But then the look of horror when he realises that the crack in time is caused by Amy, and that if it is allowed to develop then the Earth would not be the same - and indeed what damage would the crack have succeeded in doing by the 51st century?

By trying to stop the crack at source (if he suceeds then time will get very complicated as Eleventh Hour/Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone would never have happened) he's reintroducing RTD's canon back into human 'memory'.

If he wasn't concerned about the crack he wouldn't be trying to sort Amy out.

Why if he wanted to get rid of Humans knowledge of aliens and their memories of mass invasion did he have a world wide alien threat in his very first episode?

This is a problem any large scale Earth-based show faces, not just DW. In order for the world to be identifiable to the viewer, past events to reflect real past events. In order for the show to be entertaining, things have to happen. These two points will inevitably conflict, as writers are tied down by what they can do.

The contrast I like to use for this is '24'. Like Doctor Who at the start of 2005, the world of 24 in 2001 was indistinguishable to ours today; Half of 'Rose' goes into showing just how realworldy the world is, as is the case in the first few hours of 24. Like New Who, 24 relies on large-scale events impacting a believable Earth. Only now, 9 years later, they've been through a reem of Presidents and catastrophes that haven't happened in the real world, and whether you like it or not this makes the show less compelling for the viewers, which was slowly becoming the case for Doctor Who too.

The declining ratings for Heroes, FlashForward and to an extent Lost (shows that rely on the premise of something extraordinary happening on 'our' everyday world) correlate quite strongly to how far their fictional Earth starts to differ from our own. A lot of people will tell you Heroes 'lost its magic' after the first series. This wasn't because of writing, acting, or production, it is because it stopped being a show about how something mysterious could happen in our world, and became about events in a fictional universe, entirely removed. Similarly, FlashForward reached this point of separation far too soon, before it had built up a substantial following.

This is a problem for Doctor Who and indeed all Earth-bound shows, with a few plausible solutions.
Either:
* Ignore continuity. Not compelling viewing, annoys the potential fanbase.
* No Earth bound stories at all. Makes show less identifiable, more costly and limits the sense of danger.
* No Earth bound story can have a significant impact on the world in the long term. Narrative incredibly restricted in terms of scale. As I said earlier, in order for the show to be entertaining, stuff has to happen. Trivial, self contained stories grow tiring quickly.
* No effort is given to maintaining 'our world'. Quality of the show, believability and ratings all suffer as a result, but narrative is freed up.
* A reset/selective amnesia is used after every single Earth bound episode - quickly becomes predictable, and hinders the writer with working it into every episode.
* A combination of techniques to just about hold the world together, though not convincing under scrutiny.

Buffy opted for the selective amnesia, quickly becoming a running gag. This only slowed down the inevitable drift away from our world; As Buffy herself observes in a later series, "it's been a long time since one didn't know me."
For DW, RTD seemed to favour the 'let it run wild' option, with only one episode being fully reset (LotTL/TSoD). The world was quickly going the way of Heroes/24/FlashForward.
Torchwood Series 1 and 2 combine the 'trivial self-contained' approach for the smaller stories with the selective amnesia approach for the larger scale ones, as maintaining a sense of 'our world' is MUCH more important on a 'more real' show. Compare the results of the earlier trivial approach to the massive improvement for the larger-impacting series 3, and you can see it really isn't a viable long-term strategy.

The truth is that there is no answer to the problem, and every show must grapple with it whilst still being compelling viewing. A selective reset may be necessary now due to continuity running rampant, and the only obstacle is how to facilitate it; normality in the Whoniverse would seem more unusual now than the digressions from the real world in the first place! So if Moffatt can solve the problem in some genius way with a reset, good luck to him. It might jar a bit, but it's for the greater good and as fans we should stop nitpicking and look past it for the good of the show.

There's a lot of suggestions on hypocrisy going one. Like if RTD did a 're-set' people would complain, but when Moff does it people praise him.

But there is a big difference in RTD doing a reset during his tenure to resolve stories, and Moffat doing it to clean the slate somewhat for his era.

