Doctor Who/WMG/Series 6

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Speculation regarding Matt Smith's second season as The Doctor.

Series Six Cliffhangers

The Series 6 / Season 32 Midseason Cliffhanger will involve...

  • ...River.

Her identity one of the mysteries that's going to be covered next series.

    • CONFIRMED and CONFIRMED. She's part of the mystery of Amy's Schroedinger's Pregnancy.
  • ...the Silence.

The Cracks were slowly explained during series 5, why not dump reveal the mystery of the Silence at the midpoint, setting up the second half so the Doctor has to have separate adventures knowing what the Silence is, and that it probably has to be stopped immediately?

  • ...the Mondas Cybermen.

With a redesign, since it could be in the budget this year.

    • Confirmed, but not a major redesign. The chestplate is just slightly different.
  • ...the Daleks.

They're always involved when something big is happening, and when it's not them, it's...

    • Moffat has stated there will be no Daleks in series 6.
  • ...the Time Lords.

Okay, this is stretching it, due to The End of Time and everything, but maybe it's more specific Time Lords, like...

      • Jossed, though it turns out a plot revelation shows River/Melody is part-Time Lord, part-human, based on the mechanics of how the "real" Time Lords gained the ability to regenerate.
    • ...the Master.

Also not likely, but like I said, if it's not the Daleks, it's him. But maybe it's another Time Lord, like...

    • ...Jenny.

It's about time she showed up again. What a cliffhanger it would be, too.

    • Jossed.
  • ...a fez.

Will the Doctor get to the fez? You have to wait until fall! BEST. CLIFFHANGER. EVER.

  • ...Jenny wearing a fez.

Takes after her dad, no matter what he looks like and what silly things he thinks are cool.

    • Assuming you mean the Doctor's daughter and not Vastra's associate, Jossed.
  • ... Susan. (but it will be her regeneration. This will solve any problems that may be caused by Carole Ann Ford's health. She's 70 years old, at least. I'm sure that may be a liability.)
    • Jossed, though Bernard Cribbins was hardly a liability and he was well into his seventies at the time of "Voyage of the Damned".
  • ...a new species.

A new species called the Silents. This has been somewhat-partially proved in the trailer for this season, with that beastie that Amy turns her flashight on. I also found a script spoiler somewhere online with the line "Amy looks up at the ceiling. There are four Silents there." Finally, I found an interview somewhere with the producers saying that they were tired of the old monsters because of re-using them over and over, and wanted to introduce something new.

    • Due to the Silence's nature (who appeared earlier in the premiere "The Impossible Astronaut"/"Day of the Moon"), this isn't COMPLETELY disproven, however they do not appear, nor are mentioned. The ceiling spoiler is from "Day of the Moon", not the mid-season cliffhanger episode, "A Good Man Goes to War". One could argue that the "a new species" bit is disproven, as the Silence are very strongly suggested to have caused the Cracks in Time, and one of them said "Silence will fall".
    • It's since been revealed that The Silence is a religious movement, not a species.

The person behind the Silence is.......

RIVER SONG!!!! Now I can imagine what most of you are thinking about that theory. And yes, I am totally aware of how ridiculous that idea is, and also why it can't work, so there no need to review those details. The reason behind this theory is that we know that River has done something really awful in the future...er the past.......FNARG, And she said at the end of The Big Bang that everything would change. We also know that both the mystery voice and River's true identity are something of a puzzle. Who's to say they can't be the same puzzle? As for the logic behind trying to kill your past self, well if I'm right, I'll just leave it to the Grand Moff to explain, because even I admit that this one is far fetched, and I can't work out the mechanics behind it. Just consider that we've seen the rules broken before, and consider that the answers to both of these mysteries will likely be something completely out of left field.

The Silence are really...

The victims of the cracks in time. Now bare with me for a second. The cracks erased people from time and from memories. What happens when you look away from a Silent? They're erased from your memories. Because of the reboot that the Doctor performed on the universe, they aren't the full person who was eaten any more, more like an echo of them, and that is why they look the way they do. It also explains the fact that they are not a species—multiple species were eaten by the cracks in time, but because of the way the "echos" were created, they all ended up looking the same. It also explains why they've technically been around forever—the cracks completely erased you from time, so they could be in every time logically. It would also explain why Amy seemed to notice the Silent before anyone else and semi-remember them when no one else could—she grew up next to the crack, which made it easier for her to remember people once they were eaten while others couldn't. The same principle could apply here.


The Doctor, Regenerations and Valeyard

The 11th or 12th Doctor will, at the end of his life, be granted more regenerations.

By his former selves. The reason for the call backs to the previous Doctors is because they'll all help, if only off screen for some, create a device to give him more regenerations. Perhaps the Master will try to use it and 9, 10, 11 and maybe 12 (and previous ones, if they can get them) will work together to stop perhaps the Simm Master and a new one. As for how Rose won't be with 9, it could take place after he left but before he came back and picked her up. 10 could be between companions.

    • Jossed? In one episode of the Sarah Jane Adventures, the Doctor says he can change 507 times. Then again, he lies.
      • Probably jossed. Supposedly, if a Time Lord killed another Time Lord, they would get the dead Time Lord's regenerations. The Doctor killed a whole bunch of Time Lords and has their regenerations. Or, since the regeneration limit was artificial and enforced by Rassilion, with the Time Lords gone the limit on regenerations is nonexistent.
      • Also, supporting the 507 thing, we have to remember that the Time War led to huge changes in Time Lord society, to the point of literally reviving their King in the Mountain. It's quite possible that the increase in regenerations has to do with this. Either removing all limits to support the war effort, or artificially supercharging everyone's ability.

The Tenth Doctor thought he was going to regenerate into the Valeyard

The Tenth Doctor is clearly dreading his regeneration. When he can delay it no longer, he flips one last control on the TARDIS. When he regenerates into Eleven, the TARDIS is crashing into the earth. Coincidence? Accident? Or Ten's last attempt to save the world from himself? Of course, Ten was wrong in the end. Or was he..?

  • This is somewhat supported by the fact that, when Ten is agonizing over having to sacrifice himself to save Wilf, he starts shouting "I could do so much more!" One could argue that he's just upset, or he just means this particular incarnation, but it does seem odd that he's ignoring the fact that his next incarnation would (theoretically) be carrying on his work...
  • It looks as if Ten had reason to be scared of turning into the Valeyard. The Eleventh Doctor acts like the Valeyard/Dream Lord contained in a Stepford Smiler shell in "The Pandorica Opens". That last control that Ten flips before regenerating may have led to the TARDIS developing temporal energy-regulation controls such as the Friction Contrafibulator and Zigzag Plotter (unless of course either of those controls were already present before the TARDIS regenerated into its Series Five form).

Eleven is the Valeyard

See above, and consider also that the weird half-death regeneration-with-the-same-face might still have counted against the doctor's remaining regenerations, bumping him right up against that window of Valeyard-dom.

    • What about the Dreamlord?
      • The Doctor's evil side.

If the Doctor ever regenerates into a women, she will be a lesbian.

If you have been a male for nearly ten centuries, this is quite a probable side-effect, considering. And if the Doctor had been in a relationship with a companion before regeneration (like the newer series likes to do these days), it could get very interesting...

  • If Moffat ever writes episodes for a female Doctor, he'll probably make her bisexual as a continuity nod to Eleven and the other bisexual Doctors.
  • Look up Curse of the Fatal Death some time. Written by Moffat but non-canonical. Less bisexual and more intrest in the Master, dalek bumps and all.

The Doctor has become the Valeyard

And no one can stop him.

  • Series Five seems to imply that Eleven is the Valeyard/Dream Lord trapped in a box (the Pandorica). The Series Five finale also indicates that whether or not the force trapped in that box is the Valeyard/Dream Lord, it is a force that cannot be stopped; it can only be tricked into submission. If that force is the Valeyard/Dream Lord, then Eleven has been tricking it into submission repeatedly across the series; his Big Bang idea was the smartest trick he used, but until the TARDIS explodes, the issue is still unresolved.

A Time Lord's sexual orientation can change with each regeneration.

Their default orientation is asexual—possibly purposely engineered to keep the population down. For beings that can live hundreds of years, over-population could become a significant problem. However, every once in a while, after a regeneration they pop up as non-asexual. Ten is hetero, so is Eight, and we can presume One as well, since he had to get that granddaughter somehow. Eleven, I think, is gay—he does seem to go on a bit about how good looking Jeff is. This explains, for instance, how Five traveled with so many attractive companions of both genders without a hint of temptation. Also, why Nine didn't show any romantic interest in Rose, but when he became Ten, he fell in love with her.

  • Nine is bi. He showed some interest in Rose, argued that he was not asexual, was pretty overjoyed at the 51st Century's pansexuality, and therefor Jack's pansexuality and there were other hints between him and Jack.
  • I like this theory, but I think Eleven is bisexual at least. When Amy kissed him, his first instinct was to put one hand on her hip and the other in her hair.
    • The way Eleven checks out the rather hot young Venetian woman at the beginning of "Vampires of Venice" indicates that he has at least an appreciation for the other gender. I'm going with bi, personally.
    • I concur with Eleven being bisexual. Eleven's pained facial expressions in "Vincent and the Doctor" and "The Lodger" seem to indicate that he's also deeply entrenched in a Transparent Closet. Poor guy.
  • The Eighth Doctor Adventures and other EU stuff made the Eighth Doctor pretty definitely bisexual.
  • Clearly bisexuality is the default. Asexuality is a more cultural thing on Gallifrey.

The Dream-Lord is the Valeyard.

  • Not so much a wild-mass guess, as a logical assumption based on the information provided. Both are described as manifestations of the Doctor's dark side- the psychic coral merely acted as a conduit for the Valeyard to manifest himself prematurely from the stated point where the Doctor is meant to regenerate into him (between the 12th and 13th Doctor's- whom the 11th Doctor isn't that far off from). Notice how in The Ultimate Foe, the Valeyard manifests as a dark-haired and darkly-clothed man in contrast to the blonde, garishly dressed 6th Doctor, whereas in Amy's Choice he takes the form of a short, plump and plain man, in contrast to the 11th Doctor's tall, dark and handsome appearance, which he makes numerous mocking references to in the episode, amid his standard Hannibal Lectures.
    • I think it's more that the Dream-Lord is a manifestation of what becomes the Valeyard: not so much good-versus-evil, as a gradual degradation. Taking into account the events of "The Waters of Mars"—or even going back to "School Reunion"—it seems to me this has been a long time coming.

Regeneration doesn't have a hard limit, but a cultural/regulatory one.

There is a finite resource behind what allows/causes regeneration. A regen limit makes sense to avoid an eventual population nightmare if every time lord could liver forever, barring a double tap, no matter how low the birth rate is. Still, note that the Doctor now can regenerate ONLY 507 more times or whatever the number is. With no Time Lord Regeneration Regulatory Authority he either can freely use up his natural limit or that is all the regeneration phlebotinum the Doctor was able to salvage after the time war will allow for.

Eleven is becoming the Valeyard.

After the events of A Good Man Goes To War, Eleven has the Time Lord equivalent of a nervous breakdown and decides that in order to be 'good' again, he must fix history, starting with Earth. The first of the Autumn episodes happens to be entitled 'Let's Kill Hitler' (no, seriously). Assuming the first part of this WMG is right, the desperate Doctor attempts to 'fix' the worst event in human history: the Holocaust. Obviously, it doesn't work. Through his repeated attempts at 'fixing' history in various ways, he creates a universe in which all the crazy stuff rumoured to happen in A Good Man Goes To War (Roman Empire existing in the 21st Century, pterodactyls flying around and Winston Churchill riding a mammoth, for starters) actually happens. Realising that he has now just broken history possibly beyond repair, he falls deep into a state of despair and starts to call himself the Valeyard, believing that the alliance against him are actually right. 'Fixing' the Holocaust is the event the Doctor was referring to when he asked Rory about his time as the Lone Centurion, and holds great plot importance.

  • My god... the Doctor is responsible for the cracks. All in an attempt to change the universe enough, to fix the biggest mistake of all-The Time War.
    • OK, it's been mostly Jossed by Let's Kill Hitler. However, the new trailers and some new prequel-ly materials confirm that the crazy-alternate-universe stuff DOES happen. Whether the Doctor is the cause of it has not yet been revealed.

The Doctor's death will be used to get a fresh batch of regenerations.

How? Before he dies, the Doctor will plan a Xanatos Gambit to save his life. This will involve cloning a new Time Lord body, keeping it under tight wraps, and downloading all his knowledge and personality into it. Or just creating it as a vessel for his mind. This clone body will have never regenerated before, allowing the Doctor 13 more lives. The question is how to deal with the 24th Doctor, but that's not going to be until the 2060s.

The Ganger!Doctor is/will be the Valeyard.

A slightly unhinged version of the doctor, spawning from his eleventh form (making him a "twelfth" doctor), who, due to his presumably flawlessly copied time lord DNA can regenerate, and theoretically repair his own physical instability through the healing-y powers of that regeneration? Sounds reasonable to me.

  • Noob question; Who's the Valeyard?


The 13th and "Final" Doctor will be "The Perfect Doctor", a amalgamation of all of his previous incarnations. And Ginger.

The Doctor is basically a character who has a serial dissociative identity disorder- each regeneration brings a new personality (although with the raw essence of what makes the Doctor the Doctor always remaining). One of the main ways of treating multiple personalities, especially in Hollywood Psychology? Making all of the personalities merge into a single identity. So the 13th Doctor would be as if you had slammed the personalities and characters of all the other 12 Doctors together. Oh, and he'd be Ginger, because, well, it's a running gag.

  • His appearance and skills would reflect this too- Tom Baker's scarf, Sylvester McCoy's hat (although only after his companion told him to take off a fez), Davison's celery, Tennant's suits...

Alternatively, the 13th Doctor will be constantly switching between the 12 personalities.

i.e: He'll behave like 5 one second, then switch to 11, and start a sentence the way 4 would've, but finish the sentence the way 9 would.

  • It would be awesome, but we'd all have seizures.
  • 13 incarnations. 13 episodes per season.

The Doctor's final incarnation will be Flavor Flav!!!

Susan will return for the Thirteenth Doctor's last story.

She will inherit the TARDIS. Whether she regenerates at the end or goes on for a season or two before regenerating will depend on Carol Ann Ford's health.

The series finale will be the twelfth or thirteenth doctor comatose and stuck in a human hospital.

Not damaged enough to regenerate, but too damaged for the humans to wake up. He'll be signed in as a John Doe (John Smith?) because none of his companions will be there to ID him and (metafictionally) so they won't be able to identify him. The companions will be running around trying to find him, figure out if he has a regeneration left and, if not, figure out how to get around the 12 regeneration limit.

The next series will depend on how soon the show is Uncancelled. If it takes only a couple of years, or even a single season break, they will figure out how to revive him, and the Valeyard will be a result of messing about with his regenerations. If it's more than a couple of years, like when new Who fans are Running the Asylum and can have it revived, the series will pick up twenty years from the end of the current show's run with the companions' children and the same situation.

The Last Doctor will be a kid

Every regeneration of the doctor gets younger, so if were on the eleventh doctor, who is in his twenties, when we get to the last, it should be a teen or kid, and come on, how cool would it be to see a little kid with all the doctor's quirks?

10 or 10b will return in some form

We know how the River Song plot concludes on her end, and so eventually the eleventh Doctor is going to have to give her his screwdriver and do all that other stuff, leading to her heading to the library. There is just too much potential there not to show 10 again. Granted, David Tennant probably won't come back to guest star, so they'll have to use stock footage from the library episodes for those scenes.

Alternatively, Tennant will come back as a guest star to play 10b in an episode or two, now married to Rose and going permanently by the name "John Smith".[1] John and the Eleventh Doctor will come into conflict in some way. In fact, he could be the episode's Big Bad. John may be embittered about no longer being the Doctor and the Doctor could be jealous that John was able to step off the roller coaster of being a galactic fixer and live a peaceful life. Eventually they would settle their differences, and once again go their separate ways.

The last story

The last story will involve the 13th Doctor (the ginger female one) discovering the true nature of his universe : a work of fiction. Thus, having discovered the final truth of the laws of nature in his reality, he will force the writers to come up with a good end.

  • So, sort-of Blade Runner then?
    • Hangonamo, ginger female one? We've had two ginger female companions lately, and this troper's felt for a while that there needs to be a definitive conclusion to Donna's story...

The Ginger Doctor.

We all know the doctor wants to be Ginger, but who would play him? My guess, Rupert Grint

The Ginger Doctor will be the Valeyard

Any concurrent Doctors, as well as, preceeding, succeeding Doctors will not be ginger. The good Doctors will be hilariously irate about this.

The final Doctor Who episode will have all 13 Doctors

Seriously final, will-never-be-renewed, we mean it this time seriously really truly last episode. Because it could never be topped.

  • And instead of calling it "The Thirteen Doctors", it will just be "The Doctor".
    • Gonna be pretty hard to pull off since William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton and John Pertwee are all dead.
      • Computer-generated people are getting better all the time, though.
        • And it's not like they've never recast a Doctor before (Richard Hurndall playing the First Doctor in the 20th Anniversary special).

The Doctors final regeneration will be Conan O'Brien

The ultimate crazy ginger.

The Thirteenth Doctor will regenerate into...

