WMG / Doctor Who Series 4

Beware of unmarked spoilers - WMG pages are always Spoilers Off

• "Midnight"
• "Turn Left"
• "The End of Time"

---

Confirmed

Davros is back

We know that the last Dalek has failed to clone itself but in the trailers we see multiple Daleks. Davros may be the only person who can create the Daleks, as he has done it twice by now.

• Wikipedia's article on the series states that the final antagonist appears to be some sort of humanoid on a dalek-style base... Sounds like Davros.
  • It's now doing the rounds that Davros is to be played by Julian Bleach, who appeared as the Ghostmaker in the Torchwood episode "Out Of The Rain". As for humanoids on a Dalek base, it is widely speculated that Harriet Jones will be converted into a Dalek.
    • Thankfully, it didn't happen that way. She went out as a Big Damn Hero.
    • ...Do Daleks work that way?
• Status: Confirmed!

This season's Arc Words will be "The Shadow Proclamation."

It's important on a galactic scale, it's been floating around since Season 26, and the name was dropped again in the BBC's online video about the Adipose.

• Russell T Davies has stated in the Doctor Who Magazine that there won't be a single arc word, though little details will be building up from Season 27. Though he could be messing with our minds again (as he did with a certain face), and the Doctor did mention The Shadow Proclamation in the first episode of the revival.
  • He mentioned it in the second episode of the new series.
    • Not used in Planet of the Ood. Curses!
• Status: Sort of confirmed (the Shadow Proclamation ends up playing a role in the finale, but it's not the only set of Arc Words)

This season's Arc Words will be "That planet has vanished"

The first two episodes have plots based on the disappearance of planets. The buildup will lead to either reveal what was destroying these planets, or that they were planets lost in the time war.

• The midseason trailer also has Wilf noticing that stars are disappearing from the sky.
• Midnight has the Doctor talking with a woman about a lost moon.
• Status: Sort of confirmed (vanishing planets are relevant to the finale, but that particular sentence isn't)

This season's Arc Words will be "Medusa Cascade."

• Status: Sort of confirmed (the Medusa Cascade ends up playing a role in the finale, but it's not the only set of Arc Words)

This season's Arc Words will be "The bees are disappearing."

It's a real-world phenomenon; however, apparently one of the audio commentaries said it was important, and photographs of filming for the season finale show a newspaper stand which says that greenhouse gases are at an all-time high - global warming is one of the speculated real-world causes of the bees vanishing. It also happened to be a side-effect of the parallel universes merging in season 2/28.

• Sort of Confirmed. The bees are a Chekhov's Gun, not an Arc Word.
  • Does that make them a Chekhov's Bee-Bee Gun?

Arc Words are just one aspect of the arc.

Or so says Word of God.

• The first two episodes have dropped a whole bunch of clues, including Rose's return, the Shadow Proclamation, 'lost' planets and, probably, the Medusa Cascade and the something on Donna's back.
  • Let's not forget the bees.
    • That one is a real fact and is really happening clickles, but what about Ood Σ's assertion that the Doctor's song may be coming to an end?
    • He addressed them as Doctor-Donna and could have meant either one of them or "soon" from his own point of view, not that of a time-traveller.
    • Doctor Song seems to know something about Donna's fate, and it's likely to be unpleasant.
• As a further elaboration: couldn't the Doctor-Donna song be a reference to Silence in the Library?
• Continuing that elaboration: think about the wording - The Doctor's Song will soon come to an end... and Dr. Song, the Doctor's future romantic partner, did meet her end in the Library...
• Status: Confirmed.

The main theme of this series will be Humans being transformed into something else

• In "Voyage of the Damned", Astrid became Stardust.
  • Was Astrid actually human though? The passengers on the space-ship designed to look like the Titanic certainly didn't seem to know much about Earth.
    • She was a Human Alien —probably biologically close enough to count.
• In Partners in Crime, the Adipose were made of human fat, in the Fires of Pompeii, the soothsayers, augers and other fortune-tellers slowly were turned to stone by the pyrovillains,
• In Planet of the Ood, the 'Big Bad' of the episode turns into an Ood
• In The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky the planet Earth is almost turned into a Sontaran Clone world.
  • We also have Martha's clone, although that's admittedly on a smaller scale.
• The titular Doctor's Daughter was expected to be Human but was a Time Lady.
• The Unicorn and the Wasp gives us a human who turns into a wasp.
• Silence in The Library and Forest of The Dead had humans being "saved" and converted into data, and space suits taken over by the Monster That Lives In The Shadows.
• Midnight had Sky Slivestry taken over by the entity.
• Turn Left was Donna converted by the beetle.
• Since we know the Daleks are making a reappearance because of the trailers, humans being turned into Daleks again, like in Bad Wolf/Parting of the Ways perhaps?
  • Rumour has it that the former Prime Minister, Harriet Jones will be converted into a Dalek. Several "sources" are quoted as saying the actress was "smuggled onto the set" so as not to give the plot away.
• With the Doctor having a half-human clone, and Donna turning half-Doctor, we can say the theme has played a big part in this series. Status: Confirmed.

The theme of the series is the Earth being converted for other purposes

Miss Foster, the Pyroviles and the Sontarans have done it. That or the writers are running out of ideas. Then again this didn't happen in Planet of The Ood, for obvious reasons.

• This is similar to the one above.
• And yes, the very last episode(s). Status: Confirmed.

The title of the 12th episode will be something like "The Stolen Earth"

And it's confirmed!

Upcoming Episodes

According to comments by a video uploader on Youtube (who has a contact at the BBC), the titles of the final three episodes are Turn Left (where Rose Tyler comes back), The Oncoming Storm (a reference to a Christopher Eccleston line) and Journey's End. There are also videos on the site that show Rose running with a gun, Daleks, the Doctor being knocked down and picked up by Rose, Captain Jack, and what seems to be a reprisal of the "Bad Wolf Bay" scene from Doomsday. It also seems that Mickey Smith and Sarah Jane return for guest appearances.

• Status: Mostly confirmed (it was "The Stolen Earth", not "The Oncoming Storm")

The girl's name is some derivative of "Cal"

She clearly has major control of the library.

• She is the Library database. Dr. Moon told her that her nightmares are real and the real world is not, so it seems as though the database created this elaborate imaginary life for its avatar, the little girl, when the Library shut down.
  • She is the Library database, which is described as a computer inside the planet, and Dr. Moon is a diagnostic computer inside the planet's moon.
    • In addition, the people being "Saved" are saved like Ctrl-S saved. Dead, yes, but digitally copied into the library's computers. To those who read Girl Genius, the library computer is split like Castle Heterodyne, and so the main core (girl) is unaware of its purpose as it can no longer access its database, and its strong AI is unaware of what is a simulation it's running and what is input from its sensors. The father is most likely some kind of security program; he ignores and possibly blocks contact from the Doctor. Dr Moon is a diagnostic thing, and is trying to fix the library. The girl falls over onto a rug shaped like the library logo, making the "it's a simulation, she's an AI" theory pretty strong. While we're on the topic of computers, the scan for life forms thing is strange: It tops out at 100 billion life-forms on the world. This is odd, because we see binary code inside the computer, meaning its logic will be based on powers of 2. Thus the highest value it can store will be a power of 2, and 100,000,000,000,000,000 is not one of these. Strange waste of an individual memory address for the computer. Geek niggles aside, I think that yes, the girl is the library system's GLaDOS, the father is the angry sphere, Dr Moon the curiosity sphere and that means the floating one we see the doctor fiddle with is the Cake one. 100 years ago, somebody removed the bit that stopped her flooding the Enrichme Library with A deadly neur Vashta Nerada, and sadly the portal gun does not work on bookshelf surfaces, so Chell is still making her way around the planet trying to find the bits to zap.
• Status: Confirmed. (Charlotte Abigail Lux)

The series finale will include a big "The RTD Years" montage

So far confirmed we have the returns of:

• Rose
• Rose's Mum
• Mickey
• Martha
• Torchwood in General
• Captain Jack in particular
• Sarah Jane Smith
• The Daleks (well, they're somewhere in the last few episodes, I'd be surprised if it wasn't the finale)

"The Sun" - whose insider reporting on Doctor Who is usually pretty spot-on - reported that the Doctor would be "terribly injured in an explosion, but four companions run to his side."

