Moffat and the Novelmen

Steven Moffat loves to reuse characters, plot lines, and themes from the New Adventures and Eighth Doctor Adventures novels—but always with a new twist, and often a whole new meaning.

Background

The classic series was accompanied by comic strips almost from the start, with the publication of "The Klepton Parasites" in TV Comics on 14 November 1964. But these early stories are barely Doctor Who at all.

Things began changing in the mid-80s. TV producer John Nathan-Turner was explicitly raising (and attempting to answer) questions about continuity. The comic strips in Marvel's Doctor Who Weekly/Monthly/Magazine, largely written by fans like Gary Russell, attempted to fit their stories into that continuity. Target expanded beyond novelizations and into original stories about the companions. Some of the TV writers even began writing for other media.

But Virgin's New Adventures (launched in 1991) and BBC's Eighth Doctor Adventures (launched in 1997) were different. These novel ranges were designed from the beginning to take over where the TV series left off. They were also intended to tell stories for adults that were "too big for the small screen". And they deliberately tried to police their continuity far more seriously than the TV show had, even in the JNT/Cartmel era. RTD and Moffat both read the novels, and RTD even wrote one.

Continuity

When the series came back, novel fans immediately began wondering whether the novels were part of the continuity of the new TV show. But that was always a silly question. The EDAs were all about changes to not just history, but the very nature of history. And the new series was set in the aftermath of a Last Great Time War that had removed the Time Lords from space-time and again changed the way history works.

While RTD was always cagey about the question, Moffat has told people from the start that it's not even a question worth answering. Off-camera, he pointed people to Paul Cornell's blog post on Canonicty in Doctor Who. On-camera, even before he was in charge, he had the Doctor describe post-Time War continuity as a ball of "timey-wimey". His first story arc was about cracks in time eating history, ending with Amy and the Doctor rebooting the whole universe. And, just to hammer to point home, he gave us this speech:

The thing is, Amy, everyone's memory is a mess. Life is a mess. Everyone's got memories of a holiday they couldn't have been on, or a party they never went to, or met someone for the first time and felt like they've known them all their lives. Time is being rewritten all around us, every day. People think their memories are bad, but their memories are fine. The past is really like that.

Anyone who asks whether the novels are part of continuity is missing the point of Doctor Who entirely. Sure, if you're trying to put together a wiki like the TARDIS Data Core, you have to make some decisions about what does and doesn't count—but if you think there's a "right answer" out there to be discovered, you're watching the wrong show. If you remember the Doctor fighting Kleptons with John and Gillian, your memories are fine. The past is really like that.

The more interesting question is how the new stories have made use of the enormous amount of source material. Even ignoring the stories that weren't written to carry on the main narrative, you've got 26 years of classic shows, 61 NA novels, the TV movie, 73 EDAs, two web animations, and dozens of audio plays that were.

RTD

Early in the EDAs, the novel Alien Bodies began dropping hints of a Time War in the Doctor's personal future. Some of the other novels followed up on this. About halfway through the range, in The Ancestor Cell, the Doctor finally caught up with this War, and ended it by destroying both Gallifrey and their Enemy. The Enemy in the novels were definitely not the Daleks, and RTD has said behind-the-scenes that his Time War was a different one to the one in the novels, but the idea is the same. Both the later EDAs and the revived TV series are set in a post-Time Lords universe. Both took advantage of the narrative freedom from continuity, while at the same time exploring what the effects of such a change would have on both the Doctor and the universe.


But in a sense, the Time War was an idea whose time had come. The 1996 TV Movie had tried to weaken the links to the past without openly severing them, as did the 2003 webcast animation Scream of the Shalka. But in 2000, the EDAs openly broke history, in-universe. 2001's webcast Death Comes to Time, the Big Finish audios did the same starting in 2004, and the new TV series starting in 2005 all similarly gave us a war that destroyed the Doctor's people and changed the nature of history. The four Time Wars were very different in their particulars, but the effect was the same. They loosed the bonds of continuity without breaking the narrative connection to Doctor Who's past, opening the scope for new stories. Most fans who followed the novels agree that the second half of the EDA series was far better than the first half, and of course it's Rose, not the TV movie or Shalka, that kickstarted a new series that finally brought Doctor Who back to the masses.