  • A young man who looks an awful lot like the First Doctor. Time isn't a big ball or a banana...it's a wheel.
    • Or a girl.

The Doctor will have a major arc for his 'last' regeneration.

Something that occurred to me was that the Doctor is starting to run low on regenerations and I could see several things done by companions if he dies without the 'last' one.

1) Either the doctor or his companions make an equivalent devils deal with a being of power or the master to get the Doctor another regeneration or another set of them. Done by the doctors companions to bring him back or the doctor to save the world/a companion.

2) Somehow the doctor gets tied to the Masters extra regenerations. In essence now if one kills the other they both are put at risk, maybe even being sympathetically injured if nearby. This would add a few interesting new potential elements for future shows.

The 12th Doctor will have been a companion

Well, masquerading as one. It'd be interesting, wouldn't it?

    • Mickey. Out of the four guy companions of the revival series (since it's doubtful the Doctor will regenerate into a girl), he's the only one that makes sense. If it turned out to be Rory, it would put massive amounts of Squick on his and River's relationship. Jack's a bit too fond of guns. And Adam... no, just no. Which leave good old Mickey.
    • Leaving aside the massive paradoxes this idea would cause, there's also Wilf.

Rory, death(s) and lack of being dead

Rory will die in series 6

In the Doctor Who Confidential at the end of The Impossible Astronaut, Stephan Moffat says something along the lines of "sometimes, people you love die." He was referring to the Doctor and Rory.

  • Again?
    • as of the Siren episode it has only been three to four times. Not to mention since the show keeps reminding us of his time as the Centaurion he is effectively double the Doctor's age. You would think the poor chap wants to out do the Doctor everything, including regenerations.
  • He will die then not be dead once or twice more to make us think he never will, and then he will. For real and permanently.
    • This is a definite possibility. He's already died before in Cold Blood, and in both The Curse Of The Black Spot and The Doctor's Wife (though he was quickly revived in the former and the latter was an illusion). Everyone is expecting him to not die now, which means that in the second half of Series 6 he might be quickly and suddenly killed off for good, with no reset of the universe to save him again.
      • Alternatively, he might just become the Doctor Who equivalent of Kenny.
    • It appeared it was going to happen in The Wedding of River Song, with The Silence even commenting on it, before Amy's Big Damn Heroes moment.


Rory is immortal

For a moment, Amy had godlike power thanks to the crack in her bedroom. Not only did she bring The Doctor back into existence, but she also unconsciously made Rory immortal a la Captain Jack. Amy didn't successfully resuscitate him, he just came back to life shortly after she tried. Neither the TARDIS or The Doctor seem to notice this time though, possibly due to how it happened.

  • Sort of related to this, Rory is supposed to be dead. After all, he was dead or dying before he was erased from existence. However, Amy is some sort of reality warper(possibly due to the crack) and she brought him back. Now, the universe keeps trying to right itself, hence the reason Rory keeps dying. Amy keeps warping reality to cancel this. Eventually, this will start having really bad effects on the universe and Amy will have to accept the loss and let Rory die for good in order to prevent the end of the world as we know it.
    • This could also explain why the TARDIS sensors can't figure out if Amy is pregnant or not. She is pregnant with Rory's child, but Rory is supposed to be dead, so the baby both does and doesn't exist.
    • You have no idea how pregnancy works, do you?

River Song kills Rory.

As stated before, the Doctor isn't a human and Rory is the best "man" River knows. However with Rory's track record, he'll just get better.

  • I dunno about getting better, though I do have my suspicions about this. Recall the Doctor saying the following to Madame Kovarian:

The Doctor: Good men don't need rules. Today is not the day to find out why I have so many.

If you look at it one way, he's pretty much telling Madame Kovarian that he does indeed have rules, therefore not making him the good man that's been hinted at since and Stone. Rory, who, so far this season, has been nothing if not playing the role of 'the good man' straight ever since the beginning of the season, and the only time his temper's really been tested was only at the end of Almost People.

  • Considering the opening was a speech to dear River about how her father was amazing and would never let her down and all that, and well, he is her father, a role that is often looked up to by a majority of girls, that theory's just gotten a lot more likely, at least in this troper's opinion.
  • Look at River's expression when she first realises its Rory in the prison at the begining of 'A Good Man Goes to War'. Its absolutely pained. This may be because he doesn't remember her- or maybe because the last time she saw him, she killed him.
    • I though it was because this will be the last time she'll meet a version of her father, who knows who she is.

One of Rory's ancestors was a Chameleon Arched Time Lord

His Time Lord genes are mostly dormant, but he is still able to come back from the dead, just not regenerate. This might also explain the little girl. If it is Amy's daughter, Rory is the father, and all the time she spent in the TARDIS in utero activated her Time Lord DNA.

  • Jossed by the very episode that establishes Chamelon Arches. They don't make the Time Lord DNA "dormant", they put EVERYTHING Time Lord into the fob watch. Also, providing the Little Girl is Amy and Rory's daughter, also Jossed. She was conceived while the TARDIS was in flight, and got tampered by Eye Patch Lady and that's how she got Time Lord DNA.

Rory's grandmother was Susan Foreman.

In similar way to the Master, Susan escaped from the Time War by using a Chameleon Arch to make herself human. She then ended up starting a family and eventually died of old age. But before she passed away, one of her children ended up marrying someone with the last name Williams and they had a kid named Rory.

    • I thought she married David.
    • Time Lords don't have the same ageing rate as humans. He could conceivably have died before the Time War reached her.

Rory has a weaker version of whatever is causing Miracle Day.

The plot for Torchwood: Miracle Day, is that all humans on the Earth become immortal; they should be dead, but they keep living. Its been speculated in show that some aliens have been experimenting to cause this- maybe Rory just happened to be one of the earlier test subjects, and it allows him to keep coming back to life.

  • Given what we know by episode 10 of that series, probably Jossed.

Rory is The Master.

In Let's Kill Hitler, Rory mentions hearing a knocking sound in his head. Amy dismisses it as Hitler, but it could just be the sound of the drums. Rory is The Master, returned to life somehow. This is why he always comes back to life, because he's a Time Lord. Being brought back the way he was, he now permanently remains the same after regenerating.

  • Supporting the theory wholeheartedly. I say that he regenerated after breaking out of the Time Lock, and Chameleon Arched himself to be a human again. Regenerated to a little kid. The Doctor may or may not know about this fact already, but if he does, he just doesn't want to reveal him, and set the Master free - he does not want to basically kill Rory while freeing the Master. Also - the fact that he married the Master's daughter? Ouch.

Rory is The Doctor.

Something about the regeneration process split him into two people. The Eleven we know will become the Valeyard, and Rory is actually Twelve.

  • "You are turning me into you!" Rory, The Girl Who Waited. The Doctor, master of both the Batman Gambit and the Indy Ploy. On occasion the Indy Gambit and the Batman Ploy as well. The Doctor hates himself, really hates himself. Look at what he is facing, either an inevitable death or becoming the Valeyard. He can escape his greatest possible fall by suicide by River. Though, at what cost? He even said himself, or that Doctor said, in his final hours "humanity always needs saving". He'll need an heir if he does decide to not stop his death.
  • Alternatively, River lied about Rory being her father at Demon's Run, but earlier in her life (as Mels) thought he was before later finding out the truth. She truly is the child of the TARDIS and was actually conceived by the vortex itself. Rory has been a chameleon-arched Eleventh Doctor from the start, albeit with some kind of disguise or perception filter to look different that even he doesn't know has on at all times, including the illusion of having been a child. Note that Rory wasn't seen when young Amelia first appeared... he didn't exist yet. At some point, the Doctor figures out that Rory isn't what he seems and deliberately creates a paradox by crossing his own time-line and in effect, comes back for young-Amy after all and into her life as Rory. He had to do this, else Rory and River both would have never existed and bad things would have happened to the universe, but at the same time another version of himself still exists that shouldn't... the one doomed to die at the lake. It's a cruel parallel to The Girl Who Waited, with one Doctor having to face certain death. By the end, Rory would have found his fob-watch (thanks to questions from the Doctor about how he was missing something his entire life) and turned back into the Doctor, but the other Doctor is still dead and Rory is gone forever.
    • Or maybe it wasn't a paradox that he had to fulfill, maybe Eleven (a later eleven) planned and did this deliberately. One day he realizes he has grown too emotionally distant and realizes too late (after doing something unforgivable) that he's become a monster. So when he regenerates, he turns himself human, goes back in time, and deliberately becomes his own companion to see what it's REALLY like for them to travel in the TARDIS with him and regain a little perspective. When Matt Smith leaves, Rory will regain his memories and continue the show as Twelve (or move right into Thirteen with a new actor).
    • Or just to make this even more complicated, all of the above is true, except Rory is the regeneration of the ganger Doctor, sending himself back in time to gain perspective on humanity so he will be better equipped to stop the original Doctor, who has become the Valeyard.
    • This would also be a pretty big stab to the heart for fans of Old Amy. The TARDIS supposedly can't keep two Amys on board at once, yet there have been two Doctors onboard this whole time. Imagine how that realization might affect both Rory and Eleven.
  • It's also possible that Rory might not be the Doctor himself, but a sort of shadow or echo that imprinted on him since he was a child due to the Tenth Doctor's regeneration, as said above. Think of what happened to Jackson Lake, but to a lesser extent.

Rory's immortality has already been explained.

Rory Williams is Stormageddon, Dark Lord of All

  • Craig and Sophie get caught in some more wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey adventures, and the Doctor loses another baby in time. (Seriously, don't let the Doctor near your baby). It lands in Leadworth and grows up to be Rory.

Rory can only die when he believes Amy no longer needs him.

  • Amy's exposure to the Time Crack over many years has made her a low-level reality warper, as revealed in the Big Bang, where she willed the Doctor back into existence. Because of her love of Rory, even when he'd been removed from her memories and timeline, when the Doctor's enemies used her memories to create a trap, she pulled his soul out of oblivion and into an Auton body. The combination of the Time Crack's power, Amy's exposure to it, Rory's devotion to her and his spending two millenia dedicating his existence to her protection have made him into the ultimate guardian of Amy, so much so that he is unable to truly die so long as she lives and needs him. That is why the Silence told him that no matter what he goes through she would never come back for him when he confronted them in the aborted timeline - it wasn't mockery or a threat, they knew that he'd never let them past him to threaten Amy while he lived, and they can't kill him unless he believes his duty to Amy was over. They wanted him to doubt Amy, and by extension his guardianship of her, so they could get past him and get to the Doctor.

Rory is related to Ash.

  • That level of badassitude? Gotta be genetic.

Silents

The eyepatches let people remember the Silence

  • Not necessarily the eyepatch itself. If one wanted to remember the Silence, they would remove one of their eyes, hook it up to their brains wirelessly (or something), and keep it looking permanently at a Silent. You would be missing an eye, hence, eyepatch.
    • Confirmed.
      • Specifically, the eyepatches stimulate your memory functions so you remember them.

The Silents are the Echthroi

When they do their electrical attack, the victims are Xed (unNamed). This not only destroys them, it removes them from existence, like the Time Cracks. Which are ultimatly their doing also. At one point in A Wind in the Door the Echthroi are said to be causing rips in the universe. We never got any follow up on that destroyed secretary because she was removed from existance.

Amy is naturally, or was caused to become, a Namer. That is how she brought everything back. The Doctor, who has some qualities of a namer himself, tried to directly, but only subconciously kicked Amy's abilities into action when Rory died and was Cracked. "Tell me about Rory. Fantastic Rory, funny Rory, gorgeous Rory. Remember Rory." Which is how Rory's essence survived long enough to be actually Named.

Rory: Listen to me, you have to run. You have to get as far away from here as you can. I'm a thing. I'll kill you. Just go! Please, no, I don't want to go. Im Rory! I'm— Amy: Williams. Rory Williams from Leadworth. My boyfriend. How can I forget you?

In fact, at this point, Rory has been Named several times over. Rory Williams, Rory Pond, The Lone Centurion, Stupidface, Pretty...that's why he's so hard to kill.

The Silence Won't Fall...

  • The Silents will fall. We already know that there are going to be creatures in the upcoming series called 'Silents', afterall.
    • Jossed. Though technically a better translation is that silence "must" fall.

The Silents will be revealed to be Time Lords who were twisted refugees of the Time War, or The Silents were at least somehow involved in the conflict

I keep thinking of a (then) throwaway line from The End of Time, where Ten talks of the Skaro Degradations, The Nightmare Child, and the Could've-Been King and his Army of Never-Weres, and wonder if the Silents might fit in to that somewhere. The nature of none of those events or entities have been revealed heretofore, and we know that Steven Moffat loves binging on Continuity Porn, so the means, motive and opportunity for him to pull this twist is certainly out there. Since we don't know where the Time War fits into to time, linearlly, could they possibly be combatants from the war who somehow were able to evade the time lock and the destruction of both Skaro and Gallifrey? If that's the case, it might bring some sort of answer to, if not who killed The Doctor, at least WHY. Particularly if the Silents are twisted Time Lords. And remember, they did, apparently, build their own TARDIS-like-thingie...

  • Oh, and the mid-season cliffhanger is called A Good Man Goes to War. Mayhap a Time War?
    • It's not the Last Great Time War, and the battle is fought in one timezone (though it does involve beings spanning from the 19th to 41st centuries)
    • Alternatively, the Silents are a twisted new breed of Time Lords descended from River Song, making them a race of Time Lord-human hybrids. They eventually develop their own version of the TARDIS that is seen in the Lodger, but just as they aren't "pure" Time Lords (you can't just cook up a Time Lord like that, as a certain someone said) , the technology they develop is also impure - the Doctor claims that he's "too much" for the Lodger-TARDIS, which indicates that their TARDIS isn't as powerful as a Time Lord's one. This could also explain why they were supposedly driving the human race to develop space-faring technology - their attempt at a TARDIS could travel in time, but not space, so while they could go back and exist since the wheel and the fire, they remained bound to a single world. On the other hand, they found a way to master the perception filter technology even more than the Time Lords ever managed, which is where their Forget-attribute comes from.

Schizophrenia is caused by the Silence in the Whoniverse

We don't really know what causes schizophrenia. All we know about it is that the symptoms include hallucinations, delusions, and, occasionally, catatonic stupor and that antipsychotics and certain other treatments seem to be somewhat effective in treating it. The most common hallucinations are audio - the hearing of noises (like voices) that aren't there. Who's to say the voices aren't the Silence, and the delusions aren't the Silence putting suggestions in the affected person's mind? In "Day of the Moon", it is revealed that the Silence can put someone to sleep merely by telling them to, even without leaving their sight. The catatonic stupors (loss of physical mobility for a set period of time) may also be caused by the Silence. As for why certain treatments seem to be effective, the Silence are smart. They could easily lay off a bit. Why would they do this? Seems like a fun prank for the adolescents to carry out.

The Silence and the Silents are two different things.

The Silents are an alien race that serve something called the Silence or are working towards an event called the Silence. Thus when they say Silence will fall, they are not referring to themselves, rather to their goals.

  • The Silence is a religious organisation. Probably confirmed.

The Silence really were in the Library.

And they, inadvertently or not, were responsible for filling it with so many Vashta Nerada.

  • Jossed in the story. The Vashta Nerada were not "filled". They were taken there when their spores were inside every book.

The Silents and the Ood are closely related

  • The Silents' faces look like silly putty somebody dragged their fingers through. It could be the precursor or descendants of the Ood tentacles.
  • The Ood were developing time travel technology when we last saw them, and somhow advancing way faster than they should. It was never explained. Perhaps they got as far as the Black TARDIS?
  • There is a scary Ood in the trailer for "The Doctor's Wife". Eyes glowing green this time, almost creepier than red.
    • The episode gives no connection to the Silence. The green-eyed Ood is possessed by a being from another universe.
  • The Silents' sits even look like they're made from the same sort of material as the Ood's outfits.
  • Fact is, no matter how much they were abused, the Ood are a scary looking people. And they have reason to be angry with humanity.
    • The Silents'/Silence's anger seems more focused on the Doctor.

The Silence help out humanity, such as protecting them from aliens when The Doctor is not around.

So, Silence Falling is referred to as a bad thing. The Silence have been controlling Earth since as long as there have been protohumans. We are still around, aren't we? They may protect us when there are problems when The Doctor isn't around. We just don't know how many times that they have saved us since we forget them. They may antagonize The Doctor because they are protective of us, we're their protectorates, not his!

  • Also, that might explain Amy's baby/not baby: If the Silents have been protecting Earth, then Earth will have been destroyed if they fall. In the original timeline, they are still ruling Earth, allowing Amy and Rory to live a normal life. In the new timeline that the Doctor made, aliens have destroyed and ravaged Earth, not allowing Amy and Rory to have children.
    • Her baby/not baby has nothing to do with alternative timelines. That's because Amy's occupying a Ganger body.

The Silence aren't evil and the Doctor is essentially committing genocide.

  • Think about it: we have only seen a Silent attack without provocation once, and as mentioned above, that may have been out of frustration. Furthermore, one person's action does not define a species. And controlling human history behind the scenes is not necessarily evil: if a new species appeared on your planet that forgot you existed when they looked away, wouldn't you want to help them out a bit? We don't know for certain that the Silence are responsible for the cracks in time. It's all Steve's fault, of course.

The Silence were not responsible for destroying the TARDIS and the universe. Rather, something much, much worse was and it is now free.

