Who blew it up?

[RoJoHen]

We can probably assume that The Silence blew up the TARDIS in Season 5's ending two-parter "The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang", but do you think this is a story that we'll ever actually see addressed? We still don't know how they gained access to the TARDIS in order to make it explode? What if it turned out that someone like River did it? She was captured and conditioned to kill the Doctor, and she knows an awful lot about how the TARDIS works. Could she have, possibly unwittingly, been the cause of the explosion?

This was a thread left dangling in Season 5, but it was completely ignored in Season 6. I hope that it's something that becomes addressed in this coming season.

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

Who blew it up?

YOU blew it up!

You MANIACS..!

I re-watched the first couple epsiodes of the current season, and the more you look into the Silence, the less everything makes sense. Oh it's great fun to watch, but the overall arc confuses the hell out of me. The group out to kill the Doctor want to operate in a linear fashion but they are really all over the place. I *hate* paradoxses...

Mark

 

[Tom]

Omega!!

 

[Lonemagpie]

I re-watched the first couple epsiodes of the current season, and the more you look into the Silence, the less everything makes sense.

Yep, even my reaction to the season is paradoxical - I loved all the episodes individually, but thought the season was rubbish. Which should be impossible if all the episodes in it were good, and I don't honestly know how that works, but there you are...

The whole was far less than the sum of the parts.

 

[Samurai8472]

You did this!

 

[Admiral_Young]

Hasn't Moffat confirmed that the Silence did in fact blow up the Tardis? As I've mentioned in other threads there are still plot elements that need to be addressed and are probably building up to whatever Moffat has planned for the 50th Anniversary. @Tom...I'm another Omega guy We seem to be in the minority despite the clues

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

Who blew it up?
Who shot J.R.?
Who was that masked man?
Doctor Who?

Unanswered questions of our generation.

 

[Lonemagpie]

Who shot J.R.?
Who was that masked man?
Doctor Who?

Kristin (or is it spelled Kirsten, I forget, it's been 30 years - ah what the hell, Maggie Simpson...), the Lone Ranger, and yes.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

Who shot J.R.?
Who was that masked man?
Doctor Who?

Kristin (or is it spelled Kirsten, I forget, it's been 30 years - ah what the hell, Maggie Simpson...), the Lone Ranger, and yes.

[River] Spoilers [/River]

 

[Cutter John]

I'm still a bit puzzled by the creepy "Silence will fall!" voice. Wasn't there a rumor going around prior to series six that we were supposed to see the return of a classic Who villain at the end of all this?

 

[Saul]

I'm still a bit puzzled by the creepy "Silence will fall!" voice. Wasn't there a rumor going around prior to series six that we were supposed to see the return of a classic Who villain at the end of all this?

People said Omega. But they also said it was Omega at the end of the first series when we wondered who had brought back the Daleks and who had said "i did". It turned out to be the Dalek Emperor but it always seems to be Omega or Davros in these speculations.

 

[Cutter John]

I'd heard the endless Omega discussion, and had thought it was speculation based on a tidbit spilled by the BBC. So the 'returning villain' thing was all a fannish rumor then?

(was holding out for the Black Guardian personally)

 

[gastrof]

What if it was The Doctor himself? A future version who had very good reason?

 

[Jax]

I don't think The Silence blew up the Tardis, the voice that says the statement and the fact it wanted to bring the Silence and the order we saw wants to stop it. It does seem the overall arc might be finished come the end of next season or at least the end of the 11th regin so hopefully we will get answers...

One thing about RTD, even if its sometimes it was OTT the story at hand was wrapped up and past events explained.

 

[Admiral_Young]

Perhaps the Valeyard? I still think I remember reading somewhere here that Moffat confirmed that the Silence blew up the Tardis...yet we don't know the reason yet. I was corrected by someone which is why I remember this.

 

[Jax]

Perhaps the Valeyard? I still think I remember reading somewhere here that Moffat confirmed that the Silence blew up the Tardis...yet we don't know the reason yet. I was corrected by someone which is why I remember this.

Maybe there are 2 silence groups, one trying to prevent the end and one trying to stop it. I guess maybe The Silence could of been tricked into thinking blowing up the Tardis who prevent it when instead it brought the end on.

Anyway technology to control the Tardis is extremly powerful and advanced and The Silence while advanced do not seem to possess such abilities.

 

[Sci]

It seems pretty obvious to me that the TARDIS was blown up during its transit from June 2010 to Roman-era Britain by the Order of the Silence, in their attempt to prevent the Fall of Silence when the Question ("Doctor who?") is answered. They either did so either in an attempt to disable the TARDIS for any other users or did so before realizing that the Doctor was destined to be shot at Lake Silencio in April 2011. Either way, they seem to have miscalculated the effects of the TARDIS explosion -- their goal is to prevent the Universe from being destroyed, not to hasten is, so it seems unlikely that they realized it would cause the Cracks to develop and then a total event collapse. Notably, there were no Silence aliens in the Pandorica Alliance that formed in an attempt to prevent the total event collapse; if any of the governments that made up that Alliance retained any awareness of that alternate timeline in which the TARDIS exploded, I'd bet they'd be right pissed at the Order of the Silence.

