The Dalek Problem...
sovietusername
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So in around 2007, the Earth is invaded by an army of cybermen and Daleks who are only defeated after being sucked into the void. Then in 2009 the Earth is moved to the Medusa Cascade, then invaded by the Daleks who have been recreated by Davros and who are now under the command of the Supreme Dalek. So how come, in 2012, in Dalek, when a lone Dalek is captured by Van Statten, no one knows what ti is? Surely everyone on Earth would know a Dalek when they see one...
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maybe the Dalek don't look like what a Dalek looked like.
I thought it was because of the cracks in time
The 2012 the Doctor and Rose visit in "Dalek" is from a timeline where the events of "Doomsday" and "Stolen Earth" had not happened.
If the Doctor had gone back to Utah 2012 after witnessing the events of Doomday and the Stolen Earth things would be slightly (or even majorly) different in that Van Statten would at least know what a Dalek was.
However with the cracks in Time wipping out the events of Stolen Earth/Journeys End it's possible that if the Doctor now returned to Utah 2012 Van Statten would be back to not knowing what a Dalek was.
Sorry, that kind of got away from me...
P.S. Sorry, know that's the answer that's always given to stuff like this but I actually think that's the case.
We look at things to linearly, we assume that because something happened in 2007 people in 2012 would know. But things happen releative to a time stream which may or may not go inline with actual time.
Take The Doctor. In theory every 'version' of himself is out there somewhere. In theory he could have met his future self. But I believe that for him, time is relative to one 'point in time version' of himself (for the most part, the one we see) and that there is no future version of himself out there yet.
So for the events in Dalek, I view it as the events in S.E, etc. haven't happened yet. Even though they end up happening in the past.
So yeah, big ball of wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff.
Is this one of the reasons why the Doctor can't/won't cross his own timeline?
That and the paradoxes that would be created by crossing your own timeline.
Crossing your own timeline would generate a timeloop in addition.
So all in all, not a good idea
The number of times people have linked that clip when stuff goes unexplained...
But it's not unexplained. Just unexplained to your satisfaction, which is an entirely different kettle of fish...
The thing is, the show could not be made without continuity errors riddling it - it's been going far too long for that. However, there is, and always has been, a premise of 'time can be rewritten' (except for when the story demands it, which is where the 'fixed point' comes in). What you are seeing as the episodes and the series go along are the linear progression of the Doctor's life, which dips in and out of our time-stream. This means that it really could happen that Van Statten didn't know what a Dalek was in 2012, because at that point in the Doctor's own linearly progressing timeline, he hadn't been to, let's say, 2009 to do something which then overwrote what had happened that had lead him to the original 2012.
It happens all the time in NuWho, and by necessity. It is the story that has to come first, and if that means contradicting an established story from earlier in the series, or in the Classic series then so be it - the kinks can be ironed out later (either in the hand-wavey above, or in exact detail by the more... intense Doctor Who fans).
And, as it's sci-fi, these kinds of things happen all the time. There are lots of examples of it in other series' involving time travel, but Doctor Who has more than most as it has been around more than all the others.
I'm well aware, hence why I put "P.S. Sorry, know that's the answer that's always given to stuff like this but I actually think that's the case.
We look at things to linearly, we assume that because something happened in 2007 people in 2012 would know. But things happen releative to a time stream which may or may not go inline with actual time.
Take The Doctor. In theory every 'version' of himself is out there somewhere. In theory he could have met his future self. But I believe that for him, time is relative to one 'point in time version' of himself (for the most part, the one we see) and that there is no future version of himself out there yet.
So for the events in Dalek, I view it as the events in S.E, etc. haven't happened yet. Even though they end up happening in the past.
So yeah, big ball of wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff."
I did go on to why I felt it explained the question being asked.... I'm sorry if you didn't like my opinon
Tennant seemed to take the possibility of Jackson Lake being his future self very seriously. Though it has always taken either Time Lord interference (as in The Three, Five and Two Doctors, and Dimensions in Time) or a potentially cataclysmic accident (Time Crash) to get past and future Doctors together before.
That said, I think it's the Doctor deliberately avoiding himself. Look at what happened in Father's Day.
Yeah there are flaws to my view on things. But it's one of those catch 22 as both ways of looking at it have flaws. For example, why when someone is scooping all the versions of The Doctor out of time and space would they only go for the ones up to the current one? Makes no sense! Likewise, in the Eleventh Hour, the Atraxi showed images of The Doctor but only his past self, why would THEY not have anything on the future Doctors?
So yeah, it's a tricky one which I doubt we'll ever get a clear cut answer to. After all having it one way for one episode and another for another allows them to do as they wish
Well theres no reason why the Time Lords shouldnt know nothing about future doctors as they dont travel in time on Gallifrey and as for the Atraxi, just cos they only have records of other doctors yet, doesent mean future doctors dont exist
Bit confused by your first statement
But regardless, both Time Lords and Atraxi should have records of either all (or the majority) past and future Doctors or none. Why would the Atraxi (for example) have records of (almost) all past Doctors but no future ones? Makes no sense unless we're making the assumption no future Doctor goes back in time to before the events of Eleventh Hour.
Of course, we should remember, that at the end of the day it is just s TV show and isnt real:D
And obviously t=it is impossible for a show thats gone on so long to have no continuity flaws. However I'd just like some explanation cos until series 5 we didnt actually get anything more than the Doc saying how time is "wibbly wobbly" or it's in flux. Obviously it's a family show aimed at kids as well as adults and that shouldnt change, but a few little lines of exposition wouldnt hurt
Actually, it would. Lines of exposition need to be understood - trying to cobble together an in-universe explanation of why we don't have pictures of future Doctors is going to make the whole thing much more complicated and confusing. And at the end of the day, it's not a question people are asking all the time.
The bottom line is that we can explain most of these aspects away with saying - we don't understand how Time works the way Time Lords do.
Of course, smaller things can be easily explained away. The Atraxi don't have pictures of later incarnations? Perhaps because they were scanning the Doctor, rather than their own databanks. Why did Borusa time-scoop only the first five Doctors? Perhaps because he was synced to the fifth incarnation, he could only trace parts of the Doctor's life leading up until that point.
That would ceratinly be quite cool but only if the idea of the current Doctor being the most recent and there being no future ones out there is abandoned.
Indeed it was abandoned with the Valyard but again that's a bit different because he was presented as a possible future Doctor.
There is certainly an argument for them to edit old episodes as long as it doesn't change the plot and get all "Lucas" on us!
However I do also think that it works to say that we are with the Doctor in his NOW and that there is no future Doctor or Doctors floating about out there.
Either way is valid and it depends what sort of series we/they want.