Doctor Who Series 9 / WMG

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Confirmed

Missy will be back.

Goes without saying now The Master has been reintroduced. Joker Immunity applies.

Possibly already confirmed by Michelle Gomez. The wording is slightly ambiguous, but it seems she'll be back.
- Oh, please be a buildup for a multiple-Master special, please PLEASE be buildup for a multiple-Master special...
  - Confirmed.
- By the way, that multi-Master story? Also confirmed — for series 10.

The question of how the Twelfth Doctor really got his face will be answered.

Even after discovering the true nature of his character, the Doctor is still on a quest to understand the Hidden Depths of his regeneration.

This looks to be key to the plot of "The Girl Who Died".

Clara won't be in all of Series 9

That was just another one of Moffat's lies. The 'Apprentice' part of the title of the first episode could very well relate to Clara showing someone like Shona the ropes, before moving on with her life (or waking up as an old woman again - because there was some indication that Clara wanted to continue her dream of travelling with the Doctor and that's why she became young again. It was just a deeper dream).

Although she's in all the stories through "Face the Raven", "Heaven Sent", the first half of the finale, looks to only have the Doctor as a character...could her demise trigger the events of "Hell Bent"? (Confirmed! She dies in "Face the Raven".)

The finale two-parter "Heaven Sent" / "Hell Bent" will have — and keep in mind that "Heaven Sent" looks to feature only the Doctor onscreen —

Gallifrey returning, and/or it will be set there.
- Confirmed! The Doctor returns to Gallifrey in "Hell Bent" and "Heaven Sent" depicts how he gets there!
Davros returning.
- This would nicely bookend the season premiere, as it turns out.
The Metacrisis as the villain.
The creation of the Valeyard.
- This could explain how Peter Capaldi is one of only two cast members announced for "Heaven Sent": Perhaps they've decided to go with an Evil Twin approach to the Valeyard. And as noted above, the Valeyard is the only big classic villain left for a finale that won't risk retreading last year's — or this year's opening story for that matter. And now that we know Gallifrey and the Time Lords are back for "Hell Bent", and the Doctor's getting to the Despair Event Horizon...
The Dalek Time Controller.
A previous Doctor (8?).
Fenric.
Two Masters.
Rassilon.
Omega.
The Other.
- As noted below, this might be what the "Doctor's confession" story arc is all about — at last, he will be revealed to be the Other.
A solving of the plotline about Caecilius and John Frobisher and Twelve all having the same face.
- This was addressed in "The Girl Who Died" instead.
A Super Who Lock crossover (Supernatural + Sherlock + Doctor Who)
MLP toys or references to Doctor Whooves and Derpy Hooves.
The Doctor fighting Daleks and Cybermen.
- The season finale has been announced to be, storywise, huge but a complete 180 from that of Series 8 tonally, and that had Cybermen; we've already had a Dalek story with the season premiere, so while this concept is workable, the scale and scope of it might have to be really amped up. And keep in mind that whomever the big villain(s) is/are, they won't have an onscreen role in the first half of this two-parter. The confirmation that the Doctor is on the opposite side of the Time Lords in "Hell Bent" suggests Daleks and Cybermen won't be on the menu this year, but Daleks may turn up anyway.
Clara's death.
- Well, she doesn't look to be in the Christmas special...
- Alternatively, she will Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence.
- Or she'll leave under other circumstances.
- Or the Doctor will drop her off in Aberdeen and assure her she's in South Croyden.
- Jossed: She died in "Face the Raven", though she will have at least one scene in "Hell Bent" to cap things off.
Twelve's regeneration into Thirteenth.
- Jossed: Twelve is in the Christmas special and Series 10.
River Song.
- Jossed: She's meeting Twelve in the Christmas special instead. Will she be comforting the virtual widower?
Idris/human/projection TARDIS.
The Paternoster Gang.
Tasha Lem.
The return of Jenny (the Doctor's Daughter).
The Rani.
Ian Chesterton cameo.
Susan Foreman's return (and possible regeneration).
Romana III.
The child of Clara and Danny is born.
- Probably jossed, as both have been Killed Off for Real as of "Face the Raven".
Tegan Jovanka returns.
Adric gets revived. (Maybe by Nyssa? Or something. Or maybe we see his ghost.)
We see a revived/ghost of Danny instead.
- The Doctor Who Magazine comics ran a story with a fake Danny ghost shortly before Series 9 began.
New companion on the TARDIS.
- Jossed; wait for Series 10.
Courtney exits the TARDIS, instead.
- Unlikely in that she has virtually nothing to do in Series 9.
A regeneration — but not the Doctor's!
- Confirmed. It was the General's.
Multi-companion episode.
- As Part One is a solo turn for the Twelfth Doctor and Clara's been his only companion so far, having multiple companions in Part Two would mean giving up waaaaaay too much screen time to give them their due as they get to know Twelve. The Doctor returning to Gallifrey at last and having a breakdown, The Reveal of the identity of the Hybrid, and Clara's final farewell is really enough plot for one episode. However, this would be a good premise for the Christmas episode, which is already bringing back River Song.
Nyssa and Tegan's wedding.
A wedding in general.
A birth (be it the Doctor, a companion, etc.)
A death.
UNIT vs Torchwood.
Sarah Jane's teenage crew.
Canonized EU stuff.
William Russell playing someone who is not Ian. (If Jacqueline Hill can play Lexa...)
Clara as a/the villain, because...
- As a result of traveling with the Doctor for so long and adopting his less-admirable qualities, not helped by her echoes' familiarity with large swaths of his timeline, she's mad with power.
- She becomes or already is the Hybrid of the Gallifreyan prophecy — partly a human who has many of the qualities of a Time Lord, owing to her travels with the Doctor, and partly a Dalek. She was hooked up to a Dalek for an extended period of time in "The Witch's Familiar", after all, and would have presumably absorbed some of the Doctor's regeneration energy in the climax. (More on this below with regard to Missy's part of all this.)

Maisie Williams' character will be...

A Time Traveller, like a rogue Time Agent.
Another escaped Time Lord.
Someone who is given immortality, like Sebastian Grayle or Sato Katsura.
- Confirmed!
Someone resurrected by Odin.
Susan Foreman.
Jenny (Doctor's Daughter).
The Rani!
The Corsair.
Romana.
A member of the Deca (That's Drax, Jelpax, Magnus/War Chief, Millennia, Mortimus/The Monk, Rallon, and Vansell, if you don't include Rani, Doctor, and Master/Mistress.)
A relative of the Doctor's Gallifreyan family/loom (Lungbarrow?)
Borusa.
An all-new character from a species/planet we've never seen before! (GASP! Just like over half of the guest stars in the series!)
A Time Lord/Lady we've seen before but is not one of those above.
River Song.
River and Eleven's daughter. (she looks a bit like Matt)
A future incarnation of the Doctor.
The next companion after Clara.
Rose and Ten-Too's daughter. (She also looks a bit like Billie...)
The younger sister/relative of either Clara or one of her echos.
A mutant echo Clara.
K-9's voice.
The spirit of the TARDIS (or somehow connected to it).
An younger version of Sarah Jane Smith. Or another of her adoptive gang.
One of Jack's many, many children around the world.
The girl who gets cyberconverted, and then the cyberman head gets sliced off and becomes Handles.
Tegan Jovanka's adoptive daughter (and eventually also Nyssa's. Maybe?)
Ace, who became a Timelord after all, and has since regenerated.
Evelyn Smythe in her younger days.
The Moment.
Future incarnation of the Doctor.
An humanoid Tracer, like Abby or Zara.
Another piece of humanoid Gallifreyan magitek. (Including the Eye of Harmony and the various XY's of Rassilon)
Gallifrey personified.
A ghost!
TWINS. Or clones. Or well, double-characters played by the same actress.
A Canon Immigrant from the EU.
A member of the Lethbridge-Stewart family or else, relation to Three's UNIT gang.
Someone whose first name is Not and last name is Clara.
Arya Stark who just switched universes!
The police(wo?)man we see at the very start of An Unearthly Child, or somehow related to him (her?).
Donna Noble, who regenerated due to having part of the Tenth Doctor within her.
Kamelion and/or Frobisher, shapeshifted.
Susan's mother or grandmother.
Derpy Hooves as an human.
Someone who ends up KILLING Clara.
Someone who ends up the cause of the Doctor regenerating into Thirteen.
Vastra and Jenny's adoptive child.
An expy of a character from another franchise or even from Classic Who or Big Finish.
The Valeyard!
The White Guardian.
The Black Guardian.
The Rainbow Guardian.
The Translucent Guardian.
Any of the Guardians of Time.
The Doctor's name. (Not that the Doctor and Maisie have the same name, but that the Doctor's name happens to be a person, not a word.)
Relation to Ms. Delphox or Madame Karabraxos in general.
Sarah Jane Smith herself. When the Trickster found her, it turned her into a... "special" human of sorts. The Trickster did that to ensure he'd have a rival through space-time, a sort-of earthly counterpart. It's not humans in general (Leela, Tegan, Peri, Mel, Ace, Clara...) that cannot go to Gallifrey. It's just some people, including Sarah Jane Smith. That's because she'd discover her secret to the point of meta-exploding in five dimensions (or basically won't survive there in that body). So yeah, Sarah Jane has some ultra-human abilities. These include a special form of regeneration. Basically, SJS changed her body and we learn in which way she is special.
Leela. She was on Gallifrey for a while so she might have become a timelady and regenerated. Of course Louise Jameson is still alive so she enters as Louise and regenerates partway.
Leela and Andred's own child.
Romana's child.
She was a companion/grows up to be a companion in one of the Doctor's past selves, but we haven't actually seen or heard her.
The Whoniverse's newest local Mary Sue.
- If we want a Mary Sue, just Rose is necessary.
- If she's not available there's always Miss I can fly the TARDIS better then the Doctor River Song.
Iris Wildthyme, or a similiar 4thwall-breaky charachter.
A character from a Show Within a Show. She exits Claras' or whoever's TV and befriends the Doctor and Clara.
A child/grandchild/descendant of a couple from the Classic series, like Ian x Barbara or Polly x Ben.
A character on the trans* spectrum, or a cross-cast role.
A girl with an illness that the Doctor plus Clara end up curing. Or who they end up babysitting, or just meeting (in a relax/vacation-ish episode) and befriending for a day, even.
A friend of Courtney.
The person who will help Courtney become US president.
Barbara Wright (Maisie does have quite a bit of resemblance to Jackie Hill...)
- Or alternatively, Lexa of Tigella. (Meglos) Or BOTH!
Someone who the Doctor is helping so she'll take his place once he has no regenerations left and dies for good.
A party-crasher at Nyssa and Tegan's wedding.
A second "Impossible Girl".
The Bad Wolf. As in, the ORIGINAL Bad Wolf meta-TARDIS entity before Rose became such.
A sim of Arya Stark that Shona made on The Sims 4 (or TS 3, TS 5, whatever) who broke the fourth (and fifth?) walls and became real.
Danny Pink's ex-girlfriend and the ancestor of Orson Pink.
Nyssa. (Yes, the 5th Doctor's Trakenite science "princess" companion. Just look: http://www.tv.com/shows/doctor-who-2005/ Does'nt the girl remind you of her?)
The Moment.
The Terrible Zodin.
She's a relation of someone who look William Russell but is not Ian.
All of the above.
None of the above.
- Bad Wolf? Bad Direwolf?
The Master's Daughter

Ingrid Oliver was confirmed to return as Osgood in a two-parter featuring the Zygons.