"Silence will fall" in fact refers to their downfall in Day of the Moon at the hands of the Doctor. Something terrible was being restrained and rendered powerless by them, which might have been one of the reasons they acted as they did... though they were silent, mostly-evil conquerers they were also in a sense protecting humanity and the rest of the universe (but most importantly, themselves). With their power and influence greatly diminished, whatever it was they were guarding has broken free. Destroying the universe and the TARDIS were just pieces of a great plan to get the Doctor to neutralize The Silence, which he ultimately did.

  • And that person they tried to stop...may just be the Doctor.
    • Jossed. "Silence will fall" has nothing to do with their downfall.

Between 1969 and 2011, The Silence did something to reverse or counter the hidden extermination order in the moon landing.

It is unlikely that Amy, Rory or River never saw the moon landing video during their lifetimes, but none of them were compelled to kill any Silent they see on sight. With those two episodes being a Stable Time Loop set up by the future Doctor (supposedly), they should have been affected but they weren't.

  • They wouldn't need to. Whenever you look away from a Silent, you forget. It'll be as if there wasn't any change to the moon landing video, and you will never know.Quite simply, The Silence may have used the same trick the Doctor did back in 1969... embed a hidden message into something that many, many people were sure to watch, telling them to submit and listen to whatever The Silence order them to and that this order supersedes all others now and forever (making the moon landing video useless).
  • The Royal Wedding perhaps? 0.5 Billion? NO!! 2.5 Billion. The Doctor would have to wait a while to beat that!

The Silence are behind the whole of Madame Kovarian's operation, and also the attempt to blow up the TARDIS (without knowing the consequences).

The motivation for the anti-Doctor group led by Madame Kovarian still hasn't been adequately explained ('boo-hoo the docter is scary' doesn't quite satisfy me), and the idea of 'Silence will fall' was set up as being way too big to blow its whole load in the first two episodes (and we know that the characters from the Lodger will return...) so after the Doctor destroyed the Silent Empire, they created the Anti-Doctor organization slowly (only took 'em three millenia) as a means of revenge against him. This is actually plan B after plan A - blow up the TARDIS - somehow failed (I guess the voice in the TARDIS just before it explodes is a silence? Maybe).

The Silents are good, but think that the Doctor is evil.

Assuming that the Silents are ultimately benevolent, despite how scary they are, they could be against the Doctor because they see him as a threat. It's been established in "The Pandorica Opens" that much of the universe is scared of him, so who's to say the Silents aren't? They first occupied Earth because it's where the Doctor and so many aliens love to visit. At first, they weren't exactly sure if the Doctor was the monster they'd come to believe. But after theorizing that he may be why Earth is a Weirdness Magnet, and more importantly ordering their execution, they felt it was absolute proof they were in the right. Their alliance with Madame Kovarian is to fight off the Doctor.

How The Doctor will stop the Silents for good

  • He will go into the Time Vortex and broadcast the message from the Silents through every television for eternity, every holoscreen, every phone. Once a day sending out a continuous subliminal message: You should shoot us all on sight. Ever watched an episode of a tv programme again and think "I didn't see that bit last time!" That's because that part was on when the message happened to be replayed. Tinkering in the background. Maybe a little image in the corner. Either way, you will forget and you will do it.

The Silents predicted their downfall

  • They kidnapped Amy Pond because they think she led to their defeat. Let's face it, if Amy was never there, The Doctor would be dead. Also, Amy spawned River Song, who has killed a *LOT* of Silents. So when they said "Silents will fall" they were talking about their own defeat. They had seen it (maybe they're precognitive?) and wanted to stop her.

The Silents made the crack to save Rory's life.

Yes, it seems that Rory is now nigh un-killable. But in "Cold Blood" he should have died, and would have, if the crack hadn't eaten him. The time crack might have wiped Rory out of existence for a little while, but in the long term, it did him a lot of good. It was the crack streaming through Little Amelia's head which allowed Amy's memories of Rory to be kept. It was the crack which allowed the creation of Nestene Romans, one of which became Rory.

So why would they do this? Possibly because they seem to have interest in the time tyke seen in "The Impossible Astronaut"/"Day of The Moon", who was hinted to be Amy and Rory's daughter, and hinted very strongly to be River Song. They might have known that for the her to come into existence, they would have to keep Rory alive, so the child could be concieved. Thus the crack was made to save Rory's life.

The Silence are Slendermen

Or their leader is. They look remarkably similar (Tall, Slender, Male, in a suit) and fans have wanted this for a while and Steven Moffat complied.

  • And after having seen the first episode of Season Six, this guess looks ever more plausible. The business suits, the tallness, the general creepiness, the fact that they mess with memories... It's almost like Moffat has been watching Marble Hornets and said "Yeah, that'd make a great villain!"
  • The one few memories that exist of them are so faint and vague we incorporate them into stories. Creating the illusion that there is only one of them, when there are many identical and also the reason we most often depict the Slender Man as The Blank, because their face is too alien and horrifying for us to take in.

The Silence are both the result and the cause of a massive paradox involving River Song

It wasn't the TARDIS exploding that caused "Silence to Fall" - at least, not directly. It was the fact that River Song was on board the TARDIS when it exploded on Amy and Rory's wedding day. This theory is based on the fact that River Song is heavily implied, if not actually confirmed, to have been conceived that night, River claiming to be a complex space-time event similar to the Doctor, and the Silence claiming that Amy will bring the Silence, which might be a reference to her daughter. The destruction of the TARDIS not only tears reality a new one, it causes a complex space-time event to cancel out her entire existence at the moment of her own creation, causing a hell of a paradox. River says that something is overriding her and driving the TARDIS to destroy itself, and hears a voice state that "Silence will fall". This is actually the Silence using their ability to leave post-hypnotic commands, meaning that River is actually the one forcing the TARDIS to explode, subconsiously countering her own desperate attempts to stop it. Why? The Silence exist in a reality outside of the multiverse and the void, so very different that they can't exist in any reality we would consider normal. They used this paradox as a way to destroy what they couldn't have, or maybe it was a Xanatos Gambit depending on the Doctor cancelling out the destruction of reality, allowing them to slip into it and weave themselves into the reality created by the TARDIS' Big Bang in a way that allows them to exist within our reality - if this is the case, they may also have inspired the creation of the Pandorica for the Doctor to use to save the day. Of course, this means that the Silence would have to have been around before any of this started, but when it comes to Paradox and time travel, Effect doesn't necessarily follow Cause.

The Doctor has encountered the Silence before.

However, he has (naturally) forgotten all about them. One of the Silence mentioned being on Earth since fire and the wheel. The making of fire was a major goal of the cavemen in the very first episode of the series. The Doctor wasn't all that heroic in this episode, so intentional thwarting is somewhat out of the question. Accidental stowaways on the TARDIS perhaps? Stranded in pre-history, their plans for recovery delayed by the Doctor, whether he knew it at the time or not.

  • Well, have you watched "Edge of Destruction" recently?

The Silence are both the remnants of alterations to human history, echoes of future alterations, The Enemy from Faction Paradox, and a link between RL Earth and Who Earth

In the Whoniverse looking away from a Silent means you forget the existence of the Silence. This of course means that a wild mass guessing on the nature of the Silence is impossible in the Whoniverse. Are you looking at a Silent or a picture of one while reading this? Probably not. Do you remember them? Yes otherwise this example would not exist.

Now what else can't be seen unless your looking at it? Changes to Time and of course Plot. Imagine your a girl that hangs out with those two guys then some time traveler changes history and guy one becomes a girl and you now always lived in a harem comedy. where did the first boy go? No where it was silenced by the change to history. Can you see a change to history or remember it if your not a outside observer like say The Doctor. No it simply "has always been that way".

The Silence can affect Time Lords because they exist in a higher order of time. Time lords follow cause and effect time except when traveling. Silence exist in "wouldn't that be neat time" also called 'plot time'. The Silent that killed that woman knew everything about her not because it stalked her but because it was a coporeal manifestation of the past'(pre-time alteration) future she will no longer have and the 'future' (post-time alteration) death. The Silence killed her because plot demanded it.

Now then in the Faxtion paradox series the "Great Houses" a.k.a. Time Lords faught a nameless Enemy that was described more as a force of history then an oranization or group of beings. Why didn't the Time lords name this enemy? They only knew it existed due to its side-effects. They forgot what the enemy was when not seeing them but knew the enemy existed. Once everything went to hell with Fation Paradox, the Ancestor Cell, the Celestis, the Remote, and Lady Lolita (who evolved from The Master's old Tardis and takes after her Time Lord) the Silence sliped away so their masters (not to be confused with The Master(unless he's a fan of Doctor Who)see below)could watch.

Now who are the masters of the Silence. The humans from this Earth in particualar those incharge of making teh episodes and other parts of Doctor Who. The Silence never appeared in the library not because we forgot them but because it would ruin the plot twist. Now then the Second War in Heaven ended with Galiifrey's destruction yet it's a different war then the Last Great Time War why? Because until the plot twist Dalek were easier to film then a memetic force thus the Silence altered the time War and replaced it with a different time war that was more coporeal. We can't see how a bio-data virus that alters its victims genes and history works nor have we seen The Nightmare Child (probably not the biological or adopted child of Steven Moffat, too obvious to be a child version of Moffat that escaped into the Whoniverse) but it's easier to imagine something eating a flagship while also properly "big enough" to be incomprehensible.

This of course means that when one decides to explore the setting of Doctor Who a Silence is made to "set the stage" and after that it simply disappears until needed again. They appear in the new series because the Doctor needed something ominous to face that his try to reason with it tactics would not work. Thus the normally formless Silence took form by the orders of the King of Nightmares.

Feel reassured and less paranoid? Don't. Here's how it gets worse. That link they create between the two universes. Nothings stoping anything from finding a way to follow it back into this universe. The Nightmare Child, Skaro degenerations, and the Could Have Been King have to escape to somewhere? Right? Good Day.

So basically its all Steve's fault.

The Silence "convert" people.

  • If the Silence, as revealed in Let's Kill Hitler, is actually not a species, but rather a religious movement, then why are they all identical? The Headless Monks are capable of making a rather, er, fundamental change to your body. Perhaps the Silence run a similar but more elaborate operation, and can reprogram your biology at a basic level to gradually make you one of them...brr.

Jack Harkness was working with the Silence.

  • Or rather, the person who would become Captain Jack Harkness was working for the Silence. We know that River Song, who the Silence were training as a weapon against the Doctor, spends a lot of her time in the 51st century. It's quite probable that the Silence are based in the 51st century. The 51st century is also Jack's native time period. If the Silence is fighting against the Doctor, they might well have asked the Time Agency for help. Given that the Doctor keeps on messing with time, the Time Agency may have seen the Doctor as problematic and supported the Silence's attempts to get rid of him. So they may have sent some of their agents to work for the Silence. In "The Doctor Dances", Jack claims that the Time Agency erased two years' worth of his memory. We know that you cannot remember the Silence (the species version, if not the entire religious movement) after you've stopped looking at them. If Jack spent two years working with them, he probably wouldn't remember most of what had happened. But he wouldn't have been looking at the Silence every single second for two years, so surely he should be able to remember something? Not really—if the Silence have that much power over someone's memory in the first place, it would hardly be surprising if they figured out how to make someone forget everything they did during a time period when they were even vaguely associated with the Silence.

The Silence aren't, as a whole, actually evil.

Aside from traitors or others coerced in some way, they are more than content to share the Earth and help humanity (and themselves). Perhaps the Doctor was used to try and exterminate them once the Silence organization didn't need them anymore, which nearly succeeded. He will then free and help the enslaved ones, who will then go back into obscurity and live as they always did.

The Daleks from Bad Wolf/Parting of the Ways are part of the Silence

They mention having waited in silence for years. They have guided human evolution via Satellite 5 and the game station. They mention blasphemy and the Doctor asks them 'Since when did Daleks have a concept of Blasphemy? -The Silence is a religious order. And then in series 6, where does the Doctor get his information about the silence? From a Dalek scientist's memories. Now why would Daleks work with the Silence? Because there's something out there they both fear and hate so intensely. The destroyer of worlds, the oncoming storm.

There's a Silent hiding within the TARDIS

At two points in the Lodger, there are scenes where Amy, stuck in the TARDIS as it tries and fails to complete a materialisation, is talking to the Doctor when something odd happens. As the Doctor talks, once in Craig's spare room and once on the football field, Amy looks off screen, gasps and looks shocked and then cries "Hey!" before the scene carries on as usual. During the second time, as she reacts like this, the Doctor says "Hang on" as she cries "Hey!" - she repeats his "Hang on" in an uncertain tone of voice and shakes her head as if trying to wake from a tired state. Later on, as the Doctor and Craig race upstairs to help Sophie and Amy experiences turbulence in the TARDIS, over the earpiece she can be heard to cry "Doctor!", and then inexplicably say "Hang on..." in the same uncertain tone that she did earlier. Her actions here aren't explained. Perhaps the Silent was the pilot of the primitive TARDIS above Craig's flat, and the disturbance that caught the TARDIS was it managing to transport itself into the Doctor's TARDIS. On two occasions, Amy saw it darting away from her out of the room, causing the reaction, but the trademark effect of the Silence kicks in and she immediately forgets it happened. As we also know that seeing the Silence can leave a post-hypnotic suggestion in a person's mind, maybe seeing this Silent accidentally left the Doctor's command of "Hang on" in Amy's mind, which then came back to her mind when she was again in danger of being lost in the Vortex as the Doctor was warning her about. It's not long after this - the next episode, in fact - that the TARDIS inexplicably shoots off to 26/06/2010 with River Song and explodes despite her efforts - was the Silent in the TARDIS sabotaging it? And if it was, was it killed in the explosion, or could it have survived? Could it still be in the TARDIS even now, watching the Doctor? And if it is, what happens when it warns the rest of the Silence that the Doctor survived Lake Silencio?

The Black Guardian is the one behind the Silents.

At the end of the Black Guardian trilogy, the White Guardian said that the Doctor would meet up with the Black Guardian one final time. That has yet to happen. Also, what does the Black Guardian love most? Chaos. Causing Silence to fall by having the question asked? Sounds like chaos if you ask me. It's exactly his type of thing- manipulating other people/creatures to cause the chaos for him, and hating on the Doctor a lot/wanting to kill him.

The Silents are the Doctor and the TARDIS

Even for the Doctor, that was a very unusual regeneration between Ten and Eleven, wasn't it? Regeneration is never exactly quiet, but to create such a blast wave that it destroys the TARDIS console room, causes it to crash, and requires it to completely shut down to rebuild itself? And, on another subject, if the Time Cracks appear throughout time and space, and if the Silence has manipulated humanity since the Stone Age as they claim, why is it no sign of any of them was ever seen until the Doctor regenerated into his Eleventh incarnation?

What if that huge explosion of regenerative energy purged something from the Doctor? And took with it something from the TARDIS telepathically linked to him? Something that manifested into a group of creatures now called the Silents? The memory-proof nature of them? From the TARDIS' perception filter. The energy attacks they use? Energy from sources they draw on in the same way that the TARDIS draws on. Their makeshift TARDIS machine? The result of the Doctor's knowledge of the TARDIS without sufficient or suitable materials to grow a proper one. River Song being as close to a Time Lord as you can get? She may have got a spark of the Time Lord gift from being concieved on the TARDIS, but the Doctor insisted that it took far more than that to cook up a working Time Lord...his knowledge of which the Silence could draw on to create their weapon, just as they could to take control of the TARDIS and blow it up.

So, why are they so hell-bent on eliminating the Doctor, then? Well, maybe they have the shadows of something buried in the Doctor's mind, so deeply not even he can clearly remember it. Something that scared the Doctor a long time ago, so much so that he sealed away his name in such despair, something that he has run away from all his life. The answer to a question that deep down, he knows must never, ever be answered. And if these newborn Silents took a memory from the future, one that the TARDIS could know due to her non-linear perception of time, that told them that one day the Doctor was destined to reveal this terrible secret, what lengths might they go to to stop him?

Eleven is going to change the events of Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead.

The only water in the forest is the river. "Forest" of the Dead contained "River" Song and piranhas. Air piranhas. Plus, it makes for an epic episode. Donna Noble, Amy and Rory Pond, 11 and 10 all with River. Could you imagine 11 pulling a "spoilers" on 10?

  • If this happens, it'll be in the series finale- firstly because arc words always show up in the last episode(s), and secondly because how else can they top restarting the universe, The Master Race, Daleks trying to destroy all universes, The Year That Never Was, Cybermen vs Daleks vs Torchwood and Daleks on Satellite 5? Also, Rule of Cool demands it.
  • Plus, the main villains of Series 6 are the Silence. Silence in the Library?! Knowing Moffat, he could very well have planned this entire thing out beforehand.
  • Coupled with the IMDB rumor that David Tennant is returning for the season finale, this theory is looking surprisingly likely.
    • Of course, a similar rumor also insists the Peter Davison is in the finale, which would throw a pretty big wrench in this theory.
      • And they're not on IMDb any more.
        • Wouldn't that be interfering with his personal timeline? Isn't that against the rules?
  • There were two children in the computer (Donna's kids) that were still there listening to River's bedtime story with the library's heiress - Amy and Rory?

The Dead(th) Doctor

Real!Doctor wasn't actually sure the Teselecta!Doctor plan could work. It wasn't an example of The Doctor coming up with a perfect answer to his problem, but an example of The Doctor performing one final, desperate gambit.