Outside the Time War, RTD didn't borrow much from non-TV stories, or from the classic series. (While some fans have drawn parallels between Rose and Ace, they seem pretty thin to me.) When he did, the borrowings were far from subtle.

Most obviously, the RTD era directly adapted stories from other media. Dalek was based on the audio story Jubilee, Human Nature/The Family of Blood on the novel Human Nature, and Rise of the Cyberman (partly) on the audio Spare Parts. These are among the best stories of the era, or at least the best that weren't penned by RTD or Moffat.

Less obviously, RTD sometimes lifted scenes out of novels and dropped them into the series. In general, they were lifted almost verbatim, and often didn't fit their new context. For example, compare the scene in Journey's End where the Doctor beats himself up over all the people he's led to their deaths to the equivalent scene from the novels. Some of the words are lifted verbatim. But in the novels, they come from a manipulative puppet-master Doctor who's deliberately led people to sacrifice themselves for the greater good, finally admitting that his companions Ace and Benny had been right to accuse him. In the TV series, they come from a heroic Doctor who does everything he can to prevent others from sacrificing themselves, being manipulated by Davros getting into his head. So, what comes across as a powerful cathartic moment for the Seventh Doctor (and, meta-textually, the NA authors) instead plays out as whiny angst from the  Tenth Doctor (and RTD).

The writer responsible for most of the exceptions to that rule was Steven Moffat—who would go even farther once he took over the show.

Moffat

Future posts will explore the various specific instances where Moffat has borrowed from non-TV media, but here I'll attempt to paint an overall picture.

Unlike RTD, Moffat rarely borrows elements unchanged. He often lifts character elements, plotlines, and themes rather than specific lines or scenes. But, even when he does reuse a speech, he puts it into a completely different context, giving the same lines a completely new meaning, that's perfectly in keeping with the new story he's trying to tell.

For the most obvious example, no one would mistake River Song for being the same character as Benny Summerfield, even though they're both dodgy archaeologists from the future, with a taste for drink, skilled at combat despite not being very warrior-like, who keep a journal, who the Doctor has had sex with, etc.

For a less obvious example, both Anji and Rory accuse the Doctor of being dangerous because he inspires his companions—Fitz and Amy, respectively—to try to be like him. In the novels, this is ultimately Anji failing to realize that Fitz is doing what he wants to do; in the series, it's Rory realizing that neither Amy nor the Doctor are being honest to themselves about the danger she's in.

While Moffat borrows from all eras and media, he seems to borrow a lot more from the EDAs than anywhere else. Given that the EDAs were primarily about the idea that "history can change", this isn't too surprising. Moffat wants to write stories that are actually about time travel, the meaning of history and memory, the line between technology and magic, the natural of reality and fairy tale, the nature of the Doctor-companion relationship, and the effect on the universe of the Time Lords' absence. These are all central ideas in the EDAs. When Moffat focuses on other areas, he does borrow more from other stories—for example, the NAs had a lot more to say about the nature of the TARDIS, and when Moffat turns to the TARDIS, he turns to the NAs.

It's probably worth pointing out that Moffat borrows more from some authors than others, and from Larry Miles more than anyone else. Miles seems to think, at least at times, that this is done out of spite, but I think there's a much more innocent reason. Most of what was interesting about the EDAs grew out of Miles' first and last novels for the range, Alien Bodies and The Adventuress of Henrietta Street. Also, his novels are so full of ideas that are so central to understanding Doctor Who in general and the EDAs in particular, that it's hard to imagine how anyone could be inspired by the EDAs without being especially inspired by Miles.

