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Howling:After someone's been absorbed by the Crack... (view source)
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::::You want a simple explanation? Here's one. The Byzantium crashed and its home box went home. Now, in this world, when there's a crash, the authorities go out, get the flight recorder and conduct a full investigation. That's what that unit was doing. Why was River Song there? She was doing something with the unit when it was ordered to investigate and since the Bishop had to go take part in the investigation, he couldn't drop her back at Stormhaven first. I am not offering it as '''the''' explanation. For that, you'd need some statement in the show or from Moffat. Happy now? [[User:Boblipton|Boblipton]] 19:58, August 11, 2011 (UTC) | ::::You want a simple explanation? Here's one. The Byzantium crashed and its home box went home. Now, in this world, when there's a crash, the authorities go out, get the flight recorder and conduct a full investigation. That's what that unit was doing. Why was River Song there? She was doing something with the unit when it was ordered to investigate and since the Bishop had to go take part in the investigation, he couldn't drop her back at Stormhaven first. I am not offering it as '''the''' explanation. For that, you'd need some statement in the show or from Moffat. Happy now? [[User:Boblipton|Boblipton]] 19:58, August 11, 2011 (UTC) | ||
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::::Well if nothing seen in the episode is reliable, then it's pretty dang useless, isn't it? If a Crack can come along and rewrite reality so whatever happens doesn't really matter, what's the point in following any of the stories? [[Special:Contributions/82.2.136.93|82.2.136.93]] 21:10, August 11, 2011 (UTC) | ::::Well if nothing seen in the episode is reliable, then it's pretty dang useless, isn't it? If a Crack can come along and rewrite reality so whatever happens doesn't really matter, what's the point in following any of the stories? [[Special:Contributions/82.2.136.93|82.2.136.93]] 21:10, August 11, 2011 (UTC) | ||
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::::And yes, of course that means that no past episode is necessarily a reliable record of consensus history. (For the most part, they're a reliable record of history on the Doctor's personal timeline, but even that isn't always true—e.g., ''Turn Left.'') So, if you think that makes it useless to watch the episodes, that's fine; there are shows handle time travel differently, and even more shows that don't have time travel at all, and you can watch those shows. --[[Special:Contributions/173.228.85.118|173.228.85.118]] 03:58, August 12, 2011 (UTC) | ::::And yes, of course that means that no past episode is necessarily a reliable record of consensus history. (For the most part, they're a reliable record of history on the Doctor's personal timeline, but even that isn't always true—e.g., ''Turn Left.'') So, if you think that makes it useless to watch the episodes, that's fine; there are shows handle time travel differently, and even more shows that don't have time travel at all, and you can watch those shows. --[[Special:Contributions/173.228.85.118|173.228.85.118]] 03:58, August 12, 2011 (UTC) | ||
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::::I feel it should be noted that both Donna and Wilf would have to have gone through the events in TSE/JE in order to help the Doctor defeat the Master in TEOT. Take out the Dalek invasion, and how was the Master stopped? How did Donna even get back to Earth? Oh, and the reason certain people survived the events of LOTTL, while the rest of that timeline was eradicated, was because those people were protected by some kind of temporal bubble that preserved the part of reality they occupied at the time. I don't recall seeing anything like that in the latest episodes. And even if it did, it would still drastically effect everything that came afterwards. [[Special:Contributions/213.121.200.42|213.121.200.42]] 09:39, August 12, 2011 (UTC) | |||
:::::You're still making the same mistake, assuming that there's a linear timeline that everyone shares. There's not. On the timeline of the 6 billion non-time-traveling Earthlings, TSE didn't happen, but on Donna's timeline, it did. | |||
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:::::And again, it's already granted that sometimes changes in history have drastic effects on what follows. That's not a problem; that's the very nature of the show. It wouldn't be very dramatic otherwise. (If drastic changes were impossible, why would the Doctor bother trying to stop the Monk, the Cybermen, etc.? Just let them have their fun, and it won't make any difference anyway… It's only because history really can and does change that there's any conflict.) --[[Special:Contributions/173.228.85.35|173.228.85.35]] 02:27, August 13, 2011 (UTC) | |||
:::::I don't see how anyone can swallow this crap that Moffat comes out with. It's just pure nonsense. [[Special:Contributions/82.2.136.93|82.2.136.93]] 20:45, September 10, 2011 (UTC) | |||