The key is that The Doctor doesn't actually know why his death is a fixed point in time. All he knows is that the Silence went out of their way to force it to become one. Now, the reason a fixed point in time is immutable is because so many other events are so casually tied to the fixed!event that attempting to changed the fixed!event causes so many other things to change that the universe gives up in frustration. The fixed!event is the load-bearing block of a universal jenga puzzle. So why is The Doctor's death fixed in stone (and how would that affect his gambit?)

1) The future of the universe must unfold in a way that requires The Doctor to have absolutely no more influence on it whatsoever. If this were true, then the plan using Teselecta!Doctor simply wouldn't work. Teselecta!Doctor touching Married!River would not set time straight again, and Real!Doctor would've eventually had to shrug his shoulders, climb out of the Teselecta, and set things straight himself.

2) The future of the universe unfolds in a way that's dependent on the news of The Doctor's "real" death. Hence, it's not The Doctor's actions that create the fixed point, but actions of other people that create the fixed point. So it doesn't matter if The Doctor lives or dies, just that other people act as if that he did. That's why the Teselecta!Doctor plan worked.

3) The universe hates people that try to mess with it. The Doctor's death didn't start out as a fixed point in time, but the Silence had made it so. The universe remembered the original version of events, decided to flip off the Silence for telling it what to do, and sided with the Time Lord Victorious just this once.


The astronaut is Old!Amy

Somehow Old!Amy doesn't die in The Girl Who Waited but gets rescued (by the Silence?) and is really angry with the Doctor for lying to her about sustaining the paradox (of both Amys surviving), in order to get her to help Rory save Young!Amy.

  • Jossed.

The astronaut is not River Song

In The Impossible Astronaunt, River seems just as surprised as everyone else is that the Doctor is dead, and when he returns, she doesn't see it coming at all, even though she supposedly was the one who killed him. Also consider the fact that she seemed pretty clueless as to who the little girl was, and we can deduce that River has completely forgotten being the little girl, or is not the little girl. We never saw the little girl regenerate into Mels, we only saw the beginning of her regeneration. I think Moffat's messing with us.

  • Why didn't Mels kill the Doctor in the cornfield? "We'd only just met." Mels had never met the Doctor before this, but the Doctor seemed to know who the astronaut was. If it was River, surely she would remember seeing and killing the Doctor when she was younger.
  • Jossed.

The astronaut/child is Jenny

When Mels/Melody meets the Doctor in the beginning of "Let's Kill Hitler!", she seems like she has never met him before. The young girl in "The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon" did at least get a glimpse of the Doctor, and spoke on the phone with him. Even if it was River, and, at the time, she was too young to know it was the Doctor, you would think she would have "studied" the Doctor enough to at least retroactively realize who it was.

I don't think it was ever explicitly mentioned that the astronaut/child was River, but it was made pretty clear she was Timelord. If I remember correctly, at the end of "The Doctor's Daughter" Jenny is shown to start regenerating. Honestly, I'm surprised Jenny hasn't at least been mentioned here.

  • Jossed.

The Vashta Narada killed the Doctor

A space suit and River Song, and living in the Library they'd be able to figure out time travel and how to kill the Doctor.

  • Jossed.

The Doctor who died in The Impossible Astronaut is the Ganger version.

He really is the doctor, and yes he is dead. However, he's the Ganger Doctor and not the original Doctor. This might be the simplest answer as opposed to one involving multiple time lines or time travel or something.

    • Alternatively, the Doctor who died in the Impossible Astronaut was the 'original' Doctor, but since there's no fundamental difference between the Ganger and the Original, Doctor Two can take his place, allowing the show to continue.
      • There is a fundamental difference-Ganger Doctor will have a 200-year difference with the Doctor who dies.
    • Jossed. It's actually the Doctor operating a Teselecta of himself.

The Doctor who died in The Impossible Astronaut is not the Ganger version.

Because that would be too easy. It was the real Doctor. The original Doctor. The Ganger will replace him. Has anyone else noticed The Doctor's recent habit of being cloned, by the way? First Jenny, then 10.5, now Odo - I mean - the Ganger?

  • Ganger!Doctor is simply a Red Herring. By the previews for The Almost People, he seems to be at the very least psychotically unhinged and most likely will die in the same episode. The 'theory' that the future Doctor is his clone will probably be brought up between Amy and Rory to make the audience think it may be possible, but then he'll end up being killed. Also, Ganger!Doctor wouldn't probably be able to regenerate, whereas Future!Doctor seemed to be starting to before being killed.
    • Why would the Ganger!Doctor be unable to regenerate? The Gangers are exact duplicates of the original people, down to the very last detail. If the Gangers are identical to their originals, then there should be no physiological differences between them (excepting the cellular/DNA/whatever destabilisation). The Ganger!Doctor should therefore be able to regenerate to some degree. Due to the destabilisation the Gangers suffer, perhaps the process cannot be completed, but there does not seem to be a reason he couldn't at least /begin/ to regenerate (Ten pulled that trick off in Journey's End, remember?).
    • Also, wouldn't anybody be 'psychotically unhinged' if they realised that they weren't really who they thought they were, but just a copy? Since the preview scenes have been taken out of context, we don't know which Doctor is which or what happened to make either one act the way they did. We all know that the Doctor has a nasty habit of winding people up, and that almost certainly includes himself (all Nu-Who Doctors so far have suffered a huge amount of self-hatred). Er, anyway, point I was trying to make is that anything can happen and the Moff is obviously never going to stop screwing with us. (Long-winded comment got so long I had to cut it in two...)
    • Given some credence. The Ganger Doctor was deactivated, but otherwise was sticking pretty well together.
    • Confirmed. He's not a Ganger.


The Doctor who died in The Impossible Astronaut is a different Ganger version.

Amy and Rory tell him about being killed, and he uses the ganger machine to complete the stable time loop without being killed.

  • Jossed.

The Doctor will come back through a Ganger.

Prior to his death, the Doctor created a Ganger version of himself. Containing all his heart, mind and soul, it'll effectively be a Replacement Goldfish. Since Gangers are supposed to be indentical, the Ganger Doctor will be capable of regenerating. Indeed, since that clone never regenerated, he'll get 12 more lives.

  • Jossed. It was a ruse.

The Doctor that was killed is really the Teselecta robot.

It's not like the Doctor to leave a perfectly working transforming robot in the middle of Nazi Germany. We've seen that it can take the form of anyone it has data on, so why not the Doctor? At that moment it only seemed to respond to Amy commands, but I'm sure with a little Time Lord know how, he could adjust it so that it would take his appearance. I'm sure the Doctor would adjust it so that it's movements and interactions won't be as stiff. The Tesselecta is a perfect stand in to take a blow for the Doctor.

  • By extension, he could theoretically control it remotely with a ganger-harness or some such device.
  • Confirmed! Although he didn't pick it up in Germany. And he was inside, not controlling from afar.

It will be River's plan and not the Doctor's that saves him from his death in The Impossible Astronaut

To echo her saving him in LKH. everyone is expecting the Doctor to have some plan to save himself from death. Last season finale he had managed a last minute plan to set up Amy bringing him back from being erased, so we expect he should manage to change his own death.

  • After "The God Complex" he's starting to look like a Death Seeker. He seems to have resigned himself to dying for real and might even welcome it. It's probable that someone else is going to have to come up with and pull off a clever plan to save his butt this time around.
  • Jossed, sort of. It's complicated.

It was the real Doctor, but he isn't really dead.

A couple quotes:

"You cut off my hand...And now I know what sort of man I am. I'm lucky. 'Cause quite by chance, I'm still in the first fifteen hours of my regeneration cycle. Which means I've got just enough residual cellular energy to do this." (regrows hand) –Tenth Doctor, "The Christmas Invasion"

"Never shoot a girl while she's regenerating." (blasts Nazis with regeneration energy) -Melody Pond, "Let's Kill Hitler"

And, above all, Rule One: "The Doctor lies"

He's not going to die, obviously. Matt Smith has signed on for the next season. The question is, how is he going to get out of it? We learned way back in Christmas, 2005 that a regenerating Time Lord can heal injuries, and Melody/River kindly reminded us in "Let's Kill Hitler". The Astronaut waited until the Doctor started to regenerate before shooting again. It was implied that this was because that's when he was vulnerable, but what if it was the opposite? What if the Astronaut, whoever that is, didn't want him to die? He was shot again, but it had no effect. River said he was dead, but it was probably an earlier version of her in the suit, so she knew what was going on and lied to keep the continuity stable. The Doctor stayed quiet while they burned him alive because he's guilty and masochistic like that. Once they were all gone, he popped up gasping and swam to shore. He then lied, lied, lied to the entire Universe, made them all think the Doctor we know to be 11 had been the final regeneration. That's why he told Amy, Rory and River he was 1100 when we've seen him in trailers donning a cowboy had and telling the Tardis it was their last trip. The Doctor lied, River lied, and Stephen Moffat lied. Are you reallly surprised?

  • To the argument that the Tessalecta people said his death there was a fixed point in Space and Time: It's canon that Time Lords somehow see how fixed certain points in Time are. Presumably, these Justice Department blokes have a computer program, because they are certainly no Time Lords. No computer could rival the Doctor's own brain. I wouldn't be surprised if he planted that fact himself, so people would stop trying to kill him at other times.
  • Confirmed, at least in part. He faked his death, and used a Teselecta to do so.

The Doctor Killed The Doctor.

  • Either through a bizarre timeloop or something Ganger related, the Doctor was the astronaut as well, and the "death" was something quite different then what everyone else thinks it was.
  • Jossed.

The Doctor's death only became a fixed point in time after the Big Bang 2

When River Song tries to work out what point in his timeline the Doctor is in relation to her in Silence of the Library, one of the occasions she asks him if he remembers is the crash of the Byzantium. This happens in the Time of Angels, during which the Doctor is in his Eleventh incarnation - the same incarnation that River witnessed him die in. But when she asks his Tenth incarnation if he's gone through that adventure yet, she has to believe that the Doctor could be in an incarnation following his Eleventh, otherwise the question makes no sense - if he died in the same incarnation he witnessed the crash she's talking about, she'd know a different incarnation can't have witnessed it, and therefore the question is pointless (and potentially dangerous, given the views of herself and the Doctor on "spoilers"). Perhaps when the universe was destroyed and rebooted, someone or something took advantage of the re-creation to try and make some alterations to what normally couldn't be altered, such as changing the time and events that cause the Doctor to die. He can't have always been destined to die in his Eleventh incarnation, as we know from the events in the Sixth Doctor's trial that the Valeyard split off from him between his Twelth and Final incarnations. So perhaps the universal reboot allowed a new fixed point in time to be created. And maybe this is the Doctor's chance to survive. Protected by the Pandorica, he still counts as being from the original version of the universe, not the new version, so maybe he's not as bound by fixed points in time as is made out to be.

The Doctor used the Two Streams facility on himself to deliberately create a paradox, after seeing what happened to Amy.

The Doctor wasn't shown often during the episode, so it is possible that he had wandered off into his own personal stream for a while. He then found another stream from some time into the future and rescued his older self, who then took his place as the Doctor. Due to being a Time Lord and near the Vortex both versions of him could, for a while, be able to exist together. The present Doctor hid in the TARDIS away from Amy and Rory, and soon left for Lake Silencio after careful discussion and planning with his other self, while the future Doctor took over the Doctor's role. From The God Complex on, the Doctor we've seen is a paradoxical future-self that shouldn't be able to exist.

The present Doctor is the one to be shot by the astronaut, who is actually the future-Doctor about two hundred years older. Once he dies, the universe can't quite make up its mind whether his other self should be dead or alive. After everyone else was gone and the Doctor's body reduced to a mere skeleton, he recovers it and does much the same thing that River Song did to him in Berlin... he uses up his remaining regenerations, and indeed his entire life force, to revive the Doctor. He is completely absorbed into the 'real' Doctor, leaving no body behind, making them one once more with all the memories and experiences of both and ending the paradox.

  • Time goes wibbly, but it has nothing to do with Two Streams.

The Eleventh Doctor will be the last

If his future self's death The Impossible Astronaut was for real and won't be retconned, then there will never be a twelfth doctor. There is unlimited time for the series to continue, as the Doctor lives another two hundred years, but he will not regenerate again.

  • It turns out that he didn't die for real. Rule One in action.

Canton Everett Delaware III was lying.

Either the Doctor isn't dead, or he was a copy or a robot or something. But, for reasons yet unknown, the Doctor needed everybody to think he had died. But since this would be the last time Canton would see Amy, River, and Rory, there would be no way for them to discover this until the Doctor Revealed that he wasn't dead. Why do this? Who knows! The best theory this troper can imagine is that, for some reason, they needed to see the Doctor die so that Amy would try and kill the astronaut in an attempt to save him, for some reason I can't determine because we're only two episodes in as of this writing.

  • He was in fact a robot. Or something.

The Astronaut is some incarnation of Susan Foreman.

A bit out there, but the impossible astronaut can be thought of as unearthly, a call-back to An Unearthly Child.

  • Jossed. It's River. And NASA astronauts are from Earth, so what does that even mean?

It was River who...

killed The Doctor (or whoever it may actually have been) in "The Impossible Astronaut. Seems likely. She's Amy and Rory's daughter and after firing at the astronaut, she says, "Of course...". Seems like she knows why it didn't drop dead at the very least.

  • Confirmed. Sort of.

River Song

Crack theory: River is the sonic screwdriver

  • We already had the TARDIS embodied in a human form, so why not the sonic screwdriver?
  • The Moff said that we would realize we knew from the beginning who River is. In Forest of the Dead her consciousness was preserved in the future!screwdriver.
    • If he really means from the 'beginning', does that mean she can't be at all related to Rory or Amy, because we didn't know them yet when we first met her?
  • She killed "the best man she ever knew." The sonic screwdriver was the instrument used to kill ganger!Doctor, among other people, in The Almost People.
    • The "best man" is not the Ganger.

River Song...

  • ...is just someone that we have yet to meet properly. She isn't some character from the classic Who, she isn't Amy or Rory or Jenny or Rani or any of those other theoretical Rivers. She isn't going to kill The Doctor and she isn't a time lord. She's a companion, just like all the others were/are. She is new, and we just happen to be experiencing her character in the opposite direction than we're used to, as we're seeing her timeline in reverse. We won't ever know who she really is until the day that she first meets the Doctor, as a young girl, which will unfortunately probably mark the last time we ever see her. Maybe she is the Doctor's wife. Maybe she just happened to be the one perfect woman for the Doctor. Maybe it's more complicated than that. We'll just have to wait and see.
    • Partly confirmed, partly not. She IS part-Time Lord, and she's the daughter of Amy and Rory, which barring extenuating circumstances, means it's not them. Also, she technically first meets the Doctor as a baby while we still know relatively little about her, but that's grasping at straws, as River couldn't remember what she did when she was one month old.
  • ...is the daughter of someone who travelled as a companion with Jenny (as in Jenny-the-Doctor's-Daughter.)
    • Jossed. The parents are Amy Pond and Rory Williams, the Doctor's companions.
River-travelled-with-Jenny - Key Points

My evidence for this is mainly circumstantial and comes from musing upon: 1) Observed strong similarites in the personalities of Jenny and River. 2) The behind-the-scenes story behind Jenny's continuing existance 

River-travelled-with-Jenny - More Details

(1) Jenny, the Doctor's daughter (created from the Doctor's DNA using a progenation machine), is a character introduced to us in the Tennant-era episode titled 'The Doctor's Daughter'.) Since this episode occurs shortly before Silence in the Library, when we first meet Jenny, we have not yet met met River Song. Watching The Doctor's Daughter again now though, after getting to know River somewhat, I see so much of River Song in Jenny that it is just screaming at me there must be a connection. They both basically do the whole sassy, sexy, good-with-guns thing, which could be a coincidence (and Jenny seems somewhat more 'innocent', which is not surprising since she is only a few hours old) . But what is striking to me is that they play this character in ways which echo each other not just generally, but actually *very* closely, as if one of these gals had spent time with and learned from the other at some point, not just as if they are playing the same general type:

  • When River escapes the Stormcage by kissing the guard with hallucinogenic lipstick, this echoes the way Jenny frees herself from a cell by distracting the guard with a kiss and stealing his gun.
  • When Jenny wakes 'from the dead', scaring the wits out of the two guys preparing (what they thought was) her corpse for her funeral, she smiles broadly and drawls 'Hello Boys!', and that is River all over.
  • And they are of course both rather good with guns.

Not that Jenny could BE River, not after that kiss. But could there be some other connection? So what I am speculating is that perhaps, as Jenny was going around Saving planets, rescuing civilisations, defeating terrible creatures, and doing an outrageous amount of running, she became lonely. Then, echoing her father, perhaps she collected up a few strays of her own. So perhaps River was one of these, and Jenny influenced her strongly. Or, maybe River was the daughter of one of these companions, and River picked up mannerisms and attitudes from an already adult Jenny as River grew up. So, all of the above was my first strand of evidence. My second is again very circumstantial: (2) Why the continuing existence of Jenny? What has she done for us lately? Is she going to make another appearance in some way? Originally Jenny was going to stay dead at the end of The Doctor's Daughter, but someone suggested that she be kept alive. Now this was obviously someone who loved the character, and by extension loved the potentials for future marvellous adventures that her continuing existence could give rise to. And the person who made this suggestion .... just happened to be ...... Stephen Moffat!

