A Closer Look at the Series 6 Arc
Doctor Who TV guest writer, Michael Clark, takes a look at the Series 6 mysteries.
Is Amy pregnant?
During the course of The Impossible Astronaut Amy exhibits common signs of pregnancy; the Doctor points out that she has gained weight and she begins to have the occasion stomach ache. At the climax of the first she even whispers it to the Doctor before shooting the Astronaut. However, it becomes apparent that she was showing signs of a false pregnancy as she said at the beginning of Day of the Moon with the explanation that the Silence were causing the stomach aches, and the fact that she had no baby bump after three months of running. However, there is more at play here than what meets the eye.
Although Amy’s pregnancy is dismissed at the start of episode two, it is left ambiguous by the end. The Doctor does a full body scan for pregnancy with his scanner (without Amy knowing), but all we see is the scanner phasing from ‘positive’ to ‘negative’ before the camera cuts to the Doctor. Then, in The Curse of the Black Spot, the scanner is revealed to still be running and unable to give a readout.
The biggest thing that strengthens the argument of Amy’s pregnancy is, of course, the picture that Amy sees in the little girl’s room. Amongst all the photos of the little girl, this is a picture of Amy holding a small baby in her hands. So, does that mean that the little girl is Amy’s child? If it is, then who is the father? Rory? The Doctor? Or perhaps even someone else? If the little girl were able to regenerate that would make her a time lady. So, is it the Doctor’s offspring? Or is something else at play here?
Is the Doctor really dead?
Before the series even began, there was talk that one of the main characters will die; and finally it was revealed, during the start of the first episode of the series, that the Doctor is the one who dies. Shot by a mysterious person in an astronaut suit. The Doctor’s body begins to regenerate, but he is shot a second time in the middle of his regeneration cycle, killing him stone dead. The astronaut descends back into the lake from where it came; Amy, Rory, and River mourn their loss while they burn his body at sea. But is the Doctor really dead?
There were a couple of things at the beginning of the episode that we found out about the Doctor before his death:
- He is a future Doctor; 200 years older than the current Doctor
- He knew about his death and sent four invitations, even one to himself, to get them to witness it
- He knows the person in the astronaut suit who shoots him
- He acquired a Stetson sometime in the future
- River and the future Doctor have been through a lot together, including Easter Island and Jim the Fish
So, without a doubt this Doctor is a future Doctor and he has been through a lot. He even says that he has been running faster than he’s ever run, and it’s time for him to stop. But what does this even mean? What is he running from? Death? He has obviously organised his own death. But, there has to be a reason.
But is he actually dead? Amy questions his death by saying that the Doctor could be a clone or a duplicate. Even though it’s dismissed, this could be spot on. Episode five and six of the series, The Rebel Flesh and The Almost People respectively are about cloning. Could the future Doctor be a cloned Doctor from the two-parter and be running around with Amy and Rory without them knowing it? Only time will tell.
Who kills the Doctor?
Who is that mysterious person in the astronaut costume that kills the Doctor? At first many people thought it was the little girl that shots him, however, this theory was dismissed about halfway through the second episode when it is revealed that the little girl escapes from the suit. But, there is much more to this than what meets the eye.
The astronaut suit was constructed by the Silence in 1969 from a combination of human space equipment and alien technology. It was designed to keep the person who was wearing the suit alive and healthy. The suit is able to repair itself, and even walk on its own and “eat people”, which was what happened to the little girl at the warehouse. Amy shoots the little girl in the suit because she thinks that it’s her that shoots the Doctor at the beginning of the episode, but she is wrong.
The little girl appears in the suits along with two other Silents about halfway through the second episode in the abandoned orphanage to abduct Amy. However, after the Doctor arrives, the suit is empty on the floor, meaning that the little girl might not be the one who killed the Doctor. So who did?
At this point, it could be anyone. The suit keeps the wearer alive. So, could that mean that the Doctor put someone in the suit to keep them alive, during a future episode, and that he asked them to kill him on his own request? That is one of many speculations and theories going around.
What is the master plan of the Silence?