Its known that there were two Osgoods as of Day of the Doctor: The real and the Zygon. This brings up the question of whether Missy murdered the real Osgood or the Zygon. When considering the fact that the murdered Osgood was slightly more assertive, one may think it was the Zygon all along. Or it could all just be a red herring to throw the viewers off and there will be a a completely different explanation. But it just seems too obvious.
- Indeed, one Osgood survived, but she never reveals whether she's the original or the Zygon and doesn't intend to.

The Cool Shades the Doctor wears in the trailer are a new, permanent part of his wardrobe.

Doctor: They're sunglasses. I where sunglasses now... sunglasses are cool.
Clara: No. Don't. Just... don't.

Confirmed! They actually replace his sonic screwdriver as sonic sunglasses.

The Doctor didn't come back to kill boy Davros, but to save him

The Doctor has figured out that Davros was paranoid and constantly afraid, and thus created the Daleks, because of being abandoned by the Doctor mid-rescue — or at least it was a big part of it. The Doctor came back to kill off the "hand mines" and save the boy, and try to instill in him some hope and faith in others. Through this, he hopes to either alter the Daleks or prevent their creation.

Denying him that option is probably why Davros made sure to have Colony Sarff separate the Doctor from the TARDIS: it's a way to force Twelve into a corner, where simply taking young Davros away from Skaro to grow up on some peaceful low-tech world where he can't invent the Daleks isn't an option.
- But who says that the Doctor has to take the boy off of Skaro to instill hope and faith? If anything, the Doctor can prove his points better in the midst of the war, and he already knows the TARDIS is not an option, so...
- Or maybe the Doctor trying to save Davros will make things even worse so he will be forced to leave him.
- Or maybe whatever method the Doctor used to get there will either be able to transport the Doctor and Young Davros together, or only be able to save Young Davros, who will escape knowing the Doctor sacrificed himself to save him.
Confirmed in 'The Witch's Familiar' - he does it to show kidDavros the quality of mercy in the hope that it will be passed on to the Daleks

Clara is going to die in "Face the Raven".

...and "Hell Bent" refers to the Doctor getting revenge and/or trying to get her back after suffering alone in "Heaven Sent", which features only him and a monster of the week as characters.

It bookends with the opening two episodes, where we had a "Clara dies" fake-out, and the Doctor loses it. Plus, look at the evidence, especially in "Before the Flood". There's a whole conversation between Clara and the Doctor about accepting death, and then at the end there's the line about "tell her you love her, because if you don't you might not get the chance." The Doctor also admits it felt like "the longest month of my life" when he briefly had reason to believe she was dead in "The Zygon Inversion".

Also, in Series and 9, there's a recurring motif of Clara becoming the Doctor. He confronts her about it in "Under the Lake" by basically saying there can only be one him, and if she tries to be him it might not end well. Similarly, in "The Girl Who Died" there's more talk about the inevitability of death, the Doctor worrying about Clara becoming too much like him/a warrior, how sometimes you meet someone that you can't stand to lose, and how the Doctor "can do anything, he's just not supposed to". Ashildr/Me warns him "She'll blow away like smoke" in "The Woman Who Lived".

Finally, we haven't seen a regular companion die yet in the new series. We've seen one get trapped in an alternate dimension, a couple leave but continue to fight, one get kicked out, one lose her memories, and two whisked away to another time (and ultimately their death), but never die in battle. It's due.

Also — in the wake of the events of "The Girl Who Died"/"The Woman Who Lived", in which saving someone from death's door had a tragic downside, the Doctor might be leery of trying to get Clara back outright...or would he be?
The Doctor Who Magazine preview suggests that "Hell Bent" is indeed about what happens when the Doctor is finally at the Despair Event Horizon, as he becomes maddened and angered by something with no one to hold him back from possibly becoming a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds...
Confirmed. She dies in "Face the Raven" and "Heaven Sent"/"Hell Bent" deals with the fallout of this event on the Doctor's actions.

"The Girl Who Died" will end with Ashildr being resurrected

Confirmed.

In "The Woman who Lived" the Doctor will reference...

...Jack or Rory.
- Correct! (Jack)

The big shock in "Face the Raven", leading into the finale two-parter, will be...

Collected from Tumblr and elsewhere. Some of the following possibilities may overlap; the ones in bold are the most likely.

Clara's death via:
- A Heroic Sacrifice to take Rigsy's death sentence upon herself — the other candidates to do so are the immortal Ashildr and the multi-lived Doctor, who may not be able to step up to the plate because they wouldn't die for good. It would also be a natural conclusion to the Series 8-9 theme of Clara effectively becoming the Doctor — giving up her life for Rigsy, who was a sort of companion in "Flatline". In any case, the trailers go out of their way to suggest this is exactly what happens, but Never Trust a Trailer until the episode's aired!
  - Confirmed.
- Or the Doctor volunteers, and she pretends to accept this only to step into his place at the very last moment. There's a vice versa version of this, however — keep reading.
- A motorcycle accident, fitting in with the mundane demises of her mum and Danny.
- Ashildr killing her out of jealousy.
Missy turning out to be behind the whole business. It's a trap street after all, and as she witnessed the events of "Flatline" from afar, she would know how to set up a trap involving an unsuspecting Rigsy. Michelle Gomez isn't in the released cast list for this episode, but maybe that's to hide the surprise?
The reveal that Clara and Ashildr are related (see above).
The reveal that Clara and Missy are related (also see above).
Clara willingly leaving the Doctor on friendly or unfriendly terms, setting up a return in his hour of need in "Hell Bent".
The Doctor's death (which will be temporary, and explained in the finale), via:
- Taking the execution of the death sentence on himself. The BBC trailer for this episode suggests that he and Clara are separated when she decides "Let me be brave"; they say their goodbyes — and fans already know she isn't in "Heaven Sent". But the Doctor can't bear the prospect of their separation/her death, however eventual it may be, and his character arc this season involves his desperate need to save anyone he can, if he can. Thus, Never Trust a Trailer — it's misdirecting viewers into thinking Clara will die. In truth he will either 1) take the sentence on himself, or 2) trick Clara into thinking he'll let her die and step into her place at the very last moment. And few whams are bigger for a Doctor Who Wham Episode than the prospect of the Doctor dying. "Heaven Sent" would thus be set in limbo, the Nethersphere, or some other shadow world. This would also tie into the issue of Clara having lost any meaning in her life not involving her adventures with the Doctor, and avoid the Stuffed into the Fridge implications her death would have.
- Missy.
- Ashildr.
- Clara.
Clara betraying the Doctor in some way, setting her up as a villain in "Hell Bent". She tried it once before and failed in "Dark Water", but who's to say she hasn't been waiting for the right moment to finally get Danny Pink back?
A huge secret about Clara being revealed, such as:
- She's a Time Lady who hid her true form with a chameleon arch and a very convincing backstory. Her raven necklace might be her version of the Tenth Doctor's pocketwatch.
- A double life (perhaps as the titular raven; see above).
- Her being a creation of the Time Lords, a way to woo the Doctor into saving Gallifrey and bringing it back into the universe. This could explain her unusually strong influence in the Doctor's life — convincing him not to activate The Moment, convincing the Time Lords to give him a new cycle of lives, surviving his timestream, etc.
- Her being the Doctor's first wife. It could be via one of her echoes or her being displaced into Gallifrey's past at some point, or perhaps she is a human reincarnation of the wife.
- Her Heroic Sacrifice going awry when she regenerates after being slain, if the possibility of her already being the Dalek-Time Lord hybrid is seen through. And if she has a different personality, she might become the villain of the finale.

Missy was behind the events of "Face the Raven"

Or it could be the Time Lords in general.
- Very likely, as the trap Ashildr sets for him involves both a lock that can only take his TARDIS key and his confession dial, and he will not be on the side of the Time Lords in "Hell Bent". (The only other characters who have any knowledge of the confession dial at all are Davros and the Daleks, and they probably don't know its actual significance.) Perhaps they hope to kill him off to find out what great secret he's been hiding for so long — or hold the threat of death over him if he doesn't give up the secret willingly. That the secret apparently involves the Hybrid suggest they're itching to restart the Time War and finish it for good. All this, of course, would be absolutely dastardly and ungrateful given that their continued existence was the Doctor's doing, but that's Time Lords for you.

In "Heaven Sent"...

...the Doctor's very first round of captivity was a lot longer than the others, possibly even requiring that copy of him to use up a number of regenerations before he cracked the Castle's secrets. After all, his first iteration wouldn't have had the clues of altered stars or "BIRD" to guide him; he had to figure it all out from scratch. It's only after he'd solved the mystery the hard way that he thought to leave a hint for his next teleportation-copy, and only after a few tens of thousands of additional iterations that the stars had moved enough to provide another clue.

Confirmed by Word of God.

The Doctor's Game Plan in "Heaven Sent" and "Hell Bent"

In "Heaven Sent", the Doctor endures two billion years of death and kills innumerable copies of himself by refusing to divulge information about the Hybrid to his Time Lord captors, because he knows the Hybrid will be Clara, once one of his transmat duplicates makes it back to Gallifrey and regenerates her into a Time Lord, in a mirror of his actions in "The Girl Who Died".

Clara's character arc has been about how much like the (Time Lord) Doctor she's becoming, and last season she was in love with a (human) soldier strong-willed enough to save the world through his love for her. Hence, she's already a "hybrid" of two powerful warrior races, of sorts. Having her be THE hybrid is the natural culmination to her character and the last few series' worth of stories. The stuff about Ashildr and the Hybrid being half-Dalek are just misdirection.
Spoiler-philes already know Clara is "alive" and working in an American diner at the start of the episode, so obviously she comes back somehow.
The Timey-Wimey nature of Moffat's plotting fits right in with the idea of the myth of the Hybrid creating itself like an ouroboros, with the Time Lords trying to stop the Doctor from creating the Hybrid, which in turn starts the chain of events that create it.
All well and good, but what does he regenerate her with? He doesn't have her body with him; the Deleted Scene from "Face the Raven" posits that it's back in London. And if he wanted to regenerate her that badly, he would have just used his own energy on her right after she died.
- The Time Lords have incredible technology; they just don't interfere with the universe unless they have to. They're able to remotely send a new set of regenerations through a crack in time in "The Time of the Doctor", but only after Clara coaxes them into it. The Doctor emulates that, to a degree, until "The Girl Who Died", wherein he decides to revive Ashildr, even though he knows it's a bad idea. Moffat has repeatedly demonstrated his penchant for long-form storytelling; anything from his tenure could turn out to be a seeded plot point for "Hell Bent" that the audience can only recognize with hindsight, which fits in with the Doctor's plan — and Missy's description of him — from "The Witch's Familiar".
Confirmed that the Doctor was trying to save Clara with Time Lord technology, but not by making her a Time Lord. Ashildr speculates that Clara and the Doctor are jointly the Hybrid, but the issue is never really settled whether it's both of them, just the Doctor, or just Ashildr, assuming it has anything to do with them at all.

