Howling:Miracle Day - alternate timeline?

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I've read on a lot of the discontinuity pages people's ideas about the whole fact that the events of Miracle Day coincide with the sections of Series 6 taking place on modern day Earth. Now, from a meta perspective, it's kind of obvious as to why there's no impact on the events of Series 6 from the Miracle; Rusty's no longer controlling the parent show and Torchwood, so he can't implement the same level of interconnection between the shows, and Stephen and he aren't really communicating on the topic, so we can kind of chalk up those inconsistencies to separate creatorial vision etc. and move on. From an in-universe perspective, though, we still get the clashes regarding the Miracle not affecting Amy, Rory, River, The Doctor (although the fact that it was the Teselecta getting shot might be a little bit of a cover for the 'death takes a holiday' not affecting the Doctor. I had a little idea while watching Wedding; what if the events of the miracle are actually happening slightly out of joint with the events at Lake Silencio - we know they're around april or that rough time, so it can't be that, but what if the Miracle is actually part of a separate timeline; a Torchwood timeline which effectively branches off from the Main Whoniverse? 'Cos with the 456 invasion, it wasn't mentioned at all in Series 5, but that can be chalked up to the cracks erasing the invasions of the 21st century; Canary Wharf, Medusa Cascade, etc. It might be that the Torchwood timeline is an extension of the Pre-reboot universe, where all those events did occur, but the cracks haven't affected anything yet; how it might have continued to occur without the cracks, and Doctor Who, after the start of Series 5, is the post-reboot, Big Bang 2 universe. Just a theory.

59.101.75.133 04:10, October 2, 2011 (UTC)

Just going to correct something here: The Miracle only affected humans, the Doctor isn't a human, the Doctor could easily die on Miracle Day. The Light6 ^{talk to me} 10:33, October 2, 2011 (UTC)

Quite right. The only real question is why none of the contemporary human characters in Doctor Who seem to know anything about the Miracle (or, for that matter, about Children of Earth). Alternate timelines is one possible explanation. There will be others. If/when Jack reappears in the parent show, we might get at least a hint towards an explanation. Also, once Steven Moffat has had time to think about it, we might get some kind of mention of what's been going on, even without Jack's reappearance. --2.96.24.60 13:09, October 2, 2011 (UTC)

Children of Earth isn't really important here, because as far as most of the public were concerned all of the children were acting funny for 5 days, there was a fire over London, and the government started kidnapping children. The general public probably wouldn't see this as another alien invasion, and there hasn't really been any time in season 5 or 6 when that would come up in conversation. We also can't be seeing the pre Big Bang universe, because that universe no longer exists. Now we are stuck with a completely identical universe. Miracle Day pretty much had to take place in the same universe as the rest of the show. I don't know how the dates work out, but is it possible that The Impossible Astronaut was before Miracle Day, and Let's Kill Hitler was after the miracle ended? It's still a bit weird that nobody mentioned it, but Amy and Rory were more concerned with there missing daughter at the time and probably wouldn't have really cared if they didn't know any category ones or twos.Icecreamdif ^{talk to me} 17:54, October 2, 2011 (UTC)

Alien invasions aren't the point. Notable events on a worldwide scale are. The disruption in Children of Earth was comparatively minor and might not get talked about much after it was over. The Miracle, however, was followed by a major disruption to society over a significant length of time. Anybody making even a short visit to Earth would have encountered clear evidence that something drastic was happening or had recently happened. It would take at least months for things to get back to anywhere near normal. --2.96.30.78 18:16, October 2, 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, but how much time did the Doctor really spend on Earth this year? If we assume that the 2011 scenes of Let's Kill Hitler took place after the miracle ended, then the Doctor was only on Earth for about five minutes and the only people who he saw were Amy, Rory, and Mels, none of whom would have talked much about the Miracle given what was going on. In Night Terrors, the only people who he had any real interaction with were George and Alex, both of whom were more worried about other things than the Miracle at the time. If the Miracle hadn't ended it would obviously have been relevant in that episode since they'd be more worried about becoming category one than dying, but if the miracle was over than why mention it. Closing Time is probably the biggest problem since the Doctor interacts with several people in modern day Earth, but if the Miracle is over at this point, than all the category ones and twos are dead anyway, and the miracle could easily have just not come up in conversation. The overpopulation problem was pretty much solved when the Miracle ended, so countries like China would have reopened their borders, so the only way the Miracle would still be relevant would be people's reactions to the government policy to burn people alive. None of this was really relevant to the plot of the episodes, so it wasn't mentioned. Icecreamdif ^{talk to me} 18:31, October 2, 2011 (UTC)