The Silence are a mysterious species with powerful memory manipulative abilities that not only allowed them to erase themselves from people’s memories, but allowed them to plant ideas into people’s heads through post-hypnotic suggestion. They have explained that they have been around since the dawn of human kind and have been influencing human life for centuries. The Doctor put an end to their invasion (if you can call it that) at the climax of the moon landing by turning their abilities around on them and making humanity rebel against them. But, are the Silence really finished? Or is there more to the story?
We must remember that it was the Silence that forced the Doctor’s TARDIS to explode at the climax of Series 5. If they are able to do this, they must be very powerful being. And to have their whole race defeated on the opening two-parter episodes seems very unlike Doctor Who at all. “Silence will fall” was the warning they gave throughout Series 5. They were the ones that caused Saturnynians to fall, and Prisoner Zero to laugh. Something more is going on here, than meets the eye.
The Silence are somehow related to the little girl and the astronaut suit. Most of the evidence points to the Silence having constructing the astronaut suit. As the Doctor pointed out, the Silence needed space equipment, so they got the human race to go to the moon, so they was able to acquire some. But why? And what did the little girl have to do with this? The Silence abducted a little girl from Graystark Hall Orphanage, a children home close to where the suit was constructed, and stuck her in the suit for some reason. Was it to keep her alive? Or was it something else?
Another question about the Silence still remains. What were they doing with Amy? Were they just keeping her a hostage for days in the underground control room? There must be something more. The near the end, the Silence says something curious to Amy, “You will bring the Silence. But, your part will soon be over.” What does that mean? Did the Silence do something to Amy while she was asleep there for days? Did the Silence somehow make Amy pregnant? Or is it something else?
Who is the Eye Patch Lady?
While investigating Graystark Hall Orphanage, the abandoned building, Amy sees a woman wearing a metallic eye-patch in the door of the little girl’s room. The woman is distant and talks to someone (but not to Amy) and says, “No, I think she’s just dreaming” before closing the hatch attached to the door. Amy is intrigued by this and goes into the room in search of this strange lady, but finds the room empty, even the hatch on the door was not actually there in the first place. A hallucination? Maybe not.
Then she featured in another strange scene in The Curse of the Black Spot. Amy had awoken from her sleep and saw the character appear through a hatch on the pirate ship and she said: “It’s fine. You’re doing fine… Just stay calm.” Then vanished.
The Eye Patch Lady, played by “Frances Barber” is set to appear throughout the series. Woven into most episodes like the cracks in Series 5, until she is introduced properly in episode 7 and 8 as a character called Kovarian. But who is she? Amy is the only person who sees her during the second episode. Does she only appear to Amy? And what is with the white background? And will she say something different every time we see her? “No, I think she’s just dreaming.” Is she talking about Amy, or someone else? Again, only time will tell.
Who is the little girl?
The little girl was not shown a lot during the course of the two-parter, but played one of the biggest parts during the plotline. She is the one who is in the astronaut suit. She is the one who has a photo of Amy in her room. And she is the one who regenerates at the end of the episode. As the Doctor says, “This little girl. It’s all about her. Who was she?”
The nameless little girl, misnamed Jefferson Adams Hamilton by the President, apparently lived at Graystark Hall Orphanage, or at least there are photos of her in one of the rooms. She was abducted by the Silence and put into an astronaut suit for some reason. Then trapped in a seemingly abandoned factory, until she is shot by Amy. She turns up three months later in her room in the orphanage with two Silents and takes Amy hostage. However, when the Doctor and his companions try and save Amy, all they find is the astronaut suit; she was able to somehow escape. She turns up six month later in New York (almost 800 miles away from Florida) apparently dying, however, in that instant she begins to regenerate.
This is quite odd. According the River Song, the little girl shows up to be human, however, she possessed phenomenal strength, while able to escape the astronaut suit and the ability to regenerate, something a Time Lord (or Time Lady) can only do. So, what is she? Is she Amy’s daughter? The photo is leading proof of this. But, why is she living in an orphanage? And who is the father? The Time Lord ability suggests the Doctor? But could this be the intervention of the Silence? After all, the Silence did say “You will bring the Silence. But, your part will soon be over.”
When the little girl was in the suit she was able to phone the president. However, most of those phone calls were about the Silence. How was she able to remember the Silence? There are some many questions surrounding the little girl. Why is she dying? Who is she regenerating into? Only time will tell.
