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)