People on Twitter are concerned about the possible revelations that we're reporting in this post. Tweeting Twitter-er Chris Rooke tweeted Moffat himself about this urgent topic.
"Please, please, I'm begging you, please ensure that whatever's leaked online isn't the real Ep 13, I wanted a surprise! :'("
Steven Moffat replied to him.
"Don't know, haven't looked, suggest you don't either."
Just when we'd decided that Doctor Who isn't nearly as complicated as the press claims, Steven Moffat turned the series upside down. I might be relying too much on that "Read More" function, so I won't use it here; but let this serve as your only warning, because this could be a spoiler you simply don't want to know. Don't blame us for what your eyes can't resist.
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| Well, I say "only warning" . . . |
In episode 13, we see a version of River from Series 5 wearing the clothes from the end of Flesh and Stone. Amy greets her and asks how she is. River says she’s just climbed out of the Byzantium. “It was so much fun, wasn’t it mother?” (paraphrased, not the actual line), she remarks.
“River says, “What’s rule one with the Doctor; he lies”. River says she does too, how it’s been so hard seeing Amy, Rory and the Doctor, and knowing who she really is (Amy’s daughter) but not being able to say. Curiously, she also says she recognised the astronaut in 1969 but had to stay quiet.
This poster on Gallifrey Base also heard some crucial filming, including a snippet of dialogue in which River identified herself as the Doctor's wife.
River Song appears in camouflage gear, and Amy and her cross check their diaries. River says she’s just climbed out of the Byzantium, "you were so young, didn’t have a clue who I was", she says to Amy.
She asks Amy where she is in the timeline, and and she says the Doctor is dead and that she’s sad. Not just because of that, because she killed Madame Kovarian. River says it’s fine, it was in an aborted time-line, so never happened. But it still happened for Amy, she remembers it.
Amy longs to see her Doctor again, but she can’t, he’s dead. River then says "Oh mother, he isn’t dead, don’t you want to know what he whispered in my ear?". Amy assumes it was his name. River says no it wasn’t his name. Amy says that the Doctor said he was about to whisper his name to River, but he clearly didn’t. He whispered something to stop the astronaut killing him.
River reminds Amy about rule number one. The Doctor lies. So do I, she says. River says her life is one giant spoiler. She’s had to keep it from Amy that she’s her daughter, and keep secret about the astronaut: she knew all along it was going to shoot the Doctor. So Amy pushes her to say what the Doctor whispered in her ear before he went off to America to get shot. River grins and says "that man, always thinking so far ahead".
At first some commenters across the Whoniverse speculated that this filming might not have happened at all. Of course, that was quickly proven wrong, first with this extensive gallery and then with the following video.
In the video above, it looks as though Karen Gillan might be dressed in her outfit from "Time of Angels", or maybe some sort of big blanket, and River is certainly wearing the camouflage from that same story. During filming River also mentions that she has done enough good deeds to earn her pardon from Stormcage. Furthermore, what does the Doctor whisper in River's ear, and how does he escape his death at the hands of the Astronaut? It sounds more and more like Moffat has fallen into the same old get out of jail free card. Just "reverse everything so it never even happened", because no deus ex machina is too big for Doctor Who!
But how legitimate are these scenes? Are they taken wildly out of context? Perhaps there is an even greater conspiracy being generated than the Obama birth certificate: have the production team purposely filmed a false scene mocking bloggers' insane Doctor Who theories. Well, if we start hearing River declare herself to be the Rani, we'll know what's going on.
Meanwhile, Steven Moffat was back on Twitter again today, once again reminding everyone about the complexity of this topic.
Lot of utter nonsense Who spoilers around at the moment. Please ignore.
If River's identity as Amy's daughter is true, then Moffat would probably just say that it's wrong to distract us. But he could just be saying that because it is wrong. My head . . . !
Exclusive source credit goes to Doctor Who Spoilers.
5 comments :
The video is private.
You mean it isn't working? It was before.
Hmm. . . but River's wearing her vortex manipulator in this picture. So she can't have just climbed out of the Byzantium. She wasn't wearing it at all in Flesh and Stone, but she obtained it in The Pandorica Opens, which occurred before the Byzantium from her perspective.
I don't think we really know who River's father is yet. That's still speculation. I think they are trying to make people think it's the Doctor's DNA, but I don't think we've really gotten a good lead on that.
River got the vortex manipulator back from the Doctor at the end of the The Big Bang, so she had it when she went on the Byzantium adventure (which for her was her next stop). (odd she didn't use it to get off the ship, but jumped into the Doctor's Tardis instead -- but that was much more fun).
I was under the impression that with the Vortex manipulator, River was once perhaps a time agent and possibly a resident of the 51s century, though I don't know why I think that. Perhaps too many assumptions, but since people have been guessing this Amy as mother of River thing since "Time of the Angels" it seems too pat a thing for Moffat to do. It has the air of misdirection, or possibly Karen and Alex goofing on a take because there were known to be fans sneaking about with cameras.
Basically the cast & crew must be well beyond the point where they assume spies are everywhere. That even with all the previews of ep 1&2 that the Doctor getting shot/regeneration didn't leak out until the BBC did it with their picture release is a credit to how cagey the production has been. And good for them!
After all it's not a new thing to film a scene with dialogue that is rubbish and dub new stuff in later - like the most famous example from "The Empire Strikes Back" where David Prowse waving his arms about and spouting dialogue that wasn't going to used was turned with dubbing into "I AM YOUR FATHER!"
It's just as likely that Amy is The Doctor and River's biological daughter who was adopted by Mr & Mrs Augustus Pond from an orphanage on Earth where they left baby Amy IN THE FUTURE so Amy could have a normal life for some reason. Or to keep her safe from some even worse danger in the Doctor's future we have yet to see.
River's cameo costume or VM on her wrist really means nothing either. For all we know Dr Song was actually already Professor Song at the Crash of the Byzantium for example and River didn't bother to correct him, just having fun with him.
The one thing of this season arc to me seems to be the defeat of the Silents won't take place until the end of the sixth series.
Until then the most vital thing is an air of caution for all the characters would be is that they many never be out of ear-shot of a Silent eavesdropping on everything they say or do. So whatever they are doing and saying has to be as though they are always under surveillance. The scene might be word for word accurate and still might not be River telling the truth to Amy, but lying to throw off a lurking Silent.
And if it is true - Amy and Rory are the proud parents of "Mrs. Robinson", well it's hardly an unexpected possibility and knowing it won't distract from the enjoyment to me of learning all the details and so on.
After all how many of us have re-watched "Forests of the Dead" more than a few times and not gotten a little misty even when we know so well what is coming? Or re-watched David regenerate at "The End of Time" and not felt it as keenly as the first time, even then when way back when we knew it was inevitable?
The greatest thing about the series is anticipation. Couldn't you imagine clearing your weekend right now if you could secretly watch the coming 12 remaining episodes if a DVD fell backward through time through your mail-slot? We have an insatiable appetite to just gobble this show up.
I think back on 2009 and he specials, a whole year of already knowing the 10th Doctor was doomed, only not how it would end. The speculation went so far up and down the gamut that one could have made several decades worth of Who scripts just exploring all the what-ifs!
I think this show may be becoming the most speculated about show in the history of television, so much so that I think there's a growing problem of fans forgetting that it's supposed to be fun!
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