The Time Lord President is Rassilon.

After The End of Time he regenerates into Donald Sumpter to heal his wounds that The Master caused.

Confirmed that he's Rassilon.

Jossed

Seven will return for an episode.

He and Twelve will try to outdo each other in Scottishness but their powers combined will save the universe!

They really should do that. To tie the final loose end of Ace's departure. I mean McCoy doesn't look all that older. Dye his hair, some wrinkle cream. He'll look more or less like himself. But I imagine, Ace goes through some sort of time vortex that ages her thirty years (to explain her actress getting older) and decides to call it quits.
- Better yet, skip the explanation and just say she's been travelling with him for decades.

The Sixth Doctor will return.

We never saw how Colin Baker looked right before he regenerated into Sylvester McCoy, so having him appear older would not really be a problem. He might even remind the Twelfth Doctor about The Valeyard.

He looked like Sylvester in a wig, of course.
You're not too far off. Around the same time as the series premiere, Colin Baker WILL be playing the Sixth Doctor for his regeneration story.

The Valeyard will appear.

They can't just name-drop him in "The Name of the Doctor," have the Twelfth Doctor wondering if he is a good man, and not have him appear!

The Valeyard could certainly tie into the Doctor's confession (i.e. why he left Gallifrey) story arc. And since this season's premiere has already seen Missy, the Daleks, and Davros cause trouble, the Cybermen were last season's endgame, the Silence and Great Intelligence as threats more or less ended with Eleven, and other Time Lords now owe the Doctor their lives and planet, at this point the only comparable antagonists for the Doctor to face in a spectacular finale would be either a gigantic villain team-up, his evil incarnation, or perhaps himself. (See below.)

Gus will return

He has already tested the Doctor once and as there was no indication it was Missy, chances are Gus is still out there.

Jossed.

Gus is the Doctor

It makes sense given that in "Time Heist", the architect turned out to be the Doctor. Why the Doctor is testing himself is uncertain but may be linked to his question about whether he's a good man or not.

Except the Architect's scheme in "Time Heist" was set up not to get a bunch of innocent people killed. Gus's mission required multiple deaths.

Rose Tyler will return

Billie Piper has said she'd like to work with Peter Capaldi. So Rose will return, if only for one or two episodes. Seeing that the Doctor has changed may finally give her the push she needs to move on with Handy.

"shudder": Hopefully not, as Moff has said something like he feels her storyline has concluded.
Not to mention she earned her happy ending. There is literally no reason why she would need to come back. Besides, 12 being all gruff as he is will not show the same level of affection that 9 and 10 did. That would DESTROY her. Then again she probably won't show affection to him because she would feel awkward dating a man who looks at least 50. BUT I would like to see just for the 10 clone to interact with Capaldi. That will be gold.
No one ever said she'd have to return alone. I'd be very interested in a special where 12 and Clara worked with Rose and Handy to stop some big threat. (Maybe two Masters?)

The Celestial Toymaker will return

We haven't seen him since 1966.

I hope so. I was quite looking forward to his return after watching the original serial. He was supposed to return in season 23's The Nightmare Fair, but the serial was cancelled and released later as a novel and two audio adaptations.
This is the exact reason I came on here, the first episode of the series is "The Magician's Apprentice"; for some reason that just screams "Celestial Toymaker will return" and I never even saw that serial (being lost of course), I just have a feeling...

Craig Ferguson will portray the Twelfth Doctor's companion.

They were, after all, good friends in real life. And it would be a nice change for The Doctor to have an older male companion.

Geoff Peterson will appear as a Cyberman.

Because that would be hilarious.

"You will be upgraded. In your pants. Balls."

A new companion will join the TARDIS team.

Regardless of whether Clara is actually leaving at Christmas, it seems we may be getting a new companion at the start of Series 9. The first story's title is reportedly The Magician's Apprentice. Twelve once referred to himself as looking like a magician, so taking on an "apprentice" would be akin to taking on a new traveler. May hint toward a more student-teacher relationship like Four and Leela than the more traditional friendship we've seen with Clara.

If this happens, it won't be that early. The second episode is called "The Witch's Familiar", and with the confirmation that Missy's returning the titles refer to Clara's relationships to the Doctor and Missy respectively — so that will be the focus of the episodes, not a new character.
Jossed; no new companion(s) until Series 10.

All of Series 9 will be a dream.

Just watch "Last Christmas." I would be surprised if this did not end up being the case.

Santa knows where Gallifrey is and will return to help the Doctor find it in a future Christmas special

At the end of "Last Christmas", when everyone got into the sleigh, Santa told them that he knew everyone's address. Which means he may know where Gallifrey is. After all, Santa knows when children move house, even if it happens right before Christmas, so he's bound to know when planets move dimensions/universes.

Jossed; the Doctor returns to Gallifrey in the Series 9 finale.

An Elf being called Wolf is foreshadowing...

But for Fenric.

To celebrate ten years of "Nu-Who"...

Twelve will have a "near-regeneration" experience and be coaxed into surviving by visions of Nine, Ten, and Eleven, ala Eight in Zagreus.

The idea of a "near-regeneration" may turn out to be the premise of "Heaven Sent", just without the other Doctors appearing.

Jack Harkness will return

Similar to how he returned in the series 3 Master Arc, he'll become a companion for a few episodes, or more. But 12 openly admits he doesn't like people flirting in the TARDIS, though he tries to endure it for the sake of their friendship. Jack will realize The Doctor changed way too much and leaves for the final time. But The Doctor does assure him before he steps out of the TARDIS that the immortality will wear off someday. But doesn't say when, nor does he say what he becomes.

Jossed, although he is mentioned in "The Woman Who Lived".

The Doctor will reconsider and come back for Journey Blue

Due to the events in "Death In Heaven" he feels he owes it to Danny and The Brigadier to hold back his prejudice and let a soldier become a companion. (Though maybe not, as I think his issue isn't just that they're killers, but that being around soldiers for too long would reopen memories of the Time War and relapse shell-shock.)

The Doctor has been dreaming - because of the dream crabs - since the events of "Listen"

In "Listen" the word 'listen' appeared on the blackboard and the Doctor doesn't know how it got there. In "Last Christmas", words appeared on blackboards in Clara's dream about Danny Pink, telling her she was dying. She doesn't know how they got there (though we know it was the Doctor trying to reach her). So in "Listen" the Doctor (and perhaps Clara) are both dreaming and the blackboard message was a means of trying to reach them and let them know the dream crabs had got them. Who left the message, I don't know, but it could be whatever the Doctor found at the end of the universe. Leading to....

The Doctor switched with another Doctor at the end of the universe in "Listen"

There were times when Clara couldn't see what was happening on the screen, at which time the switch could have been made. It may be a later version of the Doctor, who knows what happens, and so has gone back to try and put things right.

If the bulk of Season Eight is an extended dream caused by the Dream Crabs as suggested above...

Then the point where the Doctor and Clara were hit with the dream crabs was shortly after "Into the Dalek". This would explain why Robin Hood in "Robot of Sherwood" so closely resembled Errol Flynn. This would also explain the bizarre (even by Doctor Who standards) science behind "Kill the Moon" and "In the Forest of the Night". Also, Missy is not the Master, but a manifestation of the Dream Lord.

The Doctor will have to choose between Missy and River or Missy and Jack

In the brief preview of Missy's return, she appears to be wearing a 'time jump' wristband (sorry the actual name escapes this troper at the moment) similar to River and Jack's. So she may have got it off one of them. The Doctor will have to take her on, but she will endanger River or Jack's life and he'll have to choose whether to save one of them or her. Alternatively...

The Doctor will need to reassemble the Key to Time (again) in order to find the Time Lords

He and Clara will run around all over time and space for an entire arc to retrieve its fragments.

As much as I love that idea I doubt it would work with the new template of the series.

Series 9 will feature a Team Power Walk with the Doctor (Capaldi), the Master (Gomez), and Rassilon (Dalton)

And the sheer awesome will destroy your screen.

The Zygon two-parter will be set before "Death in Heaven"

Hence Osgood's presence, and 12 will have a dilemma whether to avert her death. The episode may end with a call from Missy.
- The synopsis for the episodes makes it pretty clear that this isn't the case, explicitly referring to Osgood as dead. Whether she's really alive somehow or is a clone is another question.

Missy is infact "not" the Master

Missy may not be The Master at all. I see two possibilities, 1) she "thinks" she is but is in fact an Opposite-Sex Clone (like the Doctor's daughter Jenny). One he created before getting trapped in the Time War along with the other Time Lords. Or 2) she knew exactly what she was and just wanted to mess with the Doctor's head, because she's that much of a jerkass.

Tegan Jovanka will return at the end of Season 9...

Just in time to get acquainted with the Doctor again, and to confess her love for Nyssa to him.Tegan/Nyssa becomes canon, and maybe they even marry up. And/or get a spinoff together. Maybe they even revive Adric somehow. Maybe. Just some of the things who could happen then.

Missy/The Master will accompany The Doctor over several stories (although maybe not consecutively) like River OR will be behind the scenes affecting every episode, similar to the Original Master in Season 8

Michelle Gomez appeared at Comic-Con alongside Peter and Clara... now why would a guest actress who is allegedly appearing in only 2 stories be given such prominence in the promotion of the series? Previous Masters such as John Simm never accompanied the respective Doctors to such a large promotional event.

We will see how the Master regenerated into Missy

The actress who played the head of the Sisterhood of Karn from Night of the Doctor has been confirmed to return. And given that Missy is returning it is very likely we will get the as-yet untold story of how the Master became Missy. There will likely be a flashback explaining how the Master somehow managed to escape Gallifrey before the end of the Time War and went to Karn, either because he needed their regenerative potions to regenerate (his current incarnation having decayed and mutated irreparably after his resurrection in The End of Time), or because he wanted to regenerate into a woman (perhaps to make him harder to be identified by the Doctor or others). He somehow manages to convince/trick/coerce the Sisterhood into helping him regenerate into Missy. This will thus be the first cross-gender regeneration depicted in Doctor Who history!

