Steven Moffat, executive producer for Doctor Who, insists the Doctor’s greatest secret will be revealed in the finale season finale, The Name of the Doctor. However, it’s not necessarily what you think it is. The Doctor’s name won’t be revealed according to the Daily Star.
“We learn The Doctor’s greatest secret but it will be a surprise whether we learn his real name,” said a spokeswoman for the show.
A source added: “We may have to wait another 50 years to find out. Steven Moffat is a big tease.”
In fact, there are many revelations says Moffat:
It’s full of surprises and questions that have never been answered in the history of Who, including the Doctors greatest secret. We’re not pretending, we’re not kidding, it’s actually going to happen. The episode is called The Name of the Doctor and involves our hero in a conflict that is very, very personal to him. Usually he’s saving other people, but this time he might be the one who needs to be saved. We’ll also find out what makes his new companion so impossible and there’s a surprise that no one has got right so far, and one that will change the course of Who forever!
Doctor Who Magazine gives the following “The Name of the Doctor” synopsis:
Every journey taken by a time-traveller tears a wound in the fabric of reality, and the Doctor has time-travelled more than anyone. But the trail runs cold in Trenzalore, the one place in all of time and space that he should never go. The most dangerous place in the universe…
Who is kidnapping the Doctor’s friends, leading him to Trenzalore? Could the Fall of the Eleventh be nigh? Or does an impossible girl hold the key? The Doctor’s past, present, and future lives are in grave danger… and his greatest secret is about to be revealed.
The magazine quotes the Doctor:
The path I carved through time and space, from Gallifrey to Trenzalore. My own personal time tunnel, leading back to every moment I ever lived. Every step, every tear, every kiss. Even the days I haven’t lived yet. Which is why I shouldn’t be here. The paradoxes… very bad…
“I’m about to cross my own timeline,” the Doctor says in the trailer. “And the TARDIS doesn’t like it.”
This paradox could lead into the 50th Anniversary Special. John Hurt recently told the Eastern Daily Press that he plays “part of the Doctor” in a “kind of trinity” that includes David Tennant. Hurt would presumably be the future Twelfth Doctor but there’s some speculation that he is the actually the real Ninth Doctor, a forgotten Doctor. If the latter is true, that would make Tennant the Eleventh who will fall according to the Trenzalore prophecy.
Hurt might not be the only one to fall between the cracks. Jenna-Louise Coleman told the BBC, “All I can say is that Clara hasn’t just met the Doctor three times before…” In fact, the trailer shows Clara with Bessie, the Third Doctor’s car. All but confirming my own prediction that Clara is a forgotten companion.
Doctor Who Magazine also revealed future River Song (Alex Kingston) is “back from the library” where she was uploaded into a computer to save her. One possibility is that River regenerated like Jenny, the Doctor’s daughter. Another is that River is still in the computer and that she is a hologram projected by the TARDIS. This would square with another one of my theories that the Doctor will also be digitized. Clara’s laptop has what looks like the Fields of Trenzalore wallpaper.
In the prequel episode, “She Said, He Said,” the Doctor and Clara appear to have an internal monologue in what could be virtual reality. Each one explains how they had come to terms with not knowing the other’s secret but they found out the day they went to Trenzalore.