I see what you mean

I understand what you're saying and it is one possible interpretation given the inconsistent and dodgy "rules" of time travel in Doctor Who. What I'm saying is another possible interpretation that also works.

Re-read your own post above and think about time travel. Ask yourself this: "Whose "AFTER" (your emphasis, BTW) are you referring to? In what sense does "before" and "after" make sense when we're discussing time travel? Whose PoV makes there a "before" and "after" the GI/Clara intervention?

This kind of thing is why time travel and all the "fixed points" nonsense is essentially broken in Doctor Who.

In this case, it really is straightforward - cos there really are three different timestreams and we saw all three of them.

It may appear to us - now - that Clara was "always there" but she wasn't - plain and simple. There really was an original timestream that didn't have her footprints all over it - she really wasn't present when the Doctor left Gallifrey.

In effect, entering that timestream let her time-travel without a Tardis. The appearance of cause and effect may seem reversed but only if you don't know that the original timestream existed - and we do know that.

That's your assertion, but it ain't necessarily so, as I've tried to elucidate.

To try another example: Although Marty McFly was utlimately able to change things (his improved future in BTTF III) in BTTF II he was working in 1955 to prevent changes caused by 1955 Biff getting the Sports Almanac. He did this without his earlier version being aware of him or changing events as portrayed in BTTF I.

I rest my case M'lud.

Still doesn't work - not least because in BTTF2, the Delorean had been upgraded to fly and use nuclear power and Marty had been to the future in it to buy the almanac - so there was a very clear linear progression of linear time.

To an outside observer seeing two "Marty's" it may look like that had always been the case but - as with DW - we were very clearly shown cause and effect which included the petrol-powered Delorean visiting and then leaving that time frame before being upgraded and making a second visit.

It does depend on how you look at the BTTF films from Marty's POV it happened over the course of a few weeks from the Doc's POV given he had kids by the end it must have been about 10 years.

But from the worlds POV the Delorean was around for about 12 hours (from making the trip with Einstein to getting crushed by the train)

Edit to add

The Delorean itself was around 70+ years old though when it was crushed

I see what you did there


Not sure if that's the case. If it were, we wouldn't have met Clara in Asylum of the Daleks and The Snowmen, as those events occurred before we saw her enter the Doctor's timestream. The fact that we saw the effect before the cause suggests she had to have been there long before the events of Name of the Doctor.

She couldn't have travelled back and altered established events, as we saw her as a part of established events in the first place.

Of course you could argue that she was never originally in Asylum and Snowmen when they aired, but our memories of those episodes were altered when she entered the Doctor's timestream

Sorry but that's simply not how it works.

The Doctor was in Cardiff before he was in Pompeii - but that doesn't mean that the Slitheen predate Vesuvius.

There's no predetermination in Doctor Who - he can land in 1852 never having been there before.

The Doctor experienced the altered timestream but that does not mean that it was the ONLY timestream that ever existed. The real "Clara prime" existed BEFORE the copies - the fact that the copies were able to time-travel does not and cannot alter that fact.

Keep in mind that BOTH of them - Clara and the Doctor - were independently operating outside of the normal flow of time.

the order of events is simple - he met Clara in our present, she travelled with him and eventually dived into his timestream at which point millions of "copies" of her "time-travelled" and one of them ended-up in the Dalek asylum and another in Victorian England. It's only because the Doctor was able to time-travel to those places that he encountered the copies before meeting the real Clara.

Would you argue that the Doctor never did anything or saved anyone cos it had already happened - all of it?

Not really, I don't think it was ever stated Gallifreyans were loomed full grown.

Yes, there is. That's what all the "fixed points in time," are all about. Particularly if you are a part of a fixed point in time. There have been numerous episodes where the Doctor was predetermined to do something. I believe "Fires of Pompei" was one of them, if I remember. He was always a part of those events, even though he never knew it until he went there.

That's why they've made a point of fixed points and time in flux. Where its in flux are places where the Doctor can alter the original timeline. Where its fixed, he cannot and in fact, can also be a part of the events that lead to it being the way it always was.

Steven Moffat is clearly a fan of predestination paradoxes and causal loops. They have occurred in several of his stories to date. "Blink," was entirely a causal loop. There's no possible way the events could have occurred in a strict cause - effect fashion. Sally couldn't have the transcript to give to the Doctor if she hadn't watched the DVD and the Doctor couldn't make the DVD without the transcript.

Same goes for the Lake Sinencio death of the Doctor. Amy, Rory and River couldn't have been there to witness the Doctor's death if his future self hadn't had invited them, but he would never have known to invite them if they hadn't been there to witness his death and set off the chain of events for his younger self. Let's not forget that he also invited his younger self, too.

The big one (that still causes masses of debate) is the causal loop that allowed the Doctor to escape the Pandorica. No single event is an absolute starting point and no point can occur any differently without the whole sequence of events unravelling. Its a completely closed loop, in which future events have to be predetermined in order for current events to take place. All events involving the Doctor.

