Howling:Dating the Amy era

The Howling → Dating the Amy era

There be spoilers about un-released stories here.
Run back to the forums if you're scared.

For most of the show's history, it's been pretty clear when "the present day" was. Yes, there were a few glitches like Ian knowing a song from 1964 or a series 4 episode where the writer apparently forgot it was 1 year in the future, but for the most part there aren't any real questions.

The famous exception to the rule is the UNIT dating controversy. But I think we have nearly as big a problem with dating Amy's present-day stories.

There are some detailed arguments on Talk:The Power of Three (TV story), which I won't repeat here; I'll just give unfairly brief summaries, and you can go read the long versions over there. Here are the basic possibilities:

1. Around 2017. It's 10 years since The Big Bang (TV story) on Amy's timeline, but less than that on the main Earth timeline, hence all her talk about aging faster than her friends.

2. 2020. It's the Ponds' 10th anniversary, Rory's 31 years old, therefore it's 2020. Otherwise, they'd have to lie to everyone about their anniversaries, ages, etc., and we never see that. Also, there's time they skipped over (where nobody saw them for months) as well as extra time they've lived on the side.

3. 2012. Technology, fashion, and trends all look like 2012. Amy and Rory look a lot closer to 23 and 24 than to 30 and 31.

I personally don't see how 2012 could make sense. Rory said he was 31, and we saw an episode that explicitly took place in 2013 that's at least a couple years before TPO3. But the present day is so clearly not 2017 (much less 2020). You can make excuses for each piece of circumstantial 2012 evidence (as you can see on the above-linked talk page), but there's so much of it, and the excuses are so thin.

So that brings us to:

4a. Moffat's trying to be intentionally vague, as Dicks tried to do in the UNIT era, and he's pulled it off just as badly. Chibnall, Mackinnon, and Wilson gave us an episode that looked like 2012 because Moffat forgot to tell them otherwise.

4b. Moffat's being intentionally contradictory, as a clue.

I could live with 4a—after all, I still love the UNIT stories. And that was my first conclusion. But the more I think about it, the more it seems out of character for Moffat to not do 4b. Even if he started off just being sloppy, once he realized the problems, it's exactly the kind of thing he'd spin a story out of.

So, I'm coming around to the crazy conspiracy theory that the dates don't work on purpose, and this is a clue to the 7a finale. (Or the 7a finale could leave it open, and then there will be more clues and it'll be resolved in the 7b finale, either with a surprise return by the Ponds, or without them.)

But I still don't buy the theory that "The Power of Three" was named to remind us of "The Power of the Daleks" (set on one of Earth's space colonies in 2020) as a further clue. It's not so awkward a name that it demands explaining. --70.36.140.233^{talk to me} 08:39, September 25, 2012 (UTC)

Part of your calculation is adrift because the date of The Big Bang is wrong. You seem to have forgotten that the TARDIS explosion (although it affected all of time & space) occurred on Amy's wedding day in 2010, which is also when she woke up in the "rebooted" universe. The museum scenes were set in 1996 (as Amy calculated from her younger self's age) & the Stonehenge scenes were in 102AD. None of it was set in 2007, so 10 years after The Big Bang isn't 2017. --89.241.76.92^{talk to me} 09:33, September 25, 2012 (UTC)

Did you just stop reading half way through possibility 1? The wedding was 2010, and that's 10 years ago on Amy's timeline. The question is whether those 10 years on Amy's timeline correspond to 10 years on the main Earth timeline (so it's 2020, possibility 2), or significantly less (so it's around 2017, possibility 1). There are some clues for the latter, but I won't go over them again (see the linked talk page for someone else making a good argument), and I don't think we have anything conclusive to say that Moffat definitely intends it to be 2017 +/- 3 years, or that he intends it to be 2020. --70.36.140.233^{talk to me} 16:44, September 25, 2012 (UTC)

