Howling:Cross Dimensional niggle (Curse of Black Spot)

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The spaceship that occupies the same space as Capn Avery's ship is said by the Doctor to exist in an alternate dimension (with portals between the two worlds via reflections). The adventure ends with Avery taking charge of the alien ship to sustain his crew who are reliant on the medic programme for life. I assume this means Captain Avery is now living in the alternate universe with son and crew. If so, when the TARDIS dematerialised from aboard the pirate ship to be found on the alien craft, where the Doctor finds it, has it returned to the original dimension? Because in A Good Man Goes To War, Captain Avery is one of those who assist in Amy and Melody/River's rescue (time's passed, the Captain seems to have got his son free of the medic programme): is this because a) Avery's spaceship is interdimensional, b) the Doctor has transported Avery's ship or c) the action all takes place in the alternate dimension?

I'm guessing the answers simply 'a'.

Its either A or B. A Good Man Goes to War features characters who we know are from the original dimension such as River and the spitfire pilots, and characters who the Doctor has met before and are probably from our dimension such as the Sontaran and Silurian. The ship can either travel between dimensions, or the Doctor brought them back to our dimension either at the end of Curse of the Black Spot or just to join his army.Icecreamdif 20:21, August 13, 2011 (UTC)

I've read that Curse of the Black Spot was originally to be shown later, after the season break. Does this mean that Captain Avery would've appeared at Demon's Run without us knowing who he was? Or did they add Avery to the Good Man Goes to War script? It might just have seemed a good recent ally to add to the mix. --Makgrey 20:46, August 13, 2011 (UTC)

In favour of option "a": Something created the portals between dimensions. It could well have been the alien ship that did so. Also, adding Avery to A Good Man Goes to War (and therefore shifting The Curse of the Black Spot) might have been done because Jack Harkness was originally intended to be in A Good Man Goes to War but John Barrowman's schedule didn't permit it, so he had to be replaced. By the way, Captain Henry Avery has been mentioned before in the show, though he didn't then appear in person: His treasure provided an important plot point in the First Doctor story The Smugglers (1966). --89.242.67.144 21:09, August 13, 2011 (UTC)

I would think that if Jack had appeared in A Good Man Goes to War, he would have been given a larger role than Captain Avery was. Most likely, Avery and Toby were added to the script after the schedule change. After all, they didn't really have a major role.Icecreamdif 21:32, August 13, 2011 (UTC)

Jack surely would have been given a larger role but that doesn't mean Avery and Toby weren't added to the script because he couldn't appear. If Jack had been there, it's extremely likely that use would have been made of him being "killed" and then taking the opposition by surprise, afterwards (as in Journey's End). No other character could do that. Avery and Toby wouldn't and couldn't simply have been "slotted in" to do everything Jack would have done. They could, though, have been written in, in a reduced capacity, to make up the numbers of those the Doctor recruited to his cause. On the interdimensional question: Given the established situation that "parallel worlds are closed off", either that has changed and we've not been told so, yet, or what the Doctor meant by "an alternate dimension" isn't the same as an alternate universe. The latter seems more likely, especially as one of the first things established in the show (on 23rd November 1963) is that the interior of the TARDIS is in a different dimension from the exterior. Until/unless it's stated otherwise, I'll assume that Avery's (new) ship was in a different dimension of the same universe and can move between dimensions but not universes. --89.240.245.226 09:25, August 14, 2011 (UTC)

I had assumed it was b), and that because the crew were dead, something had gone wrong during hyperspace travel, leaving the ship marooned at the same coordinates as the pirate ship, but somehow in other dimensions as well (just as the TARDIS is dimensionally transcendant). Then when the Doctor repaired the ship, he managed to bring it out of hyperspace and back into the normal universe (I assumed this because the Captain mentions heading for ORions Belt IIRC, which I took to mean it was back in our dimensions). 187.58.98.57 18:04, August 15, 2011 (UTC)

I could be completely wrong, but a dimension is not a universe! Words like "alternate" and "parallel" get thrown around too much. While the ship could very well be transdimensional (which would explain why it ended up with Avery's ship) Avery simply took over it and started from a new location in space. As I understand it, dimensions make up a universe, who the two ships were connecting two different points in space, while stile being in the same universe. IDK, but there's another topic either in the Howling or somewhere that tries to see the difference between universe and dimension. Hope I've helped. User:Steed 18:37, August 18, 2011 (UTC)

I have a theory which could answer both questions right now, but it's a bit complicated. I've always thought dimensions are universes that overlap another universe, existing in the same place but unreachable. In theory, this is possible if time passes slower in that dimension, creating by the second overlapping dimension vibrating out of sync from the first universe. In theory, if Captain Avery's ship could somehow 'tune-in' to these vibrations, then he could pass between dimensions that exist in our universe, but not other universes. Anyone who's ever read 'Flash of Two Worlds' will know what I mean. Gallifrey102 22:48, August 18, 2011 (UTC)

Steed: you are right, a dimension is not a universe, and most scifi that uses the word "dimension" (like most new age metaphysics) is just total nonsense. There is some hard SF that gets it right, like Greg Egan's stuff, but it's not common.