:::::The situation with the Cracks isn't anything like what happend in Last of the Time Lords. It makes no sense. [[Special:Contributions/82.2.136.93|82.2.136.93]] 14:04, September 11, 2011 (UTC) | |||
::::::Millions of fans around the world understood it, but because you're too stupid to get it and too stubborn to admit you might be wrong, it must be crap. I agree; Moffat should be writing for you, and nobody else. --[[Special:Contributions/173.228.85.35|173.228.85.35]] 01:32, September 12, 2011 (UTC) | |||
::::::While I appreciate your feelings, surely there is a more courteous way of expressing it. [[User:Boblipton|Boblipton]] 01:37, September 12, 2011 (UTC) | |||
:::::::I'm sorry, I don't feel the need to be courteous to people who come on a Doctor Who fan site, call Doctor Who crap, and imply that something must be wrong with everyone who enjoys it. This is a forum, not the main space of the site, so I'll grant that he's entitled to his discourteous opinions—but if he is, so am I. --[[Special:Contributions/173.228.85.35|173.228.85.35]] 02:26, September 12, 2011 (UTC) | |||
The cracks weren't a particularly hard story line to understand, but they definetly weren't one of the stronger story lines that the shows's done. [[User:Icecreamdif|Icecreamdif]] 01:47, September 12, 2011 (UTC) | |||
I'd agree it wasn't the best story line ever in the show -- but it was nowhere near as weak (or as hard to understand) as some of the guff that's churned out by other shows. Apart from being discourteous and unreasoned, the comments by 82.2.136.93, above, are in the wrong place: They don't belong here but in some other discussion of the merits/demerits of Moffat compared with other writers. Even there, they would be improved by some actual reasoning. It may be wrong to call 82.2.136.93 "too stupid to get it" but 82.2.136.93 hasn't provided evidence to the contrary. --[[Special:Contributions/89.240.254.190|89.240.254.190]] 04:09, September 12, 2011 (UTC) | |||
Well, not being able to understand a relatively complicated timey wimey science fiction plot point doesn't make somebody stupid, though his comment abuot people swallowing crap that Moffat comes up with obviously didn't belong.[[User:Icecreamdif|Icecreamdif]] 05:12, September 12, 2011 (UTC) | |||
Part of the difficulty with understanding what happens when someone is absorbed by a crack seems simply to be the Doctor's explanation of it: That they don't just die, it's as if they never were. Before I go any further, let me say I'm not postulating that the Doctor's explanation is wrong. Rather, I suspect there may still be something we don't know about the cracks and looking at the discrepancy might be useful. The actual behaviour of people and events is '''not '''what one would logically expect from someone ceasing ever to have existed. What happens is more or less what you'd expect if that person had been killed and edited out of memory, with survivors being conditioned not to pay any attention to the logical inconsistencies that result. It's almost as if their previous existence gets covered by a perception filter. If the Doctor had explained the effect that way, we'd have little or no difficulty with it. | |||
He didn't explain it that way; he said it's as if they never were. Why? One obvious possibility is that the writer, Moffat, messed up. That's hardly likely. He's not exactly unfamiliar with perception filters and, if he'd had something like that in mind, he'd have written that as the Doctor's explanation. A perception filter isn't the only way the observed effect could be produced. Silence-style post-hypnotic suggestion would also do the trick and the Silence do seem to be (somehow) connected with the cracks. Of course, the Doctor couldn't offer that as an explanation until he'd learned about the Silence. What he could have done would have been to offer the perception filter type explanation at first, then modify it later by saying something like: "Aha! It wasn't a perception filter, it was the Silence." Again, the explanation covers the facts and again it wasn't used. | |||
We're still left with an explanation that doesn't appear to cover the known facts. Either the Doctor's explanation is wrong, with no apparent excuse (either for him or for Moffat for having written it as he did), or the facts the Doctor used in coming up with his explanation are better (more complete) than the facts we know. There's nothing implausible about that. The Doctor has extensive knowledge and has Time Lord perceptions. The question for us is: What are the missing facts? --[[Special:Contributions/89.242.76.105|89.242.76.105]] 09:53, September 13, 2011 (UTC) | |||
: I disagree, to put forward an example - as far as Amy was concerned she spent her entire life without parents and did spend her entire life without parents, she wouldn't need something to cover up the gaps because she had lived her whole life that way, why would she question it now? [[User:The Light6|The Light6]] 10:35, September 13, 2011 (UTC) | |||
