The Total Collapse Event Incident was the Time Lord designation for the event in which the Pandorica Alliance failed to prevent total event collapse, and the Eleventh Doctor's subsequent effort to restore the universe. (TV: The Pandorica Opens [+]Steven Moffat, Doctor Who series 5 (BBC One, 2010). / The Big Bang [+]Steven Moffat, Doctor Who series 5 (BBC One, 2010)., PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual)
History[]
A day to come[]
Through the extrapolations of the Matrix, the Time War-era Time Lords foresaw this event from the Doctor's personal future, which was recorded in the Dalek Combat Training Manual. Observing the effect total event collapse had on the Daleks, reducing them to stone afterimages, Time Lord Weapons Architects explored the possibilities of exploiting Localised Event-Collapse Time Fields as a means of petrifying whole fleets of Daleks. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual)
After Operation Mannequin, (PROSE: Operation Mannequin) the Nestene Consciousness decided an alliance with the likes of the Daleks and Cybermen was the best way to defeat the Doctor. (PROSE: Revenge of the Nestene)
Shortly following his regeneration, the Eleventh Doctor found a crack in Amy Pond's bedroom. (TV: The Eleventh Hour [+]Steven Moffat, Doctor Who series 5 (BBC One, 2010).) Such cracks appeared throughout their travels (TV: The Beast Below [+]Steven Moffat, Doctor Who series 5 (BBC One, 2010)., Victory of the Daleks [+]Mark Gatiss, Doctor Who series 5 (BBC One, 2010).) before they discovered one within the crashed ship Byzantium, capable of erasing people from history. Following the ordeal, River Song told the Doctor that he would see her again soon when the Pandorica opened, having already experienced the event. The Doctor dismissed the Pandorica as a fairy tale. (TV: Flesh and Stone [+]Steven Moffat, Doctor Who series 5 (BBC One, 2010).) Another crack, found within the Silurian city in 2020, erased Amy's fiancé Rory Williams when it consumed his corpse. Much to his shock, the Doctor recovered a piece of his then intact TARDIS' outer plasmic shell from the crack. (TV: Cold Blood [+]Chris Chibnall, Doctor Who series 5 (BBC One, 2010).)
The Pandorica[]
With its Roman Autons in place, the Alliance lured the Doctor to the Pandorica on the belief that he was going to destroy the universe. In doing so, however, the Alliance only succeeded in locking the Doctor away while River Song attempted to pilot the TARDIS, which exploded and destroyed the universe in a total event collapse. Every star exploded at "every moment in history" as time was rewritten. (TV: The Pandorica Opens [+]Steven Moffat, Doctor Who series 5 (BBC One, 2010).)
Big Bang Two[]
- Main article: Big Bang Two
The exploding TARDIS took the place of the sun in keeping the Earth warm, although it was only a temporary solution: the Doctor reasoned the planet was the eye of the storm and would be last location destroyed.
When the Pandorica was opened in 1996, it contained billions of atoms from the universe as it should have been. Some of these were the final traces of whole races erased by the cracks in the universe. As "the perfect prison", the Pandorica was also designed to emit a restoration field to preserve or restore whatever was inside it, preventing prisoners from escaping even by dying. This combination of pre-collapse atoms and the restoration field had a restorative effect on a fossilised Dalek. This seemed impossible, because the Daleks had never existed, having been erased from history; there should have been nothing to resurrect. The Eleventh Doctor thus reasoned that if the restoration field could be transmitted throughout all of space and time, the entirety of the former universe could be extrapolated from the atoms within the Pandorica.
The Doctor used a vortex manipulator to fly the Pandorica directly into the heart of the TARDIS' eternal explosion. Since the TARDIS was exploding at all points in history, the particles and restoration field were present at every point in time. A new universe was created based on the old one, but with the Doctor having never existed, as he had to 'seal' himself outside the universe in order to close the cracks. "Rebooting" the universe caused this new universe to proceed undamaged, because the TARDIS had not exploded. Thanks to the ability the crack in her room had given her to restore things erased by remembering them, on 26 June, 2010, Amy Pond brought back, at least her parents and fiancé Rory, and at Rory's and her wedding, the Doctor after she focused on remembering him. (TV: The Big Bang [+]Steven Moffat, Doctor Who series 5 (BBC One, 2010).)
