Who Mysteries: Who Blew Up the TARDIS?
John Hussey looks into the lingering Series 5 mystery.
One of the biggest mysteries of the last three years is of course who actually blew up the TARDIS and why? Steven Moffat has a tendency to leave his viewers in the dark while he unravels his multilayered story-arcs and complex character developments. From time to time people pick up upon stuff that hasn’t been answered. That seems fair most of the time, because the story is ongoing and so it would seem natural to receive some answers and not others until a later date. Concerning who blew up the TARDIS, this is something that has never been confirmed onscreen.
Some may call it lazy writing or a mistake on Moffat’s part for not explaining the main details while others simply use their initiative. For this case, it is one of those plot points which doesn’t need answering because the answer is staring us in the face. So allow me to give my verdict upon the situation and hopefully it might help people understand the reasoning’s behind the act. Firstly we simply have to put the different pieces of information together to reveal what is really going on, although I will admit it took me until after watching Series 6 to fully understand the reasons behind the TARDIS exploding. So it just goes to show Moffat sometimes likes to take his time in answering our questions.
Who caused it to happen? Simple, it was the Silence. This is obvious because they are mentioned throughout Series 5 and also Steven Moffat more or less confirmed that it was the Silence behind-the-scenes on Doctor Who Confidential.
That’s the easy part out of the way. The main question is why did they do it? Here is my theory, so go along with it if you wish. As it was established within Series 6, the Silence is a religious group who deem it their duty to silence the Doctor in order to prevent him asking the First Question. With this in mind, the answer as to why they exploded the TARDIS becomes clearer. They created the cracks throughout the universe in order to spread panic, which ultimately influenced the Doctor’s greatest enemies to create the perfect prison: i.e. the Pandorica. All of this is engineered by the Silence in order to imprison the Doctor.
We know now the Silence have the ability to manipulate the minds of others through hypnotic suggestion and they also have the power to erase your memory of their existence once you look away from them. Once the TARDIS explodes, due to the Silence taking control of it (I’m afraid I can’t give you an exact answer as to how they took control of it, but since they have their own time capsules, it doesn’t seem so hard to believe they could control the TARDIS as well) they then leave the universe in chaos. Knowing the Doctor will escape the Pandorica, they leave him with the ultimate dilemma, save the universe via sacrificing his existence or allow fate to take its course. Either way, the Doctor will be erased and the First Question cannot be answered. The one thing they didn’t count on was Amy being able to remember him back into existence.
The simple answer is this was their first attempt at trying to silence the Doctor. Complicated and mad I know, but it would’ve got the job done and they didn’t have to get their hands dirty. It was all engineered from behind-the-scenes. Because of their failure, they decided to come into the frontline and deal with the problem more personally. In both cases of attack, they have tried to use the Doctor’s weaknesses against him and silence him in a humiliating fashion. The first attempt would have had all of his hard work and dedication of being a hero disappear from minds of the universe forever. Their second attempt would have had him being killed by his companions’ daughter, with himself being the blame for her long suffering life by being separated from her parents at birth and manipulated into being the perfect assassin.
Hopefully this has filled in the gaps of any confusion people may have had about this mysterious question. As I say, this is just my theory. Others believe the same or at least something similar. These ideas were developed via the information given onscreen. I doubt we will ever be told the answers within the show; so coming up with the answer you is the best solution in my opinion.
Feel free to use the comment section below to either agree or disagree with my verdict of this mystery. If you have your own theories, then please share and compare them with others.
