Christopher Eccleston Returns to Doctor Who, if only on audio, for now.

***SPOILERS***

I think that the BBC's policy is that there is only one Doctor at a time. So even the Doctors who have appeared out of sequence: Tennent on Smith's episodes, Davison on a Smith special, Tennent and Baker on a Smith episode, the thirteen Doctors, and these are just the modern episodes. At least these are the ones I remember.

Or an interesting variation.

Perhaps my favorite scene from Doctor Who, Vincent Van Gogh Visits the Gallery. It is at least my favorite that I can recall at the moment.

Yup! Tho from the same episode when they are all lying out in the field is pretty cool.

Okay...you started off my morning with tears...
This too is one of my favorite scenes...and episodes.
Ty.

Van Gogh was my favorite artist when I was in high school... until I saw Monet's Woman with Parasol and Japanese Bridge over Pond (name?). Then last year we went to the Netherlands and we both fell in love with Rembrandt's work. Monet and Rembrandt were NOT starving artists, so there was no need for a time machine to show them how wonderful their work is.

Old Blue & DoubleSaj too

Space and Time Extended Edition.

This is a very well done knot, untied slightly in this extended edition, then pulled tight again.

It actually doesn't work at all. He pulls the Wibbley lever, walks through the door, then somehow instantly knows to tell himself the Wibbley lever. Such nonsensical, throw-away paradoxes are a hallmark of the Moffat era (Timecrash has essentially the exact same plot).

There is plenty of non-continuity in the DW universe, but it still has a general tone that remains consistent. Prior to Moffat it very rarely dealt with paradoxes, and when it did they were very bad things that had to be carefully avoided. Two quick examples from the 5th Doctor: Adric dies (um... spoilers?) and the Doctor can't simply go back and save him. It's matter-of-fact and final, so the emotional impact is immediate and brutal. The next season we get two points in the timeline of the Brigadier crossing, and when they meet it's a catastrophe. The energy released kills Mawdryn and his crew, and the Brigadier loses years of his memory.

Moffat mucked things up with his time-wimey nonsense so much that he had to create some really crazy excuses for the Doctor to be unable to return to New York in order to try to have any emotional impact to the departure of Amy and Rory. The explanation is so convoluted that it left plenty of fans dissatisfied.

Sure, paradoxes are a way to throw fun into a short-story, but they make it awfully difficult to maintain any kind of real drama in an anthology of stories written over nearly 60 years.

K

This is an example of a causal loop, an ontological paradox or bootstrap paradox.

Blink, Before the Flood and The Angels Take Manhattan were during the Moffat era, but Father's Day was during Russell T Davies.

Babylon 5 has one (or two) instances of time travel, spread over three seasons. However, it is also an ontological paradox. J. Michael Straczynski thinks that time travel is overused in science fiction.

Personally, I like time travel paradoxes, even ontological ones. They provide interesting things to think about. You obviously have different tastes.

My favorites are in the Bill & Ted movies. This short (that we're discussing) has that sort of feel, a fun romp with a time machine. It is a comedy, which is how I'm enjoying it.

What I have trouble with is when multiple Doctors get together, then the earlier Doctor(s) don't remember the encounter. This happened in the original run with The Three Doctors, The Five Doctors and The Two Doctors. During the Moffat era were Time Crash (which you mentioned), Twice Upon a Time and The Day of the Doctor. Fugitive of the Judoon was a Chibnall episode.


An example of one of these short stories is All You Zombies written by Robert A. Heinlein. It explores themes developed in By His Bootstraps. AYZ was made into a film called Predestination.

I'm glad you mentioned Father's Day under RTD. In that story, Rose's actions had severe consequences, the Doctor was very angry with what she'd done, and in the end Pete had to sacrifice his life to "fix" it. The paradox was treated very seriously. It's also, in my opinion, the better version of Stephen King's The Langoliers.

When a causal loop is done for laughs I really enjoy it, like Bill & Ted. I realize that this is what Space and Time and Timecrash are both doing as well, and they work as non-canon fun extras. But The Angels Take Manhattan and Before The Flood don't. Both those stories fall flat for me.

It's important to note that the by-far vast majority of Doctor Who has nothing to do with time travel. The TARDIS is merely a plot device to place the main character in an ongoing anthology of mostly unrelated stories. It's about time arrival and time departure, with that famous blue box often only showing up briefly in the opening and closing scenes, particularly with the first three Doctors.

Bootstrap paradoxes can be ingenious thought experiments, such as the fantastic All You Zombies/Predestination that you mentioned, or the brilliant Spanish film Cronocrímenes (Timecrimes). When DW does this, I welcome it, but Moffat just tosses it around in places like The Pandorica Opens with too much aloofness, where you have to use visual cues from mops and fezzes to follow the nonsense.

