Doctor Who: Crackpot Theory #4815162342

[me_llamo_nic]

me_llamo_nic: That "attempt to build a TARDIS" has been driving me mad ever since "The Lodger" first aired and even the S6 opener didn't completely satisfy my curiosity. An Omega story would probably tie a nice little bow on it.

elisi: Claraaaaaaaa! <3

And then it clicked. Like a zap to the synapses and suddenly I've got a theory. A lengthy and somewhat complex (and probably wrong, but still fun) theory.

So, the string-puller (Omega?) uses the Silents. Never mind how, he probably reversed the polarity of the neutron flow, or something else that he'll explain later. Maybe he even wills them into being. At any rate, the Silents set about attempting to build a TARDIS. They get other life forms to build things for them. Eventually, they get something with a quasi-functional time engine, or maybe some Time Corridor technology. They seed themselves throughout the whole of human history "since the wheel and the fire" and even into the future, laying the foundations for The Silence, the religious order, an Academy of The Question, the Sentinels of History.

In a wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey plot of deviousness, The Silence sets about trying to bring down the Doctor before he can reach Trenzalore. Or at least, they're told that's what their mission is and they believe that they're acting in the best interests of the universe. They've decided that the universe is better off without the Doctor (but the universe doesn't agree...and nor does the Doctor). Regardless, along the way, they kidnap a child and take her to earth. The child is troublesome though. She's incredibly strong. She's a child of the TARDIS. And the TARDIS is looking out for her. So when the Doctor is recruited and gives the TARDIS Space 1969, she gives him the Oval Office, just in time to hear Melody Pond's phone call to the President. And so the child, together with the TARDIS, summons the Doctor, her parents, and her future self to fight the Silents. The Silents lose the battle, but the war continues.

Never mind the war though, Silents have fallen and one of the ships has been left with no crew. What's more, the Doctor's TARDIS is about to land close by and it's time to run away. So it searches for people who want to run away. It finds someone who has never stopped running, but the automated program doesn't realize the problems that this pilot could cause. And then the circuits get overloaded by a powerful desire to stay, by human emotion. It is perhaps at this point, that The Order of the Silence discover and/or must accept the fact that their ships are incomplete. Time engines they may have, but a TARDIS has something more. A TARDIS has a soul. A TARDIS with a soul could have faced down that human emotion. A TARDIS with a soul could look out for them. A TARDIS with a soul could take them where they need to go, not just where they want to go. A TARDIS with a soul is a weapon.

But whoever knows enough about time travel to attempt to build a TARDIS knows that they can't just use any soul to build a Matrix. For best results, they need a soul soaked in Artron energy, the background radiation of time travelers. And so they - the Silents, or The Silence, or Omega, or whoever's pulling the strings - they endeavor to grow a soul fit for their TARDIS.

And there's been a possible sighting of one of these:


On a tree as the Doctor observes the funeral of Ellie Oswald. "Changes a life in tiny little ways. Most times the universe just compensates around it." --- "This exact leaf had to grow in that exact way so that precise wind could tear it from that precise branch and make it fly into this exact face at that exact moment. And if just one of those tiny little things had never happened...I'd never have met you."

Now this goes into some wilder theory-craft, but there certainly seems to be something out of the ordinary on that tree. And the leaf looks different between Saint John and Akhaten. And even at the end of Akhaten, when Clara arrives home, she does say "It looks different." Perhaps that's more than just the sentimental sort of statement one makes, saying home looks different when you've been away.

But let's just say that our string-puller has managed to get their hands on something that can change a life in tiny little ways, make tiny little things happen that might never have happened. "Because that's what the Silents do; think about it. They don't make anything for themselves. They don't have to; they get other life forms to do it for them." And so they get another life form to aid in the growing of a soul that is to their liking. And perhaps they've learned a bit from the last time they tried to grow and condition a person, a person who summoned her future self and the Doctor, causing them to raise up an army against themselves. Perhaps psychopath is not the way to go. This time they just need her to travel with the Doctor. (And whether they assume it's a younger Doctor than the one they tried to kill at Lake Silencio, or if they suspect he may have survived, or if they have discovered that he survived, or if they always intended him to survive...isn't necessarily relevant. I reckon the servants have been told that the Doctor must not reach Trenzalore, that silence must fall. But the string-puller just wants to lure the Doctor to Trenzalore. However, that's not really here or there.)

