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In Last Christmas, most of the characters eventually woke up for real (I assume) and thereby killed the dream crabs that were attached to them. But Professor Albert died in the dream, so the real-world dream crab that was on him should still be alive.

I guess the Doctor might be tracking down that crab off-camera before series 9 starts, but considering he forgot who those four people were even during the course of that episode, it seems unlikely he'd remember enough information to locate Albert and his crab in the real world.

So is there still a dream crab running around on Earth that everyone simply forgot about?

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    It was implied, early in the episode, that there were many more dream crabs on Earth than just the six we encountered. So if we missed one out of those six, it wouldn't make much of a difference.
    – Mr Lister
    Commented Dec 28, 2014 at 17:39
  • Are you referring to the scene where they find several dream crabs lying dormant under the ice? If I remember correctly everything that happened at the north pole was part of the dream, so that scene might not count.
    – Ixrec
    Commented Dec 28, 2014 at 17:45
  • Absolutely true! But it was never established how many dream crabs there actually are. I wouldn't count on just six. By the way, I was referring to the scene where the Doctor says that depending on how many there are, we might all be dying.
    – Mr Lister
    Commented Dec 28, 2014 at 18:00
  • I think a more fundamental question would be, did any of them wake up in the first place?.
    – JDB
    Commented Dec 28, 2014 at 19:46
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    It's already been confirmed that they did in fact wake up because Moffat explained that everything except the very last scene was a dream.
    – DoctorWho22
    Commented Dec 30, 2014 at 18:42

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Since we know for a fact that everything until the very last scene was a dream we can sort of figure this out, by my answer in Did any of them wake up in the first place, we can sort of figure this out.

Now the only thing we know for a FACT is that there were at least two dream crabs, the one that had The Doctor and the one that had Clara. Now the part about the other dream crabs besides them is debatable since Moffat stated everything until the very last part is a dream, we can probably assume that the other people who were "saved" might not even have been saved. This being said it could mean the Professor Albert might have not actually been real to begin with and just part of the dreams within dreams.

Since Moffat symbolized the tangerine in the last scene as Santa getting Clara and the Doctor back together, we might also assume that perhaps there were only two dream crabs on Earth and it was used on only them in an effort to bring them back together. If there are more dream crabs on Earth we can be sure that they might make a reappearance further down the line or just completely forgotten.

Overall we are left wondering if there were even more than two to begin with, gathering from what we know.

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  • Good enough for me. Much better than a simple "nobody knows because dream inception".
    – Ixrec
    Commented Dec 30, 2014 at 23:12

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