delericho
Legend
How does the monster know he's making a true confession? I think the reason for that would be that it's psychic in some way, and can register how he feels about a confession - is it a true one, is it a new revelation?
Sure, but there's no hint of that in the episode. Might as well wonder why the creators don't just build a mind-reading machine.
And the machine might also need to have the ability to "teach" its victim that confessions are needed, otherwise they might die not knowing how it works, never revealing anything useful.
Well, quite. It was only through dumb luck that he happened to blurt out his first 'confession'. And it's not much of one: that's a profound 'truth' that's true of just about everyone ever.
If the limitation didn't exist, of course, the second iteration would already spell the Doctor's doom, since he might not come up with a new confession in time.
Indeed. Of course, that, again, is also true if he hadn't dragged his near-death body through the castle for a day and a half just to use the teleporter, or indeed if just one of the iterations had seen him get just slightly more damaged than average and so left unable to do that.
And that's one of the other problems with the episode - that sort of closed loop doesn't really work, as explained in Jurassic Park. Because the number of skulls in the water increases with each iteration, the conditions for him hitting the water after jumping out the window are slightly different each time. One of those times, he should have broken his neck.