Howling:How does the Doctor refuel after Big Bang 2?

The Doctor explained a few times in the first four seasons of the new series that he has to power the TARDIS by absorbing energy from time rifts.

But, at least according to RTD, when the Doctor closed the cracks last season, that also closed all of the rifts (which is why Torchwood has no reason to go back to their old location).

So, how does the Doctor power the TARDIS now?

I've got some theories, but none of them seem that compelling:
 * 1) RTD's not the boss anymore; the Moff could just say, "Ignore that crazy guy in America, of course the rifts are still around, and that's how the Doctor powers the TARDIS."
 * 2) When the TARDIS regenerated itself between The End of Time and The Eleventh Hour, it changed its power source, either because she knew the rifts were going to close in a year, or because she just thought the rifts were inconvenient and she'd wanted to change it ever since the end of Gallifrey but hadn't gotten a chance.
 * 3) When Amy remembered the Doctor and the TARDIS back into existence in The Big Bang, because she didn't know about the rift power, it ended up with something different.
 * 4) During the season break, the Doctor solved the problem in some way that wasn't interesting enough for the Moff to mention.
 * 5) Power is a problem, but the Doctor's got bigger problems to worry about (his death, the Silence, Melody being kidnapped, etc.), so he's putting it off for later.
 * 6) Power is a problem, but the Doctor doesn't realize it yet; he's got half a tank, and he won't notice that there are no more rifts until it's time to refuel.
 * 7) This last one seems beyond implausible and into ridiculous territory, but for completeness: In the later EDAs, a godlike echo of the Master had been secretly powering the TARDIS from within the link, just to get the Doctor to the lowest point possible. In the last novel, he finally did so. Except most of that last novel must have been erased by the cracks (the Vore invasion of 2005 certainly couldn't be covered up), so maybe the Master's echo is still powering the TARDIS until the time is right to reveal himself.

As I said, none of these seem that great to me. My guess is that Moffat hasn't come up with an answer, and he won't worry about it until he's got a good story idea that involves refueling the TARDIS, at which point we'll learn that there was enough fuel to get to that episode but it was just about to run out (#5 or #6)… Either that, or he'll never deal with it, and at some point Justin Richards or some other NSA writer will casually mention a stopover at a rift in an 11/Amy/Rory story (#1). --173.228.85.35 08:33, August 22, 2011 (UTC)

Could be 5. Remember in The Doctor's Wife, House had to eject 30% of the rooms to get back into the main universe. Of course, the TARDIS could have later got some energy back by eating House and absobing his Artron energy. 186.212.128.73 11:05, August 22, 2011 (UTC)

The most likely explanation is probably number 1, but I doubt that Moffat will ever actually bring it up. The rift is similar to the kind of crack that the vampires and Prisoner Zero went through, but they still don't seem to be the same thing. The Cardiff rift has been around for much longer than the cracks have been, and the Doctor never seemed very disturbed by its existance. RTD really only has to worry about Torchwood now, and how the TARDIS is powered isn't really his problem. He wanted a reason why it was OK for Torchwood to leave Cardiff, so he came up with one. Since the only time the Doctor ever actually went to refuel the TARDIS was when they needed a plot reason for him to be in Cardiff anyway, I doubt that it will ever be brought up.Icecreamdif 20:01, August 22, 2011 (UTC)