Please DO NOT add to this discussion.
So, thanks to Dorium we know that on the fields of Trenzalore at the fall of the Eleventh, a question will be asked. Is it a coincidence that the current Doctor is the Eleventh? Maybe the Eleventh Doctor is destined to regenerate on the fields of Trenzalore. It isn't unusual for the Doctor's regeneration to cause dialogue like:
Companion: Who are you?
New Doctor: I'm the Doctor.
Companion: What do you mean you're the Doctor? Doctor Who?
Since apparently no living creature can speak falsely or refuse to answer a question, the Doctor could be forced to answer the question literally, thus leading to silence somehow falling.Icecreamdif talk to me 18:17, October 13, 2011 (UTC)
This is just a tag to make sure I get notified as this topic is debated. I think it likely Moffat chose that designation to be provocative.Boblipton talk to me 20:51, October 13, 2011 (UTC)
"I think it likely Moffat chose that designation to be provocative": "Likely" is putting it extremely mildly; "totally certain" would be nearer the mark! It won't have escaped Moffat that "fall" is a word with several meanings of which "death" is only one. --89.241.74.8 00:30, October 14, 2011 (UTC)
I think that after two years of "silence will fall," we can be sure that Moffat has noticed that "fall" has several meanings. The question is really does "the fall of the eleventh" refer to the Eleventh Doctor, or is it just a random phrase that he chose, that currently means as little to us as "Trenzalore" does.Icecreamdif talk to me 02:44, October 14, 2011 (UTC)
put it this way, i believe the chance that the number 11 is a coincidence is about infinity to none. i mean, why else would he use the number 11 in the name. it just isn't the kind of thing that turns out to be a coincidence on this show. oh, and boblipton, how do you get it so your notified of further discussion in a thread? i always find that i just have to keep comming back to the howling page to find out what's new. Imamadmad talk to me 09:04, October 14, 2011 (UTC)
I don't uncheck the box to let me know of further editing on a page.Boblipton talk to me 12:21, October 14, 2011 (UTC)
Okay, this could be completely off but I'm re-watching "Silence in the Library" just...for the fun of it and I know that nothing had really been set in stone about the 6th series back then but the crash of the Byzantium did come up. The Doctor says that he can't be sure that River didn't pluck the sonic screwdriver from his cold dead hands and then she whispers his name in his ear. If the only way that he can speak his name is when he's dying - he still wouldn't be sure that she didn't just take it from him after his death? Toppingdaywhat_spiffing (The date didn't show up, not sure why. Sorry about that.)
I'm not sure what Toppingdaywhat_spiffing is getting at. The two facts, 1. that River used her knowledge of his name as a way to get him to trust her and 2. that it worked, must mean that telling her his name requires trusting her -- and, from his reaction in the Library, trusting her a lot. It's possible, of course, that River will turn out to have learned the Doctor's name under some peculiar circumstances that hadn't occurred to Ten in the Library, so her knowledge of it doesn't mean what he thought it meant. That's unlikely, though, because subsequent events in the Library showed River wasn't conning him; he was right to trust her. --89.240.243.254 16:14, October 15, 2011 (UTC)
I think I was trying to throw that in there as a reason why the Doctor saying his real name might not be connected with "the fall of the eleventh" but now I realise that no one was really implying that in the first place. Sorry, should I delete above comment? Toppingdaywhat_spiffing
No, don't delete anything. We know from Dorium that the Doctor saying his real name is connected to "the fall of the eleventh," we just don't know what that means. Even just going by the library episodes, it is possible that from River's point of view, the Doctor told her his name when he was dying, and then sometime later he gave her his sonic screwdriver. We don't know that River will learn his name on Trenzalore during the event that Dorium is talking about, but it is pretty likely that she will.Icecreamdif talk to me 18:57, October 15, 2011 (UTC)
And I think he already told her his name while he was dying. Boblipton talk to me 23:25, October 15, 2011 (UTC)
I don't think so. Her reaction "I'm sure she already knows," just doesn't sound like a reaction to being told his name. Melody would probably assume that if the wanted her to tell this River Song person his name, that River didn't already know it. Then, it was implied that learning who River was, in combination with knowing whatever the Doctor whispered to her, is what made her decide to save his life. Then, most importantly, The Wedding of River Song takes place after Let's Kill Hitler from River's point of view, and when the Doctor whispered "Look into my eye," to her, he lied and said he told her his name. Her reaction to that mad it seem like she didn't already know his name. Besides, the Doctor may trust River at this point in his timeline, but he knows perfectly well that she wasn't trustworthy enough to know his name yet in Let's Kill Hitler (she had just tried to kill him 32 minutes ago). The whole question arc that Dorium foreshadowed will probably be connected to River learning his name.Icecreamdif talk to me 23:52, October 15, 2011 (UTC)
Melody's reaction, "I'm sure she already knows," makes no sense if what the dying Doctor whispered was his name; it makes excellent sense if he whispered, "Tell River I love her," or words to that effect. It would certainly intensify the impact of her discovery, almost immediately afterwards, that she was River. --89.240.253.134 01:14, October 18, 2011 (UTC)
Yeah, that's how I always interpreted that scene.Icecreamdif talk to me 02:49, October 18, 2011 (UTC)