Sure, it all sounds nice on paper, but when you take the time to pause and think about it, that's when you run into serious problems.
How do so many people know about the Time War? (Spoilers)
- Thread starter EJA
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Sure, it all sounds nice on paper, but when you take the time to pause and think about it, that's when you run into serious problems.
It bugs me how Gallifrey's destruction could be placed nearly any time in our past, thus explaining how so many people (e.g. Mr Finch, the Sontarans, etc) in the present know so much about it; but the biggest stumbling block to this theory, IMO, is the story The Brain of Morbius, a tale taking place in Earth's distant future on a planet that is heavily implied to be a key world to the Time Lords, and located quite near to Gallifrey (I believe the Doctor states that the worlds are located only a few billion miles from each other). Mehendri Solon is a human from Earth who joined Morbius' cult when he tried to conquer the galaxy.
I have pondered the notion that perhaps the Time Lords periodically shift the physical and temporal location of Gallifrey (and perhaps the whole Kastaberous sector), so that sometimes it exists in one time zone, and other times in another. But then I think the Time Lords would be wary of disrupting the timeline by jumping around in the past and future.
I have pondered the notion that perhaps the Time Lords periodically shift the physical and temporal location of Gallifrey (and perhaps the whole Kastaberous sector), so that sometimes it exists in one time zone, and other times in another. But then I think the Time Lords would be wary of disrupting the timeline by jumping around in the past and future.
Wow, thread necromancy... or did it travel here from 2010?
Okay, try this.
Think of the Doctor's own timeline. The First Doc found the Daleks in a city, the result of nuclear war. Much later, still in his own personal timeline, the Fourth Doctor met Davros, which indicated somerthing had changed, the planet was different, the outcome was different, and so on. Then later still, for 8/9, was the Time War, the result, some say, of 4 trying to stop the Daleks back then. And now we have 11. The Doctor's personal timeline. All the changes are present.
And other timelines bend around it. He causes events to change. The Gallifreyans caused events to change, but from their POV, history has an entirely different shape - not so much a history book as a Make Your Own Adventure.(as popularised in the 90s) From the Doctor's POV, history was one thing at this point in his lives, and now it's that. Think of it as... a city in 1940 England is there, and in 1945 it isn't, having been bombed flat. Now instead of thinking of 1940 and 1945 as times, think of them a splaces. And to elaborate further, the Daleks as Space Nazis... gone, a legend, a mythm but every now and them something crawls out of the woodwork
Also, Time Lords don't have a time zone, they exist outside time.
For the Doctor to go back and change something he did in the Time War, crossing his own timeline, is verboten. That applies to Time Lords too. And to a certain extent Daleks... though I doubt they care that much. Didn't turn out so well for Dalek Caan, looping again and again through time to rescue Davros.
You really are thinking too linearly about this.
Okay, try this.
Think of the Doctor's own timeline. The First Doc found the Daleks in a city, the result of nuclear war. Much later, still in his own personal timeline, the Fourth Doctor met Davros, which indicated somerthing had changed, the planet was different, the outcome was different, and so on. Then later still, for 8/9, was the Time War, the result, some say, of 4 trying to stop the Daleks back then. And now we have 11. The Doctor's personal timeline. All the changes are present.
And other timelines bend around it. He causes events to change. The Gallifreyans caused events to change, but from their POV, history has an entirely different shape - not so much a history book as a Make Your Own Adventure.(as popularised in the 90s) From the Doctor's POV, history was one thing at this point in his lives, and now it's that. Think of it as... a city in 1940 England is there, and in 1945 it isn't, having been bombed flat. Now instead of thinking of 1940 and 1945 as times, think of them a splaces. And to elaborate further, the Daleks as Space Nazis... gone, a legend, a mythm but every now and them something crawls out of the woodwork
Also, Time Lords don't have a time zone, they exist outside time.
For the Doctor to go back and change something he did in the Time War, crossing his own timeline, is verboten. That applies to Time Lords too. And to a certain extent Daleks... though I doubt they care that much. Didn't turn out so well for Dalek Caan, looping again and again through time to rescue Davros.
You really are thinking too linearly about this.
And we have several examples in EU of what happens when the Doctor does re-interfere to correct mistakes, including the awesome Unbound Audio Book with the Valleyard
But clearly the planet Gallifrey did exist within the normal universe at some point, as seen in The Invasion of Time, when it's shown that vessels from other civilizations frequently pass it. It's by no means some mystical higher realm here.
