Madcap and cockamamie Doctor Who theories …
OK – so here’s the thing. I’m beginning to come around to a theory about Doctor Who, based on little more than instinct and a few facts that seem to have clicked together, and other people’s opinions on the ‘net – and I really hate it. So I’m writing it down so that over the next month as it is proved right or wrong I can either be happily embarrassed, or bitterly justified, in all or in part.
It’s sparked, in part, by comments I’ve seen out in the ‘verse that Amy Pond is not real, or is some sort of … part of the Doctor, formed in some annoying fashion during his regeneration, or something – along with her village and her fiance and everything else. I don’t know exactly what the theories are, because I rolled my eyes and skipped those posts. I thought it was stupid.
Now I’m not so sure.
First, take a look at these cracks showing up everywhere. He described them as “two parts of space and time that should never have touched”. They were present in the very fabric of spacetime — a crack that appeared to be part of a wall would still be there if the wall were removed. On one hand, they are everywhere; the Saturnynians fled because their planet was being destroyed by the Silence. But they’re also everywhere the Doctor goes, very nearly – and look at the placement of them in each location.
According to Rosanna Calvierri, the cracks ranged in size from tiny to “big as the sky”, and some connected to other worlds, while others only to “silence, and the end of all things”. Of course, the Doctor only knew about the ones on Saturnyne because he happened to choose Venice in 1580 just when the big fish were about to make their move, and just before, apparently, Silence fell. I’ll come back to that.
– In Amelia Pond’s room, on the second (or first, depending on who’s saying it) floor. I don’t have the episode with me, but in trying to picture where the bed was and where the crack was in relation to it I think it was at a ninety degree angle to the window – to the left? I think? Anyway. Not really relevant to my point – except that it’s been there a little while, long enough for her to be really scared. The question is: why did the TARDIS crash-land just *there*? Of all the gin joints in all the world, why did it land in Amelia Pond’s garden?
– The Beast Below: on a spot low on the country-ship’s hull. Could have been near where the TARDIS landed – or not. No way to know. And the Doctor never knew about it.
– Victory of the Daleks: the TARDIS dematerializes, and there it is, behind where it was. And the Doctor never knew about it. It wasn’t there earlier; the Doctor zipped off to the Dalek ship with Amy and Churchill standing right there, and even if Winnie shrugged it off, Miss Dear-Santa-please-send-someone certainly wouldn’t.
– The Lonely Angel duology: Big honkin’ crack in the Byzantium ship (was its name the Byzantium, or …?). And here’s where it starts getting weird. I’ll come back to that. Nowhere near the TARDIS, so it doesn’t bode well for this part of my theory, but then again it doesn’t seem to have appeared till it showed up – was that supposed to be the reason the ship crashed? Which happened after the TARDIS chased it for a little while.
– Vampires in Venice: This was where most of the information about the cracks comes from, thanks to Rosanna Calvieri. There is no crack here, but silence falls as the Doctor enters the TARDIS – and it just struck me that that was an odd reaction. He’s been hearing all this about silence falling, and now he’s there when it happens – and he leaves? Strange. Not Doctor-like. This is the person who said “There’s something there that doesn’t make sense. Let’s go and poke it with a stick.” Far from poking, he scarpers. That doesn’t make sense. *poke*poke*
– Amy’s Choice: no cracks. As someone somewhere pointed out the whole episode actually took place in the TARDIS. There’d better not be any cracks.
– The Silurian duo: nothing till the end, and there it is, right next to the TARDIS again. OK, so it’s not so pervasive as I thought – if you’d asked me before I listed them I’d have said more appeared closer to the TARDIS – but they do always seem to be within a stone’s throw of the TARDIS …
OK, so, what are they? The first thing the Doctor says about Amy’s wall is “two parts of space and time that should never have touched, pressed together”. Amy has heard voices through it – “Prisoner Zero has escaped”; how did she hear English? And did Prisoner Zero escape through that crack (unlikely: small) or another, whereabouts unknown? And if it was another, shouldnt’ the Doctor have followed up on that? There were no memory issues. That we know of.
Rosanna: We ran from the Silence. … There were cracks. Some were tiny. Some were as big as the sky. Through some we saw worlds with people. And through others we saw silence, and the end of all things. We fled to an ocean like ours and the cracks snapped shut behind us. And Saturnyne was lost.
Other cracks don’t seem to have done anything. The one in Churchill’s bunker; the one in the Britain ship. Then there was the great big horrific one on the Byzantium ship. That was just no fun at all. And it was the same kind of crack that showed up in the center of the Earth – that took Rory. That erased Rory.
What does that even mean, that Rory was erased? He was a nurse. Does that mean that if he saved someone’s life, that person is now dead? Or would time have healed around him and replaced him in every instance? I hate this.
But I was trying to go somewhere. Right, the crack in the center of the Earth unwrote Rory – but the Doctor was able to hunker down next to it and stick his arm in up to the shoulder, and pull something out. Because he’s a Time Lord? He can be seriously exposed and has the presence of mind to remain in existence?