Given that Amy clearly said that it's been about ten years for her and Rory, but not for the Doctor or the Earth, I think we can assume that it is sometime from 2014 to 2017. There's nothing that directly contradicts that, and plenty to support it. This is nothing like the UNIT dating controversy, where it is mathematically impossible for every date's reference to be correct.Icecreamdif ☎ 16:50, September 25, 2012 (UTC)

How do we know when the Doctor drops them off in the God Complex? Maybe he dropped them off a little in the past. So maybe 2012 isn't that far off? Just a thought. VoicesFromTheVortex ☎ 17:00, September 25, 2012 (UTC)

I doubt he'd do that. For one thing, Amy and Rory would have to avoid seeing their families or any of their friends from Leadworth, or anyone else who they knew to avoid creating paradoxes. For another thing, Amy became a model, which could potentially cause a paradox if past Amy saw future Amy on a billboard or magazine or something.Icecreamdif ☎ 17:21, September 25, 2012 (UTC)

True. But did we ever get a definite time WHEN he drops them off? VoicesFromTheVortex ☎ 17:33, September 25, 2012 (UTC)

Honestly, past Amy seeing future Amy on a billboard is no problem for the way time works in the Moffatverse—in fact, it's almost the _most_ likely reason for Amy to become a model, given the way her life works. And it's an interesting theory. But ultimately, I don't think this changes the options much. --70.36.140.233^{talk to me} 18:06, September 25, 2012 (UTC)

Getting back to the main thread: As I said, I don't think 2020 or 2012 is actually plausible. If it's not (4b), it's (4a). Or, this new possibility that someone elsewhere is swaying me toward:

4c. Moffat's being intentionally contradictory, as a red herring. Which means we'll probably end up left with a minor unanswered mystery, but that's not out of character for Moffat at all.

Anyway, to briefly summarize the problems with 2017: If it's not 2012, why do people wear 2012 clothes (even models), watch The Apprentice, etc.? If it's not 2020, why aren't Amy and Rory's friends surprised that they're 30 and 31 years old (it's not like nobody notices a model's age…) and having their 10th anniversary? And why even bring up (more than once) "you disappear for months at a time and show up like you just stepped out" if not to push the dates farther into the future?

People were arguing about UNIT dating long before Battlefield made it mathematically impossible. While Dicks intentionally avoided firm references to dates, there was tons of circumstantial evidence for both the future and the present, because some of the writers and producers remembered the original brief and others didn't. In-universe, all of that evidence (and even Pyramids of Mars and Mawdryn Undead) could be explained away, but it was pretty shaky. Similarly, all the problems with the Amy years can be explained away in-universe, but it's pretty shaky. --70.36.140.233^{talk to me} 18:08, September 25, 2012 (UTC)

I thought it was already mathematically impossible by Pyramids of Mars, but I've never really cared enough to try to work it out. If it's 2017 or around then, then people are probably wearing 2012 clothes because the production people would rather have people wear outdated clothes, then try to predict what people will be wearing in five years and then have everyone laugh at horribly wrong they got it when 2017 looks nothing like that. I don't exactly remember Fear Her or Dalek looking like the real 2012, and I certainly don't remember The Tenth Planet looking like the real 1980s. Amy isn't a model anymore, and its unclear how long its been for her or for Earth since Asylum of the Daleks. They didn't know their current friends before they were travelling with the Doctor, so they wouldn't notice a discrepency. We don't even know if Amy and Rory actually told all their friends it was their 10th anniversary, rather than their fifth or seventh. The Doctor is erratic enough that they can miss months at a time sometimes, and be gone for no time at all other times. Remember, the entire first season took place over one night for the Earth, and even in this episode, Amy and Rory were gone for 7 weeks within a few seconds. The references to them disappearing for several months was basically to show the difficulty of them trying to live two lives. When they travel with the Doctor, there is always the possibility that they will miss something on Earth.Icecreamdif ☎ 20:30, September 25, 2012 (UTC)

Fear Her didn't go out of its way to highlight current trends in technology, TV shows, and so on. Power of Three did, more than any episode since Eleventh Hour.

