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Doctor Who fans think they might have cracked one of the biggest mysteries of Ncuti Gatwa’s run as the Time Lord so far.
Gatwa’s second season of the BBC sci-fi classic has seen Mrs Flood, played by EastEnders alum Anita Dobson, pop up all over the shop with each new episode, much like Susan Twist’s character, Susan Triad.
Dobson’s character made her debut in the Christmas special The Church on Ruby Road, as Ruby Sunday’s fairly nosey gilet-clad neighbour, who was prone to some very sinister breaking of the fourth wall.
The show has yet to unpack the mystery box to reveal who exactly she is, with all signs pointing to Mrs Flood having some bearing on the season’s overarching villain.
But fans now think they might have cracked Russell T Davies’ storytelling scheme and, in classic Davies fashion, it involves an anagram.
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Sharing their theory on X, @WhovianLife pointed to the moment Belinda (Varada Sethu) quibbled over her title in The Robot Revolution as a potentially crucial one.
They wrote: ‘So Alan made a big deal of insisting about Belinda being a Miss because she’s not married. Bc if she was married, she’d be a Mrs. And who do we know that is a Mrs?
‘We’ve been thinking about who Mrs Flood is. But maybe her husband’s important. Who’s she married to??’
@CallumGreen5 then commented with their own smoking gun clue to back up the theory, writing ‘Oh my god’ alongside a screengrab which said ‘misterflood’ is an anagram of ‘Lords of Time’.
The theory was also shared on Reddit, where @spacey_a commented: ‘This is exactly the kind of wordplay with anagrams that RTD absolutely LOVES to do. I’m accepting this theory as headcanon until the show proves otherwise.’
Others thought this could mean Mrs Flood is an incarnation of River Song, the Doctor’s wife, with @WorldWatcher69 posting on Reddit: ‘I still think it has something to do with the Ponds. River, Pond, Flood?’
Who is River?
Metro’s Senior TV Reporter Rebecca Cook gives the lowdown on the mysterious character…
Much like the Doctor himself, River Song is a storied character with a long and winding history. We first met her during David Tennant’s tenure, when she appeared as an echo, but we didn’t yet know who exactly she would turn out to be…
She reappeared alongside Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor, initially as his platonic companion, before love bloomed and the pair married.
Born Melody Pond, we later learned she was the child of the Doctor’s previous companions Amy and Rory. Given that she was conceived aboard the good ship Tardis while in a time vortex, Melody/River has some timey-wimey powers.
River was last seen during Peter Capaldi’s tenure, when she was played by Alex Kingston, and they spent a very, very long (24 years) night together.
The show went on to cast younger actors to play River and fill in her backstory, so there’s every possibility she could be an older incarnation now in Mrs Flood.
The theory would make sense of Mrs Flood’s familiarity with the Tardis and references to the Doctor’s family and children.
Yet, some have questioned whether it would make sense for Mrs Flood to be the Doctor’s wife, given that she seems to have grim intentions. @jtuck044 wrote: ‘Yeah, but she seems to be acting against the Doctor, or setting up people to act against him, which is not River.’
Other fans were less than thrilled about the theory, if it turns out to be correct, after an underwhelming anagram explanation was used at the end of last season to reveal Sutekh.
@Hughman77 wrote: ‘Alan’s character is basically a very unsubtle point about the intersection of geek culture with misogyny (he’s a space nerd, a gamer, a sci-fi fan, etc). The line about Belinda being Miss because she isn’t married is the first hint that he’s a sexist.
‘So for that line to actually be a lore thing to tip us off that “Missus” Flood must by definition be married (to the Time Lords, I guess???)… would be so unspeakably, unhingedly stupid and awful that the show would deserve cancellation. You thought we were making a point about misogyny in sci-fan fandom? Hahahaha you idiots it was just a mystery box!’
We’ll have to wait until the finale to see who exactly is right.
Doctor Who airs on BBC One and iPlayer every Saturday.
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