Howling:Time Crack is stupid

I mean, come on, cause-less events? This makes absolutely no sense at all, and messes up past continuity no end to boot. EJA 14:51, May 10, 2011 (UTC)


 * Plus, time-crack it's time-addictive, and the hit only lasts five time-minutes. Don't time-do time-crack, kids!


 * More seriously, there are causeless events all over the Whoniverse. Every person standing in his own past is a causeless event when looked at linearly. Every pre-Genesis Dalek story is a causeless event even if you take the future into account. Everyone's knowledge of the Time Lords post-LGTW is a causeless event. To some extent, time travel is ridiculous, especially time travel that allows the past to be changed. You can come up with time travel theories that make sense of it, without even breaking what we know of physics (many-worlds branching, two-dimensional time, separate causal and chronological chains, etc.), but if you try to fit it into common sense, you're guaranteed to fail.


 * And as for messing up continuity, the Moff pretty clearly wanted to selectively edit a few events out of continuity while leaving the rest as consistent as possible, and the time cracks are just as good a way to do it as the many episodes, novels, BFAs, and games that did the same thing (starting with Genesis, Day, Remembrance, War, and City of the Daleks). --99.33.26.0 03:50, May 11, 2011 (UTC)


 * How is people's knowledge of the Time Lords a causeless event? EJA 08:02, May 11, 2011 (UTC)

EJA, the unregistered user is talking about the same thing that you've brought up in about a hundred different posts. He believes that the Time War caused time to be rewritten, so the Time Lords never existed, but people still remember them anyway. The main reason that cause-less events are more of a problem here, is that the effects are still seen when the cause has been erased. All the pre-genesis Dalek episodes, for example, could have been erased as far as we know, since the Doctor hasn't travelled back in time to the middle of a previous episode. When characters travel back in time, they are not a causeless event, there cause just hasn't happenned yet. When Amy's parents were erased, however, Amy's cause never had happened and was never going to happen, but Amy clearly still existed, without a cause. It would have made more sense if Amy ceased to have existed along with her parents. The same thing goes for Amy's photo of Rory and her engagement ring. The only part of the cracks that is really stupid, is the fact that many believe that they are being used to erase continuity, which is just a stupid idea. Shows should build on continuity, not erase it.Icecreamdif 01:16, May 12, 2011 (UTC)

Oh, I quite agree with you, Icecreamdif, good drama should build on continuity, and not discard it. But I'm afraid that the Cracks have muddled up just about everything in Dr Who to the point where it's fast ceasing to make any sense. EJA 07:33, May 12, 2011 (UTC)

time travel doesn't create causeless events, or at least not easily. if someone, eg the doctor, travels to the past, anything that would ultimalely affect what he does in the future becomes a fixed point in time eg: pompeii was a fixed event because if mt vesuvious hadn't errupted, it might have changed human history in a way that it would change the doctor's timeline which might mean that he couldn't come to pompeii and stop the volcano from errupting. that's the special time thing the doctor can detect, and he has to make sure he doesn't mess up his past. another example is in father's day. it was a fixed point because if rose had saved her father, she would have lived a very different life, more like how her parents lived in petes world, and wouldn't have met the doctor to come change that event. that's why the reapers came, to make sure time wasn't messed up in that way. so fixed points in time are just points that can't change without causing a big paradox. ok, i know i went completely off topic there, but i felt it needed saying 121.216.229.210 03:26, July 13, 2011 (UTC)


 * No, time travel does create causeless events, at least if you're looking for the causes along a linear timeline. The very appearance of the Doctor and Donna in Pompeii had no cause in the past. They literally appeared out of nowhere. Time travel into the past always breaks causality, period. (Of course if you have two time dimensions, and only travel in one, you can have linear causality along the other, and some of the novels imply that's how things work in the Whoniverse, or at least that's how Time Lords work. Or you can just abandon linear time; it's just an accident, or it's because of the Time Lords' creation of the Web of Time, that the illusion of linearity works at all. And there are other ways around it—travel into the past takes you to an alternate timeline, travel into the past always drags enough frames along so that it's no longer the past, etc.—but none of them seem relevant to Doctor Who.) --99.8.228.116 10:11, July 16, 2011 (UTC)


 * what i mean is that normal time is linear although movement arround it doesn't have to be. it's like a ruler and a piece of string, with the ruler being time. you can twist the string so that any point of it can appear connected to any point of the ruler, but both the ruler and the string are one line. just because the string doesn't go in a straight line doesn't mean you need more rulers. i hope this explanation is clear enough to explain my reasoning. 121.216.229.210 10:44, July 20, 2011 (UTC)
 * If time travelers can't change the past, that analogy works great. But as soon as they can, it's no longer true. Any change creates a loop in the ruler, which means it's not a straight line anymore. You can describe that as "normal time isn't linear" or as "normal time is linear, but causality is broken", but either way, it's not at all like our real-world experience.
 * The Whoniverse has always been pretty close to our real-world experience, to the extent that any major deviation is a big noticeable, exciting plot point. But there's a reason for that. Actually, two separate reasons: during the Rassilon Era (classic series, Virgin novels, TV movie, early EDAs, most BFAs), Rassilon made it that way. During the Humanian Era (new series), there are very few time travelers, and they're all deathly afraid of breaking the Web of Time left behind by Rassilon—the Daleks wouldn't even touch Adelaide Brooke while in the middle of their plan to destroy all of reality.
 * If you want to see what it would be like in other circumstances, look at the Dark Time before Rassilon. The same events took place a few millennia ago and 1 billion years ago. Magic works better than science. New races appear out of nowhere and suddenly permeate all of time. Or, for less dramatic examples, look at the short period between the first destruction of Gallifrey and its re-creation, or the time leading up to that destruction, or the alternate timeline where the Second War in Heaven continued instead of being cut short (in the later EDAs, early EDAs, and Faction Paradox series, respectively). --173.228.85.118 02:21, July 23, 2011 (UTC)
 * time travel can change the past, but it has always changed the past. for example, the doctor still had been to pompeii and caused mt vesuvious to errupt when he was in his 10th incarnation (fires of pompeii) even when he was in WWII in his 9th incarnation and discussing pompeii with jack (the empty child/the doctor dances). he just didn't know that he was the cause when he was in his 9th incarnation. this can mean that time can still fit on the linear ruler as long as fixed points in time stay the same. on some special occasions, like when he saved adelaid brook, a new time line (or ruler) is added to help this but it is only in emergency situations when a fixed point in time is changed like this. i dont know much about how time worked in the classic series etc. because i've only watched the new series, but this i feel is an easier way to view time travel. Imamadmad 03:06, July 23, 2011 (UTC) (ps, i used to be 121.216.229.210)
 * But in most cases he _doesn't_ end up fulfilling the future, which is why it's an interesting story in the few cases where he does. Look at Evolution of the Daleks, The Next Doctor, or Vampires of Venice—he didn't inadvertently create the history he always knew; he prevented someone else from changing the history he always knew. In fact, in Victory, he _didn't_ prevent them; while he did stop the Daleks from changing the course of WWII, he didn't stop them from changing the far future so there'd be a Dalek Empire where there shouldn't have been one. The whole point of last season was the cracks changing history.
 * The show hasn't been totally consistent—occasionally there's a Novikov-style story (history is immutable, time travel can only fulfill the future that always was), or a parallel-worlds story (changing the past creates a different future rather than changing the one you came from), or whatever—but for the most part, the Whoniverse goes with meta-time: what happened last Friday may not be the same as what yesterday (on your timeline) had happened last Friday, because you or another time traveler could have gone back to last Friday and changed it.
 * Finally, if your explanation were right, then either the Doctor should be running into Time Lords just as often as in the classic series (as long as he stays before 2005), or those Time Lords were always absent and he just hallucinated them or something. --173.228.85.118 04:47, July 23, 2011 (UTC)
 * But in most cases he _doesn't_ end up fulfilling the future, which is why it's an interesting story in the few cases where he does. Look at Evolution of the Daleks, The Next Doctor, or Vampires of Venice—he didn't inadvertently create the history he always knew; he prevented someone else from changing the history he always knew. In fact, in Victory, he _didn't_ prevent them; while he did stop the Daleks from changing the course of WWII, he didn't stop them from changing the far future so there'd be a Dalek Empire where there shouldn't have been one. The whole point of last season was the cracks changing history.
 * The show hasn't been totally consistent—occasionally there's a Novikov-style story (history is immutable, time travel can only fulfill the future that always was), or a parallel-worlds story (changing the past creates a different future rather than changing the one you came from), or whatever—but for the most part, the Whoniverse goes with meta-time: what happened last Friday may not be the same as what yesterday (on your timeline) had happened last Friday, because you or another time traveler could have gone back to last Friday and changed it.
 * Finally, if your explanation were right, then either the Doctor should be running into Time Lords just as often as in the classic series (as long as he stays before 2005), or those Time Lords were always absent and he just hallucinated them or something. --173.228.85.118 04:47, July 23, 2011 (UTC)
 * The show hasn't been totally consistent—occasionally there's a Novikov-style story (history is immutable, time travel can only fulfill the future that always was), or a parallel-worlds story (changing the past creates a different future rather than changing the one you came from), or whatever—but for the most part, the Whoniverse goes with meta-time: what happened last Friday may not be the same as what yesterday (on your timeline) had happened last Friday, because you or another time traveler could have gone back to last Friday and changed it.
 * Finally, if your explanation were right, then either the Doctor should be running into Time Lords just as often as in the classic series (as long as he stays before 2005), or those Time Lords were always absent and he just hallucinated them or something. --173.228.85.118 04:47, July 23, 2011 (UTC)
 * Finally, if your explanation were right, then either the Doctor should be running into Time Lords just as often as in the classic series (as long as he stays before 2005), or those Time Lords were always absent and he just hallucinated them or something. --173.228.85.118 04:47, July 23, 2011 (UTC)