Doctor Who Season 6: 5 Questions About ‘The Doctor’s Wife’

Sunday, May 15th, 2011 at 7:30am
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Doctor Who Season 6: 5 Questions About ‘The Doctor’s Wife’  

Short of an episode being written by Alan Moore (or, perhaps, Stephen King), this week’s Doctor Who — written by none other than Neil Gaiman — may be the only time where the writer of the episode outshines the eponymous hero. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have some questions about it. Five of them, in fact …

What Is The TARDIS?
So, now we know for sure that the TARDIS is alive — and, when inserted into a human body, surprisingly similar to Delirium from Gaiman’s Sandman comics — but, beyond that… What is the TARDIS? Something with a soul and a mind of its own, we can say for sure, but also something that claims to exist at all points of space and time simultaneously, according to this episode. Which makes sense, because how else can it travel around time and space safely? But that also means it knows how all of the stories end, because it’s there at the same time as the stories are beginning. We’ve learned that the TARDIS “borrowed” the Doctor, back when he thought he was stealing the TARDIS, and we also know that she love him … so why would she take him to somewhere where he’d die, back in “The Impossible Astronaut”? Unless, of course, she knows that he doesn’t stay dead …

(Also worth remembering: The Doctor we watched die didn’t have a TARDIS that we saw. Is that a sign, somehow? And if so, what does it mean?)

And, while we’re thinking about the opening story from this season …

Is The Little Girl From “Day Of The Moon” A TARDIS?
The energy we saw her release from her hands … The TARDIS did the same thing, this week. What if she is Amy’s daughter, but the TARDIS is somehow the father? Instead of being a new Time Lord, the little girl is somehow part-TARDIS … Is that as ridiculous as it sounds?

Are There Other Time Lords Alive After All?
The Doctor seemed surprisingly willing to believe that some Time Lords may have survived the destruction of the race by being outside the universe … Just because he didn’t find any in the Cosmic Junkyard, that doesn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t right. If, as we know, a TARDIS can leave the universe, how likely would it be that at least one other Time Lord thought to escape genocide by that method?

Is This The Death Season? Or Just The Opposite?
Four episodes into this season, and we’ve seen both the Doctor and the TARDIS “die,” as well as the imaginary corpse of Rory. And, despite that, we’ve been given multiple hints of the Doctor not being the last Time Lord after all, and also had each death followed by the re-appearance of the person we’ve just seen die. If there’s a theme so far from what we’ve seen, it just might be that death isn’t necessarily the end that we tend to think it is — fitting for a show where regeneration is always a possibility. This week, we had the Doctor admit that he’s looking for redemption for his role in the death of his people … What if he finds it by bringing the race back from extinction?

The TARDIS Told Rory “The Only Water In The Forest Is A River.” So What Does That Mean?
I’ll admit, I was disappointed that an episode called “The Doctor’s Wife” wasn’t about the one character we all suspect is the Doctor’s wife … But then we had this line thrown in at the end to tease us. It’s clearly a reference to Dr. River Song, but should we put take it to mean that there’s a forest in the future that River should enter, but Amy (who is, of course, a Pond, another body of water) shouldn’t? I’m convinced it’s an Amy/River clue of some sorts; I just don’t know what kind. Yet.

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  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_QKN5MHOI6VUFOYCTV5REK7M7A4 Jacob

    Hmmm, that is true. That certainly does indicate she was regenerating. But to me, they did look incredibly similar. They just behaved differently. Sexy’s had intent and purpose, where as a Time-Lord’s is just exploding. But no, not exactly the same. You are correct on that.

  • Boggs

     The silence were trying to build a tardis.  Perhaps the little girl…

  • Wildstorm

     Yes Amy’s is

  • Shawn

    Yeah I think the writer who wrote the Human Nature novel was the one who adapted it into an episode of Season 3. And same for Blink too with Steven Moffat I think.

