Doctor Who question

[Plane Sailing]

she is stuck there with K9.

K9 doesn't appear to be stuck anywhere... he was in the episode with Tennant when they reintroduced Sarah Jane IIRC.

 

[Umbran]

K9 doesn't appear to be stuck anywhere... he was in the episode with Tennant when they reintroduced Sarah Jane IIRC.

Yeah, but he's a robot, just take a backup of his memory, and build a new body, and you're off and running with multiple K9s.

 

[Rykion]

Yeah, but he's a robot, just take a backup of his memory, and build a new body, and you're off and running with multiple K9s.

Yep. K9 Mark I left with Leela. K9 Mark II staid with Romana. Sarah Jane Smith was given K9 Mark III, and the Doctor repaired/rebuilt Mark III or created Mark IV after the events of "School Reunion."

 

[Sutekh]

Rykion is correct.

 

[MarkB]

Yep. K9 Mark I left with Leela. K9 Mark II staid with Romana. Sarah Jane Smith was given K9 Mark III, and the Doctor repaired/rebuilt Mark III or created Mark IV after the events of "School Reunion."

Which goes to show that the Doctor is very good at making friends.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I've been wondering: TARDIS technology seems to have been reasonably common amongst the Time Lords. Even though the Doctor is the last of his kind, how come there aren't a ton of Time Lords who have since died bopping around through time and space? You'd think that the Doctor would run into younger versions of his old kinsmen all the time.

Anyone know?

Prior to the Time War, TARDISes only encountered each other in chronological order, according to what some have called "Gallifreyan Standard Time". Evidence for this is present in The Ribos Operation (Romana can make a statement about the Doctor's age that she fully believes to be accurate), Mawdryn Undead (although events are happening in two different time periods, the Doctor attempts to explain that they are also happening now), and Time and the Rani (the Doctor can know the Rani's age by knowing his own age).

In effect, Gallifrey is not located in four-dimensional space-time, but in a five-dimensional continuum (Susan tries to explain this in An Unearthly Child), where Gallifrey is travelling obliquely to time. Thus, no matter what time one travels to externally, if one then travels to Gallifrey it is always "now" on Gallifrey. One sees reference to this in The Invasion of Time. It also explains the 4th Doctor's remark that he is more properly from "Inner Time" than "Outer Space".

Assume that it takes the ability to travel in 5 dimensions to lift out of one part of four-dimensional space-time and rematerialize in another. This is what is seen both in terms of the Vortex and the temporal orbit in Mawdryn Undead and elsewhere. Several species in Doctor Who seem capable of this type of time travel.

In order to gain access to another point in Gallifrey's history, one must be able to travel in 6 dimensions to lift out of one part of the five-dimensional Gallifreyan Standard Timeframe and rematerialize in another part. TARDISes are not made to do this, but can be caused to do so in some cases (i.e., Inferno may be a case where a time track is jumped, as is The Space Museum).

Apart from the Time Lords, only the Daleks are shown to possess their own 5-dimensional space-time frame, so that they can be encountered time travelling out of sequence, so that Skaro can be destroyed and restored, so that the time lock on Gallifrey doesn't necessarily also contain the Daleks, and so that they can actually be a threat to the Time Lords.

Ironically, the Daleks probably got this technology (or started on it) when Davros interrogated the 4th Doctor in Genesis of the Daleks.

After the Time War, Gallifrey's 5dstf is locked away, so that the Doctor has no access to it. As a result, he has no access to the Eye of Harmony, and needs to refuel. He cannot re-establish contact with Gallifrey without breaking the Time Lock, releasing the Time Lords, and allowing the Time War to continue.

He also has no direct telepathic contact with any other Time Lord through the TARDIS's link to Gallifrey. There is reason to believe that other Time Lords may have survived -- the Doctor's claim that he would known is sheer bunkum. After all, both the Doctor and the Master were on Earth before Archangel launched, and the Doctor didn't know. Likewise, he has failed to recognize Azrael, the Master, and K'Anpo/Cho Je in the past.

What is actually interesting is how the Doctor could both create the Time Lock and escape it. I imagine this has something to do with the 8th Doctor being half human (regenerative imprinting on Grace), just as the Master avoided the Time Lock by use of his Chameleon Arch.

We know that several Dalek groups escaped, either because they were not linked to the Dalek 5dstf (not true Daleks ala Victory of the Daleks) or because they somehow managed to sever themselves/got severed (as in Dalek, the so-called "God of the Daleks", and the Cult of Skaro).

So, there exists the possibility of Time Lords escaping because they were somehow not linked to the 5dstf at the time it occurred, because they somehow escaped the 5dstf while it was in effect (like the Doctor and Romana escaping the time loop in Meglos), or because they somehow escaped the 5dstf when Rassilon attempted to end the Time Loop via the Master.

Indeed, the Monk may be quite lucky if his TARDIS was still malfunctioning when the Time Lock occurred!



RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

That certainly matches the series. According to Susan in, I think, the very first episode, Time is the fifth dimemsion, the fourth being Space.

Yes, but since the first three are also space, that makes damned little sense, an should be ignored however canon it might be. Susan was young, it was the 1960s, and there were a lot of... youthful indiscretions involving recreational pharmaceuticals.

Actually, Susan says that the 4th dimension is Time, and the 5th Space. However, she is presumably speaking to her teacher via the TARDIS's telepathic circuitry, which is attempting to make a concept beyond what a human of that area could comprehend into something more comprehensible.

I take Susan's remark to refer to a sort of "temporal space", a dimension to which Ian Chesterton and his class would have no directly translatable reference. Because of the TARDIS telepathic circuits, "Space" is Ian's conception of what is being discussed, not Susan's.



RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

Yep. K9 Mark I left with Leela. K9 Mark II staid with Romana. Sarah Jane Smith was given K9 Mark III, and the Doctor repaired/rebuilt Mark III or created Mark IV after the events of "School Reunion."

Depending upon how you view the new New Zealand series, K9 Mark I presumably escaped the Time Lock with outside help, resulting in his arrival (and upgrade) in an alternate universe.

Or not.




RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

I say they just forget the 'limit' on regenerations.

If they need a reason to handwave it I think the Doctor has got several zillion possibilities they could call on.

Well, they apparently gave the Master a new cycle of regenerations when they resurrected him for the Time War. That they could do so was established in The Five Doctors. Perhaps the 8th Doctor was "reset" so that he could regenerate another 12 times?

(See also Underworld for the potential problems of unlimited regeneration, which the Time Lords were perfectly capable of supplying, and note also how many Time Lords - ex. Borusa, possibly the Master - seem to become unstable in their last regenerations.)


RC

 

[Umbran]

Actually, Susan says that the 4th dimension is Time, and the 5th Space.

Well, that's even worse!

However, she is presumably speaking to her teacher via the TARDIS's telepathic circuitry, which is attempting to make a concept beyond what a human of that area could comprehend into something more comprehensible.

And failing miserably

While your construction isn't bad, but it is ex post facto. I've never seen any sign the authors had any such self consistent structure in mind when writing Susan's lines in 1963. I haven't watched the old episodes in ages, but I strongly suspect that there's stuff back there that violates your construction with passion and gusto. Doctor Who has never been hard SF that sticks to a set of rules.

The Doctor talks about "wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff" specifically because the authors recognize they've not be consistent, and don't want a single, exhaustive explanation of how the whole thing works, and want the audience to know that.

The Doctor doesn't run into other Timelords for the same reason that Obi Wan has to die in Star Wars - the plot can't plausibly go the way the authors want if they're around. The words "time lock" can be replaced with "plot logic".