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How was Clara supposed to save the Doctor if she actually lost her memory?


Spoilers for The Name of the Doctor


It is unclear to me what are the exact effects for someone who enters the Doctor's time stream.


Clara goes in to save the Doctor. But given the two scenarios we know (Dalek asylum and victorian London), she doesn't even remember the Doctor. Yes, she saves him, but not because "oh boy there's the Doctor, I came here to save him", but rather because of a certain turn of events throughout the episodes (a.k.a fate/luck).


So what guarantees that Clara's sacrifice to save the Doctor would actually work, if none of her copies actually remember a thing about the Doctor?


A possible answer would be "well, the fact that the Doctor reached Trenzalore alive proves that her clones did the job correctly, one way or another". Which makes sense, but, is there not a better explanation?




Answer



It's the souffle.


Her echoes don't actually know they exist for the purpose of saving the Doctor. Remember that Clara actually became an expert in computers in her first true apparition, when her mind was taken by WiFi in the cluster. This makes her an expert in making recipes.


Being capable of seeing all of the Doctor's timeline, Clara makes her echoes with the purpose of saving the Doctor, but they don't actually know about it. Like the souffle is not the souffle but the recipe, the echoes are not the purpose but the recipe that involves the possibility to save the Doctor -- or the impossibility of the "Impossible Girl".


Echoes will be always cooking the souffle possibility, even without milk.


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