(no subject)

[sebastienne]

Just been watching a re-run of the Doctor Who christmas special on BBC3 (oh, I love being at home where there's nothing to do but watch dodgy digital TV...).

Now, this entire episode revolves around the Doctor recovering from his regeneration. It's effectively a race against time - will he recover in time to save planet earth from the Sycorax?

A Time Lord. In a race against time. Surely, the fact that he is a Time Lord with a Time Machine would mean that, no matter how long he needed to sleep for, he could just come back in time and save everyone?

Comments

[glamwhorebunni.livejournal.com]

Nope. See the episode about Rose's dad to see why The Doctor can't do the messing-with-his-own-timeline-and-thus-the-fabric-of-time-thingy...

If the Dr had failed, he couldn't go back and alter it because this would lead to those big scary flying things and badness- the Doctor works to preserve the Fabric of Time, he can't go round fucking it up.

[neoanjou.livejournal.com]

There is no paradox if we take that if the doctor had failed then he would have died, thus wouldn't have been able to go back and change anything. Its like the end of Bill and Ted - only the winners are able to go back and alter the past.

I'd guess that the doctor can't help changing the past with his adventuring, but he probably knows how to stop the evil things appearing by making only a small change or something - I'm not familar with the nature of space-time within the Doctor Who universe.

Of course he could have saved himself prior to the events, (i.e. the Doctor from christmas one year ago could save the world (and thus the doctor) in the present (this christmas) ) but he didn't. Maybe he didn't know it was going to happen (the doctor seems to have a history book style knowledge of most of history, and this event might not have got a big mention in the history books if security was as tight as claimed) or maybe he knew that he would save the day so wouldn't need to.

[sebastienne.livejournal.com]

wasn't the an episode of doctor who called "the five doctors", or something? cuz that strikes me as the Doctor messing with his own timeline... you'd think that timelords messed with timelines all the time, in fact, what with travelling in time and changing things...

i'm just a little worried that doctor who might be built on not entirely honest science.

yes, i'm aware that this is stupid, because it's sci-fi nonsense, but i still like realism, or at least internal consistency, in these things...

[foreverdirt.livejournal.com]

If memory serves (and it has been over ten years since I last saw it), the point of The Five Doctors was that an evil plot device had messed the timeline and the Doctors had to unmess it before the universe collapsed.

But yes, as anotherusedpage says, he can't go back and fix it if he's already dead.

[chrisvenus]

the plot of the five doctors was the the first five incarnations of doctor were being summoned to the same place basically by... errr.. Borusa possibly. Basically he needed them to get into the tomb of rassilon to unlock its secrets and stuff.

It was not a chocie of the doctor.

Similarly in the three doctors and the two doctors (the latter being the second and sixth doctors rather than the expected first two) the doctor had no intentions of meeting himself. Then again neither did the big gribbly monsters turn up. It is quite possible though that the time lords being around in that time prevented the universe falling apart.

I'm pretty sure it is mentioned then though that there are rules against meeting yourself.

Also it is worth noting for completeness that in Mawdryn Undead, Brigadier Leithbridge-stewart met a version of himself from five to ten years in the future and there was a huge energy release. I forget why this happened but it seemd kind of relevant.

And there my geeking shall end (until my next comment). :)

[glamwhorebunni.livejournal.com]

The nature of time in the Doctor's universe is strange and contradictory, unfortunately. But he almost never goes to places where he'll meet himself, and he never interfers with things he previously did. These seem to be important, as the Father's Day episode with Rose-saving-her-father unleashing horrible consequences suggests.

A classic example of this was the TV Station arc from the last series. Halfway through we had the evil-news episode where the Doctor helped stop the news satellite that was holding back humanity. Then a few episodes later we had one a hundred years later, where the Doctor saw the consequences of his past actions. A Seemingly Good Idea would have been to go back in time to the previous episode to stop it. But he doesn't, because that would create paradoxes.
Similarly they always creap slightly forward in time in the "real world" where Rose's family and friends are, probably again to stop paradoxes.

The Doctor seems to always know how history should be, and works to keep it to that. Quite how this doesn't create all sorts of paradoxes is never really explored... There are lots of things like that that are sort of just skirted around.

[anotherusedpage.livejournal.com]

Also, not if he's dead of world-ending before he's well enough to make the Time Machine work....

[steerpikelet.livejournal.com]

you are destroying the magic. please stop that.

[vampire-kitten.livejournal.com]

And isn't the whole point of doctor Who to sit there and point out why their science is bad and evil and wrong. Plus to watch Katy's Young Man squirm at the Bad Science?

[mi-guida.livejournal.com]

Read "The Time Traveller's Wife" by Audrey Niffeneger (I think that's how you spell it). Lots of circular time travelling "he didn't do it - so he couldn't do it when he went back - so he doesn't do it - so he didn't".

And it's a good story and added to the soggy pillows today.

[vampire-kitten.livejournal.com]

I love that book.

[chrisvenus]

Only just. :)

[chrisvenus]

You will find that in a hell of a lot of the episodes he should really just get into the time machine, go back to a few days before the epiosde starts and sort everything out. He doesn't though. Because he shouldn't.

The way I tend to think of it is that the Tardis shoudln't be used for short time travelling trips. You use it for the big trips but if you use it for the short ones, well, you just shouldn't. I have a wealth of Who trivia that I can probably use to back this up empirically but I can't be bothered right now. :)

[stronglight.livejournal.com]

I've often wondered that. I tend to assume that the Doctors Time Travel is analogous to the spectacular technology in James Bond, which does not depend on this paltry mortal physics, but rather is powered directly by the audience's faith in the ability of Our Hero to triumph.

And if there were no plot holes, where would the plot bunnies live? :-)

[chains-of-irony.livejournal.com]

I never bought those explantions, either.

More importantly; how are we going to watch the new series when we are all IN OXFORD? We could steal someone's JCR, or download them and watch them together. But we should definitely make an event of it!