Howling:Two more bits of time travel stuff from The Lodger

First, the alien time-space ship creates a local time loop, which sends out secondary time tremors. Just as in City of Death. But there's a big difference. In that one, even though the Doctor and Romana, unlike everyone else, could tell something was wrong, they were still affected by it. This time, the Doctor is completely unaffected, watching everyone else go through the loop and the shudders from the outside. What's different here?

And it seemed like Craig was also aware after his mind-meld with the Doctor. Is this the same change that being a time traveler had on Amy's mind in Flesh and Stone?

Second, the episode is framed by a "San Dimas Time" device, where at the end Amy has to write a note for the Doctor that he found at the start of the episode, and it's very important that she get it exactly right ("make sure to use a red pen").

This has come up a few other times in the show, most notably in Blink (and The Curse of Fatal Death), but they've never made a big deal out of the "we have to make sure to set it up properly" part before. And, unlike the "finale Doctor" speculation, where nobody noticing the San Dimas setup is the whole point, in this case, the Doctor blatantly noticed. So, what if Amy uses a black pen, or is so shocked by seeing the engagement ring that she writes with a shaky hand, or even just forgets all together?

Saturday Night Live had a great sketch (from the most recent Alec Baldwin episode) with an infomercial for a "timecrowave". You can eat right now, without having to wait for 2 whole minutes; the only catch is that if you forget to put the right box in the microwave later (as Alec Baldwin does, of course), you screw up history in various Twilight Zone-via-Simpsons ways. Everyone has mustaches, the Nazis won WWII, it's Planet of the Apes, humans are only a few inches tall and menaced by "giant" (normal-sized) cats, that kind of thing.

But what would happen in the Whoniverse? Everyone but the Doctor, Amy, and maybe Craig ends up back on the timeline where the Doctor never showed up and they all get killed by the alien ship? The TARDIS gets thrown into the Vortex and destroyed with the Doctor and Amy in it? Reapers come by and eat everything? Cracks open in the skin of the universe?

Does it matter how long they take to come back?

Is it important that Amy leave the note, rather than the Doctor, because he'd be crossing his own time stream, but she was never in that time and place before? --Falcotron 04:45, June 13, 2010 (UTC)


 * To make it clear: Craig is _aware_ of the time shudders, like the Doctor and unlike everyone else, but not resistant to them, unlike the Doctor. --Falcotron 07:51, June 13, 2010 (UTC)