This is a blog post about series six of Doctor Who. It contains nothing but speculation and widely commented on factoids. If you’re allergic to spoilers – or rather, the possibility of spoilers – then stop reading now.
This post contains no actual spoilers (unless you’re behind in your Doctor Who watching) as it contains no leaks, previews or anything like that. This is entirely speculation based on fan chats about the series over lunch, dinner and in the pub.
In most – but not all – of the series six a woman wearing an eye patch has appeared. She slides open a panel, often in a wall, makes a comment about or to Amy and then closes the panel again. It looks as if she’s peering in from some other dimension.
She first appears in episode 2: Day of the Moon when Amy is exploring the orphanage infested with The Silence. Amy asks;
”Hello. Who are you?”
There’s no direct response. Instead, the woman – who fans are calling Madame Kovarian – turns to face someone we can’t see and says;
”No, I think she’s just dreaming.”
Her eye patch is metallic. It reminds me of Cybermen.
She appears again in the pirate episode; The Curse of the Black Spot. In this she seems to talk to Amy. She says;
”It’s fine, you’re doing fine. Just stay calm.”
She also appears, once again behind the sliding panel, in The Rebel Flesh but says nothing.
Amy’s the only one who’s seen her. I and other fans connect Madame Kovarian to the child and Amy’s pregnancy.
The first mystery around Amy’s pregnancy is why the Tardis scanner shows alternating positive or negative scans. The first theory – given how The Silence abducted Amy and showed interest in her – was that the pregnancy is somehow Silence related. In keeping with the Silence’s powers the scan first detects the pregnancy (showing positive) but then forgets (showing negative). I’m not sure this speculation is that robust. There’s no evidence to suggest The Silence’s power works on technology.
A more common theory is that there’s a temporal flux and in one side of the flux Amy is pregnant but not in the other.
In The Rebel Flesh we encounter doppelgangers. Here’s a possible answer to the death of the Doctor. Was it a doppelganger? Agent Canton Delaware insisted that that really was the Doctor but from the language the Doctor has used himself in respect to doppelgangers – a doppelganger really would still be the Doctor.
The key point The Rebel Flesh seems to be bring up is that there might be doppelgangers out there. We could have a pregnant Amy doppelganger/original and a not-pregnant Amy/doppelganger. It seems like an easy prediction to suggest the series will explore more along these lines later.
Another point o f speculation brings us back to River Song. We know River kills someone incredible. Could it be the Doctor? Unlikely. It was someone important. Could it be that River Song kills Madame Kovarian? That’s pushing the speculation but not impossible.
For that speculation to have more meat to the bone then Madame Kovarian would need to be important. If she’s the nurse maid to a future Time Lord – the child? – a child born in temporal flux, ie, Time Lord-like, then she might be that important. That might also explain why she’s checking in on Amy.
One final point of speculation is that Madame Kovarian seems to be looking in back on Amy’s life. How is that possible? Time Lords again? Or someone peaking in from a parallel dimension. Could Amy be in some sort of futuristic hospital, with Madame Kovarian caring for her and the child and is she simply running through memories or dreams with Madame Kovarian occasionally checking in?
What do you think?
You’ve missed out one other dangling plot thread, the girl in the space suit. The one who seemed to regenerate at the end of Day of The Moon. I’m guessing she is linked into this.
Plus, why did the Silence want to go to the Moon? (Did I miss that bit?)
It’s wrong of me to assume that the girl in the suit in Amy’s child – but that’s what I had in my head while writing this. Of course, I’ve followed a path paved with assumptions before and I didn’t like where it took me!
I think the episode offered an explanation as to why the Silence wanted to go to the Moon – they actually wanted mankind to develop the spacesuit! I think it was the Doctor who proposed that notion.
Oh yes. Forgot that bit. Doh (about the space suit). And yeah, I’m kind of assuming the phantom pregnancy is related to the little girl. But I thought I’d mention her as a seperate thing.
The last episode wasn’t really gripping me, until near the end it has to be said.
There’a also the Rory angle – notice how he keeps on dying? If he’s supposed to be dead and the Universe is trying to correct things then, well, I can see why the Universe might be confused by the presence of his unborn child…
well, considering we know River killed a “MAN, a very good man”…I don’t think Madame Koravian would be it, considering she is not a HE.
Ah-ah! I think that’s a good point made well. Although I’m not so sure about the liberal use of capital letters :)
Am I the only one who thinks that the good man she kills is Rory?
