Whatever happens, they say afterwards, it must have been fate. People are always a little confused about this, as they are in the case of miracles. When someone is saved from certain death by a strange concatenation of circumstances, they say that's a miracle. But of course if someone is killed by a freak chain of events -- the oil spilled just there, the safety fence broken just there -- that must also be a miracle. Just because it's not nice doesn't mean it's not miraculous.
He was hoping that things would work out well. The Doctor always tended to hope that things would work out well - his life would have been unbearably stressful if he didn't. Plus, a long lifespan spent traveling in both time and space had given him a certain perspective on hideous situations involving almost certain death. So far none of them had ended that badly.