The trailers seem to confirm this, as they seem to show Karn and the Sisterhood, with a figure who looks like the Master from the Classic series.

There will be emphasis on beings of myth

Hence Odin, a dragon-creature (Jormungand?), and a fire-breathing lion (Chimera?). Also the Fisher King, even if it doesn't look like it has much in common with the Fisher King.
- The lion-creature is also shown sitting in a carriage, looking rather Beauty and the Beast-ish.

Missy tries to trick the Doctor into changing Dalek history

All the different Daleks in the trailers aren't there by choice.

There are so many kinds present, from so many eras of the show's history, because something more powerful has been collecting Daleks for some purpose, and intentionally acquired one of every type. Possibly it's Davros and/or one of the Dalek leaders, seeking to determine which variant is legitimately the most "superior" by having them engage in a competition. This would (naturally) require them to overcome the only challenge Daleks recognize: the Doctor.

Jossed. The episode is set in Skaro, hence the different types of Daleks present.

Morbius will reappear

Because the Sisterhood of Karn are re-appearing and the figure in the trailer looked like he was made of different bits.

The whole series will be 'Clara's Dream'

Now it's been reported that Jenna Coleman is leaving at the end of this series, before the next Xmas special, it's possible that this whole series could be Clara's dream. She really is an elderly lady, as seen at the end of "Last Christmas", reliving her time with the doctor. She will only let go when she realises that it will kill the Doctor if she allows the dream crabs to remain.

We'll see Clara's "previous visit" to UNIT headquarters.

Those photos on the Black Archive bulletin board from "Day of the Doctor" had to have been taken at some point in Clara's future, and it would account for Osgood's re-appearance if, at some point in the season, Clara pays a visit to UNIT a few years before the National Gallery incident.

Wasn't the joke that Clara had been there but they wiped her memory of the visit?
- Yes, that was the joke - Clara's 'previous visit' would've been during her weekly travels with the Eleventh Doctor.

Davros's

Snake-Assistant is the Mara.

Now the only question is what does it want with Davros, and why is it working with him?
- This troper got the impression that Colony Sarff is just a Dalek Puppet, given the Doctor's friend Bors spontaneously became one himself after getting bitten. A puppet looking for the Doctor is less likely to draw suspicion than a Dalek screaming at people.
- Or maybe he is just something like a mercenary.
- Considering snakes - even alien ones - aren't likely to come with humanoid eyes, noses or mouths on their sides, Davros may have made Colony Sarff via genetic or surgical alteration. Certainly several people recognize him by name when he's looking for the Doctor, suggesting he's a unique individual rather than part of a gestalt-snake-person civilization somewhere.

The Doctor's next companion will be Young Davros

.He'll not only save him from the hand mines, he'll offer a free trip to see the wonders of the universe!

What better way to inspire wonder and hope in a young man, than to show him all the fantastic and amazing things out there? We could end up with Kinder and Gentler Daleks!
Or, on the other hand, if they're not so lucky, it could backfire spectacularly if he sees the wrong things, and, like Tegan Jovanka, ends up burned out and shell-shocked enough to end up just as bad, if not worse....
Or, having taken young Davros under his wing, he could end up discovering that Davros was actually born a clinical psychopath devoid of any capacity for conscience or empathy, hence would have become a Dalek-building megalomaniac no matter what the Doctor had done at the hand-mine field. Which would, admittedly, be terribly grim even for a Davros story, but at least would exonerate the Doctor from thinking he had any part in making him that way.

The Doctor will succeed in helping Young Davros escape the hand mines and become a happy, well-adjusted kid

This will end up changing time so that the Daleks never existed, but the Time Lords still became corrupt and evil, only this time there was no opposition keeping them in check. Eventually, Davros himself will find out what happened, and will basically order the Doctor to go back and undo what he's done.

The Doctor will save Young Davros

, but it won't do a damn thing. It'll be revealed that one of the aspects of the Time Lock, and the time travel both the Daleks and Time Lords used, means that even if they change their own past directly, it won't change them at all. Davros and the Daleks will continue to exist even if he never exists because, like the Time Lords, they're powerful enough to survive in spite of the paradox. Think the "paradox machine" the Master used, only on a much larger scale

The Doctor will be forced to kill Clara.

Granted, this would probably be too dark for even the Doctor Who Expanded Universe if not handled carefully. If she becomes a villain outright in the finale (see above for possible finale plots), perhaps he'll have to pull a Mercy Kill when she repents.

The Doctor is only temporarily dead in the past ("Under the Lake"/"Before the Flood").

He'll have some sort of way to stop his hearts, and then restart them again once he's learned what he needs to. Unfortunately, he may not be able to control what his ghost does in the meantime....

He may get revived in the past, or he may be in stasis in the deadlocked box, and once Clara opens it she'll know some way to revive him, either through prior knowledge or via a note pinned to his chest. Thanks to the stasis, he'll only have been "dead" a very short time and thus be able to be revived with little or no damage.

Possible plots/plot elements for the 2015 Christmas special

The Series 10 companion is introduced!
- Currently Jossed as Steven Moffat claims the role hasn't even been cast yet, but Rule Number One...
Gallifrey is found at last if the season finale turns out to be a near-miss!
- Jossed — "Hell Bent" is partially set there.
Several past companions team up to help the grieving Doctor after the series finale. Or how about past Doctors?

There will be a "Game of Thrones" Actor Allusion with Maisie Williams

Ashildr will give the immortality 'pill' to Clara

Then they'll go off together to have adventures without the Doctor.

Unlikely, as Clara's appearing in most of the stories afterward — unless Ashildr is brought back for "Hell Bent".
- OP here. Okay, got that wrong, but it does look like she's coming back and that she's taking quite an interest in Clara.

"Heaven Sent" and "Hell Bent" will be set in the REAL afterlife.

As opposed to the Nethersphere Missy created. Given that the Doctor encounters a creature known as The Veil there, as in "beyond the veil"...

The reason the Doctor left Gallifrey in the first place will not be shown using Capaldi

Instead it will be a distinct flashback featuring David Bradley as the First Doctor. He already established himself well enough in An Adventure in Space and Time. This would also give us a chance to see Time Lord Clara and a host of familiar old series characters (most notably Susan) all at once in a natural, non-forced fashion.

The Time Lords are all trapped in Omega's antimatter dimension

We know they're outside this universe and that's a good a place as any for them to go narratively speaking. And just in general, let's see Omega again.

Wasn't that dimension obliterated in The Three Doctors though?

The creature in "The Woman Who Lived" is connected to the Tharils

The lion-like appearance, the planet seen through the gateway may be connected to the time wind ability of the Tharils.

Ashildr is interested in Clara because...

She met some of Clara's echoes over the centuries, and knows that virtually all of them perish in the process of helping the Doctor. She asks him "How many Claras?" in "The Woman Who Lived", which can easily be taken as "How many companions?" but may have been meant literally on her part.
She wants to kill and replace her as the Doctor's companion; a lot might happen to her between "The Woman Who Lived" and "Face the Raven" and jealousy can be a beastly thing...
She's Clara's mother! She faked her death before her family could realize she wasn't aging. Ashildr didn't intend to have children again after losing a brood to bubonic plague, but perhaps she changed her mind and realized with time that her child was the original Clara. Perhaps the discovery of this will be key to the finale episodes; how would Clara feel to realize her mother and her own existence was so timey-wimey?

Clara and Ashildr are half-sisters, and their mutual mother is Missy.

Ashildr has a Missing Mom in "The Girl Who Died". Who says her mum wasn't Missy, perhaps in a different female form? For that matter, who says Clara's mum wasn't Missy in a different form, again faking her death to cover her tracks?

The Osgood Box contains the gas that kills Zygons

Opening it will reveal who Osgood is.
- In any case, the gas is definitely a Chekhov's Gun — it turns them inside-out, inverting them...but in the end it's merely the claim that its in one of the boxes that's important.

The Half-human version of Ten from the alternate universe will return

The arc word is "hybrid", plus there have been a number of flashbacks, which were avoided in Series 8 and most of Eleven's run.
- He could be the hybrid and the villain the Doctor must confront in the season finale.
- As of The Zygon Invasion, three episodes have featured flashbacks to the Tenth Doctor (The Magician's Apprentice, The Girl Who Died, and The Zygon Invasion). Makes you wonder why they keep bringing him up...

The Osgood Box is The Moment

When she appears, it will not be as Bad Wolf Girl, but as the other Osgood. We may even have seen her already, helping to guide our heroes to another solution so that she won't have to be activated, just as she did in the 50th anniversary special.

Jossed, but the episode reveals that the boxes are similar in appearance to the Moment for good reason. Instead of Bad Wolf Girl, it's the Doctor who talks down those who would activate them — and they're not even activate-able anyway!

"Heaven Sent"/"Hell Bent" involves the Doctor dying and returning from the other side to arrive on Gallifrey, and how Clara saves him from the Despair Event Horizon.

While a popular assumption has been that Clara will die in "Face the Raven", and the promo material the Beeb's releasing for it practically encourages it, it will turn out that it's the Doctor at death's door when he decides he must save Clara. The setting of "Heaven Sent" is a sort of limbo. He's spent the whole season saving people from death and destruction any way he can, but now he needs a rescue — either from death itself or post-death madness. Clara has spent her tenure becoming more and more like the Doctor, so she'll be the one who does something clever to rescue him. Alas, the circumstances of the rescue will be what must separate them for good. Perhaps he will become a hybrid of living and dead; perhaps she will become human-Time Lord...

The Doctor knows who/what the Hybrid is because he encountered it in "Listen"

The official synopses of "Heaven Sent" / "Hell Bent" reveal that the Doctor knows what the Hybrid is and where it is, and also that he is afraid. Now he is in "a struggle that will take him to the end of time itself." The Doctor visited the end of time in "Listen". Only the Doctor saw whatever terror may have been beyond the door of Orson Pink's spaceship. Perhaps it wasn't the perfect hider the Doctor sought, but rather the Hybrid.

Alternatively, "Hell Bent" will involve revisiting the events of "The End of Time".

We never did find out who the mysterious woman was, for one thing. Was it Clara? An echo of her? Missy? Ashildr?

"Hell Bent" will reveal the circumstances of Twelve's presence in the climax of "The Day of the Doctor".

Perhaps in his Despair Event Horizon rage, he considers not answering the call for help from his past lives to save Gallifrey, aware that it would not only prevent his existence but perhaps destroy the entire universe, or even considers sweeping in to destroy the planet himself instead. Thankfully he has a change of hearts.

So perhaps the episode will end by 12 going to save Gallifrey. Maybe when he has finished with Clara in the cafe he will go to do so.

Alternatively, Ashildr is the Raven.

