Here's a question that'll likely be given the "timey wimey" explanation but I was thinking the other day, while I was watching the Hartnell episode The Dalek invasion of Earth, that because the Daleks were essentially wiped out from time due to the Time War will all the encounters that the previous Doctors had with them, especially any on Earth, still happen from the current Present or will those time periods be rewritten to show something completly different?
Dalek encounters?
- Thread starter Crewman47
- Start date
From my point of view, there are two timelines. There's normal historical time, where 1964 leads to 1965 leads to 1966, which us "lower species" think is the be-all and end-all of time, and there's meta-time, where, say, 2005 leads to five billion leads to 1864 leads to 2006, which is what time travelers like the Doctor, Jack, the Daleks, and the other higher-species with first or second hand knowledge of the Time War know of.
Meta-time, like normal time, appears to be a strict progression of cause to effect when examined in isolation. The Doctor meets Jack, the Doctor gives Jack a german bomb, the Doctor rescues Jack from his spaceship when that bomb is going to explode, the Doctor leaves Jack behind on Satellite Five, Jack meets the Doctor in Cardiff and hurls them both to the end of the universe. It's only when you start to mix meta-time and regular time that things get... complicated. Then you get Jack Harknesses popping in and out of time and space like kettle corn, so there were like three or four of him within a few hundred miles of each other at a certain point during World War II. It makes perfect sense from the meta-time perspective, but from the normal time perspective, its downright insane.
Also, you'll note that the only time the Doctor meets someone who is out of sync, like Sally Sparrow or River Song, it's because they aren't time-travelers. It seems there's sort of fundamental mechanic in Whoniverse time travel that prevents time travelers from meeting each other in the wrong order (barring extraordinary circumstances, like every multi-Doctor story ever), but people who stick to regular time don't get that benefit.
In short, the events prior to the Time War will still happen in regular history, even if they take place after events which time travelers claim were before or during the war, like the Dalek Invasion of Earth in 2164 taking place after all of the present-day, post-Time War Dalek stories of the new series. So, in theory, the Doctor could reenter the Time War simply by going to a point before some battle in it took place, and then biding his time and living his way into it, but I presume if he were to try it, those time dragons from "Father's Day" would come out and eat his face.
Meta-time, like normal time, appears to be a strict progression of cause to effect when examined in isolation. The Doctor meets Jack, the Doctor gives Jack a german bomb, the Doctor rescues Jack from his spaceship when that bomb is going to explode, the Doctor leaves Jack behind on Satellite Five, Jack meets the Doctor in Cardiff and hurls them both to the end of the universe. It's only when you start to mix meta-time and regular time that things get... complicated. Then you get Jack Harknesses popping in and out of time and space like kettle corn, so there were like three or four of him within a few hundred miles of each other at a certain point during World War II. It makes perfect sense from the meta-time perspective, but from the normal time perspective, its downright insane.
Also, you'll note that the only time the Doctor meets someone who is out of sync, like Sally Sparrow or River Song, it's because they aren't time-travelers. It seems there's sort of fundamental mechanic in Whoniverse time travel that prevents time travelers from meeting each other in the wrong order (barring extraordinary circumstances, like every multi-Doctor story ever), but people who stick to regular time don't get that benefit.
In short, the events prior to the Time War will still happen in regular history, even if they take place after events which time travelers claim were before or during the war, like the Dalek Invasion of Earth in 2164 taking place after all of the present-day, post-Time War Dalek stories of the new series. So, in theory, the Doctor could reenter the Time War simply by going to a point before some battle in it took place, and then biding his time and living his way into it, but I presume if he were to try it, those time dragons from "Father's Day" would come out and eat his face.
That's a pretty good explanation. I'm almost tempted to turn this into a discussion of why multi-Doctor stories bother me but... I won't hijack the thread. 
The Doctor can meet time travelers out of order if they first mutate into a giant head in a jar. :P
I always thought we (the viewers) saw events as the Doctor sees them, being able to comprehend paradoxes, back tracking to change events etc, whereas the lower races within the show can't and it goes straight over their head.
The sense that I get is that the Daleks were not erased from history; rather, at some point between the 22nd and 52nd Centuries, the bulk of the Daleks left their regular timestream and entered the Time War. Gallifrey, being encased in a temporal bubble or some such as I've been told by numerous classic Whovians, was probably erased from history -- I rather imagine that this is so because their temporal bubble would have been destroyed too. "Higher beings" -- beings with an awareness of the effects of time travel -- are probably aware that the Time Lords once existed and were erased from history; hence their being referred to as like legends, even though the Time War probably didn't happen all that long ago, relative to present-day Earth.
Given that the events of the Time War are "time locked," I imagine that the history of the Daleks within the pre-Time War timeline are now impossible to interact with or alter by third parties or by the Daleks themselves (barring something like Dalek Caan happening again). Ergo, if the Daleks are ever to be rescued from extinction, they have to be repopulated from stock that was removed from the Time War prior to its end -- hence the Davrosian Daleks in "The Stolen Earth"/"Journey's End," the Cult of Skaro in "Army of Ghosts," and the title character in "Dalek."
Given that the events of the Time War are "time locked," I imagine that the history of the Daleks within the pre-Time War timeline are now impossible to interact with or alter by third parties or by the Daleks themselves (barring something like Dalek Caan happening again). Ergo, if the Daleks are ever to be rescued from extinction, they have to be repopulated from stock that was removed from the Time War prior to its end -- hence the Davrosian Daleks in "The Stolen Earth"/"Journey's End," the Cult of Skaro in "Army of Ghosts," and the title character in "Dalek."
As soon as the Master showed us that paradox machines can keep the universe ticking over, I thought it was pretty obvious that the Daleks in the timewar had drawn reinforcements from across all time, that the same Dalek could be pulled from time as a reinforcement for it's own death millions if not billions of times, which would explain why the Daleks can be remembered but never encountered if even the first Daleks hatched by Davros in genesis were conscripted into the time war...
Besides the invasion of 2164 happened twice, the second time right over the top of the first since future Daleks were ashamed of their failure and insisted on a temporal do-over in day of the daleks which might suggest that the Doctor's TARDIS was pushed aside to land elsewhere when they were supposed to put down the occupation or the Doctor and his companions were exterminated in that divergent timeline... but the Daleks weren't drilling towards the core or they had and it just didn't seem worth mentioning.
Besides the invasion of 2164 happened twice, the second time right over the top of the first since future Daleks were ashamed of their failure and insisted on a temporal do-over in day of the daleks which might suggest that the Doctor's TARDIS was pushed aside to land elsewhere when they were supposed to put down the occupation or the Doctor and his companions were exterminated in that divergent timeline... but the Daleks weren't drilling towards the core or they had and it just didn't seem worth mentioning.