  • Shawn

    The video was called Analysis Lessons, and I read somewhere it was an anagram of Lonely Assassins, don’t know if that’s important or another red herring.
    But I get the feeling from the video that he’s doing this because he’s going to forget everything because of the Silence. For all we know, the Silence are already back and they just keep forgetting because they think they got rid of them. This video reminds me of another video they put up to tease the coming of the silence, and that doesn’t make sense either: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdYdY9o1sfk

    Maybe the messages go backward, like for example, in Day of the Moon, it says, “We found your message, your alive….” which might be something that happens after someone found his distress signal video. Like River’s travels with the Doctor, everything might be backward.

    It’s all so exciting, I hope the mystery pays off.

  • Shawn

    Actually, if you didn’t watch those, it wasn’t just that video, there was another video similar to the one I posted that came with it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Io6dds79iyI&feature=related

    And then these 2 videos also accompanied them where the Silence are actually shown: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdClwdQvKXo&feature=related

    And

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFEk8Nx-1Tc&feature=related

    These videos remind me of the one with the Doctor because they both seem static and stuff, but maybe they are unrelated.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_QKN5MHOI6VUFOYCTV5REK7M7A4 Jacob

    Paul Cornell wrote “Human Nature”/”The Family of Blood” based on his novel Human Nature, which featured the Seventh Doctor. Kinda fun how RTD ran with the concept of a Time-Lord turning human for the series finale that year. (“Blink” was based on “‘What I Did on My Christmas Holidays’ By Sally Sparrow”, which was written by Moffat for Doctor Who Annual in 2006.)

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_QKN5MHOI6VUFOYCTV5REK7M7A4 Jacob

    I don’t think they’re backwards. I think it’s a full on conversation about the Doctor’s distress call.
    Guy 1: “All The secrets you seek can be found here on the Webb”
    Guy 2: “We found your message. Your alive! But what secrets d’you mean my friend?”
    Guy 1: “I mean i glimpsed him! and May the gods help him or perhaps you can. To see what I saw click on the spot beyond the Doctor’s home planet”

    Those videos are weird… They definitely tie back into the whole “You don’t remember seeing them the first time.” Which only became clear after we met them. I don’t think we’re going to get this one before they tell us what it means. But, if I had to guess, I’d say we’ll find out either before, or during, episode seven. Which is when they cruelly give us the first half of a two-parter (with the second part coming in the Fall) that will have a “game-changing cliffhanger” titled “A Good Man Goes to War.” Pft, frikkin Moffat, why do you have to be so good?

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_QKN5MHOI6VUFOYCTV5REK7M7A4 Jacob

    Anyone else realize they threw out the whole “The Doctor stole the TARDIS”? By making it Sexy’s decision to leave, she wasn’t stolen. They left together. to go on the greatest adventure of all time.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_QKN5MHOI6VUFOYCTV5REK7M7A4 Jacob

     Rory’s always confused and left out. Hell, he got left out of the Universe, last time around.

  • Ruckergsc

     just to add…did we remember the book from the beginning of the season? The Doctor is leaving messages in the boos for Amy to find. She was trying to figure out why. I am sure this will tie into the woman with the eyepatch who keeps sliding open the window. As for the season of Doctor Who I love it more and more. Though I have to admit I miss Eccleston.. of the season? The Doctor is leaving messages in the boos for Amy to find. She was trying to figure out why. I am sure this will tie into the woman with the eyepatch who keeps sliding open the window. As for the season of Doctor Who I love it more and more. Though I have to admit I miss Eccleston..

  • Shawn

    It’s what makes him the Doctor-knowing he’s a mad man willing to explore the universe and stole a box to do that, but lots of people seem to think that the revelation that the TARDIS stole him undoes all that. But it doesn’t, because in the Doctor’s mind he stole, or ‘borrowed’, it, even if all this time it may have been the other way around, or a mutual thing, he didn’t know that until now, he didn’t know they were leaving together. So it doesn’t really change the Doctor’s character or what Doctor Who is about. Right?

  • Shawn

    Good point, so maybe they aren’t backwards. It’s funny how when they say the secrets can be found on the web, it’s for us, and it’s part of the dialogue in the story at the same time. They’re good. 