  • ... is the death of the Doctor. (See below, next section)
  • ...is the daughter of Captain Jack Harkness.
    • Growing up with Jack, she heard many stories about the Doctor. She grew to idolize him and seek him out. Archeology? What's a better way to find a Time Lord than messing with ancient technology that could easily cause trouble? Her "murder" was a plan thought up between her and Jack to get the Angel. She "killed" him, he pretended to stay dead, she went to jail and was able to get to where she could deal with it.
      • Addendum: Her mother is Amy. Because we all know that if Amy and Jack met without The Doctor or Rory to step in it would end in some very crazy, very kinky, most likely Jack-killing (temporary, as always), sex.
      • Addendum to the addendum: She was conceived in the TARDIS on hers and Rory's wedding night, and so far as we can tell, there was no opportunity to have met Jack, not even if Miracle Day happened before the beginning of "The Impossible Astronaut" with the two.
  • ...is a fez in disguise.
    • ... or possibly a regenerated version of the fez she shot.
    • The universe was rebooted. The fez she shot and the museum it came from never existed.
  • ...is (or is somehow related to) Bad Wolf
    • Not too far off the mark. She was conceived in the TARDIS as it travelled through the time vortex.
  • ...is the Rani,
    • ...but doesn't know it.
      • There's a pocket watch out there with her name on it. The 'human' forms of the Time Lords seem to be counter to their normal personalities. John Smith was (at first) meek, dull, and not overly adventurous; Yana was compassionate, kind, and wanted to do good; River is reckless, kind, an archaeologist (a joke of a career for a Time Lord), remorseful about killing, willing to pay for her crimes, and probably loves Children and Christmas.
      • What's more, it is the Rani herself who changed and asked the Doctor to help her and hide her watch. The Doctor found her, broken and lone, another victim of the Time War, in River's form. He realizes what's happened and tells the Rani of who she could be. The Rani, wanting a better life and a second chance, becomes River. That's also where she knows the Doctor's real name from.
        • To do a crossover with "what are the Silence?" theories: the Silence got hold of her pocket watch (or whatever her chameleon arch object it), and from it they learned all kind of scientific and technological information that's far in advance of anything else in the universe, since the Rani was one of the foremost scientific minds. Their ability to make people forget? The ultimate perception filter. That control room in "The Lodger" and "The Impossible Astronaut"? Their attempts to build a TARDIS based on the Rani's memories and knowledge.
      • Jossed on the Chameleon Arch front. She's the human daughter of Amy and Rory, but with Time Lord DNA
    • ...on her last regeneration.
      • Somehow she was able to hide this from The Doctor (for a while), and supposedly being taught by him how to fly the TARDIS and read / write High Gallifreyan could be a fabrication as she would already know how to do so. Her recent appearance suggests that it's still somewhat early on in her personal timeline, as she's not yet a Professor. She is using The Doctor for something not yet revealed, but will either be foiled in her attempts or change her mind, and eventually be reformed.
      • Vastra suggests that she can regenerate, whether or not she's the girl from "The Impossible Astronaut". It's unknown if she's on her final regeneration as in "she can never regenerate", as on her death in "Forest of the Dead" she points out that even the Doctor (who still has at least three lives left at this point) wouldn't come back from using his mind to rescue 4022 saved.
      • Alternatively, as "Day of the Moon" implies, she's the girl, and used up all her regenerations trying to keep alive until she met the Doctor. And that's why she killed him.
      • Confirmed, but in a roundabout way. In the episode, "Let's Kill Hitler", River poisons the Doctor to within an inch of death, but Heel Face Turns at the last minute and uses up all of her remaining Regenerations to save his life. So, it's NOT her 13th Regeneration, but it is her last, since she gave up all her future ones.
  • ...is the Eleventh Doctor's first companion.
    • River Song is a companion that the Doctor hasn't had yet, who first appeared in an episode written by Steven Moffat, who will be taking over as executive producer in 2010, which David Tennant may or may not be appearing in. River says the Doctor is younger than she's ever seen him - implying that, when she knew the Doctor, it was in another, older regeneration. Perhaps, in an inversion of their meeting in series 4, the newly-regenerated Doctor casts about time and space for someone he knows and ends up with River?
    • The "picnic at Asgard" and "crash of the Byzantium" must be with the Tenth Doctor, or she wouldn't need to ask him about them. Of course, this doesn't necessarily mean the Eleventh Doctor won't also interact with her, but it can't be the first time they meet (from his perspective) after this episode.
      • C'mon, people, Song isn't surprised at all that the Doctor is in his 10th regeneration. She would immediately know that this isn't "her" Doctor if he looked like someone she saw die and regenerate. She only knew him as #10, although possibly centuries into this regeneration's future.
      • One way it could possibly work is if she knows him in at least three distinct regenerations (an "Asgard" regeneration, a "Byzantium" regeneration, and a "singing towers" regeneration), and has reason to believe he might have had more in the middle somewhere. And if the Doctor doesn't keep a photo album around (or at least doesn't keep it well-organized), so she doesn't immediately recognize Ten as being a pre-her regeneration. And if she doesn't actually see him until after he regenerates into Eleven.
        • On set pics from when they were filming the episode with River showed some kind of metal case with "Byzantium" on it. So the "Crash of the Byzantium" is the adventure they have when 11 meets her next.
    • If she is a companion, she must be a sporadic one. Their timelines are not contiguous. This doesn't apply to the other companions - they experience events in the same order that he does, which (for whatever reason) is not the case for River. They know this, hence their system of comparing diaries.
    • Maybe due to the Timey-Wimey Ball, she did originally meet him as the tenth doctor, but now she does as the 11th.
    • It's been confirmed River Song is returning in Matt Smith's first series by on set pics. It's not known though if it'll be her "First" meeting with the Doctor.
    • Status: Jossed.
  • ...is the Doctor's Final Companion.
    • The diary isn't just a record of River's various adventures with the Doctor, it's a record of his adventures with everyone. He told her all kinds of things he told none of the others - like his name - because he knew that when he died, none of his still-living selves from earlier in his personal timeline would have all the memories that he did. As to why she knows Ten, well, we still don't know everything he did in between seasons and specials.
    • She does claim that the reason she was imprisoned is that she killed the greatest man she has ever known. Sounds like the Doctor to me. And if she was his companion when she did the deed, that would indeed make her his "last" companion.
  • ...is Amy Pond.
    • Ok, it's crazy and won't be true but I briefly had this thought. So far my only evidence for this is the following:
      • We know that Amy has already changed her name once.
      • Their hair colour.
      • Who can't see Amy using hallucinogenic lipstick?
      • In "The Big Bang", River gives Amy her TARDIS book. Except it's blank. And given that the Stable Time Loop is one of Moffat's favorite plot devices...
      • Didn't the writing come back when Amy brought back the Doctor though? I believe he gave it back to River at the end of the episode too.
    • There's actually a decent amount of evidence for this one. Here's a list.
    • Denied by Moffat. The memories River revealed in "The Impossible Astronaut" pretty much disprove this, too.
    • Jossed in canon by "A Good Man Goes to War", too. She's Amy's daughter.
  • ...works for the Valeyard.
    • Note: if Eleven is the Valeyard, then this will probably become true.
  • ...is the Doctor's mother.
  • ...was a Gallifreyan bureaucrat who miraculously escaped the Time War before it became time-locked.
    • She was on the Gallifreyan population control board.
    • Plus River said that some one thought her how to fly the Tardis the some one? her husband.
    • Jossed. She's the human daughter of Amy and Rory with Time Lord DNA as a quirk of when she was conceived. She was born long after Gallifrey was Time Locked.
  • ...is the same person as River Tam.
    • She grew up, got rid of the insanity that plagued her, and somehow changed ethnicity when she travelled to our galaxy. She then fell in love with the Doctor because he reminded her of how crazy she was; she missed that.
  • ...has already had her travels with the Doctor, off-screen.
    • After Ten lost Donna in such a heartbreaking manner, he rushed off to grab a companion who he knew wouldn't get a unhappy ending... well, living in a gigantic library for eternal un-deadness... let's say he wasn't thinking straight. He spent the equivalent of a holiday seducing and loving River. Then he reached the end (thanks to River telling him) of their relationship; he then swore that he would never again put another human being through that. Enter "The Next Doctor," where he isn't a emotional wreck.
      • Not an emotional wreck? The Doctor specifically mentions near the end of that special that companions end up breaking his heart, and for the rest of his run he is pretty miserable. The end of Journey's End destroyed him like nothing had before, because he had to for all intents and purposes kill his best friend.
    • Jossed. Even by the Series 6 opener, Eleven''s only just starting to be romantic towards her.
  • ...is a former companion of the Master.
    • In The Time of Angels, she says that she learned how to fly the TARDIS from the best—too bad the Doctor was busy that day. Assuming she wasn't just teasing him, then who did teach her? She was also apparently in prison, and that River was in prison for "killing a good man". So perhaps the Master taught her how to use the TARDIS, along with the awesomely smug attitude, and she first met the Doctor while traveling with the Master. Then, somewhere along the line, she killed the Master, landing her in prison.
      • That makes her Lucy Saxon.
      • Jossed on the Lucy Saxon front. Lucy and River died in two conflicting ways. Not to mention that Vivien Brook told Lucy that her backstory on Earth is clearly not faked, and that's how she figured old Harold Saxon was a fraud. Also, her first meeting was as a baby on "Demons Run", and the first she can remember was as a child when the Doctor crashed into her life, long before she could conceivably be incarcerated.
      • Rather than literally killing the Master, she would have "killed" everything he was if she was the one who threw the switch for his Chameleon Arch. What jury's going to buy "I didn't kill him, I just rewrote his entire genetic code and made him a different species" as a defense?
  • ...is descended from Donna Noble.
    • The metacrisis left an epigenetic imprint on Donna's DNA. A hundred generations later, the bloodlines reconverge on River Song - all her ancestors for the last 1500 years were descended from Donna in some way.
    • This explains why River Song was overawed when meeting Donna, why she can fly the Tardis (and do things that the Doctor would never do, like using the stabilisers and turning the noise off), and why she speaks Old High Gallifreyan. She implies in Time of the Angels that her relationship with the Doctor is not marriage, but something much more complicated.
      • You're implying that knowledge of the language and TARDIS piloting skills are encoded in Time Lord DNA? How does that even make sense?
        • Yeah, you're right, a species who's members can rewrite their entire DNA at will to cheat death and who with the aid of a piece of technology the size of a pocket watch can transform themselves into whole new species having language or piloting skills encoded into their DNA makes no sense at all.
      • It's the Imprimatur of Rassilon - the epigenetic imprint she inherited was a copy of the Doctor's bond with the TARDIS. This explains the line "I learnt from the best - pity you were busy that day". The TARDIS taught her to fly it.
      • Jossed. River's parents were born circa the late 1980s-early 1990s and were Amy Pond and Rory Williams, long before Donna had her memories wiped in 2009 as a metacrisis and her marriage to Shaun Temple in 2010. Though she DID learn how to pilot the TARDIS from the TARDIS.
  • ...is Donna Noble.
    • She lived out her life with Shaun before succumbing to old age, but still had enough regeneration energy from the metacrisis to somehow be able to regenerate one time. This restored her memories and repaired her brain but she does not have a mind at the DoctorDonna level (or a second heart), but still retains much of the Doctor's knowledge. Perhaps through disorientation or choice she ended up in the 51st century, possibly through a crack in time. After recognizing her new form (albeit younger than when she saw her in the Library), the new identity of River Song was born, making her name and existence a Stable Time Loop as she had met Future!River many years before.
    • Donna and the Doctor each considered the other to be her or his best friend more than anyone else, and knowing that River was going to have many adventures with and be very special to the Doctor, River decided to become who she is because of him. She knows full well how she is eventually going to die (and having the Tenth Doctor's memories, has seen it) but knows that, like many decades ago, the journey is more important than the destination and they'll be best friends again. The reason why she reacted the way she did over Donna in the Library was because it had been so long since she had seen that face that had once been her own that young, and because her own time was soon to be up. Seeing the Tenth Doctor again after so many years must have affected her deeply as well. She can also fly the TARDIS and read / write High Gallifreyan because of the Doctor's memories

(this is also how she knows his name), meaning that From a Certain Point of View he did teach her. Also, in the case of the former, the Doctor was shown to be giving Donna rudimentary flying lessons near the beginning of The Sontaran Strategem.

    • The main reason River is adamant against giving out 'Spoilers' is because the Doctor does not know who she is during certain encounters, and eventually she plans on telling him when the time is right, possibly by whispering something Donna would say into his ear (Spaceman?) paralleling the events of Silence In The Library. Eventually, a part of her will also live on with the two 'children' she once had in the Library.
    • All of this seems to be very unlikely as Word of God has said that no RTD-era companions will be appearing again, meaning that if River secretly is someone she is probably a character who appeared before but wasn't given official companion status, someone introduced by Moffat in Series 5+ , or a character from Old!Who.
      • Look at how prepared and willing Donna was to find the Doctor in Partners In Crime. She also said that even if it'd take a hundred years, she would find him. If something like this is possible, then she would stop at nothing to be with the Doctor again.
    • Another possible scenario is that due to Donna's unique situation, she gained multiple regenerations in addition to the Time Lord mind. After her first eventual death, she regenerated and became a complete Human / Time Lord hybrid (still with only one heart though), but at the permanent cost of all of her memories. The Doctor finds her and looks after her for a while, this being the first time from River's point of view that they meet (and the Doctor likely giving her the name of River Song in an example of a Stable Time Loop). Donna Temple-Noble is still, for all intents and purposes, dead, and the Doctor never tells River about who she used to be. River, meanwhile, has a mind well above and beyond any human and quickly adapts to a new life. Regardless if she has anymore regenerations or not, she eventually dies for good at the Library, and regeneration might not be a great choice in any circumstance since she's not a full Time Lord, and could a) still die or b) lose all of her memories again.
    • Jossed. She was born to Amy Pond on Demons Run.
  • ...is an Old Gallifreyan.
    • River Song knew how to pilot the Tardis better than every Time Lord we've seen, and appears to have a longstanding knowledge of the Doctor. We all assume that it's future Doctors (11-13+ ) but it could very well be past Doctors as well. The Doctor seems to be able to recognize regenerations as the same person, however, Old Gallifreyan regeneration was different. The best evidence for this is that River could write in the Old High Gallifreyan language, which the Doctor is implied to be barely able to read. There are two known Old Gallifreyans, both of which good possibilities, which would be Susan Foreman and Patience, the Doctor's wife.
    • Jossed. She was conceived after the Time Lock was closed, and she's mostly human.
  • ...is a con artist who only pretends to be close to the future Doctor.
    • She has assembled extensive knowledge of the Doctor, perhaps from publicly available sources like A Journal of Impossible Things and the Library, and now uses it to manipulate the Doctor to her advantage, pretending to be someone she knows in his future incarnations.
      • This leaves the opportunity open for a Stable Time loop in which River Song discovers a diary chronicling a human's adventures with The Doctor, uses it to manipulate him into (possibly among other things) taking her on marvelous adventures and teaching her about the Time Lords, over time Becoming the Mask and truly caring for The Doctor. After her Death in Silence in the Library, her diary is recovered, and finds its way into the hands of a young River Song, a researcher fascinated with time travel and the legends of the long dead Time Lords and that species' sole survivor.
    • Jossed. Her affections are legit.
  • ...is the TARDIS.
    • There's precedent in the expanded universe for people becoming TARDISes. How about the other way around? What if River is a fragment of the TARDIS, in human form?
      • She knows the Doctor extremely well
      • She can pilot the TARDIS way better than the Doctor
      • She knows Old High Gallifreyan
      • The TARDIS can home in on her with pinpoint accuracy from 12,000 years away—the Doctor landed two years off his destination after a simple jaunt to the moon.
      • She carries a TARDIS-shaped diary
      • The TARDIS is always referred to as "she".
      • There exists an Alex Kingston quote re: River Song's ridiculously awesome heels - "Matt [Smith]’s got them. He kept them, not for himself personally but they’re around because he wanted them to be on the set of the TARDIS for evermore." Matt KNOWS and kept the shoes there not only because they're faboosh, but so she can acquire them there once she gains human form.
    • It all fits, I tell you!
    • Sorry, But As In Logopolis, A TARDIS inside a TARDIS Causes a Regression and Gravity Bubble, so, The theory Doesn't work.
    • Actually, since River is in a different form, it could, much like how different regenerations can meet and have no problem, whereas if humans cross their timeline Bad Things Happen.
      • Sorry, no. The Fifth Doctor's TARDIS collided with the Tenth's and that still caused Bad Things to Happen.
    • "The Doctor's Wife" sets a precedence for the TARDIS inhabiting a human body. What's more, the TARDIS (which had already been established as knowing things that are going to happen) drops hints about a river.
      • Proves nothing. She was in earshot of River when she revealed herself.
      • River could also somehow be a Ganger of the TARDIS itself... River's form being what the TARDIS thinks she would look like as a human, albeit as a child who later grows up into the River we know and love.
      • Jossed. She's not a TARDIS ganger, she's the human (with a hint of the Temporal Schism) daughter of Amy and Rory.
  • ... Is Prisoner Zero
    • They are both prisoners, and prisoner zero was never killed by the giant eye thing. They both have the same delight in knowing things the doctor doesn't, and I think that they both mentioned the "pandorica". It's possible!
  • ...is the Doctor's next regeneration.
    • I'm honestly surprised no one else has said this.
    • Just pointing this tidbit out:

Dalek Supreme: Only the Doctor can pilot the TARDIS.