It's always possible that some of these apparent borrowings are just coincidences. There are only so many stories to tell, and the number of stories that can be told about a madman in a box traveling through time are even more restricted. With 73 EDAs, plus 61 NAs and hundreds of classic TV stories, comic strips, short stories, audio plays, and past-Doctor stories in all media, you eventually run into the "Simpsons Did It" effect. Plus, in some cases, the borrowings might be not coincidental, but still unintentional—if you were writing a story about being trapped in a damaged TARDIS, and you read Time's Crucible 20 years ago, you might incorporate some ideas from it without consciously realizing you're doing so. But there are enough connections that are sufficiently blatant that they can't _all_ be unintentional.

Finally, why does it matter? Really, the only thing that matters is whether Doctor Who gives us a compelling story that's worth following. And in many cases, seeing the parallels, and seeing how Moffat has used some element from an earlier story to tell a completely different story enhances your enjoyment of both. Fitz's 1000 years as a Remote and Rory's 2000 years as an Auton are both great stories, and when you notice that they use the same lines to describe their very different stories, it sheds new light on both.

Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS

Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS borrows from various TV stories, NAs, and EDAs. But, more than anything, it seems like a story written to explore some ideas raised by the NA Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible and a few other novels—ideas that The Doctor's Wife could have, but didn't (whether because it was written by outsider Neil Gaiman, who never read any of the novels, or because there were already too many ideas to explore).

Damaged TARDISes

With a few minor exceptions (notably season 1's The Edge of Destruction), Time's Crucible is really the first story about the consequences of a damaged TARDIS. In this novel, the Doctor's companion Ace and a group of outsiders are trapped in a damaged TARDIS, caused by collision with another vessel while under emergency operations. They're beset by what ultimately turn out to be future versions of themselves, and the Doctor later explains that this is possible because, inside a damaged TARDIS, time cannot flow normally. Some of the present-day outsiders also cause problems by betraying the others through their own selfishness.

While many later stories, such as the EDA The Ancestor Cell and series 6's The Doctor's Wife, are "damaged TARDIS" stories, Journey basically follows the same sketch as Crucible, and doesn't add much from those later stories.

However, there are major differences.

First, Crucible has an entire secondary plot full of flashbacks to the early days of Gallifrey. The outsiders are the explorers from the first great Time Scaphe experiment, and as such are connected to the turbulent politics of the last days of the Pythia and the rise of Rassilon. While this story is at times compelling, it's also often silly and sometimes tedious, and the explicit parallels to Greek history and legend are hard to take seriously. This is also the story that introduced the Curse of Pythia and the subsequent Looms, and various other controversial plot elements that annoyed so many fans. The Gallifrey story also has very little to do with the main plot; if the characters had been 49th century human time-travel experimenters, or, say, a space salvage crew, it wouldn't have made much difference.

Also, in Crucible, the TARDIS is fleeing an attacking data-eating organism, the Process, when it's captured by the TARDIS collision. The Process turns into a very silly giant leech monster inside the TARDIS, and becomes the main enemy in the novel. The TV episode has no equivalent. The TARDIS attacks when one of the salvage workers betrays everyone out of greed, but really the future selves are the only real enemy. Simplifying the story by removing the Gallifrey subplot and the Process streamlines it tremendously. Crucible was a long, slow novel, and even it barely had room for all of its ideas; there's no way they could have fit into 45 minutes of TV with any of that. 

The inclusion of the Process and the Time Scaphe also means it's never clear how much of what we were seeing was the consequence of a damaged TARDIS, and how much was caused by other factors, which made the central idea of the story weaker.

Meanwhile, the novel's future selves have been living inside the damaged TARDIS for decades. We discover that the sadistic tormentors are the same characters we've met over the first few hundred pages, even the ones we thought of as heroic, beaten down by decades of futility until they've given up and allowed the Process to enslave them. Journey's future selves are just "time zombies", turned bestial by leakage from the Eye of Harmony. The novel's version of the story allows it to explore the idea that anyone can turn evil, and that definitely adds something the episode is lacking. 

On the other hand, zombies are always good for action scenes, and they're certainly better than the action scenes against the giant rolling leech monster.

