Look, I don’t exactly know how this would go down, but that’s never stopped Russell from executing a story before.
Fifteen remembers that Fourteen “fixes yourself”. Yet this also ends in Fifteen having ‘no-one’ straight after the family episode where we all cry.
So let’s say Fourteen decides what the Doctor really really wants was to grow up normal with a real family. Logical desire. Fifteen was split off with magic and is clearly considered a separate entity by the universe because there’s no Blinovitch limitation effect. So Fourteen is free to do that - to rewrite time, and unlike with the Eleventh Doctor situation, the universe exists just fine because there is still a Doctor here to keep the balances in check.
Fifteen is stuck as The Doctor, knotted in the timestreams by their bootstraps, but Fourteen and back get to be Lulubelle. Happy ending. Ish. Cus obviously it isn’t. We saw the fridge. None of the companions will exist as they do. Fifteen is utterly alone. However is also happy with Fourteen.
(Also while I assume 15 means abandoned in the sense that it seems self-evidential as across eternity no-one ever tried to find them, if 15 knows anything we don’t…that could be worrying. But also this resolution wouldn’t stand long term anyway, as we saw with Ruby. Enough time for fans to worry and sharpen pitchforks, but not anything meaningful long term. Rusty loves that sort of thing.)
Fifteen is keeping the info from us, just as they’re keeping the fact they know it’s Ruby who abandoned herself from her while inviting her so that can happen. We’ve seen with Chibs that manipulating the audience to essentially have the same emotions as the characters has interesting results. Makes sense, feels good, feels organic.
So we have our bootstrap paradox wibblies like Ruby and potentially Mel (though if that ever goes beyond subtext and inferences, Rusty truly is bananas (affectionate) frankly the Glitz mention seemed surprising).
“But speaking of Mel, you uh, have seen the trailer, right?”
This is where I say I dunno how it would work, even if thematically it feels logical.
But if I was Rusty with his willingness to play bullshit, I’d say that Fourteen hasn’t actually gone and done it yet. Fifteen remembers, sure. But the universe always pivots around the most recent Doctor. We now have two concurrent focal Doctors. So if Fourteen decides to do this in December 2024, then we are still in our ‘normal’ world until Fourteen makes that decision and essentially pop goes the timeline.
Does that entirely make sense, not really, but neither does time travel anyway, and certainly not anything where we play with timelines like silly string. Would it be watchable and followable, yeah I think so.
Doesn’t mean anything, I could just be way off, but eh. Vibes.