The doctor wasn’t the only one who went to war, Rory did as well.Between that and River’s reaction on seeing Rory the first time, as if she couldn’t believe he was alive.
Am I the only one who thinks that the good man she kills is Rory?
The doctor wasn’t the only one who went to war, Rory did as well.Between that and River’s reaction on seeing Rory the first time, as if she couldn’t believe he was alive.
Nah. I think a lot of people suspect Rory’s a deader…
I honestly think the whole ordeal either has to relate to another timelord orchestrating the whole plan, from what it sounds to me and the evidence presented, no doubt that its someone from the high council, but who, the good man they are talking about could be the doctors mentor, the doctor, or even rassilon, everything i think about keeps pointing to rassilon just because they may be timelocked but honestly that doesnt mean that they are trapped, the timelords may be adept at time travel but are by no means masters of the craft, that also explains why they do not travel outside of time and space although is extremely alluring.
We know a little more after the last episode. It’s still not clear who Kovarian might be working for – but there are rumours Omega will return and that fits your Rassilon theory.
River said she killed a man, “a good man”. Madame Kovarian does not appear to be a man therefore it is unlikely that River killed her.
Also the title of episode 7 is ‘A good man goes to war’. So by my thinking River kills whomever that man happens to be. It could be the Doctor but that seems to be too obvious (like the episode titled ‘The Doctor’s Wife’)
Yeah – I wish I’d looked ahead to the episode titles. When I discovered the title I came to the same conclusion as you. Have you seen the prequel?
@facebook-586035843:disqus also pointed out how silly the idea of River killing Kovarian was.
River does say she kills “a good man” but we have both Strax and Vastra showing that they don’t always recognise the difference between men and women, so it’s still possible she kills a woman. Tenuous, I know.
I still think she’s the girl in the spacesuit who kills the Doctor though.
Do you think it’s little River in the spacesuit? She’s the child The Silence were trying to build a Tardis for?
Lots of people think it’s River in the spacesuit… and maybe it is; but wouldn’t older River remember killing the Doctor? Older River was surprised when the Doctor died and even tried to shoot the spacesuit… something seems off there.
Am I the only one getting the vibes that it might be Rory that River kills… ? I mean, we’re bound to find out more about Amy’s pregancy, she is in trouble, the prequel definately shows Rory fighting for it and we all know he’d do more than go to war for her… Maybe whatever is going on with Amy has to happen and River is forced to kill Rory for it? We don’t know all of the facts yet(or do but can’t see them), but his presence in the past few episodes seems more significant, his independance and “goodness” in the last two seemed to move more of a focus onto him, maybe giving him a bit more light before he is killed off? Give it a bit more of a kick when it hits? I think the suspense we have been kept in in regards to the character that River kills of requires it to be someone quite close at the time, I mean whatta drag if it’s someone we really couldn’t care about?! Moffat has also said it’s definately a twist noone would expect, I really think it fits quite nicely. But ah well, I guess I’ll just have to wait and stop speculating. Poor Rory the Roman, The last centurion. .
You know – Rory seems to be getting killed a lot, it’s as if the Universe is warming up to the idea. I think your theory has merit.
I’ve a question about Rory though. Isn’t he plastic? That’s how he survived all those years since Rome. Yet, in the Almost People he was able to scan the machine as a human unlike the Flesh.
When the Doctor rebooted the universe at the end of series 5 and told Amy to remember her family that restored them to the universe (after they had been erased from it by the crack in her bedroom wall). Her remembering the Doctor also restored him to the universe and I am guessing the official reasoning is that it also restored Rory as a human.
That said, it is a messy explanation. At the wedding Rory can be heard recalling that the Doctor was the stripper at his stag party and that he *was* plastic. The rebooting of the universe clearly altered the timeline slightly (such as her parents still being alive) but, on the other hand, many events remained exactly as they were before.
I think you’re right. A Good Man Goes to War seemed to make statements that confirm this.
I definitely think it’s Rory.
River Song most definitely kills the doctor. She’s amy’s daughter, the little girl in the space suit, and kills the doctor before disappearing back into the depths in the modern time. Then she grows up and see’s the doctor again later in her life, earlier in his, starting the chain of meeting in reverse order that they have been for so long, each knowing how the other dies in thier own future/past.
