Howling:Erasing events?

the Moff made it very clear that certain events in who-history have been erased to make the inhabitants of earth unaware of aliens. but how can an event be swallowed by a crack without the people who took part being swallowed to. lets take journeys end for exaple. if that event was erased by the cracks, it would mean all 27 planets would have been erased along with their inhabitants as well as the doctor, the "children of time", the daleks and davros. i have a feeling that if that were the case, the post journeys end removal universe would look very different to what it does look like. so, if the cracks don't swallow everything in an event, how do they uncreate events? do the cracks just remove the cause, eg swallowing dalek caan so he can't go back and save davros and so that event never occured? i want to hear your theories. Imamadmad 09:07, August 8, 2011 (UTC)

My theory is that the characters in the show are going to act as if they never happened and the production team will perform the moral equivalent of a shrug. Boblipton 11:20, August 8, 2011 (UTC)

Imamadmad's logic in respect of The Stolen Earth/Journey's End seems wrong to me. Erasing those events does not mean erasing the 27 planets (one of which was the Earth); it means only erasing their disappearances. Adipose 3 would not have vanished, so there'd be no need for Miss Foster, Pyrovillia would not have been lost, and so on. All those planets would still be in their original places. I've gone through the episodes of Series 1 to 4 (including the 2009 Specials) to see which would have to be erased and which could remain (perhaps slightly modified) but either be forgotten or be explained without reference to aliens. The entire list is far too long to include here but the major problem I found wasn't one I'd expected. I'd thought that the absence of events involving Donna would (as in Turn Left) mean that the Doctor was killed but the events that would have killed him are among those that would need to be erased to avoid public knowledge of aliens; Donna wouldn't have been there to save him but there'd have been nothing to save him from. The major problem is that Rose would not have got trapped in a parallel world. The events of Army of Ghosts/Doomsday must have been erased because they were so public and so obviously involved aliens. The universe of "Pete's World" might not have been affected by the "reboot" of this universe, so Rose and the metacrisis Doctor could still be there. This universe very definitely was affected, so Rose should still be around and the Doctor's bright enough to figure that out. I'm not going to say Steven Moffat can't solve that problem but it does need to be solved. --89.242.67.159 02:16, August 11, 2011 (UTC)


 * Rose was a time traveler when Doomsday happens, so she lived through it. So did the Doctor, and Mickey and Jack and a few others. For all of them, she's stuck in a parallel world because of those events. For everyone else, those events didn't happen, and she's vanished for no reason anyone can discover. The same thing already happened when she was gone for a year in the first season. No problem there. The same thing happens whenever anyone steps outside of the consensus timeline. So what?


 * For the original question: Moffat didn't say that the events themselves were directly erased by the cracks; that's just fan shorthand. What he said is that because of the cracks, the events never happened. So yes, presumably the cracks erased something or someone that was necessary for those events (the Dalek fleet flew into a crack as they were crossing the orbit of Pluto, or Caan fell into a crack while trying to break the time lock, or whatever), and that's why the events didn't happen.


 * We don't know exactly what and when, and it really doesn't matter. All Moffat wants to do is set his stories on a planet that doesn't look like it was repeatedly devastated and isn't populated by people who are blasé about aliens, and as Boblipton implied, he'll just do that and leave the details unanswered. Even for the hardcore fans, the interesting part is that the Doctor (and Rose, Jack, etc.) lived through those events, and therefore remember them, but the 6 billion normal humans didn't.


 * Of course some day, some writer is going to bring back Davros. And they might give us a clue (almost certainly unintentionally) by hinting at which impossible fate he escaped this time—the time lock in the LGTW, Doctor-Donna in the Medusa Cascade, or nonexistence thanks to the cracks. But that won't even be noticed by anyone but a handful of obsessive fans. And the ones who refuse to accept that history can change still won't accept it, while the rest of us won't care beyond racing to edit one tiny footnote on the wiki…--173.228.85.118 05:10, August 11, 2011 (UTC)


 * The flaw in that theory is that the Time Fields erase only the cause of an event, but the event itself still happens. So I think the way it erased it all is a little ambiguous.


 * 86.173.142.182 22:21, August 11, 2011 (UTC)
 * Who says the event still happened if you erase its cause? Certainly it's _possible_ for that to happen. Some events were so likely to happen or so fixed-pointy or whatever that they'll happen anyway with another cause. And maybe some parts of spacetime are so damaged that removing the cause will just leave a naked paradox, and the events will just happen with no cause. But in general, neither of those is what happens. That's why they make a big deal out of the special cases, pointing out fixed points in time and paradoxes as if they're rare and important—because they _are_ rare and important. In general, if you remove the cause of an event, that event doesn't happen.
 * As for it being ambiguous: well, yes, it is. He doesn't tell us exactly what got erased or when, so there are many possible explanations, all equally plausible. That's ambiguous. So what? --173.228.85.118 04:27, August 12, 2011 (UTC)
 * Army of Ghosts/Doomsday may not need erasing. Yes it was public but people were just as oblivious to aliens in series 3 despite that. Plus Torchwood was mentioned as covering it up. Much of series 1-3 where already covered up or where not in need of covering up so it doesn't matter about them.
 * Erasing The Stolen Earth /Journeys End alone is enough to have a relitively real world Earth simply because, as mentioned multiple times in the series, humans will sooner believe hallucinations been responsible for alien invasions than aliens.--82.11.57.232 14:34, August 12, 2011 (UTC)
 * Army of Ghosts/Doomsday may not need erasing. Yes it was public but people were just as oblivious to aliens in series 3 despite that. Plus Torchwood was mentioned as covering it up. Much of series 1-3 where already covered up or where not in need of covering up so it doesn't matter about them.
 * Erasing The Stolen Earth /Journeys End alone is enough to have a relitively real world Earth simply because, as mentioned multiple times in the series, humans will sooner believe hallucinations been responsible for alien invasions than aliens.--82.11.57.232 14:34, August 12, 2011 (UTC)


 * People in the RTD-era Whoniverse talk (or at least joke) about leaving the major cities every Christmas because aliens are probably going to invade. And RTD expressly said, as early as the Confidential for The Christmas Invasion and interviews after Aliens of London, that he planned to explore how the world would change if people were forced to accept that there were aliens attacking the Earth. So, it's got to be more than just one story at the end of series 4.


 * But anyway, it's an open question exactly which episodes need erasing, and almost certainly one that nobody in authority will ever answer. And it doesn't really matter that much, since we know what the end result is. --173.228.85.35 02:48, August 13, 2011 (UTC)


 * All we really know for certain is that people and objects cease to physically exist at the moment the Crack absorbs them, and other people's memories of them are then blocked off, similar to how the Silents can't be remembered after you look away from them. That doesn't necessarily mean they *never* existed at all. Consequences of their actions remaining would then make more sense. 82.2.136.93 16:09, August 12, 2011 (UTC)


 * Let me quote from the Doctor himself: "If the time energy catches up with you, you'll never have been born. It will erase every moment of your existence. You will never have lived at all." -- Flesh and Stone, 00:28:26 (and Cold Blood, 00:39:33). "The Angels all fell into the time field. The Angel in your memory never existed." -- Flesh and Stone, 00:34:55. And so on. He's completely consistent on this, and it's the only explanation anyone ever gives for any of the effects (including Moffat, behind the scenes). So yes, it definitely does necessarily mean they never existed at all. --173.228.85.35 02:48, August 13, 2011 (UTC)