Who Mysteries: The Ducks

This Doctor Who mystery is a bit of an odd case, but it’s one that gets brought up fairly frequently.

In the Series 5 opener, The Eleventh Hour, the Doctor quizzes Amy on why there aren’t any ducks when they walk past a pond in Leadworth village. While it could have just been a humorous throwaway scene, the Doctor later brings this back up again in Flesh and Stone, seemingly giving it greater significance.

Some fans were left confused by these scenes and its relevance as this wasn’t directly addressed again. Was there ever anything more to it, or were you just meant to assume the ducks fell victim to the cracks in time?

Moffat actually cleared this one up in Doctor Who Magazine. He confirmed that he originally planned to show the ducks again after the Big Bang 2 reset in series 5 finale.

“From the start, I had this single idea: that the ducks, like Amy’s parents, had been sucked through the crack in time. And to round everything off, in the very last shot of the series, we’d see the TARDIS fade away, leaving us with a shot of the duckpond, and some happy little ducks.

“Then, at the last minute, we had to relocate the scene to Amy’s back garden, and it never happened. So! There you go! Nice thought, never happened. Oops!”