The Return Of The Wire

The lack of title quotes should have been your hint that this post is not about The Wire, HBO’s seminal television series from the early 2000s. Rather, this is about Doctor Who, because back in June or July when I no longer was blogging I made a prediction on social media and I needed to get it down here for posterity, before the show returns.

Back in 2006, the show aired the episode “The Idiot’s Lantern”, in which an extraterrestrial criminal calling herself the Wire stole the essences of the television-watching public and was seen in direct conversation with various characters through an image of unknown origin appearing on television screens.

Let’s cut to the chase.

Yes, Mrs. Flood is the Wire.

Over the course of the premiere season for Ncuti Gatwa’s fifteenth Doctor, speculation continued as to the identity of nature of Mrs. Flood, neighbor to Ruby Sunday and a character who more than once broke the fourth wall and addressed the Doctor Who audience directly. For me, this is the tell.

She isn’t the Rani. She isn’t River Song. She isn’t any other former companion, a theory mostly prompted by the character appearing in clothes resembling Romana’s, Rory’s, and Clara’s. Those costuming choices, I believe, are deliberate “meta” hints: after all, who better would know about all these companions if not for someone who lives inside television itself?

I do not believe that’s intended to suggest the Doctor Who storyline itself, will depict Mrs. Flood knowing that it’s a television show. It’s all just meant as breadcrumbs for us, the viewer. Breadcrumbs no one seems to have picked up.

What this means, of course, is that after trapping the Wire on a Betamax tape in 1953, the Doctor never did actually remember to go back and erase her. How she escaped, and what her plan today possibly could be, is yet to be revealed.

Unless they intend to string us along, we’ll find out sometime in 2025 when Doctor Who returns.

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Addenda

1. During the week before the Christmas special, I finished up my full (modern-era) Doctor Who rewatch, and there are a couple of things worth mentioning.

   Near the beginning of “The Legend of Ruby Sunday”, just before she enters the Sunday apartment, the radio goes on the fritz. (Yes, there’s a storm coming, but I think that only gives plausible deniability to say it’s not Mrs. Flood causing the static.) She says, “Anything I can do to help. It’s nice for me to get out. I’m always hiding myself away.” Shortly thereafter is the second time in the series that she looks directly into the camera.

   It’s worth noting, too, that this entire episode hinges around a videotape, an instance of which item being where the Doctor trapped The Wire at the end of “The Idiot’s Lantern”.

   Finally, at the very end of “Empire of Death”, Mrs. Flood literally gives the closing narration, leading into her third breaking of the fourth wall.

   I don’t expect “Joy to the World” to bring us anything more or new about Mrs. Flood. It’ll be up to next season to reveal the return of The Wire.

2. After watching this year’s Christmas special, I remembered something I hadn’t noted here. In addition to the first season of Fifteen ending with a story prompted by a videotape, the first appearance of Fifteen is in “The Giggle”, a story centered around a hidden signal that’s been within all of television since the very first successful broadcast.

   Mrs. Flood doesn’t appear until the season properly begins after “The Giggle”, raising the possibility that she owes her corporeal existence to that hidden signal in all of television—which of necessity, of course, would have been present in 1957 as The Wire attempted to corporealize—finally being linked worldwide via satellite network.

   (I am suggesting, although somewhat less surely than I am that Mrs. Flood is The Wire, that Mrs. Flood perhaps did not exist until that global signal in “The Giggle”, even though that would mean she appeared with the world believing she’d been there all along.)

   At the very least, I think events of “The Giggle” and “The Legend of Ruby Sunday” are meant to evoke The Wire even if they aren’t necessarily meant to directly implicate her. Even the manifestation of Susan Triad as a Vellengard ambulance display visually evokes The Wire in “The Idiot’s Lantern”.

   What sent me needing to add this second addendum is an image from the teaser video for the new season, wherein an animated character climbs into three-dimensional space from a movie theater screen. Again: I don’t mean to suggest this implicates The Wire, but I do believe it is meant to evoke The Wire, and that Davies deliberately has been evoking her in various ways since the beginning.

3. Early in January 2025, I finally got around to watching Mrs. Flood’s appearance at BBC Proms. Naturally, these appearances hardly count as canon, although given my theory that Mrs. Flood is The Wire you certainly have to take a look. For my money, the appearance supports the theory, due to one line of dialogue:

   You know, sometimes I hear whispers on the breeze, telling me stories.

   What are the electromagnetic waves of television if not “whispers on the breeze”?

4. So, it’s March 2025 and the new trailer for next season dropped, and I’m pretty sure that another fan theory is correct, and that Mrs. Flood is the God of Stories.

   However, I believe I also am correct, meaning that The Wire turns out to be the God of Stories. If she’s not the God of Stories, then the trailer is a deliberate takeout. Mrs. Flood proclaims, “I love a good show.” Someone says to there Doctor, “Tell a story.” Even if she’s not the God of Stories, I’d argue these still point to The Wire.