Howling:"You saved me in 2008.": Difference between revisions

::Well, again, ''be fair''. WOM doesn't "say" 2008 in any dialogue. Some graphics that were on the screen for ''less than a second'', written by a trainee script editor and not overseen by RTD, said that. And these same graphics were ''littered'' with errors ranging from plain grammatical and spelling errors, to claiming that Susie's crew were the same as the crew on [[Bowie Base One]]. So the WOM 2008 reference is a plain, old ''mistake'' — not authorial intent. There is a clear difference between an obvious production gaffe and a continuity contradiction. I'm surprised you're hung up over this frankly very minor stuff, and not completely driven '''crazy''' by the ''real'' continuity nightmares caused by ''The Waters of Mars'' with respect to ''[[The Moonbase]]'', ''[[The Wheel in Space]]'' and ''[[Seeds of Death]]''. WOM drove a big, ol' RTD-shaped hole right through the heart of the Troughton era.

::But the broader point is that '''this is ''Doctor Who'', not ''Star Trek'' or ''Star Wars'''''. Dates simply aren't crucial to one's enjoyment of the show, on most occasions. As both Moffat and Cornell have said, the dude's a time traveller. Continuity errors are generally impossible, because time is fluid, wibbly-wobbly, and timey-wimey. You will only drive yourself ''crazy'' by spending so much energy trying to find precise chronological alignment in this show. People smarter than both you or I have been trying for 50 years, and it only gets more difficult the more episodes that are filmed. The only thing you can kinda hope for is that the basic narrative from the '''Doctor's''' perspective makes sense. His own relative timeline is what's key, and violations in that probably should be noted, if they're major enough. But as for the progression of time in the larger Doctor Who universe? Nah, that's just not possible to follow. An objective view of the "chronology of the Whoniverse" is extraordinary elusive because "people assume that there's a strict progression from cause to effect", when the show has definitively established that there isn't. You will enjoy the show so much more if you — to reverse a sports metaphor — follow the man, not the ball. Another way of looking at it is to assume that the writers have done their homework, they're making a good-faith effort, but production realities (like trainee script editors and the occasiional mistake by the graphics department) are occasionally present. You can spend your time here buried in writing theories in the discontinuity sections, or you can write the substantive, ''factual'' parts of articles. For me, the choice between those two things is a no-brainer. '''[[User:CzechOut|<span style="background:blue;color:white">Czech</span><span style="background:red;color:white">Out</span>]]''' [[User talk:CzechOut|☎]] | [[Special:Contributions/CzechOut|<font size="+1">✍</font>]] 06:18, March 16, 2010 (UTC)