• Right on "terribly injured" and the four companions (Rose, Martha, Donna, Jack), wrong on "explosion".
  • Presumably whatever mole the Sun has on the inside saw them filming David Tennant running along the street, then being flung to the side by an invisible force to be added in post-production.
    

Cue Murray Gold, wielding every instrument at his disposal, and a look back at the last four seasons before RTD hands over to Steven Moffat.

• Status: Confirmed. Except for the bit about the explosion.

Will the Doctor regenerate, either at the end of Series 4/30 or after the 2009 specials?

For the Yes:

• The above montage, if it comes to pass, and the "terribly injured" thing, would suggest so.
• Even if the montage doesn't happen, it's still an awful lot of people from the history of the show, combined with Russell's assertion that the finale to this series is one he's been planning for some time and finishes a lot of ongoing stories.
• New production team, new Doctor?
• The official line is that Tennant is signed up for the 2009 specials at least, but there's no regular series because he's doing Hamlet for the RSC. But no word on Series 5. Maybe a staggered change, with a new production team seeing the "old" Doctor through some specials to get their eye in, rather than change everything all together.
• Five of the original seven Doctors did three seasons each. It's a decent stint in the role - much more and you start to get typecast (ask Tom Baker, who did seven seasons). Tennant's doing Hamlet is a sign he's getting itchy feet, even if he does stick around for the 2009 specials.
• Maybe this whole thing about, due to Tennant's other commitments the 5th season will be delayed, is really subterfuge and he's really leaving after this season and that stuff about the delay of the 5th season is just so people don't start asking why Tennant has all these other commitments that would clash with him shooting the next season.

For the No:

• The BBC are notoriously bad at keeping this sort of thing secret. RTD's handover to Moffatt was common knowledge (or at least "very strong rumour" months before it was announced. You think they could keep the departure of the star of the show secret?
• Anyone like to post more "no" arguments?
• It might still be a different Doctor; it won't necessarily be new. With the alternate universe, a further one-year stint for the Eccleston Doctor is a distinct possibility.
  • This would have the useful side-effect of pushing back the Fourteenth Doctor problem by several years...
• Well, we know Tennant's doing the 2009 specials, and he's been seen filming the 2008 Christmas special. That said, some of the rumours flying around about that don't actually rule out the possibility of his regeneration at the end of series 4.
• The fact that they're postponing series 5 around Tennant's schedule seems like a pretty good indication that they don't want him to leave quite yet. Of course, Tennant may still opt to leave.

Confirmed. The Doctor is shot by a Dalek at the end of The Stolen Earth and begins regenerating.

Well, they've still got one more episode to cop out and hit the reset button...

• It's likely his severed hand will "sacrifice" itself to halt his regeneration and restore him to health...but it won't be permanent, meaning he'll still regenerate from being killed by the Dalek shot sometime next season.
• Semi-confirmed for that part, the hand did stop the regeneration in full.
• Still not Jossed; there's the specials to consider.

• Confirmed with the announcement of the replacement, Matt Smith, who will be taking over after the 2009 specials.

The "Next Doctor" is not the Next Doctor

Going by the performance in the preview, which was over the top even by Doctor standards, plus the crappy looking sonic screwdriver, the fact he did not recognise his own past self, and his overly emphatic insistence "I'm the Doctor, the one and only", it's likely someone's playing -Identity Impersonator.

• Davros caused a bit of reality distortion which plucked Rose over to the main world (for lack of a better term). If we assume that the Cybermen are Cybus Cybermen, not Mondas ones, then they probably ended up in the main world similar to Rose. And if Rose and the Cybermen have come from Pete's World thanks to Davros' reality distortion, it's possible that the Pete's World Doctor did.
• I'm thinking, unintentional Identity Impersonator. His "sonic screwdriver" is... an actual screwdriver! He's never seen a Cyberman before. His companion is called "Rosita". I think what we have here is a delusional man who's heard one too many legends of the Doctor and convinced himself that he's the real thing. (Frankly, I'm surprised "thinks he's the Doctor" isn't the Who-verse's equivalent of "thinks he's Napoleon", at least on some worlds.) He's dubbed his companion "Rosita" because he's heard so many tales of the Doctor and Rose (RTD fan?). It's all very Don Quixote.
• Status: Confirmed.

The newspaper stand man from Voyage of the Damned is highly significant.

Both previous Christmas episodes have had the Arc Words of the next season appear, and the newspaper man also appears in the season 4 trailers. He will probably appear in another guise in different time periods before being noticed and revealing who he is. It's likely he works for the oft-mentioned, but little-detailed Time Agency.

• It's already been announced that Wilfred is Donna's grandfather. This doesn't necessarily rule the theory out, but if he pops up in, say, the Genteel Interbellum Setting episode, you'd think she'd notice.
• Status: General theory confirmed, details Jossed.

Eleven/Twelve/Valeyard/Thirteen/Fourteen showed River a picture of Ten.

This is how she can recognise him, and why he's a younger version of her Doctor- she's one of the few companions to grok regeneration, the others are confused by but accepting of it, deny it, or both at various times.

• Confirmed! River has pictures of all his faces in her diary. Presumably she first met a late incarnation of the Doctor, who gave her pictures of his previous regenerations, which she then used to recognize him as she met him in roughly reverse order.

The reason the Tenth Doctor was much more concerned about regeneration than his other incarnations was due to his experience as John Smith.

• Since as John Smith, he felt what happens when his mind is erased and taken over by a different person, he would be more strongly affected by the implications of regeneration erasing his identity.
• Confirmed by Word of God.

River Song is the Doctor's future wife

• They did, or will do, all kinds of romantic stuff together — and she's "not just anybody" to him. He could only have told her his name under a very special circumstance... like a marriage vow, perhaps?
• Alternatively, she's NOT his future wife, and they're just trying to make us think she is.
• Alternatively, she's a canon expy for Expanded Universe companion Bernice Summerfield who is also
  1. a space archaeologist
  2. from the future
  3. who carries a diary with her everywhere and
  4. has shagged the Doctor.

In the spin-off media, she's his longest-serving companion.

• Semi-confirmed. She and the Doctor married in "The Wedding of River Song", but it was in an aborted timeline and thus probably doesn't legally count.

Jossed

Jenny will be the Doctor's companion for the specials.

Catherine Tate has said she is only doing one season. If this is the case (and don't forget Ood Sigma's comments!), the Doctor will need a new companion - plus, if she conveniently figures out how to regenerate, she can be recast if Georgia Moffett doesn't want to return. Plus it would remove a HECK of a lot of shipping.

• Apparently it was Steven Moffat's idea that Jenny survive. Which suggests that he may have specific plans for her in Season 5...
  • Shipping maybe, but Rule 34 will be back with a vengeance. No corner of Teh Internets will be safe from a massive Squick-worthy development such as that. (Admittedly it's somewhat less creepy than Hartnell-Doctor/Susan "shipping".)
• The specials have series 4 production codes; this may "count", so we may not find out about a new companion until 2010.
• Status: Jossed (the specials each have a one-off companion)

The Royal family of Padrivole Regency Nine are the ones who involve the Judoon in the last two episodes.

Based purely on the fact that we see them at about 11 and 30 seconds in the next time at the end of Turn Left and, all things considered, they may feel they owe the Doctor.

• Status: Jossed.

All the Arc Words of the RTD years will be solved.

As of The Stolen Earth, Medusa Cascade and Shadow Proclaimation have been mentioned, as has Torchwood and Bad Wolf.

• "The bees are disappearing", which is not only referenced but explained as the bees being an alien species who have migrated back to their home planet.
  • Not all of them.
• Also, Mr. Saxon wasn't mentioned - though we did hear the sound of drums at one point. When Harriet Jones, Former Prime Minister made her first appearance. The four-beat sequence of beeps that started her transmission was exactly in time with the sound of drums.
• Status: Jossed.

The "most faithful companion" is the TARDIS

Oh no!