Again, it would work with the Norse mythology theme. Perhaps she's developed shapeshifting abilities since her last appearance, and helps keep the peace in the trap street?

Jossed. She does sort of control it, though.

The Rani will create a metacrisis version of herself

Not necessarily this season, but possible given the hybrid theme. When the Rani returns she will grow curious as to why the doctor seems to be missing an incarnation. This will let her discover Handy and the idea will fascinate her. She will then immediately regenerate, lop off a hand and make a clone of herself just to examine the unique properties of the hybrid.

Part of the reason the Doctor wants to find Gallifrey

To close a Stable Time Loop set in motion in The Day Of The Doctor. After all, Capaldi!Doctor joins the twelve other Doctors in time-locking Gallifrey, possibly because the calculations needed to do that haven't been finished by the time Smith!Doctor regenerates. He has been looking since the calculations were done.

Hate to say it, but it looks like we may never get to see Twelve going back to take part in the 13-TARDISes-over-Gallifrey scene. The events of "Heaven Sent"/"Hell Bent" strongly imply that it's already happened off-camera during series 8 or earlier in series 9, because Rassilon is perfectly willing to order the Doctor's execution without any concern it might undo Gallifrey's survival.

Clara Oswald is herself an echo.

Her existence is a bootstrap paradox. She only exists because she made herself exist to save the Doctor, and there was never an "original". She is, quite literally, an impossible girl. Unfortunately, it means she will share in their fate and be the final and worst sacrifice of all.

The Raven needs to kill someone...

The Doctor will try and make it kill him, but Clara will sacrifice herself for him.

Moffat will finally explain that darn "could"!

The Doctor told River, "There's only one reason I would ever tell anyone my name. There's only one time I could!" Remember, Moffat, it's only a spoiler if there actually is an explanation eventually!

Could it, perhaps, only happen during an especially intimate moment? We never did see the Doctor and River do more than kiss, it's about time they consummated things. River's dream-world after her ghost was uploaded showed her with three children, be nce if she could have one in real life! And maybe that leaves an opening for the Doctor to have more family out there even after River is gone.
Moffat stated the return of Gallifrey was plotted out from the beginning. Possibly that line was a Call-Forward to the Truth Field from "The Time of the Doctor", but the events leading up to that story were changed and Moffat's original conception bears no relationship to what he eventually wrote, save a single cryptic line in a story five years prior.

The Veil will be revealed as...

...the Doctor.
...the Valeyard (Veil-Yard).
...Missy.
...Clara, or another companion.
...a Time Lord (Rassilon?).
...the Hybrid.
...Davros.
...something connected to "The God Complex".
...a Ghost of someone, considering the theme of revival this season.
- All Jossed; the Veil is a construct that's part of the castle's workings.

Twelve will become the Valeyard, at least temporarily, in "Hell Bent".

After Clara's death, and being trapped in hell for billions of years, because of the Time Lords, the Doctor is in a very bad place, and as a result of Clara's attempt at being Morality Chain might not have taken, the Doctor will finally assume the mantle of the Valeyard. It might not last the episode, but it's a mantle he will assume to deal with the Hybrid which isn't him, but Ashildr/Me, as hinted by the final line of "Heaven Sent".
- Jossed.

Regeneration in "Hell Bent"

The Master regenerating into Missy.
Clara somehow regenerating.
The Doctor regenerating (but not changing faces...similar to Journey's End).
The Doctor regenerating in a process that creates the Valeyard.
Ashildr regenerating.
Gallifrey itself.
The (or since we're on Gallifrey, a) TARDIS?
- All Jossed; the General regenerates, because the Doctor shot him as a distraction. Although he did ask if the guy had regenerations left, first.

The Doctor will destroy Gallifrey...so it can be remade.

Basically, the only way to fix everything is to hit the Reset Button...which is on Gallifrey. Gallifrey itself will end up being remade in a hopefully nicer image.

Jossed; the Doctor and Ashildr both stand in the ruins of Gallifrey, but it's only ruined because it's in the final hours of the universe. The prophecies never stated that the Hybrid would cause the ruins, after all...

Gallifreyan Clara will "save" the Doctor one last time.

In "The Name of the Doctor", we see a Gallifreyan Clara echo who directs the First Doctor to the correct unlocked TARDIS (presumably because the Gallifreyan Great Intelligence echo opened up a sabotaged/ready-to-blow one). There's no reason to think she's not still on Gallifrey, necessarily, and as she says in that episode, she was "born to save the Doctor." So, she takes up Clara Prime's role in "Hell Bent", preventing him from going all Warrior on the Time Lords' asses (or, indeed, arses), and helps him Take a Third Option. In so doing, the Impossible Girl gets to save the Doctor one last time, and perhaps give him some small amount of closure for Clara Prime's death.

Of course, the problem with this is what happens to her at the end of the episode. Does she die to save his life? Does she regenerate? (Is she a Time Lady or an ordinary Gallifreyan? Can all Gallifreyans regenerate or only Time Lords? Was that ever established beyond fanon?) Does she refuse the call? Something else I haven't thought of?

Jossed; so far as we know, Gallifreyan Clara doesn't appear.

The Time Lord President in "Hell Bent" is the Master

Basically, after the events of "End of Time", the Master (in his John Simm incarnation) somehow manages to defeat an already weakened Rassilon, or at least escape from him. Later, he managed to regenerate (maybe with help from Ohila?) and either worked his way up into a position of authority as an influential Time Lord leader (by contributing to the rebuilding of Gallifrey after the Time War) or maybe stole the body of or regenerated into the form of an influential Time Lord leader. Eventually he becomes President. He's the one who broadcasts the 'Doctor Who' message through the crack and grants the Doctor his new regeneration cycle. He then hatches the plan to use Ashildr to lure the Doctor into a trap because he wants to find out about the Hybrid and knows that the Doctor might have answers.During the events of "Hell Bent", the Doctor will discover who the President really is and expose him. The Master, possibly injured by the end of the finale, will regenerate into a female form - Missy. Missy will then flee Gallifrey (or maybe the Doctor lets her go, to maintain the timeline) and, having seen the potential of an angry, vengeful, unrestrained Doctor, travels back earlier in his timeline and hatches the Cybermen plot. Plus, she also sets the Doctor up with Clara, knowing that Clara is important based on the events of "Hell Bent"...

Jossed.

Ashildr will somehow become a Time Lord

The regeneration will be a part of this.
- Jossed; Ashildr lives to the end of the universe the long way round. The Time Lord General regenerates because the Doctor shoots him as a distraction after asking him if he's got any regenerations left.

The Monsters seen in the Promo for "Hell Bent"...

...are part of a Time Lord program to somehow control the Hybrid, by gathering warrior races.
- Alternatively, they're part of a Doctor Mengele-esque "medical" program, to be dissected to figure out how the Hybrid could exist.
...will be used by the Doctor against the Time Lords.
- Jossed; there are a number of creatures in the Cloisters, including the creepy Cloister Wraiths.

The Clara in "Hell Bent" is...

...one of her splinters from Earth. We may get a flashback to how she saved a Doctor, maybe 11th as this is the cafe from "The Impossible Astronaut". Or it may be that 11 will enter soon after 12 leaves. The episode will begin with the Doctor telling the events of the episode to her. Perhaps he remembers encountering this Clara when he was 11.
...in the Matrix.
...in the Doctor's imagination.
...one of her splinters from Gallifrey, perhaps the one who told 1 which TARDIS to steal.
- All Jossed; she's the actual Clara, extracted from the instant before death by Time Lord technology. And see the other WMG below...

The Doctor is Rassilon's father

The Doctor is said to have run away with the President's wife, but it turns out it actually was the President's daughter. The Doctor also ran away with his granddaughter, Susan. This two women are one and the same, which means that the Doctor would either be Rassilon's father, or Rassilon's father in law, since the father in law thing is less exciting, it must be he's Rassilon's father. This would also fit with an allusion to the aborted arc that was supposed to reveal the Doctor was something more than a mere Time Lord, back in the Classic Series. It's been mentioned that a few aspects of that master plan have been seen in the new series. Since it's clear they are not going to go with the Doctor being something more than a Time Lord (which in the aborted plan was supposed to lead to the Doctor being revealed as the third founder of Time Lord society and thus something else), him being Rassilon's father would be a proper shocking revelation without being too 'out there' in terms of the show's status quo. It could be that the current Doctor has not yet fathered Rassilon, which is why the President has no idea and the only reason the Doctor knows is because he recognized his granddaughter. He probably wanted to keep her away from Rassilon's influence and also keep Rassilon from finding out his parentage, after all the Doctor ran because he was afraid, and he may have been afraid of more than the Hybrid thing. This means that at some point in the future, the Doctor will travel back to Gallifrey's deep past and father one of the first Time Lords. Let's be honest, the Time Lords must have a couple members whose origins are not linear.

Gallifrey had a lot of Presidents before Rassilon was resurrected to rule during the Time War. It's far more likely that the President in question was some other Time Lord ... although, if the daughter/Susan connection is to be maintained, it could well turn out that the Doctor's child was that President.

Osgood's "return" is not one at all, but actually Missy masquerading as her.

While the Doctor and others who knew her would be all wondering "How is she back?", the truth is that she's still very dead. Missy either is using something to make herself look like Osgood, or regenerated off-screen into her form, and decided it'd be fun to push the Doctor's buttons. It may be several episodes before she's found out, possibly travelling as a "companion" during that time, with subtle hints to the viewers that she's not who she appears to be.

Or it's Zygon-Osgood. Or it's the other Osgood girl, the sister whom UNIT's Osgood thought was prettier than her.
- Jossed.

The Doctor's Confession, to be revealed in the season finale if Steven Moffat's Radio Times episode guide isn't fibbing, is something he'll only reveal in life if he's pushed beyond the Despair Event Horizon, if he needs the ultimate bargaining chip. It may be related to the real reason he left Gallifrey, and it definitely has to do with the identity of the Hybrid. The confession is, or has to do with, the fact that...

