Rich Morris' Comics - YAFGC and The ComixBlog

A bit of philosophical debate here- when they introduced the concept of a fixed point in time, I got the idea that as the universe travels along there are just certain moments, no matter how it bends thru space in time, that the universe has to hit.

This means that you can change history as you travel, except certain spots which are so worn in the groove of time that they cannot be changed, and you better learn where they are and how to avoid getting caught up between what must happen and what you are doing there at the time.

I took Amye's death not to be a fixed unchangeable point, but a point that could be changed, but would likely change a lot of history that we know. Something a wise time traveler would accept shouldnt be changed, but one not so wise could have changed if someone didn't stop them.

What do you think? Inevitable, or simply lucky for us that live in a future it created? (If we are in favor of an unmarried Elizabeth or start of democracy and revolutions, etc. )

I take the approach presented (at least, in part) in the FASA Doctor Who RPG gamebook.

Time flows like a river, and certain points are deeper than others. "Shallow" points, called Temporal Nexus Points, are dangerously pivotal points that are easily diverted. Earth primarily exists in one of these strategic Nexus Points, especially around the 60's - 80's...and it looks like we're heading for another one. That makes it very attractive for aliens as an invasion point, since once you control a major Nexus Point, other events will be easy to divert to and from. They aren't necessarily aware of this and sometimes the ebb and flow of time guides others there.
This would make the Earth particular vulnerable and in need of a guardian or two.

Other points are deeper and set and only some very serious deviation will effect it at all. Otherwise events roll over the obstacle, recreating the main points as they were.

However, major changes from a Nexus Point that feed into one of these deeper points can drain it like a dam in a river. So ultimately, the Universe could be destroyed or change...or cease to exist.

I rather like that explantion. From the TV show point of view - Earth is riddled with time rifts, temporal fractures, time holes/cracks/loops and gateways. So Earth is not only 'shallow', but practically a puddle on the surface waiting for a disturbance to direct it.

It would also go a long way to explain why every time hopper in the universe (Time lords, Daleks, Legion, Cybers, Chronovores, etc, etc) drops by for a visit at some point, and generally pay a lot of attention to a boring small blue/green rockball inhabited by crazy monkeys.

And also why time hoppers 'in the know' get upset when some other species tries to grab it (for whatever reason). And possibly why the new 'Shadow council' thing considers it a 'hands off' world.

That's sensible. Mind you, I'm not against fixed points, as long as they're kept rare.

Besides, the whole point of fixed points isnt that you're not supposed to change them, it's that they're going to happen no matter what, and it takes more than what most time lords are capable of, to attempt to say otherwise.

But the idea that Earth gets attacked so often because it's in a causal nexus is pretty good, it explains so much of our Doctor Who history! (It's a pity the Shadow Proclamation doesnt pay special attention to Earth then, giving it the same protection any level 5 planet gets ... then again, how would the Earth fare if the Juddoon were all that stood - or always stood - between the inhabitants and alien invaders? A couple of "They went that away!"s and the Juddoon would be tricked and the Earth would be taken.)

That would make us a puddle along the river's turn, flowing along at a shallow level with a couple of surprisingly deep points <g> to combine all the theories.

Hmm, well chewing on it a bit further (and with the half of a bottle of red ) I'm toyed with the following ideas.

At some points the 'time stream' is less of a river, but is more of a water flow through a levee. The path of the levee is how time 'should' flow, with everything set out as to how it should unfold - the strictly determinist outcome.

The range of events which can happen is defined by the levees 'width'. On the whole things will occur along the course of the stream, but within the stream currents and eddies allow for a wide range of motion - but the motion on the whole is more or less fixed over the long term. So things will happen as expected with only the minor details changing (the 'deep' time) so visiting here and playing around is 'safe' - the fixed points.

However at some points, the levees are not in too good condition. For whatever reason the boundaries are somewhat brittle, and if they are hit at just the right point, they can crack open and the stream shoots off on a new course. Mess around at these points and you risk something nasty happening.

Earth's levee for various reasons (see below) is falling to pieces and holds together by good intentions and a prayer. All it would take for the levee to crack is someone to give a whack in the right location and the stream would break out of its pre-set boundaries and shoot off on a new course. You might get lucky and only hit a fairly strong part and things continue as normal, or you may hit the right spot and the next words are 'Oops'. As with all breaking levees the result can range from disasterous to mostly harmless - the 'nexus points' are somewhat 'fixed time', but if you are playing around near one you are begging for trouble.

So why are Earths "time levees" in such a bad state? Well, here I fly off into rampant speculation and gobblydegook *hic*.

Okay - however long ago, the Time Lords started on their own Manhattan project for time travel. Of course such potentially dangerous machines and technologies in their own back yard was begging for trouble to they looked around for their own Trinity site. After poking around they found an uninhabited rock circling a unimpressive yellow star out in the boondocks of the galaxy.

