Doctor Who

Time is usually rewritten when a time traveler starts messing around with stuff. Danny dies in an event that's completely unrelated to time travel.

But... Missy

How do you know?

That's one hell of an assumption.

Yeah, what part of "time is being rewritten all around us every day" don't you understand? Only the big moments, those that cannot be changed, are immutable (unless you're a Time Lord and don't mind messing up completely), everything else is just...timey wimey.

edited 5th Oct '15 5:59:31 PM by alliterator

I'm trying to think of a situation where history was altered without a Time Lord or other time traveler doing stuff. Unless I'm forgetting something there was never an episode where history just suddenly changed for no adequately explained reason. At the very least the existence of fixed points implies there's some kind of "correct" sequence of events that time progresses through. The details from point A to point B change but A and B still happen.

Only some things are fixed points in time. Everything else can be changed and it can change for any number of reasons. Perhaps by Clara traveling in time, Clara and Danny's relationship went faster than it would have, and then he proposed moving in together over the phone in a different place he would have and he wasn't looking at where he was going, so he died. Time changes.

How about free will? How's that for a reason?

I suppose but it's still weird. The existence of fixed points implies the universe is actively guiding things along a certain path but then you have stuff like WWTW saying that time is inherently chaotic. It can't be that chaotic if certain things must happen.

...You do remember that every time fixed points are mentioned, it's mentioned that only some points are fixed, right? And that in most other cases anything can happen?

And frankly, I'd say that makes it more chaotic.

Absolute chaos ultimately ends up uniform, to the point where it seems like another type of order.

edited 5th Oct '15 6:07:10 PM by unnoun

I feel like Kostya's got a point. If u want, think of it like Newton's first law (a state of motion needs to be acted on by an external force to change). If there's some kind of analagous law for time, time travel would be that changing force. If free will was enough to change the events of a timeline, that suggests that all points of a timeline are occuring simultaneously.

edited 5th Oct '15 6:08:31 PM by frosty

Except that's never been how time works in Doctor Who.

The Laws and their Lords are basically dead, or may as well be for all the effect they still have.

No time travel was involved in the third destruction of Atlantis.

You mean, like a ball of wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff?

edited 5th Oct '15 6:11:26 PM by unnoun

No, I agree that time is constantly being rewritten, but it can't just happen. Something needs to effecting those changes, be it the TARDIS showing up, or someone stepping on a butterfly.

Yes but fixed points also mean certain things have to happen prior to them. Suppose the Kennedy assassination is one. That means that Kennedy has to be born no matter what happens, the US has to be formed, etc. This means that if someone went to a point in history that wasn't fixed and tried to nuke the US into oblivion it would be impossible because the conditions for the Kennedy assassination wouldn't exist.

Things happen all the time. The timeline is nothing but things happening.

Well, there are people who don't time travel themselves that nonetheless have some sense of what might happen in the future. I guess that theoretically, they or someone who spoke to them could pull a Screw Destiny and rewrite the fixed point. But you need to *have* an established future before you can change it. Most people don't have any knowledge of what should/will happen, so everything happens naturally.

Also, Clara is a time traveller. Danny chatting to Clara, who was preparing to talk about time travel, was part of the reason he died. If Clara hadn't travelled through time, the conversation wouldn't have taken place, and he might have crossed the road safely. But this is getting into butterfly effect territory...

I mean, if you were talking about a consistent, rationalistic universe you might have a point.

This is Doctor Who and logic is dead.

That's one hell of a presumption.

Of course they would.

They'd be completely separated from their original context, but they'd happen.

Time doesn't actually have to make sense. It is under no obligations to follow your rules for what constitutes consistency or rational behavior.

edited 5th Oct '15 6:15:00 PM by unnoun

The 'thing happening' can't be the change to itself. Leaves turning yellow isn't something that just happens because the leaf got bored. Lowered temperature, decreased sunlight, increased wind, etc. A timeline, by its nature, has an ordering, a causality. The events in a timeline wouldn't just happen, they are the result of something. If some external force shows up and alters it, the rest of the timeline is altered, wibly wobly. That external force has to be present though.

edited 5th Oct '15 6:16:28 PM by frosty

Anything that happens, happens.

Anything that, in happening, causes something else to happen, causes something else to happen.

Anything that, in happening, causes itself to happen again, happens again.

Not necessarily in chronological order.

...Oh, you must be new.

Hi, my avatar is based on a cult of Time Lords that worship paradoxes.

There is no external force.

It's not possible for there to be one.

Everything that happens, happens within the system.

There is no inside or outside.

edited 5th Oct '15 6:18:18 PM by unnoun

Unnoun: How is it a presumption? A fixed point is a specific event that must happen. This means the people and places in the fixed point have to exist so anything that erases them prior to it can't happen whether it's during the fixed point or not.

Poppycock! It will be happened; it shall be going to be happening; it will be was an event that could will have been taken place in the future. Simple as that.

You're thinking about this common sense.

And you assume that history knows the difference between John F Kennedy or the United States and a hole in the ground.

What history knows is atoms, and bits of pieces bouncing off each other.

...I mean, this is a show where the Master can destroy a quarter of the universe in a single serial and that has no lasting ramifications.

Unnoun, are you saying that a free-will decision in the chronological future will rewrite the history of some chronologically past event? I jumped in to say that "time being rewritten" can't just happen without time travel. Deliberate and specificly targeted actions might not be a necessity, but travel itself is. Causality loops and other paradoxes all involve travel of a kind. The kind of vague, hypothetical happen to which you refer just doesn't help me understand what you're trying to say. I'm not even sure we're on the same topic anymore.

I mean if you want to make a case that the show should work this way that would not be my go to example.

Basically: sometimes time changes for no reason besides someone didn't do what time thought they would. No time travel necessary.

edited 5th Oct '15 6:26:47 PM by Wackd

Don't mind me, I'm just sitting here refreshing the page watching all of this and eating popcorn.

Pass it over. Confusion makes me hungry