• Okay, Prof. Song knows the TARDIS from the future, but still. Oh no!
  • Donna becomes the new Heart of the TARDIS. Oh noes!
• Technically true, the Tardis "dies"... in a way.
• And so does Doctor-Donna. Which would make the Doctor's "most faithful companion" a female version of himself.
• Also, given that Dalek Caan was secretly working against the Daleks, and kept his Heel–Face Turn a secret until the end, he was pretty faithful and could have even been referring to himself.
• All but confirmed in the final part of the comic mini-series Doctor Who: The Forgotten when The Doctor, having been attacked by a Time Beetle (like the one which attacked Donna in Turn Left), hallucinates being trapped in a museum devoted to his life and is guided out of the illusion by a psychic projection of The TARDIS. The TARDIS first manifests as Martha, clues The Doctor into something being wrong by knowing things Martha couldn't possibly know, introduces itself as the one companion he has always had and then helps The Doctor by changing into other companions as their skills become needed (Leela to fight a Clockworkman, Adric to do some complex equations, etc...)
• Status: Jossed as it pertains to the finale. Mostly... Though it depends on just how badly Ten damaged her during his regeneration to Eleven and attempt to escape same.

The "Next Doctor" is a fraud impersonating the Doctor, and in addition, he's River's Doctor.

Based on his over the top, showman-like mannerisms in the "The Next Doctor" preview, he's a fraud. Also based on his arrogant, boastful attitude, he's the Doctor River describes. C'mon, this Doctor would definitely tell River that armies run from him, would rig his "TARDIS" to open with a snap of his fingers, and even looks older. And they'd totally be awesome together.

• Status: Jossed.

Iris Wildthyme will be in Planet of the dead

She's a renegade time lady, whose TARDIS is a red double-decker bus that's slightly smaller on the inside. She kidnaps the doctor (With whom she is madly in love) and takes him to the planet of the dead to get him alone, but ends up stranded when her TARDIS breaks down...

• Also...
• Status: Jossed.

The planet of the dead is Gallifrey

...Pretty self-explanatory, really.

• Status: False.

The Planet of the Dead is Utopia.

Because the year 100 000 000 000 000 sucks. And it provides a bittersweet alternative for the Y3b humans after the paradox machine collapsed.

• Um, don't they DESERVE a horrible fate? Dying as the universe screams and burns around them seems too good for them for this troper

• Status: False.

The Planet of the Dead is The Library.

Vashda Nerada.

• Status: False.

The next incarnation of The Doctor will be 10.75

Since 10.5 is Human!Doctor.

The powers that be had wanted David Tennant to stay on, and so it's probable that the early drafts of the Season 31 scripts were anticipating the Tenth Doctor. But Tennant turns out to have injured his back; since the new series is action-heavy, that means he has to bow out. The replacement actor is a relative unknown and looks something like Tennant, so maybe Ten gets hit by an anti-Blinovitch ray or something like that.

• Is this a real guess? Because Tennant injured his back after quitting, not before. And he seems to be fine now. And they'd been planning to have the "gap year" with a few specials after season 4 anyway.
• Status: Jossed. Smith's Doctor is a genuine regeneration.

River will be back before Ten regenerates

There's more specials coming with Tennant, yes? So one of them is another adventure with River Song, perhaps her first adventure with him!

• Status: Hinted at as an idea: The Doctor says in "The Time of Angels" that they "keep meeting in the wrong order". Moff hints in the companion Confidential episode that there's at least one off-screen adventure between the two episodes, but Eleven's timeline is pretty much all accounted for.

The Tenth Doctor will be unveiled as a cocaine addict in his final episode.

... hopefully explaining his hyperactive behaviour. And his mood swings. And his recklessness. And his schizophrenic attitude towards his own moral code. Plus, who knows? If we're lucky enough, we'll be treated to the sight of him snorting a small mountain of cocaine off the Tardis console, a la Scarface (1983), making him the only Doctor to die of an overdose. Yeah, I'm having too much fun- sorry.

• The only thing I like about this theory is that if true, it would be evidence that the Doctor is Sherlock Holmes.
• Status: Jossed.

The Doctor is going through the Five stages of Grief regarding his coming death and, by the end of The Waters of Mars, entered the second stage.

What we have seen seems to fit the bill so far.

Stage One: Denial and isolation consistently traveling alone, visiting places at random places at random times without planning anything as though nothing is wrong, life as normal.

Stage Two: Anger being fed up with changing nothing in the long run, breaks the law of time by rescuing the Mars crew, declaring himself "Time Lord Victorious"...that final, aggressive "No", all seems to fit the bill.

Therefore, if this really IS the path RTD is taking, then conjecture for how things will end for Tenth (contains elements from all of the above):

Stage Three: Bargaining. The Doctor dealing with the Master, who returns from the land of the dead, for prolonging his current generation (hey, a certain Immortality Gate has been mentioned)? Or even buying extra regenerations? Perhaps he has to surrender something (Donna) to the Master in order to bring the Time Lords back? Maybe the Master offers BOTH? Might also return to current earth to see 'loose ends', bargaining with Varity Newman not to publish "Journal of Impossible Things" to safeguard Donna's sanity.

Stage Four: Depression. The Doctor feels guilty for the price he has to pay for his extra regenerations/prolonged generation afterward, death of Donna (and possibly consequences humans faces) weighs on him? Perhaps still angry at his inability to change things in the long run? (If anything, the Master's plan will be to psychically convert everyone on earth to THINK they are Time Lords, causing a planetary-scale mental breakdown/mental conversion, thus causing everyone to have 'bad dreams'. Verity Newman, don't publish "A Journal of Impossible Things". PLEASE.) Oh, and Donna will serve as a 'stopgap' experiment.

Stage Five: Acceptance. The Doctor presses the 'reset to status quo' button...by allowing himself to die. The four knocks will be the Master/a 'converted' Time Lord knocking at the Tenth's locked Tardis/control room, begging Tenth not to kill the entire Time Lord race AGAIN by his death. Is there anything more heartbreaking than having to destroy your own race TWICE? I think not...

• Status: Jossed.

The 11th Doctor is the Master. Well, sort of.

Ten cheating his way out of regenerating somehow breaks the laws of the universe. As punishment, he's made to regenerate into Eleven, who is identical to the Master. Alternately, Ten comes up against the owner of the hand who picked up the Master's ring. He's hurt badly enough to make him regenerate, but the ring got slipped on him during the fight, and he ends up regenerating into the Master.

• Status: Jossed.

"The Next Doctor" will be an unholy mix of Ten and Five.

It has been noted that the replacement actor looks kinda like Five. Judging from Jenny, who was played by Peter Davison's (Five's) daughter, Five-type genes are near the top of the next regeneration's set.

• Makes sense. In the Children in Need special (asides from being just one big excuse to let David Tennant behave like the squeeing fanboy he is for about eight minutes) Ten (in a line no doubt fuelled by the actor himself) called Five "his doctor". If he had any say whatsoever in what happens to his next incarnation (there's another theory out there that each incarnation is inspired by the last) then, I expect he'd hope to be like five.
  • Jossed. He's somewhat like Ten in energy, but in many ways not any of the Eleven Doctors at all.

River Song is the thirteenth regeneration of Jenny

Everyone assumes that their future relationship will be romantic, but the actual facts could just as easily support a father/daughter relationship. And if she's on her last regeneration, then her being a Time Lady doesn't affect the ending of "Forest of the Dead."

• Jossed. She's Amy and Rory's daughter.

The River Song adventures already happened, but The Doctor doesn't remember

Everyone assumes that River Song will meet the Doctor at some point in his personal future, they'll have great adventures and then split up, and then she'll accidentally contact a younger Doctor for the Forest episode. But she mentions him being able to open his TARDIS with a snap of his fingers, and he says that it's impossible. At the end, he does it. There are only two ways that can make sense:

1. The TARDIS could always do that and he just never knew
2. He modified the TARDIS to do that

In his past history, he went on the River Song adventures and was all snappy with the doors; but then, for some reason, his memory was wiped. (At this point in the Doctor Who continuity, picking the wrong bagel for breakfast might erase your entire memory, so this isn't too far-fetched.)

• And he was de-aged? River is surprised at how young he looks.
  • Given the Doctor's apparent Merlin Sickness, this isn't actually all that surprising...
• Jossed. If the kiss River and Eleven shared in "Day of the Moon" wasn't the last, then it was likely one of the last. Plus, series 6 (as of episode 12) has shown very little leeway for adventures with non-Eleven Doctors.

The creation of Other Ten will result in the Doctor becoming the Valeyard.

Other Ten seems a hell of a lot more rational than his progenitor. He chose to dispense with the attempts to "save" the Daleks and kill them for these reasons:

1. He realized they could not be negotiated with.
2. Their numbers meant that, even if their "reality bomb" was stopped, they would in and of themselves be a force of extermination to reality almost on par with thar bomb — something that the Doctor never seems to get through his head.

In other words, Other Ten represents the Doctor's rational, practical, and reasonable side, his ability to realize when things have gone past passionate pleas and warnings and when violent action is needed to get anywhere. The Doctor lost that side of himself, and with it the crucial circuit breaker to his morality that was needed to keep him from falling into Valeyard territory.

• The Tenth Doctor has, upon inspection, a disturbingly large number of similarities with his Valeyard incarnation, suggesting that, rather than the Valeyard being a distillation of the Doctor's dark side as the Master claims, Other Ten is the distillation of the Doctor's light side. What is left of the original Doctor will eventually regenerate directly into the Valeyard in a couple of incarnations' time. In his current incarnation, the Doctor shares the Valeyard's utter lack of tolerance for necessary evils (genocide toward the Daleks and the Vervoids respectively), his banality (embarassment over being seen traveling with somebody's mother, a low that no previous incarnation has ever been seen to sink to), and his presumption of authority over the universe as a whole (compare the Doctor's speech in New Earth and his insistance that only he be allowed to have time travel technology). The most distinctive difference between the two is the Doctor's seeming envy of people with the capacity to die of old age; the Valeyard appears to have finally acknowledged the hypocrisy of his past self's words and strives to extend his lifespan before it's too late.

Donna's Victory-Guided Amnesia was just a ruse.

Oh, yes, the DoctorDonna will return. And she'll team up with Jenny, Martha, and Sarah Jane to form "The Girls From N.U.R.S.E.", a blatant Charlie's Angels spoof readily picked up by American markets due to the fact that it makes a hell of a lot more sense than Cleopatra 2525 ever did. Special guest stars include Rose for wacky parallel-universe hijinks and Joanna Lumley's 13th Doctor (from The Curse of Fatal Death) for a Very Special Episode about Jenny's lack of stable parental figures.

Other Ten is the Valeyard.

It's only a matter of time before the Cybus universe gets revisited. Other Ten has already committed "genocide", demonstrating a marked ability to be Darker and Edgier than the regular Doctor. His abbreviated lifespan puts a sense of urgency to his work - he'll be wanting to steal the Doctor's remaining regenerations from him as soon as he can.

• And perhaps "fix" Donna as well in all of this. In a way, she's a living fob watch. Couple that with the "original" Doctor all but rejecting him for being genocidal and dumping him on Rose, and he's bound to resent such implications down the line (especially because Rose can't help BUT compare him to the original). The threefold man will be looking to be make himself whole again — with the Valeyard as the dominant personality, one who TRULY believes in "no second chances".
• If you squint a little, then the Master's statement about the Valeyard coming from somewhere betweeen the Doctor's "twelth and final" regeneration doesn't rule out Other Ten being the Valeyard's first incarnation. All it requires is for the Tenth Doctor (and by the same token, Other Ten) to have technically entered their 11th life when the averted regeneration took place (which makes Matt Smith's impending incarnation the 12th Doctor, not the 11th) and for the deleted scene where the Doctor gave Other Ten a piece of TARDIS coral to be canonical. From there, Other Ten simply needs to grow a TARDIS within his human lifespan using Donna's instructions, travel to a point in Pete's World's future where nanogenes have been invented, and then use nanogenes to purge the human DNA from his body. Then there wouldn't be anything jamming Other Ten's ability to regenerate, meaning that he should still have two regenerations remaining like the Doctor has. Although Other Ten will now have a Time Lord lifespan, he's still conscious of his limited number of regenerations and thus sets about stealing the Doctor's regenerations to extend his own life, requiring him to break through into his dimension of origin. Somewhere along the line, Rose is going to question Other Ten's descent into darkness, perhaps even being responsible for Other Ten's eventual regeneration (ala Chantho and the Master) should Other Ten become hostile toward her during the course of his Face–Heel Turn. Other Ten retreats into the TARDIS upon sustaining fatal injuries, deadlocking the TARDIS closed to prevent anyone from following him, and then undergoes his first regeneration. Upon examining his new body in a mirror, he recognizes it as the familiar visage of the Valeyard and realizes that he is currently at the heart of a Stable Time Loop that will allow him to travel back in time to Gallifrey prior to the Time War without losing his mind like Dalek Caan did. Having embraced the persona of the Valeyard, Other Ten travels back in time to where the rift between universes can be breached without causing reality itself to collapse and then travels to Gallifrey shortly before the Sixth Doctor's trial, offering to help the Time Lord High Council frame the Doctor in exchange for his remaining lives. Behind the scenes, the Valeyard secretly converts his own TARDIS into a Paradox Machine so he can avert the stable time loop at the last moment without getting eaten by time monkeys. However, unbeknownst to the Valeyard, the Master (in his Ainley incarnation) has been observing his activities for some time and begins making moves of his own to undermine what he sees as a threat greater than that posed by the Doctor himself. Despite the Master's interference, the trial goes ahead as planned; the Valeyard remains poised to avert the time loop and emerge victorious. Unfortunately, the plan hits a snag; events proceed as the Valeyard remembers them in spite of the Paradox Machine, and he survives at the last moment only by using the Matrix to seize control of the Keeper. From there, the Valeyard/Other Ten's whereabouts remain unknown.

Other Ten is dead

Original Doctor said that human-Time Lords can't exist; since Other Ten was a human-Time Lord, he died when Donna's memory was wiped. There was no-one there to wipe his memory.

• No, Other Ten is a Time Lord-human. Doctor-Donna got the brain; Other Ten got the aging.

Somehow, some way, Donna's "husband" from when she was inside CAL will track her down.

Perhaps if Donna has to sacrifice herself in some way (see above), The Doctor finds some way to take her back to the library and store her in the computer with River and her buddies, where her "husband" may appear again.

• Except we found out at the end that he was a real person.
  • Alternatively, knowing that no hard drive ever truly deletes the data it holds. Husband-man returns to The Library and desperately tries to download whatever fragments of Donna may still exist within CAL. In doing this, husband-man tries to download other CAL-denizens to make sure he has the process right. One of his early unsuccessful attempts involves re-materialising River Song, in a younger body, with much of her memory missing. This River BECOMES the original River, that the Doctor will eventually meet for the last time at some future date.
    • Good luck with that. The Library was closed down. And what, you think the Vashtas just took the next shuttlebus to some new forests? They're still there.

Jenny is the Rani

Pretending to be The Doctor's Daughter is all part of an elaborate and evil plan to crush his spirit when she reveals the truth.

• Or she is the Rani, but several regenerations before she turns evil.

Astrid is the TARDIS

It's an anagram! Astrid wanted to explore the universe, she was turned into star dust and, thanks to a timey-wimey ball, she became a TARDIS. Probably the Doctor's TARDIS, at that. No WONDER he fell for her instantly. He's like one of those men who's more interested in their car than their girl.

Jenny from the Doctor's Daughter is the Valeyard

Jenny can possibly regenerate, and she is a clone of the doctor, so maybe she becomes the Valeyard instead of the actual doctor.

---

The Doctor is regenerating, but not into the 11th Doctor

.They're out of phase with normal time, and the Medusa Cascade seems to be the center of the reality-weakening effect that's letting Rose travel between worlds. Certainly not a normal environment, anyway.

• Dalek Caan called him a number of odd things, including "The Threefold Man" - three regenerations left, hmm...
  • Ooh, now you've got me thinking the "Regeneration" energy, rather than making the Doctor regenerate, will alert other previous doctors. Tennant, Eccleston, McGann for the three in question maybe?
  • Personally, I think his Regeneration will be halted, probably by The Hand that he lost way back when...it was shown right at the beginning of the episode in an odd camera pan (which may have been to show it bubbling, but...)...and it did get cut off curing his first fifteen hours of regeneration..granted, that was three years ago, but still..
  • Alert! Alert! Sylvester McCoy recently spotted in full Doctor garb...
• Status: Confirmed in broad strokes, Jossed in detail.

RTD is an evil alien

He feeds on the crushed hopes of fangirls, and loyal fan's tears of disappointment. The "man" builds us up with promises of epicness and awesome, then dashes hopes and dreams with twists that leave fans shouting "Lame!" Donna's grandfather kills the Doctor? and "WTF?" Did anyone really understand what was up with the Time Lords?. The only explanation is that he feeds on despair.

