10 Things That Only Doctor Who Could Get Away With

5. Deux Ex Machina

"He woke up and it had all been a dream" is one of the most ill-fated plot devices in narrative history and Doctor Who has tiptoed dangerously close to fulfilling it - or something similar - throughout its many years in operation, excluding the most recent episode, Last Christmas, in which the events actually were all a dream. For one the most notable examples of this it's worth revisiting the Series 3 finale, Last of the Time Lords, during which the Master (not the first time he's been mentioned on this list, and it certainly won't be the last...) reigned supreme over the human race as the ever faithful Martha Jones single-handedly walked the entire Earth as part of her mission to restore an aged Tenth Doctor to his former youthful glory. To cut a very long story short. All of this ensuing drama - which involved the Doctor, Captain Jack and Martha's family being imprisoned and tortured in equal measure - took place over the course of a whole year but all of it, including the Master's initial rise to power as his Prime Minister alias Harold Saxon, eventually came to nothing when time was ultimately reversed so none of it had even happened. Not officially, anyway. The Doctor went from being a worldwide sensation to a stranger in the street and nobody on Earth - save the handful of people aboard the Valiant and, of course, the millions of viewers watching at home - will ever know what truly happened during the fateful 'Year That Never Was'. It all did still happen, though, which is probably why Doctor Who has been able to recover from this blatant use of deus ex machina more successfully than most. Martha's family were still tortured, Martha still travelled the Earth and the Doctor still lost his friend/foe (depending on how you look at it) at the end of it all, so none of the crucial character developments were distinguished. It's a shame the show can't adopt the technique more often, though. It would get the Doctor out of a lot of sticky situations.