The Woman (The End of Time)

The Woman
Species:	Time Lady
Place of origin:	Gallifrey
Appearance:	The End of Time
Main actor:	Claire Bloom

You may be looking for the Gallifreyan woman from after the Time War.

"The Woman" was a Time Lady active on Gallifrey during the end of the Last Great Time War. She appeared to Wilfred Mott on several occasions before and after the resurrection of the Saxon Master.

Biography

At the age of eight, the Woman was taken from her family for the selection process in the Drylands. Staring into the Untempered Schism as part of a Time Lord initiation rite, the Woman was inspired by what she saw in the Schism. (PROSE: A Brief History of Time Lords)

The Master knew the identity of the Woman. (PROSE: Lords and Masters) So did the Doctor. (TV: The End of Time)

The Last Great Time War

During the final phases of the Last Great Time War, when the Doctor had turned against the Time Lords, the Woman opposed Lord President Rassilon's plan to destroy time itself, (TV: The End of Time) along with the Patriarch of the House of Stillhaven. (PROSE: Lords and Masters) Rassilon condemned her and the patriarch to stand behind him in the Panopticon and cover their faces "as monuments of their shame, like the Weeping Angels of old” (TV: The End of Time) and had her name erased from time as further punishment. (PROSE: A Brief History of Time Lords)

The Woman reveals her face to the Tenth Doctor. (TV: The End of Time)

When Rassilon and his retinue came to Earth via the Immortality Gate on Boxing Day 2009, the Tenth Doctor's gaze fell on the Woman and she briefly uncovered her face and looked at him, shedding a single tear and glanced toward the White-Point Star. The Doctor then shot the diamond, severing the link in Rassilon's plan to return to reality, sending her and the other Time Lords back into the time lock with Gallifrey. As the enraged Rassilon turned to kill the Doctor, she returned to her weeping position, just before the Doctor was saved by the Saxon Master. (TV: The End of Time)

Appearing to Wilfred

During the events surrounding the Master Race and the Tenth Doctor's regeneration, the Woman frequently appeared to Wilfred Mott in conventional human clothes at the same time she was on Gallifrey during the Time War. How the Woman managed to do this is unknown, but she appeared older, with her hair getting greyer, each time she appeared to Wilf.

The Woman was first seen by Wilf in a church, where she told him that the church had been a convent that was attacked by "a demon from the skies" in the 1300s, and was saved by a "sainted physician". She directed Wilfred's attention to a stained glass window that contained an image of the Doctor's TARDIS. After suggesting that the physician would appear again, she vanished.

She next appeared to Wilfred on Christmas Day, appearing on television during the Queen's Christmas speech. Only Wilf could see her. The Woman told Wilf that he needed to take up arms and that the Tenth Doctor's life could still be saved. Before vanishing again, she warned Wilf not to tell the Doctor anything she had said to him.

She once more appeared to Wilf on the Vinvocci's spaceship. She told him that this was the Doctor's final battle, and he had to take up arms. He asked her who she was, but she replied that she was lost, and vanished once more.

At Donna Noble and Shaun Temple's wedding some time later, which the Doctor observed from a distance, Wilfred asked him who the Woman was. The Doctor chose not to reply. (TV: The End of Time)

Behind the scenes

• In the final script, the identity of the Woman is not revealed. In a March 2009 email reprinted in Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale - The Final Chapter, on pages 622-623, Russell T Davies states that he created the character as the Doctor's mother and that this is what actress Claire Bloom was told when she was cast. During filming, newspapers The Daily Mail and The Daily Telegraph announced that Claire Bloom would be portraying the Doctor's mother.
• In Davies' script, when Wilf asks the Doctor, "That woman. Who was she?", the stage direction reads: "The Doctor just looks. At Wilf. At Sylvia. At Donna, in the distance. Friends, mothers, brides. He's not saying."
• However, Davies has acknowledged that the character could be interpreted as any trustworthy Time Lady like Susan Foreman, Susan's mother (the Doctor's daughter or daughter-in-law), Romana, "or even the Rani".
• The Tenth Doctor Sourcebook puts forward the White Guardian as a potential candidate for the Woman's identity.
• The piece "The Doctor's Theme" plays in the scene where she reveals her face to the Tenth Doctor. This piece was occasionally referred to in jest by the producers as "Flavia's Theme". Flavia was a Time Lady, and a Chancellor.
• Julie Gardner was of the opinion that the Woman was the Doctor's mother, but admitted there was enough ambiguity to allow other interpretations. Davies generally refused to be drawn in by Gardner's comparative certainty about the Woman's identity. (PCOM: The End of Time, Part 2)
• Philip Purser-Hallard theorised on Twitter that the Woman could actually be the Doctor's father.
• Steven Moffat has said that he leaves it to Whovians to decide whether they want her to be the Woman from Hell Bent, as well as the Doctor's mother.