capalxii:

adreamofgallifrey:

capalxii:

the interesting thing for me wasn’t that he mourned for 2 billion years–he didn’t. he made 2 billion exact replicas of himself, each one of them only living for a brief period of time, and one interesting thing is each one of them mourned exactly the same way. it was as hard-wired into him as anything biological

(the other interesting thing is: does this mean the version of him currently on Gallifrey is no longer 2k years old? that version is also not 2 billion years old, he’s only as old as it takes for the Doctor to be created and then break through the wall. my understanding is that the prison was another dimension, not a mental trap but an actual place inside of the confession dial. his memories are as old as they were at the end of Face the Raven plus a little, but his body is not 2k or 2bn.)

but doesn’t he have memories of living and dying and repeating the cycle? or at least, he figured out that that’s what he kept doing because the hole in the diamond-ish wall was a bit more broken each time he went back?

I need to rewatch this before it makes perfect sense tbh

no, I think he figures it out all over again each time. that’s why he’s confused by the stars making it look like he’s 7,000 years in the future, and why he’s confused about all the skulls at first. by the time this episode started, there have already been countless versions of him, over the course of 7k years. the hand we see in the beginning that flips the lever is always him, burning himself up so the next one can come, re-figure things out, and punch the wall a few times, slowly but surely breaking it down over the course of 2 billion years.

since he’s the exact same person each time, he figures things out exactly the same in each version.