3.2 KiB
[D] Time travel in Doctor Who @ Things Of Interest
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Author: u/alexanderwales Time flies like an arrow*
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URL: http://qntm.org/who
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Score: 16
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Created: 2015-07-17T22:03:57
Post:
Comments:
u/None [+8] (33 minutes later)
This is a nice ground-up approach.
I'm a bit of a Dr Who superfan,
Yeah, I guess this is where I apologize for the deluge of drivel to follow
and I'm often stuck trying to reconcile the, as Sam labels them, "pain points" in the universe. In this article, Sam has done himself a great nicety by only considering the television show. In fact, the show has spun off into countless books, comics, audio plays, stage plays, licensed TV spinoffs, unlicensed TV spinoffs ... The list goes on.
Of course, there are loads of blatant contradictions between (and even within) media. For instance, Gallifrey has found itself destroyed in the books, the audios, and the TV show - all in distinct ways, all in the same general time period, and each without mentioning the other ones. You can read all the gruesome details, along with a fuller description of the theory I'm about to propose, beginning on page 27 here (warning: pdf).
So my personal in-universe approach is hypertime: the timeline is basically filled with these little pockets of narrative/causal fuzziness that can open and close at will. I tried writing a Time War ratfic using this system, where decoherence in the DWU isn't a one-way process - ie, it's possible to collapse and reopen a blob of superposition. So multiple different things can happen around (for instance) the JFK assassination, so long as the outcome is roughly the same.
This allows for Gallifrey to have been destroyed by the Faction Paradox, and destroyed by the Daleks, and destroyed by the Timewyrm, and hidden away by the Doctor in a parallel universe, all at the same time, so long as the final outcome is roughly the same: Gallifrey is gone. This also accommodates all the crazy alternate, coulda-been versions of the Doctor (from Scream of the Shalka to Infinity Doctors to goddamn Professor Paradox) as equally valid: trapped off in some bubble, somewhere. And when the same story is told three times, with three different Doctors (looking at you, Shada)? No problemo! Hypertime, yo.
Anyway, yeah. That's how I do it.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+3] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (4 hours later)
Has anyone tried to write a rational Dr Who fic?
u/syberdragon [+1] (16 hours later)
I'd like to see that.
u/None [+1] (21 hours later)
Yeah, once. I published the first chapter (a long time ago) and it was called Healer of All Wounds. You might be able to find it in search. But yeah, I got bogged down by my own world building and the project is on indefinite stand-by.
I did just write this supershort Doctor Who one-shot, though. And that's rather rationalish. So
u/TimTravel [+1] (10 hours later)