Finally, in the novel, the TARDIS is turned "sort of inside out", and appears (at least to Ace) as a ruined city made up of repeated subdivisions, where each one is more dilapidated than the previous one. This is a fascinating image, and it vividly illustrates how the TARDIS bends space and time into each other. On the other hand, it also means that we don't actually know that's what we're seeing until most of the way into the book. And it means we don't get the TARDIS runaround that Journey gives us.

Inside the TARDIS

Most of the show's TARDIS scenes, both classic and new, take place in the console room. Two Fourth Doctor stories, The Masque of Mandragora and The Invasion of Time, show much more of the interior, including a collection of wildly incongruous rooms, like the famous municipal indoor swimming pool. However, Logopolis and Castrovalva show a handful of rooms that all match the console room, with white roundeled walls.

The NAs and EDAs largely ignored the Castrovalva look in favor of the eclectic style of Invasion. The novels explained time and again that the TARDIS was "potentially infinite", and contained rooms beyond describing. Sometimes we even saw some of them. Most notably, the EDA Vampire Science introduced an meadow full of butterflies, with no walls or ceiling, which featured in a number of later novels. (Time's Crucible had earlier shown that such a thing was possible, but not necessarily normal, as the TARDIS was described as "sort of inside out" at the time.)

The series 6 episode The Doctor's Wife, and scenes from some of the official video games before it, seemed more in keeping with Castrovalva. But Journey followed Invasion and, especially, the EDAs, by showing off what's possible inside a TARDIS. In particular, it had the first on-screen view of an outdoor area within the TARDIS.

It's pretty clear from both promotional materials and statements by the producers that the chance to do a real TARDIS runaround, better than the one they didn't have time for in Wife, was a large part of the reason for making this episode.

The Eye of Harmony

In its only two mentions in the classic series, The Deadly Assassin and The Invasion of Time, the Eye of Harmony was the power source of Gallifrey. These two stories notoriously contradict each other in many regards, but at least that was a constant, and remained so throughout the NAs. However, in the TV movie, the Eye of Harmony is in the Doctor's TARDIS.

The first EDA, The Eight Doctors, explains away this contradiction by claiming that the Eye of Harmony in the TARDIS is both a symbolic manifestation of the power source on Gallifrey, and a link to that power. The Adventuress of Henrietta Street and The Gallifrey Chronicles (and, to a lesser extent, the PDA The Quantum Archangel) later added to this explanation.

The TV movie also introduced the idea that if the Eye "leaks", it can damage space-time. The Eight Doctors followed up with the idea that a leaking Eye would giving visions of the past, and possibly the future. Neither of these ideas had been mentioned in the new series before becoming plot points in Journey.

Historical Secrets

Journey also shows Clara discovering and reading a book, The History of the Time War, that can't possibly exist. Of course the TARDIS is full of things that can't exist, as the novels told us repeatedly, and The Doctor's Wife at least hinted. But this is a particularly interesting thing.

Larry Miles's spinoff series, Faction Paradox, begins with The Book of The War, a sort of novel in encyclopedia form. This book encodes "forbidden knowledge" out-of-universe as well as in-universe—in particular, the "key" that connects Faction Paradox to elements of the Doctor Who Universe which Miles doesn't have a license to use. In particular, it tells you that Grandfather Halfling in FP is really the Doctor in DW. And the book in Journey tells Clara who the Doctor really is.

This also connects up with Time's Crucible again. It's not entirely clear what the Cartmel Masterplan actually was, but Marc Platt (one of Cartmel's stable of writers toward the end of the TV series, and the author of Crucible) clearly believed that the main idea was that the Doctor was actual a reincarnation of the Other, a mysterious character from early Gallifreyan history whose existence is first hinted at in Crucible (and Platt's novelization of Battlefield at around the same time).