Also, the little girl that regenerates isn’t a full time lord, because she didn’t change faces when she regenerated, just healed herself. So it’s entirely possible that River Song can heal herself by using regeneration, but isn’t fully time lord (time lord in her DNA but the doctor doubts she can fully regenerate)
I think that’s a pretty tight write-up; hard to disagree with that now we’ve seen A Good Man Goes to War. I do have a question though… why was River Song’s identity written in Gallifreyan on the Doctor’s cot before he found out who she was?
Does this suggest that River Song has further connections… for example, time line wise, was she the first step in the evolution towards Time Lords? If she’s the mother of all Time Lords that would explain why her name was on the cot.
River’s name wasn’t on the cot. It was written on the prayer leaf in the language of the Gamma Forests.
In all likelyhood what we finally saw on that cot was the Doctor’s name in Gallifreyan
It was written on the cot, in gallifreyan, but it couldn’t be translated to Amy/Rory. Only the Doctor and river saw this; or maybe something else’s written, tipping the doctor to understand who River was. Remember also that Time Lord objects are often automated; the name of the last baby in the cot _could_ have written itself. I didn’t see any CGI supporting this theory, even though I tried to stay focused on this.
(now following Dysus’s thoughts)
I have a strong feeling that River, as the girl in the spacesuit, kills the doctor. Though, I have doubts on the doctor’s identity since their visit to the acid/ganger plant (but the last scene of this episode shows clearly John Smith (Ganger Doctor) dissolving when stopping Ganger Jenny monster, which should indicate the doctor we saw is the doctor, or like Jenny, a ganger’s ganger…
I hate to admit this, but the end of the series might be at hand; TV series nowadays are only running between 5-10 years (Star-Trek used to have a 7-10 years life, Stargate SG1 had a 10-years life and the spinoffs were less than that). Or I’m totally wrong (as I hope), but I guess the age of the doctor (90? years in “the impossible astronaut”) might give us a clue about how many years we still have left.
In the “universe.2”, River might never end up being trapped in CAL (“The Girl In the Library”), and she could become Madame Kovarian (the woman with the patch on one eye), as “Let’s kill Hitler”‘s previews tend to indicate. Madame Kovarian could even be a living Ganger River Song.
One thing that makes me wonder about the Doctor’s real identity is that he’s not really acting like the doctor anymore. In “Pandorica Opens” he repeatedly crossed his own timeline (with River’s bracelet). He willingly intervened with violence/force himself or through others, which he always tried not to do. He unregretfully killed the asteroid’s alien which was inside the tardis’s core (“The Doctor’s wife”) instead of giving him an option or trapping him like he did to the the Carrionites or to the Family Of Blood. He’s now thus quite un-Doctor-esque.We’ll know more tomorrow night, I guess :-)
You hit a number of home runs on this post. Those time cops seem to confirm that River Song does kill the Doctor. As for the end of the series; concerns are already growing. Have you seen the viewing figures?
River’s name wasn’t on the cot. It was written on the prayer leaf in the language of the Gamma Forests.
In all likelyhood what we finally saw on that cot was the Doctor’s name in Gallifreyan
I think that’s a pretty tight write-up; hard to disagree with that now we’ve seen A Good Man Goes to War. I do have a question though… why was River Song’s identity written in Gallifreyan on the Doctor’s cot before he found out who she was?
Does this suggest that River Song has further connections… for example, time line wise, was she the first step in the evolution towards Time Lords? If she’s the mother of all Time Lords that would explain why her name was on the cot.
Theory: Madam K may turn out to be Amy’s biological mother, and hence, River’s grandmother. It would certainly explain the resemblence between her and River. When the Pandorica trap (for which Amy’s whole life was created) failed, Madam K then used Amy and Rory and their predictable wedding night reproductive actions in the TARDIS to create the ultimate weapon to defeat the Doctor – a half-timelord whose DNA when combined with the Doctor’s creates the mystery regenerating girl in the spacesuit who’s DNA would be 3/4ths timelord. Such a being could pilot the TARDIS the Silent’s have been building since “The Lodger”. The poem “Demons Run” that River recites says “friendship will die and true love lies”…
Imagine the Doctor’s quandry. He knows now that Amy and Rory’s baby can never be rescued, for doing so would destroy his and River’s future and past. He also cannot resist having a biologically compatible female close enough to his own species that he could once again have a family. His giddy reaction upon learning of River’s true identity and hasty exit supports this. He cannot, ever, do anything more for Amy and Rory with regards to rescuing their child. He lies to them when he says he will. He knows he cannot and they will realize it (or will) soon enough. How would they feel toward the Doctor then? Their lives have been destroyed, their baby stolen, and the Doctor will not (cannot) help them. “Friendships die” indeed.
