For those of you familiar with the British science fiction show "Doctor Who," see if this isn't a pretty convincing argument.
There seems to be quite a bit about Santa Claus that seems patently impossible, until you consider that he may not be human, but rather a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey.
1. Santa visits every child's home in a single night. This seems patently absurd. How could one person visit all of those houses in the span of 24 hours (assuming he hit all of the houses in whichever time zone was at midnight, and kept moving on to the next time zone each hour)? Obviously, he couldn't...unless he had some means of time travel. With a TARDIS, Santa could take as much time as he needed at each house; when it came time to move on to the next one, he could travel backwards in time if necessary before hitting his next stop. Obviously, his TARDIS would have to be a top-of-the-line model, not an old Type 40 like the Doctor uses. (The Doctor's TARDIS would never make it: He'd hit one house on Maple Street, and his next stop would be somewhere in the Andromeda Galaxy several thousand years in the future.)
2. Santa fits all of the gifts for every child in the world inside his bag. Again, the very concept is ridiculous...unless, somehow, the bag was bigger on the inside than it was on the outside. We all know that that's how the TARDIS functions; Time Lords have had that little trick figured out for centuries. It would be child's play for a Time Lord to use dimensional relativity to create a bag with near-infinite storage capacity.
3. Santa has a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer. Two possibilities occur to me here. A TARDIS comes with a chameleon circuit as standard equipment, allowing it to blend in with its environment by projecting an appearance that won't seem out of place. Of course, it's also possible to choose a TARDIS' outward appearance, and we've seen that the Doctor's TARDIS spent many centuries "stuck" in the form of a police call box. I don't think it's entirely impossible that a state-of-the-art TARDIS could appear as a sleigh, complete with eight reindeer. After all, do we ever see any of Santa's reindeer when they're not attached to the sleigh? Of course not. One possibility is that Santa's entire sleigh - reindeer and all - is his TARDIS.
Of course, perhaps there's a simpler solution. Perhaps the flying reindeer are exactly that: reindeer with an innate flying ability. If we figure Santa spends his "off time" traipsing around the Universe like the Doctor does, who's to say he hasn't stumbled across some planet somewhere that has flying reindeer? Those of us who watch "Doctor Who" have seen far stranger things on that show than hoofed quadrupeds with innate powers of self-telekinesis. (Come to think of it, that might also explain away Santa's elves: they're aliens!)
4. Santa lives up at the North Pole, yet seems to get by with just a red coat and mittens. Well, we know from firsthand experience that the Doctor is hardly bothered by the cold. In "The Seeds of Doom," he's running around Antarctica with his coat wide open and even though he's wearing his trademark extra-long scarf, he doesn't even bother wrapping it up around him to keep himself warm. Sarah Jane Smith, meanwhile, is wearing an Antarctic-issue parka and is freezing her poor little tootsies off. If Santa Claus is a Time Lord, I don't think he'd have any trouble with Arctic conditions at all.
5. Santa keeps a list of who's been naughty and who's been nice. We all know if there's one thing a Time Lord is good at, it's voyeurism. That seems to be what Time Lords do best: spy on people. Of course, most of them wouldn't bother to act on that knowledge, so if Santa Claus really is a Time Lord, no doubt he's no longer part of the High Council; odds are, he's a Renegade.
6. Santa comes down the chimney when the children are sleeping. With a TARDIS, Santa doesn't actually need a chimney, he can just materialize inside the house. This explains how he gets into the houses that don't have a chimney.
7. Santa likes it when you leave milk and cookies out for him. Santa Claus couldn't possibly drink all the milk and eat all the cookies that everyone leaves out for him...unless, of course, he wasn't actually performing his Christmas Eve duties in one night. Remember, with time travel, he could hit a dozen houses, take a week off, then get back in his TARDIS and go back in time to Christmas Eve again and pick up where he left off. Plus, even if he did go on a "cookies and milk" binge all at once, so what? It's not like he has to take care of his body; if this one wears out (through poor dietary habits), he can always regenerate into a new body.
8. Santa Claus has been around for how long now, and he doesn't seem to have aged a bit. We all know how long-lived Time Lords are, even without taking their regeneration ability into account.
I don't know about you, but I'm convinced. Santa Claus is a Time Lord.