      • But as we've seen every companion pilot the TARDIS at some point during the revived series, this is definitely unlikely. It's most likely that The Alliance was manipulated to believe only The Doctor could pilot the TARDIS, so they would get him away from the TARDIS for whomever it was manipulating them to blow it up.
        • Or maybe all the companions had been erased from history.
    • Jossed. Jack is still in Torchwood, Sarah Jane appeared in a fourth series of The Sarah Jane Adventures (with Jo Grant as a guest) and Tegan, Ben, Polly, Ian, Barbara, Harry, the Brigadier, Liz and (implicitly) Ace are namechecked in the SJA episode Death of the Doctor, which is set after the universe reboot and Amy and Rory's wedding. We also witness River's birth in "A Good Man Goes to War". Also, all of River's regenerations are accounted for.
  • ...is her own person and the Doctor's next regeneration.
    • A precedent is established in Destiny of the Daleks and more subtly in The Caves of Androzani for Time Lords regenerating into a form that resembles somebody else.
      • You mean she's two different people, like Astra and Romana, and Maxil and the Doctor?
  • ... Is The Master
    • He found a way back from death, but it required becoming a human woman.
    • Jossed. She was born on Demon's Run.
  • ... Is still alive.
    • She regenerated when the Doctor had left-she was faking a death.
    • Unlikely. Otherwise how did her data ghost store her consciousness? And why was she so eager to take the Doctor's place if HE could regenerate?
  • ...a rejennyrated Jenny (see what I did there?).
    • It'd be weird and slightly Squicky but sure, why not?
    • She calls the Doctor "my love" in TBB. Squick to the power of squick.
    • Jossed. We witness both Jenny and River's births.
  • ... is Lucy Saxon.
    • Lucy traveled with the Master to the end of the universe. Given that the Doctor isn't too keen on crossing his own timeline (or probably running across the Master), River going to the end of the universe is probably not a future event. This theory has problems (Lucy being dead, for one) but may still somehow be possible.
      • Another problem is that the journalist Vivien Rook pointed out that Lucy has a solid background check, while Saxon's photoshopped history paper-thin was obvious to the people resistant to the Archangel network of satellites.
  • ... will come back from the dead in Series 6 / Season 32.
    • It seems like a perfect twist. The furthest point in her timeline we have seen so far was in 'The Forest Of The Dead' when she had sacrificed herself before the Doctor worked out a way to preserve her consciousness in soul although her body had died. Season 5 showed that people can be 'revived' even if they were written out of history, provided they are, in some sense, 'not quite dead' i.e. their soul still exists, in this case in the void, and they are actively 'remembered' by a time-sensitive mind like Amy's. It seems not so great a leap for someone to 'rewrite' reality sufficiently to put River back in a physical body. Amy is obviously a contender for the one who brings her back, whether or not intentionally; she being the one who brought back Rory, the Doctor, and her parents. Also Amy and River seem to have developed a close relationship and trust in the course of their few encounters together. Another option is that River is resurrected in a similar way by an enemy of the Doctor's. Or she may never come back in the physical world, but manage to cross over into dreams or other simulated realities. The least likely option to me is that she return as an android or cyborg containing her consciousness, although this would be useful if they needed to recast her for some reason.
    • Jossed.
  • ....Is Captain Jack Harkness.
    • Why? In the Big Bang she says "....that's when everything changes." Sounds familiar to anyone who's ever watched an episode of Torchwood. And doesn't halluciogenic lipstick sound like just the type of thing Jack would love?
    • Not to mention, if we go with the whole 'Jack is the Face of Boe' theory, in one of the first season episodes it's mentioned in passing that the Face of Boe has revealed he's prgenant. Either this was a lie, or Jack's biology has overgone a major re-write (besides the giant head thing, obviously).
    • Also, River's last words of "The Forest of the Dead" are:

Some days are special. Some days are so, so blessed. Some days, nobody dies at all. Now and then, every once in a very long while, every day in a million days, when the wind stands fair, and the Doctor comes to call... everybody lives.

    • When's the last time we heard those words? At the end of Captain Jack's first adventure with the Doctor, The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances. How better to commemorate your last adventure with the Doctor than the words that marked the end of your first?
    • Jossed. We see both River as a baby ("A Good Man Goes to War") and Jack as a little boy on the Boeshane Peninsula (Torchwood: "Adam").
  • ...will not appear in Series 6 / Season 32.
    • Simple deduction. She told The Doctor he would find out who she was soon, indicating that she will meet him for the first time while he is still in this body. However, she did not recognise Rory in The Pandorica Opens, so we can conclude that she had never met him before then. Since Amy and Rory are still with The Doctor, and companions don't tend to leave mid-series (and no, I'm not accepting Rory leaving and Amy staying as a possibility). Although of course, they could meet an older version of her...
      • Jossed. She appeared prominently in six episodes. She doesn't remember Rory for the same reasons Amy doesn't, and she isn't erased from history likewise. "The Wedding of River Song" implies that she lies about not knowing them in earlier appearances too.
  • ... Is a Gender Flip version of the Doctor.
    • Come on. She's just like him. Sure, you're thinking, "But she acts like she's his wife in his future!" Of course she does. Can't you see the Doctor taunting himself like this? It makes even more sense if she's doing it to try and keep him from finding out who she is.
    • While "The Almost People" clearly proves that the Doctor is in love with himself, Amy later gives birth to her later in the same episode.
  • ... Is Cameca.
    • The first woman we see the Doctor romantically involved with, despite the grumpiness of his first incarnation. To drive the point home, he actually got engaged to her. Clearly, she found some way to travel through time, eventually collected on his promise, and is now screwing with his later incarnations.
  • ... Is Marilyn Monroe.
    • River Song is always treating the Doctor as if he is her husband, and technically the Doctor is Marilyn Monroe's husband. They also both have curly hair. Marilyn Monroe went off with the Doctor and then later decided to stay in the future and build a career there, still having an occasional adventure with the Doctor.
  • ... actually Amy's biological mother
    • Amy's parents aren't her real parents; River traveled back in time and gave baby Amy up for adoption. It could explain how Amy's and River's personalities are so similar and the fact that the two deal with the Doctor and time travel.
    • Barring implications, Jossed. She's Amy's daughter.
  • ... Is from the parallel earth
    • The Doctor she first met was the one on Earth-2. It happened years later, after Rose had died and the Doctor there had aged into an old man. Note that when she first sees Ten she comments that he is "younger than I've ever seen you". She clearly isn't referring to physical age (Eleven looks younger, and she had met him by that point in her life). Well, maybe she isn't referring to "younger" in the absolute sense either; she met Ten before, but that was his half-human self who had aged. There was also a scripted scene (don't know if it was filmed or not) in Journey's End where the Doctor gives his clone a piece of the TARDIS so that he can grow his own. Maybe he did so, and had lots of adventures with Rose, who eventually died. The Doctor's next companion was River, but he was getting on in years, and knew that he would soon die (and not regenerate). So he trained River as his replacement; told her his real name, taught her to fly the TARDIS (he was better at it at that point), and eventually passed away. River found a way to break into our universe and hooked up with our Doctor.
    • Jossed. It's up in the air whether meeting River as a baby counts as "the first time", but that doesn't change the fact that she was born in N-Space on an asteroid called Demon's Run.
  • ... is a direct descendant of the royal family of Britain
    • mainly because Liz10 in "The Beast Below" acts in a similar manner. Awesome gunslinger, quite hot, knows a lot about the Doctor - because stories are passed down through the family...also, Liz10 probably gave the longest continuous confusion to the Doctor on the subject of her identity, second only to River. Admittedly, that's three minutes compared to years or possibly eons, but it's still a record.
  • ... is Queen Elizabeth I of England
    • Combing the previous WMG with the ever-present theory that River is the Doctors (future) wife. She killed him because she's still pissed about the whole "Virginia" thing.
  • ... is Idris
    • The fourth episode of Series 6 is named 'The Doctor's Wife', and has the character of Idris who is said to be 'an old acquaintance with a new face'. That comment is actually from our point of view, since canonically we've seen River before Idris. She will die and regenerate into River, which will be the beginning of their long journey from her perspective.
      • The same Idris who was the last King Of Libya?
      • Jossed, The Doctor's Wife is the TARDIS in a human body named Idris. Idris' body dies at the end of the episode.
  • ... is Madam de Pompadour
    • When Madam de Pompadour kissed the Doctor and/or when he read her mind/she read his mind, something happened to her. This might also explain why she knows his real name - she saw it when she was inside his mind. All of the mindreading the clockwork guys did might also have done something to her brain, making it more susceptible to the Doctor messing with it or something. Moffat wrote The Girl in the Fireplace, so maybe he planted that seed way back when?
    • Jossed. Madame de Pompadour and River Song have mutually exclusive points of death.
  • ...is Amy's Daughter.
    • In "The Impossible Astronaut" Amy says she's pregnant. Why River? Why not?
    • Seemingly implied is that she's the girl from Day Of The Moon, and has got a 'time head'.
      • A Good Man Goes To War confirms River is Amy's Daughter, Melody Pond. That's what her name translates to in the language of those living in the Gamma Forest.
  • ...is pregnant.
    • In "The Impossible Astronaut" both Amy and River are nauseous. We learn the cause of Amy's sickness, but River's isn't explained. Any theories on the identity of the theoretical father, besides the obvious?
      • No, it's noted in Day of the Moon that The Silence can cause this effect.
      • Random alternate theory: Little girl is River, and being in such close contact with herself from the past causes feelings of sickness.
      • Plausible. Let's Kill Hitler confirms she's the Little Girl.
  • ...is the Doctor's Gallifreyan wife from before the Time War.
    • She somehow survived the Time War, but her mind was broken after witnessing the destruction of her homeworld and the death of her entire species at the hands of her husband. To help her, the Doctor lets her use the chameleon arch to become a human with no memories of the Time War. What River perceives as her first meeting with the Doctor (when she was young and impressionable) and the moment when she first became so attached to him is actually moments after she was transformed from a Gallifreyan into River Song; the reason that the Doctor knew everything about her is because he helped to design her new memories and personality. But just like the Doctor began to emerge from John Smith in fits and starts, part of the Doctor's wife starts emerging from River, and she essentially falls in love with the Doctor as a result of already being in love with the Doctor. In turn, the Doctor recognises so much of his wife in River that he falls in love with her all over again. They fall into the dynamic of a married couple so easily because they're already married.
    • Jossed. She was born to human parents after the Doctor instigated the Time Lock, and has Time Lord DNA due to being conceived inside the Temporal Schism.
  • is Omega.
    • Think about it- we know Omega is in the new season. It's entirely possible that the end of the Time War screwed him and his timeline over so that he got born as a woman-or managed to squeeze his way out of that antimatter universe of his.
      • No we don't? When was Omega confirmed to be in series 6?
    • This might also be a good way to refer to the Cartmel Masterplan. Not only does s/he now have a crush on the doctor, he'll claim that he always had a crush on the doctor, even Back Then, when The Doctor was The Other.
  • ... is Ms. Frizzle
    • And she killed the doctor to steal his TARDIS so she could take her class on adventures. Sadly, shortly after this, she was caught and put in Stormcage.
      • Nope.
  • ... is the Silence.
    • She was first introduced by Silence in the Library. She was in the Tardis when it exploded in The Pandorica Opens. During Day of the Moon, Amy was told she would "bring the Silence". As of A Good Man Goes to War, we know River Song is Amy's daughter.
    • No, just a pawn of them.
  • ...is The Silence
    • "The Silence" being her Time Lord Title.
  • ...Is a Lying Liar Who Lies
    • She somehow has the ability to know exactly what needs to be said to get people to trust her - probably because she's so out of sync with everyone else, she can get the spoilers ahead of time and use them to give her the advantage.
    • She knew about Melody Pond's disappearance, and planned for it. She took the name River Song specifically because she could use it to later claim she was Melody. Everyone believed her, even the Silents, hence their insistence that Amy would "bring The Silence".
      • Pretty much confirmed.

The Doctor never told River his name

  • She just read it off his cot at the end of A Good Man Goes To War

The man River killed--the "best man [she] ever knew"--was or is...

  • ......the Doctor.
    • But don't worry - Time can be over-written.
      • Then why was Father Octavian so mistrustful of the Doctor, if he knows him as a hero?
        • Being a good man, and a hero, doesn't mean you aren't a complete madman either.
      • The question is, what reason did she kill him for? If there was a good reason why doesn't he forgive her and bust her out of stormhold prison? And if it was a bad reason why are the two on such good terms in the future?
        • She killed him because she didn't know him yet. She seems to have a bit of a shady past anyways, so it's not too far of a stretch to think that he was trying to stop her from doing something and she acted in what she thought was self-defense. If she flees the scene (or is arrested) before he regenerates, that would explain why she kept trying to play catch up with Ten when he first met her, even though (at least as far as we know) she never saw that incarnation of him again. She really only ever knew Eleven, and assumed that Ten was a later regeneration as opposed to a previous one...
      • it also ties in, very neatly, with her death. A Stable Time Loop where her last meeting with the Doctor (her death) is his first meeting with her. We then follow the Doctor's timeline of adventures with her, where each is one step backwards in her timeline until we reach her first meeting with the Doctor, where she kills him (so becoming his last meeting). The Grand Moff could not possibly pass up such an elegant time loop, with each end anchored by a characters death.
    • Not sure if this counts as wild but this seems the most obvious choice. It also syncs well with the above River is a companion of the Master theory. This is how Eleven will regenerate into Twelve.
    • Except she didn't kill this incarnation or a future one; she caused Eight to regenerate into Nine.
      • Why doesn't he remember?
        • The more think about it, the more I'm convinced that it's NOT the Doctor whom she kills. I mean, she was locked up for it, right? Well the Doctor is virtually a myth, a story to the people on earth and not even that (maybe even moreso now since the universe rewrote itself). He barely exists and he's certainly not considered as a human citizen (or an anything citizen for that matter.) How can you be locked up for killing a story?
    • I don't think so. In the Series 6 premiere, The Doctor dies. River then says to Amy and Rory that she is not afraid of the Doctor's death, as well as her own. There will be a worse day coming.
      • I assumed the "worse day" was the day she "looks into the Doctor's eyes, and he doesn't have a clue who she is."
    • In the Series 6 premiere River is the one in the spacesuit who kills the Doctor and an earlier version of herself gets sent to jail for the crime. The yonger River is shown the evidence of the crime so even though she has not killed the Doctor yet in her personal time line she still tells people that she killed the best man she's ever known because she knows she will kill the Doctor one day.
      • The River in the spacesuit is the younger version after she's done some research not long after the end of LKH. The one with Rory and Amy is a much later version (they sync'd diaries and was implied that to both of them, they've then done plenty of adventures together). When he tells Spacesuit!River to look over she asks how can she be there and the Doctor says "that's your future self" saying how she's serving prison time for the murder she's about to commit but won't personally remember doing.
  • Alternatively The Doctor that River kills is the Ganger! Version. While we do see that Ganger!Doctor melts into a puddle in the end of The Almost People, it doesn't mean that he didn't regenerate. It's quite possible that he survived the attack and also goes to the Battle of Demon's Run, albeit on The Slow Path and gets killed by River.
  • After the events of "A Good Man Goes to War", I think that that could've easily been the real Doctor, and that River Song is the one in the spacesuit.
    • 1) She was conditioned from birth to kill the Doctor.
    • 2) We have it on somewhat good word that that was "certainly" the Doctor, and he was "most certainly" dead. I don't think the Moff would cheat his way out of that one too simply.
    • 3) River is in Stormcage for killing "The best man she ever knew". Could be either the Doctor or Rory honestly but for the sake of the theory let's say it's definitely the Doctor.
    • 4) The Arc words "Time can be rewritten" are closely tied to River.
    • I'm thinking that Steven Moffat wouldn't stoop so low as to undo River's death (or sorta-death) from Silence in the Library, and the Arc Words seem more important than they did at first. I believe that younger!River killed the Doctor, but by the end of this series that event will somehow be worked out; the Doctor lives, and River doesn't have to go to prison for homicide (although she still might, in case it's needed to prevent a time paradox).
    • If she did kill the Doctor, it would have likely been before she truly knew him. Leading up to her becoming The Atoner, helped possibly by a regeneration.
  • CONFIRMED... kinda. It wasn't really the Doctor: he faked his own death in order to disappear from the public eye, and River knew this, but she took the rap anyway because the Doctor's "death" is a fixed point in time.
  • ... Captain Jack Harkness.
    • The Face of Boe, they called him.
    • Evidence:
      • It's implied the man River killed was well known in her own time. The only existing character who fits that bill, other than the Doctor, is Jack.
      • Two things almost always show up in the series finales: the Arc Words, and Captain Jack. We know we'll see River again "when the Pandorica opens," so it's quite likely River and Jack will be in the same episode.
      • What would happen if you fed a "fixed point" into a temporal eraser, anyway? If the Doctor could close the crack temporarily, maybe Jack could close it permanently.
      • The Rift was closed in Torchwood: The Lost Files. Jack did not turn up in "The Pandorica Opens".
    • And Jossed.
  • ...a brand new character who will be introduced in the beginning of "The Pandorica Opens" and killed off in the end of the two-parter—presumably in self-defense or desperation or after being possessed, because we can't have River Song actually being nasty or morally ambiguous.
    • (I'm sorry, but it irks me to see how many fans shout loudly that it's obviously the Doctor. They obviously haven't been baited by the writers long enough.)
    • Also, she'll turn herself in, just to make sure the audience will still like her...I mean, coincide with the timeline.
      • Jossed, at the start of Pandorica Opens, River Song's already in prison for the presumed murder.
  • ... Rory Williams.
    • Someone want to make an argument for me? I can't seem to put a coherent thought line together for this one.
      • River is Amy Pond, and Rory is certainly the "best man" she refers to and a hero to many.
      • With the reveal, the best man many girls know is their father - voila
    • Jossed.
  • ...her husband.
    • In order to save the Universe. Or something. River said The Doctor's "too complicated" to be married to her, although she didn't specifically deny it. Also, that comment about weddings, the "honey I'm home" could all be a very ironic game they're playing. The "everything changes" line could imply that the Doctor will never see himself in the same light again when he sees what people will do for him.
    • Confirmed, in a manner of speaking.
  • ...a "best man", as in a best man at a wedding.
    • All the "best man she ever knew" stuff was just her idea of humour.
    • Jossed.
  • ... herself, in a former regeneration, which also happens to be a future regeneration of the Doctor.
    • The Doctor - probably twelfth or later, as River considers both Ten and Eleven to be very young - goes into a situation in the full knowledge that he will not come out of it without having to regenerate. His companion, who has met River and knows about the "killed the greatest man she ever knew" thing but who does not know about regeneration, does not see the actual regeneration event. The companion jumps to conclusions when it's not the Doctor he or she knows who emerges from the wreckage but River. River!Doctor sticks with the story that she "killed" her former self to maintain the timeline (she knows that River Song spends quite some time imprisoned for murder) and because she feels some regret at having to end that particular incarnation when she did.
    • Implausible, all of River's regenerations are accounted for.
  • is THE FEZ
    • She later realized that Fezzez are cool and deeply regretted her mistake. She turned herself in to the authorities for murdering the greatest hat of all time.
      • The authorities of a Planet of Hats? I'm fairly certain you cannot legally murder a hat even in Whoniverse!Britain.
      • Incredibly unlikely. The Fez is from a universe where Stormcage doesn't exist. Plus, the museum probably doesn't exist in the rebooted universe in the state it was in.
    • Jossed.
  • is Jeff
    • Probable 'Best Man' at Amy and Rory's wedding, referred to as the Doctor's 'Best Man' at the conference, and hero to many for spreading the 000 virus. Of course, it's ironic because- (see Big Bad entry below)
    • Jossed.
  • Vincent van Gogh
    • She made it look like a suicide.
    • Jossed.
  • is Elan
  • ...JFK.
    • Jossed.

