Steven Moffat has revealed that the introduction of Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) in Season five of Doctor Who was not dependent on Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor’s arrival.

In Doctor Who Magazine, the Who showrunner explained what the basic story arc for series five would have been had David Tennant stayed on as the Tenth Doctor.

I only had the roughest idea. Had David stayed for one final year, it would certainly have been his last, so my pitch was that it would start with the Tardis crashing in Amelia’s back garden—as now—and a terribly battered and bruised Tenth Doctor staggering out.

Amelia finds him, feeds him fish custard (no that was for Matt, it would have been something more Davidy) and generally helps him. But we, the audience, can see he’s in a truly bad way. Dying maybe. Eventually he heads back to his TARDIS, and flies off.

But when he returns—many years later for Amy—he seems perfectly fine, and indeed doesn’t remember any of those events…And of course over time, we realise what we saw was the Tenth Doctor at the end of his life, about to regenerate. Events that we return to in Episode 13…

Now that sounds downright intriguing. Does it mean that "The End of Time" would still have happened? And if it did, then the Tenth Doctor that Amy would have met in later life would have been a pre-"End of Time" Time Lord.

Would it have changed the dynamic of the Doctor with Amy, Rory (Arthur Darvill) and later on River Song (Alex Kingston)? Most probably.

Still, we do wonder what can be more "Davidy" than fish custard? Certainly not pears, as the Tenth Doctor hated pears. Any guess at foods that can actually be more "Davidy"? Is there even such a thing?

Ah! What could have been. So many questions ...

(via Bleeding Cool)