Back to the Future

There hasn’t been much movement of the Series 5 story arc in a couple of weeks, which has been a little strange. However, in The Hungry Earth one scene stuck out as noteworthy.

Shortly after the opening credits, the Doctor spots Amy and Rory from the future. The Doctor gets his binoculars out and sees the couple waving back, or so it would seem.

Doctor: It’s you two!
Rory: No, we’re here. How can we be up there?
Doctor: Ten years in your future, come to relive past glories I’d imagine.

We have to question why this scene was shown. First up, this does strengthen the Future Doctor theory. Instead of them living those 10 years, what if the Future Doctor has taken Future Amy and Rory back to meet their past selves for some reason? Maybe it all ties in with the Future Doctor going back to past events from their time lines. Perhaps they are not waving but warning them?

Another possible idea is that this scene is a trick to lure the viewer into believing that Rory and Amy will survive the episode and/or series. Now we’ve seen Amy in future episode media, but Rory is strangely absent after Cold Blood…

Watch this deleted scene shown on Doctor Who Confidential (we’ve pieced it together best we can, but a section of dialogue is missing unfortunately). In it, the Doctor tells Amy that they might not live happily ever after, as this time can be unwritten.

This is almost certainly a strong foreshadowing of some events to come and it’s interesting this scene got deleted.

So where does Rory go after Cold Blood? Let’s rule out the Doctor dropping him off, as it doesn’t add up, especially after all the character building over the last few weeks between Rory and Amy.

One reason – he dies fighting in the next episode. It’s possible, but then consider how happy Amy looks in the promo clips from Vincent and the Doctor, the episode that follows. She hardly looks like someone who has just lost her fiancée.

So what if the crack shows up again at the end of the episode and Rory gets erased from time. It’s not quite the same as him just dying and it means he can show up again should the Doctor be able to sort the whole mess out in the future. Plus it conveniently means Amy has to show no signs of grieving. Obviously this is just speculation, but we’re expecting a payoff from this scene on Saturday one way or another.