Doctor Who and possible plot holes (and possible spoilers)

[dragontiers]

It's that time of year again, when I get to watch new Doctor Who episodes, and I love me some Doctor Who. Well, last night I'm watching "The End Of Time Part One" (I believe is the title). The Doctor is sitting in the Cafe with Donna's grandfather (his name escapes me), and is asked why he can't just go back to when he lost The Master and follow him then. The Doctor replies "I can't cross my own timeline." Meanwhile, I'm going "Huh?" I can think of at least one episode when he has done exactly that, and another where he believes he has. In the episode where he first meets Martha Jones, she sees him on the street where he takes off his tie and talks to her, meanwhile he is also a couple of blocks away in the hospital in a bed, where he's been "all morning" as he tells her when she says she saw him on the street before. In the episode "The Other Doctor" he believes for most of the episode that he has somehow run into one of his future incarnations that has partial amnesia and forgotten about his past.

Anyone out there have any plausible explanations, or even any other examples to discuss? What do you guys think?

 

[waterhazard]

He's a timelord he can do what he wants.

 

[Disaster Button]

Those are minor violations of the rule, and carry a lesser risk that he's going to run into himself.

And remember, in the episode before he also began to try and manipulate the time rules for his own benefit and he got ***** slapped for it, so it stands to reason that he didn't want to risk breaking even the littlest of rules. Although crossing his own time line in this instance would have affected the time line a lot more than the examples than you mentioned.

 

[dragontiers]

Those are minor violations of the rule, and carry a lesser risk that he's going to run into himself.

And remember, in the episode before he also began to try and manipulate the time rules for his own benefit and he got ***** slapped for it, so it stands to reason that he didn't want to risk breaking even the littlest of rules. Although crossing his own time line in this instance would have affected the time line a lot more than the examples than you mentioned.

I don't know. He seems to be back to his old self, no longer the "Timelord Victorious", but he still likes to mess around. Right at the beginning of the episode he indicates that even though he got the Oods summons, he still decided he had time to run off, have a little fun at a party, and get married (if I understood things right), so I don't think he is letting the little things bother him so much. After all, as long as he stayed in his Tardis and a good distance away, he could have followed the helicopters without ever seeing himself or otherwise manipulating his time-line. Also, as a side note, anyone get exactly what happened there anyways? They were shooting at him with standard guns, but then it is like they tranq'ed him or something, as he was simply knocked out without any injuries. It felt like they should have explained that or something.

 

[interspark]

easy peasy, crossing his own time line implies affecting his own past (ie running into himself) if anything it would have affected his timeline more by not going back and taking off his tie, as martha had already told him she had met him earlier that day, (also donnas gramps is called wilfred). Although as for the other doctor i have to agree with you there, he should have just walked away and ignored him.

It's that time of year again, when I get to watch new Doctor Who episodes, and I love me some Doctor Who. Well, last night I'm watching "The End Of Time Part One" (I believe is the title). The Doctor is sitting in the Cafe with Donna's grandfather (his name escapes me), and is asked why he can't just go back to when he lost The Master and follow him then. The Doctor replies "I can't cross my own timeline." Meanwhile, I'm going "Huh?" I can think of at least one episode when he has done exactly that, and another where he believes he has. In the episode where he first meets Martha Jones, she sees him on the street where he takes off his tie and talks to her, meanwhile he is also a couple of blocks away in the hospital in a bed, where he's been "all morning" as he tells her when she says she saw him on the street before. In the episode "The Other Doctor" he believes for most of the episode that he has somehow run into one of his future incarnations that has partial amnesia and forgotten about his past.

Anyone out there have any plausible explanations, or even any other examples to discuss? What do you guys think?

 

[The Riff]

What i am wondering is

Spoiler

Why can't he just go back in time before he arrived and stop the prison from blowing up and the master resurrecting? Like go into his box, and go back like a day or two before they resurrect the master and prevent the whole thing from happening? and then fly back to where he left off

 

[Graustein]

It's the Timey-Wimey ball principle. The laws of Time act according to the plot at any given moment. This is a canon phenomenon. As the Doctor himself said, some moments in time are fixed, while others are mutable and can be changed. Which is which? Whichever provides more drama at any given moment.

Most episodes take place during mutable events, or things happening which are not meant to happen. In those cases, the Doctor can and does change things. Other times, it's not brought up because what's meant to happen coincides with what the Doctor's doing. And a few times, the writers plonk him into the middle of some big, immutable catastrophe (Pompeii, anyone?) and watch Tennant squeeze every bit of drama he possibly can out of it.