Dalek did highlight current trends in technology (and corporate structure), just like Power of Three, and it was clearly years ahead of 2005. In fact, if anything, they overdid the amount of change over the next 7 years. But Powr of Three showed absolutely no change at all.

The Tenth Planet didn't look like the _real_ 1986, but it certainly looked 20 years ahead of 1966. The whole setting of the story was a futuristic base in Antarctica that tracked routine spaceflights. A major plot element was the futuristic Z-bomb. Even on a military base, we still saw fashions that were bizarre for 1966. And so on.

So all of those counterexamples just make the point even stronger.

And even if the original poster dismisses the Power of the Daleks connection, look at how much different that 2020 was from 1966.

Maybe the "red herring" thing is true, but it's not nothing, and I don't think it's sloppiness. Steven Moffat is not Terrance Dicks. And he has much more control over the show than Dicks did.

Apart from the fact that clothes and cars will probably change, The Power of Three's 2015-17 probably wasn't too far off from the what the real one will be. It is perfectly conceivable that people will still be using Twitter and Facebook, and that The Apprentice will still be on the air. The Wii will be outdated by then, but given that Amy and Rory are in their 30s and their only kid is grown, it makes perfect sense that they wouldn't bother to upgrade to Wii U. It was probably just cheaper and easier to show the near future as the world is now, then to try to guess what the world will look like in a few years.Icecreamdif ☎ 00:09, September 26, 2012 (UTC)

I raised all these answers on the original Talk page. But they're not very good answers, especially when you put them all together. Yes, Facebook will still be around, but how many people in 2012 still talk about MySpace as an example of that new-fangled communication that's changed the world? The Apprentice will still be around, maybe even with Lord Sugar, but is Survivor still a major cultural touchstone today? Some people will still have a Wii, but when's the last time you saw someone pull out their GameCube and hook it up to their 31" CRT?

If they just wanted to get away with "cheaper and easier", they would have avoided bludgeoning us with up-to-the-minute cultural references. When Dicks wanted to make season 8's setting ambiguous, he didn't pepper it with references to Monty Python, transistor radios, and electric folk. But TPO3 did exactly that. And it did so in a way that closely paralleled TEH, where the same references were explicitly used to tell us "Doctor Who is just like the real world in 2010" (as a change from the RTD-era Whoniverse which had drifted farther and farther from the real world).

And everything the unsigned poster said about your examples is true. Dalek was very obviously not 2005, and The Tenth Planet even more obviously not 1966, which just highlights even more how solidly rooted TPO3 was in 2012.

As for the Power of the Daleks thing… I didn't want to get into this, but: TPO3's name can't have any deep meaning, given that it was almost aired as "Cubed". And even if it did, the name is more similar to The Power of Kroll, and that one isn't a story that nobody has seen in 46 years because it was wiped and has never been recovered. --70.36.140.233^{talk to me} 02:42, September 26, 2012 (UTC)

One more thing: If you really think 2017 won't be that different from 2012 in TV, technology, etc., go back and watch an episode of Screenwipe from 2007 and see if it feels up-to-date, or if you have to struggle to remember half of what he's talking about (and why you ever cared). Except, of course, for the one about Doctor Who. :) --70.36.140.233^{talk to me} 02:52, September 26, 2012 (UTC)

I'm not saying that 2012 will be the same as 2017, I'm just saying that it will be similar enough that the only time that audiences will really care will be in 2017. Given that we've already been told it's not 2012 (Amy said it had been two years since he dropped them off in The Doctor the Widow and the Wardrobe, etc.) it has to be a few years in the future. Maybe not as late as 2017, but certainly no later than 2015. In a couple of decades, nobody will even remember the difference between 2012 and 2017 anyway.Icecreamdif ☎ 14:56, September 26, 2012 (UTC)

People remember the difference between hippie-burnout 1972 and disco-and-punk 1977 today, or even the early and late 60s—half the success of Mad Men (and most of the dramatic tension that isn't generic soap operatics) is based on the fact that we know what's coming for the characters' world and they don't.

