The Unanswered Moffat Era Questions

Guest contributor Mark M looks over the questions Moffat has left over.

It is no great secret that Steven Moffat loves to wow us with complicated story arcs and amazing resolutions. The only problem is that sometimes he doesn’t answer everything, perhaps some of these issues will be addressed off screen (by Moffat himself), or will just be left to the fans to speculate on what happened. In this article I am going to round up the parts of his story arcs which have not specifically been answered onscreen.

The first arc, the cracks in time, left a few unanswered questions. For me these didn’t impact on the quality of the story and I always presumed that they would be answered at a later date, these included;

• Who was responsible for blowing up the TARDIS? This was never specifically answered on screen, it was implied that it was the Silence due to the line “silence will fall”. (I know that Moffat has confirmed in interview that it was them, but a casual viewer may not be aware of this).
• How was the TARDIS overpowered and how did it blow up? This seemed to contradict what we have previously learned about the TARDIS, and was incredibly unbelievable. Was it too much to ask even for a two line explanation?
• What was to gain by causing the cracks? As far as I am aware, this was never touched on, however I may have missed something (enlighten me in the comments).

Moffat’s second arc, the Doctor’s death at the hands of the Silence was perhaps his most complex, so it is no surprise that several questions are still unanswered, these include;

• Why was the Silence building TARDISes?
• Why did it have to be River who killed the Doctor? This one really bugged me because River didn’t bring anything to the party, the astronaut suit had all the abilities required to kill the Doctor. I believe that it was pointless that the Silence went to such lengths to condition River when an automated suit or anyone else could have actually succeeded. The Silence deserved to fail. Again a simple line would have resolved this.
• Who is the leader of the Silence?
• Why would the question’s answer harm them so much?

I was expecting the majority of the questions left from the Silence arc to be answered this year in the Doctor’s name arc, thankfully the majority of my questions were, bar the ones highlighted above. Unfortunately some were still unanswered and some new questions were posed, they include;

• Why did the Silence cause the cracks in time? You are probably wondering why I have included this here; well the answer is that ultimately the cracks led to total event collapse as the Doctor was placed in the Pandorica. And what happened when the question was answered, the Great intelligence entered the Doctor’s timeline and caused total event collapse.
• What was the bit about ‘no one failing to answer or being unable to answer falsely’? I thought that this was a very interesting concept that I would love to have seen addressed, however this fits in perfectly with my next point.
• Is this the last we have seen of Trenzalore? I would think not, given the news of Matt Smith’s departure, I think it quite likely that we could be seeing the battle of Trenzalore and the fall of the eleventh
• Why was the Great Intelligence so annoyed with the Doctor that he effectively committed suicide to destroy him? You would imagine that the Doctor would have to have done something pretty bad to him to cause that level of anger.

Moffat has also left a few unanswered questions about the companions of the Doctor throughout his era; I will now look at each companion in turn and their unresolved mysteries.

Amy and Rory were probably the least mysterious companions, the only real questions posed were probably production errors (the number of floors in Amy’s house comparing inside and outside, and the date displayed on Rory’s nurses badge)

River has a lot more unanswered parts of her timeline, they include

• How does River know the Doctor’s name? This is the most interesting one because if the theory that we now know all of her timeline is true then we have no answer to this. It is my opinion that we will not learn of this and shouldn’t.
• Why couldn’t the Doctor have given River regenerations in the library like she did for him in Let’s Kill Hitler?

And lastly Clara, the impossible girl. This one is a little harder as her story is only beginning, she has at least one more series. Therefore I expect these questions will be addressed then. This is what I want answered:

• Who gave Clara the Doctor’s telephone number? There are lots of fan theories on this one, some believing Rose as it was announced Billie Piper would be acting in the 50^th anniversary special, others think it was a splinter of the real Clara (but wouldn’t she recognise herself). There has been no definite answer yet
• Why doesn’t the TARDIS like her? This really doesn’t make sense at all yet, some will say it is because she is splintered in time and the TARDIS wants to prevent this, but this would be a very paradoxical resolution so I’m not convinced.
• What is her connection with River?
• Why did the Clara splinter in Asylum of the Daleks call herself Oswin?

As you can see Moffat’s resolutions still leave a lot of questions to be answered, in an ideal world, the 50^th anniversary special would wrap up all of these questions allowing for a fresh start with a new Doctor in Series 8. Just to confirm, Steven Moffat is my favourite writer and in no way is this article meant to be a slight on him or his writing. In fact in my opinion I think all of the issues covered in this article are a victim of the 45 minute time slot. Given a longer time for his finales I reckon Moffat would get the action and resolutions perfectly balanced.

Thanks for reading my first attempt at an article and I hope you liked it. Feel free to share any ideas you may have.