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Time to get the Doctor off his high horse, right? The Oncoming Storm got a little too gusty? So it's time for him to make everyone in the universe think he's dead. From the dawn of time to the end of the world? Help me. My suspension of disbelief is suspended.
Michael Knight, David Banner, Racer X … or, not forgetting the most obvious one of all considering who is writing this, Sherlock Holmes after the Reichenbach Fall(s). Moffat seems to be having two bites at the same sandwich.
We've already seen how this new scenario pans out in the series five weeping-angels two parter. The identity of the good man who River Song had killed was still being kept a mystery to the viewer then, but River's minder knew it was the now supposedly dead Doctor, a dead-timelord-walking, who was assisting them.
Make of that what you will, but it does seem to make sense in the general ethos of the programme. Once a current incarnation of the Doctor is gone, he can continue to have adventures on audio or book form, but he seldom reappears in the television timeline.
For the inhabitants of the television Doctor Who reality, it's like Matt Smith has gone the same way as David Tennant or Tom Baker, but has not been replaced.
It's the flip-side of series five. Instead of them knowing what was being kept hidden from us the viewer, now we know and they are in the dark.
The inherent logic of the Doctor Who universe remains as it was.