So, who wants to talk about new Doctor Who (spoilers likely)

[MarkB]

What, time travel?

No, travel through serious time distortions. River says as much, as I recall - it's better at getting through 'traffic' - so the dirt bike / SUV comparison is an apt one, though I'd suggest that the time bracelet is more closely analogous to a bicycle.

The only aspect of time travel the bracelet has been shown to do better is slipping through time distortions, and to some extent that makes sense - smaller object, less easy to get caught up in things. The fact that it can handle one single, specialised aspect of time travel better than the TARDIS is no reason to assume that it does a better job in general.

 

[Morrus]

I think it's the question that matters, yeah, based on your complaints. If it was a better time machine but couldn't do everything else the Doctor wanted it to, would that somehow make him less of a Lord of Time and Space?

If I was the world's best brain surgeon and there was a laser scalpel that did a certain part of my job better than my other tools, but wasn't what I actually needed the vast majority of the time, assuming I can't easily switch tools, am I now no longer the best brain surgeon?

There's some weird anology-switching giong on there. You should be asking about what is the best laser scalpel, not whether you're the best surgeon. We're not asking whether The Doctor is the best Time Lord; we're asking whether the TARDIS is the best time machine.

 

[Morrus]

The only aspect of time travel the bracelet has been shown to do better is slipping through time distortions, and to some extent that makes sense - smaller object, less easy to get caught up in things. The fact that it can handle one single, specialised aspect of time travel better than the TARDIS is no reason to assume that it does a better job in general.

What other aspects of time travel are you imagining there are?

There's one - getting from time A to time B. The bracelet does that successfully in more cases than the TARDIS. It is therefore better at time travel.

The TARDIS may be better at other things (as is a microwave and a bicycle and a blue whale) but it isn't better at time travel. A ladder may be great at getting people up trees, but that doesn't make it a better time machine than the bracelet.

Being able to do something which isn't time travel better than the bracelet doesn't make something a better time machine than the bracelet.

 

[Iosue]

What other aspects of time travel are you imagining there are?

There's one - getting from time A to time B. The bracelet does that successfully in more cases than the TARDIS. It is therefore better at time travel.

No, it does that successfully in this particular case, when time distortions make landing a large, extra-dimensional space difficult.

 

[MarkB]

What other aspects of time travel are you imagining there are?

Safety?

Even back when it was first introduced, the time bracelet was said to be a highly risky form of time travel, and have you seen what the Time Vortex looks like in the current credits? I wouldn't want to be flying through that unprotected.

There's one - getting from time A to time B. The bracelet does that successfully in more cases than the TARDIS. It is therefore better at time travel.

We've seen one instance of it being able to go somewhere the TARDIS can't. I see no reason to generalise from that single example.

We know little about how, or how often, the bracelet is fuelled, what it can do when up against temporal phenomena other than the time distortions we saw in the last episode, how well it does at plotting courses to destinations the wearer doesn't already know about, etc.

Really, given all the timey-wimey stuff the Doctor's been involved in, I'd hardly call time travel as simple as going from point A to point B. It frequently gets a lot more complicated, and I'd bet that in 90% of those situations, you're better off with all the resources of a TARDIS than with a vortex manipulator strapped to your wrist. We just happened to get a glimpse of the other 10% this time.

 

[Morrus]

Safety?

Even back when it was first introduced, the time bracelet was said to be a highly risky form of time travel, and have you seen what the Time Vortex looks like in the current credits? I wouldn't want to be flying through that unprotected.



We've seen one instance of it being able to go somewhere the TARDIS can't. I see no reason to generalise from that single example.

We know little about how, or how often, the bracelet is fuelled, what it can do when up against temporal phenomena other than the time distortions we saw in the last episode, how well it does at plotting courses to destinations the wearer doesn't already know about, etc.

Really, given all the timey-wimey stuff the Doctor's been involved in, I'd hardly call time travel as simple as going from point A to point B. It frequently gets a lot more complicated, and I'd bet that in 90% of those situations, you're better off with all the resources of a TARDIS than with a vortex manipulator strapped to your wrist. We just happened to get a glimpse of the other 10% this time.

Heh. Sometimes I guess we have to accept that we're not going to agree. I don't want to get into one of those endless line by line rebuttals, so let's just say I disagree with your viewpoint completely and leave it there.

 

[Morrus]

No, it does that successfully in this particular case, when time distortions make landing a large, extra-dimensional space difficult.

Exactly! Thank you!

 

[Fast Learner]

There's some weird anology-switching giong on there. You should be asking about what is the best laser scalpel, not whether you're the best surgeon. We're not asking whether The Doctor is the best Time Lord; we're asking whether the TARDIS is the best time machine.

Not as I understand your argument. What I read you saying is that he is the master of time and therefor should have the very best time machine. I'm saying that "best" doesn't necessarily mean "travels to times another machine can't", that the bracelet is the laser scalpel, utterly the best for certain things but not for every thing. That it travels to the most times doesn't automatically make it the best for the master of time.

 

[Morrus]

Not as I understand your argument. What I read you saying is that he is the master of time and therefor should have the very best time machine. I'm saying that "best" doesn't necessarily mean "travels to times another machine can't", that the bracelet is the laser scalpel, utterly the best for certain things but not for every thing. That it travels to the most times doesn't automatically make it the best for the master of time.

I honestly can't face repeating my position on the limited criteria I would require for ranking time machines again; needless to say, as my previous posts indicate, that position is not aligned with yours.

But my part of the conversation's devolved into me just repeating myself in different ways which is a long way removed from fun - and I'm sure you guys don't want to keep reading the same thing in different words any more than I want to keep typing it; so like I said a couple of posts back it's time to accept there's going to be no agreement on this.

 

[Fast Learner]

Agreed that we can but disagree.