‘Pond Life’, written by Chris Chibnall, was a series of mini-episodes showing married life for the Ponds and their eventual separation before the events of ‘Asylum Of The Daleks’. As they are so short they can only hint at larger adventures occurring off-screen.
In April the Doctor leaves a phone message to let the Ponds know what he has been up to. He does this by phone, rather than in person, because he is having difficulty piloting the TARDIS due to a faulty Helmic regulator.
This allows you to create a period of the 11th Doctor’s life where he can’t always get where he was supposed to be going. A fault to the TARDIS can also be the justification you need to prevent a Time Lord PC being able to return his companions home.
Amongst his adventures he is shown to be fleeing from Sontarans at a place called Florinall 9, using a surf board to escape on a firefall. This is a particularly exotic location for an adventure and there is plenty left to discover about why the Sontarans are there.
Next the Doctor claims to have met Mata Hari in a hotel in France. There is an extended period where this meeting could take place, beginning in 1903. Most famous for being a German spy she did not enter their employment until 1915.
Presumably the Doctor would know who she was so why was he in her company? Typically of the Doctor he appears surprised that she would try to seduce him. Did she have any feelings for him or was she trying to gain information for Germany? This would be the good basis for an adventure based around the the first world war.
The Doctor also says that he laid down backing vocals which would seem out of character except we know that he also took time to play the triangles in a performance of Carmen (broadcast by Oswin in ‘Asylum of the Daleks’). We can only speculate how this particular recording session came about.
All of the above should be treated with a pinch of salt as it could just be the Doctor spin a tale to make his life seem interesting.
In May the Doctor pays a night time visit to the Ponds, dashing into their bedroom despite there being rules against that. He warns that no one on the planet is safe and urges them to come with him until he realises that they don’t know what he is talking about and that he has come to the wrong point in time.
When pressed for information about what is going to happen we are shown clips of ‘Dinosaurs on a Spaceship’. In that story the threat to Earth occurs in the future and the Ponds didn’t know about the crisis before the Doctor collected them so it seems unlikely that this is what he is referring to.
It makes more sense that this Doctor comes from ‘The Power of Three’. We know that the Doctor was popping back and fore between trying to solve the mystery of the alien cubes. He would assume that the Ponds would immediately know that he would be talking about this ongoing mystery so their puzzled response lets him know he has come back too far into the past.
It could also be an unseen adventure. This indicates that it is certainly possible that the 11th Doctor had further adventures with them, popping up out of order. He might not always realise he has taken the wrong Ponds before whisking them into adventure. Rory’s comment that he hates when the Doctor does that suggests that this isn’t the only time the Doctor has done this.
In June Rory and Amy find an Ood on their toilet and don’t learn until July that the Doctor had rescued the alien from the Androvax conflict and speculates it must have wandered out of the TARDIS when he last visited them.
This could indicate that his arrival during the night was at the end of May and that it was the next day or so that the Ponds discovered the Ood. If not what was the Ood up to before they found him? Alternatively the Doctor visited them again between the events shown of May and June.
This Ood is still conditioned to be servile and it would appear that the Doctor was going to return him to the Ood-sphere (probably to free him). This suggests that know the Doctor is aware of their conditions (having been shamed by Donna Noble into taking action) that he goes out of his way to help them.
Until the Doctor comes to collect him the Ood acts as the Ponds butler, although they at least have the decency to feel guilty about this. This period could make for interesting adventures, as the Ponds try to keep the presence of the alien a secret.
The Doctor doesn’t come to collect him immediately as there is a power drain in the TARDIS, threatening to cause it to implode. How this fault occurred and how the Doctor got out of it could be an exciting start to an adventure.
At some point the 11th Doctor does manage to rescue the Ood and take it to be reconnected to the hive mind. Along the way he gets mixed up in the Battle of Hastings (where the helmic regulator is again damaged), rides a horse through 11th century Coventry and might have invented pasta by showing how it is made to a Mongol.
By August the Doctor attempts to make contact but finds no one is home. We are shown that Amy and Rory have split up (the reason eventually revealed in ‘Asylum of The Daleks’) during this time, suggesting things went downhill fast after the Ood left.
This last segment shows the deep concern the Doctor has for the Ponds. He reconsiders leaving his phone message, using the sonic screwdriver to delete it. It is possible to interpret this as a post ‘Angels Take Manhattan’ Doctor, particularly as he is changing the TARDIS’ light bulb.
Bigger On The Inside 