• Status Just for fun

The Reality Bomb would've failed without the DoctorDonna.

Why? The 27 planets are supposed to act as a transmitter. However they exist outside the Crucible, which is why the Daleks retreated to shelter in it. If that's the case, the Reality Bomb would only be able to reach the nearest of the 27 planets, as said planet would disintegrate and make the doomsday device non-functional. This is why Dalek Caan mentioned "it would would have always happened": because the design is fundamentally flawed, and Davros was too ecstatic about ending everything to notice.The disappearance of the stars was caused by another Class Z level doomsday-The TARDIS exploding.

An explanation of the Master's drums

• When a Time Lord first looks into the vortex, s/he may feel a variety of emotions. Perhaps what the Master felt was fear. Fear tends to result in things like a powerful, rapid heartbeat. The Doctor can feel the turn of the universe. Perhaps the Master developed it on a more personal scale: hearing his own internal organs operating, including his two hearts beating: one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four... The constant sound etched itself into his mind, to the point where it's the only thing that remained even as he turned human. An endless rhythm, like the sound of a drum, driving him to madness... Only he can hear the drums, because the "drums" are really a part of him. It's his own personal, eternal Heartbeat Soundtrack.

Davros' Daleks were loyal to him.

At least, to a slight extent. Most Daleks would simply try to exterminate him once they knew how to make the Reality Bomb, which if Davros isn't telling they'd just use torture or sucking out his brain waves to get it. The Supreme Dalek had no problem with chatting to Davros and listening to his advice, when most Daleks would be smart enough to not do that. Why are they doing this? Davros actually managed to ingrain a sense of loyalty from his flesh, making it as if they at the very least see Davros as "pure enough to live." They kicked him out of power because even if he was worthy of life, Davros isn't worthy of leadership.

The 10th Doctor regenerated out of fear he was turning into the Valeyard

Many have said the Doctor could have found a way to free Wilfred without dying. The Doctor however decided this would be a good death for him. The Time Lord Victorious meant he was worried of turning into Valeyard, and he hoped with his regeneration he would become less brutal and arrogant about changing history.

Alternatively, the reason the Tenth Doctor was more afraid of regenerating than any of the other Doctors was out of fear that his next regeneration would become the Valeyard.

The Eleventh Doctor knew that he would have no more regenerations left, and so Ten knew it too. He also knew that he would eventually become the Valeyard, but that would be on his final regeneration. Since Ten didn't know he'd be getting more from the Time Lords, he probably feared that whatever would cause this last regeneration, he'd end up becoming the Valeyard eventually and lose all traces of the Doctor within him.

Handy will end up really unhappy in Pete's World

• He will be trapped on Earth, unable to travel. He will start to realise Rose is a Clingy Jealous Girl. Before someone says he can grow his own TARDIS that scene isn't fully canon.

Dalek Caan never truly had a Heel–Face Turn.

Given how hung-up he was about keeping Dalek purity (even though he was not pure himself), his prophecy about the end of everything Dalek actually refers to the destruction of the impure, and the rant over how he could no longer stand what the Daleks stood for was a lie. This was mostly fulfilled in "Journey's End", with the last dying at the hands of the pure Daleks in "Victory of the Daleks".In actuality, Caan had seen the future of a renewed, pure Dalek race without the influence of Davros when he broke the time lock, and everything was a careful Gambit Roulette on the part of him to make this come about, even at the cost of his own life (the impure Daleks in "Victory of the Daleks" concede that they are inferior and let themselves be destroyed, so Caan may also think the same way). He did not change his views since "Evolution of the Daleks" whatsoever, but only strengthened them even further.Also, he taunts the Doctor that "one will die" (Donna), and these were also his final words to him. Does this sound like someone who wants to truly help the Doctor?

• It sounds like Frankie Muniz...
  • Jossed-even if he wanted Dalek purity, the Daleks had just constructed the Reality Bomb aka what they needed to once and for all to exterminate all non-Daleks. If Caan was still loyal to the Daleks, he wouldn't have manipulated the timelines to stop it going off.
  • Daleks are obsessively purist, so Caan may have considered a race of impure Daleks bad. And saw fanwork "The Dalek that Time forgot" for another theory on Dalek Caan...

Caan was being manipulated by the Dalek Time Controller

• Who assisted Caan as part of its Timey-Wimey Ball plans. Considering "The Dalek Generation" shows it working with the New Dalek Paradigm it may have been to ensure its own existence.

Jenny was born on her twelfth life.

• The machine that produced her used a piece of the 10th Doctor (who was currently on his eleventh life, thanks to the Time War), and likely was meant to create a more exact replica of him to fight. However, the machine wasn't quite sure how to handle Gallifreyan DNA, so the stresses of her being grown forced her into a regeneration. The machine's imprinting function combined with the normal regeneration trauma to give her total amnesia save for what the machine taught her. Thus when she was shot by the general, she was still in the first fifteen hours of her regeneration and could recover without going into another regeneration (it just took her some time because of the trauma of being shot and the lethality of where she was shot). This means that she only has one regeneration left when she was born.

Wilf was around for previous London invasions.

• It wouldn't be a stretch to assume that Wilf was around when the Yeti and the Great Intelligence took over London. He might have even been one of the soldiers in that serial!

Why Dalek Caan knew the reality bomb plan was doomed from the beginning

• The reality bomb, was to destroy every reality in the entire multiverse, and was heavily implied that it would destroy all parallel universes adjacent to the current one, and then the ones adjacent to those like dominos. Except, the Multiverse is infinite. No matter how long Davros waits, there will always be universes because it will take an infinite amount of time before the reality bomb can reach them. Even if the bomb would destroy every reality in an instant, he would need more than infinite power. And if he has that kind of power, he would have most likely used that to make himself and The Daleks gods to begin with.

The reason Jenny (the Doctor's daughter) didn't regenerate into a different form

Was because she was within 15 hours of birth (regeneration maybe?) (this is kind of going with the "the Doctor's daughter is Vastra's wife" theory) because when a time lord is within 15 hours of regeneration, and they get injured they just heal, maybe jenny only died for a few minutes and she just healed, maybe the Doctor forgot about that when jenny "died".

The "Gates of Elysium" were a temporal safe zone.

It was one of the few places which would allow someone to escape the Time Lock. Davros, knowing when to retreat and able to plan a back-up in case the Time War destroyed the Daleks. Unfortunately for him the Nightmare Child was in the way, which prevented people from escaping. Except the Master, who was lucky enough to escape(if just barely)

Bannakaffalatta was a suicide bomber.

In Nash Bozard's review of the episode, he points out how odd it is for Bannakaffalatta to have an EMP in him, since that makes no sense. But, it's established that cyborgs are an oppressed class. What if he was a radical, and was planning on detonating in the engine room, taking out the entire ship? It would even fit the "all walks of life" theme, and would explain more of his personality.

Dalek Caan lives.

Thanks to looking into the Time Vortex, Dalek Caan is an all-knowing, time-travelling entity. Whether it be because the attempt at killing the Daleks failed or Caan has other motives, it wasn't planning on letting itself die and so fled. Davros lived as well, after all. Unlike Davros, Caan's playing dead as part of a bigger scheme; probably to not be restrained by its blobby form.

The Doctor appearing on Bowie Base 1 was not a coincidence

The timing was way too good. Showing up the exact day the accident that killed them all took place, and seeing what really went down. Something brought him there. And then when he immediately realized he needed to bolt, things kept happening to keep him there until he got a little too attached. I suspect even the Doctor knew this would happen deep down, although not to the extent that it did, another reason why he wanted to get the hell out of dodge. Some force was trying to change the Doctor into a much darker person, and if not for Adelaide Brooke things would have been much worse.

The true nature of the Nightmare Child

The Nightmare Child (or, feel free to substitute any of the other horrors of the Time War that the Doctor mentions in The End of Time) is not a being as we understand the term. The constant screwing with the timeline that the Time War involved eventually earned a backlash from the very foundation of physics itself in the form of a mathematical concept so horrendously complex that it not only achieved some sort of sentience, but it destroys everything in its path. (Of course, when the Doctor talks about Davros' command ship "flying into the jaws of the Nightmare Child" in The Stolen Earth, he is speaking figuratively.)

