Doctor Who’s unanswered questions: How did the Silence destroy the TARDIS?

We try to answer one of the biggest questions of Doctor Who in the New Series: how was the TARDIS destroyed at the end of Series Five?

While writing the recent article covering the Silence arc, I was suddenly reminded of a major plot point from Series Five. One that had been deliberately left open, but hadn’t been properly resolved in Doctor Who. Which is actually surprising, considering that it was part of a major arc for that series.

As I’m sure many of you remember, the TARDIS was destroyed in The Pandorica Opens. This was something that had been heavily foreshadowed beforehand, so we knew that it was coming. What we didn’t know was how it was destroyed.

And actually, even after that episode – no, even after the Eleventh Doctor’s final episode The Time of the Doctor, which was supposed to have resolved all the unanswered questions – we still didn’t know.

Oh, we learned who was responsible for destroying it. Tasha Lem made a very quick comment about Madame Kovarian’s sect of the Silence being responsible.

But it still leaves us wondering how. The TARDIS shouldn’t be that easy to destroy, and yet the Silence were able to destroy it without even being inside it. Worse, they destroy it to such an incredible extent that it causes every moment in history to be destroyed. Where did they get the power to do that?

Ordinarily, I don’t have a problem with plot holes. In fact, a lot of the time, I usually miss them, especially on first viewing.

But this moment was what the whole of Series Five had built towards. It was essentially the core arc for Moffat’s first series as showrunner. So it’s actually kind of shocking that it was never completely answered. (Then again, Russell T Davies wasn’t completely innocent of leaving major plot points open.)

When the TARDIS exploded in Series Five, there was no clear cause for it. Or was there…?

(Image credit: Doctor Who/BBC.

Image obtained from: official Doctor Who website.)

How was it destroyed?

Despite not getting a concrete answer in the show itself, there is one distinct possibility. For instance, I was never able to accept that the Silence somehow blew up the TARDIS from the outside. I’m not saying that the

memorable

monsters were inside the control room themselves. But someone was: River Song.

While we didn’t know it at the time, we later learned in Series Six that River had been raised by the Silence to kill the Doctor since birth. Until the day that she actually met him, River was happy to follow the Silence’s instructions and kill the Doctor.

Of course, River consciously changed her mind entirely about that in Let’s Kill Hitler. She not only helped to save the Doctor’s life, but even began to love him, on a very deep level. So there was no way that she would have deliberately destroyed the TARDIS herself.

Unconscious commands

But what if it wasn’t deliberate? When the first attempt with killing the Doctor by poison failed, the Silence then put her in an astronaut suit. They clearly had backup plans with River. Could it be so unlikely that they had one more, one even she wasn’t aware of?

We know that the Silence use their powers of amnesia to make people forget about them instantly. More than that – people could be given mental instructions that they’d forget about on a conscious level, but act instinctively on another.

More from Winter is Coming

So while River believed that she was working the TARDIS properly towards the end of The Pandorica Opens, was she in fact causing it to self destruct and not even realizing it? It’s quite possible, especially as River’s handling of the TARDIS is, while accurate, also appears to be very instinctive.

Perhaps the date was even a part of it. The Doctor worked out that the Pandorica was a trap, but he wasn’t sure how until it was too late. We know that it was a prison for him, but was River also a part of the trap? Was sending her to 26th June 2010 the trigger to make her destroy the TARDIS?

I will admit, this is nothing more than pure speculation. But it’s also possibly the only theory that truly fits, at least for the time being. And there’s something brilliant about the idea of the Silence controlling River, even years after she left it (from her perspective).

Do you have a theory on how the TARDIS was destroyed in Series Five? Do you think River was a part of it? Let us know in the comments below.