In a way, this is a variant on the last idea, but not as most people would think. This is not about "wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey," badly-handled time travel paradoxes, but rather taking the more natural fact that the TARDIS can leave a situation and come back to it later. As such, the Doctor can function as a vaudevillian plate-spinner, managing multiple crises at once, like plates on their poles, working frantically among them to use elements from one to solve another before everything comes crashing down. Some aspects of this were seen in the original series. "The Face of Evil," for example, seems to be related to an untold story that occurred during a brief time during "Robot" in which the Doctor left and came back. In both series, the Doctor himself has invited people off on journeys, promising to have them back "in time for tea." In a particularly clever usage of story elements, he might even use one of the problems to solve another, perhaps rerouting an invading star fleet into the middle of some other battle, fouling up both enemies' plans... and possibly, in the end, resulting in a new problem for the Doctor to solve. The best stories seem to lead into each other that way.
Michael Marcus is a game designer, author, and mad scientist living in Hamtramck, Michigan; his current project list include a series of comic short-stories collectively called "One-Punch," a book on hypnosis and language called "The Prometheus Codex," a collaborative game project called "Art War," and a fun spy story called "The Adventures of Jack Uzi" at http://tinyurl.com/JackUziChannel (for those interested).