Finally, this loosely connects Clara with Fitz from the EDAs. In a loose arc running from Escape Velocity to Halflife, Fitz gradually remembers/discovers the Doctor's role in destroying Gallifrey, and believes that he's the only person in the universe who knows the truth. In the novels, this never really went anywhere interesting. The Doctor also eventually remembered the truth, and then we met a number of other people who knew it, and eventually it became irrelevant anyway. In the upcoming TV stories, Clara's memories may become much more important.

Summary

Overall, it seems clear that the main motivation for this episode was the chance to do a proper TARDIS runaround, showing us the wide variety of environments that she contains and exploring her inner workings.

Given that constraint, the main story was borrowed from Time's Crucible, but ruthlessly stripped down to remove the extraneous subplots that would have slowed things down. This means a few interesting ideas were lost as well.

Familiar Characters

Captain Jack

Captain Jack was Moffat's first creation, and he's a joint character of Moffat and RTD. It's not entirely clear exactly which parts each contributed, but RTD has given us hints in The Writer's Tale and elsewhere.

RTD wanted a companion who was something other than a present-day human, and who was openly non-heterosexual. It could be argued that he borrowed these ideas from the novels—but if so, it's mostly Chris Cwej's story from RTD's own novel, Damaged Goods. It's also RTD who came up with Jack's death and resurrection into a "fixed point" who can't permanently die, and his transformation into the Face of Boe.

Moffat came up with the idea of making Jack a future human Time Agent. Time Agents from the 51st century were briefly mentioned in The Talons of Weng-Chiang, but were never brought up again on TV. Then, in the EDAs, we finally learn more. In the post-Gallifrey universe, humans have been free to develop time travel on their own, and forced to police their own history. Being far less refined than the Time Lords, they do so in a far more primitive way, such as setting off nukes in the past to "sterilize" problems. The first Agent the Doctor meets is Kala, in 1933, in novel Eater of Wasps. The Doctor even considers inviting her along as a companion, but decides that he can't accept her violent methods. Then, in Trading Futures, the Doctor's opponent Sabbath has a companion Jaxa, who's a renegade Time Agent. Jack definitely has elements of Kala and Jaxa, although the connection isn't that strong.

While Jack's irresistible personal charm probably owes more to RTD and to actor John Barrowman than to Moffat, it was Moffat who proposed the idea of making him a lovable rogue and conman. Here, the obvious inspiration is Sabalom Glitz from the classic series, along with similar characters like Star Trek's Harry Mudd and antecedents like Professor Marvel/the Wizard from The Wizard of Oz. However, the idea of using time travel to sell amazing but ultimately useless ahead-of-their-time gadgets to primitive civilizations was a recurring idea in the novels of Larry Miles (and in his proposed but rejected novels).

River Song

The parallels between River Song, Moffat's first recurring character, and Benny Summerfield, the first new recurring character from the New Adventures novels, are obvious. But their differences are also interesting.

Both are very good at integrating themselves into foreign cultures. Both have shown themselves to be skilled combatants when necessary, although neither character is warrior-like. Both have a fondness for alcohol.

Both are human archaeologists from the future, who managed to use a combination of dodgy credentials and real skill to establish themselves. And both series make frequent use of that fact. However, Benny's archaeology background is primarily used as a way to get them into or out of trouble, and occasionally to allow them to go off on separate adventures—and ultimately, it's the lure of working as an archaeologist for the Braxiatel Collection that separates them for good. River's archaeology background, on the other hand, is primarily used as a way to get the characters together—and ultimately, we learn that this is exactly why she became an archaeologist.

Both are independent, strong-willed women, older and wiser—and generally "cooler"—than their fellow companions Ace and Amy. But with River, this is subverted by having her turn out to be Amy's daughter.

Benny and River are the only two characters that we know have had a sexual relationship with the Doctor. However, in Benny's case, their relationship was platonic for their original time together, with the Doctor hoping to give her away at her wedding; she slept with him spontaneously, meeting him after a long absence, in a more attractive new body and more warm and "human" personality. River, on the other hand, had a tragic romance with the Doctor, and in every interaction between them, at least one of them knew of their past/future relationship.

