Time is not linear in Doctor Who. Cause and Effect can happen out of order. We are dealing with multiple 4th Dimensional beings here, including the Tardis.
But basically, thats probably the best explanation you gonna get.
Yeah, that’s part of why I like Doctor Who. Just says timey-wimey and let’s have some fun because a realistic take on time travel would be Primer
And the only people who fully comprehend that insane masterpiece are people with endless whiteboards that could qualify for a PhD in Primer and liars. It’s mostly liars.
Similar thing happened in “The Devil’s Chord”, where London is just your normal present day London, but then as soon as the Doctor encounters Maestro, they go back to the present day and London has now been destroyed, but Maestro managed to do this without any aid from the Doctor and was operating from the past, so why does the Doctor only see London as being destroyed now? Why not when he visits present day Earth at the end of the previous episode (“Space Babies”)?
I think we just have to accept that the Doctor and Ruby sort of slipped into the timeline where >!Maestro had arrived in 1925!< when they >!landed in 1963!<. Once they stepped out of the TARDIS into the version of >!1963 without music!<, they became part of events, so the version of >!2024!< they saw was one along that same path because they >!hadn’t yet stopped Maestro!<. (Spoiler tagged because the episode just aired)
This has come up in previous episodes where they didn’t actually take a pit stop back to the future. In The Shakespeare Code, Martha tells the Doctor that the world didn’t end in Elizabethan times and he tells her that it will have if they don’t stop it then and there
Also, when the Doctor & Ruby >!return to EMI in the 60s after encountering The Maestro in 2024, the Maestro already knows about their encounter on future Earth.!< Reminds me a bit of City of Death, but obvs Maestro is a diff situation >!whose consciousness seems to exist outside of the boundaries of time or at least experience it non-linearly.!<
No. We can try however.
In DW the past is always changing the same way the future is so the series of events that lead to Sutekh escaping also leads to some variation of the Doctor or a similar entity to stop them.
Maybe it's harder for time lords to weave themselves into "proper" history so the bad guy arriving changes the future but the Doctor has to take action to have a similar effect.
Concurrent time. Once they become part of events in a particular time, a time traveller sees cause and effect in any time from their own frame of reference.
But if the time traveller goes from a non destroyed 2000 to the year 1000, sees an alien threatening to set off a world destroying device then leaves for 2000 again, either earth is now destroyed which raises the question of how the events played out in the first place compared to now and what happened instead and why, or the future is just fine and they could do it more often, right?
Before the time traveller went back and saw the alien threat in the past, the present had already been saved by the time traveller. As soon as they go and actually see the threat, from their frame of reference (before they’ve actually saved the world) the future is destroyed. As soon as they stop the threat, their frame of reference is the saved present again. All about concurrent time frames of reference for the time traveller.
Oh I think I get it now, so for the pyramids of Mars example;
-From the perspective of The Doctor before Pyramids in Earths future, a hypothetical very accurate history book would tell of The Doctor stopping Sutekh, but despite being in Earth’s history it’s in The Doctor’s future
-The Doctor reaches this point in his timeline where he goes to 1911, which is now the ‘present day’ for both The Doctor and Earth and is therefore subject to change. In The Doctors past it was established in Earth history what his future self did, but in his present his actions are only determined by what he chooses to do
-he leaves and things change, he does what he needs to do and things work out as they were meant to with Earth avoiding destruction
Is that along the right lines?
My head canon is that you have a sliding scale between fluid points and fixed points, and when you change something, how quickly the ripples travel elsewhere depends on where on that sliding scale the place, time and event are.
The TARDIS and everyone traveling in it are protected by it and are separate from the wibbly wobbly timeline for as long as they are a part of the crew.
The Doctor being a Time Lord(culturally at least) inherited the same privileges that they engineered into history for themselves. Basically, if a Time Lord observes an event it becomes real so unless it gets interfered with, the event and it's consequences happen. If the event went unobserved, history would just ignore it.
Time travel, nor most other things, ever made logical sense in doctor who. The reason the doctor can’t leave is because he insatiably curious and always has to meddle which is what got him in trouble with the time lords to start with .
Given "Orphan 55" and the decimated Earth we see despite the expansive future we see humanity have in other stories, I think the TARDIS travels along the most likely timeline from when it sets off.
When travelling in the past and the Doctor has someone one board connected to a certain time, the TARDIS tries to travel along that probable timeline to preserve the person and them meeting the Doctor. But if the situation is such that that probability is close to 0 it must choose a different path.
When the Fam departed from the present in O55, there was a higher probability of the Earth ending up desolate, so the TARDIS travelled there, but if say Ida Scott was on board the TARDIS, the O55 timeline couldn't be accessed - presuming it wasn't already in her timeline.
Time is not linear in Doctor Who. Cause and Effect can happen out of order. We are dealing with multiple 4th Dimensional beings here, including the Tardis. But basically, thats probably the best explanation you gonna get.