All those experiments were done pretty much the same way as the real Manhattan project - varying from brute force solutions to elegant ones. From this they learnt enough to proceed to the next stage (Omega's black hole & singularity) but it also had the side effect of making an absolute mess of the local 'time levees'. Like the real Manhattan project things like this were speculated to happen (It may set the atmosphere on fire) but no one really expected it to - but in this case it did (Oops).

There was also one additional upshot. Some time lord DNA (from skin flakes or something) was left behind after the project was completed. Nothing worth noting on a barren rock until the Jagaroth blew up thier warp drive on the surface (the time cracks and fissures may be why they crashed in the first place). Some of the resulting simple replicating protiens had the genetics of the time lords fused into them - and they went on to form cells and then lifeforms and eventually evolved into us. So thats why time lords and humans look roughly the same (with differences due to X millions years of evolution divergance) - they are the same.

And for a last bit of babbling - the Shadow Proclamation never really got built upon, but so far we have only seen the muscle (Juddoon) and an obstructive pompous bureaucrat. It would not be beyond speculation for these low level plebs to know nothing about Earths nexus state. Maybe the higher up have a better idea and hide behind 'Yeah yeah, just a boring L5 planet, nothing to see here).

Hmm, thats is waaaay to much rambling. Me go sleepy now....

LC that is so deep and plausible, just a great way to look at it all (hell, after all these years I had forgoten the Jagaroth incident). How do you avoid the headaches that temporal theory gives everyone?

Hee, the key factor is in the first line - and with the half of a bottle of red. But since I'm on a rambling roll, I may as well run with it.

Why did the Daemons (3rd Doctor) bother setting up a science lab on Earth? Because they noticed some strange anomaly (Time Lord DNA) in the planets genetic forms. Curious they decided to encourage the 'mutation' to see what it was. Of course they had to get rid of those damn Silurian lizards first so they didn't contaminate the experiment...(Hey Azrael. Got any ideas on how to clean up the lab?)

The levees also explain why only super beings (like Seutek) can 'Destroy History'. While ordinary beings can break the levees at certain weak points, super-beings like Seutek are the equivalent of a bulldozer and can just smash right through them anywhere they like if they take a fancy.

The 'Alternate Timelines' aren't actually real. What they are is when the levee is leaking and a stream of time is squirting out of the 'Prime Time'. The reason the alternate timelines are suspiciously similar (Inferno, Fathers day, Rise of Cyber, etc) to the 'real time' is because up until the point they start squirting out they are 'real time'. Inertia means they also stay roughly the same for a while though the differences grow greater as they diverge and eventually it dissipates.

If the hole is plugged up the alternate line disappears and sloshes around in a puddle. The reapers are the 'repair crew' of the levee. They plug the hole and 'mop up' (erase) the time which has leaked through. The Time Lords themselves when they did their jobs also slapped duct tape on the leaks (rise of cyber). Esp around the Earth as they sort of caused it....(sorry guys). If the hole isn't patched you can also fall through them if you're not careful.

The Blinovich effect (short circuiting times) is bad because it is like dropping an explosive in the stream. The release of energy could do nothing at all but make a splash at a strong point, or could cause a hole at a weak spot. As you dont know which will happen you either dont do it as a matter of principle or expend a lot of power negating the explosion (The 3 Docs). If you do cause a hole then the repair crew turns up in a bad mood because they are flat out fixing all the holes and dont get overtime...

The Doc recharges the Tardis at Cardiff because of the rift. The rift is actually a leaky point in the time stream and the time leaking out through holes allows him to do the equivalent of sticking a hydro-generator in it and charging it up. Of course since this is a leaky point doing things (like say setting off a nuke reactor) is a bad thing(tm). And you can't charge up the Tardis when there is no leak because there is no flow to pop your generator in - like if you slipped out through the hole into an AU for example.

Of course it is complete babble, rule bending, Timey Wimey ball juggling and WAGing, but I think I am expected to do that after the "Sphynx incident".

Should I even ask about the Sphynx incident?

Actually with my theory I was equating shallow with easily changeable and deep as undivertable, but I guess it's matter of semantics as both ways of looking at things work on the same principle.

In the audio series there's rather a long combination of stories that reveal Rasillion(sp) was a genocidal maniac in his day, and went around secretly stopping the evolution of most species that didn't look like how he thought intelligent life should look like - explaining why most species are vaguely bipedal and somewhat resemble Time Lords. I don't think the TV show intends to make that their canon, but it was a tweak at having human actors play most of the aliens on the show (aside from the occasional tinfoil and puppets, and nowadays, CGI).

If we throw in the fixed points of time at the radio show, it does explain all those species he couldn't get rid of that weren't humanoid -some moments those species had to be there for. Well, as well as those that he couldn't get to - it's a big universe after all, even for a genocidal leader of the time lords.

While I'm not going to subscribe to your idea that alternate time lines are leaky plugs that eventually dissipate... I do like the theory! Time as a really bad plumbing job .. soon to replace string theory

In the sphynx arc in YAFGC I was using a lot of rules interpretation, fuzzy logic, bullsh*t arguments, and long winded quasi-plausible ways around the sphynx's "Answer or die" question. I think it annoyed some people.


But back to timelines...

I have always hated AU scenarios - they usually stank of author lazieness and copping out, and usually were the pure definition of "lame filler" episode (Usually where the authors fantasies of shipping couples, doing stupid things, and mary-suism could run rampant without messing with the 'real show'). I didn't like them in Dr Who, hated them in Trek, absolutely despised them in Stargate an so on. So any way to make them go away forever as 'it was just a bad dream' is a must for me.

The main problem with any idea is that because it's a TV show, and even more so that we really dont know what time actually is means we can come up with any gobblydegook which fits what the shows 'canon' is. In the real world current thinking is that 'causailty protection' will pop into effect, with quantum interference causing the time machine to cease to exist before it can go back in time.

So unfortunatly the only 'true' answer I could give is that the timeline has 'Author Causality Protection', where as the author says what is fixed and what is not. Add to this that Dr Who cannon (with the combination of audio plays, books, TV, fan fic, etc) is about as straight and coherent as a bowl of spaghetti put through a blender. Trying to untangle the whole mess is an exercise in futility (even for the die hards), but ocassionally speculation is fun.

Time travel, just like FTL drives, are the dirty secret at the heart of any sci-fi. It's the coat of paint hiding them that counts - ignore it totally, introduce technobabble, magic, whatever. In the mean time just enjoy the ride.


Side question though - M'Reens 7? Currently residing in Deep Space Vessel 1, or a clapped out planet hopper?

lol - actually there are video fics out there, a show on "imagination channel" that someone based on my handle, named M'reen's 7 <g> I laughed so hard that I stole the show's icon for my own. Turn about being fair play and all.

It was a collage nickname - my roommate was Elisabeth and when pming/emailing her boyfriend I got tired of typing it out over and over and started typing E-beth, and he loved it and promptly named me M-reen, and it stuck.

But I'd take Zen/Liberator over a lot of ships - for one, it had a treasure room! But the M'reen 7 ship in the fic wasn't bad either <g>

I can see a certain amount of Mary-Sue ism in some of the alternate timelines, but not all, and never minded them. I think they often show the writers, tired of TV executives limiting the drama and never letting anything different happen, find a way to step out and let things actually happen and deal with the results, if only in short term - the result is there are usually more drama in an alternate universe than the main one.
In fact some of my very favorite eps contain them - in SG-1, But For the Grace of God, (that's the title I think) is one of my favorites. Having Sam and Jack ship wasn't the main reason, it was dealing with an invasion, failing, and then having to deal with it all over again at home. DK, one of my favorite writers and executive for Farscape, wrote that one, refusing to do just the formula, they go thru the gate, they fight, they come back, and instead veering the story down another path with the magic (dimensional travel) mirror.

Farscape -notice the nice segue that you'll see me bring things back full circle here - had a fantastic idea that you'd love about alternate time lines tho.They held there was one time line, but as you traveled down wormholes(made using black holes) it was possible to bring an Unrealized Reality into play. If you knew what you were doing, you could take a side step into an alternate reality, something that is created by changes in the time line and could become the new reality - but if you stepped out quick enough, it would snap back to the old path. If you didn't know what you were doing, or were plain insane, you could end up making the alternate reality the new reality, and the one you came from would be unrealized.

This also mean if you accidentally time traveled instead of just falling into an unrealized realty, you could make sure you didnt change history if you focused on fixing the first things you set wrong.

This was a fascinating idea, that every glimpse into an alternate reality was not so much alternate, but actually making duck soup out of everything you knew, and you had to fix it fast or it would stay that way - but eventually (rather quickly in fact) they lost sight of that concept and made these unrealized realities into plain old alternate realities, something you could visit and come back from by choice, only affecting events in the other reality. All about taking a trip, being gone and then back home for dinner to a reality that you left for a bit, rather than a deadly lesson in physics. I was terribly disappointed in them for that, as it was the coolest new twist I'd seen a show take with the concept.

In reality, I don't think we are actually protected by causality, and that a time machine could wipe out things - but we'd never know.

Of course, there can't be ANY fixed points in time (in the sense of being truly unalterable) in Earth's history after 1911, since we saw a time track where Sutekh rose and annihilated all life on the planet that year. Better to dump the notion of unalterable events and go with the FASA "some events can only be changed with great difficulty" approach.

Well, we saw a dusty planet without much life, but who's to say that a certain family line wasn't still hiding underground - that Sutek himself might have found and sent a certain woman and some crew to Mars to make a suitable colony to do something with his prison - and then something happened and her heroic death inspired what was left of humanity, and her granddaughter in particular, to take to the stars on their own?

Dedicated fans can usually find their way out of canon messes like that.