River learned to fly the TARDIS...

...from the TARDIS itself. Remember how she said she "learned from the best" and said how it wasn't the Doctor since he was busy doing other stuff? May have been achieved with some kind of telepathic connection, similar to the one Sexy had with Rory.

  • Confirmed in Let's Kill Hilter. The Doctor was indeed very busy.

River Song is the TARDIS

So, despite the heavy Doctor/River shipping that's been happening, Moffat randomly decides to throw in an episode where we see a much longer-lived relationship cast into the limelight? In an episode called The Doctor's Wife? When River has been heavily implied to be just that? It all makes sense now! At some point, the TARDIS comes to life again, as River! Perhaps it was even the Doctor meeting River in the first place that put the idea in her mind.

  • Jossed. She's not the TARDIS. Also, Gaiman had apparently been planning this episode since the time the Ninth/Tenth Doctor TARDIS room was still in use.

River Song gets a happy ending

  • River does get her consciousness saved into a computer by the end of Forest of the Dead, but at the end of the whole Matt Smith series, we'll cut back to River but now it'll show that the Doctor would have managed to save a copy of himself in that Sonic Screwdriver.

River Song's diary was or will be stolen from the Library.

The Doctor really shouldn't have just left it behind. All it would take for someone malicious is to sneak in there while the day of amnesty is still in effect (to not get eaten by the Vashta Nerada), and use the knowledge within to wreak havoc on the universe, especially against the Doctor. Time really will be rewritten, and not in a good way.

River Song is the first Time Lord.

Or at the very least the root of their society. Either by being the first ancestor of the people that would evolve into them, or by giving them the knowledge of the Time Vortex in the first place.

  • Jossed, though she did come into existence in a similar way the early Time Lords did.
    • Not necessarily. She's a time traveller. It's entirely possible that she could go back in time and become the first of the Time Lords.
    • Through the Time Lock? No...

There is an incarnation of River between Mels and the Astronaut.

At the end of Day of the Moon, we see the girl in the Astronaut suit start regenerating in 1969/1970 New York City. In Let's Kill Hilter, River says last time she regenerated, she ended up a toddler in the middle of New York. However, she is roughly the same age as Amy throughout their childhood, and Amy is not 40 years old. Certain sources say Amy was born in 1984, which means there is a gap of 14 years between known regenerations. The events of this gap will presumably explain who took care of River as a toddler and who brought her to England to grow up with her parents.

  • Jossed. River is the Astronaut, and we know there's no one between Mels and River. Therefore, any in-between incarnations would have to be between New York Suit Girl and Mels.

From now on, we'll see Nina Toussaint-White as Melody Pond / River Song.

We know that River/Melody's and the Doctor's timelines run in opposite directions. So, either one of these timelines (or maybe both) is already seriously screwed up somehow, or we'll see Nina Toussaint-White as Melody Pond from now on.

  • Their timelines don't actually run backwards; if they did, the diaries would be pretty useless.
    • Also, keep in mind that River expected the Tenth Doctor to know her and have a diary. The "present day" Eleventh Doctor hasn't been shown to be keeping a diary yet (although probably is as of "Let's Kill Hitler"). This can only mean River initially thought the Tenth Doctor was a later incarnation, so even she didn't take the "living backwards" thing entirely literally.

The "X is a Time Lord" meme on TV Tropes is soon to be replaced by "X is River Song".

The little Time Lady, Melody Pond and Mels have all been revealed to be past selves of River Song. If this happens to one more character, people will start seeing her everywhere.

An episode soon will involve the River of the Library.

Did anyone else catch the line in the episode with House? "The only water in the forest is the River" (Or something extremely close). Now, what have we seen about forests? A certain episode called Forest of the Dead, perhaps? Which just happened to have River Song's final resting place (If one can call it that) inside? Food for thought, at the very least...

    • probably Jossed given the meaning of that phrase.

Other

In Series 6, River will meet the Doctor for the first time.

  • In the Christmas Special or the first episode of Series 6, the Doctor will encounter River at the earliest point in her timestream. For River, this will be the first time she's ever met the Doctor (Wibbly wobbly, timey wimey, etc...). Expect the Doctor to be that one that starts saying "spoilers!" and such.
    • Jossed, but the mid-season finale shows River at just one month old. However, this is too young for him to communicate with her.
      • The Doctor does speak Baby.
  • For a time (maybe a block of episodes, maybe the entire series), River will be a companion of the Doctor's, travelling on the TARDIS, all that jazz. They wind up in a real romantic relationship; just knowing that they'll probably get together in the future is enough to get the Doctor thinking that maybe she's someone he'd want to get together with. Predestination paradox and all that.
    • Nope, just two-parters as usual.
  • At the end of the series, she'll kill "the greatest man [she's] ever known" and be locked up in the Stormcage. Worse, she'll really piss off the Doctor.
    • Or, she'll kill Eleven, causing him to regenerate into Twelve. Hence her apoligising in "The Big Bang" and saying that everything will change soon.
    • And at some point in the future, there'll be an episode called "The Time Lord's Wife". Just wait, you'll see.
      • Close, it's "The Doctor's Wife".
      • ...which has nothing to do with The Time Traveller's Wife OR River Song (apart from some arc words), so disregard.
      • None of the Doctor's incarnations are supposed to stay dead. Ideally, the actors who play the Doctor move on to other roles when the Doctor regenerates (but actors are people too, so they do what they like). Every human the Doctor has ever worked with is a hive mind of fans. The most recent Doctor(s) did not show his (or their) fans sufficient respect, so BBC America broadcast images of the Eleventh Doctor at gunpoint, so that angry fans would send Eleven to figurative Hell. He fought his way out over the course of a few weeks. The Force is currently in balance (approximately).

Series Six will deconstruct Davies' habit of not knowing when to quit with his pet characters by having River turn out to be Not A Nice Person, Period, or perhaps just an especially persistent admirer of the Doctor's.

The Doctor will eventually have to reboot the Randomiser just so she'll go away and people will stop talking about her, already.

    • She's already untrustworthy, a Child Soldier and very likely killed the Doctor. Take what you will from that.
      • Plus she would have risked the whole of time and space just for him. The Doctor wasn't amused.
      • She's both insane and sociopathic, but still derided by some as a Creator's Pet and Canon Sue. Take from that what you will.

Series 6 will feature Nine/Ten's TARDIS

If you pause at exactly the right moment at 0:37 in one of the trailers, you'll see this: http://img855.imageshack.us/i/tenstardis.jpg/ Yeah. Eleven's TARDIS doesn't have those curvy support beam-thingies. Nine/Ten's does. (Also a lot of people were saying that the people looked like Ten and Rose, but it's pretty obviously Rory and Amy.) My guesses are that the Silence somehow puts them into the actual old TARDIS or whoever was making the TARDIS from "The Lodger" made it in the same design as Ten's. Either way sounds suspicious, but there is no way that's Eleven's TARDIS.

  • Partially confirmed in "The Doctor's Wife". It's still Eleven's TARDIS, but there's an archived control room which is Nine and Ten's.

Eleven WILL wear a Fez in season 6!

C'mon, Matt Smith will bug Moffat so much that he will go Sure Why Not.

    • Alternatively, The Doctor will get a new Nice Hat every episode, ranging from bowlers to sombreros to pretty floral bonnets but by the end of the episode he'll lose it or it will be destroyed. Then in the season finale, the Master lures him into a trap with a Fez.
    • He wore another fez in A Christmas Carol and he's got a Stetson on in the Season Six preview. Semi-confirmed?

Series 6 will have another Redeemable Dalek

There was the lone Dalek During the 9th's tenure, and 10 had Dalek Sec and Dalek Caan. It takes extreme circumstances, but the Daleks have shown that they can change, that they can break out of their usual thought processes. I think one of the Dalek Rangers will turn on his brothers. He will probably then immediately get killed.

  • Or not. Two words for you: Dalek companion. IMO, the best bet would be Dalek Strategist, as a strategist would probably be more capable of abstract thought, and could figure out the best bet for Dalek survival would be stop making the Doctor mad. Also, IIRC, Strategists are blue, and would go wonderfully with the TARDIS. It could even show it's allegiance with a bow tie!
    • That idea is has more madness in it than all of Sparta. But, it may actually be the most logical conclusion if said Heel Face Turned Dalek dodge the Redemption Equals Death Bullet.
    • Maybe the Doctor picks up this redeemable Dalek and as they travel together they bond a little, and it becomes much better/nicer because of his influence. Then, the day comes when they split up, the Dalek ends up alone on some random planet, and it manages to create a race of nice Daleks, or at least Daleks who don't try to screw with everything they see.
      • The preview for The Wedding of River Song includes a very quick shot of what looks like the Doctor standing by a damaged Dalek at an odd angle that could be a non-hostile moment, maybe these two most ancient of enemies having to team up against the falling of the Silence, an alliance so unpredictable that it's the one thing that even the Silence and its carefully-laid plans can't account for? (Of course, it's far more likely that this is just the Doctor dealing with one more Dalek trying to exterminate him. But you never know...)

Season 6's big bad is anti-Silence

The doctor said the silence are an empire, so "the Silence will fall" means their empire will fall maybe unleashing a Sealed Evil in a Can in the form of season 5& 6's Big Bad

  • Or the big bad is the Silence. When you say that Silence falls, it doesn't mean Silence is gone, but the opposite.
  • Eh? Empire? He said no such thing. The Silence is both a religious order (and series 6's Big Bad) as well as an abstract term implied to mean their downfall, the Doctor's death, or a bit of both.

The Doctor in Series 6 isn't the real Doctor

The Real Doctor is trapped behind the cracks after driving the Pandorica into the TARDIS explosion. The Doctor in Series 6 is the Doctor, but a version "remembered" into existance by Amy. This Doctor is the one who gets killed in "The Impossible Astronaut", and the Astronaut is actually the Real Doctor having got back through the cracks in time. However, since there can't be more than one Doctor in existence at the same time, the Real Doctor has to kill the "remembered" Doctor to stop reality breaking. Again. Elaborating on this theory, all the stuff that happened during the 200 years that the Doctor supposedly spent running was actually him working to free the Real Doctor from the cracks.

  • Alternatively, the real Doctor is still trapped in the Pandorica after the universe was re-created, and Amy 'remembering' him was unable to release him and instead created a new one. He will not be discovered or released until after the Doctor we know dies.

In Series 6...

Another of the Virgin New Adventures will be adapted. Specifically All-Consuming Fire. However, it will be an updated adaptation with the 11th Doctor and set in the present day with the Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman version of Holmes and Watson. With Moffat working on both, he really should do it...

  • Jossed.

Character Copies, fakes and other WMG

The Real Amy was kidnapped before the start of the current series.

I would have theorised that she was kidnapped when the Silents grabbed her in the Day of the Moon, but she saw Eye-Patch Lady before that happened. Any way, far too obvious; we all know what The Moff is like when it comes to crazy-twisted, timey-wimey plot. Theories as to the exact time would be most appreciated. For now, I'm throwing out this one:

  • She was replaced while in the Pandorica. On one hand, Rory the Roman was being extremely badass and protecting her, but on the other... you can't remember them while you're not looking at them. The Silents have been on Earth since, like, forever. And two thousand years is a REALLY long time for the Silents to manage something like this. Not out of the realms of possibility.
    • They didn't need to take her from the Pandorica. Remember, they've been living together happily for quite some time by the first episode. Seeing how fast a clone can be made, it might be as simple as in-out in the night, while Rory's asleep, so he can't bust out his hand-gun (does he still have that if he's still Rory the Roman, Nestene copy?). She was probably flesh by the time the Doctor died, but any time they were separated in the meantime. Although a "long, long time" implies before his death.
      • Word of God is that she was switched before the start of The Impossible Astronaut, likely offscreen.
      • And later suspected as such, if not outright confirmed in "The Almost People".

The humans in The Rebel Flesh are also Gangers. The original crew are all long dead.

Something happened that wiped out the original crew, perhaps a very long time ago (the Doctor seems keen to point out that hours have passed when they think only minutes had, so something is clearly wrong). The entire state of the factory seems to be decrepit and in need of repairs, and there is absolutely nobody and nothing else on the island except them. They are caught in a cycle that began when the originals died... the Gangers for some reason don't remember what happened and then make a new batch of Gangers, until they die and those Gangers take their places and make a new batch of Gangers, etc... Each time that the 'originals' die, the memories of their Gangers are reset to the point where they first started working at the factory. They have been there for a long time but don't realize it, as this is the Flesh's way of keeping them alive (and sane). The Doctor showing up and the solar storm has changed everything though... it will end with both groups realizing that they are just as 'real' as each other and their deceased originals, and just how much time has passed as they are finally able to leave the island. Their families, as well as anyone they once knew, are also long gone.

  • This is just the kind of Aesop-inducing plot that the Doctor Who producers love to throw at us. Also, Rule of Drama demands that this happen somehow.
    • Jossed, Jennifer-Ganger attempts to use machinery designed to detect whether a human or non-human is trying to operate it.


The Amy in the TARDIS is a Ganger

The vision of the eyepatch lady are feedback to wherever the original Amy is. At some point during Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon Amy was taken by the Silence and duplicated. That's why the TARDIS reads her as experiencing Schrodinger's pregnancy - either the Flesh is having trouble duplicating a pregnancy or Ganger Amy isn't pregnant but the original is, and the TARDIS is picking up information from both when she scans Ganger Amy.

  • Confirmed. Whoever wrote this has earned the right to say "I Knew It!!"
    • Which raises the question: if the sonic can distinguish between a human and a replicant, why can't the TARDIS resolve her pregnancy as fake?
      • Because, presumably, the pregnancy isn't fake. It's both real and fake, with real!Amy and ganger!Amy. That's what the TARDIS is picking up on.
      • And there were hints that Ganger Doctor and Real Doctor were having some kind of feedback between each other, so the non-pregnant Ganger Amy was getting the pregnancy vibes through time (probably) from Real Amy, hence the confused TARDIS.


The Gangers are the origin of the Changelings

No noses, pale faces, born from (and reverting to) goop, able to switch between Ganger and human looks... Now they just need to get their own planet and cover the surface of it.

Rory is still not the original Rory.

