Howling:Miracle Day - alternate timeline?

I've read on a lot of the discontinuity pages people's ideas about the whole fact that the events of Miracle Day coincide with the sections of Series 6 taking place on modern day Earth. Now, from a meta perspective, it's kind of obvious as to why there's no impact on the events of Series 6 from the Miracle; Rusty's no longer controlling the parent show and Torchwood, so he can't implement the same level of interconnection between the shows, and Stephen and he aren't really communicating on the topic, so we can kind of chalk up those inconsistencies to separate creatorial vision etc. and move on. From an in-universe perspective, though, we still get the clashes regarding the Miracle not affecting Amy, Rory, River, The Doctor (although the fact that it was the Teselecta getting shot might be a little bit of a cover for the 'death takes a holiday' not affecting the Doctor. I had a little idea while watching Wedding; what if the events of the miracle are actually happening slightly out of joint with the events at Lake Silencio - we know they're around april or that rough time, so it can't be that, but what if the Miracle is actually part of a separate timeline; a Torchwood timeline which effectively branches off from the Main Whoniverse? 'Cos with the 456 invasion, it wasn't mentioned at all in Series 5, but that can be chalked up to the cracks erasing the invasions of the 21st century; Canary Wharf, Medusa Cascade, etc. It might be that the Torchwood timeline is an extension of the Pre-reboot universe, where all those events did occur, but the cracks haven't affected anything yet; how it might have continued to occur without the cracks, and Doctor Who, after the start of Series 5, is the post-reboot, Big Bang 2 universe. Just a theory.

59.101.75.133 04:10, October 2, 2011 (UTC)


 * Just going to correct something here: The Miracle only affected humans, the Doctor isn't a human, the Doctor could easily die on Miracle Day. The Light6 talk to me 10:33, October 2, 2011 (UTC)
 * Quite right. The only real question is why none of the contemporary human characters in Doctor Who seem to know anything about the Miracle (or, for that matter, about Children of Earth). Alternate timelines is one possible explanation. There will be others. If/when Jack reappears in the parent show, we might get at least a hint towards an explanation. Also, once Steven Moffat has had time to think about it, we might get some kind of mention of what's been going on, even without Jack's reappearance. --2.96.24.60 13:09, October 2, 2011 (UTC)

Children of Earth isn't really important here, because as far as most of the public were concerned all of the children were acting funny for 5 days, there was a fire over London, and the government started kidnapping children. The general public probably wouldn't see this as another alien invasion, and there hasn't really been any time in season 5 or 6 when that would come up in conversation. We also can't be seeing the pre Big Bang universe, because that universe no longer exists. Now we are stuck with a completely identical universe. Miracle Day pretty much had to take place in the same universe as the rest of the show. I don't know how the dates work out, but is it possible that The Impossible Astronaut was before Miracle Day, and Let's Kill Hitler was after the miracle ended? It's still a bit weird that nobody mentioned it, but Amy and Rory were more concerned with there missing daughter at the time and probably wouldn't have really cared if they didn't know any category ones or twos.Icecreamdif talk to me 17:54, October 2, 2011 (UTC)

Alien invasions aren't the point. Notable events on a worldwide scale are. The disruption in Children of Earth was comparatively minor and might not get talked about much after it was over. The Miracle, however, was followed by a major disruption to society over a significant length of time. Anybody making even a short visit to Earth would have encountered clear evidence that something drastic was happening or had recently happened. It would take at least months for things to get back to anywhere near normal. --2.96.30.78 18:16, October 2, 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, but how much time did the Doctor really spend on Earth this year? If we assume that the 2011 scenes of Let's Kill Hitler took place after the miracle ended, then the Doctor was only on Earth for about five minutes and the only people who he saw were Amy, Rory, and Mels, none of whom would have talked much about the Miracle given what was going on. In Night Terrors, the only people who he had any real interaction with were George and Alex, both of whom were more worried about other things than the Miracle at the time. If the Miracle hadn't ended it would obviously have been relevant in that episode since they'd be more worried about becoming category one than dying, but if the miracle was over than why mention it. Closing Time is probably the biggest problem since the Doctor interacts with several people in modern day Earth, but if the Miracle is over at this point, than all the category ones and twos are dead anyway, and the miracle could easily have just not come up in conversation. The overpopulation problem was pretty much solved when the Miracle ended, so countries like China would have reopened their borders, so the only way the Miracle would still be relevant would be people's reactions to the government policy to burn people alive. None of this was really relevant to the plot of the episodes, so it wasn't mentioned. Icecreamdif talk to me 18:31, October 2, 2011 (UTC)

People wouldn't need to be talking about the Miracle and its consequences. The social and economic disruption was so great and pervasive that there would be evidence of it all over the place, even if nobody mentioned it. Anyway, there being something as big as that about which nobody was talking wouldn't get past the Doctor. Remember The Beast Below, in which the Doctor explains to Amy how he knows there's something wrong. People not talking about it was one of the clues he picked up on, within minutes of arriving. And it's not good enough to say he had other things on his mind. In Closing Time, he definitely had plenty on his mind but that didn't stop him noticing things were wrong: "You've noticed something. You have your noticing face on. I have nightmares about that face." Closing Time was set (in large part) in a shop. Shops are affected by economic disruption. At the end of The God Complex, the Doctor somehow obtained for Amy and Rory legal title to a house and a car, requiring fairly extensive interaction with the legal and financial systems (if only to arrange things so his friends wouldn't be bothered by people questioning their ownership of the house and car) -- he'd have encountered the consequences of the Miracle while doing that. It's not believable that the Doctor (of all people) could have failed to notice, unless the Miracle hadn't happened (yet). --89.241.71.64 05:52, October 3, 2011 (UTC)

So maybe he did notice something was wrong. If it wasn't relevant to the plot, then it would just have been distracting to mention it on screen. There could well have been a point when the Doctor was working in the shop where somebody said, "Wow, that great depression a couple of months ago really hurt business. Good thing Torchood was able to end the Miracle." Really, if the Doctor heard about the miracle but also heard that it had ended, what would he have done about it?Icecreamdif talk to me 06:06, October 3, 2011 (UTC)