent concoction. This stretches right back to ‘The Time Warrior’, which was supposedly meant to describe the Sontaran, but was in fact about Jon Pertwee. Specifically, we hear the story from the point of view of one Sarah Jane Smith, who met the Third Doctor for the first time in this story and who was thus introduced to a Time Warrior – no, no, the Time Warrior – who was actually the Doctor himself.
Told you this was coming back later. Didn’t we?
Prove us wrong. Go on. We dare you.
Brian of Morbius 
This is THE BEST.
I know, and I can’t take any credit for it! It was all him.
Well, that makes sense, even thought I was, in fact, putting my money on Chrístõdavõreendiamondhærtmallõupdracœfiredelúnmiancuimhne de Lœngbærrow. I wonder if it’s too late to change my bet. 😀
Sadly, it probably is. It’s a shame in a way, because I was kind of hoping for the Lungbarrow theory to play out as well…
I Have His Name Right Here! Chrístõdavõreendiamondhærtmallõupdracœfiredelúnmiancuimhne de Lœngbærrow –
I Know Its Long But That Is His Name!!!
But For A Shorter Version Is Christo.
Yep yep yep. The basic problem is that the canonical authenticity of Lungbarrow is disputed, simply because it’s a book. If Cartmel had got another series or two this may (or may not) have been where they’d gone, but we’ll never know.
It cant be true because the Doctor has said on multiple occasions that one would find his name “unpronounceable.” We can pronounce the words “The Time War” very easily.
Still putting my money on Christo, TBH… Memorising his name was hard, but I managed. And it is very nearly unpronounceable, but I’m a hyperpolyglot, and each word of it has meaning in another language. I know it was prose, but lots of stuff in “Rememberance of the Daleks” (the book version) turned out to be stuff they couldn’t put in the episode, but wanted to (Seeing as Aaronovich wrote both the script and the book.) So maybe this is prose but legit, too.
Let me explain his name:
Christo = a normal way of saying Chris (short for “Christopher”) in many European languages
Davoreen = a Slavic shout of joy or pain, a bittersweet cry
Diamond Heart = a heart of diamond- coal turns into diamond when put under pressure, and we see the Doctor turn from a cranky old man in his first regeneration to the hero that he is now
Mal Loup = bad wolf, don’t need to explain this
Dracoefire = The episode of DW where 7 meets Ace is entitled “Dragonfire”, many people hold to the belief that they’re the Doctor’s OTP (one true pairing), I see whoever made this name must agree
de lun mian = Chinese; de is a posessive marker, also used with some verbs; lun mian means to travel or traverse
Cuimhne = Gaelic for “to remember”
de Loengbaerrow = a long barrow is a type of grave used in places like Stonehenge; it’s long in width and holds many people.
So, here’s how to pronounce it:
“Kree-stoh dah-vor-een diamond-heart mahl-loop draykoh-fire duh-lewn-mien kwihv-nuh day-lung-berrowh”
No, it’s definitely ‘The Time War’. Or ‘Kevin’. Steven Moffat has yet to deny it.