#the rogues theory

[humanstein]

Be careful where you step.

It has to mean something.

[im-totally-not-an-alien-2]

Breaking news! Vicky Vale leaks footage of Brucie Wayne following the new teenage rogue 'Phantom' around the city saying "Please let me adopt you 😭"

Phantom refuses and saying he's a supervillian not a lost puppy.

Turns out this was a part of Bruces plan however as Phantom now sees people all over tv talking about him and the Waynes and already considering him a new member of the family. They're even asking when there will be a face reveal. There was a reason he was wearing a mask! He. Is.. A. Villian. What about that do these people not get?!

Sure he doesn't kill people. Or hurt people at all really. Or steal from small family owned businesses. Or...yeah ok. Just because you're a bad guy doesn't mean you have to be a bad guy, ya know? Apparently Gotham doesn't.

Cause they insist hes just a very confused hero

[ace-whovian-neuroscientist]

the “show within a show” theory continues!

y’all remember how in space babies, the ship created the bogeyman because there’s supposed to be a monster?

rogue fits an archetype just a little too well. he’s smart and witty and full of bravado and clicks with the doctor instantly.

a lot of us had the theory that rogue was secretly jack harkness. and the thing is, he still basically is. he’s the archetype laid out by jack. doing some sketchy work, flirty and angsty, changes his heart and sacrifices himself at the end. and how many american accents do we hear on doctor who anyway?

so maybe space babies was designed mimic to the end of the world. and rogue was designed to mimic the empty child/the doctor dances (also! the doctor danced!)

maybe ruby is supposed to be the prototypical companion, be quite a bit like rose and clara. maybe rogue is supposed to be like jack.

maybe this new “season one” is supposed to be like 2005 season one.

it’s not little references meant to make you think of the past, this is an act. this is cosplay.

[mwagneto]

questions we haven't answered yet that make me super hyped for the next season:

what did the toymaker mean when he said he made a jigsaw out of the doctor's history?

↑ is that related to the strange way the doctor's memories keep changing and the random weird stuff that keeps coming up? or is that something else

was sutekh "the one who waits"? he was never actually referred to as that

multiple characters have referenced "the boss" and that cannot be sutekh, so who on earth is the boss?

this one's kinda meta but ruby left but we know she filmed stuff for s15, is that just a single episode? and is the new companion mundy or just a classic case of repeating actors?

what's rogue's whole deal? do we think his story is done? coz imo him being tied to the above mentioned boss + "find me" + the ring (that 15 is still wearing in eps 7 and 8 btw) definitely seems to imply there's something more there

frankly insane amount of Susan mentions this season - is she actually coming back?

and of course. who the hell is mrs flood!!!!

[causalityparadoxes]

For some reason this stood out to me on my Rogue rewatch. In all likelihood its meaningless. A funny bit of throwaway character building for Rogue...

BUT... what if its not? The Rogue has to be coming back. He just has to. So what if its all tying into a future series arc? Ncuti says he's sticking around for a good while after all ;)

[qiuing]

Secrets

[fuzzyhairedfreak]

um uh uh um. so. did anyone else used to follow Nate Stevenson's D&D campaign drawings back in the day or-

[ohmerricat]

how much more obvious can they get? the foreshadowing is practically plain text now. it’s all been cosplay — a game, a LARP, a parody of the doctor’s life and adventures. the TV signals of the show “Doctor Who” beam out across the stars and everybody wants to watch. everybody wants to feast their eyes on the drama and outrage and tragedy. everybody wants to play, and it’s almost time for the season finale!

bonus — Ruby peering through the bookshelves at the Bridgerton-esque scandal unfolding in front of her, almost exactly as if she were watching the events through a screen:

there it is. the Doctor has been unwittingly trapped in a TV show since god knows when (The Church on Ruby Road? maybe even Wild Blue Yonder?). Susan Twist is a recurring extra, or the showrunner, or the director, or a member of the crew trying to warn them by repeatedly appearing in the simulation.

the TV show is called The Legend of Ruby Sunday. and what a game we are playing, what a wonderful, wonderful game

[bowtiesarecool11]

DWM Episode Preview 'Rogue'

"And this time when the Doctor dances - he really dances"

[intuitive-revelations]

Theory: Something serious is up with the TARDIS

I had been wondering about this all series, but after Rogue today, it's finally been confirmed that something's going on with the TARDIS (on top of all the other arc threads going on!).

The moment I picked it up was in The Devil's Chord, where the TARDIS makes a strange groan and creaks after landing back in 1963. Ruby thinks it's from Maestro, but the Doctor says it's "something else". As of today it's happened again, twice! Once in the episode itself, once in the next time trailer. The exact same sound effect!

