Howling:What exactly did Moffat erase?

The Howling → What exactly did Moffat erase?

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There's another thread about Moffat's confirmation that, because of the cracks and the reboot, the highly public invasions of the 21st century never happened.

But exactly which stories got erased?

Most likely the real answer is "whichever ones Moffat needs to get out of the way", and he hasn't sat down and made a list, much less come up with a rationale. But it would still be nice to come up with an in-universe answer. So:

1. Everything after some cutoff. Say, the end of the TV movie; 1 Jan 2000 sounds like an important date (and the 21st century is when everything changes, right?), and it includes all the RTD episodes but none of the classic ones. But this wouldn't take care of The Next Doctor, which the Doctor specifically talked about being erased. Or Terror of the Zygons, which Moffat has called out as the one classic story that can't have been covered up or forgotten. And how does it affect all the future stories, from The Keys of Marinus to Cold Blood (which include every companion death!).

2. A random smattering. A few dozen things were wiped out of earth history, and they just happen to include the handful of public-knowledge 2005-2009 invasions, the Victorian Cyberking, and Nessie in the Thames. Well, isn't that convenient? Pretty hard to swallow, but if Moffat doesn't have a plan, it may turn out to be the only thing consistent with the evidence we get over the years to come.

3. The ones that were "complicated space-time events". We know the cracks like to eat those. And for the most part, the invasions that risked breaking a fixed point in time were also the ones that went public. So this might actually work. And I can almost see RTD coming up with it and suggesting it to Moffat (or to the public).

4. The ones that were incompatible with Amy's worldview. The world was rebooted from Amy's memories, so if Amy believed humanity wasn't in fear of aliens, some things had to vanish from history to make that sensible. The question is, why would Amy believe that?

4a. Subconscious choice. She wanted to live in a world where all the thrilling adventures happened all around the universe, but she had a nice safe home to return to. And the Doctor had already suggested that she could will her parents into existence, and hinted that she could fix Rory's existence problems, so why not try this as well?

4b. Traumatic delusion. She's lying there dying from Auton Rory's shot. The Doctor shows up and says "We'll get you into the Pandorica, take you back to 21st century England, and everything will be OK". That's the last thing she hears before blacking out. Then she's in statis for 2000-odd years, being repaired by the Pandorica. When she wakes up, she believes that 21st century England is safe.

4c. Spacetime shrinkage. There's not just one Amy there--there's also little Amelia, who grew up in a world without stars. Of course that world didn't have aliens blowing up Big Ben every Christmas.

4d. The Silence. In another thread, it's suggested the Silence deliberately blew up the universe so the Doctor would be forced to find some way to reboot it, so they could turn their post-hypnotic suggestion ability into a history-editing ability. While writing themselves into the history of the Earth this way, why not also remove all of the threats that were common knowledge? Even if they weren't worried about the threats themselves, wouldn't they prefer humans who weren't all convinced that the universe was full of hostile aliens trying to enslave them? --99.33.26.0 03:16, May 7, 2011 (UTC)

PS, Doing a search, I found another similar thread from early last year. However, the consensus at the time was that Moffat wasn't actually erasing anything from history (even the original poster agreed), and obviously nobody could have come up with any good answers before seeing The Big Bang anyway. So I think it's better to keep this new thread instead of reopening the old one. But if someone who's more experienced with this wiki than me disagrees, I'll dig it up and reopen it. --99.33.26.0 03:57, May 7, 2011 (UTC)

In Rememberance of the Daleks the Seventh Doctor has already explained why nobody remembers the Loch Ness Monster. He said something along the lines of "humans have a remarkable capacity for self deception," which has always been a theme in both the classic and the new series. More importantly, Ace does not remember ever hearing about the Loch Ness Monster, but Sarah Jane still remembers it in School Reunion. This means that it was not erased, but people simply didn't believe it. Your first thoery doesn't work because we know that before the universe was restored, one event before 2000, The Next Doctor, was erased. Besides, there were classic episodes that took place in the 21st century. If the Cybermen never attack Earth in the 21st century, Zoe won't be a companion. The erasures happened before the Big Bang, so all your theories about Amy rebooting the universe inaccurately are wrong, or people would have remembered the invasions before the finale. The cracks have just always been shown to appear at random points in space-time, so they appeared in the Dalek invasion, Victorian London, Saturnya, the the Byzantium, Starship UK, etc. Some of the events that they erased were events that we had seen or heard of already, to show the audience what the cracks were capable of.Icecreamdif 13:15, May 7, 2011 (UTC)

First, the fact that Sarah Jane remembers Terror of the Zygons doesn't mean that it wasn't erased. That episode happened before the cracks had erased anything. As for the "remarkable capacity for self-deception" explanation, Moffat himsef called this the one story of the classic series that couldn't be explained away that way (or by UNIT coverup, etc.), which is why I brought it up in the first place.

For theory 1, I'm not sure why you felt the need to repeat the exact same arguments against it that I already gave (The Next Doctor, and the classic episodes that take place in the future), but at any rate, I was already convinced that this was the weakest answer.

For theory 4a-c, the fact that the erasures happened before The Big Bang doesn't actually prove anything. First, we don't know whether anyone remembered the invasions beforehand; we only saw that Amy didn't. From the time we saw the first crack to the finale, not once did anyone mention any of those events. And, oddly, the Doctor never thought to ask Rory, River, Nasreen, etc. about them (which is the first thing I'd do if I were trying to figure out why Amy didn't remember them). So, we don't actually know either way.