He is, or was, The Other, as a key piece of Expanded Universe lore is brought into the show at last.
He's a God in Gallifreyan Form or a Physical God who chose to become mortal...but could become immortal again if he wanted to...
He is The Chosen One or The Unchosen One — more likely the latter, as the Doctor has never been much for taking orders — serving either Powers That Be or a Sentient Cosmic Force that no one else in the universe knows of, something more powerful than any comparable force seen in the Whoniverse to date.
He is an Apocalypse Man.
He is a Barrier Man for the entire universe. It would explain why, though his presence in the universe sometimes ties into disaster, it gets so much worse whenever he's eliminated from it — at least, sooner than he should be.
He knew of an evil plan the Time Lords were hatching for universal destruction/conquest way back when, and in horror, chose to defect, stole what might have allowed them to pull it off (of course, there were No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup), and ran away. And he still has that item. Or, even better...
He is actually, like The Moment, a sentient weapon. He happens to have the body and abilities of a Time Lord as his "shell". He defied his masters and decided to travel the universe doing good instead...
His Valeyard self is already running loose in the universe, and the Doctor can't stop him.
He is atoning for past acts on Gallifrey, which might involve...
- Destroying most of his family to spare them from a Fate Worse than Death at the hands of the Time Lords (yes, this is probably too dark for Doctor Who).
He was supposed to be The Chosen One of the Time Lords, or was groomed to be Their Greatest, and has the powers that would suggest in this universe, but it was for a dark destiny that he rejected. Perhaps, as suggested in "The Witch's Familiar", he was intended to be a Dalek-Time Lord hybrid creature, or was part of the project...
- Or maybe he already has created the hybrid creature from the prophecy, a fusion between two great warrior-races that could defeat a threat to the multiverse itself. Humans Are Warriors too, after all, and the Doctor-Donna did save the whole of Creation in "Journey's End"...
- Another alternative: The Doctor realizes that he turned Ashildr into a hybrid in the Cliffhanger of "The Girl Who Died": She's a combination of a human and a Mire, immortal and bitter about it to boot. But this may just reflect a general theme of Series 9 — as Missy explains in "The Witch's Familiar", "Everyone's a hybrid" of friend and foe. The season opener explored relationships between the Doctor, Clara, Missy, and Davros, and the Zygon two-parter involves figuring out who's who when renegade shapeshifters are on the rampage — and who or what is that not-dead Osgood anyway?
- Clara was hooked up to a Dalek for an extended period of time and probably absorbed the energy of a Time Lord in the climax of "The Witch's Familiar"...
- And going back to "Journey's End", what about the Metacrisis Doctor, who is half-human, half-Time Lord — and too ruthless for the "real" Doctor's liking?
- Or is the Doctor the hybrid? (See below for more.)
The Doctor used to do the Time Lords' dirty work (perhaps as an assassin), in hopes of an adventure. Eventually he was hired to kill an insurgent, his own son/daughter-in-law and Susan Foreman's father/mother. Said insurgent was trying to prevent one of the Time Lord Council's corrupt schemes: an attempt to make the legend of the hybrid a reality. His daughter/son disowned him, and combined with his killing of an innocent the Doctor realized how corrupt the Time Lords were. And the biggest gut-punch? Susan doesn't know because the Doctor lied about it, and has been hiding this secret from his granddaughter since the very beginning. The only person in his immediate family who forgives him is his mother. If the Master is Susan's grandfather/mother as suggested below, then it means the Doctor got his/her son/daughter killed. However the Master/Missy ultimately forgave the Doctor, which is one of the factors for why they remain friendly enemies. What might bring the Doctor to the Despair Event Horizon at the Season 9 ending? He finds out his granddaughter is dead for good, and he will never be able to confess or apologize for what he did.
The Doctor learned he is destined to become the greatest evil the universe will ever know, and his only chance to avert this future is to run from Gallifrey.
He lost a great love(s) — perhaps the greatest of his lives — on Gallifrey, and was desperate to find a way to escape the pain. It is a major theme of Series 9 that, by his own admission in "The Girl Who Died", he keeps running across time and space as a way of coping, not entirely successfully, with the inevitable loss of everyone he comes to care about; his closeness to Clara makes him especially vulnerable. It might be a truly gigantic loss that caused him to start running in the first place, tragically exposing him to the same cycle of love and loss again and again with people with far shorter lifespans than Gallifreyans. Perhaps he and Susan were the only surviving members of his family, victims of a horrible act he may not have been directly responsible for, but blames himself for.
Clara died on her travels with the Doctor sometime between "Last Christmas" and the start of Series 9. An in-depth summary of this theory is here; in brief: He's mourning her demise as much as regretting what happened with young Davros. But news of the Doctor having The Last Dance reaches Clara before the events that result in her death take place — this might be Missy's idea/plot, or she might be unawares — and she is reunited with him, unaware that he knows how she dies. Grateful for more time with her, the Doctor keeps his knowledge secret and they travel together once more. But his willingness to defy the fates may be manifesting itself in the unusually timey-wimey nature of his encounter with the Fisher King, his tragic dilemma with Ashildr...And consider this quote from an interview with Peter Capaldi:
The Doctor and Clara are excited about the idea of having adventures this series, but that’s a dangerous thing to do. They can't have a good time for too long. They have to pay for it. The Doctor has a profound knowledge of the past and future and he knows how things will come off in the end. He is aware darkness will fall.

Davros is the Doctor

That was the Doctor's confession. Note how both Davros and the Doctor were to die on the same night. When Davros finally dies, he becomes the Doctor -perhaps having been a Timelord all along - and regenerates on Gallifrey as a child in the past. That's why the Doctor won't reveal his name. He's ashamed of what he did in creating the Daleks and that's why he keeps trying to destroy them. But he never succeeds in killing Davros, because Davros had to become him.

Missy's "good idea" will be creating the Dalek-Time Lord Hybrid — or getting Clara back upon realizing she already made her the Hybrid!

Kind of surprised this isn't here already. It's what immediately jumped to my mind when viewing the episode.
- To elaborate: Clara was trapped by Missy in a Dalek casing for a significant amount of time in "The Witch's Familiar", so she presumably would have absorbed some Dalek nanotech and the Doctor's regeneration energy in the climax. Missy doesn't realize it until after the others are fleeing, but upon getting that clever idea, makes a point of tracking Clara down, perhaps at the request of the Time Lords. Perhaps in the climax of "Face the Raven", Clara will die and regenerate, and fully become the Hybrid as the Dalek nanotech activates.

The Raven in "Face the Raven" is Clara.

It's been pointed out by multiple Tumblrs that raven imagery has surrounded Clara from the beginning — her necklace, her mum's last name being Ravenwood, etc. Ravens also have a place in Norse imagery (as familiars of Odin), which brings Ashildr into the picture. What might this mean? Has Clara had a secret life even the Doctor wasn't aware of all along, going under an alias? And what would it mean to face her?

Jossed. It's something called a "quantum shade".

The Hybrid is...

...Me. Human and Mire technology.
- If Mire technology were good enough to make someone a threat to the Time Lords, would the Doctor have been so smug about humiliating them in Ashildr's first episode? Also, the closed captions for "Heaven Sent" don't capitalize "me".
- How is Ashildr a threat to the Time Lords? She's under their thumb as of "Face the Raven" — really on their side. They probably would have already figured things out if she were the Hybrid, and thus have no need to trap and pump the Doctor for additional information about its existence and nature.
- Keep in mind that the Doctor doesn't like to have to refer to Ashildr as "Me", so it's odd that in the heat of the moment at the end of "Heaven Sent" he'd use that name. If anything, she might be the person who can talk the Hybrid down instead, with interviews with Steven Moffat suggesting she's the one person left who can see through the Doctor by the time of "Hell Bent"...
- Ambiguous. Turns out the Hybrid could be Ashildr, the Doctor himself, or Clara and the Doctor jointly. Assuming the prophecy is even about them at all.

Shona from "Last Christmas" was originally going to replace Clara.

WordOfGod was that originally the Doctor would spend a Last Christmas with Elderly Clara before she passed on, ending her tenure as a companion on a beautiful bittersweet note. In the same episode we are introduced to a flighty, curious, cute blonde with a bit of a temper and dreams of being more then just a shop girl. If that isn't companion material, I don't know know what is...

She may well return. The Doctor doesn't always have just the one companion. She had a good rapport with Clara and clearly wanted to be her friend.

Missy wasn't lying about Gallifrey

It was mentioned earlier in "Death in Heaven" that Gallifrey is still in an alternate universe after all.

Missy escaped Gallifrey via the 'cup a soup' picture in the Black Archive

And that's where she got the wrist band. The others may have seen her, but had their memories wiped along with everyone else, so she was able to get out.

Or rather he or she witnessed Dalek Caan rescuing Davros, and used a TARDIS to follow them before the wormhole/portal/whatever closed off.

Gallifrey is trapped in E-Space

That's why it's so hard to find the planet, and why the Time Lords can't find a way out themselves.

The next anniversary special will bring together all four revival series Doctors

Only 12 will have to keep his identity a secret from his past selves (so as not to alter his own timeline).

10 and 11 will get along, much like last time.
11 will be suspicious of 12.
- This happens in "Four Doctors", a comic series by Paul Cornell (10 is worried too — because he didn't think he had another life in him).

We will learn exactly why Missy picked Clara to be the Doctor's companion

Thus resolving a mystery that began all the way back in the Series 7 episode "The Bells of St. John". The truth about why Clara was picked, or what makes her special, will permanently alter her equation with the Doctor and/or lead to her final departure from the show.

Missy, in this or a future season, will get infected, transformed, or otherwise blighted in some gruesome and/or mentally traumatic way.

Because something of the sort happens to every Master. Delgado-Master outlived his regenerations and degenerated into the decomposing Pratt/Beevers wreck. Ainley-Master was last seen halfway through the process of turning into a cheetah-person. The Tipple-Master whom the Daleks executed wound up a gelatinous space slug. The Roberts-Master's takeover of Bruce was botched and his body was falling apart from the beginning. The Jacobi-Master didn't degenerate physically, but his real evil self spent nearly all of that lifetime suppressed and watching the goodie-goodie Yana monopolize "his" body. And the Simm-Master, following Lucy Saxon's sabotage of his resurrection, was a famine-crazed cannibal whose flesh was burning itself up from within. For the Master, karma doesn't play things any more gently than he does, and there's no reason why it would suddenly let Missy get off lightly.

Gallifrey really is back where Missy'd said it was, it's just invisible.

That's why she figures out so fast that the hospital is a building on a planet. If the Doctor had only risked stepping outside when he went to check the coordinates she'd given him in "Death In Heaven", he'd have found himself walking around on Gallifrey's unseen surface just like Missy and Clara walk around on Skaro's.

The Doctor got his guitar from Jimi Hendrix.

Missy's next regeneration will be on Karn.

Everything's been emphasizing how close she and the Doctor are and have been. We've seen Karn again at the start of the season; the last time we saw it was when the Eighth Doctor was saved from full death, then got to choose what sort of person to regenerate into. Either Missy will be killed and the Doctor will bring her body to Karn to save her, or Missy will come under her own power. If Missy has been killed, the Doctor will say he doesn't care about anything else, as long as Missy come back good instead of evil. If Missy came under her own power or is not quite dead and has the chance to make a request, she'll be so set on "getting her friend back" that she will be the one to request that she be a good person when she regenerates.We've seen a lot of variations on Evil from this character, but it could really be fascinating to see what would develop if she were good, for just one regeneration. Of course, when she regenerates again, she'll be back to being evil, perhaps after having earned far too much of the Doctor's trust.