Benny was the first character to use River's favorite phrase "The Doctor lies", and she was frequently torn by the fact that she trusted the Doctor completely with her life, but didn't know whether to trust anything he says. River has no problem reconciling the same two apparently-conflicting facts. The Doctor has to lie, and therefore he frequently does; that doesn't mean he isn't always ultimately on both the right side and the winning side. Benny, wracked by her conflict, is unable to console Ace; River, with her acceptance, has no such problem with Amy and Rory.

Benny and River both kept journals of their time with the Doctor, both of which took on major symbolic roles in the stories. But they're very different roles. Benny's journal reminds us that we're following a story, while River's reminds us that we're following a story about time travel. Meanwhile, Benny frequently amending her diary with sticky yellow notes tells us that history (and continuity) is not as simple as it looks; in River's story, that's so obvious that it needs no comment—but her ability  to synchronize her timeline with the Doctor's by comparing notes reminds us that, even in a timey-wimey universe, some things never change, and some stories still make sense.

River also takes some inspiration from Melanie Bush. In the TV series, Mel's timeline makes no sense; she meets the Doctor during his Trial, before their first meeting, then ends up leaving with him. Later novels and audios tried to reconcile this problem. Moffat had commented in the past about how it would be more fun to explore that out-of-order relationship than to try to fix it, and that's obviously part of the inspiration for River Song. And then there's the name Melody Pond. However, her personality clearly has little to do with Mel's. This will be explored more in a post about Silence in the Library.

River's story also shares some features with Scarlette from The Adventuress of Henrietta Street, but again these are more in the way of plotline than character. There are some interesting parallels between the Scarlette-Juliette relationship and the River-Amy relationship, and the way Amy was used by the Doctor's enemies, but River is not much like Scarlette, so this will be explored more in a post about The Wedding of River Song.

The Eleventh Doctor

The Eleventh Doctor is very different from RTD's two Doctors. In fact, he has far more in common with the Seventh Doctor of the novels than with any of the TV Doctors (except maybe the Seventh Doctor in his last season).

Most importantly, he's a master of manipulative schemes, and he's willing to emotionally hurt his loved ones to pull them off. He does this, not with the callous disregard of the First Doctor or the haphazard lack of foresight of the Fourth and Eighth, but simply because he knows it's necessary. As with the Seventh Doctor, this sometimes fills him with a sense of self-loathing. He believes—and not entirely without cause—that he's ruined the lives of everyone he's touched. He's absolutely certain, to the point of arrogance, that on the grand scale, he's the hero; he's just conflicted about whether that makes up for the damage he does at the personal level.

However, there's also an interesting comparison between the Eleventh Doctor and the Second, which is especially interesting given the parallels between the two incarnations' companions. He attempts to act like a kindly uncle to Amy and Rory, much as the Second did with Jamie and Zoe, but Amy mistakes it for a sexual relationship, and then laughs at his idea of himself as "Space Gandalf". He sometimes tries to act like a harmless buffoon, but nobody takes it seriously. When he attempts to disguise ruthlessness as playful innocence, people see through it and are alternately inspired or horrified.

Amy Pond and Rory

Besides Mel, there's another classic companion whose history made no sense, and it's never been addressed at all. Zoe Heriot somehow remembers the year 2000, despite being somewhere between 16 and 19 in a story that can't possibly be before 2020. She also recognizes technology that's from the mid 21st century, and yet knows how to program in Algol, a language that's been dead since the 1970s. There are also hints about her both having and not having parents.

Beyond that, Zoe was a brilliant young woman of the early 21st century. When people in earlier eras expected her to be inferior because of her sex, she often didn't even notice, and found it laughable when she did—although she knew the effect she had on men, and was willing to take advantage of it. She loved to be bossy, and the Doctor and Jamie usually let her get away with it. She considered her home boring and suffocating, and longed to get away and see the universe. She sometimes felt like she understood the Doctor better than he understood himself, and was sometimes proven right. She was also more fashion-conscious than most companions. Most of all, she gleefully rushed into adventure, rarely taking heed of the danger, and usually managed to take care of herself—but occasionally got way over her head, and ended up crying out into the dark for the Doctor and Jamie to save her.