He reacted the way he did during The Rebel Flesh because of his memories of being an Auton duplicate, and is starting to suspect that he still is. When the universe was restarted, Auton!Rory was somehow made human but over time he is regressing back to his original form. It was already happening when he impregnated Amy, which is why the Doctor's scan can't decide if she's pregnant or not. The original Rory died for good at the end of Cold Blood, and is still dead. The universe reboot was only able to bring back those who were erased while they were alive, which Rory wasn't, so his Auton double was made 'real' to compensate. The Rory we've seen considers himself to be as real and alive as his original, and sympathizes much with the Gangers because they feel the same way. Note that Amy doesn't think that the Gangers are real during an argument with him... when the truth comes out about Rory, she won't be able to take it.

  • Jossed, at least partially. The Almost People" and "A Good Man Goes to War" establishes that it was Amy being stored in a Ganger body is what caused the scan to go "pregnant/not pregnant/pregnant". I also don't recall Rory sympathising with the Gangers as a whole, only Jennifer.

There are two Amy Ponds. Or two universes/timelines, and Amy keeps alternating between them.

Amy's "stupid face" speech via the communicator can be taken to mean either the Doctor or Rory (although she says "I know you think it should be him [that I love]", which Rory certainly does not think of the Doctor). It's both. There's one Amy who loves the Doctor and one who loves Rory. One Amy who is pregnant and one who is not. One Amy who was whimpering and terrified when we heard her through the communicator, and one who was confident and defiant in the face of the Silence when we saw her in their captivity.

  • This is a beautiful theory, and I'll tell you why: Reg Amy (Regular Amy) was drinking wine at the picnic, whereas Preg Amy (See what I did there?) wouldn't. I really hope this turns out to be true. Her child is in flux, schrodinger-style, oscillating between being real and not real.
  • Maybe that's why she told the Doctor she was pregnant so...urgently? It's his baby. Only that version of events is popping in and out of existence. The way she refers to needing to tell the Doctor doesn't sound like how you tell a friend you're pregnant. "There's something I need to tell him, but it's like things always get in the way." In fact, all the dialogue seems to have these subtle double meanings. When he asks why she told him first, she says "Why do you think?...I traveled with you for so long."
    • Or there are two timelines. One is where the Doctor got Amy pregnant. Another where Rory got Amy pregnant. The timeline where the Doctor is the father is the one where Rory never existed.
  • No, it's not the Doctor's baby, and even if Amy is oscillating between two timelines, it's not the reason why the pregnancy scanner's all haywire. It's because she's been operating a Ganger body, but the "real Amy" is inside a chamber on Demons Run slowly growing a baby.

Ganger!Doctor will return from his shoes that he gave the Doctor.

Remember that the Doctor lost his shoes to acid, and then swapped his new pair with his Ganger? At the end of The Almost People, he still had them on. Gangers are created complete with clothing, which means that the shoes the Doctor is wearing are Flesh and the last surviving part of Ganger!Doctor. The Doctor mentioned to his clone shortly before his death that it could be possible for him to come back, and one day he will fully re-form from those same pair of shoes (much like Meta-Crisis Ten grew from a hand) and be stabilized by the TARDIS.

Given that both Doctors are the same, it's not a far stretch that the original Doctor did / will die in The Impossible Astronaut, and that Moffat is completely honest in saying that the Doctor is dead. For an alternate, possible Mind Screw, one of the two will die but it will never be made clear to the audience as to which.

The Time Lords WILL return

In 'The Big Bang', the Doctor piloted the Pandorica into the exploding TARDIS. In doing so, he deleted himself and the TARDIS from exisance. And, in the Last Great Time War, The Doctor killed all the Time Lords(minus himself and the Master(So far)), and a majority of the Daleks with the Moment. But, if he never existed, he never could've used the Moment to do that. Hence, the Time Lords and Daleks are still in the Time Lock, duking it out in the Last Great Time War. Eventually, they will dissolve the Time Lock, and re-emerge into the universe. Cue a scared as hell Doctor.


The Time Tyke and Pregnancy

Pregnancy Timeline Shenanigans

  • Someone has Word of God that Amy was switched with ganger!Amy pre-The Impossible Astronaut. At the very start of that episode, Amy mentions that it's been two months since they last saw the Doctor, and I think it's fairly safe to say that she wasn't switched while they were still travelling together.

There's a three month gap between 6.01 and 6.02. Other than that, there's no particular reason to assume lengthy gaps of time between any of the episodes this series.So. five months. But Amy can't have been four months pregnant when she was taken - she'd be showing by then, wouldn't she? She certainly would have noticed.

  • Not exactly. My wife didn't show until five or six months, due to a stress and a combination of other factors, (Not eating right, and she didn't even know she was pregnant for the first two months..) so I wouldn't bet on that.

The Little Girl is Rory, Amy and the TARDIS's daughter.

In 'Day of the Moon' we get a conversation discussing the effects of time travel on a developing fetus. It seems unlikely that Moffat, who loves his Chekhov's Gun would include that if it wouldn't have something to do with the reality of the little girl. Furthermore, in the "Doctor's Wife" we learn more about the TARDIS. We learn that she exists simultaneously in the present, past and future, which could explain why the Amy's fetus keeps disappear- its travelling within its own time stream. Also, while the glow of the little girl looked like regeneration, it also resembled the way Idris glowed in the Doctor's wife. Since TARDISes have very close bonds with their Time Lords, and often aid in regeneration, it could be that the little girl's powers are more related to that, rather than an actual regeneration.

  • Child of the TARDIS Confirmed.

The little girl is River Song is Lucy Saxon.

  • http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3041653/ Unless IMDb made a huge mistake, the little girl is in fact Lucy Saxon, who could plausibly also be River, if she's a Time Lady under a Chameleon Arch or something like that. See above WMGs about the man River killed being the Master, etc.
    • IMDb has now removed this entry...

The little girl of the most recent episodes is Jenny's (half-)sister.

We know these facts:

  • The Silence have been around since “wheel and fire.”
  • The First Doctor's first serial took them back to the start of the “fire” part.
    • Wait, what? They clearly know what fire and firemakers are in that episode already when the Doctor arrived.
    • Hypothesis: During this time, the Silence noticed the odd man, and kept watch of the Doctor throughout all his adventures, and therefore know the “power” of a Time Lord. Which is also why they were trying to build their own TARDIS.
      • Second Hypothesis: The Silence want to have a Time Lord under their control, but don't have the technology (yet, technically) to insta-clone him like what happened with Jenny.
      • Confirmed.
  • The girl appears to be Amy's daughter.
    • Confirmed.
  • Amy (almost randomly) decides to try “seducing” the Doctor the instant they get back to Earth, where there was likely a Silent in her bedroom.
    • Hypothesis the Third: The Silence reached the same conclusion about Amy that the Doctor did about the Crack in Space/Time and decided to get the power of the Crack and a Time Lord by hybridizing Amy and the Doctor.
      • Hypothesis IV: The girl is Amy and the Doctor's daughter.
      • Jossed.
  • The girl is dying, but can Regenerate. However, the Silence put her in a life support space suit.
  • Doctor-Donna would have died because the Human body isn't designed to have all the knowledge and “power” of a Time Lord.
    • Hypothesis E: A hybrid of Human and Time Lord is ultimately unstable and that's why the little girl is dying. Eventually, she may continue to die and Regenerate until the suit catches her again or she runs out of Regenerations.

The little girl in the spacesuit is Jenny

At some point she was injured and regenerated into the body of a child. She doesn't recognize her father because of his recent regeneration.

  • Jossed. We see her birth in "The Almost People", while Jenny was "born" elsewhere and when.

On Amy's Kid

Alright, so the little girl in the spacesuit (the one that regenerated at the end of the episode) is Amy's kid. She was conceived on the TARDIS, and thus has soaked up Time-Lord powers like a little kid-shaped Shamwow. Amy (and maybe Rory) got stuck in the 1960s, and she gave birth to and raised the kid there- hence, the photographs. However, Amy had to leave, (or maybe died) and she was left in the orphanage. The Silence kidnapped her from the orphanage, planted their Silence babies there, and stuck her in the spacesuit. She escaped, and is now toddling around New York. That's why the TARDIS scanner registered Amy as both pregnant and not pregnant- there were two Amys at the time, one pregnant and one not. The question is how Amy got magically not pregnant in the two month time skip- did she forget giving birth to the child?

  • The girl has the Silence's ability to make people forget about her. It's not immediate like the Silence but over time knowledge of her fades away (the Doctor mentions this in Day of the Moon). By the end of the second episode of the series everyone on the TARDIS crew has forgotten about her and forgotten to save her. They make no mention of her after the space-suit examination scene and Amy forgets the photos she saw in the orphanage.
    • Actually, at the end of the episode, after they drop off River Song, the Doctor mentions that they should look for the little girl, or they could just go off to have a fun adventure instead, and then says that he picks adventure. Kind of a What the Hell, Hero moment, really. Amy does seem to have forgotten what she saw in the room, though.
  • In broad strokes, yes. She has a Time Head, she's Amy's daughter and she was raised in the 1960s. Amy was left behind in the 52nd century, though.

The Silence and the girl

The girl is the daughter of the master of the Silence. The Silence try to keep her safe, but they can't just throw her in a cell, they're afraid of their master. So they put her in a suit to protect her, giving her some freedom, able to walk around, able to talk to who she wants. Their master is a timelord, as shown by the girl regenerating. The girl is very strong physically, something that isn't normal among timelords, so the timelord must be a special timelord, probably Omega. The Silence are the eqivelent of "Timelord Daleks," timelords mutated gentically and with temperal energy, posibly for the time war.

  • Jossed. She's the daughter of someone very opposed to the Silence.

The little girl isn't a Time Lord at all.

Rather she was simply being born in a manner that mimics regeneration. The episode began 3 months after the previous, and the "regeneration" occured 6 months after that. Assuming the baby was conceived shortly beforehand, that means the regeneration happened 9 months after. The form we see is something else, a living potential due to the fact she's a Schrodinger baby at the moment, and the regeneration is into her true birth form, whatever that may be.

  • Jossed. It's legit regeneration.

The little Time Lord girl will regenerate into Amelia Pond

It doesn't have to be this regeneration. But the inevitable Timey-Wimey Ball would probably explain that picture.

  • Jossed. All of her regenerations are accounted for. Plus, she interacts with little Amelia for much of the 90s and all of the 2000s.

Aliens made them do it

The Silence are using their post-hypnotic suggestion abilities on the Doctor and Amy to make time-babies. Specifically, the Future!Doctor (who had been a very naughty Time Lord recently). This may have happened during the Silence "kidnap" of Amy, which, due to its consequences, resulted in the seeming defeat of the Silence. The TARDIS's inability to decide if Amy is pregnant or not could stem from the change in the timeline. Either that or....

  • Jossed. It's not the Doctor's.

Amy was pregnant and has already given birth

To the little Time Lady, during her travels with the Doctor's travels in the TARDIS, but none of them remember it, due to the Silence and their memory wiping-ness.

  • Jossed. She's pregnant, but piloting a Ganger body so it doesn't show.

The little girl will...

After regenerating the (not so little) girl, whoever she may be, will be the companion for Eleven's next season.

The Little Girl is a Time Lady.

...Oh wait. Never mind.

  • Half-right.

The little girl is the Doctor.

The writers seem to have quietly scrapped the idea that the Doctor only has a certain number of regenerations, and he is potentially immortal. However, the two could work together; after a Time Lord uses all their regenerations, or is killed in some way from which they cannot regenerate, they outright reincarnate, losing nearly all their memories and starting again as a child. That's why the Doctor wanted them to get rid of his body; he didn't want them to see what happened next, as he knew it wasn't time for them to know yet.
The astronaut suit needed a child in it; it couldn't last with no-one inside it for too long, and was only built for a child, and for whatever reason, the Doctor had to give in. Rather than send an innocent child to that fate, he decided that he himself would have to do it, and arranged things accordingly.
So, the new little girl Doctor was taken to the past as soon as she came into existance. She retains only a few images from her past life; one of these is of Amy Pond, who she believes is her mother. When that woman appeared in the orphanage, she said "she's dreaming again", or something along those lines, suggesting the little girl's dreams can be projected in that room. That's why the picture of Amy was there; the little girl was dreaming of being with her mother.
However, the first time she saw Amy, Amy attempted to shoot her. Naturally, the little girl Doctor is scared and confused by this, so she runs away when Amy appears again.
The Doctor himself may have a subconscious suspicion of who the girl is, which is why he doesn't go after her at the end; he's simply scared of facing up to his fate. Eventually, he will realise what he has to do.

The little girl is Amy and Rory's baby

Ergo, Rory is a Time Lord under the effects of the Chameleon Arch, after all, we know literally nothing about his background,and Amy says he "fell out of the sky" (even though she says she was being figurative). CA'd Time Lords apparently age and die normally without regeneration as seen in John Smith's Flash Forward, but his genes were still Time lord, making the Girl a hybrid, NOT to be confused with the Metacrisis Doctor who was only part human and not naturally conceived. It's also why The Doctor allows Rory to help with the TARDIS, he subconsciously realizes that Rory is a fellow Time Lord and is capable of using it.

  • Time Lords who have been changed with the Arch are humans for all intents and purposes, genetically as well. Also, they always carry the watch storing the original biodata.
  • Alternatively, its still Rory's child, but the Time Lord nature comes from genetic alterations produced by prolonged in-utero exposure to the energies of the Time Vortex.
    • The child got time-head?
      • And time body, from the looks of things.
  • Confirmed, though she's human with a bit of Time Lord DNA, rather than anything Chameleon Archy.

The little girl was in the spacesuit when the Doctor died...

And she somehow managed to absorb his regeneration energy. Most likely this means she regenerates into River, since it's easy to see the Doctor sacrificing his life for her.

  • Jossed. She regenerates into River BEFORE killing him.

The little girl is Amy's child...

She was pregnant during the picnic with Rory's Baby, and gave birth during the six month interlude between Ep1 and Ep2. The Silents got a hold of the Doctor's DNA during the picnic (or some other time) and tampered with her genetics, causing the baby to be born Time Lord for reasons unknown. Alternatively, (as they have a lesser TARDIS) the baby was born while she was kidnapped. However, the Doctor interfered with that timeline, hence his TARDIS can't tell wether she's pregnant or not: There are two Amy's running around while causality is trying to unbend itself: In the other timeline, Amy raised her child happily, but all the time-fuckery made that go away. This is why it was so important to mention to us that everyone wants to get a hold of a Time Lord's body and why they had to burn it: To establish this for later. I had a reason why no one remembers but then...I forgot.

  • Besides the fact that the interlude wasn't six months, but two, Jossed. The body of the Amy that appeared in Episodes 1 and 2 was a Ganger, and as far as we know, that was never pregnant, only the real Amy that was connected to it. By "The Almost People", this body was destroyed, and the real Amy begins giving birth on Demon's Run. THIS Amy's baby could well be the Little Girl, however.

The little Time Lord is...

  • A regenerated Susan.
  • An earlier incarnation of River Song.
    • [Recap/DoctorWhoS32E7AGoodManGoesToWar:confirmed.\]

The little Time Lord is Jenny

A little obvious, but it's about time they brought her back. Eventually, she did regenerate for real, into a little girl, and somehow found her way to Earth in 1969.

The Girl is an established Time Lord character.

So, the girl is a Time Lord. Well, that was unexpected. The Doctor, The Master, (likely) The Rani and every other Time Lord are dead. So, you wanna bring one back? Do it this way. I'd guess she's The Rani. It's not like she has enough of a backstory to make it impossible, so this could actually be from before she first appeared.

  • The girl is young River Song; River Song is a Time Lord.
    • Confirmed, though she wasn't established as a Time Lord before the fact.
  • She could be Susan or Jenny.


The Girl is not a time lord.

The doctor allows the little girl, in the astronaut's suit, to shoot him so that his regeneration process will start, allowing him to share the regeneration energy with her and save her life. He arranged the meeting and everything that happened to the detail; he was always planning to do this. The question now is, who would he be willing to sacrifice like that for?

  • Jossed. His death was a still point reworked as a fixed point. The Doctor never planned to go to Lake Silencio.

The Girl is Amy's, Rory's and the doctors.

Something that bothered most people about Daleks in Manhattan is the way that the time lord DNA got mixed with the dalek hybrids. He may have done it durring the mixing phase knowing the scenario was inevitable where it would be needed. However the way the episode is shown implies some Bizarre Alien Biology. Maybe through that his DNA somehow mixed in the fetus causing a human time lord hybrid that is capable of regenerating without changing their face. In the Jenny episode maybe it wasn't just purely the doctors DNA getting cloned but some human was thrown in too giving evidence that human time lord hybrids can regenerate without changing. I mean she did have the knowledge of war maybe other stuff was put in.

  • Jossed, though Time Lord DNA does form in a weird way.

Amy chose her daughter's name as a whimsical play on "River Song."

Because it's just the sort of thing Moffat would do.

  • And it looks like he one-upped me. She named her after an old friend... who, unbeknownst to Amy, was actually Melody Pond in the incarnation immediately preceding Alex Kingston's.

The TARDIS was destroyed solely so the Doctor would reboot reality and cause the time pregnancy.

Because...well, there doesn't seem to have been any other lasting effect, and the Silence's plan appears to be in full gear despite the Doctor supposedly having "foiled" them in Series 5. Perhaps the Silence picked the spot outside Amy's house, on 26/6/2010, so that the Doctor would arrive there and then after the reset to pick them up so sexy time could occur? This would also mean that they created (or helped to create) the Pandorica, which doesn't seem like too hard a task for them.

  1. ↑ And, perhaps, a ginger dye job courtesy of Jackie Tyler
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