Howling:River's Timeline in Light of TATM: Difference between revisions

::"A new development" doesn't mean much when you're a time traveler. Relative to what year? The Doctor is a century or so older now, from his perspective, than he was in ''The Wedding of River Song'', and he seems to have been busy spending the last century or so of his personal history erasing himself from all records, for a span of thousands of years. Even if someone else has been doing it, that person clearly has access to time travel, since he's vanished from quite a few different centuries. In the few episodes since Oswin begun the process, we've seen databases in 19th century America and a 24th century spaceship fail to include him and River Song herself, a 52nd century archaeologist with a doctorate in the Doctor's history, has confirmed that he's vanished from public knowledge (which means, I guess, that she would have had to get her doctorate in some other historical subject). River remembers him because she knows him personally; Kate Stewart remembers him from her father's stories. I think River's dialogue in ''Angels Take Manhattan'' clearly indicates that the process of doctor-erasing has already changed history, and her time in prison was much shorter than before. Instead of being paroled under the close watch of the Church, she was pardoned outright, which means that as far as the authorities are concerned her crime is absolved and there was no need to parole her. We can't assume that any of the previous River stories that involved her prison time still happened the way we saw them before. I agree that there are some signs that River might be older now, but we can't use her time in prison to compare her to other episodes directly. She's a full professor now, but she seems to have begun her teaching career much earlier than she did in the previous timeline. It's also not clear that the Doctor has any enemies remaining that remember him, since lately he's been killing them off. The whole point of erasing himself is to prevent groups like the Silence, devoted to targeting him, from existing. The authorities who run Stormcage have never heard of the Doctor in this new timeline; River is very clear about that. It's not just that he isn't in databases - nobody knows him, not the Shadow Proclamation, not the Church, not the Headless Monks, not Torchwood (apart from people like Jack and Gwen who've met him). I wouldn't be shocked if they reveal that the Silence never formed, the Battle of Demon's Run didn't happen, and Melody Pond had a normal childhood at her parent's house in Leadsworth, interrupted only by the occasional time-traveling adventure. Or if I'm completely wrong then at the very least, I think it's clear that we can no longer safely make assumptions about how well the Doctor is known based on previous stories. -- [[User:Rowan Earthwood|Rowan Earthwood]] [[User talk:Rowan Earthwood|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 02:32, October 2, 2012 (UTC)