So, the Martha time-travel trick? That was meant to happen. Had he actually gone back in time, met himself, changed things around... shouldn't do that. Most of the time. He can't go back and wilfully change anything, but contrived coincidences are fine, I guess.

 

[XJ-0461]

easy peasy, crossing his own time line implies affecting his own past (ie running into himself) if anything it would have affected his timeline more by not going back and taking off his tie, as martha had already told him she had met him earlier that day, (also donnas gramps is called wilfred). Although as for the other doctor i have to agree with you there, he should have just walked away and ignored him.

It's that time of year again, when I get to watch new Doctor Who episodes, and I love me some Doctor Who. Well, last night I'm watching "The End Of Time Part One" (I believe is the title). The Doctor is sitting in the Cafe with Donna's grandfather (his name escapes me), and is asked why he can't just go back to when he lost The Master and follow him then. The Doctor replies "I can't cross my own timeline." Meanwhile, I'm going "Huh?" I can think of at least one episode when he has done exactly that, and another where he believes he has. In the episode where he first meets Martha Jones, she sees him on the street where he takes off his tie and talks to her, meanwhile he is also a couple of blocks away in the hospital in a bed, where he's been "all morning" as he tells her when she says she saw him on the street before. In the episode "The Other Doctor" he believes for most of the episode that he has somehow run into one of his future incarnations that has partial amnesia and forgotten about his past.

Anyone out there have any plausible explanations, or even any other examples to discuss? What do you guys think?

What this guy said. I think the rule only applies if he, or someone who travels with him, interacts with the past versions of himself then there's a problem. See the episode from the first of the new series where Rose meets her dad in the past for what I mean.

 

[ZeroDotZero]

The episode was not only nonsense, but it was also bad.

Absolutely no sense of plot appeared until the last ten minutes, which were rather good, but they didn't redeem the complete trash that came before it.

 

[Woodsey]

If he's a timelord surely he'd be aware of time travel therefore it wouldn't matter if he crossed his own timeline because, you know, he'd be expecting it?

 

[dragontiers]

What i am wondering is

Spoiler

Why can't he just go back in time before he arrived and stop the prison from blowing up and the master resurrecting? Like go into his box, and go back like a day or two before they resurrect the master and prevent the whole thing from happening? and then fly back to where he left off

That one is slightly more obvious, as by going back in time to do that, it would affect his whole chasing down The Master bit, directly changing his own personal history.

easy peasy, crossing his own time line implies affecting his own past (ie running into himself) if anything it would have affected his timeline more by not going back and taking off his tie, as martha had already told him she had met him earlier that day, (also donnas gramps is called wilfred). Although as for the other doctor i have to agree with you there, he should have just walked away and ignored him.

As for the Martha Jones one, I think it wouldn't have made a difference either way, as she still would have seen him on rounds, the other doctor would still have made her check him out (allowing her to hear both his heartbeats), the hospital still would have been abducted, and events would have still unfolded pretty much exactly as it did. My problem comes in as why he couldn't do something similar (parallel his own time-line without crossing it) this time around.

 

[Disaster Button]

Those are minor violations of the rule, and carry a lesser risk that he's going to run into himself.

And remember, in the episode before he also began to try and manipulate the time rules for his own benefit and he got ***** slapped for it, so it stands to reason that he didn't want to risk breaking even the littlest of rules. Although crossing his own time line in this instance would have affected the time line a lot more than the examples than you mentioned.

I don't know. He seems to be back to his old self, no longer the "Timelord Victorious", but he still likes to mess around. Right at the beginning of the episode he indicates that even though he got the Oods summons, he still decided he had time to run off, have a little fun at a party, and get married (if I understood things right), so I don't think he is letting the little things bother him so much. After all, as long as he stayed in his Tardis and a good distance away, he could have followed the helicopters without ever seeing himself or otherwise manipulating his time-line. Also, as a side note, anyone get exactly what happened there anyways? They were shooting at him with standard guns, but then it is like they tranq'ed him or something, as he was simply knocked out without any injuries. It felt like they should have explained that or something.

Well he would put on that front, just like regular people, when something goes wrong with their lives they try and cover it up and act like normal. But you can see the cracks are showing in him when he sits with Wilfred (Donna's Grandad) in the cafe when he begins to break down and says he did some wrong things which shows he isn't back to his full happy go lucky self.

Edit: Although I dunno about the gunshot bit, I just assumed he was shot, injured, and healed himself and carried on. It wasn't really explained very well though.

 

[AngloDoom]

He's a timelord he can do what he wants.

Pretty much this.

