On Saturday night, at around 7.26pm, roughly 6.4 million Doctor Who fans screamed 'WTF?!' in unison as Jenna-Louise Coleman - the Emmerdale and Waterloo Road star due to make her first appearance on the sci-fi drama at Christmas - turned up almost four months early.

Coleman's shock turn in 'Asylum of the Daleks' was all part of Who head honcho Steven Moffat's latest twisty-turny master-plan, but where will the 26-year-old star's story arc take her next?

Join the Week in Geek for some crazy theories and wild speculation regarding Oswin... Clara... whatever her name is!

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Wibbly-Wobbly Timey-Wimey!

So this one is proving a popular theory with Who fans - since Coleman's charming Oswin Oswald was revealed to be Dalek mutant and subsequently got blown to smithereens along with the Asylum planet, surely the Doctor (Matt Smith) must travel back in time and rescue her from her terrible fate, right?



Well, maybe not. Fans present at filming for Who's eight 2013 episodes - which will see Coleman join the TARDIS crew full-time - have claimed that her character is referred to as 'Clara'...

The 'Clara' moniker hasn't been confirmed by the BBC, but if we accept for the moment that Coleman v.2 has a different name than Coleman v.1, then presumably she's playing a relative of Oswin - perhaps a present-day ancestor of the starliner Alaska's sole survivor?

Will feelings of guilt motivate the Doctor to take 'Clara' on as his new companion? Will poor Oswin's demise be the unspoken elephant in the room?

The Moffat Master-Plan...

Or is the whole 'my relative who looks a heck of a lot like me' angle just a little too obvious? It's cropped up in the Who universe before - see Torchwood's Gwen Cooper and psychic Gwyneth of 'The Unquiet Dead' (both played by Eve Myles) or Martha Jones and her unfortunate cousin Adeola (both Freema Agyeman) - so is that slant just a little too predictable?



Speaking to Digital Spy earlier this May, Steven Moffat hinted that, even when Coleman returns to Doctor Who in this year's festive special, fans shouldn't "expect to learn everything" - "We've got a good story and there are some proper legitimate surprises in it. I'm excited by it."

Could the link between Oswin and 'Clara' - if that is indeed her name - be something we haven't stumbled upon yet? Is she some kind of reincarnation? Are they linked in a way that even the Doctor doesn't fully understand? Could this be the reason that the Doctor takes Coleman's companion on - to discover what truly links these two women?

Or could the Time Lord in fact be completely ignorant of the connection between Oswin and the new TARDIS traveller? Remember, he never actually saw Oswin in 'Asylum of the Daleks' - chiefly because she wasn't actually there to see. Unless the Doctor has a particularly good ear for voices, it's possible he won't even make the link.

Stay tuned!

We've learnt by now that, for the most part, trying to second-guess Steven Moffat is a fool's pursuit. The only thing we know for sure at this point, having seen 'Asylum' on Saturday night, is that Jenna-Louise Coleman is an exceptionally confident and charismatic performer. Whether she's playing Oswin, 'Clara' or someone else entirely come Christmas, we're confident we'll enjoy her return. And the months of speculation between now and then...



After all, part of the fun of being a Doctor Who fan is wildly speculating on what's coming up next. Well, that and the complaining...

How do you think Jenna-Louise Coleman will return to Doctor Who? Will she be playing Oswin or Clara this Christmas? Share your own theories below!

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