In the Grand Tradition of end-of-the-year entries, I'm wrapping up 2018 with a BOOK OF LISTS countdown. You guys always seem to like these.
The very first end-of-year countdown that I put together involved my top ten favorite stories. Lots of people enjoyed the choices I made and loved telling me which stories they most adore. So I've decided to do something similar this year. But I'm going to go even more specific. I'm looking at single episodes that I feel stand out above all other episodes. Basically, what I feel are the best six episodes in the history of the entire series.
Why Six? Why not something more accessible like Top 5 or Top 10? Well, I just kinda felt like six was a nice number. Who says everything has to fit into tidy little boxes?!
NUMBER SIX:
Coming in at the bottom of this countdown is an episode that has received a fair amount praise but I feel deserves far more than it gets. It's also admired in a way that seems almost ironic. It's the first part of a story and it's loved so much because the three episodes that come after it are considered pretty sub-par. It's frequently given a, sort of, backhanded compliment. Fans say things like: "You really notice that first episode because the other three suck so badly!" A sentiment that, to me, takes away a lot of its lustre.
Let's get the one big problem with this episode out of the way immediately: you have to view Part One of The Space Museum contextually. It was made over fifty years ago with visual effects that can be easily debunked nowadays (but still look quite fun and surreal when you watch it now). And the pace can feel ever-so-slightly slow compared to the way storylines move in modern television. But part of what makes the episode so impressive is that, overall, it still stands up quite well and does a great job of engaging you for its entire 23 minutes.
What gets me to love this episode so much is how much it resembles another show I have great fondness for. Part One of The Space Museum plays out like a classic episode of The Twilight Zone. It has the same sense of "off-kilter creepiness"that happened every week on the Rod Serling Masterpiece. The actors seem to alter their performances slightly so that they better resemble characters in a Twilight Zone story. There's great use of the same sort of discordant incidental music that Zone employs. The central premise of characters discovering their ultimate fate and then trying to avoid it sounds just like something you'd see on Twilight Zone. Even the fact that it's 60s Who so it was still being shot in black-and-white helped to create a resemblance. There's a definite sense of homage going on here. And it's quite beautiful.
I have a definite nostalgic "soft spot" for The Twilight Zone. It's the source of many happy memories from my youth. I remember how much I loved being scared out of my wits by some of its episodes (the one about the talking doll that starts threatening the abusive father still terrifies me every time I watch it). But I was also impressed by how it could be equally moving (the door-to-door salesman who discovers Death is an actual person and tricks him out of taking the life of a young boy by sacrificing himself in his place gets me in the feels every time). My brother and I were very close in age - which caused us to be competitive to the point of combativeness. But our mutual love of the show meant we would call a truce between us any time an episode came on. As we both made it into our teens, we discovered that two very pretty girls that lived nearby also loved the show. They would come over in the evenings to watch it with us and then we would break away to different rooms in the house to indulge in various forms of amorous activities whilst trying not to get caught by our parents! But those acts of passion didn't start until after Twilight Zone was over. Which says a lot about the quality of the program. It was capable of stifling the fierce libidos of teenage boys!
To see something in Doctor Who that really seems to be imitating my beloved Twilight Zone causes it to resonate deeply with me. And, yes, it would have been nice if the other three episodes were better (although, they're not terrible, either) - that still doesn't mar the brilliance of that first part. It really is a great example of how good 60s TV could be. Particularly when it tries to be surreal.
Like many of the great single episodes that I shall go on to discuss, The Space Museum keeps things very simple. In fact, Part One resembles the first episode of any number of Hartnell stories. The main characters have landed in a new place and are just exploring around a bit. They find a few things that "tease out" important plot elements that will arise later in the story. Basically, they get a general sense of where they are and who they're dealing with. But not a whole lot happens beyond that.
But here's what makes Part One of Museum that much more special: something really weird happens every couple of minutes. The TARDIS crew change clothes without knowing how. A broken glass flies back into Vicki's hands. They're not leaving footprints. Supporting characters don't see or hear them. They can't hear supporting characters. A Dalek appears - but it's only an exhibit! They're intangible. And so on...
And then, finally, the coup-de-grace: they discover they are exhibits in the museum, itself. All that other weird crap is great fun to watch (okay, admittedly, the intangible TARDIS is thoroughly unconvincing!) but this final revelation is a masterstroke. Things now become totally bizarre and it's truly delightful. There's a great little conversation between the Doctor and Vicki that gives us a bit of an explanation about what's going on but it's actually quite awesome that we don't fully get an answer, here. In fact, a better explanation would've hindered the creepiness of the moment. It was so much better that the whole thing is just a little bit mysterious.
And then, with a flourish of mood music, time finally starts lining up. The visuals during the next few sequences are great. The glass of water properly shatters. The footprints appear in the dust. The museum exhibits fade out of existence. The TARDIS crew freezes and then unfreezes. It's truly beautiful.
Although we will get bogged down with a stereotypical "rebels against their oppressors" plotline in later episodes, Part One of The Space Museum sets up an extra layer to this adventure. While they free the Xerons from the tyranny of the Moroks, the Doctor and his friends must also try to change the course of their own destiny. It makes all the problems of the rest of the story so much more bearable.
Part One of The Space Museum is a real visual tour-de-force that, in many cases, overcomes the limitations of its time. It's also a gorgeous tribute to another very remarkable television program that existed around that same time. Which makes it near-impossible for me to not be completely in love with it every time I watch it. Even if that intangible TARDIS looks really awful!
The latest end-of-year countdown has begun! I'll be back in a few days to reveal my fifth ranking.
Just in case you're wondering: Yes, I do still love Doctor Who better than Twilight Zone. Even if the latter helped me to get laid during my adolescence!
Friday 30 November 2018
Friday 23 November 2018
ANALYTICAL: CROSSING TIME STREAMS - PART 2
In my ongoing effort to resurrect the ANALYTICAL essay, I continue my investigations into time stream crossings.
Having looked at some basic rules and recurring patterns in the first part (http://robtymec.blogspot.com/2018/11/analytical-crossing-time-streams-part-1.html), I decided it might be nice to do a bit of a case-by-case study throughout the tenure of the Classic and New Series. Will I look at every time someone has crossed into their own past and/or future? That would prove a bit too lengthy. We'll just do some "edited highlights" (as the Doctor once requested during one of his many trials). Some key moments where such things occurred that re-enforce some of the patterns I pointed out in the first part.
FIRST CROSSING
For a season-and-a-half, the TARDIS is used strictly as a means of conveying the characters from one story to the next. And then, finally, we get to Episode One of The Space Museum. At last, the idea of travelling in time gets legitimately explored for a bit.
If you've bothered to read the first part of this essay (if not, refer to link in italic intro), you know that I've created a very specific definition for what constitutes a crossing of your own timeline. The Space Museum might not totally meet the stipulations of that definition. The big point being that crossing your own time stream enables you to meet yourself. Which, technically, the TARDIS crew does do. They see themselves as exhibits in a museum. But they are, obviously, dead by this point in their timeline. Meeting yourself implies being able to interact with yourself. Which is not quite possible in this context. It's for this reason that I can't positively say that Name of the Doctor constitutes a crossing of a timeline either. The "scar" of the Doctor's death still remains but it isn't really him meeting himself, is it? Technically, your timeline is over once you are dead. So to visit a time after your death means you're not really crossing your own timeline anymore.
Part 1 of The Space Museum also has the biggest abundance of side effects that we've ever seen (again, side effects get discussed in the link I provided in the italic intro). These side effects might exist in such great abundance because this is the first time the TARDIS has jumped a time track in such a way. She gets more accustomed to doing this in other adventures and can provide a smoother ride during such an experience. But, because she's never done this before, her occupants must deal with such things as intangibility and not registering on the senses of the people around them. Or even not being able to leave footprints. Only as the TARDIS manages to correct some of these faults and get the two timelines to merge are these problems eliminated. But that's a whole other phenomenon that gets me to wonder if this truly was a proper crossing. At no other time does such a process work this way. Normally, when someone crosses their time stream, they have to be properly displaced by temporal apparatus to the different points in their timeline to accomplish the feat. This doesn't really happen in Space Museum. The two time zones just sort of seem to blend together after a while. We're not even entirely sure how this works (the Doctor, sort of, offers an explanation at the end of the story that, kind of, only makes so much sense). It almost causes one to wonder if this isn't so much a crossing of time streams as a sort of overlapping of time zones. It's truly difficult to tell. And, again, this might have something to do with it being the first time that the TARDIS is used in such a manner so she doesn't quite follow the established patterns.
