Talk:Fixed point in time

Should there be a disusssion about these being plot devices?

No, many major concepts on Doctor Who and other successful series are plot devices. It's unnecessary to note them all.210.49.167.47 08:52, September 22, 2011 (UTC)

This is becoming a headache

Technicaly... DOES the Doctor need to be at Lake Silencio? It's the Teselecta posing as him, so doesn't that make things even more complicated? (173.167.179.77^{talk to me} 23:15, May 29, 2012 (UTC))

He is there. He's in the Teselecta. Everything's kosher. —Josiah Rowe ^{talk to me} 03:36, May 30, 2012 (UTC)

Miracle Day

From what we've seen, the start of the Miralce during the fourth season of Torchwood is most likely a fixed point in time. Ending it was left in flux; had Oswald Danes not gotten ahold of himself, he would have blown everyone up before Rex could release Jack's blood in Beauno Aries; Jack would have been dead for good and the Miracle would continue to causes sociey's collaspse. (173.167.179.77^{talk to me} 21:27, August 31, 2012 (UTC))

No, if it was a fixed point in time, that would mean that humans are supposed to be immortal in the normal time line, which would mean every story that takes places in the future would supposed to have immortal humans, which they don't. If it was a fixed point, then the fact that Torchwood saved the day would have caused massive damage to time, like in The Wedding of River Song, which didn't happen. -<Azes13 ☎ 21:44, August 31, 2012 (UTC)

Fixed time

In The Angels Take Manhattan, when Amy is about to let herself be sent back by a Weeping Angel, the Doctor says it would create a "fixed time". It would seem that the implication here is that if she gets sent back and he sees that she died, it's not simply one fixed point, but that the rest of her life would be fixed. The difference between a point and a line. Does this make sense to anyone else, and how should the specific terminology be handled? d ●•· 17:37, October 5, 2012 (UTC)

Amy, Rory & the Doctor

Okay, assuming that this explanation about what causes a fixed point in time is not total BS and made up as the series goes along and that Rory & Amy are irretrievably in the past, I still don't understand why this means that the Doctor can't travel to the past and see them. What is fixed is that they moved in time from the present to 1930s New York City. The Tenth Doctor has already traveled to this time & place before with Martha, why couldn't the Eleventh Doctor not travel back and have tea with the Williams?

It all makes me wish he HAD just let them be when he said goodbye before the Wedding of River Song episode, where they could live out their lives surrounded by family & friends. But Doctor Who writing team doesn't like happy endings, does it?69.125.134.86^{talk to me} 20:16, December 17, 2012 (UTC)

It looks like New York in the more recent timeline (after Big Bang 2) is one giant time distortion, which makes it a lot more difficult to land there in the first place. On top of that is the fact that Rory and Amy managed to generate a paradox to erase Winter Quay and most of the Weeping Angels from Manhattan, making the time distortions more prominent at that time. Apparently, The Doctor "saw" that he'd create some paradox or another if he met up with Rory and Amy again, he's always going on about being able to see fixed points and the like - according to the episode's wikia page, he actually mentions that another paradox would destroy the city, and I know he wouldn't be willing to risk an entire city going *poof* and a reality shattering anomaly just to see some friends.

I have no idea what implications these events have on The Doctor's previous journeys to New York, and it's never revealed whether everything still occurs as it did before Big Bang 2 happened. So I think we'd need a massive continuity check here to confirm what does and doesn't still have a place in the new timeline, and how exactly Rory and Amy became capable of such a paradox. - Jackal-d ☎ 17:44, December 29, 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for trying to explain what is a clumsy plot device to explain why Amy & Rory would no longer be appearing in Doctor Who (it's really the actors' decision, right?). But why would this prevent River from visiting them? I can see why a paradox MIGHT affect Rory & Amy's ability to travel in time but why would the Doctor or River's visiting them cause the city of New York to explode? I mean, the Doctor and River are not the source of the paradox, Rory & Amy are.

And is this connected at all to the time distortion that initially prevented the TARDIS from landing in 1938 (but not later in the episode?)? Why was the TARDIS bouncing off of old NYC included in there? 69.125.134.86^{talk to me} 23:30, April 2, 2013 (UTC)

It's an interesting question, but talk pages are for discussions on how to write the article. If you want to discuss and speculate about the plot of the story, you can do it at Howling:The Howling. Thanks! Shambala108 ☎ 00:30, April 3, 2013 (UTC)

Pete Tyler's death

Are we sure that his death should be considered a fixed point? Preventing it created a paradox, yes, but that's because Rose's motivation for going back in time was to be there when he died, and if he hadn't, then she would have no reason for having gone back. That, coupled with the presence of two identical iterations of the Doctor and Rose is what attracted the reapers. I don't think they showed up because Pete's death being undone broke a fixed point. Ensephylon ☎ 22:31, April 22, 2013 (UTC)

Sure, it should. If she had no reason for going back because he didn't die, then she wouldn't have gone back, then we'd be back where we started.--ComicBookGoddess ☎ 01:14, April 23, 2013 (UTC)

But how does that make it a fixed point? That just seems like a standard fare paradox to me. Ensephylon ☎ 02:16, April 23, 2013 (UTC)

From their treatment in the stories, it seems as if fixed points must be relative to a time traveller, and they must stay preserved so that a true paradox is not created. But to get away from such speculation, let's just put it this way: when Rose saved him, an alternative timeline was created, and she and the Doctor were stuck there. It was eventually resolved in the same way that Lake Silencio was - the two poles of the disturbance had to meet, and complete something like the original version of events.--ComicBookGoddess ☎ 06:27, April 23, 2013

(UTC)

But isn't that in itself kind of speculative? The actual concept of "fixed points" had yet to be equivocated by that point, so it is unlikely that they had it in mind when writing the episode. Furthermore, it wasn't that the two poles of the disturbance had to meet, it was that Pete had to die in order for the timeline to make sense. The only reason for the Doctor and Rose's presence at that time was because Rose asked to go see her father's death. When she saved him, he did not die, thus creating a general paradox (why was she there if he never died?). As for it being an alternate timeline, that part is tricky. Yes, all of the damage caused by the reapers was undone when Pete died, but the events still happened (as evidenced by the fact that everyone was still in the church, which they had only entered in order to hide from the reapers, although most of the people who were there had forgotten about what happened). With the broken Lake Silencio point, all traces of the alternate timeline were erased when the fixed point was repaired, and the Doctor and River were put right back at Lake Silencio. Plus, the "all of time happening at once" phenomenon from the Lake Silencio incident didn't occur here; granted, there were some temporal anomalies (the first phone call and such), but it wasn't the same. In the alternate timeline from TWORS, the reapers didn't appear and the TARDIS interior didn't vanish. So all in all, I still don't see what changes Pete's averted death from a regular paradox to a broken fixed point. It was a causal inconsistency, yes, but not an event that would cause history itself to collapse should it be prevented. Ensephylon ☎ 09:37, April 23, 2013 (UTC)