Spoiler alert: Davros is dying

because he's oldAnd by that, I mean biologically old. Whenever we see a large amount of time pass linearly for Davros, he's in stasis. Despite "centuries" passing through him, as a time traveler he can make himself seem millenia in age while only a limited amount of time pass for him. He's dying because he's finally reaching extreme old age, something his life support isn't designed for.

Davros is offering the Doctor a chance to take his place.

Davros says, "Imagine, to hold in your hand the heartbeat of every Dalek...So many backs with a single knife!" To stab in the back implies a betrayal of trust, and I can't imagine the Daleks choosing to trust the Doctor. The Daleks are also chanting, "All praise Davros!" which implies they still honor him. So, what if the Daleks think the plan is for Davros to replace his old, dying body with that of the Doctor, and Davros's actual plan is for the Doctor to pretend to have done so? Such a deception will give the Doctor the chance to access vital systems. Making the Doctor feel bad isn't enough, Davros wants to get him to commit genocide, a guilt he'd likely never recover from.

Missy is Susan's grandmother.

This isn't the first time the Master has been female, the last was back when they were both still on Gallifrey, and one or the other of them decided they really wanted to have a child and the other obliged them. Given Missy's attitude about sex as stated in "The Magician's Apprentice" and the fact that the Doctor had Susan with him at the start of the series, it seems likely it would be the Doctor who wanted a family.

The inconvenience and indignities of bearing a child may well have contributed to Missy's disdain for biological emotional attachments.
- Why assume Missy/the Master actually gave birth to the daughter in question? We know the Master's first regeneration was male, because he was a little boy when he looked into the Untempered Schism. And fathers can get given gifts to mark their children's births, too.
  - 1) just because his first incarnation was male, doesn't mean his second to twelfth incarnations weren't female so it's entirely possible for the Master and Doctor to have grown up and fallen in love, marry and for the Master to regenerate into a female body and get pregnant. 2) while fathers do get given gifts to commemorate their children's birth, the gift in question being a broach leans more towards it being a gift for a mother (considering all the Time Ladies we've seen have leaned towards 'feminine' fashions and the Time Lords towards 'masculine' ones it's unlikely for it to be Values Dissonance). 3) this is Wild Mass Guessing so there's no reason not to suppose the Master was female at the time for the purposes of the premise of the Wild Mass Guessing.
In the next episode Missy makes a comment about the Doctor giving here a broch for some event relating to her daughter. She's cut off before she can finish the sentence or elaborate on it, but it's entirely possible that it would have finished with the word 'birth'. It's entirely plausible that he gave it to her to commemorate their daughter's birth. Of course that brings up the question of why she said 'my' instead of 'our', but considering how possessive she is...
- Perhaps the Doctor's son and Missy's daughter are Susan's parents?
  - This was my idea as well. The Master/Missy makes a remark about having a daughter, and there is a question about why The Doctor left Gallifrey in the first place. And he seems to have a great deal of disdain for Time Lord society in general prior to the Time War. The Doctor and The Master had children (not with each other) and those children grew up close and married. They had a child, Susan. Susan's parents have never been identified and have never been shown, or even mentioned. My conjecture is that her parents died, and somehow, The Doctor believes that Gallifreyan culture is part of the cause of their death. Or maybe they're not dead, but were abandoned somehow by the Time Lords. This prompted The Doctor, then very near the end of his first life, to steal the Hand of Omega, and then flee Gallifrey with Susan. The Doctor's Confession Dial would have told Missy about the fate of her daughter and his son, and named responsible parties.
  - Susan is canonically said to be the daughter of the Doctor's "eldest son" so her being the product of a union between he Doctor's son and the Master's daughter is very possible, as is the union being the reason why the Doctor gave Missy her brooch. Susan's also been established in external materials to known the Master well enough to have an opinion of them and to have recieved a toy from them (though granted, the toy was a tracking device), and giving such gifts does seem a very grandparent-y thing to do.
  - Susan is also said to be strongly psychic, more so than the average Time Lord. She certainly didn't get this from the Doctor's side, him being more mid-level at best in the spectrum. But who is strongly psychic enough, so powerful that they could even remotely hypnotise others, that could have passed that level of high-tier psychic ability on down to Susan? The Master.

Missy's clever idea is to team up with Davros

This is something that many fans would just love to see (especially since the two finally meet after so many years). Two of the Doctors greatest foes forming a deadly alliance against him. But of course, Missy will have ulterior motives and will betray Davros at one point (what, with being missy and all)......Unless Davros betrays her first.

The Fisher King will be back.

Given that he also saw the writing that turns people into ghosts before he died, it's harder to explain how he couldn't. So either his own coordinate-relaying ghost is still lurking at the bottom of the lake, or he'd previously used different symbols to ensure he'd return as a free-willed ghost, which has been up to who-knows-what on Earth since the 1980s. Plus, we learned so little about him that one has to wonder if the writers are leaving loose ends hanging on purpose, for future use.

The Doctor is not Ashildr's first visitor from the future.

She mentions the modern idea about 10,000 hours' practice making you an expert in anything. Who did she pick that up from?

Who says she isn't the one who discovered this phenomenon, and only recently let the fact slip to others?

Ashildr met the Doctor in the time between "The Girl Who Died" and "The Woman Who Lived"

She knows that he runs away a lot. There are also pages missing from her journals that she says are too painful to keep. Because it happens in the Doctor's future, he doesn't know about it yet. But the 'too painful to keep' memories are about him abandoning her to her fate.

Perhaps she met one of the past incarnations of the Doctor. That might explain why the Doctor thought she seemed familiar in "The Girl Who Died", and why she called him "old man"; she'd met a younger version of him.

Ashildr met Missy in the time between "The Girl Who Died" and "The Woman Who Lived".

Ashildr seems to know a lot more about the Doctor than she should, especially given that they only met once, and (by her own admission) she can't remember any of the people from her early life. It seems possible, therefore, that someone told her a bit more about the Doctor - someone who knows him very well. And the missing pages from her journals? She claims that they are memories too painful to remember, but she can't remember what she ripped out. Maybe it was her meeting with Missy.

Osgood doesn't know which one is which.

Clara and the Doctor had a falling out between the events of "The Woman Who Lived" and "The Zygon Invasion", which will be explained later.

As io9.com's Charlie Jane Anders pointed out in her review, something must have happened between them for her to make the Idiot Ball move of blowing off his desperate phone calls at the top of the latter episode, given how adventure/crisis-ready and close to the Doctor she's been this season — she openly stated she wasn't going anywhere at the end of "Woman". Possible explanations:

She met Ashildr/Me at Coal Hill School. She may have been upset that the Doctor knew about her presence, but chose not to tell her. She may have been unnerved by the immortal's tendency to shadow those whom the Doctor eventually will leave behind. Or she may have learned some other unhappy information from her, which the Doctor may or may not have concealed from her. A combination of the above is possible.
The adventure they were off to at the end of "The Woman Who Lived", or another one after that, went horribly awry. Perhaps the forthcoming Found Footage episode "Sleep No More" was that ill-fated adventure? It would fit in with the creators noting that some stories this year could be seen as three-parters; this one's just being shown out of order.
She's become upset with the Doctor not being cunning and ruthless enough for her taste, as the theme of role reversals in their relationship since Series 8 progresses.
The Doctor has been discouraging her from further travels out of fear for her fate. Perhaps he even issued a No Matter How Much I Beg ultimatum to her, telling her not to respond to his requests to see her again, not expecting a crisis on the level of the Zygons to arise.
Alternatively, Clara's now fearing for her fate and has lost the taste for travel.
Going back to role reversals, perhaps Clara is ready to strike out on her own as a hero, without the help of the Doctor, and is upset that he doesn't like the idea. Note that her outfit in "The Zygon Invasion" bears a striking resemblance to Twelve's.
It should be noted that Clara was about to listen to the Doctor's message when she was distracted by that little boy crying on the stairs and stopped to help him, which led to her being abducted and replaced by Bonnie. It's really not particularly weird.

The Doctor is or will become THE Hybrid.

The concept that "Everyone's a hybrid", friend and foe at once, has proven key to Series 9, portrayed in a variety of ways — the Doctor coming to a new understanding of Davros, Missy helping rescue the Doctor on Skaro, Clara ending up in a Dalek shell supposedly so Missy could illustrate the concept, Ashildr/Me's plight as human-Mire, the surviving Osgood seeing herself as human-Zygon, evil Zygons masquerading as loved ones and colleagues and even going from foe to friend in Bonnie's case. But if everyone is a hybrid, then what does that say about the Doctor himself? Now we see how "Heaven Sent" can be a Minimalist Cast episode, and how the Doctor can be up against "the greatest challenge of his lives" all alone in his quest for Gallifrey. Now we know how his confession involves his knowledge of what and where the Hybrid is. He's the Hybrid, and always has been, it's just that he's kept the Dalek part of his being concealed by choice or — more likely — force, even during the Last Great Time War. Maybe he started running to keep it from waking up. "Heaven Sent" / "Hell Bent" will see him awaken this part of him in order to accomplish his goals at the Despair Event Horizon.

In the 1996 movie, the Doctor made a claim that he was half human on his mother's side. It hasn't been mentioned since, and wasn't all that well received by the fanbase or subsequent writers, but if true that would make him a hybrid.
Seemingly confirmed by the last line of "Heaven Sent", though thanks to Ambiguous Syntax, he could also have meant Ashildr.

Osgood lied to the Doctor about her name

Her first name is not Petronella. She only said that because the Doctor obviously lied about his name being Basil. There was the briefest pause before she said it.

"Sleep No More" will end...

...with the monster attacking, perhaps lunging at the screen.
...Rassmussen dying, perhaps due to the monster.
...the base self-destructing.

The Sandmen in "Sleep No More" are really...

Vashta Nerada in a new form. We know from "Silence in the Library" that they're not unintelligent, that their natural form is that of dust, and that they can manipulate human remains as large as bones. Manipulating tiny bits of dried-up human secretions, even on a large enough scale to construct humanoid figures, couldn't be that hard for them. They staged the whole scenario, animating sand-Rassmussen and monitoring events from within the shadows, because they wanted to scare humanity into giving up all use of the Morpheus technology: a technology that threatened their species' survival, as ever-waking, constantly-working humans need light to see by, so would soon ensure there was no darkness left for the Vashta Nerada to hide in. Now they can broadcast their video, stage a few similar attacks on various human settlements to lend it credence, watch sleep-pods by the millions being thrown on the junk pile, and get their nice comfy shadows back, all while having an excuse to nom a lot of people without anyone suspecting it's not animated sleep-dust that's doing it.
- I really like this theory. Makes so much sense.

The Doctor created Doctor Who, specifically to stop the Sandmen.