People wouldn't need to be talking about the Miracle and its consequences. The social and economic disruption was so great and pervasive that there would be evidence of it all over the place, even if nobody mentioned it. Anyway, there being something as big as that about which nobody was talking wouldn't get past the Doctor. Remember The Beast Below, in which the Doctor explains to Amy how he knows there's something wrong. People not talking about it was one of the clues he picked up on, within minutes of arriving. And it's not good enough to say he had other things on his mind. In Closing Time, he definitely had plenty on his mind but that didn't stop him noticing things were wrong: "You've noticed something. You have your noticing face on. I have nightmares about that face." Closing Time was set (in large part) in a shop. Shops are affected by economic disruption. At the end of The God Complex, the Doctor somehow obtained for Amy and Rory legal title to a house and a car, requiring fairly extensive interaction with the legal and financial systems (if only to arrange things so his friends wouldn't be bothered by people questioning their ownership of the house and car) -- he'd have encountered the consequences of the Miracle while doing that. It's not believable that the Doctor (of all people) could have failed to notice, unless the Miracle hadn't happened (yet). --89.241.71.64 05:52, October 3, 2011 (UTC)

So maybe he did notice something was wrong. If it wasn't relevant to the plot, then it would just have been distracting to mention it on screen. There could well have been a point when the Doctor was working in the shop where somebody said, "Wow, that great depression a couple of months ago really hurt business. Good thing Torchood was able to end the Miracle." Really, if the Doctor heard about the miracle but also heard that it had ended, what would he have done about it?Icecreamdif ^{talk to me} 06:06, October 3, 2011 (UTC)

Then of course there is the possibility the Doctor did hear about it, decided to have a look at it and discover it was a fixed point (which it may or may not be) and decided to leave it alone. Just adding that since Jack's immortality comes form being a fixed point in time and the events of Miracle Day seem to suggest that being a fixed point has effected his morphic field, so if all of humanity was undying due to the Blessing changing human morphic fields to be similar (but not identical) to Jack's we could easily assume the Miracle Day is a fixed event or at least not completely in flux. The Light6 ^{talk to me} 11:34, October 3, 2011 (UTC)

It's true enough that, if he heard the problem had been resolved or sensed that it was a fixed point, he'd leave it alone. However, from the dates, at least some of the action in DW Series 6 coincided with the main action in TW Miracle Day. The Miracle started on 19th/20th March 2011 (depending on time zone), which is a shade over a month before the shooting in Utah. Amy and Rory should have known all about the Miracle right from the start of the series -- and Rory is a nurse! (The Amy we saw was a ganger but the mind was the real Amy's mind, so that's irrelevant.)

One thing I've not yet checked but need to is this: In the few parts of the action of Series 6 that were set on contemporary Earth, did anyone human actually die? People disappeared in Closing Time but (as far as I could tell) they were all cyber-converted, not killed. From what we saw in Miracle Day, the Miracle probably wouldn't have interfered with cyber-conversion.

To go back to the main point: Rory is a nurse and to Amy, as she was at the start of the series, the Doctor is the one who can fix anything. They met up with the Doctor (for the first time in several months) a shade over a month after everyone suddenly stopped dying and that wasn't the first thing they said to him? (OK, the first thing after, "Hello, great to see you again!") --89.240.240.47 12:06, October 3, 2011 (UTC)

When you ask if anyone died, does that include TIA? Because the woman, Joy, in the bathroom was killed by a Silence (or whatever you call one of them). Shambala108 ^{talk to me} 15:24, October 3, 2011 (UTC)

Joy was killed in the 60s, not the modern day. The Light6 ^{talk to me} 15:47, October 3, 2011 (UTC)