Either way, the Silence subsequently realized that they needed to be the ones who got the Doctor shot at Lake Silencio, and therefore kidnapped Amy to the 52nd Century in order to rear Melody Pond/River Song. From there, they took her to 1960s Florida where the Doctor and company found her and overthrew the Silence aliens' control over 20th Century Earth. Melody/River, of course, subsequently escaped and regenerated at least twice -- once in 1969 New York City, and again at some later date that allowed her to become an apparent biological child again in the late 1980s/early 1990s when Amy and Rory were growing up. The Silence seem to have been monitoring her -- hence their ability to track her down to 51st Century Luna after her third regeneration in 1930s Berlin, and then their ability to transport her to 2011 Utah to shoot what they thought was the Doctor.

Presumably, the Silence alien present at Lake Silencio, which Amy saw before travelling to 1969, was present to verify the Doctor's death.

About the only other thing we can conclude about the Silence is that it seems to be based out of the 51st or 52nd Centuries (it's hard to say, because in spite of his references to the 51st Century, Moffat keeps putting up year subtitles that begin with "51" rather than "50"), allied with the Anglican Church and the Order of the Headless Monks, and to be in possession of advanced temporal displacement technology.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Stumbled on this thread by accident and didn't realize anyone else was still asking this question.

Obviously, River blew up the Tardis. The voice we hear in the background "Silence will fall!" is a voice in her head, probably triggering a subliminal command programmed to fire if she ever finds herself alone in the TARDIS with no one supervising her. She was programmed to fly the TARDIS to a location where the Doctor could be expected to be (the night before Amy's wedding, for instance) and then set it to self destruct. The Doctor would then arrive just in time to be blown to bits.

Just like the Lake Silencio thing, the entire plan blew up in their face and took the entire universe with it. The Doctor probably worked this out a while ago, and as usual didn't mention it because he knows there's nothing River can do about it (she doesn't even realize she did it) and it's all in the past anyway.

In general, the Silence are sort of a self-fulfilling doomsday prophecy. Paradoxically, they are a group that is determined to prevent the destruction of the universe, yet their every attempt to do so causes the very destruction they are attempting to prevent. It's like standing nose to nose with a weeping angel and somebody tells you "Don't blink!" instinctively, you blink, and are immediately zapped sixty years into the past. Then you spend the next sixty years thinking about how to prevent your demise, one day you realize you need to help your younger self so you run up behind yourself in a showdown with a weeping angel and yell "Don't blink!" just in time to see yourself zapped into the past.

The Timelords, probably, have ways around that sort of problem with a technique for breaking out of those sorts of causality loops. The Doctor, certainly, excels at this sort of maneuver. The Silence's obsession with the Doctor may reflect their desire to replace the Timelords as the new stewards of time and space in the universe; the fact that they actually suck at it may explain why they never seem to accomplish anything other than getting everyone killed.

 

[Sci]

Stumbled on this thread by accident and didn't realize anyone else was still asking this question.

Obviously, River blew up the Tardis. The voice we hear in the background "Silence will fall!" is a voice in her head, probably triggering a subliminal command programmed to fire if she ever finds herself alone in the TARDIS with no one supervising her. She was programmed to fly the TARDIS to a location where the Doctor could be expected to be (the night before Amy's wedding, for instance) and then set it to self destruct. The Doctor would then arrive just in time to be blown to bits.

Just like the Lake Silencio thing, the entire plan blew up in their face and took the entire universe with it. The Doctor probably worked this out a while ago, and as usual didn't mention it because he knows there's nothing River can do about it (she doesn't even realize she did it) and it's all in the past anyway.

In general, the Silence are sort of a self-fulfilling doomsday prophecy. Paradoxically, they are a group that is determined to prevent the destruction of the universe, yet their every attempt to do so causes the very destruction they are attempting to prevent. It's like standing nose to nose with a weeping angel and somebody tells you "Don't blink!" instinctively, you blink, and are immediately zapped sixty years into the past. Then you spend the next sixty years thinking about how to prevent your demise, one day you realize you need to help your younger self so you run up behind yourself in a showdown with a weeping angel and yell "Don't blink!" just in time to see yourself zapped into the past.

The Timelords, probably, have ways around that sort of problem with a technique for breaking out of those sorts of causality loops. The Doctor, certainly, excels at this sort of maneuver. The Silence's obsession with the Doctor may reflect their desire to replace the Timelords as the new stewards of time and space in the universe; the fact that they actually suck at it may explain why they never seem to accomplish anything other than getting everyone killed.

That is an interesting hypothesis! I like it.

 

[TedShatner10]

Some people have got waaaaay too much time on their hands, but I agree. If the second time the Universe fragmented was clearly an accident, why not the first time? And their mind controlling powers backfired spectacularily ('You should kill us all on sight!').

And even their own TARDISes are cheap 'n nasty knock offs that immolate most people who try to interface with them.