• Or, perhaps, it was really eaten by a math equation. I've heard of stranger things.
  • You could argue that the characterization of each incarnation of the Doctor is determined by dividing the number of incarnations the Doctor has had by the first episode number of each series. The presence of a "Prisoner Zero" indicates that the episode The Eleventh Hour was Episode 0 of Series 5. Dividing the Doctor by zero may have placed the First Doctor in the Twilight Zone in the 1960s. Nowadays, dividing the Doctor by zero seems to place the Eleventh Doctor in the Twilight Saga.
• The Nightmare Child is The Nightmare Child (KISS: Psycho Circus Video Game). Duh.

• Here's an idea; maybe it's a sentient black hole, programmed by the Timelords. It consumes everything like a normal BH, but actually hunts things down, like Daleks.
• My theroy is that the Nightmare Child was a sentient, psychic nebula (about the size of the largest stars). It would travel though time and space looking for planets with sentient life, then consume them. It's psychic powers would cause fear, pain and insanity, the closer you were the worse you felt, able to affect even daleks and TARDISes. It left temporal scars, where returning to a point in space where it had been, even thousands of years later, would cause you to go insane. Its name comes from :A. how it changed shape to reflect the infant forms of the creatures it was destroying, just to mess with them; and B. how, even decades before its arrival, nightmares causing fear and insanity would inflict the populace. if you were consumed by it, you would never die, you would be trapped in the never ending nightmare.
• My idea is that, fitting with the name, the Nightmare Child is the living incarnation of the people who were never born in the first place. Every sperm that failed to fertilize the egg and become someone, every miscarriage and stillbirth that were denied the chance of growing up; the Nightmare Child is the horrific manifestation of this, with the mentality of an infant-hence the name "Nightmare Child." It tried to eat Davros out of vengeance from the countless people who can never be born because of him.
  • Or maybe the Nightmare Child is the living incarnation of the people wiped out of existence because of time travel.

Time Lord Victorious or not, Adelaide Brooke would have still died

Fixed point in time. As the episode showed, as long as she died somehow, Mankind taking off into space would have still happened. If the Doctor hadn't of alienated her, she might have just been hit by a car, slipped on some ice, or some other random occurence. This just means that the Doctor acting the way he did only ensured that her death was Ten times as dramatic and painful as it could have been. Although this may not be all that much of a guess.

"The exact size of Belgium" is a code set as a Shout-Out by an elder Tenth doctor, or the Eleventh or Twelfth Doctor.

The TARDIS fused at least two of herself, but the Davison Doctor and the Tennant Doctor never fused because they were separate regenerations. Ten either fused with his later incarnation, or Ten/Eleven/Twelve were out of the ship. "The exact size of Belgium" was later set as the code which means, "The exact size of 'big enough that we're Belgiumed'."

We have not seen the last of Jenny.

• That's so certain it shouldn't even count as "wild" or "guessing".
  • It doesn't even count as guessing when you know that Jenny's big resurrection scene was demanded by Steven Moffat in order for him to be able to throw her into future episodes that he will be showrunning.
    • ...demanded? Isn't it actually that he simply suggested it to make it less depressing and then, y'know, forgot about it 'til the episode aired?
    • Wasn't it just a joke he made about Russell T killing off so may interesting characters so soon after introducing.

The reason the Doctor told River Song his real name was...

...so she could win the trust of his younger self, closing the Stable Time Loop.

Mickey is descended from Rosita, or Jackson Lake, or both of them

We know as per Rise of the Cybermen that his dad is called Jackson Smith - could be an old family name...

Donna has a Fixed Point somewhere in the future.

That's why, even though the Earth is invaded by aliens every year, she always misses it - Because Destiny Says So. Perhaps the Fixed Point is, in fact, the point at which Donna remembers everything. Thus, she can't remember everything before that point.

The montage of dead characters in Journey's End was much longer in the Doctor's mind than in the televised version.

It actually began with the Old Mother, Antodus, and Eprim.

Stahlman's gas is the Silurian equivalent of the Osterhagen Key.

It just takes longer to work.

• Alternatively: Each bomb that would be detonated by the Osterhagen Key is directly over a pocket of Stahlman's Gas. That's how the Earth can be destroyed with a few comparatively small bombs.

Martha's previous fiance was killed during the Dalek invasion.

Which is why she ended up with Mickey.

The Adipose were food.

Ms. Foster, whatever she said her real name was, was lied to. She was hired as a breeder, not a nanny. Fat is an extremely high-calorie substance that can most likely be digested by the majority of creatures in the Whoniverse, and creatures with humanlike biology at the least. Those that hired her were not the Adipose royalty, but rather a species that raised Adipose either to sustain themselves (since they might be able to synthesize the necessary vitamins and minerals to live, but not efficiently convert the necessary calories from nonbiological materials), and maybe to melt down and sell to other species. Since their farm planet was taken over, they had to find a ready source of creatures that wanted rid of some excess fat to hand out the adipose eggs to and use them either as food directly, or as a starter kit for a new farm planet once the current generation is ready to make eggs. The most likely assumption is that the Adipose are herbivores or omnivores, while the species that breed them are obligate carnivores, unless you want to go with some huge technobabble explanation or a pyramid scheme where Earth was only one target of many.

Other Ten survived okay because he had a downgraded Time Lord physique rather than an upgraded human physique.

He's running underclocked, while Donna was running massively overclocked and sure to burn out.

CAL didn't erase the virtual version of Donna

Remember, the version of Donna we saw in the CAL environment was a copy. (It was an exact copy, but it was still a copy). Why would CAL "move" Donna out of the system rather than just copy her out? The original purpose of the system (to index books) is no longer needed now that the Vashta Nerada occupied the whole library, so it's not like there's a better use for the space. It would also help the few other people (River Song and company) we know to be stuck inside CAL: Instead of just themselves and a few computer programs, they'd have a few thousand people to hang out with.

• CAL moved everyone out of the system because it was too full, causing her insanity. There's enough room for the few people who are stored in there, but certainly not thousands of people. The books are still in the database because CAL reads them.

Dalek Caan's status is similar to Jonah and the Pompeiians

He went insane staring at something that should never be witnessed by a mortal, like Jonah in the Torchwood episode "Adrift". And he has visions of the future by having a connection to the Time Vortex, like the people in "The Fires of Pompeii".

• This could give us further insight into what "time-locked" means...

Rose's appearance in 'Partners in Crime' takes place after the events of 'Journey's End'

Think about it. In her appearances throughout the season, her priority is to get word to the Doctor that 'the Darkness' is coming. We know she knows who Donna is and how significant she is even before the events of 'Turn Left'; yet, in 'Partners in Crime', when Donna is standing right there, about to board the TARDIS, Rose just turns and walks away with a sad look on her face. Even if you assume that Rose doesn't know who Donna is yet, she could still leave a message at UNIT HQ or try to get in touch with Torchwood or something. Her expression suggests that she does know who Donna is and how things are going to play out for her. (Perhaps Other Ten explained what was bound to happen to Donna after they were dropped off on the alternate earth). Rose used the dimension-hopping equipment one last time before the barriers between universes went up, perhaps hoping to warn Donna, perhaps hoping to see the real Doctor one last time (perhaps hoping to apologise for kissing his double right in front of him!) - but in the end, she restricted herself to bearing silent witness to the beginning of something she'd just experienced the end of.

Rose's appearance in 'Partners in Crime' occurs between 'Turn Left' and 'The Stolen Earth'

Trying to travel to the Dalek-infested Earth, she overshoots in time by several months and ends up outside Adipose Industries. Recognising Donna, who just died on the road in front of her, she is unable (or at least unwilling) to interfere with history and sadly watches her head off towards her fate before returning to her own universe to try again.

The Doctor had a (non-hypocritical) reason for leaving Handy with Rose in the parallel universe.

Rose knew how dangerous breaking through the walls of the universe was, but she did it anyway. Given the chance, she probably would've tried again. He left Handy with her in the hopes that he'd be an acceptable substitute.

• Plus, the Doctor tends to run away screaming at the first mention of commitment - a way out of marriage, etc. probably looked very promising indeed.
• And perhaps the genocide hit too close to home - he knew quite well he'd done the same, and probably would again, and it scared him.

