User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-26469787-20151013042811

I would like to raise debate on the requirement of a section within each Doctor page's biography entitled "Alternate Timelines". It has been established on numerous occasions that the DWU features the concept of an omniverse: that is, an infinite number of universes which feature every possible outcome for every possible event. Therefore, a section such as this is quite irrelevant, as it would need to feature every single one of these to be complete. However, these sections instead feature events seen within valid sources which detail potential events which never ultimately occurred to the Doctor in the supposedly final timeline. However, this just gives raise to many more problems: these sections feature both alternate timelines accessed as such, as well as timelines which were reverted by the Doctor himself, as well as timelines seen by characters which feature different events to the ones the "real" Doctor experienced. This amount of variation simply compounds the problem, potentially causing unfamiliar readers to be unable to understand the content.

We deem all licensed works to be valid, and rightly so. However, certain works have been unsupported by all others, and therefore seem irregular or "alternate". But these works are just as valid as others, so we do not place them within sections detailing alternate timelines. However, when the Doctor alters events of his own past, we seem to have no policy. Either in the case of events such as those of The Light at the End, we feature the alternate timeline and the Doctor's reversion of it in the main bio, or we create a short, often almost nonsensical statements, referring to the final events, and provide no easy link to the events which acted as cause and effect for this change. In the case of Klein's Story, we feature identical information in both sections! How can we state that Flip-Flop occurred to the "real" Doctor in both instances (as it must have done), but then relegate the events of Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS to the alternate section, leaving simply a statement claiming that the Doctor was given a button by himself and therefore solved a problem? It becomes impossible to understand when read in chronological order.

I believe that two alterations could render the problems less prominent. The most drastic would be to completely remove the alternate timeline section, but then events not featuring the Doctor but showing characters encountering alternate versions of him (primarily the Gallifrey series) would not be able to find a home. Instead, an easier solution would be to only feature events which do not feature prominently in the plot of a valid source, or do not affect the Doctor in any extensive way, and to reintegrate all other "alternate" details to the Doctors' main bios. If necessary, a paragraph of the main bio could refer to "(insert adjective here) alternate timelines," and these could be described in detail within the alternate section. But events which act as cause and effect to the Doctor's main timeline do not suit being relegated to a section with very little prominence.