Doctor Who: 6 Things That Explain The Matt Smith Era

2. The Doctor Deleting Himself From The History Books

After the troubles with the Daleks and the Silence, the Doctor was wiped from the Daleks' path web by Oswin, and then by himself at the Inforarium. So how did the Great Intelligence know so much about him? Well, the GI is information. He/it may well have been the only villain left in the universe to actually know who he was; there was literally no one left to have a grudge against him. The arc of the Doctor's history deletion may have only lasted up until 'The Time of the Doctor' - the Daleks tortured the information out of Tasha - but it resets a lot for the Doctor with other enemies. It settles old scores, freshens up the legend and in a year in which we've looked back at the Doctor's history, it's fitting that the series has focussed a lot on ghosts; the Doctor's been a ghost this past year, but Clara, 'Hide' and the loss of Amy and Rory have all carried the theme. We've seen three gravestones in Series 7 after all.