Another possible reason? Handy is, in a way, offspring. He's not a very good parent (or grandparent) and he knows it. He left Susan on Earth. No one knows what would have happened with Jenny if she'd been allowed to tag along (though we might just find out someday). He couldn't keep Handy with him, and he couldn't just abandon him, either. Leaving Handy with someone he trusts is not a perfect solution, but it's probably the best he could make of the circumstances.

Ten's regeneration was horrible because he knew it was his last

With The Time of the Doctor in mind, Ten's reaction to regenerating makes even more sense from an in-universe perspective. Handy used up a regeneration, as did the War Doctor, meaning that Ten was actually the penultimate incarnation. Ten regenerated into Eleven with only 8 years under his belt, and Eleven might've lived for even fewer, with his regeneration cycle all used up. Hell, Ten created Handy with the intention of living longer, but seeing as he regenerated within a week or two, this turned out to just take one of his regenerations away. This wasn't just Ten being egotistical. This was a man realizing he was right on the cusp of death, unable to prolong his life any longer.

• "I could do so much more. So much more! But this is what I get. My reward. It's not fair!"
  • "I've lived too long."

The Vashta Nerada's natural predator is...

... the common housefly. You know how flies will appear to be picking up small things and rubbing their little front legs together? They're eating Vashta Narada.

The Pan-universal Dalek killing bomb missed those Daleks in the Void

Because the Void is not a universe.

• When did this happen?
  • There is a slight confusion here; this did not happen at all. The Doctor clone in Journey's End wiped out the Daleks in the Crucible, but did not do this using the Reality Bomb. No Pan-Universal Dalek death.

Dalek Caan did not betray Davros and the Daleks

The Cult of Skaro were the only Daleks who were permitted to have imagination—to learn to think like their enemies so they could come up with new and crueler ways of destroying them. The actions of Caan and Sec were carefully orchestrated to convince the Doctor that Daleks can be capable of good so that they can ask him for help and betray him when he opens the TARDIS' door to them. Caan knew (thanks to his adventures in space-time) exactly what would happen in the Crucible and got Davros and the other Daleks to play along, convincing the Doctor that he (well, he and he-her) had defeated them.

• The Crucible had the Reality Bomb, aka the creation-ending weapon that would have the Daleks win. If Caan didn't betray the Daleks, he wouldn't have manipulated the timelines to stop this weapon.

Dalek Caan was a lying liar who lies

Seen the end of all things Dalek have you? All things Dalek? Really? Well either his ablilites to see the future fell a little short, or more likely, he meant that he had seen the end of all Daleks created by Davros. Out with the old, in with the new. That's what they get for trusting a Dalek, especially a crazy one.

• Dalek Cann might have been referring not to the events of "Journey's End" but instead a future episode, where the Doctor does destroy all Daleks for good.
  • Or he did mean it, but Caan couldn't see the time cracks coming. The only reason why the Daleks aren't completely extinct is because some Crucible Daleks "fell through time" via a crack in time — said cracks are gaping violations in time and space, which would screw with Caan's visions.

The Meta Crisis Doctor is The Valeyard

• Given what we now know about where he fell in the Regeneration Cycle, he fits the original description of the Valeyard's placement of being in between the Doctor's final regeneration. And a deleted scene leaves him with a chunk of TARDIS coral, allowing him potential to return.

The reason Jenny (the Doctor's daughter) didn't regenerate into a different form

Was because she was within 15 hours of birth (regeneration maybe?) (this is kind of going with the "the Doctor's daughter is Vastra's wife" theory) because when a Time Lord is within 15 hours of regeneration, and they get injured they just heal, maybe Jenny only died for a few minutes and she just healed, maybe the Doctor forgot about that when Jenny "died".

• Or maybe he didn't know it was possible. Jenny was born from a progenation machine, remember, and the Doctor says some things that make it clear that the circumstances that led to Jenny's birth have never happened before.

General Cobb from "The Doctor's Daughter" knew what was going on all along.

He was too old to have been a clone himself, he was just lying to his short-lived followers because he wanted the Hath wiped out.

Most of the population of London felt very foolish on Christmas Day, 2008.

They all left town expecting yet another alien invasion, which never happened because the Doctor was in the Victorian era instead, and were roundly mocked by pundits/comedians/etc.; as a result many or most of them stay in London over Christmas 2009.

Of course, the events of Christmas 2009 appear to be world-encompassing, so they don't provide a particularly good argument for leaving London in 2010...

• Well the Christmas the Doctor was away for would be christmas 2009 since the who "present" has been a year ahead. However, they could have made "the next doctor" be set in 1851 so that the events of "The End of Time" are set christmas 2009 ready for when the show returns with MS as The Doctor. That way the "present" will be the year of broadcast and the new people in charge of the show don't have to worry about that.
  • The End of Time definitely takes place in 2009. And I just realized this as I was reading this WMG. Obama is referred to as President Obama. And anyone who watched his inauguration knows that it happened in January 2009. He was not president for Christmas 2008.
• Actually, Christmas 2008 was "Voyage of the Damned" (which aired Christmas 2007).

Time Lord Victorious or not, Adelaide Brookes would have still died

Fixed point in time. As the episode showed, as long as she died somehow, Mankind taking off into space would have still happened. If the Doctor hadn't of alienated her, she might have just been hit by a car, slipped on some ice, or some other random occurence. This just means that the Doctor acting the way he did only ensured that her death was Ten times as dramatic and painful as it could have been. Although this may not be all that much of a guess.

The Doctor is the father of the Nightmare Child.

The Doctor in "Fear Her" and "The Doctor's Daughter" mentions that he has been a father and suggested he isn't any longer. The Nightmare Child existed during the Time War which was X years before the "The Doctor's Daughter" in which he says he was a father "a long time ago." What proof do I have that this means that the Nightmare Child is his daughter/son? None, except it would be dramatic and this IS Doctor Who.

• Except that we know the Doctor has to have had at least one Time Lord child, because the First Doctor traveled with his granddaughter, Susan. She had to come from somewhere.

In The Stolen Earth/Journey's End, the staff of A Charitable Earth headquarters took out many Daleks with Nitro-9.

The organization's founder invented the stuff, and it is known to be effective against dalekanium.

The Tenth Doctor thought he was going to permanently die.

It's a simpler explanation for why he was dreading his death so much, and he seems much calmer when he finds out he's regenerating. We know that Time Lords can be permanently killed even if they have regenerations left, and in "Turn Left" that happened to the Tenth Doctor himself.

• This is distinctly possible, though the Tenth talks about Regeneration with Wilf, it would explain why he was so put out by the idea - if she were just referring to him regeneration then why didn't Carmen say "your song is changing" or something?
  • Unless of course Regeneration really DOES count as death these days, I'm not sure it was ever specifically explained. I'm more and more inclined to believe this.
  • I think Regeneration counts as death. The Doctor certainly think so; he would know, he's done it 9 times. As for Carmen saying his song is ending, well the Ood clarify this a bit: "This song is ending, but the story never ends".
  • The Doctor's personality permanently changes when he regenerates. It's not death, but he's not the same man anymore, either. It's not unreasonable for him to regard it as death.

The Tenth Doctor was just pissed he was regenerating so soon.

He's only got twelve regenerations and when he realized he would be regenerating again that would mean he'd have burned through three of them in less than a decade (8-to-9, 9-to-10, and 10-to-11). He's just upset because it's starting to dawn on him that he only has a few regenerations left, unlike before when he never really had to worry about it.

• Plus the extra wasted regeneration that created the Metacrisis Doctor.

Void Daleks escaped with the Cybermen

Since the Christmas Special is the Cybermen coming back and Rose said that the void colapsed with the other parallel universes this is probably how they come back next series.

• Highly likely, given as Davros also survived according to Word of God. They will meet up and yet start another season-long plan that will be revealed in the two-hour Season Finale.
• I thought those Cybermen were Mondas Cybermen, or did I miss something?
  • You must have, dialogue clearly states them as Cybermen from the Void. The Void Daleks do not return in series 5, just a couple from the Medusa Cascade.

By saving Caecilius and his family, the Doctor accidentally screwed Britain and its government over.

Those who read the Cambridge Latin Course know that due to the fact Quintus's family dies, Quintus and Clemens escape to Britain. By going to Britain, Quintus meets Salvius and becomes important in his later prosecution (being one of the witnesses who testifies against him, turning the trial against Salvius's favor). If Quintus relocates with his family and survives, he'll never go to Britain, he'll never stop Salvius, Salvius will take over Britain, and will become a power-hungry dictator that royally screws up the country. Wrong family, Doctor.