So they cause a soul to come into existence, perhaps earlier or later than she would have done, perhaps with some tiny difference in chromosomes, perhaps they simply influence her life in abstract ways, or perhaps they cause her to come into existence when she wouldn't have existed before. Point being, she exists now, and the circumstances around her existence are to their liking. The universe will compensate around any changes. And then, after some 24 years of preparation, they have some inconspicous woman in a shop give her the phone number to "the best help line in the universe". It's possible that they even arrange for her to be in danger, just to be sure that the Doctor will come running and become attached. Little do they know, the Doctor has his own reasons for being curious about Clara Oswald. That seems to be the pattern with them though. They devise a scenario from the memories of his companion to trap him, they condition a psychopath to kill him, they grow a companion to travel with him...but he has already seen the future implications of their machinations.

Sum of it all: she travels with him. Soaks up Artron energy, becomes a complex space-time event, even journeys to the heart of the Doctor's TARDIS. And after a certain amount of time, she's ready. It's time to extract her soul and use it to turn a time engine into a TARDIS...into a weapon. Now, extracting a soul-matrix from a TARDIS and putting it into a body might seem rather simple, but going the other way, forcing a soul to part company with its body and using it for a TARDIS takes colossal power. And there's a power in words. There's even more power in Old High Gallifreyan. Why there were days when those words could burn stars and raise up empires and topple Gods. There's a special power in names. "The power of a name, that's old magick." And so, on the fields of Trenzalore, at the fall of the eleventh, when no living creature can speak falsely or fail to answer, they arrange for this soul to ask a question. A question she has never been afraid to ask. A question she will continue to ask until she gets an answer.

And out comes a terrible, dangerous secret. Knowledge that must never be spoken. But it is spoken. Not just read in a book, but spoken aloud by the last of the Time Lords. And the sheer power of it is incredible. And the right kind of energy converter can harness or focus or channel or amplify that power and use it to strip a soul from its body and create a living TARDIS at last.

But there is still the one thing for which they can never prepare. The Mad Man, The Predator, The Thief, The Goblin, The Trickster, The Most Feared Being in All the Cosmos, The Destroyer of Worlds, The Oncoming Storm...The Doctor. The man who never gives up. The man who is always one step ahead. He knows he has to put a stop to this. More than that, he knows he has to save Clara. And just as they failed to foresee River's love for the Doctor, they have failed to foresee the Doctor's love for Clara. "For him, saving one life is as great an imperative as saving a galaxy." And so the Doctor is determined to save her at any cost, consequences be damned. And after much action, and complex events, and dramatics, and heroism, and epic musical score, and probably rather a lot of assistance from his wife...the Doctor succeeds. Clara is saved. Well...mostly. He's able to put her soul back in her body so she can come back in the next series. But something timey-wimey happens, probably something to do with the explosion of an almost-TARDIS, and Clara's soul is multiplied across time and space.

More than that though. Because she was an almost-TARDIS, and possibly helped along by the Doctor's TARDIS being used in a quasi-offensive capacity, fearing what may happen, and yet yearning for a sister, family calling to family, soul calling to soul, this muliplied soul becomes something new and exceptional. A total screaming genius that sounds modest and a tiny bit Sexy. A soul that can hang on to her sanity and make soufles against the Daleks for an entire year. A soul that can hack the path-web. A soul that can draw the lonely man down from his cloud...can cause it to rain. A soul that can fight alongside the Doctor, even if it must extinguish itself in the process, and then come back in another time, another place, and join him again. Oswald for the win. Oswin. Oswin across time and space.

Probably wrong, but it's so much fun to spin theories.