    I don’t think the last part about ‘click on the spot beyond his home planet’ is part of the dialogue. Guy 1 probably just shows the video to guy 2, where he glimpsed the Doctor. 

    No I don’t think we’ll get any answers before episode 7…and considering how cruel they seem to be so far, I don’t think we’ll get any big answers during ep. 7 either, probably only after. But either way, I can’t wait for episode 7.  Maybe that’s when we’ll see River kill ‘the good man’ whoever he is, since it’s titled that way, and that could be the cliffhanger.

    We have no lives, do we? Speculating and speculating each week until the next episode, and then finding out all our theories were wrong. :)

  • Jhkep2

    The Timelord who the Doctor was excited to see was named “The Corsair” and they made a point of saying that he had regenerated as a woman in the past. So, corsair = pirate = eye patch. Maybe the mystery woman with an eyepatch is the Corsair in a fully functional Tardis. Or maybe the corsair peeking in from outside of the universe trying to ssave the Doctor.

    As a side note I would love the little girl to be Jenny, but when Jenny “regenerated” she didn’t change physically. Although David Tennant pulled that one off so it isn’t unfeasible.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_QKN5MHOI6VUFOYCTV5REK7M7A4 Jacob

    Did “we” remember? No, no we did not. You sure did. I thought that was just the Doctor having fun. I think the opening to this season is going to need to be reexamined several times…

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_QKN5MHOI6VUFOYCTV5REK7M7A4 Jacob

    I do think the mention of the spot is part of the conversation, just that “Guy 2″ is one of us. It fills the voice of the user. It even fits with your own train of thought. Guy 1 shows it to us, Guy 2, where we glimpsed the Doctor. ARG’s are supposed to be interactive (though Valve took it a little far with Portal 2 XD), so it’s certainly possible.

    I don’t think Moffat would leave us for so long without any answers to these burning questions. I think we’ll find out who the girl is, who the eyepatch lady is (MOLOTOV! I can’t stop thinking that…), and probably another revelation with the Silence (but not in which ever episode reveals who River is, because she’s not experienced with the Silence, so I don’t think they’d met before the season premiere, or after… you know what I mean).

     I think that’s the fun of fandom, though. Enjoying the franchise even when it’s absent. And then, despite sinking untold amounts of time into it, it still manages to kick us off our feet.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_QKN5MHOI6VUFOYCTV5REK7M7A4 Jacob

     Ten did have to have his hand cut off to do it though…

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_QKN5MHOI6VUFOYCTV5REK7M7A4 Jacob

     Oh, of course it doesn’t change anything, but moving forward, knowing it’s mutual, we can’t think of the TARDIS as stolen. He still will, because he’s got the most hyperactive conscious ever.

  • Ktaylor_2

    Well since River and the Doctor keep meeting traveling backwards . Perhaps River is the Tardis, again in human body from some point in the future. As the Tardis is most certainly the Doctors wife. Just an idea

  • Ktaylor_2

    River being the Tardis would certainly explain how she can fly the Tardis so much better than the Doctor.

  • mars

    Douglas Adams does that in hindsight doesn’t he? 

  • Sammy

    Everyone says River is Romana but no one seems to say that the Eye Patch Lady is Romana looking in from outside the universe. 

  • Shawn

    Oh yes, our perspective changes

  • blueboxfan

    River Song is the little girl, she is the daughter of Amy & the TARDIS, but rather than regenerate and change, she simply regenerates within the same body (much like the Doctor’s Daughter). The TARDIS does this in the hope that it will give the Doctor a companion / lover / friend who is also an equal for the rest of his life. Being part TARDIS – River is automatically attracted to the Doctor & vice-versa & also being part Amy contniues this theme and also gives River the aspect of humanity that the Doctor always finds fascinating, the only difference is that River appears to have a ‘dark side’ as well which implies that there is a part of the Tardis that has not yet been revealed & also even the Doctor / other Timelords also have a ‘dark side’ in them, so if a being was part Timelord then there would be a part of the ‘dark side’ in them as well! This is just a theory and add fuel to the fire as to where this season is taking us & making us want to watch each episode hoping for a vital clue which will reveal everything! :)

  • Shawn

    I hadn’t thought about River not meeting the Silence before, but also, maybe she did and just forgot by the time the series opener rolled in :) But the last season showed us time could be rewritten so I don’t know. But with all our theories we seem so clever coming up with this stuff. So Moffat has to be a friggin’ genius for being able to kick us off our feet even after we come up with the wildest theories.