The creators of Dr. Who once said that the beauty of the series is that it can never have a plot-hole; it could always be The Doctor going back and changing rules, or something he can sense that we simply can't. Or something along those lines.

 

[GoodEyeSniper]

It's that time of year again, when I get to watch new Doctor Who episodes, and I love me some Doctor Who. Well, last night I'm watching "The End Of Time Part One" (I believe is the title). The Doctor is sitting in the Cafe with Donna's grandfather (his name escapes me), and is asked why he can't just go back to when he lost The Master and follow him then. The Doctor replies "I can't cross my own timeline." Meanwhile, I'm going "Huh?" I can think of at least one episode when he has done exactly that, and another where he believes he has. In the episode where he first meets Martha Jones, she sees him on the street where he takes off his tie and talks to her, meanwhile he is also a couple of blocks away in the hospital in a bed, where he's been "all morning" as he tells her when she says she saw him on the street before. In the episode "The Other Doctor" he believes for most of the episode that he has somehow run into one of his future incarnations that has partial amnesia and forgotten about his past.

Anyone out there have any plausible explanations, or even any other examples to discuss? What do you guys think?

Well, if you'll recall, in the "Smith and Jones" episode, The Doctor explains that he can't change history in any significant way, just "cheap tricks". In "The Other Doctor" it could be argued that because The Doctor didn't intend to run into himself, that he would deem it acceptable to just casually meet a future incarnation.

The biggest plothole I've seen, however, is the fact that in "Silence in the Library" and "Forest of the Dead", River Song (who may or may not be The Doctor's future wife) obviously recognises the Tenth Doctor as the person that she spent a significant amount of time with; but we know now that her first meeting with The Doctor will be the Eleventh Doctor. I've thought about it, and I don't really see a way to clean that up.

 

[ReSpawn]

Having a reason to go back in time to fix something, means you go back in time to fix something, which means it's fixed, eliminating the reason to go back in the first place, which means you don't go back in time to fix something, which means it isn't fixed, which means you have a reason to go back and fix something, which means....

This is the most fundamental element in most time travel stories, the paradox.

In Doctor Who, it justifies all sorts of things. Not existing in parallel with oneself, keeping plot threads in multiple time periods concurrent etc.

 

[randomic]

What i am wondering is

Spoiler

Why can't he just go back in time before he arrived and stop the prison from blowing up and the master resurrecting? Like go into his box, and go back like a day or two before they resurrect the master and prevent the whole thing from happening? and then fly back to where he left off

Well I'm sure by now you've noticed that the TARDIS simply isn't that reliable. It quite frequently dumps him in the wrong place and time or perhaps the right place and time, depending on how you see it. Either way, a lot of the time it doesn't end up quite where he wants it to. I'm guessing this could be as a result of the same thing which made the TARDIS get stuck looking like a police box.

 

[randomic]

The biggest plothole I've seen, however, is the fact that in "Silence in the Library" and "Forest of the Dead", River Song (who may or may not be The Doctor's future wife) obviously recognises the Tenth Doctor as the person that she spent a significant amount of time with; but we know now that her first meeting with The Doctor will be the Eleventh Doctor. I've thought about it, and I don't really see a way to clean that up.

Well noticed but did she immediately recognise him? If so, it could be possible that in his future incarnation the doctor showed her a picture?? Seems like a bit of a cop-out but I look forward to loose ends being tied up in imaginative ways. Let's hope it's not a plot-hole that's been missed by the writers.

 

[cleverlymadeup]

he can't trail the Master because he'd run into himself and mess up time, he can sense other timelords around, so he'd know he was there.

 

[dragontiers]

The biggest plothole I've seen, however, is the fact that in "Silence in the Library" and "Forest of the Dead", River Song (who may or may not be The Doctor's future wife) obviously recognises the Tenth Doctor as the person that she spent a significant amount of time with; but we know now that her first meeting with The Doctor will be the Eleventh Doctor. I've thought about it, and I don't really see a way to clean that up.

I've also wondered about that one a lot, but as it has yet to happen (in the Doctor's time-line anyways) I have adopted a wait and see attitude. My current possible explanations include a) Maybe since this Doctor has encountered her, he has occasionally traveled to see her and only has the main thrust of the relationship with the next Doctor, or b) She has spent enough time with him, and knows him well enough that she can recognize him even though he looks different (after all, she supposedly knows his true name). Also, this knowledge kind of takes the sting out of the whole "I'm going to die" vibe they are trying to give right now.

 

[sauerkraus]

Is Dr. Who the guy who time travels in a telly booth?