“Ashildr, I think I’m very glad I saved you.” – “Oh, I think everyone will be.”
Lady Me’s stories have turned into a library full of diaries diaries, played out, abandoned and barely remembered. That of a queen was full of boredom, that of a soldier only kept her attention till the war was done, that of a healer met by little gratefulness. And among them, the smaller personal stories scream in pain. The lover turns into a ghost, the mother grieves her children. Her tales could not keep anyone safe, in the end, until she swears not to tell some of them, ever again
Becoming “Me” is in many ways the antithesis
to what “the Doctor” did when he chose his name. A name might be a
promise here too, but it’s a promise of her own solitude, her merciless
independence. And yet they’ve both lost a family and were left with a cot, they’ve both gone through the centuries to witness the death of people they cared about again and again. What room has the Doctor to judge, when he could no longer remember how many innocent lives were lost when Gallifrey burned? When Madame de Pompadour and the Great Intelligence are get lost in his past, memories turned to smoke like hers? When the question of his own age is slipping his grasp? He sees himself in her for a good reason, not out of judgement, but fear. And she cannot keep herself from caring any more than he can, forever destined to fall off the wagon.“You are an extraordinary woman, Ashildr,” he tells her and she smiles at him, knowingly. All her
other names died with whoever knew her, until only she was left, but there is someone who knows
her now. She’s no longer singular, without an attachment, nothing at all
to describe her. Instead, she has chosen her path: to protect the world and the people the Doctor abandons in his stumble through history. The antihesis to the Doctor once again.She isn’t a villain or a hero, neither good nor bad. She’s as unfathomable as the Doctor himself (the idiot with a box, the man who saves people). When
we first meet her, she was Ashildr,
daughter of Einarr. In our more recent encounter, she was Lady Me,
nothing to nobody. It will be interesting
to see who she is if we see her again. And what name she will go by.