Doctor Who Theory – Why The Moment Is Bad Wolf Part 2

THE THEORY PART TWO

For this week’s Doctor Who Diaries, I decided to skip the re-watch (it will be back next week and hopefully on Sunday) in order to finish out my theory from “The Day of the Doctor,” something I kept meaning to do but never quite got around to. If you missed my other post, then please read the other part first as this is a continuation of “Was the Moment in Day of the Doctor Actually Bad Wolf?” Take a look HERE.

It is amazing how many small details I left out the first time around. And while I don’t plan on analyzing every small little detail, I do think there are a few important parts to add as to why I think the Moment IS in fact Bad Wolf, that time had truly been rewritten. I will include some excellent points some of you brought up in the comment section as well as some new thoughts of my own. So let’s get started:

THE WOMAN IN THE SHOP

While I talk about this in detail in my theory pre-airing of “The Day of the Doctor,” let me reiterate once more what the woman in shop could suggest by mostly including what I already wrote there because I think it deserves repeating for a new context:

In “The Bells of St. John,” Clara calls the Doctor’s Tardis because a woman in a shop gave her the number:

DOCTOR: Listen, where did you get this number?

CLARA [OC]: The woman in the shop wrote it down. It’s a help line, isn’t it? She said it’s the best help line out there. In the universe, she said.

DOCTOR: What woman? Who was she?

CLARA [OC]: I don’t know. The woman in the shop. So…

Hmm. Not only was this mysterious woman not explained by season’s end, but it also reminds me of Rose. Rose, when she first met the doctor, was just your ordinary shop girl, nothing special, nothing extraordinary, not until she met the Doctor. When I hear “woman in the shop,” I can’t help but think of Rose because she met the Doctor in a shop back in March 2005, once again coinciding with the date on the grave of Clara’s mother. More than that, however, is that the question of “What woman? Who was she?” strongly parallels the Tenth Doctor’s question to Donna about the blonde woman who whispered “Bad Wolf” in her ear right before Rose’s reunion with the Doctor. From “Turn Left:”

DOCTOR: Who was she?

DONNA: I don’t know.

Compelling when you put the two side by side because we have the exact same line: “Who was she,” followed by the response, “I don’t know.” And it all connects to Bad Wolf in “Turn Left.” What if this woman in a shop also connects to Bad Wolf?

I do think my theory back then was partly right, that I had been onto something. IF, for instance, Bad Wolf orchestrated the entire story to bring Clara to the Doctor (by being the woman in the shop), then she could bring the right person into the Tardis, the one who takes care of children, the one who would convince the Doctor that “this time” the Time Lords needed to be saved. To me it just shows that Bad Wolf has had a hand in everything for a long time now. I could go deeper into all the Rose and Bad Wolf references but I did already do that in my old theory. For the purpose of this particular theory (or interpretation), I do find it odd that nothing had been mentioned again about just who that mysterious woman in the shop was. Connecting it to the Moment and Bad Wolf controlling all the events in order to rewrite time would definitely make sense of everything.

QUEEN ELIZABETH I

Returning back to “The Day of the Doctor,” I didn’t write about Queen Elizabeth the first time around because I couldn’t stand to re-watch much of her scenes (which I still do not love but that is beside the point). Now that I have, I did notice some interesting details that imply time had been rewritten, notably with the story between the Tenth Doctor and Elizabeth the First.

Most importantly, If time was rewritten as I personally think it was, then the first time around the Doctor wouldn’t have left Queen Elizabeth the same way (because of the interference from the other doctors thanks to The Moment). I prefer to think in the other version she was more historical Elizabeth and less some pod woman obsessed with marriage, acting like a ridiculous caricature of the great woman. Part of the reason I think this is because of Ten’s remark in “The End of Time Part 1” where he says:

DOCTOR: “Got married. That was a mistake. Good Queen Bess. And let me tell you, her nickname is no longer…”

To me he was implying that she was no longer the Virgin Queen, hence the nickname. Was there even a suggestion that Ten and Elizabeth slept together? I don’t think so. Here, he could barely stand to kiss her, acted like she was grotesque, even brought her into his Tardis because he thought she was a Zygon. Not to mention his little side comment:

ELIZABETH: And I need you alive for our wedding day.

(Elizabeth kisses him, then runs.)

DOCTOR 10: Oh, good work, Doctor. Nice one. The Virgin Queen? So much for history.

While he does bring up the nickname, there was no actual consummation of the marriage as the Doctor later just takes off.

ELIZABETH: God speed, my love.