But more importantly, you're still skipping over the central point. If you want an episode to be vaguely dated, why insert all kinds of conspicuous up-to-the-minute references into it? Or, conversely: We know the reason they inserted those references into TEH: to let us know that the 2010 Whoniverse was just like the 2010 real world. So why did they insert the same references into TPO3?

--70.36.140.233^{talk to me} 17:43, September 26, 2012 (UTC)

Probably because they feel like an episode where the Doctor spends about an entire year on Earth should have references to the present day, and because they hope that putting in pop-culture references will make the show seem relevant to modern viewers. Plus, they got to get in a few guest stars.Icecreamdif ☎ 21:08, September 26, 2012 (UTC)

But that's my whole point. When the Doctor spent months on Earth in 1969, they didn't put in references to the present day; why should 2017 be any different? Using 2012 pop culture references to make a 2017 story feel more relevant is like using shots of the London skyline to make a story set on Skaro feel more like home. The whole thing only makes sense if they forgot they were set 5+ years in the future (which is exactly what happened in season 8). --70.36.140.233^{talk to me} 03:31, September 27, 2012 (UTC)

consider the references:

the wii: ok, it will be old by then, but it's not like people today don't still have old consoles. my family still has a play station 2 which we never bothered upgrading to the PS3.

twitter etc: well, sites like twitter and facebook and youtube have all already been around for over 5 years. it's not much of a stretch to think they will survive five more.

fashion: is cyclical. and anyway, although probably caused by my lack of interest in fashion, the big stuff doesn't change much over a few years. i mean, some of the small things like seasonal colours/prints and cuts can change, but it's not too much of a stretch of the imagination to believe that clothing will be similar to now.

amy/rory being 30/31: well, they certainly didn't look their ages.

the apprentice: never seen it, but from what others have said, it has already been on air for a while, so yet again it's still not much of a stretch to believe it still would be in ~2017

the disappearances is to show that the doctor has taken them in and out of their "normal" lives for different lengths of time (sometimes no time at all while other times for months on end) and reinforces the need for amy/rory to choose between their lives.

and for the differences within a decade being greatly remembered: as someone from a younger generation (i wont say anything other than born during the wilderness years of doctor who), i don't really distinguish between the early and late parts of decades when i think of them. eg: 60s is hippy, 70s is disco. so, although the older people will "remember the difference between hippie-burnout 1972 and disco-and-punk 1977 today", the younger/later born generations won't distinguish as much. when people from the future think of last decade or this decade, they will probably generalise as the technology decade(s). so, yeah. seriously, in a few decades, most people won't be able to see much difference. probably.

so, that's a few explanations for some of the references to today's technology etc. Imamadmad ☎ 11:58, September 27, 2012 (UTC)

Like Imamadmad, I was also born in the Wilderness years of Doctor Who(a few years before the TV Movie), so I have a similar view of the past. I'm sure that in 2030, all of us who were alive during this decade will remember the difference between 2012 and 2017, but the younger viewers wouldn't care less. Twitter and Facebook will (unfortuanetly) probably still be popular in 2017, and Amy and Rory are probably a bit old to be keeping up with the most modern game consoles. Besides, I don't think the Wii U has the same motion control thing as the Wii, and the motion control is probably the main reason that two people in their 30s who go on real adventures all the time anyway bought a video game console.Icecreamdif ☎ 12:14, September 27, 2012 (UTC)

Imamadmad: All of those explanations were already brought up in the first post on the talk page, and I've already made the same point repeatedly. But I'll try to make it again: It's not that nobody will have a Wii or want an iPad or use Twitter or watch the Apprentice in 5 years; it's that those things are all major cultural touchstones of 2012, and they will not be in 2017. They're the kind of thing future TV shows will use to establish a flashback to 2012, just like every sitcom that wants to establish a flashback to 2007 has someone mention MySpace instead of Facebook or play with a GameCube instead of a Wii. It doesn't matter that there are still millions of people with GameCubes, and MySpace accounts, and just-plain-MP3-players, who watch Survivor; highlighting those things tells people the setting is 2007.

