Howling:Interfering With Personal Timeline

The Howling → Interfering With Personal Timeline

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So it's stated many times by The Doctor (The most glaring and recent example being the episode Fathers' Day in the original reboot) that interfering with one's own personal timeline will have disastrous consequences, cancel out history, et cetera. This is supposedly supported by The Eleventh Doctor in Big Band/The Pandorica Opens, when the two versions of the doctor's sonic screwdriver spark when held near each other due to "temporal friction"; i.e., the paradox of two identical objects being at the same point in space and time, but at different points on the object's timeline. So why is it that, when Rose touched the other version of herself in Fathers' Day, a great catastrophe occurred, but the Doctor is visibly seen to embrace his past/future self , exchange words, and all the rest when he uses the vortex manipulator to sneak away and wire up the Pandorica without the timeline negating like it did prior?110.175.4.178 12:10, September 17, 2011 (UTC)

Also, Amy touches her younger self in this episode too. 110.175.4.178 12:10, September 17, 2011 (UTC)

What you have to recognise not all interference in a personal timeline is the same, you have to look at it in context. First I'm going to pull up a classic series example: In Mawdryn Undead two Brigadier's met each other and gave off the same energy that the sonic screwdriver gave off when it touched itself in The Big Bang. This is due to the Blinovitch Limitation Effect and in both cases despite two selves from the same timeline meeting the timeline looped around, eg. the meeting didn't cancel out the future because that future version used to be the past version that meet itself. On numerous cases the Doctor has came into contact with himself, why it hasn't effected him has never been explained but I would guess it has something to do with the fact he's a time lord. And on Father's Day, Rose changed the timeline and caused a grandfather paradox as opposed to an ontological paradox as mentioned with the Brigadier, the Doctor and the sonic screwdiver. The vastly different nature of the paradox allowed the Reapers in; despite to the fact that history was being re-written around them the baby Rose was still the same Rose as adult Rose which caused the Blinovitch Limitation Effect however due to the Reaper's presence the energy was syphoned off to allow another one to get through. And as for kid Amy and adult Amy touching in The Big Bang, they were two different Amy's from two different time lines one from where the universe existed and one from a collapsing universe. Like I said at the beginning you have to take into account the circumstances when it happens. The Light6 13:04, September 17, 2011 (UTC)

I agree with the point about a collapsing universe, but the flaw in that logic is the sonic screwdriver causing the Blinovitch Limitation Effect after the universe collapse. If the sonics caused the effect, then the Amys should have as well.

However, in the Big Bang when Amy touches her younger self she did so standing in the light of the Pandorica which may have limited the effects. I cannot recall if they touch again in the episode, but if they do I believe the effect is more like static electricity. Object of point A in the time line comes into contact with the same object from point B form its timeline. Temporal difference (much like voltage is an electrical potential difference) is discharged and must be built up again before it can be discharged again. Object from A and from B are moving at the same “speed” through Time and therefore do not create a temporal difference until one of the two time-travels to a point where they have different potentials.

As for the Doctor and the same effect, I believe that every time that has happened; it has been between two different incarnations of the Doctor (please post if this is otherwise because I am very interested in these situations). In essence the physical properties of the two are different enough to perhaps eliminate the effect. If the two Doctors of the same incarnation, but different points in time, were to come into contact, this effect may be witnessed. That is unless Time Lords are indeed immune as mentioned before.MasterIII 06:03, September 19, 2011 (UTC)

Nope, in The Big Bang/Pandorica Opens, the Doctor uses the Vortex Manipulator to transport himself a few minutes back in time after being shot by the Stone Dalek. His younger self, still in the eleventh incarnation, however, props him up, then hugs him as he whispers something into his ear. It's a major plot point of the episode, and it makes no sense to me, seeing how the Blinovitch Limitation Effect is shown to still exist mere minutes before, when the Doc touches the screwdrivers. 110.175.4.178 07:05, September 19, 2011 (UTC)

"I agree with the point about a collapsing universe, but the flaw in that logic is the sonic screwdriver causing the Blinovitch Limitation Effect after the universe collapse. If the sonics caused the effect, then the Amys should have as well." - MasterIII

I will re-touch on this: No they shouldn't have; as I previously said the Amy's were two different Amy's - One from the Proper!Universe and one from the Collapsed!Universe, not a two Amy from a single Amy timeline. The sonic screwdriver on the other hand was the same one that travels back in time from later in the episode to interact with itself forming a stable time loop. As for the Doctor on the other hand, well like I said the Doctor has previously interacted with himself before in such a way without effect, I myself had assume something about the fact they were different incarnations of the Doctor stopped this, as MasterIII suggested, however this clearly doesn't add up in The Big Bang. This means it that it is possible Time Lords in general are immune from the effect, at least to some extent, a better question would be why the Doctor's clothes instead didn't display the effect, I would guess that they forgot the clothes aren't part of the Doctor. The Light6 08:18, September 19, 2011 (UTC)

When Moffat was asked on Twitter why the two Amys didn't Blinovitch, he quoted the same line used to explain why the vortex manipulator isn't dangerous: (paraphrasing) the universe is so small that many of the normal rules don't apply. That raises the question of why the rules _do_ apply to the screwdriver, but I think he wasn't saying that there are no rules, just that the normal rules are replaced by different rules (that we don't know).

As for the Doctor touching himself, it's been established in many past episodes that Time Lords touching themselves don't have Blinovitch problems. The clothes are an interesting point—when it's different incarnations of the Doctor, they're (obviously) not wearing the same clothes, and presumably Light6 is right, and Moffat just forgot that this wasn't actually a solved problem. --70.36.140.19 12:03, September 19, 2011 (UTC)

While I could go on about what Moffat said on twitter compared to what we saw and what it means for my explanation but it would become long a rambling so I'll make it short and quick instead: Moffat attempted to handwave the issue (and missed a perfectly logical explanation while doing so) and because his handwave doesn't make complete sense we now have a Voodoo Shark runningswimming loose. To paraphrase a saying: "Writers make plotholes, fans fix them." The Light6 17:09, September 19, 2011 (UTC)

Gary Russell paraphrased that same saying so many times on rec.arts.drwho and Outpost Gallifrey (at one point, his .sig was something like, "Jean-Marc Lofficier: Never underestimate the ability of future producers to destroy continuity. Gary Russell: And never underestimate the ability of fans to fix it.") that many people suspected that he deliberately wrote continuity errors into DWM comics (and later the BFAs) just to give the fans more fuel for fanwanking.

I get the feeling Moffat sometimes does a less "cheaty" version of that: he deliberately leaves us permanent mysteries to debate forever, not to mention both real clues and red herrings to the season arcs. But then, when he sees people debating "less interesting" topics instead of the ones he's given us, it annoys him a bit. --70.36.140.19 03:22, September 20, 2011 (UTC)