What remains is for the next stanza of the poem, “true love lies” to determine how and when River betrays her true love, the Doctor. She is part of the plan as well, albeit an unwilling part. Yet the poem relates historical events, and we hear River reciting it. Perhaps she wrote the poem. Blue Man says it’s old, perhaps the oldest. And River does travel in time. We do know her ultimate fate in the Library, but we do not know her life after the relative now (of episode 7). Presumambly it’s during this period that River and the Doctor travel together and become intimate.
There is perhaps another clue in episode 7. River scolds the Doctor when she finally arrives at Demon’s Run for becoming something that terrifies his enemies (thus making more enemies) rather than being what he set out to be: a healer and wise man. She mentions that he ran away from Gallifrey in the beginning, but we still do not know after 777 televised episodes why he ran. I propose another theory to explain this and tie it all in with what we do know these past few years.
We know the Doctor ran from Gallifrey and took his granddaughter Susan with him. We know he went to Earth. He must have had a family on Gallifrey (or perhaps one of it’s colonies) in order to have a granddaughter. What became of them we do not know, it’s never mentioned. But suppose he ran away from the responsibility, or ran because of family issues.
In the 1997 Paul McGann movie, the Doctor says he is half human on his mother’s side. That would mean his mother was not a timelord. Perhaps she was married to a timelord and lived on Gallifrey, we simply do not know. But suppose the Doctor’s mother had other children, by the Doctor’s father or someone else. The Doctor could well have siblings he knows nothing about. They need not be timelord siblings if his mother had children by a non-timelord.
Now imagine that the Doctor has a half-sister of whom he knows nothing. The Doctor can only detect the presence of other timelords, remember. Now, imagine this half-sister has a bit of resentment towards her brother for his “solution” to the Time War – destroying the timelord race and Gallifrey as well as the Daleks to put an end to it. Maybe she survived this fate, but her mother (the Doctor’s mother as well) did not. She might very well become unhinged and desire to change history and destroy the Doctor in the process.
But for that, she needs a TARDIS. She enlists the aid of the Silents and uses ‘ganger technology as well as hiring mercenaries like the Anglican Marines. She devises the Pandorica plan, using all of the Doctor’s arch foes to trap him. The keystone to this plan is Amy, her own daughter, whose life she manipulates to ensnare the Doctor. The Doctor himself said that Amy’s life made no sense, and we still do not know why the TARDIS crashed and literally burned in the girl’s front garden. The TARDIS in corporeal form as Idris tells the Doctor that she is not unreliable, but rather takes him where he needs to go.
When the Pandorica plan fails, Madam Kovarian devises an even more devious plan that cannot fail. When her daughter Amy conceives a child in the TARDIS during flight through the vortex, a human child with timelord DNA vestiges is created. The child who will become River Song is destined to fall in love with the Doctor, and he cannot resist. The last of his species, only through River can another timelord be born. And thus the creation of a new timelord race.
It’s THIS child, the daughter of River and the Doctor, who is kidnapped and encased in the spacesuit by the Silents. Her DNA is perhaps 3/4s timelord (half from her father, perhaps a quarter from River) but her cellular makeup is flawed. She cannot survive outside of the TARDIS or the specially modified spacesuit which acts as a life support chamber. When she escapes from the suit and the Silents, and after being shot by Amy, we see her regenerate. But what is part in the plan to destroy the Doctor and change history? Having sufficient timelord DNA to regenerate, this child could pilot the TARDIS constructed by the Silents at the direction of Madam Kovarian. With a TARDIS and a pilot, Madam Kovarian could go back in time and stop the Doctor from ever being born.
It’s admittedly not a perfect theory, but it would explain quite many loose threads in the 11th Doctor’s timeline. I’m still pondering what the events of episode 1 involving the Doctor being killed and how they relate to this theory. Perhaps the Doctor is shot by his ‘ganger (with his consent) in order to release the regeneration energies into his ganger double. Thus the Doctor continues to live but the original Doctor’s timeline can now be altered.
see the ney trailer. Kovarian is river song/ melody pond. she creates herself and brings her up against the doctor, it is a neverending paradox, just like jenny.
It could be a young avitar River in a space suit that kills the doctor and not River herself.