Howling:Web of Time and other things

Okay, so I made some edits to the Web of Time page and it got me thinking about all the temporal concepts there are and how we can make sense of them. Like how time rifts and time fissures are pretty much the same thing, or time contour and time corridor. There's got to be a way to fit everything together.

So we have Time which is it's own thing, then the Web of Time, causal nexus, and fixed point in time. There are fixed points in time and there are also events in the Web of Time that musn't be undone. When events are erased, they seem to become alternate timelines. Does that mean that things like the Cyber-King which were erased became alternate timelines? I'm trying to find out how this all makes sense. All I have so far is that the Web of Time holds the fixed points, but I'm not even sure they are related, but that's the point of this thread. Steed ☎  02:00, April 10, 2014 (UTC)

Series 6 introduced the idea of a still point in time & The Angels Take Manhattan in Series 7 brought us "fixed time", to add to your collection. We've not had much explanation of either of those.

The term causal nexus is a real-world term (see Wikipedia's article on Causality), meaning the connection(s) between cause(s) & effect(s).

In The Fires of Pompeii, the Doctor told Donna that a fixed point in time was something that "must not" be changed, rather than "cannot" be changed, & The Wedding of River Song seemed to confirm that description. River was able to change the "fixed point" of the shooting but the consequences were disastrous -- a collapsing timeline. (This, by the way, suggests that the opening of the article fixed point in time ought to be modified.) The Waters of Mars showed that some details -- even apparently major details, such as which planet the event occurs on -- of a "fixed point" can be changed, provided that the essentials remain.

In Battlefield, the Doctor described parallel universes as being "sideways in time". The Master used the same description in the novel The Face of the Enemy.

As far as I can tell from the stories with parallel universes & those with alternate timelines, the main difference seems to be that parallel universes co-exist & alternate timelines don't. Pete's World, for example, co-exists with the "main" universe; Rose could go & spend time there, return to the "main" universe & spend time in it, go back to Pete's World & so on (although travel between the universes wasn't easy or safe). In contrast, once an event like the Cyber-King has been erased, there's no longer any way to revisit that timeline, because it has been completely replaced -- overwritten, if you like -- by a new timeline. It no longer exists, though memories of it may still exist (Amy, River & co remembered the death of Kovarian, for example). --89.241.220.65talk to me 20:44, April 10, 2014 (UTC)

I figured alternate timelines still existed despite being negated because "every point at time has its alternative" in Pyramids of Mars. But parallel universes exist sideways in time because alternative timelines exist fowards and backwards. That kind of makes sense. So if a fixed point "must not" be changed, it's the same as the Web of Time. It'd be different if events "could not" change, but the closed thing we've seen to that is the Doctor's death at Lake Silencio. (see the fixed point article about that) Events in the Web are still described as things that "must not" be changed. So, not that it's going to be canon, but how can we link everything together? Steed ☎  01:18, April 12, 2014 (UTC)

My interpretation of "every point at time has its alternative" was just that alternate timelines are possible, not that they co-exist.

In any case, I can't agree that "alternative timelines exist forwards and backwards" in time. 13th April 2014 in a timeline in which the CyberKing existed is neither forwards nor backwards from 13th April 2014 in a timeline in which the CyberKing didn't exist.

Also, my understanding of the shooting at Lake Silencio is that the fixed point never was the Doctor's death; it was always the Teselecta that got shot & put on a light show to simulate regeneration, although we (along with River, Amy & co) didn't know that at first. There was never any real verification that the Doctor was dead. Canton said it was the Doctor & that he was dead but he also ensured that there wouldn't be any close examination to check if he was telling the truth. --89.243.203.184talk to me 14:30, April 13, 2014 (UTC)

And if there had been any closer examination, it would have been River, running her scanner over the Doctor and telling Amy & Rory what it said. A later River who had already walked out of the lake in a spacesuit and knew to keep Rory & Amy from interfering.Phil Stone ☎  00:09, April 19, 2014 (UTC)

Indeed, remember, 89, River did in fact recall completely what happened at the lake the first time she was just putting it on. The Doctor, of course, expected her to forget because it seemed perfectly reasonable to him. She was a puppet of the Silence acting without her own motives and would forget after that act had been carried out. He thought that process quite reasonable to expect along with its inevitable outcome when actually it was quite patronizing. Instead River managed, for her own reasons to disobey the Silence and break the fixed point. She then came round to the idea of repairing the fixed point and fired the gun at the teselector for her own reasons thus she remembers everything. That's worth mentioning sometimes just to remember how brilliant River is. Is does invite the question of how much the presence of the teselector might have enabled her to disobey the Silence at all.DCT ☎  12:06, July 11, 2014 (UTC)

Her instructions being to, "Kill The Doctor." Only on some level River knew the Teselecta wasn't the Doctor, and leveraged that part of herself (unconsciously) to void the instructions. Except doesn't River say it isn't her (programming) but the suit itself which is carrying out the commands to kill?Phil Stone ☎  18:36, July 14, 2014 (UTC)

That was, kind of, the theory. I do see your objection but, of course, River lies. And clearly the argument "it was the suit" didn't do her any good at her trail. No, that's a joke River likely offered no defense although you'd expect some slightly better investigation, really. No, the issue here and it's come up before is that the Silence did something ridiculously convoluted for purposes unknown when, given their abilities, doing exactly as suggested above seems perfectly reasonable. The silence must have given River some instruction as least as far as not doing what she did and fighting the suit (if that was indeed the case) because the suit ultimately proved inadequate independently. It's also possible River thought it was the suit causing her arm to move because, as far as she knew, it wasn't her. The main point stands, I think, that enough happened outside the Silents' influence and River definitely made a conscious choice to allow the gun to fire to allow her to remember the points. Why was she able to do this? Because she's brilliant. DCT ☎  12:42, July 15, 2014 (UTC)