It probably wouldn't have taken long for him to pick up the signal of the video being transmitted. The question would be, how to stop it from destroying humanity? Even if you stop it from reaching one place, there's no way to be sure it hasn't spread elsewhere. The only thing for the Doctor to do is to "vaccinate" humanity against this "viral video". So he went back in time and worked with some humans in the 1960s to make a TV show about himself, helped it get popular, got Russell T. Davies to bring it back after it was cancelled, waited for the story to catch up with him, then inserted a modified version of Rassmussen's video into the series- one that wouldn't turn the viewer into a Sandman, but would instead plant an instinct into the brains of all of humanity that this is a bad episode of Doctor Who and you shouldn't watch it. (If you liked the episode, it means you were immune to the process in the first place.) So when the 38th century rolled around and people saw the beginning of the transmission, they all went "Oh, it's that episode" and turned it off, foiling the Sandmen's plan. This theory also explains that one reference in "Remembrance of the Daleks".
- Alternately, he didn't create the whole TV series to foil the evil scheme, but rather he stepped back in time to when sand-Rassmussen was recording the original video's opening sequence, and inserted the flashed credits in which the actors' names appear near its beginning. To Real Life viewers, this was a way for the producers to give the cast its requisite props, but in-Verse it's a mental inoculation that suppresses the video-signal's dangerous side-effects.

In the Christmas Special, the Doctor will tell River his name.

We never did see it happen, yet we know River knows it. This River will be from a point in her timeline before the Library, and she will learn the Doctor's real name.

The Confession Dial brings Gallifrey back.

The whole will/hybrid thing is a trick (see: Rule #1). He's set up the dial to create a crack in time and send a signal to Gallifrey to return.

Inverted; the Confession Dial brings the Doctor back to Gallifrey, albeit by a very, very, very, very, very long route.

The events of Heaven Sent will be entirely in the Doctor's mind.

The teleportation bracelet isn't sending the Doctor to some nightmare place designed to drive him insane. The actual destination will be wherever Hell Bent is set (maybe Gallifrey?). However, in his grieving and enraged state, as he teleports his mind is drawn into his subconscious where the Veil attacks him. The Veil is actually the Doctor's dark side.In the Doctor's Trial, the Master said that the Doctor's dark side manifests between the Doctor's "twelfth and final incarnation". But this doesn't happen in Heaven Sent...because it's already happened. According to The Time of the Doctor, with the War Doctor and the Meta-Crisis Doctor, the Eleventh Doctor was actually the thirteenth incarnation, which puts his life between the twelfth and final incarnations. And it was during his incarnation that the events of Amy's Choice happened - the manifestation of his dark side as the Dream Lord. The ending of that episode strongly implied that while the Doctor successfully defeated the Dream Lord, he did not destroy him, given that he saw the Dream Lord's face where his reflection should be for a moment. His dark side has remained within the Doctor, aware but trapped, waiting for an oppertunity to come for him to break free. The events of Face the Raven were what it had been waiting for - the Doctor is never as emotionally vulnerable as he is after those rare occasions when a Companion dies while in his company. So as the Doctor teleports away, grieving Clara and angrily threatening Ashildr and those in her care, his dark side makes its move, attacking the Doctor's sanity with his failures and fears. It may not be able to destroy the Doctor's mind and steal his lives like it hopes to, but if it can just break free, then the Veil may become the Valeyard at long last. With the Doctor so distracted, he may not even realize it is not longer contained within him.

Ohila's remarks in "Hell Bent" strongly imply the Doctor really did stay inside the Confession Dial that long. And it was four and a half billion years, not two.

Heaven Sent didn't just bring the Doctor home, it also created...

...the Valeyard. The Confession Dial's original purpose was as a receptacle of sorts for deceased Time Lords' sins, allowing their disembodied souls to unburden themselves of despair, anger, bitterness and self-recrimination before their transfer to the Matrix. Rassilon's tampering to make it a prison for the living Doctor and keep him in torment didn't necessarily require that its original function to provide expiation of such feelings was switched off. Thus, it was most likely sapping away and recording every last bit of grief, rage, resentment and guilt which Twelve felt or enunciated, all the time he was in there: a complete accounting of all the Doctor's darkest feelings, documented over four and a half billion years. Dark feelings that never relented, because every new iteration of Twelve that emerged from the teleporter had a whole new batch of misery and vengeful bile to contribute, fresh from witnessing Clara's death. Billions of years of grief and despair, all concentrated into one pocket-sized disc that the Doctor probably handed in for repairs on Gallifrey. Who's to say whether his enemies couldn't have secretly accessed the Dial's recordings, decanted all that bitterness and anger and self-hatred into a living form as the Valeyard, and sicced him on Six with the promise that he can ensure Twelve never exists, hence won't meet Clara or put her in the raven's path, in the first place...?

In "Hell Bent," The Doctor isn't the one killed by the firing squad.

He escapes Gallifrey by someone else (Ohila, Clara's Gallifreyan echo, Ashildr ... somehow) regenerating to look like him (explaining that "Regeneration in progress" line in the Next Time trailer). The Time Lords, already planning on killing the Doctor, grab him mid-regeneration (a la Ten in "Journey's End"), and are duped into thinking that it's actually him.
- Jossed in that it's really him. Confirmed in that he isn't killed, because none of the soldiers - most of whom served under the War Doctor - had the hearts to actually hit him, merely for the sake of Rassilon's power-mad paranoia.

After the Doctor, Clara and Ashildr leave the end of time...

...the future incarnations of the Doctor and Master, now the White and Black Guardians of Time, will appear and sit down at the unused chess board and begin to play a game, throughout the entire history of the universe, stretched out forever in those final moments until the end...

The extraction chamber was used on the Second Doctor during the end of The War Games

A new twist on the Season 6B theory, in light on the introduction to the 'extraction chamber' in Hell Bent. The JNT-era Time Lords (presumably the Celestial Investigation Agency) found themselves with the need to enlist the Doctor as their agent. But the current Doctor (Five, and later Six) would have been difficult, if not impossible, to control. So they use the extraction chamber to pull out of his timestream the Doctor at a vulnerable point in his life when he might have been more easily controllable - namely, in the moments just before his forced regeneration and exile on earth (which would sort of count as the moment before the Doctor's 'death' in a sense). They bring the Second Doctor forward to their 'relative present' and make their pitch - he gets to spend years (possibly centuries) adventuring in his current incarnation and in return he has to work as their operative. The Doctor agrees, knowing it's as good a deal as he's likely to get under the circumstances. They outfit him with another TARDIS which is a replica of his, complete with the faulty chameleon circuit (or maybe they just pull his TARDIS along with him), and set him loose on the universe. Along the way, the Doctor picks up an older Jamie and even Victoria and gets involved in The Five Doctors and The Two Doctors. Also, the CIA did something to help him escape the 'time-looping' effect that 'extracted' people face, and this explains how the Second Doctor steadily seemed to age as time went on. Eventually, though, the Second Doctor is reinserted back into his timeline, in the moments before his regeneration, and his memory may or may not have been wiped (or perhaps they were wiped as an effect of being re-inserted into his natural timestream). Though the Doctor probably regained those memories on some level eventually, especially after he encountered the 'extracted' Two in The Two Doctors. It was because of his personal experience with the extraction chamber that the Doctor thought he could help Clara escape her fate - but it didn't work out that way (maybe because Clara was actually dead whereas the Doctor was only going to regenerate).

The Cloister Wraiths scared the young One into fleeing Gallifrey as part of a mass suicide attempt.

It's implied that becoming a Wraith is a punishment meted out to those Matrix-bound personalities which Gallifreyan law, or perhaps the collective Matrix itself, had judged guilty of terrible crimes. The glimpse provided of one Wraith's screaming face suggests that they're in constant torment, little better off than the entwined alien invaders incorporated into the Matrix's data banks. Faced with the prospect of spending the whole of Time in such a state, the Wraiths covertly tapped into the Matrix's predictive abilities, and used them to identify a possible timeline leading to Gallifrey's - and hence, the Matrix's - destruction by the Moment. As the General himself pointed out in "Day", there's only one man in the universe who'd knowingly dare try to use the Moment, knowing it judges its wielder. So when young One sneaked into the Cloisters, the Wraiths scared him into leaving the planet specifically so that he could evolve into that exact man. It's only because the Moment tangled the Doctors' timelines too much for even the Matrix's prognostication to be accurate that the Wraiths' attempt to ensure their own oblivion was foiled, as Gallifrey was Cup-A-Souped rather than destroyed.

The Twelfth Doctor, or a clone of him, will eventually go back in time and live as Lobus Caecilius.

Missy's plan is the destruction of Gallifrey.

She would have a lot of reasons to wipe out the Time Lords with the drums, after all.

The Doctor didn't forget about Clara

This

Buzzfeed article explains it.

Osgood is a Zygon mind-virus

In "The Day of The Doctor", a Zygon tries to copy Osgood's body and initially acts quite different from the Osgood character. Later, after the peace is set, both Osgoods act like the human one did initially. Both Osgoods see themselves as human and Zygon, but otherwise, we don't see much of the gloating zygon from "The Day of The Doctor".

In "The Zygon Invasion", the Zygons capture the Osgood that wasn't killed by Missy. While I don't know how much intel they have on UNIT, accessing someone's memories is a pretty damn effective method of interrogation, and it wouldn't make sense to capture her unless they knew that she has some connection to UNIT. Despite that, nobody tries to take her form and use her memories, like Bonnie does to Clara. Why? because that zygon would literally become Osgood over time.

The original/human Osgood was killed by Missy

In "The Day of The Doctor", we see Osgood with her scarf. After "The Zygon Invasion" and "The Zygon Inversion", neither Osgood wears it. As a corollary, next time an Osgood dies, it will be the first Zygon Osgood who dies.

Confirmed by Word of God, though Rule 1: Moffat Lies.

The Weeping Angels will return in series 9

So far they have been the main antagonists of episodes in series 3, 5 and 7. It's only logical that they reappear in series 9.

Half jossed, half confirmed. They made a brief appearance in the finale along with several other monsters, but were not the villains of any story.

The "Minister of War" mentioned in Before the Flood is the War Chief and/or one of the War Lords.

The name would seem to imply a connection.

The Doctor was telling the truth about leaving Gallifrey because he was bored

The Doctor was actually scared that he might turn to evil just for entertainment on Gallifrey, so he left to find distractions and entertainment to keep him on the side of good.

Every Doctor Who story since Last Christmas is a hallucination

The Doctor never actually got free of the dream crabs, and the rest of the show is just a hallucination.

Osgood isn't being metaphorical

If a Zygon maintains a live link to the person whose form they are using for long enough, then their identities (down to genetic material and bodily design) start to mix and merge. Using body prints or storing the original in a pod prevents this, but Osgood wasn't in a pod, and she and her sister were friendly enough to use live links rather than body prints. By the time of Death in Heaven, the Osgoods had merged to the point where the statement "I am Human and Zygon" is in fact literally true.

WMG / Doctor Who Series 9

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