User blog:Huinesoron/Doctor Who Theory: The First Question

This post is a sequel to my original Doctor Who Theory: The Children of Time. That is not required reading for this.

Please note: this post contains some spoilers for the most recent episode of Doctor Who, The Asylum of the Daleks. I'll try to keep them to a minimum, but they're still going to be rampant - as it's one of the two episodes I'm building on. There are also unshielded spoilers from various previous episodes. What I'm saying is, don't read this if you're not up to date.

''... on the Fields of Trenzalore, at the fall of the Eleventh, when no creature can speak falsely or fail to answer, a question will be asked — a question that must never be answered. ''(Dorium Maldovar)

''The first question! The question that must never be answered, hidden in plain sight. The question you've been running from all your life. Doctor who?'' (Dorium Maldovar)

My new theory is based around a single look. In the finale of Asylum, one character causes the Daleks to forget the Doctor's very existence - they end the episode chanting The Question, DOC-TOR WHO? But I'm looking a little further back, to the character in question. The very last thing said character does on-screen... is look directly at the camera.

And Dorium's final lines in The Wedding of River Song are pretty fourth-wall-breaky too. So what if that's the point? Here's my new theory:

The Doctor - quite possibly after getting stuck in a stable time loop similar to the one that let old!Amy still exist while young!Amy was brought back in The Girl Who Waited, so that we don't have to worry about him remembering any of this - steps out of the TARDIS into... the BBC television centre in 1963. They're just about to start filming a new science fiction/historical show aimed at children... and William Hartnell walks past, and the Doctor gives a start of recognition.

This episode will be aired in 2013, either as part of the second half of the current series, or, I suspect more likely, as the last episode of the next series - as close to the 50th anniversary of the show (23 November) as possible. Due to whatever the plot is, the Doctor will step forward in time, meeting as many previous Doctor-actors as possible, until he reaches the present - and, given that this is Steven Moffat, quite possibly comes across the set where they're filming the scene he's currently acting out...

The keystone to this theory is the word 'Trenzalore'. It puts me in mind of the Hitchhiker's Guide books - where Arthur Dent is told he can't die until he visits Stavromula Beta, only to eventually discover it's a nightclub called Beta, run by Stavro Mueller. Douglas Adams gets a lot of references in Doctor Who... so is 'Trenzalore' a reference to somewhere in England? 'Trenz' could be 'Trent's', or 'Trends' (Trends Galore?), or... anything, really.

And the Question, Doctor who?, must never be answered - because that would ruin the show. Which makes the Silence, who move around in the background, setting up scenes and never remembered by the characters, nothing more than the production team themselves...