    But I don’t know why people keep speculating River is Amy’s daughter and stuff like that. I mean, as much as a big twist it would be, does that sound like Doctor Who? Does it really seem like it would happen on this show? I highly doubt it-but not completely, part of me thinks that it could happen, only because we can’t seem to speculate any other sort of scenario with the info that we are given. That’s the fun of it.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_QKN5MHOI6VUFOYCTV5REK7M7A4 Jacob

    If she had remembered them before, she’d have recalled the encounter as soon as she saw them in 1969. … I wonder if Moffat’s shoes have the word “Genius” on them so that he’s literally kicking us on our asses with his genius. (it’s what I’d do)

    I honestly think there’s no connection between River and Amy, and that we’ve latched onto it simply because it’s the only thing that seems halfway plausible (it really doesn’t sound like a Doctor Who plot). But the same logic there could apply to any companion (Like Rose or Sarah Jane).

  • Shawn

     Oh yes, that’s true, I wonder how Moffat keeps track of all these things when he writes for River. LOL. Although, what’s to say she hadn’t recalled them at the encounter in 1969? Just because they didn’t show it on the screen, doesn’t mean she didn’t remember at the time, because ultimately, she still forgets anyway, and they didn’t wanna spoil her first encounter with the Silence on screen…maybe. Maybe not.

    I doubt the Silence will return for episode 7 anyway as it seems to be about Cybermen, but the main story arc will be a huge factor I guess. And even then, I feel like the Silence, and and the little girl will only play a bigger role by the 2nd part of the season. Right now, it’s probably about River and the Eye-Patch Lady, and maybe Amy’s pregnancy.

    I don’t know if there’s a synopsis for episode 7 yet, but if you read the iTunes description of the 1st part of this season, it describes all the episodes till ep. 7. Towards the end it says, “And waiting for them, at the end of all this, is the battle of Demon’s Run, and the Doctor’s darkest hour. Can even the truth of River Song save the Doctor’s soul?” 
    So I’m guessing that’s what episode 7 is about. I haven’t watched the classic series so I don’t know if Demon’s Run is something new or old.

    Exactly, we can’t seem to come up with any other theories that make more sense than ‘River is Amy’s daughter’. And yet it fascinates me how Moffat thinks up all this stuff. 

  • Canton

     Do they still show the series 5 recap in the intro of every episode, or was it only for the first episode of this season (in America)?

  • http://twitter.com/jimmyjamawalk James Walker

    the girl isn’t a TARDIS. she wasn’t worried about her regeneration whereas with Idris (internal dimension relative in space?) if she didn’t get back into a TARDIS she was going to die–to burn up.

    the doctor burned up a universe to say goodbye to a girl (rose). in a nice little mirroring, the TARDIS burned up a girl to say hello.

    i would keep in mind, too, that the reason that episode had no real plot ties to the current season (no eyepatch lady, no river, nothing about the silence or the little girl) is because it was not meant to be a part of the current season.

    its a pretty good fairy tale filler story that would’ve worked better last series but is pretty good this series… just not the second coming of “blink” that everyone seems to think it is.

  • Mee Jung

    It has to do with ”Season 4″ back when Donna was his companion.  I think that’s the “forest”… 

  • Mee Jung

    It has to do with ”Season 4″ back when Donna was his companion.  I think that’s the “forest”… 

  • Mee Jung

    It has to do with ”Season 4″ back when Donna was his companion.  I think that’s the “forest”… 

  • Mee Jung

     Oh that is a funny connection about the Doctor buring up a sun to say goodbye to Rose.  And now the Tardis burned up a person to say hello. 

