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In season 6, episode 2 of Doctor Who, (Day of the Moon), we see a character that suddenly appears but is never seen again in this episode.

Amy briefly saw a woman with an eye patch looking through a small window in a door. This woman looked off-camera and said, "No, I think she's just dreaming." The window then disappeared and the incident seemed to be forgotten and was never referred to again. What was happening there?

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    @Lekarz: Note that since questions do not expire on this site, we don't accept time-sensitive questions, such as questions that are likely to be answered by the next episode. I've reformulated your question in such a way that it will still make sense years later when many more episodes have been broadcast.
    – user56
    May 5, 2011 at 18:13
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    The series seems to me to be about memory. Did this happen? Is your memory right? My suspicion is that you think you've out-smarted the Silence - but you haven't. What is real and what isn't.
    – Elizabeth
    May 5, 2011 at 20:00
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    She's credited as Frances Barber, and apparently in episode seven we get to learn who she is (someone named Kovarian). combom.co.uk/2011/05/just-doctor-who-is-eye-patch-lady.html
    – dkuntz2
    May 6, 2011 at 2:28
  • Nifty, she popped up in tonight's episode, in Amy's dream.
    – user1027
    May 8, 2011 at 4:04
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    she may be a mid wife to amy pond because she might be pregnant and the woman says everything will be fine...
    – user1806
    May 8, 2011 at 19:56

5 Answers 5

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Her name is Kovarian. (Spoilers for S6E7, A Good Man Goes To War, and the 2013 Christmas Special, The Time of the Doctor):

She is a leader of The Silence. Due to their race being forgotten by a person when they're not looking at a Silent, she's always wearing her eye-patch which is an Eye Drive, which allows her to remember them at all times. The Silence is a splinter group of The Church, who traveled back along the Doctor's personal timeline from the events of The Time of the Doctor. They sought to kill him, thus preventing him from reaching Trenzalore. They abducted Amy, because Amy was pregnant with River, who is part Time Lord (because she was conceived in the TARDIS) and thus incredibly useful to them as a weapon against the Doctor. After The Doctor and Rory rescued Amy, Kovarian absconded with baby River. She left behind a flesh duplicate of River to throw the Doctor and friends off her trail.

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  • Hindsight is a necessity when it comes to Doctor Who.
    – Omegacron
    Dec 24, 2014 at 15:43
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What is currently known, as of The Rebel Flesh (Season 6, Episode 5):

  • Amy is pregnant but it's being screwed up.
  • The little girl may have the ability to regenerate (we at least see the regeneration 'glow').
  • Amy finds a photo of herself holding a baby in the orphanage.
  • The eyepatch woman has appeared twice so far saying 'I think she's dreaming' and 'you're doing fine, stay calm'.
  • The Silence has the ability to effect memory.
  • Only Amy Pond has seen the woman.

There are several current theories, including:

  • Amy is pregnant with the 'space suit girl' and the 'eye patch woman' is some kind of futuristic midwife watching over her throughout the season.
  • The entire season is going to turn out to be a premonition dream in a mental hospital, and the 'eye patch woman' is a mental health nurse. Amy is going to wake up and realise she has seen a possible future and warn the Doctor about the space suit killer.
  • The season is a virtual reality simulation (similar to the Moon in Silence in the Library) that Amy is experiencing, and the 'eye patch woman' is just monitoring the progress.
  • She is a mental projection of a Time Lord (similar to The End of Time when "the woman" sent mental projections to Wilfred Mott in the form of a the woman in a white dress).
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  • Nice summation. I'm not too keen on the effectively "and then I woke up" theory (ie the season is just a premonition dream or simulation). But there is definitely something wrong with reality.
    – Lekarz Kto
    May 28, 2011 at 13:56
  • Well - having just seen the latest episode today it does seem that the 'eye patch woman' is some king of futuristic midwife...but not quite
    – Lekarz Kto
    May 28, 2011 at 19:31
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We don't know... yet. Our intrepid heroes also didn't pursue the child who was in the spacesuit. Nor did Amy seem to remember the picture of her holding a baby. I think it's clear that this two-parter was setting things up for future episodes.

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    I think it's clear that this two-parter was setting things up for future episodes. And this of course has been going on in all of the current series of Doctor Who, so anyone watching Series 6 should be used to it by now :-)
    – Xantec
    May 5, 2011 at 19:19
  • Haven't we seen the forgotten things before... Remember "The Silence" season 5 referenced by the vampires was in relations to Doctor Who's Tardis exploding. At the end of Season 5 Doctor Who is brought back into existence because of Amy, who had lost all her memory of the occasion if it wasn't for Song.
    – JustinKaz
    May 5, 2011 at 20:51
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    SM said that he wanted the first two episodes to serve as a prequel to every episode in the series, so she'll be showing up eventually (hopefully). Even the DW wiki doesn't have much - tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Eye_Patch_Lady
    – dkuntz2
    May 6, 2011 at 2:26
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We have two parallel worlds in collision or maybe more. Amy and parallel world Amy are "parked" in the same space, just like the ships in the Black Spot. Parallel Amy is pregnant.

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  • I bet they're not parallel worlds but that we're seeing a timeline that's going to be rewritten later in the season. The TARDIS is seeing the pregnancy from the other timeline, but is confused because the new timeline hasn't been implemented yet.
    – user1027
    May 11, 2011 at 17:25
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    Maybe the TARDIS sees signs Amy is pregnant, but can't detect a fetus because it's a Silent.
    – Tango
    May 17, 2011 at 19:53
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I think that the entire series is going to turn out to be a premonition dream in a mental hospital, and the eye patch woman is a mental health nurse. Amy is going to wake up and realise she has seen a possible future and warn the Dr about the space suit killer.

Or.. The series is a virtual reality simulation that Amy is experiencing, and the eye patch woman is just monitering the progress.

Additional- I don't think Amy is pregnant by the Dr. That would be just too low for him, but she might be pregnant by his doppeleganger (or something sci-fi-ish equivalent), and if he has a doppelganger, then that is who we might have seen killed at the start of the series.

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  • +1 for picking up the implication in the series that Amy fancies the Doctor and her daughter could be a Timelord...
    – Lekarz Kto
    May 28, 2011 at 14:57
  • Implication?! She threw herself at him so hard he almost fell out of the window!!
    – Stefan
    Jul 17, 2012 at 12:12

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