Multi-Doctor stories like The Three..., The Five... and The Day Of... are anniversary specials that are giving the fans what they what, but they REQUIRE the older Doctors to forget so that they can still WORK in the overall continuity of the show. If he didn't forget, they would be very short stories. Timecrash is short because 10 just has to do what he remembers as 5 seeing himself do. If 11 met the War Doctor in Day Of The Doctor and immediately REMEMBERED watching himself save Gallifrey, it would have been a lousy story.

If you really want to be annoyed listening to me debate time travel films, here is an old podcast.

K

Yes, that one did have severe consequences, even to the Doctor. The part in that one that I don't think about too much is why did the first pair (Doctor and Rose) disappear without affecting the existence of the second pair. They didn't even bother hanging a lantern on it.

I'm disappointed that we haven't seen the Reapers since.


I didn't read the book. I only saw the television movie. I don't see the connection because the Doctor wasn't "out" of time, 'just' caused a serious paradox. The only connection that I see was a creature that eats things, including people.


I had real problems with The Angels Take Manhattan, but not because of the time paradox.

Blink is brilliant! (It also involves and ontological paradox.) But after that they make the Weeping Angels too powerful. In The Time of Angels and Flesh and Stone they take over Bob, which they have never shown the ability to do before.

But that is the minor problem I have with that episode. "What holds the image of an Angel becomes an Angel" is the biggest. I may have misunderstood the camera, but it was in place before they arrived; they just tapped into the feed. The problem caused by viewing the camera should have existed before they arrived. Why have the camera on the Angel if those on the Byzantium are not going to be watching it?

Could an Angel be contained by putting a single one in a room with mirrored walls, floor and ceiling? Let's say that it is lit through small holes.

Also, Amy acting as if she can see so that the Angels don't move is bogus. The Angels don't need to use their eyes to know if they are being observed. The Angels can't move if observed by any living being. All the Angels have to do is to try to move to see if they are being observed. And when they are moving to attack the bridge, they come en masse. The ones in front should not have been able to move until all of the others came along side. Were they all abreast and I am remembering a few layers? And this is only the mass advance that we saw.

The Angels Take Manhattan causes additional problems. Perhaps these Angels have different tastes and prefers to have small meals rather than eating their meals like a boa constrictor. If they want to chow down there are plenty of people to take out in Manhattan. After all, the Daleks succeeded in this in Daleks in Manhattan and Evolution of the Daleks. (Does Doctor Who mess up every time they set a story in Manhattan?)

It was funny in Ghostbusters II to make the Statue of Liberty move, but it doesn't work as an Angel. First of all, it isn't stone, as has been established for the Angels. Second, if they somehow made it an Angel, when did it happen? It was shipped in pieces and assembled in place, so it couldn't have been an Angel from its beginning. Third, even if it hardly ever moves because it is always observed, when it does move (especially as far as Winter Quay) then it would most likely be seen going back. It would become a major investigation if the Statue of Liberty were found out of place.

Before The Flood didn't really create a paradox. The Doctor simply found a way to make it appear to be what had happened had actually happened, while finding a way to make it actually happen differently. I guess this still makes it an ontological paradox.


I know. That is why they have to make them forget. It still doesn't sit well with me. It is something that I only worry about when I'm watching those episodes.

But I don't know how to solve it otherwise, unless we use the multi-verse theory of time travel. However, doing this would disrupt their rules of time travel. Thinking of it further, that wouldn't really solve this problem without causing others.


Yes. I'm sure that you know this, but Doctor Who was originally conceived as a vehicle (pun intended) for teaching some history. It has obviously morphed over the decades.


I have just started listening to it. Which one are you, Gas, Food or Lodging? There are these three people mentioned, but so far I have only distinguished two people. Food is the deep voiced guy.

It is a pleasure discussing time travel and Doctor Who with someone who has put thought into both.

I have been to near where you live, but that was before I started letterboxing or geocaching. Have you asked GT to come visit you and see the Carpenter House Museum?

Happy Letterboxing.

They were “out of time” in the same way as the premise to Donny Darko, in that they aren’t in an alternate timeline, they are only in a small time loop that is like a scar that needs to be healed for time to move forward. The car disappears and comes back, waiting for the moment it hits Pete, because that is supposed to be the next event in time. DW fairly consistently maintains that there is only one timeline and doesn’t subscribe to the “multiverse” concept. The rare exceptions to this are Inferno and Rise of The Cybermen/Age of Steel and the follow up Army of Ghosts/Doomsday. It’s interesting to note this is the third origin story for the Cybermen, and it is subsequently ignored by Moffat, who goes on to write yet a fourth.