Johnathan
There seems to be quite a bit about Santa Claus that seems patently impossible, until you consider that he may not be human, but rather a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey.
1. Santa visits every child's home in a single night. This seems patently absurd. How could one person visit all of those houses in the span of 24 hours (assuming he hit all of the houses in whichever time zone was at midnight, and kept moving on to the next time zone each hour)? Obviously, he couldn't...unless he had some means of time travel. With a TARDIS, Santa could take as much time as he needed at each house; when it came time to move on to the next one, he could travel backwards in time if necessary before hitting his next stop. Obviously, his TARDIS would have to be a top-of-the-line model, not an old Type 40 like the Doctor uses. (The Doctor's TARDIS would never make it: He'd hit one house on Maple Street, and his next stop would be somewhere in the Andromeda Galaxy several thousand years in the future.)
2. Santa fits all of the gifts for every child in the world inside his bag. Again, the very concept is ridiculous...unless, somehow, the bag was bigger on the inside than it was on the outside. We all know that that's how the TARDIS functions; Time Lords have had that little trick figured out for centuries. It would be child's play for a Time Lord to use dimensional relativity to create a bag with near-infinite storage capacity.
3. Santa has a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer. Two possibilities occur to me here. A TARDIS comes with a chameleon circuit as standard equipment, allowing it to blend in with its environment by projecting an appearance that won't seem out of place. Of course, it's also possible to choose a TARDIS' outward appearance, and we've seen that the Doctor's TARDIS spent many centuries "stuck" in the form of a police call box. I don't think it's entirely impossible that a state-of-the-art TARDIS could appear as a sleigh, complete with eight reindeer. After all, do we ever see any of Santa's reindeer when they're not attached to the sleigh? Of course not. One possibility is that Santa's entire sleigh - reindeer and all - is his TARDIS.
Of course, perhaps there's a simpler solution. Perhaps the flying reindeer are exactly that: reindeer with an innate flying ability. If we figure Santa spends his "off time" traipsing around the Universe like the Doctor does, who's to say he hasn't stumbled across some planet somewhere that has flying reindeer? Those of us who watch "Doctor Who" have seen far stranger things on that show than hoofed quadrupeds with innate powers of self-telekinesis. (Come to think of it, that might also explain away Santa's elves: they're aliens!)
4. Santa lives up at the North Pole, yet seems to get by with just a red coat and mittens. Well, we know from firsthand experience that the Doctor is hardly bothered by the cold. In "The Seeds of Doom," he's running around Antarctica with his coat wide open and even though he's wearing his trademark extra-long scarf, he doesn't even bother wrapping it up around him to keep himself warm. Sarah Jane Smith, meanwhile, is wearing an Antarctic-issue parka and is freezing her poor little tootsies off. If Santa Claus is a Time Lord, I don't think he'd have any trouble with Arctic conditions at all.
5. Santa keeps a list of who's been naughty and who's been nice. We all know if there's one thing a Time Lord is good at, it's voyeurism. That seems to be what Time Lords do best: spy on people. Of course, most of them wouldn't bother to act on that knowledge, so if Santa Claus really is a Time Lord, no doubt he's no longer part of the High Council; odds are, he's a Renegade.
6. Santa comes down the chimney when the children are sleeping. With a TARDIS, Santa doesn't actually need a chimney, he can just materialize inside the house. This explains how he gets into the houses that don't have a chimney.
7. Santa likes it when you leave milk and cookies out for him. Santa Claus couldn't possibly drink all the milk and eat all the cookies that everyone leaves out for him...unless, of course, he wasn't actually performing his Christmas Eve duties in one night. Remember, with time travel, he could hit a dozen houses, take a week off, then get back in his TARDIS and go back in time to Christmas Eve again and pick up where he left off. Plus, even if he did go on a "cookies and milk" binge all at once, so what? It's not like he has to take care of his body; if this one wears out (through poor dietary habits), he can always regenerate into a new body.
8. Santa Claus has been around for how long now, and he doesn't seem to have aged a bit. We all know how long-lived Time Lords are, even without taking their regeneration ability into account.
I don't know about you, but I'm convinced. Santa Claus is a Time Lord.
Johnathan