I think it is clear from DWC that Moffat wasn't keen on some elements RTD introduced, like London being the centre of all invasions, and the fact the whole Earth knows about aliens. All new Doctor Who producers want to put there own stamp on things. Even Hinchcliff complained about being 'lumbered with two old dinosaurs' when he had to do Dalek and Cybermen stories planned by the previous production team.

As enjoyable as RTD's Earth invasion stories were, they could prove limiting for Moffat who seems intent on returning Doctor Who to how he thinks it should be. So a re-set is natural, and he's done it in a clever way that doesn't make RTD's stories insignificant, but rather complicates things for the Doctor now. The Doctor still remembers those events, but other people don't. Which makes things more difficult for the Doctor as seen in Victory of the Daleks.

But he purposely set it in a small village, with few people witnessing it. Other than scientists and authorities, the global public had no idea what events were actually happening in Ledworth. Hence the standard TV news reports RTD used, are not present in The Eleventh Hour. Even if people were aware of the '0' thing happening, they had no idea why. Doctor Who has always had invasions threatening the planet, but not everyone on Earth knew about it.

Besides, Moffat's re-set seems to be a slow burner, rather than just changing things from the first episode, which imo would have been a bit disrespectful of what RTD had done. It seems Moff isn't going to merely remove all RTD did, but rather make it intrinsic to the Doctor's future. Even if people won't remember, the Doctor will.

I wrote this in another thread.


Things do seem to be more complicated. At the moment it seems that most of the 4th series has been wiped as the flashbacks predate that series.

I would still like to know what that image between The Empress of The Racnoss & The Ood is in the flashbacks was.

Yeah no member of the public would notice the hundreds of spaceships hovering over the planet would they?

If he really wanted to limit it to one village then there would have only been one Atraxi spaceship that was only seen over Leadworth.

And surely the Atraxi message was still booming from every speaker wasn't it?

Exactly......

An excellent and thoughtful post.

We should congratulate Moffat for at least trying to solve this issue after RTD made it so much worse.

I think the problem facing a show like DW is one of the advances of communication from old series to new. In the past, London could be evacuated and no one in the rest of the world would really be overly bothered even if they found out about it - today, with the internet, it would be a global news story (Gordon brown's gaffe in Rochdale, whilst a relatuvely minor event in the grand scheme of things became a global story featuring on many foreign networks - that would never have happened in the 60s/70s/80s)

So now, and with an eye on foreign markets, we either go global in terms of invasions or we return to the Leadworth approach (as The Prisoner did - and is doing again - quite successfully) and create smallscale stories that might lead to a global disaster but when foiled have no great newsworthiness - SJA does this quite effectively although mr Smith's news tampering abilities clearly come in handy now and then!

Personally, I don't ever see continuity with New and Old Who as a problem - I could have done without the Doctor being half-human in the Movie but that was just one of a plethora of things that didn't gel for me...if a story is worth telling, it is worth telling and if a hard core of fans object on the grounds that it contradicts what happened in episode seven of series six then let them debate it to their heart's content: it won't affect my enjoyment or lack of it.

But there is something undeniably weird about Leadworth.... something that may mean the slate of alien invasions is cleaner than we think....

Why should they? When was the last time you saw the Hubble telescope or the ISS with the naked eye?

Hmmm, that's more of a problem

Yeah, but if you notice, the crack appeared when Amy and The Doctor were in the Tardis at the end, so perhaps everytime the crack has appeared, it's wiping out that particular part of time.

So, they would have no recollection of the Atraxi. The Doctor and Amy probably did simply for the fact they were involved at the heart of it, so they remember more.

Amy could have lost her parents simply because she and her Aunt forgot them because of the crack in the wall.
The Daleks and Churchill, again, a crack so it never happened.
The british starship, crack again, so it didnt happen.

Hmmm, I'd need to watch it again but as far as I remember at least one of the Atraxi ships were in our atmosphere a la the Racnoss ship...

Yes your right, the ships were going around zooming in on places too, like the one in Leadworth, and the eye was on every TV....But alos the scientists had picked up on all the out space ships, and there was mayhem in the top forces ...the sun was changing colour, the Radio message was speaking in every language, everyones phones were also attuned to the message, even MP3/IPODS....not many would have missed it.....and if its a case of not everyone would know what was happening....then the same argument can be made for all the other world invasions....the confusion and mayhem, wouldn't allow many to get what was going on.....