    The little girl is a TARDIS or a Time Lord…  She’s not human.  And you did notice how the Doctor kept doing a scan on Amy and the scan said “negative” then “positive”?  So in the change of realities she’s both?….  But yes I think all those things that everyone is talking about, they’ll be tied together nicely in later episodes…

    I like that he found a new hat style, though it didn’t last long. 

  • Mee Jung

     Oh that is a funny connection about the Doctor buring up a sun to say goodbye to Rose.  And now the Tardis burned up a person to say hello. 

    The little girl is a TARDIS or a Time Lord…  She’s not human.  And you did notice how the Doctor kept doing a scan on Amy and the scan said “negative” then “positive”?  So in the change of realities she’s both?….  But yes I think all those things that everyone is talking about, they’ll be tied together nicely in later episodes…

    I like that he found a new hat style, though it didn’t last long. 

  • Mee Jung

     Oh that is a funny connection about the Doctor buring up a sun to say goodbye to Rose.  And now the Tardis burned up a person to say hello. 

    The little girl is a TARDIS or a Time Lord…  She’s not human.  And you did notice how the Doctor kept doing a scan on Amy and the scan said “negative” then “positive”?  So in the change of realities she’s both?….  But yes I think all those things that everyone is talking about, they’ll be tied together nicely in later episodes…

    I like that he found a new hat style, though it didn’t last long. 

  • Elliott

    This silence that’s following the Doctor and the reference to the forest has em thinking of “Forest of the Dead”, the first episode where River makes an appearance to begin with. Just a thought. 

  • Elliott

    This silence that’s following the Doctor and the reference to the forest has em thinking of “Forest of the Dead”, the first episode where River makes an appearance to begin with. Just a thought. 

  • Elliott

    This silence that’s following the Doctor and the reference to the forest has em thinking of “Forest of the Dead”, the first episode where River makes an appearance to begin with. Just a thought. 

  • Elliott

    This silence that’s following the Doctor and the reference to the forest has em thinking of “Forest of the Dead”, the first episode where River makes an appearance to begin with. Just a thought. 

  • http://twitter.com/MonkeySmaker Daniel Saylors

    The Doctor has been known to be a bit naive when it comes to maters of the hearts. He found himself in a engagement / courtship with Cameca of the Aztecs in Season 1 Serial 6 where he and Cameca share in cocoa. He lets her down as gently as a young time lord can, which is to say as softly as a cover stone sinks into a large body of water.
     
     The 10th Doctor claims to have married and suggested to have had relations with ” Good Queen Bess” This does not appear to be the Doctor’s only marriage, as he remarked to Sally Sparrow in Blink about being “rubbish at weddings, especially my own.”

    Additionally, in his eleventh incarnation, the Doctor accidentally became engaged to
    Marilyn Monroe and then married her the same night in a small chapel that he later claimed was not a real chapel.

    It is implied heavily throughout the appearances of River Song that she and the Doctor are married somewhere in her past and his future.
     

  • mj

     What about Rose he married Rose and totally loved her.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_D7VQQXO6APXQZUYUTBXFNXMWSY Jase

     Actually, nope, they’re not. Lots of events and plot elements are rendered invalid by the TV series. Human Nature for example was a novel, but once it was adapted to the screen, there’s no way those same events could have happened to the Seventh Doctor. It’s happened with other stories as well. Some of the novels tried to introduce the idea that Time Lords are born fully grown from a loom. Also rendered invalid by the series, when it references the Doctor had a childhood.

  • jtown

    not really a comment but a question. Has it ever been confirmed that river is indeed human because if she herself were a timelord then a lot of the puzzle pieces of this season would fall in to place and maybe the little girl we saw regenerate was a past or future version of her or even her and the doctors daughter. I know I’m probably way of the mark but something about this line of reasoning makes sense I just haven’t figured it out yet.

  • Andrew Chua

    In regards to the “Pull to open sign” I always thought that was in reference only to the police telephone inside the front of the door, not the door itself – afterall, the rest of the box was a temporary holding cell for perps the London Police needed to detain.

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