Someone on reddit pointed out a few weeks ago that this sound appeared even earlier too, in Wild Blue Yonder (notably also when we first saw Susan Twist, had gravity changed to mavity, and welcomed the Pantheon into the universe). Each time, it's also had attention drawn to it. Here's a video of each scene, followed by a direct comparison of each sound:

(I did have a quick glance to see if it appeared elsewhere, maybe even during Flux. As far as I can tell however, Wild Blue Yonder seems to be the only non-S14 appearance.)

What's more, going back to that Reddit thread, someone pointed out what the Wild Blue Yonder script says about this moment:

And then the TARDIS seems to moan. The Doctor fascinated. DONNA: Is it working? THE DOCTOR: I think so. Strange. He reaches out, touches the TARDIS, wondering. And that 'strange' will come back to haunt him, one day. But now...

(Suddenly the TARDIS freaking out over Donna's spill might make a bit more sense...)

So what the hell's going on?

Well, between a trailer scene and some news that just came out a few hours ago as of writing this, I think I may have an idea. Given it's based on trailer footage uploaded and then removed from YouTube, I'll put it below beneath a read more:

In a removed Disney+ teaser trailer we get two frames of the Doctor screaming out into space (with Mel behind him). Except it's not from "his" TARDIS:

It's the f*cking memory TARDIS!

And here's the thing. Not only was this trailer scrubbed from the Disney+ and BBC channels, but in the other trailers, this clip is entirely different! Not only is Mel gone, but the TARDIS interior is now Fifteen's own, and the TARDIS is in a different, generic region of space.

Just before this, we also see a similar nebulous region of space matching the unmanipulated clip.

But why on Earth is this such a big deal, that the BBC/Disney would go full MCU and give us a deliberately altered clip? The only previous time I remember Doctor Who doing this was for Series 10, hiding the plot point of the Doctor's blindness. It's not because of Mel, who literally appears in the released trailer. It's also seemingly not because of the background, despite it also being altered (unless the two moons are a clue with the planet being Gallifrey or something - the thought had occurred to me - but that's such a tiny detail, and we also only see one sun). Instead, it must be the Memory TARDIS. But why?

In-universe, I have no idea. On one hand I'd be delighted to get some answers as to its nature. Assuming it's connected to the groans we've been hearing, then it could be the TARDIS undergoes some sort of metamorphosis into this state? But we've seen the TARDIS change all the time, whether for safety, to recover or whatever. I also can't imagine general audiences are falling over themselves to find out the in-universe explanation for a Classic Who re-release framing device. Not to mention, apparently the sound will go on to "haunt" the Doctor...

...maybe the TARDIS straight up is taken out of commission in some way? And the Memory TARDIS isn't the same ship, but the Doctor's way of saving the day without her? Maybe even remembered into existence Fitz/Amy style?

Out of universe however, it's just been announced yesterday that we're getting more Tales of the TARDIS.

And not just more omnibus stories with past characters returning for in-universe commentary... but with Fifteen and Ruby! What's more, it's apparently a one-off, right before the finale (but, note, after the first part next week).

Which means it's important. Possibly extremely so, given the edited trailer scene. It might even serve as an interquel, given Fifteen and Ruby are somehow in it.

I've seen two common theories. Either a) it will be Pyramids of Mars, and we're getting Sutekh in the finale (presumably with Fifteen and Ruby partially because of bringing back Elizabeth Sladen obviously not being an available option - and even if you thought up another character, eg. Luke, I doubt Tom would be interested, at that point anyway), or b) it will be something tying into Susan returning.

Honestly between the remaining trailer clips (eg. sandstorms and dusty planets), a tease RTD supposedly gave in DWM, and an old interview with him where he supposedly floated the idea of bringing back a Classic Who for a finale and airing the original serial on BBC3 beforehand, I'm kinda leaning towards the prior, even though it wasn't at all on my radar.

However, this still doesn't actually answer what's up with the TARDIS.

It could quite literally be anything. However, here's a few ideas, some reasonable some weird, that I have come up with:

Old age / stress. This is a weird one, but oddly enough something I had thought of once in the past, and I just saw someone else come to the same idea on Reddit. The idea is that while the Doctor has a new regeneration cycle and now a good few years, if not decades or more, of rest and recovery, the TARDIS may struggling in it's own right (especially if it is somehow old enough to have once been the Fugitive Doctor's). However, while this could be something interesting to explore, and I think isn't entirely mutually exclusive with other options, I can't imagine going anywhere near a storyline of the TARDIS itself 'wearing thin'. Besides, if we did, I like to imagine it would have been foreshadowed with size leakage, as per Name of the Doctor.