Having said all this, however, I still prefer to see this as the first time we see the Doctor crossing his own timeline. If for no other reason than the fact that such a feat occurs so rarely in the Classic Series that I'd rather it fall under the definition just so I can have a bit more to talk about!
JUST A BIT OF MULTI-INCARNATION STUFF
We don't really see the First Doctor crossing his own timeline much during his actual era. But, from a retrospective sense, he makes at least four more crossings. Like The Space Museum, he visits his future each time. Those crossings take place, of course, during The Three and Five Doctors, Day of the Doctor and Twice Upon A Time.
Twice Upon A Time makes his entry and departure point very clear (entry and departure points is another important thing to read about in the italic intro link. If you haven't read it, yet, you really should!). He meets his Twelfth Self as he is walking to his TARDIS at the end of The Tenth Planet. We see him in a garden during both The Three and Five Doctors. It could be that he is timescooped from, more or less, the same time period during both of these incursions. That he, basically, had one hell of a garden stroll that day! When this actual garden stroll took place during his timeline is difficult to determine. It could be at anytime during his era. We've never actually seen the First Doctor alone so we must assume that whatever companions were with him at the time must be in another part of the garden. But, if we go with the whole hell of a garden stroll concept then that may account for his slight change of appearance in The Five Doctors. Perhaps such a high level of time distortion briefly affected how he looks.
Of course, where he was drawn from during Day of the Doctor is anyone's guess. The sequence where all the Doctors come forward to help save Gallifrey uses actual footage from previous stories rather than getting all the living actors to re-adopt their roles (and get impersonators in for the first three - which they still, sort of, do for the First Doctor's appearance). I recognize, for instance, that we're seeing a scene from Attack of the Cybermen during a glimpse of the Sixth Doctor. Could it be that each Doctor managed to somehow "splinter off" briefly during the stories they are drawn from to save Gallifrey and then return immediately and pick up where they left off? That's my best guess....
The Second Doctor also crosses his own timeline several times for multi-incarnation encounters. During The Three Doctors, it looks like he is timescooped from an unseen moment during The War Games (although, really, it could be from anywhere - original footage was shot for the moment where the Time Lords view the Doctor on a screen before they snatch him up - but it does look like something from The War Games). Five and Two Doctors feature a Second Doctor from Season 6b. And, we've already come up with a concept for Day of the Doctor.
In The Five Doctors, the Third Doctor seems to be drawn from a time after he's met Sarah Jane Smith. It's also a period where he's on Earth driving around in Bessie. He was probably snatched up by Borusa shortly before Planet of Spiders. He does seem to be hanging around Earth for a bit between Monster of Peladon and Spiders. So that seems the most likely time and place.
Other multi-incarnation encounters seem to make things pretty clear as to where the earlier incarnation was drawn from. In Time Crash, the Fifth Doctor seems to come from the early part of Season 20. Probably just before Mawdryn Undead. The Tenth Doctor in Day of the Doctor seems to come from that period where he went on some wild excursions rather than respond to the Ood that summoned him at the end of Waters of Mars.
One more interesting thing to note before we close the door on multi-incarnation stuff: the timelines do become too tangled when more than two incarnations meet and the crossing is forgotten until the most recent incarnation experiences it. That seems to be a basic rule for this sort of experience. However, dialogue in The Five Doctors seems to insinuate that if past incarnations get caught in a second multi-incarnation encounter, their memories of the first crossing are temporarily restored. The first three Doctors all seem to recall meeting each other previously in Three Doctors and go back to poking fun at each other the way they did in that story. My guess is, however, that as Rassilon returns them to their proper time and space - both experiences are forgotten, again.
Okay, that's all the multi-incarnation stuff that needs to be handled. Let's go back to crossings that we see that don't involve multiple incarnations.
THE NEXT CROSSING
The next time the Doctor crosses his own time stream and doesn't meet another incarnation takes place very briefly. It is also one of the rare occasions where we don't see a proper entry and departure point.
Day of the Daleks contains a short scene where the Doctor and Jo meet themselves. A circuit in the TARDIS console blows which seems to cause this little crossing. The Doctors from two different time zones interact briefly and then the Future Doctor and Jo are returned to their proper place in time and space. The story moves on...
But we never see where the future version of the Doctor and Jo come from. The encounter, from their perspective, is never displayed onscreen. They are wearing the exact same outfits that their past selves are wearing so we can assume it happened quite quickly after the story ends. My guess is: that they return to the Doctor's lab after Sir Reginald's manor blows up. They enter through the lab doors and are transported back to the past for a moment and have the encounter. The TARDIS console blows its fuse and sends them back to when they belong.
MULTIPLE BRIGADIERS
Amazingly enough, we don't see any other instances of the Doctor crossing his own timestream during the Classic Series (aside from multi-incarnation stuff). But we can't actually dive into the New Series until we talk about the Brigadier, first.
Mawdryn Undead is the first real story to dwell heavily on the idea of crossing your own time stream. Space Museum does discuss it a bit, but it's more concerned with the TARDIS crew trying to avoid the future they've been shown than laying out some basic rules about such a feat. But most of the patterns I discussed in Part 1 of this essay are displayed at some point throughout the various temporal paradoxes that the Brigadier must suffer through. Including the ominous: "Don't come into physical contact with yourself" rule. Which is very cleverly used to resolve the main conflict of the plot. It is also subverted a few times during a crucial point of the New Series (as usual, go to the link in the italic intro if you want see how I explain away the breaking of this rule)
In much the same way as Deadly Assassin is the definitive Gallifrey Story that all other Gallifrey Stories must base themselves off of, Mawdryn Undead sets the template for any adventure that explores the concept of crossing your timeline. Sadly, however, we must wait until the New Series to see any of these rules employed. The only other example of a time line crossing that we see in the Classic Series is a burnt out android in Timelash. And, even then, it doesn't truly fit my definition. The android is, technically, "dead" once it's projected into the past. Once you're dead, your timeline is over - so you can't really cross it, anymore. Once more, because of the total lack of time stream crossings in the Classic Series, I'm willing to fudge the rules a bit!
INTO THE NEW SERIES....
The New Series doesn't waste its time exploring crossed timelines. While Classic Who waited nearly two seasons to feature a story about it, we get a pretty massive timeline crossing only a few episodes into Series One.
We tend to only think of that very brief moment in Father's Day where Rose and the Doctor are observing the past version of themselves from around a corner as the only instance of crossing a time stream in that particular story. We forget that Rose crosses her time stream twice over in this tale. While Adult Rose is getting to know what her father is really like, she is also in that timeline as an infant. The all-important "don't come in physical contact with your past self" rule does seem to kick in when Rose is accidentally handed the baby version of herself. But the explosion that is meant to happen is absorbed by the strange creatures that have materialized to fix the damage Rose has done to Time. So the rule does still seem to work, here. Father's Day, however, is the first time we see the Going Around Once principle being employed (yadda yadda yadda link in italic intro yadda yadda....).
Doctor Ten seems to stay away from this act throughout most of his tenure. We do see a bit of him crossing his own timeline in Smith and Jones when he appears to Martha on her way to the hospital. This does fit the definition I provide. He could've taken just a bit more of a stroll down the street and met himself if he'd really wanted to.
The only other example of a crossed timeline that we see during Ten's era (aside from multi-incarnation stuff in Time Crash and Day of the Doctor) would be Billy Shipton in Blink. Old Billy probably spent many years avoiding the younger version of himself that became a detective and hit on Sally Sparrow. Even though he hid from himself for ages, he barely lives another day once his younger version is zapped back in time by a Weeping Angel. One has to wonder if the Billy that gets sent back in time observed himself from a distance once he arrived at the point in time where he was actually born. It would probably be too great of a temptation to resist. More than likely, he secretly stalked himself just a little bit, here and there!
Just for the record: Billy Shipton's experience has to be the longest duration of a timeline crossing in the whole history of the show.
"But wait, Rob!" some of you may be crying out, "What about Donna in Turn Left?! She crosses her own time stream to attempt to get her to ... well ... turn left!"
Technically, yes, she does cross her own timeline. But my definition says that you're able to meet yourself and that's exactly what she fails to do. And, since New Who is chocked full of timeline crossings, I'm gonna disqualify this one. Yes, that's not the best logic. But, really, I'm the most illogical person I know!
THE CROSSINGS OF THE ELEVENTH
And then, at last, we reach the Eleventh Doctor era. A period where time streams get crossed as often as the Doctor flaps his arms while he talks!
The Doctor, himself, makes multiple crossings. Flesh and Stone, The Big Bang, Journey to the Center of the TARDIS. Name of the Doctor (sort of - it's a grey area) and Day of the Doctor (not for the phone call that Eleven makes to have Gallifrey Falls moved - but the fact that it's multi-incarnational) are just a few stories that immediately spring to mind. Right in his very first story, Moffat had written in a timeline crossing in an early draft that ended up getting changed later. Originally, it was meant to be the Doctor from the future watching from the kitchen as the currently-regenerated Doctor takes off in the TARDIS and leaves Young Amy behind. It's implied in the actual transmitted episode that it's actually Prisoner Zero in the kitchen, instead.
In many ways, the entire Eleventh Doctor era is one huge timeline crossing. The ongoing arch of his entire three seasons is the fact that his final story on Trenzalore is influencing events in his life. It's not a true crossing of time streams, of course. But it comes perilously close.
OTHER CROSSINGS OF THE ELEVENTH
The Eleventh Doctor wasn't the only one crossing his own time stream during his era. Many of the people around him would also get caught up in these paradoxes.
During Journey to the Center of the TARDIS, the van Baalen brothers end up fighting future versions of themselves that have been scorched by the power source of the TARDIS. The Doctor and Clara encounter ossified versions of themselves from the future, too. They also experience "echoes" from their past. The Doctor, of course, also does a one time around in order to contact himself in the console room and tell him to push the big red button. Clara will go on to cross her own time stream one more time for a brief moment in Listen (she sees herself from behind) - but we're not there, yet.
River Song crosses her timeline on a few occasions. Mainly during Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon where she watches herself kill the Doctor in her astronaut suit and then chases around the child version of herself for a bit. She intentionally pretends not to know who the past versions of herself are so as not to create spoilers for the rest of the TARDIS crew.
And then there's Amy and Rory. Rory sees himself at least twice. Once in Hungry Earth when he and Amy from the future wave to themselves from a distance. And then again in Angels Take Manhattan when he watches himself die as an old man.
Amy crosses her own timeline even more. She sees the future version of herself twice during the Silurian adventure with Rory. Spends quite a bit of time with herself as a child during Big Bang. And has quite the argument with an older version of herself during The Girl Who Waited.
For the record: Amy is the companion who has crossed her own time stream more times than any other companion.
FINALLY, THERE'S TWELVE
And then we get to "Ole Twelvie. He seems to cross his own time stream about once a season. He accidentally breaks the laws of Gallifreyan Mean Time during Listen and goes back into his own childhood.
During Series Nine he crosses his own timeline twice over during Under The Lake/Before the Flood. The TARDIS traps him for a bit during Before the Flood in events from his own past because she is concerned about the interference he is trying to cause with Time. The Doctor from the future has also been lying in hibernation throughout the entire two episodes and only emerges from cryo-sleep near the end of the story.
The Christmas Special in Series Ten is one big time stream crossing as his first incarnation accidentally meets him in Antarctica. The two go off on an adventure together and then both choose to regenerate at the end.
For the record: Twice Upon A Time is the greatest gap of time between entry and departure points. A good 1500 years exists between these two incarnations.
UP TO DATE
At the time of writing this, we are enjoying the first season of the Thirteenth Doctor with Graham, Yaz and Ryan (well, some of us are - others do seem to be complaining a lot!). Kerblam! just went out a few days ago. So far, Thirteen has done nothing to cross her own time stream. Nor has anyone else in her company. Whether that stays consistent for the rest of the season - we'll have to wait and see...
And that's it for time stream crossings. I felt the topic merited a second part to track all the different convergence points during the history of the show. The whole exercise also helps to re-enforce the various patterns and rules I discussed in Part One. Hope you also felt it was worth a second installment too!
I've purposely waited til today to publish this so that I can wish you all happy Fifty-Fifth Anniversary. Celebrate by putting on your favorite episode. Or you could even re-read a few of your favorite entries from here. I certainly won't stop you!
Having looked at some basic rules and recurring patterns in the first part (http://robtymec.blogspot.com/2018/11/analytical-crossing-time-streams-part-1.html), I decided it might be nice to do a bit of a case-by-case study throughout the tenure of the Classic and New Series. Will I look at every time someone has crossed into their own past and/or future? That would prove a bit too lengthy. We'll just do some "edited highlights" (as the Doctor once requested during one of his many trials). Some key moments where such things occurred that re-enforce some of the patterns I pointed out in the first part.
FIRST CROSSING
For a season-and-a-half, the TARDIS is used strictly as a means of conveying the characters from one story to the next. And then, finally, we get to Episode One of The Space Museum. At last, the idea of travelling in time gets legitimately explored for a bit.
If you've bothered to read the first part of this essay (if not, refer to link in italic intro), you know that I've created a very specific definition for what constitutes a crossing of your own timeline. The Space Museum might not totally meet the stipulations of that definition. The big point being that crossing your own time stream enables you to meet yourself. Which, technically, the TARDIS crew does do. They see themselves as exhibits in a museum. But they are, obviously, dead by this point in their timeline. Meeting yourself implies being able to interact with yourself. Which is not quite possible in this context. It's for this reason that I can't positively say that Name of the Doctor constitutes a crossing of a timeline either. The "scar" of the Doctor's death still remains but it isn't really him meeting himself, is it? Technically, your timeline is over once you are dead. So to visit a time after your death means you're not really crossing your own timeline anymore.
Part 1 of The Space Museum also has the biggest abundance of side effects that we've ever seen (again, side effects get discussed in the link I provided in the italic intro). These side effects might exist in such great abundance because this is the first time the TARDIS has jumped a time track in such a way. She gets more accustomed to doing this in other adventures and can provide a smoother ride during such an experience. But, because she's never done this before, her occupants must deal with such things as intangibility and not registering on the senses of the people around them. Or even not being able to leave footprints. Only as the TARDIS manages to correct some of these faults and get the two timelines to merge are these problems eliminated. But that's a whole other phenomenon that gets me to wonder if this truly was a proper crossing. At no other time does such a process work this way. Normally, when someone crosses their time stream, they have to be properly displaced by temporal apparatus to the different points in their timeline to accomplish the feat. This doesn't really happen in Space Museum. The two time zones just sort of seem to blend together after a while. We're not even entirely sure how this works (the Doctor, sort of, offers an explanation at the end of the story that, kind of, only makes so much sense). It almost causes one to wonder if this isn't so much a crossing of time streams as a sort of overlapping of time zones. It's truly difficult to tell. And, again, this might have something to do with it being the first time that the TARDIS is used in such a manner so she doesn't quite follow the established patterns.
Having said all this, however, I still prefer to see this as the first time we see the Doctor crossing his own timeline. If for no other reason than the fact that such a feat occurs so rarely in the Classic Series that I'd rather it fall under the definition just so I can have a bit more to talk about!
JUST A BIT OF MULTI-INCARNATION STUFF
We don't really see the First Doctor crossing his own timeline much during his actual era. But, from a retrospective sense, he makes at least four more crossings. Like The Space Museum, he visits his future each time. Those crossings take place, of course, during The Three and Five Doctors, Day of the Doctor and Twice Upon A Time.
Twice Upon A Time makes his entry and departure point very clear (entry and departure points is another important thing to read about in the italic intro link. If you haven't read it, yet, you really should!). He meets his Twelfth Self as he is walking to his TARDIS at the end of The Tenth Planet. We see him in a garden during both The Three and Five Doctors. It could be that he is timescooped from, more or less, the same time period during both of these incursions. That he, basically, had one hell of a garden stroll that day! When this actual garden stroll took place during his timeline is difficult to determine. It could be at anytime during his era. We've never actually seen the First Doctor alone so we must assume that whatever companions were with him at the time must be in another part of the garden. But, if we go with the whole hell of a garden stroll concept then that may account for his slight change of appearance in The Five Doctors. Perhaps such a high level of time distortion briefly affected how he looks.
Of course, where he was drawn from during Day of the Doctor is anyone's guess. The sequence where all the Doctors come forward to help save Gallifrey uses actual footage from previous stories rather than getting all the living actors to re-adopt their roles (and get impersonators in for the first three - which they still, sort of, do for the First Doctor's appearance). I recognize, for instance, that we're seeing a scene from Attack of the Cybermen during a glimpse of the Sixth Doctor. Could it be that each Doctor managed to somehow "splinter off" briefly during the stories they are drawn from to save Gallifrey and then return immediately and pick up where they left off? That's my best guess....
The Second Doctor also crosses his own timeline several times for multi-incarnation encounters. During The Three Doctors, it looks like he is timescooped from an unseen moment during The War Games (although, really, it could be from anywhere - original footage was shot for the moment where the Time Lords view the Doctor on a screen before they snatch him up - but it does look like something from The War Games). Five and Two Doctors feature a Second Doctor from Season 6b. And, we've already come up with a concept for Day of the Doctor.
In The Five Doctors, the Third Doctor seems to be drawn from a time after he's met Sarah Jane Smith. It's also a period where he's on Earth driving around in Bessie. He was probably snatched up by Borusa shortly before Planet of Spiders. He does seem to be hanging around Earth for a bit between Monster of Peladon and Spiders. So that seems the most likely time and place.
Other multi-incarnation encounters seem to make things pretty clear as to where the earlier incarnation was drawn from. In Time Crash, the Fifth Doctor seems to come from the early part of Season 20. Probably just before Mawdryn Undead. The Tenth Doctor in Day of the Doctor seems to come from that period where he went on some wild excursions rather than respond to the Ood that summoned him at the end of Waters of Mars.
One more interesting thing to note before we close the door on multi-incarnation stuff: the timelines do become too tangled when more than two incarnations meet and the crossing is forgotten until the most recent incarnation experiences it. That seems to be a basic rule for this sort of experience. However, dialogue in The Five Doctors seems to insinuate that if past incarnations get caught in a second multi-incarnation encounter, their memories of the first crossing are temporarily restored. The first three Doctors all seem to recall meeting each other previously in Three Doctors and go back to poking fun at each other the way they did in that story. My guess is, however, that as Rassilon returns them to their proper time and space - both experiences are forgotten, again.
Okay, that's all the multi-incarnation stuff that needs to be handled. Let's go back to crossings that we see that don't involve multiple incarnations.
THE NEXT CROSSING
The next time the Doctor crosses his own time stream and doesn't meet another incarnation takes place very briefly. It is also one of the rare occasions where we don't see a proper entry and departure point.
Day of the Daleks contains a short scene where the Doctor and Jo meet themselves. A circuit in the TARDIS console blows which seems to cause this little crossing. The Doctors from two different time zones interact briefly and then the Future Doctor and Jo are returned to their proper place in time and space. The story moves on...
But we never see where the future version of the Doctor and Jo come from. The encounter, from their perspective, is never displayed onscreen. They are wearing the exact same outfits that their past selves are wearing so we can assume it happened quite quickly after the story ends. My guess is: that they return to the Doctor's lab after Sir Reginald's manor blows up. They enter through the lab doors and are transported back to the past for a moment and have the encounter. The TARDIS console blows its fuse and sends them back to when they belong.
MULTIPLE BRIGADIERS
Amazingly enough, we don't see any other instances of the Doctor crossing his own timestream during the Classic Series (aside from multi-incarnation stuff). But we can't actually dive into the New Series until we talk about the Brigadier, first.
Mawdryn Undead is the first real story to dwell heavily on the idea of crossing your own time stream. Space Museum does discuss it a bit, but it's more concerned with the TARDIS crew trying to avoid the future they've been shown than laying out some basic rules about such a feat. But most of the patterns I discussed in Part 1 of this essay are displayed at some point throughout the various temporal paradoxes that the Brigadier must suffer through. Including the ominous: "Don't come into physical contact with yourself" rule. Which is very cleverly used to resolve the main conflict of the plot. It is also subverted a few times during a crucial point of the New Series (as usual, go to the link in the italic intro if you want see how I explain away the breaking of this rule)
In much the same way as Deadly Assassin is the definitive Gallifrey Story that all other Gallifrey Stories must base themselves off of, Mawdryn Undead sets the template for any adventure that explores the concept of crossing your timeline. Sadly, however, we must wait until the New Series to see any of these rules employed. The only other example of a time line crossing that we see in the Classic Series is a burnt out android in Timelash. And, even then, it doesn't truly fit my definition. The android is, technically, "dead" once it's projected into the past. Once you're dead, your timeline is over - so you can't really cross it, anymore. Once more, because of the total lack of time stream crossings in the Classic Series, I'm willing to fudge the rules a bit!
INTO THE NEW SERIES....
The New Series doesn't waste its time exploring crossed timelines. While Classic Who waited nearly two seasons to feature a story about it, we get a pretty massive timeline crossing only a few episodes into Series One.
We tend to only think of that very brief moment in Father's Day where Rose and the Doctor are observing the past version of themselves from around a corner as the only instance of crossing a time stream in that particular story. We forget that Rose crosses her time stream twice over in this tale. While Adult Rose is getting to know what her father is really like, she is also in that timeline as an infant. The all-important "don't come in physical contact with your past self" rule does seem to kick in when Rose is accidentally handed the baby version of herself. But the explosion that is meant to happen is absorbed by the strange creatures that have materialized to fix the damage Rose has done to Time. So the rule does still seem to work, here. Father's Day, however, is the first time we see the Going Around Once principle being employed (yadda yadda yadda link in italic intro yadda yadda....).
Doctor Ten seems to stay away from this act throughout most of his tenure. We do see a bit of him crossing his own timeline in Smith and Jones when he appears to Martha on her way to the hospital. This does fit the definition I provide. He could've taken just a bit more of a stroll down the street and met himself if he'd really wanted to.
The only other example of a crossed timeline that we see during Ten's era (aside from multi-incarnation stuff in Time Crash and Day of the Doctor) would be Billy Shipton in Blink. Old Billy probably spent many years avoiding the younger version of himself that became a detective and hit on Sally Sparrow. Even though he hid from himself for ages, he barely lives another day once his younger version is zapped back in time by a Weeping Angel. One has to wonder if the Billy that gets sent back in time observed himself from a distance once he arrived at the point in time where he was actually born. It would probably be too great of a temptation to resist. More than likely, he secretly stalked himself just a little bit, here and there!
Just for the record: Billy Shipton's experience has to be the longest duration of a timeline crossing in the whole history of the show.
"But wait, Rob!" some of you may be crying out, "What about Donna in Turn Left?! She crosses her own time stream to attempt to get her to ... well ... turn left!"
Technically, yes, she does cross her own timeline. But my definition says that you're able to meet yourself and that's exactly what she fails to do. And, since New Who is chocked full of timeline crossings, I'm gonna disqualify this one. Yes, that's not the best logic. But, really, I'm the most illogical person I know!
THE CROSSINGS OF THE ELEVENTH
And then, at last, we reach the Eleventh Doctor era. A period where time streams get crossed as often as the Doctor flaps his arms while he talks!
The Doctor, himself, makes multiple crossings. Flesh and Stone, The Big Bang, Journey to the Center of the TARDIS. Name of the Doctor (sort of - it's a grey area) and Day of the Doctor (not for the phone call that Eleven makes to have Gallifrey Falls moved - but the fact that it's multi-incarnational) are just a few stories that immediately spring to mind. Right in his very first story, Moffat had written in a timeline crossing in an early draft that ended up getting changed later. Originally, it was meant to be the Doctor from the future watching from the kitchen as the currently-regenerated Doctor takes off in the TARDIS and leaves Young Amy behind. It's implied in the actual transmitted episode that it's actually Prisoner Zero in the kitchen, instead.
In many ways, the entire Eleventh Doctor era is one huge timeline crossing. The ongoing arch of his entire three seasons is the fact that his final story on Trenzalore is influencing events in his life. It's not a true crossing of time streams, of course. But it comes perilously close.
OTHER CROSSINGS OF THE ELEVENTH
The Eleventh Doctor wasn't the only one crossing his own time stream during his era. Many of the people around him would also get caught up in these paradoxes.
During Journey to the Center of the TARDIS, the van Baalen brothers end up fighting future versions of themselves that have been scorched by the power source of the TARDIS. The Doctor and Clara encounter ossified versions of themselves from the future, too. They also experience "echoes" from their past. The Doctor, of course, also does a one time around in order to contact himself in the console room and tell him to push the big red button. Clara will go on to cross her own time stream one more time for a brief moment in Listen (she sees herself from behind) - but we're not there, yet.
River Song crosses her timeline on a few occasions. Mainly during Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon where she watches herself kill the Doctor in her astronaut suit and then chases around the child version of herself for a bit. She intentionally pretends not to know who the past versions of herself are so as not to create spoilers for the rest of the TARDIS crew.
And then there's Amy and Rory. Rory sees himself at least twice. Once in Hungry Earth when he and Amy from the future wave to themselves from a distance. And then again in Angels Take Manhattan when he watches himself die as an old man.
Amy crosses her own timeline even more. She sees the future version of herself twice during the Silurian adventure with Rory. Spends quite a bit of time with herself as a child during Big Bang. And has quite the argument with an older version of herself during The Girl Who Waited.
For the record: Amy is the companion who has crossed her own time stream more times than any other companion.
FINALLY, THERE'S TWELVE
And then we get to "Ole Twelvie. He seems to cross his own time stream about once a season. He accidentally breaks the laws of Gallifreyan Mean Time during Listen and goes back into his own childhood.
During Series Nine he crosses his own timeline twice over during Under The Lake/Before the Flood. The TARDIS traps him for a bit during Before the Flood in events from his own past because she is concerned about the interference he is trying to cause with Time. The Doctor from the future has also been lying in hibernation throughout the entire two episodes and only emerges from cryo-sleep near the end of the story.
The Christmas Special in Series Ten is one big time stream crossing as his first incarnation accidentally meets him in Antarctica. The two go off on an adventure together and then both choose to regenerate at the end.
For the record: Twice Upon A Time is the greatest gap of time between entry and departure points. A good 1500 years exists between these two incarnations.
UP TO DATE
At the time of writing this, we are enjoying the first season of the Thirteenth Doctor with Graham, Yaz and Ryan (well, some of us are - others do seem to be complaining a lot!). Kerblam! just went out a few days ago. So far, Thirteen has done nothing to cross her own time stream. Nor has anyone else in her company. Whether that stays consistent for the rest of the season - we'll have to wait and see...
And that's it for time stream crossings. I felt the topic merited a second part to track all the different convergence points during the history of the show. The whole exercise also helps to re-enforce the various patterns and rules I discussed in Part One. Hope you also felt it was worth a second installment too!
I've purposely waited til today to publish this so that I can wish you all happy Fifty-Fifth Anniversary. Celebrate by putting on your favorite episode. Or you could even re-read a few of your favorite entries from here. I certainly won't stop you!
Wednesday 7 November 2018
ANALYTICAL: CROSSING TIME STREAMS - PART 1: SOME BASIC RULES
Looky here! An actual ANALYTICAL essay! Haven't written one of these in ages!
It's been a bit difficult for me to do an ANALYTICAL because I've been legitimately busy with this goofy career of mine. Nothing requires heavier research than this style of essay so it's been tough to find the time do all the work that's required of me. But I do find the results very rewarding so I have missed doing these. Hopefully, you enjoy reading my observations as much as I enjoy making them.
As many have said over the years, it's ironic that a show about time-travelling doesn't actually display much examples of it (well, truth be told, the Eleventh Doctor era changes that up a bit!). More times than others, time travel is only used to get the characters into their next story. After that, the narration tends to stay fairly linear.
As has been mentioned in parentheses in the previous paragraph, there is an era of the show where we do see the TARDIS and other modes of temporal transportation put to greater use. During such efforts, a number of things can be created. Aborted timelines would be one of the more frequent by-products of such gestures. In time, we'll probably delve into them quite heavily. But it won't be in this entry. For this post, we will merely look at the rules and patterns that seem to get established whenever a character crosses their own timeline. Before we can go much further, however, we should probably clearly establish what constitutes "crossing your own timeline"
DEFINITION:
As usual, the best way to define a trend in Doctor Who involves giving examples of what doesn't constitute a part of the pattern. Still, we'll try to start with a solid definition before getting into negative examples.
Crossing Your Own Timestream: (def) The conscious or unconscious act of temporally displacing yourself so that you are returning to a point in time and space that you had occupied previously. In essence, you have the opportunity to legitimately meet yourself (though, quite frequently, such an action is very specifically avoided).
WHAT IS NOT CROSSING YOUR TIMELINE:
Just so we're really clear, we'll look at a few examples where one might almost feel that there's been a proper crossing of timestreams. But, according to my definition, that's not what truly happened.
Communication Only:
We see numerous examples of this. The Doctor is, sort of, crossing his own timestream in order send a message to himself. A future version leaves an important note for his seventh incarnation to find that saves the day in Battlefield. Eleven calls Clara from the past just after he's regenerated in Deep Breath and Twelve is in the background, listening. The Doctor places all kinds of recorded messages for himself in Time Heist. Technically, the Doctor is crossing his timeline to do this. But I wouldn't say he's truly doing it. It's a pretty big grey area.
So Close:
Very near misses could almost constitute a crossing of timestreams. But, if you want to be a purist about it - it doesn't fit the definition. We get the impression Eleven arrives just after his assassination in The Impossible Astronaut. So, not a proper crossing. Or the Doctor and Jo go off on a huge adventure on the planet Uxarieus and then return to the UNIT lab only seconds after they've left in Colony In Space. Again, they're very close to crossing their own timestreams - but not quite.
Basic Geography:
"you have the opportunity to meet yourself" - is a key point in my definition. The Doctor has been in the same relative time period so often that it's quite likely that there's been a bit of an overlap from time to time (Twentieth or Twenty-First Century Earth would be the best case of this - although we've also seen him doing a lot in the Fifty First Century during New Who). But if he's not within distance of meeting himself, I don't qualify it as a "proper" crossing of his timestream. A good example of this would be the fact that The War Machines and The Faceless Ones do seem to take place on the same day. But the First Doctor, Ben and Polly are in one part of Britain while the Second Doctor, Ben and Polly are in another. There is probably some overlap, here. Where the trio are all in the same place at the same time. But they are a considerable distance from each other and have no chance of meeting. So we're not really going to dwell on this too hard. It's another instance where, technically, this is a crossing of the timestream - but it's not enough of one for me to give it much more attention than this particular paragraph.
Multi-incarnation encounters:
Two or more different incarnations coming together is, most definitely, a proper crossing of timelines. But I've already examined the whole process quite thoroughly in another essay (https://robtymec.blogspot.ca/2017/11/analytical-psychology-behind-multi.html) so I'm not going to do much of a re-tread, here. It will get mentioned from time-to-time, But if you really want to read the observations that I've made on such a process, go to the link I just provided.
BASIC STRUCTURE AND RECURRING PATTERNS (AND EVEN SOME BASIC RULES):
Okay, we've got some nice clear definitions in place. Let's actually look at some of the things that go on when such a process occurs. Even with all the different production teams that have worked on the show over the years, they do tend to adhere to certain guidelines when they use this particular device in a story. Here are a few of the major things I've noticed:
Entry and Departure Points:
Aside from a notable exception or two, the show always bothers to go to the trouble of showing the breach in the timeline and the moment where the decision is made to make the breach in the timeline. In The Big Bang, for instance, we see the Doctor appearing to Rory at Stonehenge and giving him instructions on how to release him from the Pandorica Vault. Later in the episode, we see the Doctor running around in the museum with Rory and both Amies (I'm guessing this is how you pluralize "Amy"). Suddenly Rory points out to the Doctor that he appears the way he did when he visited him at Stonehenge. The Doctor realizes this is the moment where he's meant to go back in time and release himself from the Pandorica Vault. So he uses the vortex manipulator to do that.
Both points in the crossing of the timeline are clearly illustrated in this instance. Where the breach occurs and where the decision is made to create the breach. There can be interesting variances on the formula - but the convention persists. For example: Again, in The Big Bang, we see an older version of Amy meeting her younger self in the pre-titles. After the title sequence - we go back and see how the encounter was arranged. It's a bit of a reversal of what we will see the Doctor do in the same episode (he encounters himself after he's been shot by a Dalek then goes and gets shot by a Dalek and jumps back in time to meet himself). If the narrative had been told in its proper linear fashion, we would have seen the Doctor and Rory placing Amy in the Pandorica Vault and then we would see Young and Old Amy running into each other at the museum. But it's still the same basic principle. Both points in the crossing are displayed.
This is an important aspect of illustrating a crossed timeline. So much so, that even an android being displaced in time during Timelash gets that treatment. It's usually shown in the proper linear fashion, too. Someone pops out of nowhere at a weird time in the story and we only see, later, where and when they make that decision to go back in time and cause that appearance to happen. It's a great story-telling device as it builds a certain level of intrigue that only gets properly explained later. It's also some very tidy plotting. On the rare occasion where we don't see both points in time, it does feel strangely out of balance.
One Time Around:
This is a variation on the entry and departure points principal. We haven't seen it demonstrated much, but it does happen from time-to-time.
Occasionally, a timeline crossing creates a sort of aborted timeline. Events have to happen a certain way and then the Doctor has to go back into his past and cause them happen in a different way. In so doing, of course, he wipes out the first sequence of events and time re-sets itself slightly.
We really only see this happen in the New Series. The first time was in Father's Day. When Rose lacks the courage to go to her father and comfort him in his final moments, the Doctor takes her back one more time to try again. We actually see the Doctor and Rose in two different iterations at once. The Rose that makes the second visit runs forward and saves her father's life. Causing the other Rose and the Doctor to fade out of existence because she's changed the course of events. But the first sequence had to occur before the second one could. If things were going purely by the entry and departure point principal, then the first set of Rose and the Doctor would have watched the Second Rose run forward and save her dad. Instead, the First Set have to go through the sequence of events that leads Rose and the Doctor to making the second visit. It's pretty wibbly wobbly and timey whimey but it does make a sort of sense and is something time travelers are capable of doing under the proper circumstances.
It's interesting to note that there seem to be times when you can't cross your timestream in such a manner. When Clara is trying to get the Doctor to go back in time and save Danny Pink during Dark Water, he points out that it wouldn't work. That, in that instance, events would collapse in upon themselves. He would never go to save Danny Pink because Danny Pink would have never died. And yet, in Journey to the Center of the TARDIS he goes back in time to see himself and stop the TARDIS from being destroyed but only because the TARDIS got destroyed. The same rule should apply here - but it doesn't.
This seems to indicate that Time Lords have a sort of instinct that enables them to see when they can go one time around and when they can't. Whether or not this is true or it was just a bluff to see the full extent of Clara's treachery - we're not entirely sure.
Side Effects:
Something else that we don't see all that frequently, but it occurs often enough to make it something time travelers must be wary of when they interrupt their own timestream.
One would think that entering into your own past or future would be a clean enough affair. You use some sort of temporal mechanics to displace yourself. You end up meeting yourself (or try to avoid meeting yourself). You pop off again and return to your proper place in time and space. No fuss, no bother. Right?
Most of the time, that is the case. But, every once in a while, weird stuff can happen. Side effects occur and things get a bit sloppy.
The most common side effect is that the senses of the people in the time zone you're visiting can be affected. In both The Space Museum and Big Bang, for instance, people could not see or hear the Doctor or the TARDIS Crew when they crossed their timeline. During Space Museum, they even became intangible.
We've seen the Doctor grow genuinely ill during more complex time crossings. During The Five Doctors and Name of the Doctor, he became incapacitated for a time because of the complications that developed when crossing his own timeline (it could be debated that, by my definition, Name of the Doctor does not constitute a proper crossing of timelines - it's difficult to say). These ill feelings, of course, were created because it was not just a normal crossover. His fourth incarnation had been stranded in the Time Vortex during Five Doctors. And his entire past was being altered several times during Name of the Doctor. When these sort of variables get heaped on to a crossover, severe side effects of this nature can influence a time traveler.
And then, of course, there's the memory issue. Sometimes, you can just plain forget what you did when you met yourself. Again, I believe that complexity has something to do with this. It usually only happens in multi-incarnation encounters. Several versions of the Doctor are banding together and it becomes too complex to retain. Yes, Missy was telling her previous incarnation that this was happening to her - but I still maintain that she was lying.
Keeping a Distance:
This is something that gets emphasized heavily most of the time that we see a crossover. Don't actually let your past self see your future self. If they do, don't talk to them. And, for God's sake, don't come into physical contact with yourself (we'll dwell more heavily on this point in a moment).
The exception to the rule seems to be multi-incarnation encounters. Different versions of the Doctor seem to have little or no problem with interacting with each other. But we've even seen the Doctor try to avoid himself when it's the same incarnation crossing over. Episodes like Father's Day or Before the Flood demonstrate this quite clearly. The Doctor firmly instructs Rose to wait until her past version flees the scene before going to be at her dying father's side. He, most emphatically, does not want their past selves to meet their future selves. Under The Lake, of course, adheres to this principal even better. The Twelfth Doctor goes to great lengths to avoid himself when the TARDIS "traps" him in his own timestream. He even sets the hibernation unit to only release him after he has left the sea base in the TARDIS and gone into the past.
The biggest reason for staying away from yourself when you cross your own timeline seems simple enough: you run the risk of accidentally telling yourself something you shouldn't know about your own future. Learning something about what is to come can have all kinds of bad effects on that causal nexus. Best not to expose the Universe to that level of risk. So, if you do slip into your own timestream - keep a distance from yourself!
No Contact:
This is a bit of sore point. It's a rule that has been heavily emphasized but frequently broken. While it does relate to the Keeping a Distance requirement, it merits a discussion of its own.
In Mawdrn Undead, the Doctor expends endless amounts of histrionics emphasizing that the Current Day Brigadier can not meet the Brigadier From the Past. There will be a huge explosion that will take out the better part of a galaxy if he does. It's all quite dramatic and very intense and creates a really awesome resolution to the story's central conflict. And we learn, very succinctly, that people from two different time zones should never come into physical contact with each other. It could prove disastrous if they do.
And yet, the only other time we see a violent reaction of this nature is when the sonic screwdriver comes into contact with itself in Big Bang. There's a bit of a pop and then everything is fine.
Admittedly, an object from two different time zones probably wouldn't have as much impact when it comes into contact with itself as would a sentient being. But the real problem with this rule is the fact that we have seen sentient beings come into contact with themselves on numerous occasions but there's been no reaction like the one we saw with the Brigadier. Why is that?
Time Lords are obviously exempt from this rule. There is probably something built into their DNA that allows them to run into themselves and have physical contact without the usual consequences. This gets all those multi-incarnation encounters to work just fine. Different incarnations love to shake hands with each other as they depart. This should be causing all kinds of massive explosions - but it doesn't. It even makes moments like when the Eleventh Doctor takes hold of his "dying" self in Big Bang be okay. Even if the same incarnation from two different time zones touch each other there will be no real ill effects.
But while on the subject of Big Bang, Adult Amy Pond has quite a bit of contact with a younger version of herself and we don't get that Sensational Brigadier Reaction that happened in Mawdryn Undead. One episode later, Kazran also has quite a bit of physical contact with himself, too (there is no way to phrase that without it sounding just a little bit wrong!). How do they get away with doing this without a group of immortals with a deathwish around to absorb the blast?
Aside from these two circumstances, we don't really see this happen anywhere else (well, it does occur in Father's Day but the Chronovore-like creatures probably harness the time energy to boost their own strength and enter the church). The best guess I can venture is that the Universe had just been destroyed in Big Bang. The Laws of Time were a bit wobbly during such a fragile period. Particularly with Amy. Her incident took place during an alternate timeline where the Universe was in the process of collapsing. All sorts of rules might suddenly stop working during such a situation. Kazran's incident took place shortly after the Universe re-booted (it's clear that this is a honeymoon gift to Rory and Amy so Chritmas Carol probably happens immediately after Big Bang). Perhaps, because the re-boot is so fresh, Time isn't working completely properly. Because of this, Kazran is able hold himself as a boy and it doesn't cause the galaxy to implode or something horrible like that. But if there had been a few stops along the way before getting to Kazran's planet, it might have been a different story. It's probably also likely that the Doctor, as a Time Lord, knew the Laws of Time weren't quite properly restored so he didn't need to freak out with Kazran like he did with the Brigadier.
And there we have some basic recurring patterns or even a set of rules that apply to crossing your own timestream. I'd like to write a second installment in this little saga where we look at the Doctor's specific experiences with this sort of phenomenon. We'll also look at the experiences of various companions and supporting characters who have also gone through this. Which means, of course, that another ANALYTICAL essay is soon to come.
No doubt, you're waiting with baited breath....
It's been a bit difficult for me to do an ANALYTICAL because I've been legitimately busy with this goofy career of mine. Nothing requires heavier research than this style of essay so it's been tough to find the time do all the work that's required of me. But I do find the results very rewarding so I have missed doing these. Hopefully, you enjoy reading my observations as much as I enjoy making them.
As many have said over the years, it's ironic that a show about time-travelling doesn't actually display much examples of it (well, truth be told, the Eleventh Doctor era changes that up a bit!). More times than others, time travel is only used to get the characters into their next story. After that, the narration tends to stay fairly linear.
As has been mentioned in parentheses in the previous paragraph, there is an era of the show where we do see the TARDIS and other modes of temporal transportation put to greater use. During such efforts, a number of things can be created. Aborted timelines would be one of the more frequent by-products of such gestures. In time, we'll probably delve into them quite heavily. But it won't be in this entry. For this post, we will merely look at the rules and patterns that seem to get established whenever a character crosses their own timeline. Before we can go much further, however, we should probably clearly establish what constitutes "crossing your own timeline"
DEFINITION:
As usual, the best way to define a trend in Doctor Who involves giving examples of what doesn't constitute a part of the pattern. Still, we'll try to start with a solid definition before getting into negative examples.
Crossing Your Own Timestream: (def) The conscious or unconscious act of temporally displacing yourself so that you are returning to a point in time and space that you had occupied previously. In essence, you have the opportunity to legitimately meet yourself (though, quite frequently, such an action is very specifically avoided).
WHAT IS NOT CROSSING YOUR TIMELINE:
Just so we're really clear, we'll look at a few examples where one might almost feel that there's been a proper crossing of timestreams. But, according to my definition, that's not what truly happened.
Communication Only:
We see numerous examples of this. The Doctor is, sort of, crossing his own timestream in order send a message to himself. A future version leaves an important note for his seventh incarnation to find that saves the day in Battlefield. Eleven calls Clara from the past just after he's regenerated in Deep Breath and Twelve is in the background, listening. The Doctor places all kinds of recorded messages for himself in Time Heist. Technically, the Doctor is crossing his timeline to do this. But I wouldn't say he's truly doing it. It's a pretty big grey area.
So Close:
Very near misses could almost constitute a crossing of timestreams. But, if you want to be a purist about it - it doesn't fit the definition. We get the impression Eleven arrives just after his assassination in The Impossible Astronaut. So, not a proper crossing. Or the Doctor and Jo go off on a huge adventure on the planet Uxarieus and then return to the UNIT lab only seconds after they've left in Colony In Space. Again, they're very close to crossing their own timestreams - but not quite.
Basic Geography:
"you have the opportunity to meet yourself" - is a key point in my definition. The Doctor has been in the same relative time period so often that it's quite likely that there's been a bit of an overlap from time to time (Twentieth or Twenty-First Century Earth would be the best case of this - although we've also seen him doing a lot in the Fifty First Century during New Who). But if he's not within distance of meeting himself, I don't qualify it as a "proper" crossing of his timestream. A good example of this would be the fact that The War Machines and The Faceless Ones do seem to take place on the same day. But the First Doctor, Ben and Polly are in one part of Britain while the Second Doctor, Ben and Polly are in another. There is probably some overlap, here. Where the trio are all in the same place at the same time. But they are a considerable distance from each other and have no chance of meeting. So we're not really going to dwell on this too hard. It's another instance where, technically, this is a crossing of the timestream - but it's not enough of one for me to give it much more attention than this particular paragraph.
Multi-incarnation encounters:
Two or more different incarnations coming together is, most definitely, a proper crossing of timelines. But I've already examined the whole process quite thoroughly in another essay (https://robtymec.blogspot.ca/2017/11/analytical-psychology-behind-multi.html) so I'm not going to do much of a re-tread, here. It will get mentioned from time-to-time, But if you really want to read the observations that I've made on such a process, go to the link I just provided.
BASIC STRUCTURE AND RECURRING PATTERNS (AND EVEN SOME BASIC RULES):
Okay, we've got some nice clear definitions in place. Let's actually look at some of the things that go on when such a process occurs. Even with all the different production teams that have worked on the show over the years, they do tend to adhere to certain guidelines when they use this particular device in a story. Here are a few of the major things I've noticed:
Entry and Departure Points:
Aside from a notable exception or two, the show always bothers to go to the trouble of showing the breach in the timeline and the moment where the decision is made to make the breach in the timeline. In The Big Bang, for instance, we see the Doctor appearing to Rory at Stonehenge and giving him instructions on how to release him from the Pandorica Vault. Later in the episode, we see the Doctor running around in the museum with Rory and both Amies (I'm guessing this is how you pluralize "Amy"). Suddenly Rory points out to the Doctor that he appears the way he did when he visited him at Stonehenge. The Doctor realizes this is the moment where he's meant to go back in time and release himself from the Pandorica Vault. So he uses the vortex manipulator to do that.
Both points in the crossing of the timeline are clearly illustrated in this instance. Where the breach occurs and where the decision is made to create the breach. There can be interesting variances on the formula - but the convention persists. For example: Again, in The Big Bang, we see an older version of Amy meeting her younger self in the pre-titles. After the title sequence - we go back and see how the encounter was arranged. It's a bit of a reversal of what we will see the Doctor do in the same episode (he encounters himself after he's been shot by a Dalek then goes and gets shot by a Dalek and jumps back in time to meet himself). If the narrative had been told in its proper linear fashion, we would have seen the Doctor and Rory placing Amy in the Pandorica Vault and then we would see Young and Old Amy running into each other at the museum. But it's still the same basic principle. Both points in the crossing are displayed.
This is an important aspect of illustrating a crossed timeline. So much so, that even an android being displaced in time during Timelash gets that treatment. It's usually shown in the proper linear fashion, too. Someone pops out of nowhere at a weird time in the story and we only see, later, where and when they make that decision to go back in time and cause that appearance to happen. It's a great story-telling device as it builds a certain level of intrigue that only gets properly explained later. It's also some very tidy plotting. On the rare occasion where we don't see both points in time, it does feel strangely out of balance.
One Time Around:
This is a variation on the entry and departure points principal. We haven't seen it demonstrated much, but it does happen from time-to-time.
Occasionally, a timeline crossing creates a sort of aborted timeline. Events have to happen a certain way and then the Doctor has to go back into his past and cause them happen in a different way. In so doing, of course, he wipes out the first sequence of events and time re-sets itself slightly.
We really only see this happen in the New Series. The first time was in Father's Day. When Rose lacks the courage to go to her father and comfort him in his final moments, the Doctor takes her back one more time to try again. We actually see the Doctor and Rose in two different iterations at once. The Rose that makes the second visit runs forward and saves her father's life. Causing the other Rose and the Doctor to fade out of existence because she's changed the course of events. But the first sequence had to occur before the second one could. If things were going purely by the entry and departure point principal, then the first set of Rose and the Doctor would have watched the Second Rose run forward and save her dad. Instead, the First Set have to go through the sequence of events that leads Rose and the Doctor to making the second visit. It's pretty wibbly wobbly and timey whimey but it does make a sort of sense and is something time travelers are capable of doing under the proper circumstances.
It's interesting to note that there seem to be times when you can't cross your timestream in such a manner. When Clara is trying to get the Doctor to go back in time and save Danny Pink during Dark Water, he points out that it wouldn't work. That, in that instance, events would collapse in upon themselves. He would never go to save Danny Pink because Danny Pink would have never died. And yet, in Journey to the Center of the TARDIS he goes back in time to see himself and stop the TARDIS from being destroyed but only because the TARDIS got destroyed. The same rule should apply here - but it doesn't.
This seems to indicate that Time Lords have a sort of instinct that enables them to see when they can go one time around and when they can't. Whether or not this is true or it was just a bluff to see the full extent of Clara's treachery - we're not entirely sure.
Side Effects:
Something else that we don't see all that frequently, but it occurs often enough to make it something time travelers must be wary of when they interrupt their own timestream.
One would think that entering into your own past or future would be a clean enough affair. You use some sort of temporal mechanics to displace yourself. You end up meeting yourself (or try to avoid meeting yourself). You pop off again and return to your proper place in time and space. No fuss, no bother. Right?
Most of the time, that is the case. But, every once in a while, weird stuff can happen. Side effects occur and things get a bit sloppy.
The most common side effect is that the senses of the people in the time zone you're visiting can be affected. In both The Space Museum and Big Bang, for instance, people could not see or hear the Doctor or the TARDIS Crew when they crossed their timeline. During Space Museum, they even became intangible.
We've seen the Doctor grow genuinely ill during more complex time crossings. During The Five Doctors and Name of the Doctor, he became incapacitated for a time because of the complications that developed when crossing his own timeline (it could be debated that, by my definition, Name of the Doctor does not constitute a proper crossing of timelines - it's difficult to say). These ill feelings, of course, were created because it was not just a normal crossover. His fourth incarnation had been stranded in the Time Vortex during Five Doctors. And his entire past was being altered several times during Name of the Doctor. When these sort of variables get heaped on to a crossover, severe side effects of this nature can influence a time traveler.
And then, of course, there's the memory issue. Sometimes, you can just plain forget what you did when you met yourself. Again, I believe that complexity has something to do with this. It usually only happens in multi-incarnation encounters. Several versions of the Doctor are banding together and it becomes too complex to retain. Yes, Missy was telling her previous incarnation that this was happening to her - but I still maintain that she was lying.
Keeping a Distance:
This is something that gets emphasized heavily most of the time that we see a crossover. Don't actually let your past self see your future self. If they do, don't talk to them. And, for God's sake, don't come into physical contact with yourself (we'll dwell more heavily on this point in a moment).
The exception to the rule seems to be multi-incarnation encounters. Different versions of the Doctor seem to have little or no problem with interacting with each other. But we've even seen the Doctor try to avoid himself when it's the same incarnation crossing over. Episodes like Father's Day or Before the Flood demonstrate this quite clearly. The Doctor firmly instructs Rose to wait until her past version flees the scene before going to be at her dying father's side. He, most emphatically, does not want their past selves to meet their future selves. Under The Lake, of course, adheres to this principal even better. The Twelfth Doctor goes to great lengths to avoid himself when the TARDIS "traps" him in his own timestream. He even sets the hibernation unit to only release him after he has left the sea base in the TARDIS and gone into the past.
The biggest reason for staying away from yourself when you cross your own timeline seems simple enough: you run the risk of accidentally telling yourself something you shouldn't know about your own future. Learning something about what is to come can have all kinds of bad effects on that causal nexus. Best not to expose the Universe to that level of risk. So, if you do slip into your own timestream - keep a distance from yourself!
No Contact:
This is a bit of sore point. It's a rule that has been heavily emphasized but frequently broken. While it does relate to the Keeping a Distance requirement, it merits a discussion of its own.
In Mawdrn Undead, the Doctor expends endless amounts of histrionics emphasizing that the Current Day Brigadier can not meet the Brigadier From the Past. There will be a huge explosion that will take out the better part of a galaxy if he does. It's all quite dramatic and very intense and creates a really awesome resolution to the story's central conflict. And we learn, very succinctly, that people from two different time zones should never come into physical contact with each other. It could prove disastrous if they do.
And yet, the only other time we see a violent reaction of this nature is when the sonic screwdriver comes into contact with itself in Big Bang. There's a bit of a pop and then everything is fine.
Admittedly, an object from two different time zones probably wouldn't have as much impact when it comes into contact with itself as would a sentient being. But the real problem with this rule is the fact that we have seen sentient beings come into contact with themselves on numerous occasions but there's been no reaction like the one we saw with the Brigadier. Why is that?
Time Lords are obviously exempt from this rule. There is probably something built into their DNA that allows them to run into themselves and have physical contact without the usual consequences. This gets all those multi-incarnation encounters to work just fine. Different incarnations love to shake hands with each other as they depart. This should be causing all kinds of massive explosions - but it doesn't. It even makes moments like when the Eleventh Doctor takes hold of his "dying" self in Big Bang be okay. Even if the same incarnation from two different time zones touch each other there will be no real ill effects.
But while on the subject of Big Bang, Adult Amy Pond has quite a bit of contact with a younger version of herself and we don't get that Sensational Brigadier Reaction that happened in Mawdryn Undead. One episode later, Kazran also has quite a bit of physical contact with himself, too (there is no way to phrase that without it sounding just a little bit wrong!). How do they get away with doing this without a group of immortals with a deathwish around to absorb the blast?
Aside from these two circumstances, we don't really see this happen anywhere else (well, it does occur in Father's Day but the Chronovore-like creatures probably harness the time energy to boost their own strength and enter the church). The best guess I can venture is that the Universe had just been destroyed in Big Bang. The Laws of Time were a bit wobbly during such a fragile period. Particularly with Amy. Her incident took place during an alternate timeline where the Universe was in the process of collapsing. All sorts of rules might suddenly stop working during such a situation. Kazran's incident took place shortly after the Universe re-booted (it's clear that this is a honeymoon gift to Rory and Amy so Chritmas Carol probably happens immediately after Big Bang). Perhaps, because the re-boot is so fresh, Time isn't working completely properly. Because of this, Kazran is able hold himself as a boy and it doesn't cause the galaxy to implode or something horrible like that. But if there had been a few stops along the way before getting to Kazran's planet, it might have been a different story. It's probably also likely that the Doctor, as a Time Lord, knew the Laws of Time weren't quite properly restored so he didn't need to freak out with Kazran like he did with the Brigadier.
And there we have some basic recurring patterns or even a set of rules that apply to crossing your own timestream. I'd like to write a second installment in this little saga where we look at the Doctor's specific experiences with this sort of phenomenon. We'll also look at the experiences of various companions and supporting characters who have also gone through this. Which means, of course, that another ANALYTICAL essay is soon to come.
No doubt, you're waiting with baited breath....
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