Doctor Who history: How everyone forgot the Daleks
By James Aggas
The Daleks will return once more in the Doctor Who New Year’s Day special Revolution of the Daleks. But why doesn’t anyone remember them?
The upcoming Doctor Who New Year’s Day special sounds extremely intriguing, for a variety of reasons. With the Thirteenth Doctor in prison, the departure of two major characters, and of course, the return of Captain Jack, Chris Chibnall has definitely given fans plenty of reasons to be tuning in.
Of course, what sounds particularly intriguing is the new army of Daleks. One thing that the trailer for the episode teases is that – while we’re sure that they’ll be exterminating everyone at some point – they’re initially introduced to the public as “defense drones”. It’s extremely clear that humanity is almost entirely unaware of the Daleks. This is almost a surprise, especially considering that they stole the Earth over twelve years ago.
Back in the major Tenth Doctor story The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End, the Daleks took control of Earth in a big way. They physically stole the planet and transported it across space, before invading it in full force. In this story, everyone saw the Daleks. So how come no one is screaming in panic upon seeing them again?
How did humanity forget about the Daleks? A key arc from Matt Smith’s first series as the Eleventh Doctor holds the answer…
Courtesy Adrian Rogers, BBC
Rewriting history
Oddly enough, Steven Moffat answered that question just two years later, during his first series as showrunner. In the Matt Smith episode Victory of the Daleks, the Doctor reminds Amy of the events of The Stolen Earth. Or at least, he tries to. But – despite making references as obvious as “planets in the sky” – Amy has no clue what he’s talking about, or even what the Daleks are.
It’s not until a couple of episodes later that the Doctor finds out why. The Doctor discovers various Cracks across time and space. Some of these Cracks simply link one world to another, but others – such as the one he faced in Flesh and Stone – eat away at time itself, as well as memory.
This is a crucial reason why Amy – and in fact, the rest of humanity – have no memory of the events of The Stolen Earth. And while the universe is “rebooted” at the end of the series, there’s no indication that humanity as a whole has remembered these forgotten events.
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Soft reset
This was a smart idea on Moffat’s part. Particularly in how it allowed him to have a “soft reboot” of the series. Series 5’s arc didn’t erase Doctor Who history, just refreshed it so that it was a little more accessible, from a writing standpoint. For example, you can still have the events of The Stolen Earth important to the series without humanity remembering the Daleks or knowing that aliens exist in later stories.
On top of that, what’s interesting about Moffat’s Dalek stories is that none of them take place on present-day Earth. In fact, many of them took place off-world entirely. Resolution by Chris Chibnall was the first proper Dalek story to take place on modern-day Earth since The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End, and even that was small-scale enough that most people didn’t know about its existence.
So the idea of the public being introduced to a new army of Daleks and not panicking at the mere sight of them actually works at this point. Of course, will the world find out about them all over again? Just how big are the Daleks’ plans this time? We can’t wait to find out.
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Do you think the Cracks in Time worked well at providing a soft “reset” for the Daleks and their history? Do you think history should have been re-written the way it was in Series 5? Let us know in the comments below.