History Headscratchers / DoctorWhoSeries5

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*** The Doctor was very adamant about Amy remembering her parents in order to bring them back. If the Doctor closing the cracks brought back everyone who was eaten by the cracks except for the Doctor, he might as well not have bothered. This is probably FridgeHorror, actaully. Rory, the Doctor, and Amy's parents can't possibly be the only ones eaten by the cracks pre-Stonehenge but she didn't remember them to bring them back. The Angels were still gotten rid of that way.
** In the absence of an explanation from canon, I think there are two explanations for Flesh and Stone: (1) In the rebooted universe, the events of Flesh and Stone never happened due to the cracks never existing, the Doctor and his companions retain their memories of the event for some reason (eye of the storm, because they're time travelers or anomalies, echoes, timey-whimey ball, etc.), or (2) Thanks to Amy's memory, the crack events she's experienced happened in the rebooted universe as well, thus the rebooted universe is just like the old one minus Total Event Collapse, and the cracks are just time rifts leaking chronons (Which according to the video game at least can erase things from existence.).

*** What it really boils down to is that, due to some of the events in previous seasons, the population of earth ''should'' be very jaded to things like the presence of aliens, Cyberman, attacking Daleks and other assorted whatnot. This can be a permanent scar on the 'Verse, so the whole time erasure thing actually gives them an excuse to make like it all never happened, while the relevant individuals can still remember all the relevant events when needed to. I'm under the impression that the Doctor, Time Lords in general and, for that matter, time travelers in general don't operate on a time line that actually ''tries'' to sync with the "real" timeline at all. In other words, the universe's timeline changes but time travelers don't alter their personal timeline to fit. This is probably part of what the Doctor means when he refers to himself as an extremely complex temporal event... he's the sum of a series of possible universes that ''never happened''.

***** Not so; I'm not sure if it specifically stated so in the episode, but Expanded Universe establishes that the War Chief in the War Games was, in fact, a renegade Time Lord (Note: If you meet a renegade Time Lord, statistically, they're not friendly). The War Chief's SIDRATs were some form of cannibalized TARDIS. It's not that the Time Lords are the only ones who can build a Time Ship; they're the only ones that build TARDISes, that specific type of Time Ship. It is perfectly conceivable, however, that other civilizations get their hands on similar technology and create something similar to a TARDIS.

** The ship was a pseudo-TARDIS, right? Perhaps it self-destructed in a way similar to the way the TARDIS exploded. Only instead of creating cracks in time the way the Doctor's TARDIS did, it created a very small crack which it then fell in to, sealing it (and thereby erasing its history since the crash). Somewhat backed up by evidence from Flesh and Stone-- the Doctor tells River she wouldn't be enough to close the crack, and even all the Angels in the forest only closed it temporarily... but the Doctor (who is probably, by now, roughly an equal weight to the TARDIS in the space-time anomaly area) is enough to close it for good (IIRC). It would also explain how the Daleks were able to destroy TARDISes in the time war without destroying the universe-- they got sucked in to the resulting (much smaller) crack, along with their crews, and the crack got enough Wibbly Wobbly to seal itself with no further harm done.

*** One way to interpret the Doctor's "Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey, nonlinear time" explanation is that certain actions don't just affect events following that action, but previous events as well, especially when it has to do with a fixed point. A fixed point could be some major, universe-altering event(s), or an event a time traveler has prior knowledge of. Presumably, when the Doctor does something in the future, and then goes into the past, past events may have been altered to fit future events, or a fixed point.

** My theory: In ''Blink'' the Doctor explained that the 'sending you back in time' thing was a way for the Weeping Angels to feed on your potential energy. In ''The Time of Angels'', he claims the ones encountered on Earth were 'scavengers' who were barely squeaking by, and observes that the ones on Alfava Metraxis were feeding on the energy of the ship's drive core (and, as we later find out, on the Crack). They are also [[CompleteMonster Complete Monsters]] who prey on people ForTheEvulz. In short: they snapped Bob's neck for his voice. Everyone else, they killed straight out because they didn't need to feed on them, they just liked killing people. On the other hand, is it actually established they snapped Octavian's neck instead of killing him in their usual fashion?

**** My understanding was that it was matter of crack powering itself with all the (potentially) infinite mass, arton energy, all that stuff as well as the small singularity it would create, not just tardis boom=universe gone

**** Fast enough that outfitting Spitfires with completely unfamiliar technology can be done faster than, say, Londoners all over the city could simply ''unplug the freakin' light bulbs'' that the Daleks are keeping lit?

** Also remember that Amy didn't remember the whole stole the earth thing, because, as we find out, it never happened because of the cracks, so they wouldn't consider preventing it a paradox, since they didn't happen. As for how could they exist then if they escaped from the stole the earth thing, due to the cracks, not many things involving them makes sense: you know, Angels not existing, but no news of Octavian being alive, the stuff with penguins in Big Bang, etc. We don't even know what happened to Donna if the eath-stoling never happened, so the paradox thing is not that big a problem.

**** Agreed. People are erased, and the memory of them gone, but the effect they had is still there. Otherwise when Rory was erased the entire earth should have been retroactively destroyed, since it was his taking pictures with his phone that prevented the Atraxi from destroying it to kill Prisoner Zero. And when the Doctor was erased, we'd be looking at another TurnLeft scenario. Amy herself should never have been born if her parents weren't. The Doctor explicitly says that things are left behind (faces in photographs, half-eaten meals, luggage), so even an erased person leaves a mark on history.

*** Don't the credits SAY she's Liz 10? Plus, that makes no sense. For what reason would the writers pull a [[Recap/DoctorWhoNSS4E17E18TheEndOfTime Verity Newman]] and use an identical descendant in this situation? Yes, the Doctor's probably friends with most of the royal family, but come on.

*** And, we're talking WW2. My Grandad (who built aircraft) used to tell stories of them flying bombers down to the airfields with the engineers finishing building the aircraft ''while in flight''. If the Spitfires were in a state that could reach space, they'd have flown them.

** The Doctor got rid of all the technology that shouldn't be in that time; Churchill wanted to keep the Spitfires and other stuff, but the Doctor explained that he couldn't let him. I'm guessing WW2 playing out as it did must be a fixed point or something. Presumably, this was also explained to Bracewell.

** Evolution, [[SamuelLJackson motherfucker,]] do you understand the concept of it? It's very extremely unlikely that the Angels on twenty-first century Earth work exactly the same way as the Angels that are possibly GALAXIES away from Earth, millenia later. It's like saying that an arctic hare and a jackrabbit are ''exactly the same thing,'' and have to work ''exactly the same way, in every detail.''

*** Earth is stated on numerous occasions to be primitive and backwater (at least in ''TheSarahJaneAdventures''), but I don't recall anywhere stating it's "in the middle of nowhere". Wasn't there a race from Alpha Centauri? That's as near a star system as you can get. And that's not even getting into the Martians and Venusians.

**** The paper might not work on them since the six people all on screen have very high IQs and UNIT recognisized Ten since his last companion at the time worked for UNIT