This isn’t your Viking grandmother’s Maisie Williams.
Its out there now the technology exists to make people functionally immortal.
Because he has a heart (two of them), you monsters.
Credit: BBC America
The Doctor wouldnt wish immortality on anyone.
But if you run long enough around the same planet, the consequences have a way of finding you.
This one meets him on an English road in 1651.
Shes in disguise as the Knightmare, a highwayman with a reputation.
The Doctor interrupts her robbery in search of the same amulet.
(Well, cant we share it?
Isnt that what robberys all about?)
Between the two of them, hes more surprised by their reunion than she is.
She barely remembers the name Ashildr or the village that she defended with her life.
Shes Me now: No ones mother, daughter, wife.
Me is an island.
Shes closed off to the people around her and traded relationships for adventure.
But you dont forget the man who saved your life.
For one thing, hes got Clara.
Thats never a good sign.
She lets Swift go.
But Me is still plotting something that she knows the Doctor wont approve of.
The amulet was his means of travel, but he lost it in the crash.
Theres so much dying here.
Not on the Doctors watch.
), but hes given a reprieve: Sam Swift has been arrested and sentenced to hang.
Me is having none of it.
(Its awful, isnt it?
You think you dont care, but you fall off the wagon.)
She cant be responsible for the death of so many defenseless people.
They need you, she says to the Doctor.
He welcomes her back.
Shes not just me anymore.
Shes one of us Ashildr again.
So is he immortal now?
And theres a more pressing question to be asked: Is he going to let Ashildr come with him?
He doesnt want to.
The Doctor believes that he and Ashildr are a dangerous combination their perspectives are too vast.
People like us, he says, we go on too long.
We forget what matters.
The last thing we need is each other.
Thats more of an explanation for abandonment than he ever gave Jack Harkness, and its true.
Unlike most immortal beings the Doctor has known, Ashildr is trapped in the slow lane.
She doesnt have a vortex manipulator at her disposal.
Her life is lived day by day, and it never stops.
The battle makes him feel alive.
But those people can be her fight shell be the patron saint of the Doctors leftovers.