DOCTOR 10: I will be right back.

(He runs into the Tardis and starts cranking her up.)

DOCTOR: Right then, back to the future.

The Doctor ditches her before the wedding ceremony is completed. There was no consummation like I stated earlier and THAT was the third part of a wedding in the Elizabethan period. The marriage would have been annulled, the queen still the Virgin Queen. On a side note, I have to point out that Elizabeth’s obsession with marrying the Doctor is completely absurd and mind boggling. Why would the most powerful woman in the world at the time when women were considered a little better than cattle, be so adamantly willing to give up her freedom? Why is she so determined to marry the Doctor, especially after all of his horrible digs?

Why was she willing to become the property of a man without as much as a second thought??? It is no wonder that the Doctor didn’t think she was Queen Elizabeth. This Elizabeth was very much a pod person for sure….Historical inaccuracies aside, the line still doesn’t quite match up to “The End of Time Part 1.”

Moreover, in “Amy’s Choice,” the Dream Lord once again brings up Queen Elizabeth. The dialogue does not match what happened in “The Day of the Doctor” either:

DREAM LORD: Yes, you’re not quite so impressive, but I know where your heart lies, don’t I, Amy Pond?

AMY: Shut up. Just shut up and leave me alone.

DREAM LORD: But listen. You’re in there. Loves a redhead, the Doctor. Has he told you about Elizabeth the First? Well, she thought she was the first.

Thought she was the first what? His first love? His first time? His first companion??? Nothing I saw explains this comment very well. Certainly, this Elizabeth was quite transfixed with the Doctor to a lovesick degree. The intonation of the Dream Lord’s voice, however, did suggest something much more intimate in the sexually charged way he spoke that line.

IF we then go back to Queen Elizabeth’s first entrance into Doctor Who in The Shakespeare Code, the story tells rather a different one than “The Day of the Doctor:”

DOCTOR: Queen Elizabeth the First!

ELIZABETH: Doctor?

DOCTOR: What?

ELIZABETH: My sworn enemy.

DOCTOR: What?

ELIZABETH: Off with his head!

DOCTOR: What?

MARTHA: Never mind what, just run! See you, Will, and thanks.

ELIZABETH: Stop that pernicious Doctor.

Okay, how does that match up with this from “The Day of the Doctor?” Think of the still lovesick proclamations in the letter from Queen Elizabeth to the Doctor:

ELIZABETH [VO]: My dearest love, I hope the painting known as Gallifrey Falls will serve as proof that it is your Elizabeth who writes to you now. You will recall that you pledged yourself to the safety of my kingdom. In this capacity I have appointed you as curator of the Under Gallery, where deadly danger to England is locked away. Should any disturbance occur within its walls, it is my wish that you be summoned. God speed, gently husband.

“Gently husband” versus “sworn enemy” is quite a drastic difference in wording. Could it just be an inconsistency? Yes, very possible. But I like to think (as I tend to prefer things to remain as consistent as possible in my head) that in THIS timeline the Doctor had less time to cause even greater destruction and heartbreak to Queen Elizabeth.

GALLIFREY FALLS

Additionally, this idea further supports my theory that the Time Lords were indeed not always saved. For if “Gallifrey Falls” means (according to the Curator) “Gallifrey Falls No More” then this would indicate that time had to have been rewritten with Queen Elizabeth just as much as the rest of the original timeline. This Elizabeth doesn’t hate the Doctor as much in this one. Instead, she is the one that gives him the painting that offers the Doctor hope and also appoints him as the curator. This also does seem to imply that Tom Baker IS indeed the Doctor because Elizabeth said the Doctor was the curator. Hmm. At this point, I could veer off course and theorize what this all means in connection to Peter Capaldi having a familiar face, but I will save that for a future post (I already have the theory thought out to a degree).

Back to the wording of the painting, “Gallifrey Falls No More” even further suggests that it did in fact once fall but NOW it falls no more. Fascinating, right? Let’s turn to “The End of Time Part 2” for better proof that time had most likely been rewritten. First of all, Moffat does try to reference the story of “The End of Time” near the beginning of the episode:

ANDROGAR: The High Council is in emergency session. They have plans of their own.

GENERAL: To hell with the High Council. Their plans have already failed. Gallifrey’s still in the line of fire.

Their plans had already failed…Okay, that’s fine. This could still infer that the Time Lords always survived and that that was just one part of the story. BUT if you actually go back to the episode and examine the dialogue written back then, I can’t follow that logic even though The Moment is mentioned in “The End of Time:”

RASSILON: What news of the Doctor?