• This troper just finished Stage 1 in the course and just realized the Caecilius from the book was the Caecilius in that episode. Damn you David Tennant. (I didn't mean that... You're too sexy...)

Theories about the creatures in the Time War.

• The Nightmare Child-An Eldritch Abomination with the mind of a Creepy Child who generates such Nightmare Fuel anything consumed by it goes suicidally mad
  • The only way to "Defeat" it is to teach it happiness, which the Doctor did by getting it to laugh by laughing in its face.
• The Could-Have-Been King and his army of Meanwhiles and Neverweres, rulers of every bad future out there, or even personifications of such timelines
  • I've always imagined they had something to do with the Weeping Angels. The Angels are eldritch abominations that seem to have been around forever, with no one quite knowing where they came from. What do Weeping Angels feed on? What could have been, and now never was.
• Skaro Degradations-Potential outcomes of the Kaled evolutionary line that make the Daleks look decent by comparison.

The Doctor telling River his real name is a stable time loop.

• He knew his younger self would be on the suspicious side, and that the absolute only way he could trust River would be if she knew something incredibly serious that he had never told anybody. This was the most serious thing he could come up with. Thus stable time loop is created.
  • What does he mean by saying "there's only one time I could" tell you my name?
    • That would depend on what that only time was, I guesss... end of his thirteenth regeneration? When he knows there's nothing more to lose (if there is anything to lose in the first place)? Or maybe just because he knows it's a Stable Time Loop. There's no other choice but to tell her.
    • As of the Wedding of River Song, we have it confirmed that the time he tells his name is "On the Fields of Trenzalore(?), on the Fall of the Eleventh, when no living creature can speak falsely or fail to answer...."
  • Or she may simply have read it off his cot.
    • Maybe he doesn't actually have a name, and whatever he told River he only knew to tell her because she had already told him. Information loop.
    • What does that even mean? They've never met before in "Silence in the Library".
    • He hasn't met her in "Silence in the Library."

Ten-point-five being sent into the alternate universe was not really meant as punishment - that was just a convenient excuse

Ater all how can a man who killed an invading alien with a satsuma possibly have any moral high ground over somebody who killed a man intended to destroy the universe? The Doctor is a bit morally stuck up, but surely he's not that blind. In a cut-scene from the final episode (one RTD says he likes to believe still happened) Doctor 10 gave 10.5 a piece of Tardis to grow into a whole one -once he messed around with the growth pattern a bit to make it happen a lot faster- the more I think about that the more convinced she is that calling it a "punishment" was all just a big excuse, if not a total assumption. Ten knew what he was like in the beginning and what Rose did for him - he wanted to give 10.5 that same chance at recovery - he's trying to "cure" his other self. (He and also provided them with a way to continue the Doctor's legacy in a universe where he didn't exist... plus, now Rose probably won't be hopping across the dimensional barriers trying to GET to him which saves us a lot of trouble in the long run...)

• I don’t think it was ever about punishment. It was about love. Love for Rose, and love for 10.5. Think about it 10.5 is both 10’s twin and his son (being partly Donna). That would make him the only family he has (since he doesn’t know Jenny survived). So out of love he not only gives Rose exactly what she always wanted (a Doctor who will always stay with her), but also gives 10.5 the best life he could (a life w/ Rose).
• It's not specifically about killing the Daleks. He was dangerous to leave alone. He was bred in battle. Is it REALLY that hard to interpret?

The Tenth Doctor thought he might die for good

The Doctor knew he would be able to absorb the radiation and hold it of for a while, but when the time came he didn't know if he would be able to regenerate or if it would kill him for good.

That's why he was acting so melodramatic; there was a good chance that he would not be able to regenerate. It explains why he had that angry monologue; he was surprised that an unimportant-seeming person like Wilf might bring about the final death of the last of the Time Lords.It also explains why he said goodbye to all of his companions - he knew that most of them did not get closure when they left and he wasn't sure if he'd ever have another chance to really say goodbye.

Finally, it adds a new spin on his last line - "I don't want to go." It wasn't "I don't want to regenerate." - It was "I don't want to die!". And he didn't.

If this is true, it changes his regeneration from depressing melodrama to a poignant, bittersweet triumph of sorts. It's true that the tenth incarnation wasn't jolly about regenerating, but in his last moments as he realized that he would survive, he felt at peace with it, knowing that although he would change, his story wouldn't end just yet.

• Well, 10 considered regeneration to pretty much be the same as death, just instead of his corpse lying there it's another, brand new guy- a guy that isn't him. So I think you're right in that 10 thought he was dying, but I think he knew he would regenerate.

Jenny is dead.

Not long after she set off in the rocket she got into an accident due to how naïve she was and was injured in a way she couldn't recover from and died permanently. Or she starved to death in the rocket due to not being able to find a planet to land on and get food.

Alternatively, the Doctor-Donna is in a similar boat to River.

She can regenerate, but her human side means that she has the same or similar aging rate.

Z-Neutrino energy is a by-product of the Last Great Time War.

Hence why Davros and the Daleks have never invested in such a concept before. One of the consequences of the Time War's Time Crash was the creation of a dangerous and energetic particle, which could unravel the electromagnetic field that keeps atoms apart. The Dalek Empire speculated on such a weapon, but couldn't find or manufacture the right particle for the job. Otherwise they would have probably put all efforts on making something like a Reality Bomb, given that would be the swiftest means of exterminating all non-Dalek life in the universe. The damage done to reality resulted in this theoretical particle able to exist, and long enough to be weaponized. They proceeded to collect the stuff for their Medusa Cascade plan. It's possible the nature of the Time War means only the "main" universe where the war took place produced it, which is why there wasn't a universe where they caught on to Dalek Caan and succeed in using it. As for why they haven't tried to make a new Reality Bomb, it could be that they're finite and can't be created, so they can't make a second one.

The Reality Bomb has gone off, at least in the original timeline.

"Journey's End" was one hell of a Near-Villain Victory; Davros and the Daleks were mere seconds away from dissolving all matter in the multiverse. And they would have had the zap from Davros not triggered the Doctor-Donna scenario. In fact, they may originally have succeeded. However Dalek Caan is The Omniscient due to witnessing the whole of time. While the multiverse would be physically dead outside of the Crucible and maybe the planets used as transmitters, the actual fabric of space-time would not be and Caan's knowledge would be unimpeded. As such, he uses his complete awareness of time to push and change past events just enough to avert the apocalypse, while remaining Beneath Suspicion given nobody suspected he'd had a Heel Realization until it was too late, and he'd be safe in the Crucible to Set Right What Once Went Wrong. This is also why there isn't a universe where the Reality Bomb was successful, as even one multiversal detonation would wipe out the main Whoniverse; those Dalek Caans would manipulate history so the Reality Bomb can't succeed. Caan's influence might even extend to Greater-Scope Paragon level; while he's presumably dead, what's to stop him during his lifetime setting things up so no universe or multiverse spanning catastrophe is permanent? Or be skilled enough to prevent other universes from bringing about a multiversal cataclysm? As for why "the end of everything Dalek" didn't happen? Given Caan can see the whole of time their continued blight isn't as important as making sure they never truly get a reality where only Daleks exist, and was either lying or omitting "for now" as part of his larger plans.

The Doctor's Save the Villain routine in "Journey's End" was just him being moody.

10 had already committed genocide on the Racnoss (and was so depressed he would've let himself die without Donna), and arguably did so again in "The Fires of Pompeii" (he wouldn't know if the Pyroviles he met weren't the only ones left). He's not just mad at Handy for reminding him of the Time War, but more recent acts make him less forgiving even against destroying the Daleks who he usually has no problem with. It's why he wanted to save Davros. Sure, Davros is to blame, but he is technically the last Kaled and the letting him die could be considered genocide.

CAL is a Clara splinter.

It's just something that a fanfic I read mentioned, but CAL looks a little like a young Clara. It's far fetched but in the comics it is shown that at least one survives her encounter with the Doctor, and it's somewhat appropriate that Clara, a woman entwined in the Doctor's timeline in such a unique way, were both present in a way at the first/last time River, another woman entwined in his timeline in a different but just as unique way, encountered him.

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