Fortunately, most scifi gets it wrong in exactly the same way. When they say "another dimension", if you interpret it as "a universe (or part of our universe) a short distance away from ours along a different dimension from our usual three", it almost always works. Or, if you don't want to think through that sentence, it's just a different kind of parallel universe.

Unfortunately, Doctor Who is not consistent. It usually gets it wrong in the usual scifi way—and I'm pretty sure that's what Steven Thompson was doing in this episode. But sometimes it gets it right, and occasionally gets it wrong in spectacular new ways. --173.228.85.35 03:23, August 19, 2011 (UTC)

Maybe it was the same kind of thing as Stones of Blood where the spaceship was in the same place as the stone cicle, but in a different dimension.Icecreamdif 04:27, August 19, 2011 (UTC)

Yes, since they used almost the same wording, it probably means pretty much the same thing. But the point Steed was making is that, taken at face value, it's meaningless. Put in more familiar terms, imagine that I said you're "in the height dimension" while I'm "in the width dimension". That's obviously just nonsense. What you can be is, say, 2 meters above me in the height dimension, and if I'm looking straight ahead, I won't see you. If you extend that to the 11-dimensional Whoniverse, it still makes no sense to say that the spaceship is, say, "in the 6th dimension"—but it can be 2 meters away along a 6th axis. If I'm looking straight ahead, I can't see it—and in fact, because I can only turn my head in 3 dimensions, there's no way I can see it. However, there might be weak gravitational interactions that a TARDIS could pick up on.

So, as I said, it almost always works to translate things that way, both in Doctor Who and in other scifi. (Not all. There is another way that you can try to explain some kinds of dimensional talk, which doesn't really work for cases like the spaceships in these two episodes, but works better for a few other cases, like the TARDIS's interior. And there's some stuff that's completely accurate, and some that's just nonsense no matter how you read it. But most.) --173.228.85.35 05:33, August 20, 2011 (UTC)

To continue your example about "the 6th dimension," technically speaking (in the Whoniverse) we can't reach the higher six dimensions because of the Ancient Covenant set down after Event One. But Doctor Who is so weird with this dimension stuff. So we have the three dimensions, the fourth being Time (of which there are multiple fourth dimensions apparently (The Space Museum), and the fifth being space (outer space or gravity, I guess). Then we have 6 higher dimensions that the Transcendental Beings, like the Eternals, live in. Apparently people think the Eternals live in the Void now, but it can't be part of the universe (any one's thoughts on that?). Now, as best as I can think, these eleven dimensions all overlap each other. In a sense, we're living in the higher 6 dimensions right now, but we can't perceive them. Michio Kaku even wrote that transcendental beings could walk thorugh wall, which is what the Black Guardian could do. So does anyone have any other thoughts about dimensions or should we create a new discussion or what? User:Steed 23:04, September 1, 2011 (UTC)

Saying "these eleven dimensions all overlap each other" doesn't actually make any sense mathematically. The 11 dimensions are each at right angles to each other; that's the whole point. Think of a dimension as a direction. (It's actually a direction with a metric, but you can ignore that for now.) In fact, forget that; if you haven't read Abbott's Flatland (http://xahlee.org/flatland/index.html), go read it; even if it's written in a stiff 19th-century style, it still explains all this stuff better than anyone on an internet forum is likely to, and it's an entertaining story to boot. (Or you can read Spaceland by Rudy Rucker, which is just as enlightening and more fun, but it's still in copyright, so you'll have to buy it.)

But meanwhile, keep in mind that Doctor Who isn't consistent in the way it uses science and mathematics. For example: a higher-dimensional being doesn't really walk through walls, he just goes around them in a direction you can't see, just as you can cross a line painted on the ground by stepping over it (going around it in the third dimension). This distinction will probably come up and make a difference in a Craig Hinton novel. On the other hand, a 60s episode will almost certainly get it wrong. A Moffat episode will take great pains to make sure the story works even for people who don't get it. And Larry Miles will intentionally get it wrong as a subtle hint that science itself is breaking down in the post-Gallifrey Whoniverse. So, understanding the real-world science only takes you so far. --173.228.85.35 08:28, September 2, 2011 (UTC)