Seems to me that Moffat has got a double agenda here. Not only can he destroy anything of RTD's plot that he doesn't like, he can also "undo" the Time War (I know it's timelocked but, as we've seen numerous times, that doesn't stop much) and bring the Time Lords back into the canon.

He should leave that a few series. The Return of the Timelords is one of the only good ideas that RTD has done right, so unless SM leaves it for a few years, he will ruin that.

It's a good idea in principle, but it needs to be small scale. I mean, is it being suggested we have a 'Bobby Ewing in the shower' sort of thing where the whole of not just one but four seasons never happened????

I suppose it would make intriguing viewing though...

It depends on how far they go back. It seems (based on the flashbacks in the 1st episode as detailed in post 31) that everything up to The Runaway Bride is still in the time line but much of series 4 has possibly been wiped. Series 3 is still in play.

Now I watched Flesh and Stone again and the Doctor kept mentioning the end of the universe. That suggests to me that perhaps this has something to do with the events in the final three episodes in series 3.

The Toclafane are still there and maybe trying to break through again. Also when River said that they will meet again when the Pandorica opens which the Doctor claims is a Fairy Tale (isn’t that similar to what he said about the Toclafane).

I think that some events are going to stay wiped and some will not be wiped at all.

It is going to be interesting to see what happens.

So the Moff isn't just wiping out RTD stories, he's actually wiping his own stories shortly after they've happened?!

Poppycod, I've been reading your posts for some time and have so far not posted an argument against you mainly because I think arguing with you is pointless on account of you very stagnant and blinkered attitude toward DRW.

I didnt like a great deal of RTDs writing and ideas, and preferred other writers. I even got annoyed that RTD thought he was the only one who could write the best opening and finale to each seried (IMO).

Personally, I would love to turn the clock back and relive the glory days that was the classic series, feeling again, all those excited emotions and fear even at the sound of the original theme.

BUT, RTD brought the series back, which many had tried and failed. I applaud RTD for this, he has not ruined DRW, he has breathed life back into it and it continues even stronger without him. Noone else had the reputation RTD had at the time.

You dont have to like RTD but have some respect for this man!

[quote=Maffmoose;40015177]Poppycod, I've been reading your posts for some time and have so far not posted an argument against you mainly because I think arguing with you is pointless on account of you very stagnant and blinkered attitude toward DRW.

I didnt like a great deal of RTDs writing and ideas, and preferred other writers. I even got annoyed that RTD thought he was the only one who could write the best opening and finale to each seried (IMO).

Personally, I would love to turn the clock back and relive the glory days that was the classic series, feeling again, all those excited emotions and fear even at the sound of the original theme.

BUT, RTD brought the series back, which many had tried and failed. I applaud RTD for this, he has not ruined DRW, he has breathed life back into it and it continues even stronger without him. Noone else had the reputation RTD had at the time.

You dont have to like RTD but have some respect for this man![/QUOTE]

Hear Hear!

Oh god, sometimes I do wonder what it is about the Internet that seems to encourage both negativity and fanboyism about the smallest of subjects. Not having an answer to this I'll just blame it on the crack and move on....

Anyway, one thing I wanted to say about the way Da Moff seems to be approaching the crack and its affects on the Doctor Who universe (and I say seems because... well, it's Steven Moffat, god knows where this is ending up) is it ain't a reset button. Not really. A reset button would be something that utterly removed events from the cannon and meant they never happened. This is more of a trousers-of-time moment where everything we knew happened still happens but doesn't necessarily impact on this leg of said trousers.

Why would he do such a thing (if, indeed, it's going to stick and the mention of the Cyberking wasn't just a fan wind-up)? I don't for one second think it's 'fixing RTD's mistakes' mainly because he really didn't make many at all that NEED fixing. It's more to give the writers of both the current team and future ones the flexibility to revisit certain topics or periods again if they so require without any further retcon while also letting them use pivotal moments if so required. Very clever device but even more importantly it's a good series-long plot that'll give a lot of options at the end of the series AND plays with one of the more fixed concepts in the 'verse. Nicely played sir, nicely played.