Oops you're right my bad Shambala108 ^{talk to me} 21:23, October 3, 2011 (UTC)

No Humans died on modern-day Earth rhis season. Well, except during the alternate timeline, and if all of history was happening at once then you'd think that the Miracle would be happening, but whatever. In Night Terrors, people were just turned into peg dolls and turned back later, and in Let's Kill Hitler, they were in the 21st century for all of 2 minutes. Moffat really should have just tried to stay away from the modern day this season, but I suppoe that he and RTD aren't really coordinating anymore. Anyway, we can assume that the dates were an error, and the miracle began shortly after the events of The Impossible Astronaut and ended before Let's Kill Hitler. Alternatively, the Doctor arrived back on Earth, Amy mentioned the miracle on their way to the diner, the Doctor said "No, I'm done noticing things," or just remembered hearing about the Miracle in Closing Time and knew it would resolve itsself, then after he died they were too worried about his death to bring it up with his younger self.Icecreamdif ^{talk to me} 13:10, October 3, 2011 (UTC)

RTD and Moffat said several times prior to the airing of series 6 that they were in contact all the time to avoid continuity problems between their two shows. As it turns out, fans are seeing continuity errors that aren't there. All we got of present day Earth in series 6 was April, January/Febuary and Autumn of 2011. Miracle Day took took place from around June to September 2011. The date given on Rex's phone was technically the real life date for when the text was sent filming. It was sent on March 22nd because that would have been the day they filmed the scene. The only deliberate script-to-screen date given during Miracle Day was that it ended on September 19th and began two months earlier, making it June or July. None of series 6 takes place during Miracle Day, all before it except for the cornfield scene, the Doctor leaving Amy and Rory with a new house and Amy sitting in a garden at night, which all would have been about a month later. 90.199.247.172 22:11, October 3, 2011 (UTC)

Maybe it was the Doctor who brought Jack back to Earth, because he knew Jack was the only one who could fix things. In any case, I'm fine assuming that everyone talked about Miracle Day off screen, between scenes. One problem with including references to it is that Torchwood is a very adult show and Doctor Who is for the whole family, so it's kind of awkward to require Doctor Who fans to watch Torchwood if they want to fully understand what's going on. "Watch out for the minotaur! It'll make you Category One!" "Look out for the robots, Amy! They'll Category One you with kindness!" "Uh, that's a reference to another show you're not old enough to watch yet, which is completely irrelevant to the current plot. Ignore it." I still hope we meet a far-future Rex in Doctor Who at some point, though. -- Rowan Earthwood ^{talk to me} 03:33, October 6, 2011 (UTC)

Well, I doubt that the blessing's morphic fields extend to Apalapucia or the Minotaur's prison hotel ship thing, so it wouldn't be an issue there. The only time when it really would have made sense for it to come up was in Night Terrors, although the dolls weren't really killing people anyway. It would have been funny to see Rory on Earth during the miracle though. Jack probably just hitched a ride back to Earth the same way he left in the first place. Remember, he didn't return because of the miracle, he returned because the word Torchwood had been e-mailed all over the place. Ironically, Jack probably wouldn't have even heard about the Miracle if the families hadn't tried to kill him. I doubt that we'll meet a far-future Rex in Doctor Who, for the same reason that you gave that there weren't any references to Miracle Day in Doctor Who-younger viewers will have no clue who Rex is and will be completely lost. The only way that I can see Rex ever appearing on Doctor Who would be if they did the same kind of thing they did with The Stolen Earth and have the entire Torchwood team on the show. The Doctor doesn't even know Rex right now anyway.Icecreamdif ^{talk to me} 04:22, October 6, 2011 (UTC)

From the various dates given -- Miracle Day covering mid-July to mid-September 2011 and dates in Doctor Who episodes -- it looks as if all the datable visits to 2011 took place before the start of the Miracle. The only two "iffy" visits are the cornfield scene at the start of Let's Kill Hitler and the closing scene of The God Complex. That assumes, of course, that the newspaper date in Closing Time was not an error (i.e., that that episode really was set in April 2011). Since that dating of Closing Time fits with the other known dates of Series 6 episodes, it probably isn't an error. --78.146.180.227 15:37, October 9, 2011 (UTC)