: The Light6: Amy isn't a sensible example to choose. The Doctor himself reckoned there was something unique about Amy's memory. When (aged 7) she was talking to the Doctor, she said her mother used to put faces on apples, so she did remenber having had parents. As has been pointed out above, however, the clerics who forgot their comrades' existences didn't question why (seemingly) such a small group had been sent on that mission. Eventually, there was only a single soldier who could see nothing odd about being alone on a mission that obviously called for at least a squad. The point, which has already been made very thoroughly, is that the situation which results from someone being absorbed by a crack is '''not '''the situation you would get if that person really had never existed. If you think there are no real inconsistencies, you need to explain why and you need to do that for all the apparent inconsistencies others have already pointed out. --[[Special:Contributions/78.146.181.206|78.146.181.206]] 21:35, September 13, 2011 (UTC) | |||
Even though evidence of a person's existence remains, they still never did exist. It's a complicated paradox, but if, before ''The Big Bang'' but after ''Cold Blood'', the Doctor and Amy had decided to travel back to Leadworth during Amy's childhood, Rory still wouldn't be there because he never existed. Still, despite the fact that he never eisted, there is a photograph of him at Amy's house, the Doctor still has his engagement ring, and River Song still exists. It doesn't quite make sense, but its a paradox and paradoxes never make sense.[[User:Icecreamdif|Icecreamdif]] 22:43, September 13, 2011 (UTC) | |||
: Icecreamdif is exactly right here. You're demanding an explanation for history-changing paradoxes that doesn't include any paradoxes. You might as well demand an explanation for Amy walking around 400 years before she was born that doesn't include any time travel. Of course you're going to be disappointed. If you can't accept that paradoxes exist in the Whoniverse, you're going to fail to understand a good fraction of the episodes, but that's not the writers' fault. | |||
: And if you think of the alternative given by 89, how is it any better? If you edit someone out of everyone's memory, they would act exactly the same as if you edited that person out of history. Either way, they'd act as if that person never existed. The only real differences are that: (a) editing history could be a very simple physical process, but editing everyone's memory would be a tremendously complicated biochemical process that would have to involve some intelligent agent, and (b) editing history makes some sense of the time traveler exception, but editing memory doesn't. So, it's a strictly weaker explanation: exactly as good for the main facts, and worse for the secondary facts. --[[Special:Contributions/70.36.140.19|70.36.140.19]] 05:14, September 14, 2011 (UTC) | |||
: 89 was asking a question, not offering an all-embracing answer. --[[Special:Contributions/89.241.76.198|89.241.76.198]] 06:44, September 14, 2011 (UTC) | |||
:: But the point behind the question is: "It can't be what the Doctor says, because that would be paradoxical, so what could it actually be?" And the answer is "mu". Given that it's explicitly a paradox, it can be exactly what the Doctor says, even though that's paradoxical. --[[Special:Contributions/70.36.140.19|70.36.140.19]] 07:48, September 14, 2011 (UTC) | |||
Well, it might be possible to put a perception filter around someone's entire life so that nobody remebers them, but that's not what's described as having happenned. I think the bigger question is what would happen if the Doctor travelled in time to, say, the day of Amy's birth(before ''The Big Bang'' obviously). Would baby Amy just pop out of nowhere, or what would happen.[[User:Icecreamdif|Icecreamdif]] 19:37, September 14, 2011 (UTC) | |||
70.36.140.19: No. The point behind the question is exactly the opposite of that. The point is: "Assuming that it '''is '''what the Doctor says, why does it still '''look '''as if it can't be?" Icecreamdif seems to have grasped the idea of the question, even if he has no more answer than I do. -- (No idea what my IP address will be this time but was 89.242.76.105 when I asked the question) [[Special:Contributions/2.101.55.215|2.101.55.215]] 20:19, September 14, 2011 (UTC) | |||
Nor is it necessary to invoke some timey-wimey theory to explain what these remnants are. When the Doctor asked Amy what happened to her parents, it clearly distressed her to think about that wouldn't it disturb you not to remember something so important? So she didn't think about them. Who's this guy in Roman armor with you? Answer "Huh. I don't remember. Some guy." The real issue from our viewpoint is the pesky bootstrap paradox and the realisation that cause-and-effect is frequently an illusion. Next time you going into a room and can't remember why you went into it, think about that. [[User:Boblipton|Boblipton]] 21:47, September 14, 2011 (UTC) | |||