K

Okay. I somewhat see your point. Father's Day was a bubble that was out of the single timeline. It had to be repaired, or at least the people removed before this wound could heal and normal time resume.

In The Langoliers everyone who survived the transition through the wound in time were asleep at the time. Even on the way back they had to be asleep, which is why there was one sacrifice. Most of the events took place in a bubble universe that was in the past.

That theory of time was like A Matter of Minutes an episode of one of the modern Twilight Zones. It makes for an interesting short story, but not something to build on long term.


Explaining this for others who may be lurking on this thread: Multiverse is one of the ways used to describe time travel that allows for changes in the past. Changes are allowed without causing paradoxes because it is happening in another universe, not your original one. Think of it as an infinite number of films all playing the same movie but one frame out of sync. When going back into the past you don't actually travel back in your own film, but travel to a parallel film that is "currently" running the time of your destination. This allows time travel without paradox.

I agree with your statement about Doctor Who using the single time line concept. It is more akin to how Doc Brown explained the forking of the timeline to Marty. Even though he didn't say so, I think that he means that the timeline forks and the other branch becomes unreachable but continues. The Doctor Who single time line would be the same thing except that the other "original" timeline ceases to exist.

Nevertheless, some events are so critical that making changes causes problems as occurred in Father's Day and The Wedding of River Song. The latter was another Moffat episode, but it did create another paradox. This would have been another great opportunity for the Reapers. Instead, they gave us a totally bizarre every-time-at-once thing.

But Doctor Who did have a parallel universe, where they stashed Rose Tyler for a while. Even though the Doctor said that the connection could never be made again, she came back, for an episode or two.

BTW, I'm going to listen to that podcast, but I've got to go somewhere today. I've been working on going, but it has always been "one more thing".

The multiverse concept was initially popularized by Michael Moorcock starting in the 1950s with his Eternal Champion character. He has several different series of fantasy and sci-fi in which the hero in each are all different incarnations of the same hero in a different universe, and there are an infinite number of alternate universes.

His fantasy stories have sci-fi elements and his sci-fi have fantasy. If you read a lot of Moorcock, you understand why those two genres are lumped together at the bookstore (remember those?). The BBC even authorized The Coming of The Terraphiles, thus making The Doctor another aspect of The Eternal Champion.


I’m Gas because I have a bad reputation for my flatulence. On the opposite side of stereo is my younger brother Lodging, who admits to being a lazy man prone to needing 3 hour naps in the afternoon because he only got 12 hours of sleep the night before. The deep voice in the center is our friend Mike that we’ve known since we were teens. He owns the studio where these were recorded and released, and weighs about 350lbs, so thus is Food. There are 20 episodes from 2018. We supposedly talk about movies, but mostly make fun of each other. My favorite moment in that episode is at the beginning where I say “Let me explain this and then you can shoot me down” to which Mike replies by cocking a pistol (“ka-click”).

K

That reminds me of yet another science fiction series to throw into the mix, Red Dwarf. In one of the episodes, they meet Ace Rimmer, a hero's hero. He is the epitome of a hero without super powers. He is Arnold Rimmer from a parallel universe.

The first appearance was in Dimension Jump where the two Rimmers meet. From Wikipedia: Ace's childhood paralleled Rimmer's up until the age of seven, when one of them was kept down a year at school while the other was not. The one kept down became Ace, who claimed that the shame of being a clear foot taller than his classmates inspired him to buckle down, fight back, and work hard, while Arnold spent the rest of his life making excuses for his many failures.

In Stoke Me a Clipper, he is left wrestling with an alligator (or crocodile) in an airplane almost ready to run out of gas by a Nazi officer who jumps with the last parachute. Ace grabs a rope, while wrestling the alligator and pulls them both out of the airplane, on purpose. He ties the alligator's mouth closed and uses the alligator like a surf board to catch up with the Nazi. He unties the alligator's mouth in time so that it clamps onto the Nazi's head, takes his parachute and glides to the ground.

Somehow he avoids being shot (we think) by the Nazis shooting at him as he lands. He disengages the parachute and crashes through the roof of a shed, where he emerges on a motorcycle, knocking down or shooting (I forget which) the Nazis who were shooting at him. He eventually rescues the woman in distress and they escape the Nazis.

Anyway, Ace was mortally wounded, so he came to Arnold Rimmer to replace him. It turns out that there had been billions of Ace Rimmers since the original.


Okay, I'll have to separate my speakers more so that I can distinguish you from your brother. Should I listen for you on my right or left? Should I listen for that phrase, "Let me explain this and then you can shoot me down"?

I wasn't annoyed. I was entertained, except for the occasional language.

