Howling:Sometimes knowing your own future is what enables you to change it

31:40 into The Girl Who Waited, Amy says, "I'm now changing that future… every law of time says that shouldn't be possible."

The Doctor answers, "Yes, except sometimes knowing your own future is what enables you to change it, especially if you're bloody-minded, contradictory, and completely unpredictable."

Although Rory and the Doctor go on to conclude that if anyone can defeat predestiny it's Amy, this sounds like a pretty good clue for how the Doctor's going to escape his own death. Of course it later turns out that the two versions of Amy can't exist in the TARDIS at the same time, but then Moffat told us that "where is the future Doctor's TARDIS?" is "a good question" and "it's worth keeping your eyes open".

More importantly, at the end, while they couldn't save that future version of Amy, they did prevent her from ever existing, so a different 57-year-old Amy will be able to exist later. And that's really what the Doctor would be after—not saving his future self from the astronaut, but preventing himself from ending up in that future in the first place.

Up until now, I thought it was going to be like in the novel Anachrophobia, where the Doctor carefully arranges changes so no paradox is visible and his apparent death is the same as always except that he isn't actually dead. But now I'm not sure. Any theories on how he might use what he learned here to change his future? --173.228.85.35 23:43, September 10, 2011 (UTC)

The joke is: Don't tell me when I'm going to die. Tell me where, so I'll know not to go there. Boblipton 00:27, September 11, 2011 (UTC)

The Teselecta already told him both where and when. But it's hard to plan 200 years ahead. At least I always screw up and forget after that long.

Just picture it: The Doctor is hanging out with his new companions in the TARDIS and asks where they want to go. Phil can't think of anywhere, but Keiko says, "That place in Utah with all the sandstone pillars that you took your first companions to looked pretty cool, let's go there!" He looks over at K9 Mark V, who just say, "Affirmative, Master. It did indeed look cool." Phil just shrugs. The Doctor pauses and says, "Wait, wasn't there something about Utah I was supposed to remember? Oh well, it can't have been that important. There's a great little diner by Lake Silencio, why don't we start there?" --173.228.85.35 01:07, September 11, 2011 (UTC)

The Doctor describing Amy as "bloody-minded, contradictory, and completely unpredictable", while quite accurate, seems to me to be a severe case of pot-and-kettle syndrome. --89.240.248.153 06:16, September 11, 2011 (UTC)

That was my point. Even if he didn't realize he was talking about himself when he said that, it seems a good bet he'd figure it out later… --173.228.85.35 06:37, September 11, 2011 (UTC)

"And that's really what the Doctor would be after—not saving his future self from the astronaut, but preventing himself from ending up in that future in the first place."

There's a problem in that theory though. His death in Utah was a fixed point in time and space, according to the people in robot Amy. DoctorHer 09:07, September 11, 2011 (UTC)

Just because a buch of professional torturers in a bureaucrat-designed ship that keeps trying to kill them think they know what a fixed point in time is, that doesn't mean they do. They don't have billions of years of evolution (see that thread) telling them what a fixed point in time feels like. Eve if they do, all it means is that an entirely different timeline splits off. I think the Doctor can live with that. Boblipton 12:46, September 11, 2011 (UTC)

Even a Time Lord can be mistaken about a fixed point. The Doctor was, in The Fires of Pompeii. If you listen to the conversation between the Doctor and Donna while they're inside Vesuvius, he initially describes the eruption of Vesuvius and consequent destruction of Pompeii as a fixed point but, after learing more about what the Pyroviles are doing, realises it isn't: "That means it's not history, it's me!" --2.96.20.145 17:31, September 11, 2011 (UTC)