Aftermath and legacy[]
Amy and Rory rejoined the Doctor in the TARDIS on the night of their wedding. The Doctor, still unaware who had manipulated the TARDIS, received a phone call alerting him to an Egyptian goddess loose on the Orient Express spacecraft (TV: The Big Bang [+]Steven Moffat, Doctor Who series 5 (BBC One, 2010).) but, knowing it was a deception from Gus, disregarded it (TV: Mummy on the Orient Express [+]Jamie Mathieson, Doctor Who series 8 (BBC One, 2014).) as he took his companions on an extended honeymoon. (TV: Death of the Doctor [+]Russell T Davies, The Sarah Jane Adventures series 4 (CBBC, 2010)., A Christmas Carol [+]Steven Moffat, Doctor Who Christmas Special 2010 (BBC One, 2010).) As the Doctor realised during the Battle of Demons Run, Amy and Rory had conceived their daughter Melody Pond, later known as River Song, on their wedding night. (TV: A Good Man Goes to War [+]Steven Moffat, Doctor Who series 6 (BBC One, 2011).)
In 2005, Clive Finch was aware of theories which explained how the memory of alien invasions of Earth was lost to the general public, including a crack in time. (PROSE: Rose [+]Russell T Davies, adapted from Rose (Russell T Davies), Target novelisations (Target Books, 2018).)
Mr Smith was aware of the formation of an Alliance of Enemies of the Doctor. (TV: SJAF 4)
Human historians following the Siege of Trenzalore acknowledged the Total Collapse Event Incident within a string of defeats, following the Eye of Time and the Eternity Clock and preceding the Dalek Project and the Dalek Foundation, the Doctor inflicted on the New Paradigm which led to their organisational restructure into the Parliament of the Daleks preceding the Asylum Incident. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe)
300 years into the Siege of Trenzalore, the Doctor discussed the Silence's attempts to kill him with Mother Superious Tasha Lem, who disavowed the Kovarian Chapter. The Doctor realised that the Kovarian Chapter, who abducted and raised Melody Pond as an assassin intended for the Doctor, were also responsible for his TARDIS exploding, facetiously claiming that he thought he had left the bath running. Tasha noted that, by destroying the TARDIS, they had created the very crack in the universe through which the Time Lords postdating the fall of Gallifrey were calling over Trenzalore. The Doctor observed that the Kovarian Chapter had fallen into a destiny trap; they were not able to change history because they were a part of it. Ultimately, the siege ended without the Doctor summoning the Time Lords by saying his name. Instead, Clara Oswald convinced the Time Lords to assist the Doctor, who was on the brink of dying of old age with no remaining regenerations, which they did so by providing him with regeneration energy, which he used to destroy the Dalek forces assembled over Trenzalore whilst the Time Lords, electing not to return to the universe at that point, closed the crack. (TV: The Time of the Doctor [+]Steven Moffat, Doctor Who Christmas Special 2013 (BBC One, 2013).) Eventually, the Time Lords returned Gallifrey to the universe more discreetly, at the end of the universe. (TV: Hell Bent [+]Steven Moffat, Doctor Who series 9 (BBC One, 2015).)
Flemming read aloud "the Pandorica Opens" as recorded in River Song's diary, which he remarked sounded "exciting". This record was followed by the crash of the Byzantium. (TV: The Husbands of River Song [+]Steven Moffat, Doctor Who Christmas Special 2015 (BBC One, 2015).)
The Fifteenth Doctor mentioned the Pandorica and its consequences as one many memories which weighed on the Fourteenth Doctor when convincing him to go into rehabilitation on Earth. (TV: The Giggle [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who 2023 specials (BBC One and Disney+, 2023).)
