Blink: The Doctors overly long time span rescue
somerset fox
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So, the Doctors only solution was to wait 40 years to send a message?? What did he and Martha do in the intervening years apart from record the easter eggs? If this was the case then a 60+ Martha would still be around as well as the Doc. In which case why didn't he deliver his own message? No, a good initial story which falls apart when given some thought. Besides, if they were in 1969, all they would have to do is go to UNIT and meet Patrick Troughtons Doctor, or wait until 1970 and meet John Pertwee's and use his Tardis to come forwards, or pass the message... Now that would have been a cracking cgi-fest/ challenge in the style of Back to the Future 2. Tennant and Pertwee...:)
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Who said the Doctor waited 40 years to send a message?
It was the policeman – can't remember his name – who waited 40 years.
I think the whole not meeting Pertwee thing can be explained by the fact that wasn't the TARDIS broken in his era and Doc 10 just storming in across that particular timeline would cause all the usual time related problems. (Ignoring the fact that Doctors have met each other in the past)
All time-travel stories have this kind of dilemma.
Think about Back to the Future III. Doc lived out his life in the Old West and was killed there. But then Marty went back to save him, and so that didn't happen.
If you accept that time travel is possible (which you have to if you're going to enjoy episodes like this) you have to accept that the past can be changed, which then changes the future.
So, the Doctor was stuck in 1969, and you can suggest that yes, perhaps in one reality he and Martha had to live there and Martha would have got old. But, that never happened, because he created the DVD Easter Eggs, which Sally used to send the Tardis back to 1969 and rescue the Doctor and Martha.
Im not sure if that makes any sense. haha.
They then left 1969 to go onto another adventure. (To Cardiff )
That sentence started well, but then it sort of got away from you.
Why did the Doctor say "Blink and you're dead"?
Wouldn't it have been more accurate to say "Blink and you'll be sent back in time where there is a good chance that you'll live a long and fulfilled life"?
Oh this one is easy. Don't forget that the Doctor only got the necessary information from Sally at the very end of the episode. At this point, the Doctor had not yet met Sally, but Sally already knew him because of the information that he communicated to her, that he originally got at this point in time.
Get it? Time isn't linear. The Doctor and Martha were never around to grow old in the 60s because the TARDIS got sent back by Sally. It's kinda like that old (and admittedly awful) show "Crime Traveeler," treated time. Sure, you can time travel, but you can't actually alter events, because in the big, non-linear perspective of time, you were always meant to time travel to that point and interact with the events. It's not a change in the past, it's the way it always was.
It's no wonder that sentence started well and went off. It's damned hard to explain, but if you can grasp the idea of non-linear time, you can see how it all, perfectly, fits together, without any major plotholes. It's just damned hard to put into words.
O/T - Have to embarrasingly say, it seems that my mate and I were the only ones who were gutted that it didn't get a second series
that is just your view of time like other people have said. Sally was always supposed to send the TARDIS back to them because time is non-linear.
if you are going to enjoy a show like Dr Who then you need to grasp that time is almost like a river it can twist and turn back on itself.
The Doctor could not meet up with his previous incarnations because that would disrupt the time "river".
Therefore that's what he used so as not to affect the existing timeline
BUT how did he know that he would need to carry the the dossier with him in 2008 BEFORE the Weeping Angels sent him back to 1969?
Or does he just have a good memory
Nope, me too, even bought the DVD boxset.
Phew! Not just me then :)
his pockets are bigger on the inside of course,just pop the dossier in and its there when he needs it
I think it is very brave of the producers to do a complicated time travel story. Even though the essence of Who is time travel, it has rarely done stories that involve the concept of time
If it was, then the doctor knew he had to leave the message and so at somepoint in his timeline went to do that. But what if it was when he was at the house leaving the message that he got touched by the Angel (even though he knew that that is what would happen as he had read it in the transcript**)?
So if Sally hadn't given him the transcript he wouldn't have gone to the house and may not have been touched by the Angel.
*Ignoring the fact that rather than lobbing something the Anger could have just crept up on Sally and touched her.
**but presumably he still did it to maintain the timeline, and he knew everything would be ok as he was given the transcript.
If you imagine that, it all makes sense.
The Doctor dated the message 1969 which is the year he and Martha were sent back to, so he only wrote the message after encountering the Angel.
I'm not sure if the Doctor and Martha were sent to 1969 at the same time, maybe Martha got sent back, the Doctor realised this was what he was warned about by Sally then grabbed the Folder before letting the same Angel zap him.
Alternatively he read everything in the Folder and transferred all the info onto a small recording device that would fit in his pockets even if the Folder would not (which going by TRB it would have done anyway).