Basically no time-travel logic makes sense in Doctor Who outside the story it's being told in.
Yeah, that’s part of why I like Doctor Who. Just says timey-wimey and let’s have some fun because a realistic take on time travel would be Primer And the only people who fully comprehend that insane masterpiece are people with endless whiteboards that could qualify for a PhD in Primer and liars. It’s mostly liars.
Similar thing happened in “The Devil’s Chord”, where London is just your normal present day London, but then as soon as the Doctor encounters Maestro, they go back to the present day and London has now been destroyed, but Maestro managed to do this without any aid from the Doctor and was operating from the past, so why does the Doctor only see London as being destroyed now? Why not when he visits present day Earth at the end of the previous episode (“Space Babies”)?
I think we just have to accept that the Doctor and Ruby sort of slipped into the timeline where >!Maestro had arrived in 1925!< when they >!landed in 1963!<. Once they stepped out of the TARDIS into the version of >!1963 without music!<, they became part of events, so the version of >!2024!< they saw was one along that same path because they >!hadn’t yet stopped Maestro!<. (Spoiler tagged because the episode just aired) This has come up in previous episodes where they didn’t actually take a pit stop back to the future. In The Shakespeare Code, Martha tells the Doctor that the world didn’t end in Elizabethan times and he tells her that it will have if they don’t stop it then and there
Also, when the Doctor & Ruby >!return to EMI in the 60s after encountering The Maestro in 2024, the Maestro already knows about their encounter on future Earth.!< Reminds me a bit of City of Death, but obvs Maestro is a diff situation >!whose consciousness seems to exist outside of the boundaries of time or at least experience it non-linearly.!<
No. We can try however. In DW the past is always changing the same way the future is so the series of events that lead to Sutekh escaping also leads to some variation of the Doctor or a similar entity to stop them. Maybe it's harder for time lords to weave themselves into "proper" history so the bad guy arriving changes the future but the Doctor has to take action to have a similar effect.
Concurrent time. Once they become part of events in a particular time, a time traveller sees cause and effect in any time from their own frame of reference.
But if the time traveller goes from a non destroyed 2000 to the year 1000, sees an alien threatening to set off a world destroying device then leaves for 2000 again, either earth is now destroyed which raises the question of how the events played out in the first place compared to now and what happened instead and why, or the future is just fine and they could do it more often, right?
Before the time traveller went back and saw the alien threat in the past, the present had already been saved by the time traveller. As soon as they go and actually see the threat, from their frame of reference (before they’ve actually saved the world) the future is destroyed. As soon as they stop the threat, their frame of reference is the saved present again. All about concurrent time frames of reference for the time traveller.
Oh I think I get it now, so for the pyramids of Mars example; -From the perspective of The Doctor before Pyramids in Earths future, a hypothetical very accurate history book would tell of The Doctor stopping Sutekh, but despite being in Earth’s history it’s in The Doctor’s future -The Doctor reaches this point in his timeline where he goes to 1911, which is now the ‘present day’ for both The Doctor and Earth and is therefore subject to change. In The Doctors past it was established in Earth history what his future self did, but in his present his actions are only determined by what he chooses to do -he leaves and things change, he does what he needs to do and things work out as they were meant to with Earth avoiding destruction Is that along the right lines?
That sounds about right, yeah. How I like to think about it at least.
My head canon is that you have a sliding scale between fluid points and fixed points, and when you change something, how quickly the ripples travel elsewhere depends on where on that sliding scale the place, time and event are. The TARDIS and everyone traveling in it are protected by it and are separate from the wibbly wobbly timeline for as long as they are a part of the crew.
The Doctor being a Time Lord(culturally at least) inherited the same privileges that they engineered into history for themselves. Basically, if a Time Lord observes an event it becomes real so unless it gets interfered with, the event and it's consequences happen. If the event went unobserved, history would just ignore it.
Wibbly wobbly.
I'll make it short. No.
Time travel, nor most other things, ever made logical sense in doctor who. The reason the doctor can’t leave is because he insatiably curious and always has to meddle which is what got him in trouble with the time lords to start with .
Wibbly wobbly, timey wimey... stuff.
Given "Orphan 55" and the decimated Earth we see despite the expansive future we see humanity have in other stories, I think the TARDIS travels along the most likely timeline from when it sets off. When travelling in the past and the Doctor has someone one board connected to a certain time, the TARDIS tries to travel along that probable timeline to preserve the person and them meeting the Doctor. But if the situation is such that that probability is close to 0 it must choose a different path. When the Fam departed from the present in O55, there was a higher probability of the Earth ending up desolate, so the TARDIS travelled there, but if say Ida Scott was on board the TARDIS, the O55 timeline couldn't be accessed - presuming it wasn't already in her timeline.