Finally, you argue that theory 2 must be the answer because "the cracks have just always been shown to appear at random points in space-time"--but they _haven't_ been at random points. At least not the ones we've seen or heard about. Those appeared at points very near to where Amy and the Doctor were (including the ones on Saturnyne--one of them connected to Venice during Amy's arrival like a wormhole, and the others were near that one). Of course it's possible that there were millions of others that we didn't see, but it's just as possible that there aren't; we don't know either way.

There were presumably cracks all throughout the universe, we just only saw the ones near the Doctor and Amy, because the show is from their point of view. Moffat may say that it is impossible for people to ignore the Loch Ness Monster, but within the show, the 7th Doctor specifically stated that people did just ignore it and rationalize it away. The fact that Ace had never heard of the "Zygon gambit with the Loch Ness Monster," in an episode from long before the cracks existed, proves that the Loch Ness Monster was just attributed to drugs in the water supply, or something along those lines.Icecreamdif 16:28, May 8, 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, but do drugs in the water supply bomb entire cities and kill hundreds of people though? There's no way you could write all that off as a hallucination. EJA 16:37, May 8, 2011 (UTC)

We don't know whether there were cracks all throughout the universe. In fact, multiple times last season, Moffat referred to the mystery of why the cracks seem to be following Amy--although he didn't come anywhere near _confirming_ that they were following her. And that's the whole point; Moffat hasn't told us exactly what fell into the cracks, beyond telling us that thanks to the cracks the 21st century humans won't know about alien invasions.

At the risk of belaboring the Nessie point far more than it deserves, it's possible that Moffat just forgot about that 7th Doctor episode, or that he (like EJA above) just thought it was ridiculous. But, if he did decide that event was removed by the cracks, and wanted to resolve the Ace puzzle, it wouldn't be that hard. Remember that Ace was a 4-year-old growing up in the inland west suburbs. If the Doctor had mentioned the same event to someone 10 years older who grew up near the East End docks, they would have remembered. But the Doctor didn't think of that, and mistakenly assumed Ace's lack of memory because of the usual human self-deception. Anyway, the chances of Moffat ever bringing up Terror the Zygons onscreen, much less Ace's memory of it, seem pretty minuscule. The point Moffat was obviously making is that RTD gave us at least one ohmigod-aliens event every year, while the classic show did it exactly once in its entire history, and that's what made it impossible to write stories with any sense of wonder about aliens, and that's what he wanted to change. --99.33.26.0 01:54, May 9, 2011 (UTC)

If people actually believed that the Loch Ness Monster came to London, everybody would know about it, even years later. As was stated by the Doctor himself, people just refused to believe its existance. I haven't seen Terror of the Zygons in a while, but I don't remember anything about them bombing entire cities and killing hundreds of people. It also makes sense to show humans gradually coming to believe that aliens exist, because in the Classic Series, there were a few episodes that took place in the 21st century. It has always been a major plot point in Torchwood, particularly in Fragments that "The 21st century is when everything changes." These alien attacks are "everything changing." If we assume that all the big public alien attacks are erased, then does that mean that Children of Earth is gone. Does that mean that Ianto, Steven, and the Frobisher family are still alive, and Jack is still on Earth. If you know what the premise for the next season of Torchwood is, than you know that the writers clearly don't have a problem with making alien incursions public to the whole world.Icecreamdif 04:06, May 9, 2011 (UTC)

"... in the Classic Series, there were a few episodes that took place in the 21st century." Yes, and almost uniformly, people were shocked about the idea of aliens. Go back and watch Wheel in Space, where Bennett and his crew refuse to believe that there are aliens attacking, and insist the problems must be caused by malfunctions or fanatical anti-space-program saboteurs. Then watch Moonbase, Seeds of Death, etc.

"... If we assume that all the big public alien attacks are erased, then does that mean that Children of Earth is gone. Does that mean that Ianto, Steven, and the Frobisher family are still alive, and Jack is still on Earth." Yes and no, respectively. Time isn't linear; there can be effects without causes in the past. Amy's engagement ring existed even though Rory didn't. For that matter, every time someone walks around before his own birth, it's the exact same "paradox."

Anticipating your next objection: Jack can still remember, and otherwise be affected by, those events, even though they're not part of the world's past anymore, because he's a time traveler, and they're still part of his past--exactly as the Doctor explained to Amy in Time of Angels. Beyond that, it's an open question exactly how the paradoxes are dealt with. Maybe there are gaping holes in history; if anyone dug down beneath all the conspiracy and coverup surrounding Torchwood, they'd find that the answers still made no sense. Or maybe the erasure by the cracks, or the later reboot, smoothed over the gaps, rebuilding as consistent a history as possible backward from 2011, in which case they might find some reasonable explanation for the destruction of the Hub, but not the same one we saw. There are probably other ways RTD could deal with it, if he chooses to, although most likely he won't even bother to explain it.

"... If you know what the premise for the next season of Torchwood is, than you know that the writers clearly don't have a problem with making alien incursions public to the whole world." Really? "But this time, the threat is much closer to home, as they realize that their greatest enemy is mankind itself..." There's a global conspiracy to keep the truth about Torchwood secret from everyone, and even the people behind the conspiracy don't know why Jack's history goes back for centuries. Meanwhile, something done by some secret human organization causes death to cease to exist, and Torchwood has to reunite to save the world before it runs out of resources due to overpopulation in four months. How does any of that mean that either past or future alien invasions are public knowledge in Torchwood? --99.33.26.0 05:03, May 9, 2011 (UTC)

I'm actually starting to wonder if perhaps Amy and Rory live on a "clone" of Earth that was created at some point prior to the really big invasions from the Daleks, Cybermen, etc. It's not in a parallel universe, it's just somewhere else, like Mondas. EJA 09:41, May 9, 2011 (UTC)