CHANCELLOR: Disappeared, my Lord President.

PARTISAN: (a woman) But we know his intention. He still possesses the Moment, and he’ll use it to destroy Daleks and Time Lords alike.

CHANCELLOR: The Visionary confirms it.

Still, this visionary (who is right) doesn’t see the Doctor actually saving them. No, this is what she sees:

VISIONARY: Ending, burning, falling. All of it falling. The black and pitch and screaming fire, so burning.

CHANCELLOR: All of her prophecies say the same. That this is the last day of the Time War. That Gallifrey falls. That we die, today.

VISIONARY: Ending. Ending. Ending. Ending!

AND LATER:

DOCTOR: The link is broken. Back into the Time War, Rassilon. Back into hell.

VISIONARY [OC]: Gallifrey falling! Gallifrey falls!

Not Gallifrey Falls No More, but Gallifrey Falls period. That’s it. The end of the Time Lords because the Doctor CHOSE (more than once mind you) not to save them because of the hell that would follow (unfortunately the special only scratches the surface of the consequences that will follow after saving them for the Time Lords are certainly no saints). Not to mention that the idea of “no more” is painted all across the episode from Clara’s chalkboard (reminds me of Bad Wolf actually in series 1):

To the Doctor blasting it into a wall:

The dialogue brings this idea up several times as well that I won’t get into. My main point is that the emphasis on the words “No More” are meant to tell us that ‘Gallifrey Falls No More’ because time is changing, that Gallifrey really was once fallen. Basically what it comes down to is this: Really bad continuity or time actually has been rewritten…You decide.

THE MOMENT AS BAD WOLF

After the War Doctor asks The Moment who she is, for a moment she pauses.

Is she telling the complete truth or just the truth the war Doctor needs to hear? Without an answer, she activates the moment, her eyes glowing bright like Bad Wolf, something I’ve already pointed out in my first post.

“You know me?” The Doctor asks…Maybe she really does? Then she goes into her flippant speech about taking on the form of Rose Tyler, no the Bad Wolf…

Is this the truth? Or is this act a cover for the actual truth? Suppose this is Bad Wolf and she knows that this Doctor doesn’t know her yet, then it is quite brilliant because she can fool this Doctor into thinking she is ONLY the Moment. Could she have fooled the 10^th Doctor for instance? I don’t think so but then again she makes sure the War Doctor NEVER lets them know she’s there and she certainly never shows herself to them.

Another point I want to bring up (that was also rightly mentioned in the comments) is that there is a moment in the Tower of London where the Moment stares at the 10^th Doctor as if she not only knows him but is in love with him. Take note of these looks:

AND take a look at these looks she gives the 10th Doctor when he walks past her (she looks like she’s in love with him and wants to talk to him but can’t):

She does seem familiar with the Doctor here…

One last scene that I didn’t bring up in my original post is when the War Doctor is about to push the button. The Moment has a look of true worry run across her face as if all her ‘planning’ had been for nothing, followed by a manipulative speech to delay him while she opens the doors for the other Doctors:

She is more than just a conscience standing in judgment but a being CONTROLLING everything that has happened and later happens. This is a planner, the puppet master, who emphasizes that the Tardis brings hope even to him:

MOMENT: You know the sound the Tardis makes? That wheezing, groaning. That sound brings hope wherever it goes.

WARRIOR: Yes. Yes, I like to think it does.

MOMENT: To anyone who hears it, Doctor. Anyone, however lost.

(The sound of the time rotor is heard.)

MOMENT: Even you.

This dialogue is all about the Moment relating to the Doctor as if she understands through experience what kind of hope the Tardis brings. By bringing up the word lost, the Moment could be referring to two things. One, that the Tardis arrives in time in this very moment to give comfort to the Doctor as he feels lost. And two, it could also refer to the Moment’s own memories of being lost. And what theme was used around Rose and the Doctor? Being lost from each other. She was lost. He lost her to another universe. Not only that, when they first met, they were both lost. When he came into her life he gave her hope, purpose. Now, arguably she could be repaying the favor.

She ends this bit of dialogue with a smile, full of emotion that she as Bad Wolf is once again saving her Doctor. She is the one bringing him hope, ending the cycle of his utter loneliness (something Rose always did for the Doctor; “Well, there’s me,” Rose told him at the end of “End of the World.”):

Aside from the dialogue, I turn to the actual box for clues. Now, I didn’t notice this connection myself, rather someone sent me an email about how the box looks like a rose. So, I went back to the episode and sure enough, the big red button looks exactly like a big, blooming and red rose:

I don’t know about you, but I’m sold. It IS rather a big coincidence otherwise.

