(Hi, new here.)
I read and enjoyed the whole thread so far. A few thoughts.
Why didn’t he want to give his final confession and instead spent billions of years pecking through the diamond? It might not just be stubbornness/Type A personality. He said earlier that the confession needed to be true in order to work. Maybe the ‘confession’ he gave after getting through into Gallifrey, ‘it’s me’, wasn’t true. In any case, we don’t know that it *is* true, since the confession dial is no longer forcing him to tell the truth.
However, if it is true, then I think he said ‘it’s Me.’ From a movie-making perspective, it makes a lot more sense that Moffet has made so big a deal, and spent so much time on, Ashildir’s name being ‘me’, if he is going to use it here, than if he isn’t.
Regarding how much time passed – the 4 billion years passed, the stars were proof of that. He knew what planet he was on the whole time, from the stars. Why hadn’t 4 billion years passed on Gallifrey? While he was in the time dial, it was not on Gallifrey. And because Gallifrey was in the pocket universe, in any moment in time in our universe, Gallifrey was still at the time in which it was sealed by the Doctor. So no matter when it was, in terms of our universe, that the Doctor broke through into Gallefrey’s pocket universe, it would have been the same moment on Gallifrey. If this is true, then the Doctor enters Gallifrey just moments after the council saw him seal it in with 12 tardis’.
I think whoever sent him into the dial wanted the information on the hybrid, and he didn’t want them to have it. Which really makes me think that he either lied or was deliberately being obtuse when he told them who it was at the end (‘I think you can still hear me’). I don’t think the Time Lords put him in there, because if so he wouldn’t have needed the boy to tell the Time Lords he was coming, as he had just spoken into the dial that could still hear him, and he could say ‘and I’m coming’ or some such.
I want to know: Who put him into the dial. Who made the dial. Why did the Doctor think it was his last will and testament. And how will Clara’s grandson be born.
