The TARDIS team are all worried about starting off a paradox, but there's already one in action and all of the Future-Doctor's manipulations are aimed at fixing it. The astronaut on the beach in 2011 is not the same one we see in 1969, and it's the Doctor himself under that helmet.(This is a theory based entirely on that one scene where the Doctor puts on an astronaut helmet and claims it's what "cool aliens" would wear. I think this is foreshadowing from Moffat.)
So the Future-Doctor is, by a work of cosmic irony, a product of a paradoxical timeline caused by the TARDIS crew trying to save the Future-Doctor's life, and in order to stop the paradox, the Future-Doctor has to die. Who better to do that than the Doctor himself? After all, as River says in a different context, who would you trust above all else to undertake such a task?
(This is also more or less the plot of Donnie Darko, but anyone who's read The Time Traveller's Wife knows that Moffat is not above borrowing from other sources.)
I do wonder if it's River under that visor, and if her killing of Future-Doctor is what has her incarcerated in Storm Cage, but that little throwaway scene with the Doctor wearing the astronaut's helmet strikes me as significant, in much the same way as that bit in "Flesh and Stone" where the Doctor comes back to Amy shortly after leaving her in the forest and begins speaking to her out of context. I knew there was something off about that bit, and I was proved right; I think the helmet scene will be much the same, and if I'm right, it suggests that the Doctor strikes the killing blow.
I like that idea. Do you think - if you're correct - it'll play out across the whole series... or be resolved next week?
ReplyDeleteI think it will be like the bit in "Flesh and Stone" and we won't see it resolved until the end of the series. Moffat seems to reuse and expand on ideas he likes.
ReplyDeleteIt's possible it will be resolved next week, but the death of the Doctor seems to be the kind of thing you'd hang an entire series on.
I also wonder if the girl in the spacesuit might be Amy's child, a young River, or both.
My first thought - as they deliberately made sure we didn't see who was wearing the spacesuit - is that it was The Doctor. I hadn't thought of River though!
ReplyDeleteI'm now starting to wonder if Amy's baby could possibly be (somehow) the Doctor's next regeneration or actually River (both have red hair?)
I like it.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I am pretty sure about is that the 11-hundred-year-old Doctor is an anomaly that will end up being deleted from the timeline.
ReplyDeleteThis is based on the simple knowledge that there is no way Moffat can get away with locking the Doctor down as Matt Smith for the next 200 years of in-character time.
The Doctor being in the space suit in 2011 was my thought as well, Kelvin.
The obvious choice for kids is to think that the girl in the astronaut suit is the child of the is she/isn't she pregnant Ms Pond.
ReplyDeleteThe first thing that dawned on me is perhaps two universes are overlapping. In last night's pretty dire pirate episode, DW says that there are universes that live inside the one we live in and sometimes they interact with each other. I think something in the future causes two very similar universes to merge, which is why Amy is pregnant, but also isn't. Perhaps this alternate reality is not good and the 1109 y-o Doctor has to be killed because if he isn't everything will go wrong. That way River can have killed him and not remember doing it or he, the Doctor, could do it 'himself'.
Paradoxes, love them and hate them! :)
Yes, good point on that line about the universes. That could indeed be a clue, and I think it probably is!
ReplyDelete