The Girl in the Fireplace

So first, the Girl in the Fireplace is probably my second favorite Doctor Who episode...not far behind Vincent and the Doctor.

Such a touching episode...

The Doctor first meets Reinette as a young girl in her bedroom, while he is on a spaceship in the 51st Century looking through her fireplace.  It's seems that the crew of the spaceship needs Reinette, but we don't know why, other than they say "she is not ready", leading you to believe it is about her age.

As it turns out, Reinette is actually Madame de Pompadour, the Chief Mistress to  Louis XV...

The Doctor is able to visit her world with the turn of the fireplace,  a window between the 18th Century and the 51st Century.  However, what is only minutes in the world of the Doctor is actually years in the life of Reinette.  So the next time the Doctor sees her, she is now 23.

Unable to find out why the Clockwork Droids are waiting to take Reinette, The Doctor looks into her mind, searching the past for clues...while doing so, Reinette also walks among the mind of the Doctor, discerning his loneliness...and asks the Doctor to dance with her (you see, the Doctor does not dance)...

It is again The Doctor visits Reinette in her 37th year, as the Clockwork Druids are coming for her...the age of 37 being what they needed.  The fireplace is now gone, and although the Doctor can see the Droids coming for Reinette, he no longer has a door into her world...but only one...a mirror...for which if he goes through, will break the window to his world, forever leaving him stuck in the 18th Century.  And so he does...

Saving Reinette and the day...but being stuck forever in another time...except...Reinette remembered the fireplace, and had it moved from her childhood room, to her new room.  The Doctor, can in fact, return...and so he does...but not before telling Reinette to go to the window, pick out a star, and he would be back to take her there...

Only, when the Doctor returns, Reinette is dead...having died not long before his arrival...she was 43.  Her coffin is taken out on the carriage through the courts of Versailles as the rain falls and King Louis XV looks on (which is actually how it historically occurred)...

So why am I writing this, when we are trying to figure out who Clara Oswin Oswald is?

I'll let you figure it out...but here are the clues...something Reinette said to the Doctor, and the message from her last note...

"A door once opened, may be stepped through in either direction..."

and

"My dear Doctor: the path has never seemed more slow, and yet I fear I am nearing its end. Reason tells me that you and I are unlikely to meet again, but I think I shall not listen to reason. I have seen the world inside your head and know that all things are possible. Hurry though, my love: my days grow shorter now, and I am so very weak. Godspeed, my lonely angel." - Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson