Howling:Problems with the Miracle

Okay, there's a few things about Miracle Day that I don't understand.

1. So Jack's immortal blood caused the Miracle. Jack's blood, that we can assume has some of the healing properties of his body. And that magical healing property that gives Jack his immortality, is spread throygh morphic field. Why then, is the miracle immortality completely different? Miracle immortality means people who have been fatally or terminally injured are able to live without the necessary body functions to do so. But Jack doesn't do that. The point with Jack is that he can die, but then his body reheals until his body has the basic neccessities to sustain life, before he is ressurected. Take the exploded man in Miracle Day and the exploded Jack in Children of Earth. The guy in MD had been fried to a crisp, and hus body could not have been able to sustain even the slightest bit if life. Jack in COE was also blown to bits with a bomb in his stomach, and rehealed. But he only managed to resurrect the second his body had healed enough to keep him alive. He still was horifically burnt, and did resemble something from a fat fryer, but it's certainly possible to live through that, and some people have. Jack said the miracle made people feel they have to go on, but Jack MUST go on. His immortality is more defined by his healing ability, not his power to live through major injuries to the body.

2. Rex shoots the Gentleman in the throat and that stops him talking. Why should it? We saw earlier on that dismembered limbs can still be moved because they retain connection to the body. Why can't a few fragments of throat perfom their function? Could it be that the parts were so small that the connection was broken, like a cat 1 in a module? I'm at least surprised that Gwen assumed he wouldn't be able to talk after all she had seen.

3. Why should it mortalise Jack? It shouldn't. He's a fixed point in time and space. A nuclear bomb in his stomach and a life-devouring demon couldn't kill him, so why can the Earth's vagina manage to stop his healing? Perhaps the Blessing was finding a way to make his wounds last, perhaps by creating the wound over and over again at a faster speed than his body could sew it beack together. That wound on his arm culd potentially have stayed there for the whole of the Miracle, we never saw it heal, so perhaps the blessing was acting like throwing Jack in acid, creating injuries faster than the body could heal them, and the whole Miracle was just a side effect?

4. Critics complained that at first cat 1s were able to walk around like normal human beings, but all of a sudden they were all injured in camps. Can I just point out that not all cat 1s were sent to the camps, and not all were lying in befs unable to move. It was only later that the government forced people to go to camps, because theyw anted to treat the more grotesquely injured first, and then see to less injured people later in a different way. As it was, the secret was out, so the government had to force people to the incinerators.

94.72.209.209talk to me 14:03, December 28, 2011 (UTC)

I don't like the entire concept of the series and I think it's severely flawed but one possible reason for 3 (and maybe 1 too) is that Jack's fixed point property, or let's call it Bad Wolf Effect for simiplicity, identifies Jack as the largest body composed of Jack's biological material. The Morphic Field was identified as Jack by the Bad Wolf Effect simply because it was bigger than Jack. Suppose Jack was harmed and part of his tissues fall off, we know that small fraction of tissues don't grow into a Jack and instead, only the main body of Jack recovers. Like that small fraction of tissues, Jack is abandoned by the Bad Wolf Effect due to the Morphic Field being the bigger Jack. This may partially explain 1, as recovering the entire human race and all their sicknesses and wounds would take substantially longer and so do delaying their aging, so the effect was so small that they were not observable in the duration of the series. Now we come to the problematic non-dying property, the only idea that I can think of that remotely makes sense is the Bad Wolf Effect is not targetting any single individual but the Morphic Field which for some mystical timey wimey reason creates this effect as you can't have entire Morphic Field dying then resurrecting for 1 harmed individual. Keeping the morphic field alive would result in not death and resurrections but a continual existence of the consciousness of the individuals. Still, I think the entire idea is stupid and the revelation was a big letdown and the entire series was quite pointless. --222.166.181.32talk to me 17:16, December 28, 2011 (UTC)

I actually enjoyed the series but couldn't fpr the life of me understand why fixed point immortality cpuld be anything to do with miracle immortality. However if you think about it both immortalities are completely opposite. Fixed Point immortality means the body MUST exist, and miracle immortality means the conscience MUST exist. Seeing as hiw the blessing had a "switching" effect then perhaps thats why FP immortality was different from MD immortality. But 3 is still quite a weird one. 94.72.209.209talk to me 17:37, December 28, 2011 (UTC)

If I recall from Utopia, Jack asked the Doctor if he could ever become mortal again, and the Doctor said that he didn't know. Jack's status as a fixed point in time isn't absolute, but even the Doctor didn't know of anything powerful enough to reverse it. The Blessing, however, is more powerful than anything that Torchwood has encountered, and most of what the Doctor has. It's morphic field was just powerful enough to swap Jack's immortality with the rest of humanity's mortality. If Jack had left the range of the morphic field, and gone to Raxicoricofalapatorius or something, then he probably would have been able to die. However, while he was on Earth, the Blessing's morphic field was able to cancel out the effects of the Bad Wolf making him a fixed point. It is also a bit pointless to say that a plot point doesn't make sense, when it involves two made up technologies that are so disconnected from reality that none of us could begin to understand them. Icecreamdif talk to me 08:32, December 30, 2011 (UTC)

Jack being a "fixed point in time" doesn't conflict with him being mortal during the Miracle -- as long as he doesn't actually die. We saw, in The Wedding of River Song, that a "fixed point in time" isn't necessarily something that cannot be changed; it's just that the consequences of changing it are catastrophic. When the Doctor was telling Donna about the subject, inside Vesuvius in The Fires of Pompeii, he described a "fixed point in time" as something that "must not" be changed. That choice of words implies that changing it is possible. There's nothing in either Torchwood or Doctor Who to rule out the possibility that Jack could have been killed during the Miracle, with the consequence that time would have collapsed the way it did when River contrived to prevent herself shooting what she thought was the Doctor. --89.241.72.64talk to me 18:31, December 30, 2011 (UTC)

I had considered this myself but there's one problem with it. We know that Jack reheals his body before he can resurrect. If you threw him in Lava he would stay dead because each time his body attempted to reheal it would be fried to a crisp again. So technically he would be dead for potentially a very long time. However eventually the lava would drain away or something like that and he'd come back to life after what could have been a good couple thousand of years. It's the same with killing him on Miracle Day. His body would die and rot away but when the world ends a few million years later the remaining atoms of Jack would float out of the vicinity of the morphic field and he would be renedered immortal again. Said specks of Jack's remains could float into the atmosphere of another planet, his body would reheal and he would resurrect. As has been proved numerous times in both shows, you can't kill Jack - the best you can do is delay his resurrection. Whatever inventive way of killing him you find, rest assured, whether it be next week or next century or possibly even longer, one day, he WILL come back to life. 94.72.209.160talk to me 20:25, December 30, 2011 (UTC)

However, Jack didn't actually die on Miracle Day, he always survived through luck. Perhaps his fix-pointness was still working over the miracle, just working in a different way. What I mean is maybe Rose foresaw that his powers would be changed and ensured that he survived, by making sure that Jack got on a plane with the correct components for EDTA, or making sure Esther knew how to treat a gunshot wound. So perhaps even without his immortality Jack will still be a fixed point. 94.72.209.160talk to me 20:36, December 30, 2011 (UTC)

He was buried (and therefore repeatedly suffocated) for 2000 years, in TW: Exit Wounds. As soon as he was dug up, giving him air to breathe, he revived fully. Even lava would eventually cool and either be split open or weather away -- and Jack would be back. The key word, of course, is "eventually". 94 is quite right: "the best you can do is delay his resurrection". Even that might not do you much good. The man's a time traveller. It might be thousands of years, or longer, before he got out but he could then travel back in time to express his displeasure to you in person.

94 is also right that Jack being a "fixed point in time" means he stays alive -- somehow. It doesn't mean it always has to be by his "usual" mechanism of getting put back together again after being killed. He could "achieve immortality by not dying" (as Woody Allen put it, on a slightly different subject). --89.241.72.64talk to me 20:47, December 30, 2011 (UTC)

Another thing I contemplated in the series was the Trickster's Brigade. We saw that Jack p****d them off in 1920s America and I was wondering if they ever considered revenge. A year after he thwarted their plans Jack was kidnapped by the mysterious three families and they took his blood, intending to find amd use it on the Blessing. It got me thinking, were the Families being used by the Trickster's Brigade? Perhaps each time Jack is killed and his resurrection delayed, they are able to feed from it. So perhaps they convinced the Families to cause the Miracle merely to feed off the chaos of a dead Jack for multiple millions of years, and as revenge? If not, then did the Trickster forgive him? Even if he did, I'm surprised he hasn't looked at a living, breathing, fixed point and come up with some hideously evil plan - we know he's good at that. 94.72.209.160talk to me 21:07, December 30, 2011 (UTC)

Forgiveness doesn't seem to be the Trickster's strongest suit but the chaos of the Miracle would be "meat and drink" (his own words) to him, even apart from any considerations of revenge on Jack. --89.241.72.64talk to me 21:15, December 30, 2011 (UTC)

The Trickster is more about altering important points, to create chaos, not creating points to create chaos. For instance the world wars and vesuvius no doubt caused chaos but not the type of chaos that he fed off. So unless the Miracle was supposed to be stopped by the Doctor, and the Trickster prevented this, the only reason the Trickster would cause Miracle Day would be to feed off the fact that Jack was dead. My earlier theory about Jack's life being fixed without immortality is flawed, because Jack did technically die during Miracle Day, at the end of "The Blood Line", though it was only for a short while until the Miracle was negated. 94.72.209.160talk to me 22:54, December 30, 2011 (UTC)

Jack has "technically" died many, many times -- and usually it was only for a short while. His death in The Blood Line wasn't much different, in that respect. --89.241.72.64talk to me 23:18, December 30, 2011 (UTC)

But if Jack's death on Miracle Day had created a whole universe like in TWORS, it would have happened in that short moment, regardless of the fact that the Miracle was about to be negated. It didn't, so the Miracle didn't really endanger a fixed point. The only way you could use Jack to create a crazy universe like in TWORS is perhaps if you killed him before the Daleks did. Maybe the Trickster has considered doing this, but is merely looking for the right time to do so. 94.72.209.160talk to me 23:30, December 30, 2011 (UTC)

I doubt that the Trickster is involved. Jack stopped their plans, but that doesn't neccessarily mean that they are angry about it, or even that they care. They must have thousands of plans to create chaos every day, and they can't possibly all work. What we've usually seen them do is change people's decisions to change history, and nothing about the Miracle seems to be that. I think the best assumption here would be that the morpic field somehow cancelled out Jack's fix-pointedness. While he was within the morphic field, he was no longer an immortal fixed point. Whether his dead body could be taken out of the morphic field to ressurect, however, is another matter, but Jack did honestly seem to believe that he could die for good throughout the season.Icecreamdif talk to me 08:41, December 31, 2011 (UTC)

Bear in mind that when Jack was Exterminated he was probably dead for a good minute or so before he was resurrected. So we know that Jack can be mortal and dead and still come back to life a good while later. Jack was probably more worried that without him around Gwen would not know what to do about the Miracle. Jack has shown that he cares about her, and I doubt he'd forgive himself if he woke up millions of years later and remembered what kind of life he had left her with. 94.72.209.160talk to me 12:55, December 31, 2011 (UTC)

Actually come to think of it looking at my second to last comment about Jack dying before the events on the GameStation, Bad Wolf Rose will probably have made him immortal anyway. She will have seen what the Trickster did and put it right because she knows that's how it's supposed to be. And also the fixed point we saw get changed in TWORS was only fixed because it happened at a tender point in time, so potentially the outcome of changing that fixed point could have been a lot more different than changing Jack's fix-pointedness, that is, if it's possible to do so, and I doubt it is. 94.72.209.160talk to me 18:05, December 31, 2011 (UTC)

The thing I don't get though, the three families never actually explained WHY they caused miracle day. Could it be that their only intention was to mortalise Jack, and they never actually wanted humans to be miraclised? 178.78.81.210talk to me 23:03, January 2, 2012 (UTC)