I don't have a problem with the Time Lord's being able to shift Gallifrey in and out of normal space as well as in and out of time either. It was quite clearly explained in the first series that the Time War was fought by the higher advanced species and the result was so explosive that the lesser species came to know about it, probably not really understand it but comprehended it on a basic level.
Yes, that's sort of like how I'm thinking of it. You see, Gallifrey's present had to be in Earth's future at some point in order for stories like The Brain of Morbius to work, but I'm thinking that maybe the planet time-shifted into the past at some point (whether it was because of the events of The Invasion of Time, or the Time War, or accidentally, I really don't know), and it was here that it was cataclysmically destroyed. Of course, there's still the issue of why the Time Lords before the War were not aware of this, but I do recall reading that there are/were some parts of the Web of Time that even the Gallifreyans could not observe.
Why? Gallifrey's present is in Earth's past AND present AND future. You're thinking about parallel timelines. The big G has time that's like a big ball of water. Wibbly wobbly timey wimey. While its internal time is linear, viewed from the outside it's something else altogether.
^ Exactly.
eh...wibbly wobbly timey wimey as a catch all for the series seems more like a writers crutch..kind like bigger on the inside.. so boring..so over used..what is so wrong with a little explanations now and then? hmmmm?
If you think "bigger on the inside" is boring and a crutch then you might be watching the wrong show.
Because it's impossible, you can't explain much of it. It's a kids TV show that has run for 40 years and has plot points that are made up on a weekly basis by different writers that don't match what has happened before. Trying to make too much sense of specifics in Doctor Who is like trying to build a car out of Pasta.
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I'm afraid this is probably the best answer possible. While you and I, Starsuperion, might want to nail down the Doctor's universe to a harder science fiction reality (and I'm making huge assumptions about your intentions in that sweeping statement), Doctor Who doesn't qualify for that kind of treatment. It's definitely a universe filled with wonderful and fascinating ideas, and we can take away from it pieces and play with them (as in your awesome work on the TARDIS exterior), but it doesn't hold up well to meticulous scrutiny.
But give me fun, interesting stories with involving characters and exotic locations (at least now and then), and I'll be happy to look past the dumb stuff. Especially if the writers acknowledge the dumb stuff by sharing a conspiratorial shrug with the audience.
there were more explanations given on a solid scientific basis in the old hartnell era.. it just seemed to get dummer and dummer in terms of explaining things as time has gone by.. our generation is very smart, so to say that a simple phrase is just because of it's ease of use for the audience seems silly to me..
and there appears to be a universal reply to all things that criticize doctor who..it is quite annoying actually.."if you don't like it watch something else" i mean geez..does everything have to be favourable and jolly when posting on a forum concerning doctor who? rubbish!
and there appears to be a universal reply to all things that criticize doctor who..it is quite annoying actually.."if you don't like it watch something else" i mean geez..does everything have to be favourable and jolly when posting on a forum concerning doctor who? rubbish!
Virtually nothing was explained because there was nothing to explain - there was very little back-story and for a large proportion of the series, they simply visit a historical period (themselves often full of errors and nonsense, including their first adventure) via 'the ship'. You are comparing chalk with cheese.
That's actually not the point that was made to you - you can criticise as much as you like and come up with conjunction but the show isn't going to answer those questions in any sensible way because it never has and isn't going to start doing so now.
We know that Gallifrey and the Time Lords haven't been completely erased from the universe though, otherwise the Racnoss in The Runaway Bride wouldn't have known who they were. And I think it's been said somewhere that Jack Harkness, prior to meeting the Doctor, had had dealings of some sort with Time Lords; he thought the War was just a legend though.
If Gallifrey was indeed destroyed across all time zones, as some here appear to be inferring, then such an event would wreak cataclysmic damage to all of history. The Time Lords most likely wouldn't even exist as myths and legends for the wider cosmos; they would never have existed. But as I've pointed out, other people do retain memories of them, which buggers this whole scenario up.
If Gallifrey was indeed destroyed across all time zones, as some here appear to be inferring, then such an event would wreak cataclysmic damage to all of history. The Time Lords most likely wouldn't even exist as myths and legends for the wider cosmos; they would never have existed. But as I've pointed out, other people do retain memories of them, which buggers this whole scenario up.
I don't see how that buggers up the idea that the Time Lords were erased from history, given that Series Five established quite definitively that a person could be erased from history yet still leave evidence of their existence (the photo of Rory) or memories of their existence in others who have time traveled (Amy remembering the soldiers).
Like how opening the TARDIS doors in flight can cause the crew to shrink because the "space pressure" was too great?