Unless the clues were so submerged and obtuse, I saw no thread through the season except for Clara, the Impossible Girl. Which is unfortunate, because I like piecing the puzzle together. I remember watching Season 4 and perking up every time a planet went missing (the Lost Moon of Poosh!), and though I could not have realized it led to Davros and a reality engine, it was still entertaining to find the clue
But think about River's life. He was stolen by Madame Kovarian, raised by the Silence to kill the doctor from the very beginning. She is the little girl in the space suit in "Day of the Moon," that little girl is left homeless in NYC, and regenerates into "Mels," Amy Ponds best friend from a young age through and beyond high school. We meet "Mels" in "Let's Kill Hitler," where "Mels" regenerates into River Song as we know her now. All I'm saying is that it seems possible for a Time Lord to age. And really, who's to say River is full-on Time Lord anyway. She received all of that "power" after conceived inside the TARDIS. She may be like them but not completely like them. And she used all of her regenerative powers in "Let's Kill Hitler" to save the doctor, so as far as I'm concerned, she's mostly human now.
In "Silence in the Library," River convinces Ten to trust her implicitly by whispering the Doctors name into her ear.
Also, I just found this little nugget at Wikipedia on the page for River Song:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't "Forest of the Dead" where the Doctor uploaded the dead River's conscious into CAL? [Footnote 5 is from the BBC, but footnote 6 is thus: "DWM Preview:The Name of the Doctor". Doctor Who Magazine (Panini Comics) (460). June 2013 So it appears to be a recent revelation.]
Which is why I'm not even going to bother theorising. All I wish for is that the Doctor's name is something simple, like Ethan or Tim. Though I will say in "Journey to the Center of the TARDIS" Clara reads the Doctors name in a margin of the book History of the Last Great Time War. Though her knowledge of the name causes no calamity, she never mentions it out loud (and subsequently loses it by episodes end). His name could be the password to unlock that war. Which would be frightening.
Well, we're sort of close to that now. All through Moffat's run, we've seen hints of the Doctor's darker side. We saw it in the Dream Lord in season five. We saw it in how angry he got in A Good Man Goes To War. And in the latter part of season seven, we've seen little allusions to the Doctor as a monster. The lady in Hide said that he has a sliver of ice at his heart, and that Clara should be careful with him. In The Crimson Horror, the blind lady names him her monster. In Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS, he becomes a literal monster as one of the burned bodies that came back through time to chase them. He killed all the Time Lords, and that's changed him, made him darker. Perhaps whatever happens at Trenzalor is going to unleash the Valeyard, and Eleven and Ten will need to team up in order to stop it. But this is still just random guessing.
I like this idea. We saw how the Doctor acts without a companion, particularly after Donna ends her companionship and before he meets up with the Master in "The End of Time." He can be a bit too clinical sometimes without that human element. To get an embodiment of his sinister half would be enjoyable.
Clara's actor has stated that Clara has met the Doctor more than three times. This suggests that we've seen Clara somewhere else, in some other form. But where?
Some people think she's Jenny, the Doctor's daughter. The same chair was in Clara's pod in Asylum of the Daleks and in Jenny's pod in The Doctor's Daughter. That could be a coincidence of props, and I think it is. I see no way we could have seen Clara being born and growing up if she were Jenny.
And they were two entirely different ships. What is the likelihood someone would bring with them a console chair from one ship to another. It's more likely that the chair is model #63592 for all small-class star cruisers.
Charlotte Abigail Lux. CAL.
The little girl programmed into the computer at the heart of the Library. She looks a lot like Clara, in a way, when we see her as a child. At the end of Forest of the Dead, River Song's neural pattern is uploaded into CAL's computer. But that means ... that River's knowledge of everything that happens in all the years she knows the Doctor.
This seems more likely if "The Name of the Doctor" truly occurs after "Forest of the Dead."
Also, did you know the original title for this season finale was called "The Funeral of River Song." Just throwing that out there.
I quite like this symmetry, and had not noticed it before.
Allons-y! I know, wrong Doctor.
A big computer with nigh limitless knowedge. Could one say she may be a Great Intelligence?
Also, if the Doctor gives River the red setting sonic screwdriver to River, who goes back to "Silence in the Library" and gives the sonic screwdriver to the Doctor who then continues to use it, who ever made the screwdriver in the first place?
- The lady in Hide told the Doctor that Clara was a normal girl. She didn't sense any robotics going on. But maybe there's a real consciousness in there, and that's what the lady sensed?
Meh. She was from the 70s. Would robots even register as an option to someone, paranormal psychic or not?
And in the preview for next weeks finale, Richard E. Grant is returning for the episode,and I believe I saw him in physical form, so it's extremely likely that Victorian Walter Simeon (played by Grant and under control of the Great Intelligence) is directly related to Victorian/present Clara.
So maybe it's something that a bad guy, like the Great Intelligence, wants to happen.
How ironic that the most bad-assiest villians in recent Whovian history happen to be a group who may have been trying to save the universe.
I like all of this except for the use of the android "Spoonheads." Incidentally, Spoonhead was my band name in college.
When I first saw this theory, I just felt it HAD to be the right answer. But as time passed, it just felt more and more disingenuous.
And it will be an end to a rather mediocre half-season. Perhaps my filter is based on watching Doctor Who in large chunks to prepare for a new season. Maybe I wasn't used to sitting all week long and letting a previous episode fester and pick apart its weaknesses. But these past eight or so episodes just feel weak. Perhaps it's New Companion syndrome.
Either way, I'm still excited to see the impossible explained.
a place that's nice and peaceful, because there isn't any.
You may think there is, but once you get there, when you're not looking,
somebody'll sneak up and write "F*ck you" right under your nose.
~ J. D. Salinger