Relating to the above, could it be something linked to the TARDIS splitting in The Giggle? However, the sound starts before then (not that that means much to the TARDIS, but still).

Laws of rationality breaking down. This one makes the most sense in a lot of ways, between the expanded universe (particularly Christmas on a Rational Planet) and Flux, we've seen the TARDIS cannot survive in an irrational universe. While time has stabilised for now, we're still seeing magic and other Old Time forces encroaching in on the Web of Time. I'm a bit torn with this one however, as while it works from a lore and writing perspective, plus matches with this starting in Wild Blue Yonder (right after the Mavity incident... interestingly), it seems odd it's not more connected with what happened in Flux? Why are the sounds and effects on the TARDIS completely different?

Something to do with the Doctor's fobwatch. In Rogue, the Doctor blames the sound on indigestion. We know we're getting more Timeless Child related stuff - could this somehow be linked to Thirteen dropping the Division biodata module deep into the TARDIS? Would be a weird time to pick this up though, and I'm not sure exactly how that would have had such an effect.

The most actually likely, but least possible to theorise about: it's something time-wimey to do with Ruby, the villain(s) of the story, and/or Susan Twist, especially given this started after her first appearance.

Regardless, I'm just excited to see what's up with the Memory / "Remembered" TARDIS, because it's seems we're about to learn something...

[heresmyfiddlestick]

alrighty so

Bridgerton, Strictly, and James Bond all mentioned, adding onto Davina McCall, Star Trek

“Cushy”, “okay”, “TV” all interesting words to Emily, adding onto foundled, spoor, smelt, chapping

The vitamin string quartet-ass covers of pop songs really fucking with whether we’re supposed to understand the music as diegetic or not, especially when we’ve been told there’s a tenuous distinction in The Devil’s Chord

direct references to an earlier character intro (Rogue paralleling Jack) just like I’m Space Babies (Ruby paralleling Rose)

aliens that are lured in by plot twists

also flashbacks to reveal previously unknowable information

it’s bringing up The Distancing Effect for me, being forcibly pulled out of the spectacle of something through uncanny elements and asked to reevaluate it. What happens when the characters in a tv show get dissociated from their show and have to reevaluate their existences? Who the fuck is Susan twist

this is to say nothing of Rogue’s reference to his “new boss”, harkening back to the Meep’s cryptic message…

[boomthemoon]

What if Rogue is actually part of the pantheon but decided to leave bc he fell in love with a mortal (the person he lost) and decided he likes them better than the Gods? that fits with the name Rogue, like "a Rogue God who left to live between mortals" (I know the name came from dnd and there might be some reference to dnd deities to be made here but I don't know them).

Also that would explain why Sutekh groaned at him. Sutekh only groaned 3 times (not counting the last one before he showed himself), when the TARDIS landed in the edge of the universe (where the Doctor later did the thing that set the Gods free), after Maestro used music to mess with the TARDIS, and when Rogue was inside the TARDIS. So it feels personal.

[avasem]

POSSIBLE SPOILERS FOR EP 5 OF XMEN 97

So I guess this is my prediction

Based them on these

[blackbonnet-ruined-my-life]

Rogue has to come back. For one very important reason.

“A mysterious bounty hunter called Rogue is about to change The Doctor’s life forever.”

That was in the episode description.

Now correct me if I’m wrong, but that doesn’t seem to have happened. Two episodes later and the only thing that has changed is The Doctor’s ring.

He doesn’t seem to be affected by it in the long term at all. Remove the episode from the lineup and the only thing you’d miss is the episode. Nothing about it seems to have affected anything else. But we were promised that meeting Rogue would be life changing, ergo there’s more to this story.

I also think Rogue coming back would do the doctor good. He’s probably going to struggle with having killed Sutekh and Rogue is many wonderful things, but he’s also a killer. He’s a bounty hunter that fully intended to kill the doctor when they first met after all

[alldni]

so anyway kicks rock what if rogue has met the doctor in the past and for some timey wimey reason the doctor doesn’t remember him. rogue has been in love with him for a long time — considering, you know, the fucking marriage proposal. he remembered when he saw tens face in that hologram. did you see his eyes, his reaction when he saw ten? he recognized that face. sorry. can anyone hear me. i’m real about this

[causalityparadoxes]

A morsel for my lovely Rogue!Master truthers