Does ‘Heaven Sent’ hint that the Doctor’s confession dial contains (and is within) another of Doctor Who‘s bootstrap paradoxes?
The last episode of Doctor Who, ‘Heaven Sent,’ was a story of a continuous cycle of repetition in which the Doctor was trapped for billions of years — what the Doctor called a “closed energy loop.” Some things reset each time, while most stayed the same. But where was the start of the whole adventure? Was everything (such as his clothes drying by the fire) there from the start, or was the Doctor running around naked for a good portion of a day? Could there be another wibbly wobbly timey wimey level to this cycle going on here?
After viewing ‘Heaven Sent,’ one is likely wondering just who sentenced the Doctor to such a bizarre and tortuous house of horrors. Judging by the trailers for ‘Hell Bent,’ it seems to have been the doing of Time Lords. But what if one of them was the Doctor’s future self? After all, he was in his own confession dial. What if the device contains a bootstrap paradox? (Was that shot of his boots drying by the fire a subtle clue?)
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We have seen bootstrap paradoxes on Doctor Who before. Some famous examples are 1) the videotape and the notebook in ‘Blink,’ 2) the Doctor saving River in ‘Forest of the Dead’ because she had his future self’s sonic screwdriver and 3) the message that the Doctor programmed his ghost to say in ‘Under the Lake’/’Before the Flood.’
Personally, I have always enjoyed bootstrap paradoxes. This is partly because and partly in spite of it being a mind-bending concept. Whether one accepts the concept as valid or not, it is still fun to think about.
If ‘Heaven Sent’ does contain another example of a bootstrap paradox, what is the purpose? Why would the Doctor put himself through such an ordeal? Someone obviously needed the information right away and knew that it would take an extremely long time to crack that nut, so to speak. That is why they put him in what was probably a temporal bubble.
Does the Doctor later realize that someone in the past needed this vital information, and he therefore designs an environment with the ideal conditions which would force him spill his guts? Who better to know how to shakedown the Doctor than the Doctor? And did the Veil know that the Doctor’s confessions were true because it was programmed by the Doctor?
Also, does the paradox begin with the manipulation of Ashildr by these mysterious people, or does the plan go back even further?
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Next: Doctor Who: Possible Plot Holes in 'Heaven Sent'
Who do you think set up the castle for the Doctor and why? Do you think the confessional dial holds a bootstrap paradox? What do you think of the general concept of bootstrap paradoxes? Let us know in the comments.