THE EYE OF HARMONY

Now, you’re probably asking what the Eye of Harmony has to do with Bad Wolf and The Moment. I had no clue as I haven’t watched much of Classic Who but Ken Spragg, one of the people who originally posted in the comment section, made a VERY good point:

KS: “Didn’t I read somewhere about one of the Timelords’ major technological creations– the Eye of Harmony, I think– that as soon as they completed building it, it existed retroactively through all of time?

If that’s a ‘thing’ in the Whoverse, and Rose-as-Bad-Wolf told us in “The Parting of the Ways” that she saw/was everywhere and everywhen; and if Rose-as-Bad-Wolf had god-like power over space, time, matter and energy (reminiscent of how The Moment’s power was described); then maybe The Moment *is* Bad Wolf. Just because Rose stopped being the Bad Wolf when the Doctor removed the time vortex from her mind, doesn’t necessarily mean the Bad Wolf ceased to exist. Being ‘bigger’ than just one human girl, why couldn’t it [choose] to manifest as something else, in some other place and time?

So maybe, after Rose stopped being the Bad Wolf, it remained in some independent form, existing retroactively through all of time, adopting (in one case) this avatar of “The Moment” out of the blue in Gallifrey’s weapons vault. The fact that they didn’t seem to understand it all that well could be because they didn’t build it so much as found it (or it found them), and the consciousness/conscience that they thought it ‘developed’ could rather have just taken a while to ’emerge’ out of the confusion of being disembodied across the whole of spacetime.

It actually reminds me a bit of the Phoenix-force from Marvel comics, when considered that way.”

This is a brilliant bit of deduction that I just HAD to share with everyone who doesn’t read the comments. While I don’t know much about this “Eye of Harmony,” though I remember it in the 8^th Doctor’s TV Movie as well as a reference here and there in New Who, I briefly looked it up and now know it has to do with the creation of black holes. One interesting point, however, which I noticed in my brief research, is that the Eye LIKE the moment became a legend, something that no one quite understood. If indeed this idea is right, it makes perfect sense that once Bad Wolf created herself she always existed throughout the universe. And perhaps, that is how she was able to leave messages throughout time and space…

REWRITING HISTORY

Now, you don’t have to take my word for it, that time had been rewritten. The dialogue itself TELLS us they are changing history in two telling parts I left out in the first post. For instance, after The Moment showed all of them the war and just some of the people they would be destroying, the 10^th Doctor recognizes in Eleven what he plans to do:

DOCTOR 10: You’re not actually suggesting that we change our own personal history?

DOCTOR: We change history all the time. I’m suggesting far worse.

WARRIOR: What, exactly?

DOCTOR: Gentlemen, I have had four hundred years to think about this. I’ve changed my mind.

So, the 10^th Doctor sees it as rewriting history. Furthermore, later on Doctors Ten and Eleven admit they did in fact see Gallifrey burn the first time around:

DOCTOR 10: Using our Tardises, we’re going to freeze Gallifrey in a single moment in time.

WARRIOR [on monitor]: You know, like those stasis cubes? A single moment in time, held in a parallel pocket universe.

DOCTOR: Except we’re going to do it to a whole planet.

DOCTOR 10: And all the people on it.

GENERAL: What? Even if that were possible

GENERAL: Which it isn’t, why would you do such a thing?

DOCTOR: Because the alternative is burning.

DOCTOR 10: And I’ve seen that.

DOCTOR: And I never want to see it again.

Never wants to see it again definitely tells us they saw Gallifrey burn. They were rewriting time, also implied when Ten first enters the scene in the barn:

In the scene, he looks around like he recognizes being there before. He has a memory of it and questions how they were there in the first place because it was time locked. Nonetheless, this all makes sense if Bad Wolf let them in in order to change history.

TYING IT ALL UP

While I’m sure I haven’t covered everything, I did want to point out a couple of things I missed the first time around. I have to admit that returning to the idea months later; I saw even more proof to back up this theory. Was the Moment actually Bad Wolf? Was she both Bad Wolf and the Moment at the same time? Did Bad Wolf help the Doctor rewrite time under the guise of ‘The Moment?’ I know this is how I choose to see it.

Do you think the Moment is Bad Wolf? Did I miss anything else? Let me know your own thoughts and theories in the comments…

RELATED POSTS:

Check out my latest Doctor Who Re-Watch: Dalek Versus The Day of the Doctor

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