Surfing Tinfoil-Hat: Crazy Doctor Who Season Six Theories

Don’t turn around. Don’t try to look at that movement in the corner of your eye. Something sinister is lurking nearby, but you might forget about it as soon as you turn away.

That’s right, we’ve only seen one episode of Doctor Who this season, and the theories are already flying out of control, making us so paranoid that we have to put on our tinfoil hats to make sure that the aliens won’t get us! Rob and I have come up with some pretty crazy theories, which we’ll share here. Feel free to chime in with your own!

Please note that if you have not seen “The Impossible Astronaut,” there are spoilers for that episode within.

The Future Doctor

When we first see the Doctor at the beginning of the series, he is 1103 — and simultaneously as crazy as ever and very somber, tired. So, what has the Doctor been doing for 200 years that he is just now coming back to see Amy, Rory and River?

Theory 1: As he nears the time that he apparently knows is his end, the Future Doctor says, “Human beings. I thought I’d never get done saving you.” This is definitely a reference to his line in The Time of Angels where he says: “You lot, you’re everywhere! Like rabbits! I’ll never get done saving you.” So, is this a reference to the Doctor knowing that he will be done saving us because he knows he’s about to die? I personally think that it means that the Future Doctor had been fighting the Silence for the past 200 years, struggling to save humanity — but, he lost; there is no more humanity to save — and it takes that final end of the human race for the Doctor to figure out how to stop the Silence. He now knows how to save humanity from the Silence, but he must make the ultimate sacrifice in order to save us all — his life.

But this all begs another question: Where is the Future Doctor’s TARDIS?

Theory 2: The Future Doctor’s TARDIS was cannibalized by the Silence’s attempt to construct their own TARDIS. When River and Rory are exploring the underground tunnels, they find a chamber that is identical to that seen in the episode The Lodger — of course, neither of them would know this. The damaged time engine in The Lodger has a perception filter that makes it blend in with its surroundings, making Craig think the second floor has been there all along; the Silence seem to have some kind of perception filter of their own that makes them forgotten when not being looked at. Not to mention that while searching for a replacement pilot, the crashed ship in The Lodger electrocutes incompatible humans, and we’ve seen that the Silence have electric abilities, so it would make sense that they would pilot a ship using these electrical impulses.

The Silence

“Silence will fall.” The Silence (or “crazyface aliens” as my boyfriend called them) are gray humanoid aliens, tall and skinny with lanky limbs, deep inset eyes, no nose, and a mouth that only appears when they are summoning their electrical energy – presumably pulling it from sources around them. But where did they come from? Who — or what — are they?

Theory 1: The Silence is the Slender Man. The Slender Man is an Internet myth that began on the Something Awful forums. The Slender Man is described as “wearing a black suit and black hat and as the name suggests, appears very thin and able to stretch his limbs and torso to inhuman lengths in order to induce fear and ensnare his prey… Whether he absorbs, kills, or mearly takes his victims to an undisclosed location or dimension is also unknown as there are never any bodys or evidence left behind in his wake to deduce a definite conclusion.” If that doesn’t fit the description of what we’ve seen of the Silence, I don’t know what does!

Theory 2: The Silence are pre-cybernetic Cybermen. From my classic Who research, the Cybermen were originally humanoids that originated from the planet Mondas, Earth’s twin planet. Mondas was very similar to Earth in many ways, it even had the same orbital path. Then, Mondas began to drift out of its orbit and further and further into space. As their planet moved further away from the sun, the Mondasians became weaker, their flesh bodies unable to evolve to survive; so, they began to create cybernetic components to replace parts of their dying bodies, eventually becoming the Cybermen.

But what if some of these dying Mondasians managed to escape their dying planet and make their way to Earth? There has also been speculation that Marinus, the planet of origin of the Voord, was actually just another name for Mondas and that the Cybermen evolved from the Voord; we know that the Voord could communicate telepathically and could use mind control techniques. A type of telepathy or mind control could be what we see the Silence employing; after all, the Silence that talked to Amy in the bathroom of the White House told her to tell the Doctor a secret that she shouldn’t tell — and she did tell the Doctor she was pregnant after that, didn’t she?

Theory 3: The Silence are amongst us in an even bigger way. Nixon’s bodyguard was very suspicious and untrusting of the Doctor, even when no one else said anything. Could he be a Silence in disguise? Even more interestingly, we’ve heard Moffat and others call the Silence extremely scary, one of the scariest Who enemies yet. At Wondercon, Mark Sheppard said that Nixon is scary. Could President Nixon be a Silence infiltrator?

River Song

By far my favorite Who character, River Song is definitely surrounded by mystery. Who is she? Where did she meet the Doctor? Who did she kill that she was sent to jail?

Theory 1: River is Amy and Rory’s daughter. When River meets Donna, she seems to know about Donna but not have met her before. On the other hand, River speaks with Amy in a way that seems like she knows her well. We assume that’s because the River and Doctor have different time lines and River has had some adventures with the Doctor and Amy already, but perhaps she’s so comfortable around Amy — and so comfortable talking to Rory while they’re exploring the tunnels in The Impossible Astronaut — because Amy and Rory are her parents. She’s very good at keeping secrets to avoid spoilers, so she’d never let on.

Theory 2: River is pregnant with the Doctor’s child. After all of Amy’s stomach-clutching and nausea, many of us guessed that Amy was pregnant — but what about River? When River is confronted with the Silence and then heads back into the tunnels with Rory, she is visibly nauseous. Could she, too, be having morning sickness? I noticed something interesting while watching The Impossible Astronaut a second time: during the picnic scene, River never actually drinks any wine, she just sniffs at the glass and looks like she might want to take a sip, but never actually does.

Theory 3: The little girl inside of the space suit is River Song. We know that River was an “impressionable young girl” when she first meet the Doctor. Could the Doctor have rescued River as a young girl from the Silence, only to leave and appear in her life years later the way he did with Amy?

Theory 4: River is the “impossible astronaut” that walks out of the ocean and kills the Doctor. We know that River was sent to the Stormcage for killing “a good man. The best man I’ve ever known,” so there is, of course, a lot of speculation that River kills the Doctor. Could the Future Doctor, knowing what would happen to humanity because of the Silence, found a younger River Song and talked her into killing him in order to start this particular chain of events that would help to save humanity? When River fires at the astronaut suit as it makes its way back into the ocean, she misses (sort of strange, don’t you think, considering that she is good enough a shot to shoot the Doctor’s Stetson off of his head) and says, “Of course not.” If she really is the one in the suit, she couldn’t have been killed, otherwise she wouldn’t be there at that moment to shoot the astronaut. But that doesn’t mean that she can’t try out of hurt and guilt.

 
So, there you go! Our very first set of Doctor Who conspiracy theories about this new season. Have any theories of your own? Sound off in the comments below!

About Tiarra

Tiarra Wantz is a comic book and sci-fi geek girl who enjoys reading, playing video games, creating typography art, and comparing everything to “that one episode of TNG where…” Tiarra lives in Las Vegas with the love of her life, Dan, where they live together with two cuddly kittens named Panda Face and Ser Pounce-a-lot and a precocious pup named Pippin.

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