As for how people remember the past: 1962 vs. 1967 is 50 years in the past, quite possibly before your _parents_ were even born, and yet Mad Men, whose main fanbase is around your age… well, let me quote a review: "Everyone thinks of the 60s as hippies and Vietnam, but we all know there were two 60s… You're drawn in by knowing that the two 60s are going to collide, and the people you're watching are unprepared." For that matter, think of how much Human Nature got out of the difference between 1913 and 1918. You obviously don't remember what 1913 was like, but the fact that WWI is just around the corner is, and nobody but Martha knows it, is "the tension and dread that drives the entire story" (quoting Paul Cornell, who wrote it).

But even forgetting all of that, the show isn't made to be popular in 2042, it's made to be popular in 2012, so how people will remember it in 30 years isn't the issue. --70.36.140.233^{talk to me} 17:15, September 27, 2012 (UTC)

If it's made well enough to be popular in 2012, it'll probably be popular in 2042, also. --89.240.243.135^{talk to me} 20:38, September 27, 2012 (UTC)

Exactly. It's made to be popular in 2012, not 2017. It is basically suppossed to be set in the "present", even though the "present" is actually the near future. The writers like to put cultural references into episodes set in the modern day, and they can't possibly predict how 2017 will be different from 2012. Besides, I doubt that this will really have the same issue that you mentioned with Human Nature unless we get WWIII in the next 5 years, in which case I don't think that anyone will really be too concerned that Doctor Who didn't accurately reflect 2017. Whether or not you agree with the writer's choices dialogue in both this episode and recent episodes have made it clear that it is the near future, so really it wouldn't even matter if they were all using brick cell phones and playing N64s.Icecreamdif ☎ 00:41, September 28, 2012 (UTC)

Icecreamdif: You're arguing against the wrong point. As I've said repeatedly, I'm not saying the episode is set in 2012; I'm saying that it's apparently set in a 2017 that for some reason looks exactly like 2012, and that they've gone out of their way to highlight this fact. The question is whether they did so as a plot point, as a red herring, or out of major sloppiness.

And 89: I agree. And part of being well made enough to last 40 years is not making sloppy mistakes like that. And Doctor Who has, for the most part, either made the future look like the future, or kept things so vague that you can't really tell. (Of course the future doesn't look like the _actual_ future, but nobody expects that. Only the most obnoxiously pedantic fans complain that Zoe's gleaming future city doesn't look like any real early-21st-century city, there were no Z-bombs in the mid-80s, and Dalek predicted the wrong changes for the internet. It just looks like _a_ future. If Zoe's future city had been shots of 1968 London with closeups on current car models, then people today _would_ notice it was wrong.) --70.36.140.233^{talk to me} 04:45, September 28, 2012 (UTC)

So, in The Angels Take Manhattan, 12:05: "Tried that, if you'd noticed, and we are back where we started in 2012". Amy points out that they didn't start in a graveyard, but doesn't blink an eye at the 2012. And again at the end. And, in case that wasn't enough, a skyline that clearly has neither the old WTC nor the new one, so it has to be 2001-2014. And yet Amy and Rory were now in their mid-30s. Of course they _could_ from 2022 London to 2012 New York, but why? What's so special about that year?

Maybe it's just that 2012 is special to the Doctor, because he wants to pretend that she's 23 years old in 2012, just like she should have been in his timeline (and ours) if he'd never gotten involved? --70.36.140.233^{talk to me} 22:40, September 29, 2012 (UTC)

PS, does it mean anything that the Detroit Lions won the 2012 superbowl instead of the NY Giants? They focused on the newspaper to make sure we noticed. --70.36.140.233^{talk to me} 22:41, September 29, 2012 (UTC)