Howling:Sarah Jane's gang and the Tenth Doctor

It's shown in SJA "Death of the Doctor" that Sarah Jane, Luke, Clyde and Rani all still remember meeting the Tenth Doctor in "The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith." But that story took place in a version of history that's now been negated by the effects of the Time Crack from Series 5 of DW (In that timeline, aliens were fairly common knowledge, but now those invasions have been totally erased from existence). So how can they remember things that never happened? EJA 15:53, May 11, 2011 (UTC)

Aliens, even prior to the ones erased were "fairly common knowledge" for decades, but also plausibly denied. The Trickster meddling with one man's is not the same as the Daleks stealing 27 planets or Cybermen being in every home. If the invasions were negated, it's almost certainly only the big ones that altered the status quo (and that didn't occur until series 3 in Doctor Who) 90.208.84.168 17:50, May 11, 2011 (UTC)

And "The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith" was well after Series 3 of Dr Who. Actually, aliens started to become a lot more noticeable and impossible to deny after the beginning of Series 2, with "The Christmas Invasion."

Only some events were erased when the universe was destroyed and rebooted. Which ones seems to depend, in some way that hasn't been made too clear, on Amy's memory. (Out of Whoniverse: Steven Moffatt has given himself the chance to pick and choose which events he wants to retain.) The probable explanation of Sarah Jane and the others remembering the events of The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith is that those events were included in the reboot, whereas the various widely known alien incursions were excluded. 89.241.66.26 14:58, May 27, 2011 (UTC)

I love the fact that everybody always remembers the Sycorax but not the Slitheen ship crashing into Big Ben and landing in the Thames. Big Ben is even still covered in scaffolding when everybody's on the roofs in Christmas Invasion.

At what point in series 5 did anyone say everything had been erased? Nowhere. All we got was that the CyberKing invasion in 1851 and the Dalek invasion of 2009 were erased, with time travellers still remembering them if they witness them. At no point was is said that every single Russell T Davies-related thing had been cracked, like you're suggesting. Just two invasions, only one in the present day. People didn't start expecting alien life until the Dalek invasion. Therefore, you only need to get rid of that. Simple, really. Enough with the "different timelines" stuff, too. The Pandorica restored the universe to exactly how it was prior to the events of The Big Bang, which was a world where an invasion in 1851 and an invasion in 2009 never happened. It had a few cracks, too, hence post-Big Bang River in Flesh and Stone where she recognises (based on her facial reaction to seeing it) the crack. 90.199.247.156 03:09, May 29, 2011 (UTC)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think River ever actually saw a crack in The Pandorica Opens or The Big Bang. The only cracks in those episodes were the one in the TARDIS monitor, which River didn't seem to notice, and the ones in the Doctor's rewind. I always assumed that in Flesh and Stone, River didn't make the connection between the time cracks and the TARDIS explosion until the Doctor told her that the explosion was in Amy's time. That would explain why River was questioning what the crack was at first, and then stopped talking about it after the Doctor conducted his scan. If the time cracks have erased more than just the 2009 Dalek invasion, and the 19th century Cyber-invasion, why would they only erase alien invasions that alerted the people of Earth to the existance of alien life. By that logic, there should never be any Great and Bountiful Earth Empires, or Galactic Federations, because any major contact Earth had with aliens would be erased. Apart from that, why would the only things the cracks erase be major alien invasions, but not less public alien invasions, or other historical events? If we assume that the erased events weren't restored after Big Bang 2, then the only events that we can assume are erased are the Dalek invasion, and the Cyberman invasion. Icecreamdif 16:41, May 29, 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I asked myself the same thing. By that logic, they could erase World War I and World War II, the Pyramids being built, anything. But they only went for two massive invasions. From an out-of-universe perspective, it's an explanation for why the CyberKing invasion wasn't down in history, as the Tenth Doctor noted with a somewhat confused tone of voice. Erasing the Dalek invasion of 2009 was simply so that future companions and what not wouldn't be all, "oh, aliens, nothing new after we saw those Dalek things."

The machanics of how Big Bang II worked was that it only restored the universe to how it was prior to The Big Bang, meaning anything erased stays erased. The only things that have been erased that come back are things that Amy forces herself to remember as the universe is restored, which only included Rory's physical body and her family. Many fans ignore or overlook that as an excuse for nothing to be erased, which is ridiculous on their part - arguing against the writer. Regarding the future empires, you don't need the historical invasion for that. We saw that those future empires existed before the timeline even had a 2009 Dalek invasion. We got references to the Great and Bountiful Human Empires (there has been four historically by the year 200, 100) long before the events of The Stolen Earth/Journey's End existed. I mean, The Long Game, which features the fourth empire, is set right after a story set in 2012 and no one knows about Daleks because that invasion didn't exist at that point. It was something of a small re-write of time thanks to the Doctor and Dalek Caan. 90.199.247.156 19:45, May 29, 2011 (UTC)

There are two other threads already about why the cracks would erase some things but not others; do we really need to turn this into yet another one?

I'll give two quick possibilities; if you want more, look at the other threads:

1. The cracks are attracted to "complicated space-time events". Anything that messes with a "fixed point in time", like the core facts of humanity's future expansion, counts as one. So Journey's End was erased, but anything that could be dismissed as a coverup wasn't.

2. Rebooting the universe followed some kind of "principle of least action", generating a single consistent history where possible, starting with a 2010 England where humans didn't know about alien invasions, and generating the simplest history that fits. Maybe that involved slightly changing the events of, say, the Sontaran Stratagem, but for Journey's End, it took less energy to just rip the whole thing out and stitch history together around the gap. --99.33.24.89 21:07, May 29, 2011 (UTC)