Howling:The Tenth Planet - part of a negated timeline?

I've been wondering recently if the class series story "The Tenth Planet" might actually take place in an earlier version of history that's since been negated. It's set in 1986, but the technology is far too advanced for our 1986 - There is something called International Space Command, and Earth possesses Z-bombs, which are said to be powerful enough to split the planet apart. Obviously, these things don't exist as of the present day in the Whoniverse, otherwise the goverment would probably have used a Z-bomb rather than plain nuclear warheads in the Osterhagen Project in "The Stolen Earth/Journey's End." The thing is though, if the timestream of that story was negated, what happened in the subsequent version of history when Mondas came to Earth? Even if the Cybermen were still defeated, it would not occur in the same way, and much of subsequent Cybermen history would be effected. If we assume that the timeline in the episode is negated, what could have negated it? Of course, if anyone can come up with explanations as to how it could still fit in current Whoniverse history, I'll be very interested in reading them. 82.2.136.93 08:16, August 2, 2011 (UTC)

So, any comments anyone would like to make? Like I said, I'm perfectly happy to be proven wrong in my assumptions. In fact, I'd much rather be proven wrong, and be shown how the scenarios *could* possibly fit together in one timeline. 82.2.136.93 18:55, August 2, 2011 (UTC)

The Cracks in time were pretty much made for issues like this so yeah it was erased. Cory Jaynes 03:36, August 3, 2011 (UTC)

There were plenty of issues like this long before the cracks. As I've mentioned in other threads, go read Paul Cornell's essay on continuity in the Whoniverse. History changes, sometimes way off-camera, and it often seems to change in ways that make the Whoniverse more like the real world than like earlier predictions from the Whoniverse. And that's fine, because this is a show about time travel (unlike, say, Star Trek, which can never set any episodes in the modern era because we didn't have a Eugenics War in 1993).

In this case, there have been a few references to the change, but only as throwaway jokes (like the frequent "1970s… or was it the 80s?" lines about the UNIT era). The novelization of Silver Nemesis (maybe also on TV, but I don't remember) has Lady Peinforte viewing a totally different 1988 from the past than the one she arrives in. The EDA Escape Velocity has a little joke about mixing up the Challenger (which exploded in real life, and in Father Time, in 1986) with Zeus IV (which exploded in The Tenth Planet). And so on.

Of course as fans we want to know what changed, how, and why. In this case, there's a plausible (for fan-wank) explanation. Remember that Attack of the Cybermen featured a group of Cybermen deliberately going back in time to change the events of The Tenth Planet. And in that same story, the Doctor suspects that the Time Lords have been monitoring the Cybermen's attempts to change history and using him as an unwitting agent. So, it seems at least plausible that there were multiple attempts to alter 1986, and the end result just happened to be that Whoniverse 1986 looked a lot like real-life 1986. --173.228.85.118 03:58, August 3, 2011 (UTC)

For argument's sake, let's say that the person who invented the Z-bomb died before he could create it, or he chose to do something else. The Z-bomb was instrumental in defeating the Cybermen. If it didn't exist, would the Doctor have to go to the new version of 1986 and defeat the Cybermen some other way, so that Mondas still blew up in that year? 82.2.136.93 17:34, August 4, 2011 (UTC)

Also everybody could of all been drunk during the 1980's so no one remembers. 173.51.78.230 15:15, August 5, 2011 (UTC)

The Eugeniics War never stopped Star Trek from doing episodes set in the present day. Enterprise did an episode where they travelled back to 2004, which was pretty much the same as the real 2004, and Voyager did an episode where they travelled back to 1996, when the war should have still been going on, but there was no reference to it. The truth is that the writers for both Doctor Who and Star Trek couldn't imagine the shows lasting as long as they did, so they didn't think that they would have to match the actual future. Then, when they make later episodes, it makes more sense to show the present day as it really is than to make it match the view of there view of the future from 20 years ago.Gowron8472 01:52, August 6, 2011 (UTC)