Doctor Who Confusing Storylines: Orson Pink, the child that never was

Doctor Who, BBC

This past week, I was watching Listen, the fourth episode of season eight of Doctor Who, which features Clara and Danny Pink’s first date that continues to go wrong, and a man named Orson Pink.

Because of the Doctor’s belief that everyone in their life has the same dream, he has Clara connect with the TARDIS to show him when she was a child. Instead, they stumble on Rupert Pink, a boy that is conceivably Danny Pink from the past.

He lives in a children’s home, meaning that he’s an orphan – he doesn’t have a family. In an attempt to help calm the boy down, Clara sets up toy soldiers around his bed to protect him. He calls one “Dan the soldier man”, and we know this is Danny from the past.

When we go back to the future, a man named Orson Pink crashes Clara and Danny’s date. It’s supposed to be believed that this is Danny and Clara’s great-great grandchild from the future.

They make many allusions to Clara and Danny – including a toy soldier Clara gave to Rupert Pink when they went back in time, and Orson saying that time travel “runs in the family.” Great! This is fantastic! Clara has a great future ahead of her with this nice man and–

Wait.

Danny gets run over in Deep Water.

So how is there an Orson Pink? When Danny gets run over and dies, or worse, turns into a Cyberman, that’s it, he’s dead. There is no Orson Pink. There is no future family lineage. So where did Orson come from?

Now, before we count anything out and say it wasn’t planned, it was. Samuel Anderson is shown in the behind the scenes for Deep Water, saying he was “shocked” when he read his death in his script. He even goes so far as to say he didn’t think people died in Doctor Who!

I get that most likely it was something that the writers, or Moffat, had and then changed their mind when it came to the series finale. But if they were thinking ahead, couldn’t they have given us some clue about what’s going to happen? That really would have given us the chills and made for a great episode.

Instead, we’re left with a loose thread on the Pink family line. Poor Orson. He never stood a chance.