Jamie McCrimmon often appeared to be slow-witted, and the fact that he would sometimes pretend to understand things that he clearly didn't only made things worse. But if you gave him a chance, he'd often figure things out that should have been far outside his technological scope, and he was also often the first one to pick up on things that the Doctor and Zoe had missed noticing. He was also fiercely protective of his fellow companion. He was very cautious, especially if his fellow companion was at risk, but also for his own sake—but when the chips were down, he was unwaveringly brave.

Other than the fact that Jamie was the Scottish one, and Jamie was madly in love with Victoria rather than Zoe, and their names are backward, Zoe and Jamie almost the same characters as Amy and Rory.

But there's a huge twist. Nothing ever came of Jamie's love for Victoria, and it was basically not even addressed on-screen at all—but Rory and Amy's relationship was central to the story, which was largely about the Doctor traveling with people trying to build a family.

Meanwhile, Rory has a lot in common with a different character, Fitz Kreiner from the novels (with Amy at times taking the part of Anji or Trix). While he does share some character traits with Fitz, it's really more the storyline that ties them together. Fitz dies and is reborn in another form, lives for centuries, and is then remembered back to the original Fitz—but still remembers his thousand years as a Remote.

Professor Bracewell

Edwin Bracewell is a bomb who doesn't know it, because he's been programmed with false memories. His story owes a lot to Fatboy, a similar bomb in human shape who accompanies the Time Agents in Eater of Wasps. However, his character is very different, owing more to innocent but naive scientists like Edward Waterfield, Edward Travers, and Edward Watkins, who unwittingly aided the Daleks, Great Intelligence, and Cybermen, and were almost named Edwin. He'll be discussed more in a post on Victory of the Daleks.

Clara Oswald

The Doctor met Sam Jones briefly, then met a different version of her two years later. This new Sam was the perfect companion for the Doctor, almost as if she'd been specifically crafted to fill that role. In She Said, He Said, the Doctor describes Clara in the same way: "She's perfect. Perfect in every way for me… Always brave, always funny, always exactly what I need. Perfect. Too perfect." The Doctor eventually meets the original Sam, and has a discussion with her about how she's impossible. Ultimately, she sacrifices herself by walking into a rip in time. Probably unrelated to all of the above, Sam and Clara are the only two regular companions who definitely know the Doctor's real name. However, despite the connections in their stories, their characters are very different, so this will be discussed in a post on The Name of the Doctor.

Clara also may have some connections to Victoria Waterfield. Victoria and Jamie were the companions in the two classic Great Intelligence stories, and Victoria returned in the non-BBC Downtime to battle the Great Intelligence alongside Kate Lethbridge-Stewart (who was introduced to the TV series in The Power of Three, and will apparently be in the 50th anniversary special).  However, it's too early to tell.

Clara has a number of connections to the show itself. She was born when the original series went off the air, and her mother died the day Rose took place. Her Victorian self was born exactly 100 years before the original series began. All versions of her died at 26, the same age as the original series when it was canceled. The fact that the three named characters on the Dalek Asylum are named Oswald, Harvey, and Lee might also be relevant, given the assassination of JFK by Lee Harvey Oswald the same day the series began.

Her skipping the ages 16 and 23 in her otherwise-yearly signing of 101 Places to See might also be meaningful in connection with the show's history. Season 23 is when the show was nearly canceled and went on hiatus, but 16 doesn't have any similar status. Season 16 had the 100th story, 500th episode, and 15th anniversary, but 23 didn't have any such significance. They were the only two classic seasons to form a single arc story (The Key to Time and The Trial of a Time Lord), and the first two seasons released on DVD, and they had the last completed stories by Douglas Adams and Robert Holmes. Narratively, they could turn out to be relevant as the introductions of Romana and the Black and White Guardians, and the Valeyard. But all of that is highly speculative.