haul himself or the TARDIS into it

TV About a week ago - and with apologies for not catching up on this before -- Allyn Gibson was good enough to say some nice things about my Doctor Who writing and to pick up on that infamous post about where exactly the narrative arc of the current season is going. Towards the bottom of his post, he says this ...

"Though I am throwing out the idea that Moffat may push the reset button that Davies did not."

Here's something. I'm not. As I think I've mentioned at some other time (though for the life of me etc.) there was a rather good article in Doctor Who Magazine just after Moffat took over which described what his approach to the series might be, especially its internal narrative, and one of the options was to wipe out RTD's tenure. But I think he'd go further. So in tribute to Allyn's own raggedy theories, here's a theory of my own.

What will happen when the Pandorica opens?

Early synopses for the finale -- without dropping in a lot of spoilers unless you're outside the UK and haven't seen the Silurian episodes -- suggest that the time travel element of the series is going to be the "big bad", that the Pandorica really is a huge fairy tale concept that will effect the fabric of the universe or more specifically the web of time. Which is fine and some of the juxtapositions sound really, really interesting.

What if when the Pandorica opens something bigger happens and the only way that the Doctor can stop it is to haul the TARDIS into it -- he talked about doing something similar in Flesh and Stone before resorting to using the Weeping Angels. Assuming the effects are similar to when Rory was enveloped, the loss of the TARDIS to the time line would be catastrophic.

It would be as if the Doctor never travelling in time.

Most of his adventures gone, forty odd years of adventures snuffed out. Are you a spin-off writer working on a new Big Finish cd? I wouldn't bother, it probably doesn't matter. The Doctor hasn't met the Monoids yet. Assuming the human race even managed to survive long enough to take The Ark route to the stars.

The ultimate reset button.

It's not perfect. The spectre of Turn Left looms large. Does the crack and time really have the ability to paper over all of the those alien invasions, the time war, revolutions and what have you or would it simply let everything go to crap? Torchwood wasn't that good was it? Or would it simply have been a different timelord travelling the time lanes doing much the same thing. A benevolent version of The Master perhaps.

Plus The Sarah Jane Adventures has to be taken account of, and we know the Doctor is to appear in the next series of that along with Jo Grant. A universe wide reset button negates this even if the Doctor survives to exist within it -- which he has to of course because otherwise there isn't a show. I don't have another explanation for Amy not remembering the Daleks other than something on a more personal level ...

Of course a reset button can manifest itself in other ways. It could be a nu-Trek solution with the Doctor and Amy entering a different version of the Whoniverse where everything is different like the season two cyberworld. Or my favourite idea -- which hasn't surprisingly yet been done and inspired by the Last Action Hero -- in which the Doctor enters a universe in which he's the only "alien" element and which is exactly like ours.

What would the Doctor do without monsters to fight?