I must just note that while I can kinds sorta see your other points, the idea that the personal timestream rule is in any way a major issue with Who puzzles me. Not only does it support storytelling but it's never felt to me like an inherently stupid time travel principle. Surely there could be any number of sensible time paradox reasons?
Indeed in 'Mawdryn Undead' during the original series there was an idea that if you touched an earlier version of yourself Very Bad Things would happen. I can't remeber what, but I'm sure it was at least as bad as crossing the streams in Ghostbusters. :-)
The timestream rule is a good and sound principle for time travel stories to operate on. I have a minor problem with "The Girl in the Fireplace" in that it appears to break the rule just by existing -- by going through the different time windows, surely the Doctor is entering different points in Renette's timestream? Or if he's not, why can't he use the TARDIS to get to the final attack, rather than breaking the window with a horse? You have to add another level of justification about "common time" to have it all make sense -- which is ok, but as I said, it just foregrounds the fact that the timestream rule is an arbitrary one, there to make the stories make sense rather than for any other reason.
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coalescent) wrote2006-12-25 08:16 pm
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Indeed in 'Mawdryn Undead' during the original series there was an idea that if you touched an earlier version of yourself Very Bad Things would happen. I can't remeber what, but I'm sure it was at least as bad as crossing the streams in Ghostbusters. :-)
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