I grew to be able to distinguish the three of you by voice. And I learned your first name, but someone will have to listen to find that out.

My overall review of this podcast is that you (all) are bouncing from one to another without getting much into depth into anything. Until you get to Back to the Future. I loved the analysis on Doc Brown, and his realization.

However, you didn't analyze that the Doc Brown from Twin Pines Mall did not have the benefit of Twin Pines Mall Marty having left the letter. It could have been that Marty who left from Lone Pine Mall also left a similar letter for Doc Brown from Twin Pines Mall. You have probably analyzed this, but just didn't bring it up in this podcast.

I had seen 12:01, and bring it up as prior art when I discuss Groundhog Day with someone and have time to bring it up. I hadn't known about the lawsuit, but I see that it is on the Wikipedia page. This idea is also explored in Stargate SG-1's Window of Opportunity.

I have to disagree with you on Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey. The first ten minutes it looks like it is going to be a dud. Then it gets moving and is a fun romp. I like the scenes with Death because I saw The Seventh Seal in film class in college.

This is a time travel video that I had added to my Time Travel category on You Tube. I wasn't able to find it again until now. It is called Stealing Time.

If you want to see another twisted bit of time travel, check out Moebius from Stargate: SG-1.

The explanation given by Steven Moffat in Doctor Who Magazine:

For me, at least, this explanation falls flat. It makes the Angels even more powerful that they have already been made in the canon episodes, the episodes after Blink.

I'm glad that this didn't make it into canon. The Statue of Liberty being an Angel is bad enough.

I've always felt that entire episode was only written as an excuse for that opening moment. The visual of Liberty being a giant weeping angel is a fantastic shock image, but it belongs on a fan page on Deviant Art, not in actual Doctor Who.

Blink, remember, was produced under Russell T Davies. Under RTD's hand as producer, Moffat as writer gave us fantastic work: Empty Child/Doctor Dances, Girl In The Fireplace, Silence In The Library/Forest of The Dead. All of these produced great stories, villains and characters: Clockwork Droids, Vashta Nerada, Captain Jack and River Song.

When he took over as show-runner, with nobody to reign in his ideas, his fanboy tendencies went into overdrive. The scene of 11 standing in Stonehenge, daring every recurring alien ever to make the first move, is a fantasy speech written by a 12-year-old nerd (of which I was). It gets touted as a great scene by most fans, and I hate it. A far better version of a kid standing up to his bullies is in Stand By Me. It's a realistic and tense moment of facing fear, not a silly and over-the-top rant of bombastic bravado.

Matt Smith was used to market Doctor Who to America, and it worked in spades, but at the cost of the character. Rather than playing the fool while secretly knowing exactly what to do, Smith was constantly given arrogant dialogue written for a Hollywood action star. Think of the cliffhanger to The Time of Angels, or the "Colonel Runaway" rant in A Good Man Goes To War. Now try to imagine any of that dialogue coming out of the mouth of William Hartnell, Jon Pertwee, or Christopher Eccleston. Righteous anger, yes. Mocking superiority, no.

Don't get me wrong, there's a whole lot of the Eleventh Doctor that I love, but Moffat handled the character better under Peter Capaldi, who was back to being a genius with strong morals, not just Superman without a cape.

K

Yeah, that's a fair criticism of what we were doing in most episodes. We do deeper dives here and there, but most of it is unscripted stream-of-consciousness between three guys who've sat around having these conversations with each other for decades.

In episode 2, I go in-depth on the ending of Se7en, and we come back to it at the very end of episode 9. In episode 14, Lodging goes pretty deep into The Departed. Episode 20 has all three of us dive deep into Enemy. There are more examples, but those are some of my favorites.

K

love her in everything from Boadicea to Dr. Elizabeth Corday to River Song
https://www.facebook.com/DoctorWho/videos/240335074490246

Unless I am mistaken she was also on some episodes of "Law and Order SVU" playing an attorney named "Miss Pond."

Yes.
https://lawandorder.fandom.com/wiki/Miranda_Pond

She was a regular on ER years ago. I think I’ve seen more if her on American tv than in British stuff.

I remember that.
I also think I remember that I liked her on ER.

She also had a recurring role on Arrow, where John Barrowman played her ex-husband.

TG

In case you aren’t aware:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rrGBqKqb3gg

https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/sci-fi/doctor-who-series-13-trailer-jodie-whittaker-newsupdate/amp/

Let's hope it doesn't mean what I think it means.

Begging the question: What do you think it means?

All I can say is Don't Panic.

Flux:
Yes I know there are other definitions but this is the first one that came to mind. I just couldn't decide if it describes the alien or what it does to it's enemies.