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Thursday 21 November 2013

Rose And The Bad Wolf

I have allowed myself a moment of überfandom, and am trying to buy all 12 versions of Radio Times. There is one image in it which sticks out, which is the tenth Doctor and Elizabeth I having a picnic.

Now this clearly puts it between The Waters of Mars and The End of Time.

Tenth Doctor: For once I'd like to know where I'm going

Eleventh Doctor: No, you really wouldn't

This exchange makes some sense if the tenth Doctor is at the point where he is trying to avoid Ood Sigma's summons to the Oodsphere.

Also, if The Day of the Doctor is the tenth Doctor's penultimate adventure, then this means his last two adventures are related to the Time War. If - as some as suggested - the three Doctors we see collectively use The Moment to end the Time War, then by the time of The End of Time his emotions must be in turmoil. He is running from his past, he has destroyed Gallifrey twice already (knowing he'll do it again), he is running from his future ("He will knock four times") and to cap it all, it looks like Rassilon, the Time Lords and Gallifrey are coming back. In The Beast Below, the eleventh Doctor is quite relaxed about Gallifrey - he has seen the consequences of Gallifrey not being destroyed, seen Rassilon's plan, and realises that he did the right thing.

But if, from the tenth Doctor's perspective, this is near the end, then it means one thing - Rose Tyler is not his companion.

Looking at the trailers, I don't think we see Rose alone with the tenth Doctor. If anything, she is with the missing Doctor.

In Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways, Rose becomes the Bad Wolf, and what does she do? "The Time War ends" - the Bad Wolf's role is to bring it to an end by destroying the Daleks. In Turn Left, the Doctor tells Donna Noble that the "Bad Wolf" messages all over the place mean the end of everything - and this follows on to Rose's return and the Daleks undoing some of the Time War.

In Boom Town, the Doctor seems perturbed by a potential nuclear power station called Bad Wolf (in Welsh). But why? Why all this stuff about seeing it everywhere when the only earlier time he came across it was Bad Wolf TV in The Long Game? Something deeper was happening.

I will stick my neck out here - the Bad Wolf is, I suggest, a mythical figure from Time Lord legend representing destruction.

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