Whatever. They just do whatever they want as it’s required by the script. Dr. Who has always been more science fantasy than it is science fiction with varying degrees of consistency, apart from maybe getting into some social issue stuff, along with the tech gadgets and aliens (the sci-fi trappings). IMO it’s almost been on par with The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, things just happen and questioning it is just an exercise in futility, just go along with that episode’s logic and don’t question it. There will be characters who are forever banished from this universe, never to return again, but then a season or two later they show back up again because of some whatchamajigit or some sort of handwavy temporal anomaly or whatever the fuck they want it to be. For there to be a “complete narrative collapse” would require a narrative structure to have been there in the first place. Dr. Who somehow even out-techno-babbles Star Trek.
Whatever. They just do whatever they want as it’s required by the script. Dr. Who has always been more science fantasy than it is science fiction with varying degrees of consistency, apart from maybe getting into some social issue stuff, along with the tech gadgets and aliens (the sci-fi trappings). IMO it’s almost been on par with The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, things just happen and questioning it is just an exercise in futility, just go along with that episode’s logic and don’t question it. There will be characters who are forever banished from this universe, never to return again, but then a season or two later they show back up again because of some whatchamajigit or some sort of handwavy temporal anomaly or whatever the fuck they want it to be. For there to be a “complete narrative collapse” would require a narrative structure to have been there in the first place. Dr. Who somehow even out-techno-babbles Star Trek.