(Someone out there pointed out that it might be of interest that both the Silurians and the Daleks used gravity bubble technology – actually, the militant priests in the Angels stories did too, didn’t they? Well, I think it’s kind of interesting – having just realized it – that both Prisoner Zero (to make itself look like the coma victims, and to hide the room), and the Saturnynians used perception filters.)
One of the theories out there is that this is all in the Doctor’s head. If that turns out to be the case, I will be irretrievably alienated. Even if the Doctor wakes up with Donna Noble sitting next to him, and he’s wearing David Tennant’s face, that’s it.
Horrifyingly, there may be some merit to the idea. It would explain the recurrence of technologies in completely unrelated races. It would explain the rampant (and, I’m sorry to say, justified) uncertainty of the Doctor. It would explain his carelessness in so many cases – not determining for certain where Prisoner Zero came through, not following up on its taunts, not even trying to negotiate with the Saturnynians (he could negotiate, or appoint negotiators, with the Silurians to share Earth, but not them?). Hearing Silence fall over Venice, and closing the TARDIS door, and, silently, leaving. It would explain why the Lonely Assassins were able to move when they absolutely shouldn’t have been. It would explain why this Doctor hasn’t been able to be where or when he’s said he would be, except perhaps Churchill’s bunker and picking up River Song.
Most of all, it would explain why it’s Amy, not the Doctor, who so often has saved the world.
– The Beast Below: Amy’s the one who makes a decision and braves his wrath to implement it. And she’s right, of course.
– Victory of the Daleks: She’s the one who stopped Paisley Boy from blowing up.
– Vampires in Venice: if Francesco had still been running about loose, it could have been stickier for the Doctor. And she was the one to take him out, not Rory and his mop. She didn’t save the day – but she saved Rory. (That time.)
– Amy’s Choice: She made it. She was right. Half. She was decisive (well, and didn’t care), and took action.
– Cold Blood: She rescues Mo and – almost – saves the Doctor and Nasreen.
It’s a bit much. They’re almost tied, Amy and the Doctor – and in the Whoverse, that’s kind of ridiculous.
There have been questions raised about the timeline, too. I found a screencap of Rory’s hospital badge – from Eleventh Hour, I believe – showing that it was issued in 1990. So unless he started volunteering when he was about five, or he’s about 38 as of 2010. Which – he’s not. Their wedding date was 05/26/2010. Was. Then of course there was the thing in “Beast Below” where the computer said she was 1306 years old, which makes sense in no direction at all … (If she’s supposed to be getting married in May of 2010, and goes off with the Doctor the night before, then she was seven fourteen years ago, in 1996, which means she was nineteen in 2008 and 21 when she finally gets into the TARDIS. The solar flares are/were/will be in the 29th century, and they visit the ship in the 33rd century (But – Liz X was only queen for about 300 years …), which: take 33 and subtract 20 and you’ve got 13. Which would be 1300 years. So … Er?
Wait. My brain is fuzzy, but coming clearer… If Amy was born in 1989, add 1306, and you get 3295 – right at the end of the 33rd century. So. There isn’t after all any problem with the number, and now I have to go see why people say there was. And my head hurts. Stupid time travel.
The date of the explosion causing all of the cracks, the Doctor calculates, is 6/26/2010. That’s this Saturday. Which is the day DW airs here – though we’ll only be getting the Van Gogh episode, and I believe in England the season is over, so really it has no significance. Which is odd.
My theory was, originally, that the TARDIS is causing the cracks. Given the bit of debris from “Cold Blood” … that could be accurate in more ways than one; I meant that the TARDIS appearing on the scene cracked the universe on that site. Which could work together with “the TARDIS exploding caused the cracks”.
Like I said, I thought the whole Bobby-Ewing-in-the-shower theory was ridiculous. I scoffed. But then I saw someone’s post somewhere that Leadworth – the village Amy comes from, the village where she and Rory once in a dream settled down and started a family – is an anagram: DR WHO and TALE or LATE (or TEAL, which is dumb) (or ALTE, which isn’t the same as ALT, which could be an abbreviation of ALTernate, but …). Ohhhh… Dear. This isn’t good.
I like Matt Smith more than I ever expected to, or let myself hope. I’m in no danger of loving him as hard as I did/do David Tennant, but I like him a lot. But if this turns out to be true, and honestly the BBC website “Goodbye Amy!” feels like further evidence … that’s it. I’m done.
I should probably just put myself out of my misery and go look for spoilers. And, in fact, at lunch I think I will. It goes back to the decision I made after Serenity – under ordinary circumstances, I want to avoid spoilers at all costs. If there’s going to be a huge catastrophe, I want to know about it. Wash dying? Catastrophe. Ianto? Catastrophe. This season of Doctor Who has all been in XI’s head? Catastrophe.
I daresay another post will follow before long.
Walk in the dust 
Leave a comment