Who is Tom Baker’s Curator?

Guest contributor Eti Suruzon takes a moment of your time to offer a theory.

On the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who fans got a treat – a short but meaningful appearance by the all-time favorite Tom Baker. I tend to believe there’s no “right” answer to who or what the Curator was but my personal theory is he was the Moment, or should I say, the TARDIS. Let me explain…

The Moment guided the Doctor from the very beginning of their encounter. It showed him his own future, tried to cheer him up, broke the Time Lock on Gallifrey, appeared as the companion who always made him better and cleverly made sure the current companion, the one who knows the Doctor best and was born to save him, is around to help him make the right choice and save him one more time.

The Moment also gave him hope. Rose/the Moment was glad to see he finally understood her intentions and found a way to save Gallifrey. And after completing her quest to save Gallifrey and the Doctor she returned one more time as the Curator to tell him he succeeded.

The Moment didn’t need to appear as Rose anymore because at this point the Doctor was already better, already a proper good man. She mixed up past and future again as she did by showing Hurt’s Doctor the companion he didn’t met yet, this time showing the Doctor himself, but the wrong incarnation in the wrong time line. She showed him his dream can come true: retire, be a curator or anything else he’d like, now he doesn’t have the responsibility he took as the last Time Lord in existence. Settling down, be the old man that he is, telling him one day he’ll stop running and find a home, just what he dreams about.

Again, the Moment had the handy Clara around to assist him, this time telling her he’s looking for the Doctor, making sure it had a moment alone (see what I did there?) with him.

But what was the Moment?

Didn’t Rose remind you of a certain someone, say, Idris? The TARDIS consciousness trapped inside a human body (Series 6, “The Doctor’s Wife”). Only this time she wasn’t trapped, she was a projection, maybe using the Moment’s ancient powers to do it.

Sure, maybe all Time Lord artificial consciousness are as sassy, take forms of a certain Time Lord’s companions and are DESPERATE to save him. Or maybe it’s just the same one.

Was it simply the interface of an ancient weapon knowing the Doctor so well with the help of ancient Time Lord technology, or could it be the TARDIS, being the one who really knows him, all his lives, the one who is really inside his head? This wouldn’t be the first time she saved him pretending to be one of his closest companions. She did it at Let’s Kill Hitler. Could it be possible that this was, again, the work of the TARDIS saving her Doctor from his darkest hour?

Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!