The Question That Must Never Be Answered Will Be Answered: Doctor Who?

By Jenny Xu | Updated

This article is more than 2 years old

Steven Moffat has just announced that the millions of adoring Doctor fans will finally find out the truth about the man many have been following since the days of black and white. And what better time to reveal the Doctor’s name than the series’ fiftieth anniversary, coming up in 2013.

Moffat baits listeners at the San Diego Comic-Con by saying that the titular question, “Doctor Who?” is “tremendously important” and follows it up enigmatically (and rather smugly) with “And only I know why.”

Moffat, with his usual expert circumlocution, gives no further details as to when and how the question of the Doctor’s name will be answered. All we have to speculate with is the prophecy uttered by Dorium Maldovar (or rather, his sentient severed head): “On the fields of Trenzalore, at the fall of the Eleventh, a question will be asked – one that must never be answered. And Silence will (or must) fall when the question is asked.” According to the Teselecta, it is also “The first question; the oldest question in the universe. Hidden in plain sight.”

Just one more obvious detail that we lesser beings have missed.

But if this question is finally answered, could it spell not only the doom of the silence, but also of the show? The fact that the Doctor does not have a name is a driving force behind the series; a mystery that, for many Who-fans, is on the same scale of how gravity works. Revealing the name seems like a very J.K.-Rowling-trying-to-satisfy-everyone-in-the-universe-by-writing-a-godawful-unnecessary-epilogue sort of thing to do.

So when exactly is the day of reckoning? “You’ll see.”

Watch the full interview below: