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The Discontinuity Guide
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| THE POST-GALLIFREYAN LAWS OF TIME |
It's been well-established, at least in non-televised Doctor Who, that the Time Lords not only enforce the Laws of Time, but also provide a stablising influence upon the cosmos. With Gallifrey destroyed, the rules have changed. In The Unquiet Dead, the Doctor tells Rose that her future might not happen because history is "in flux" [and BBC Books' Eighth Doctor books tend to confirm that this would happen when Gallifrey was destroyed]. However, that was simply a throwaway comment. Father's Day provides a lot more information about how history can be changed. The following analysis is, essentially, copied (with permission and a couple of extra comments) from a post by Simon Bucher-Jones on Outpost Gallifrey's forums. Some of it may seem illogical, but then the mechanics of time travel when it comes to changing history often do. 1) Its possible to change the past in small ways:- The past of the driver of the car has changed marginally for the better (morally) as he's faced up to his actions and stayed rather than 'hit and run' -(possibly because of his deja vu nightmarish experience of seeming to almost hit this man before?) Rose's past has changed, slightly, as the stories her mother tells her about her father's death have altered. This is, of course, not a change to the way changing history works, as there have been numerous small changes in numerous Doctor Who stories. 2) However such changes must not cause a paradox. The change in Rose's history can not invalidate her desire to go back and see her dad, because if it did she wouldn't have gone back, and he'd have died in the first location, so she would have gone back, so he wouldn't have done, so she would etc etc. Whereas before she believed he died alone, now she believes he was comforted by a "mysterious, disappearing, girl" Rose is not stupid, and once having encountered a time machine it is perfectly likely that her motivation becomes the strong possibility that she is that girl. 3) Small things can have big effects, saving a single life, you know to have ended, is to save all the descendants of the person who would otherwise never have been born. While not necessarily paradoxical, such an act is at best incalculable:- when the Doctor storms off originally he's mad with Rose for changing time, but he does not at that point believe this will cause a chronoclysm. This tallies with The Unquiet Dead where he says "time can change like that". Without the Time Lords, the web of time seems to be in flux, it is not against any natural law for time to alter, but it is still immoral to alter the lives of billions to save one man, and it also still risks paradoxes. 4) Looping your own worldline, going back an havin' another go, is intrinsically dangerous - but not fatal if you don't interact with yourself. If you do and change your own past, the part of your time line behind you winks out and you are in effect an input from a deleted universe, at which point bad things can happen. [It has been said that it's the wrong you that winks out of existence, but let's just ignore that headache for the purposes of this analysis, as after Peter is saved, there is no reason for either version of the Doctor and Rose to be at the scene, which means that Rose didn't go back to save him, which means that he died, which means that Rose went back and saved him (et cetera, et cetera). Incidentally, there are previous examples of people winking out of existence for similar reasons in Doctor Who - the most likely explanation is that the Chronovores (The Time Monster, No Future, The Quantum Archangel) ate them.] 5) A "time wound" caused by the effects of looping your worldline (4) and those small changes (3) combined, has been seen to:
6) Reapers are opportunists that feast on areas of damaged time. This may have, eventually, a healing effect on a large scale, by "sterilising the wound" but as with maggots eating necrotic tissue, this is no consolation if to time you are the necrotic tissue. Maggots, of course, only eat diseased tissue (in this case the Earth) and don't touch healthy flesh. 7) Time itself resists change and appears to have some drive toward healing, time wants Rose's dad dead, and killed by a specific car (suggesting that the accident had fairly strong effects on the driver, which the microchange does not annul). 8) When killed by the car under time healing conditions (7), the majority of the wound (5) heals, the Reapers (6) are expelled and their victims restored, and the microchanges (1) mend the broken worldlines (4) almost cleanly. This seems to me to be a fairly elegant 'biological' model of time that in 45 minutes allows for:-
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Links: Rose first mentioned her father's death in The Unquiet Dead. Jackie and Mickey both appeared in Rose and Aliens of London / World War Three. The Doctor mentions the destruction of Gallifrey (mentioned in The End of the World.
Extras: Mickey's website features two pages about this episode. The first shows pictures of the Doctor and Rose at her parents' wedding, and the second is about their presence at Sarah and Stuart's wedding.
Location: London on the 7th of November 1987, and an unknown date well before that.
Q.v: The Fate of Gallifrey, The End of the World; Bad Wolf, The Parting of the Ways; Rose's Love Life, The Doctor Dances.
The Bottom Line: 'Who said you're not important? Although not without its logical flaws (and, let's face it, what story about changing your own history isn't?), Father's Day is a hugely enjoyable emotional drama. Rose, Jackie, and Peter are all perfectly portrayed, the Reapers are a strong addition to the Who mythos, and you really feel for Rose's dilemma.
Thanks go to all the folk who commented on Father's Day in the Bloopers thread on Outpost Gallifrey's forum. Without them, the goofs section would have been a lot smaller.
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