It clearly is how it works. Sometimes. Hence the introduction of "wibbly-wobbly."

but we never saw a timestream where the Doctor didn't take the faulty Tardis .

Yes we did - we just weren't shown that specific event (how could we - there's no way to have him say "I'll take this wrong Tarids". What we DID see was the GI standing behind the first Doctor in a shot taken from the same episode and scene used to CGI the "meeting with Clara" clip,

What we also had was Vastra telling us in fairly precise detail that the Doctor's timestream was being rewritten - and showing us the effect that came from that cause (literally showing US as TV viewers cos we were shown in happening on screen) - and listing some of the events that had been erased. At that time, the original timestream had been replaced with GI's one - and then Clara jumped in and created a third version which negated the effects of the GI's interference - which was also illustrated on screen including showing dead characters being resurrected.

ok we may be talking at cross purposes ,

so to clarify - I think that 'originally' without GI or Clara interfering , the doctor took the faulty Tardis , then the GI somehow tricked him into taking a non-faulty Tardis (not sure why actually ) , then Clara re-wrote that and told the doc to take the faulty one .

do you agree with that ?

however - I don't think we saw the results of the doc taking the non-faulty tardis in the 2nd reality as written by the GI . then again I suppose they can't show everything in a brief montage .


.

We DID see the result - it was part of what caused entire galaxies to disappear from the sky and all of the other consequences. It wasn't possible to list every event from the Doctor's 2,000 years lifespan that was erased but the fact that they DID go to the trouble of showing Clara telling the Doctor that "You're about to make a mistake" means it was regarded by the writer as one of the half dozen or so most important things she did repair.

In fact, thinking about it - we WERE shown the previous timeline - in the opening scene when the tech's on Gallifrey specified that someone was stealing a knackered Tardis.

If it's a TARDIS repair shop all the TARDIS' there would be faulty in one way or another.

Until they were repaired and placed back where they could be used. Clara specified that they were working - just that the one he should take had a few quirks that would make life more interesting (and it needn't be "faulty" to be in a repair shop - might just be getting a paint job or upgrading the plumbing - or maybe they had MOT's)

well I don't have the eisode to hand so I may be on shaky ground , but - as I remember it - we saw the universe imploding after the GI went into doc's timestream , then Clara goes in and we see GI changing things and Clara repairing them as he went along .

but what I mean is - we never saw the timestream from the GI's pov before Clara went in and started re-writing (did we ?) .

so imagine we're GI , we go in and stop the doc from taking the faulty tardis , now that changes everything potentially , would any of the doctor's adventures as we know them have happened after that , would they all have been different ? the GI would presumably ruin any other good works , and etc. leading to the destruction of the universe .

ok , now onto a different point - then Clara goes in and starts undoing things , the GI must be wondering whats going on , didn't he just alter that ? now its back the way it was , wtf ?

We did - it was the same one we've been watching since 1963


Impossible to say exactly which "adventures" would be missed or handled differently - we just know that a significant factor in the adventures we've witnessed has been down to his Tardis getting him to "where he NEEDED to be" even if he didn't know it.

Some adventures directly lead to others so not going to planet A might mean he can't go to planet Y years later cos they destroyed each other in a war. And it's not all about prevent an adventure from starting - the GI may have let him land on Skaro but turned the Thals against him - so no medicine and Susan's dead.


Potentially, yes - but even with the GI in his timestream (and this is where it is 100% necessary for the "GI and Clara were always there" idea to be wrong) without the Doctor knowing his life was being dicked about with, he's still The Doctor - incredibly smart and resourceful. From the Doctor's point of view, that would BE his life and he'd be working to win just as hard and well as he does in the unaltered timestream. Ultimately, we know he "lost" cos we saw him dying but it wouldn't be as simple as his losing every battle and never been able to win any battle or prevent any disaster (otherwise, none of the plot could work cos we wouldn't have had Big Bang 2, for example)


It SEEMS to be "back the way it was" and the end result APPEARS TO BE the same (even if some detail of the way he got to that point are slightly different) - but we don't KNOW that everything's exactly as it should be.

In terms of the GI realising that his changes were being reversed, he would never know. Once "he" entered that timestream, he ceased to be a single consciousness and existed (much like Clara) as millions of separate GI's. Each GI-clone did something nasty but they each lived entirely in linear time (just like the Clara-clones that all had their own birth, life and death). THE GI ceased to exist so he simply couldn't know that something done yesterday had been undone by a Clara.

Example - GI-number 30001 tells the Doctor to take the first Tardis on the left. He then walks away and Clara-number 2745 turns up and says "Don't take that one". That GI has no idea she was even there - he's done his "job" and that's the end of it for him.

It's basically the same as the Clara's - Victorian Clara genuinely had no knowledge of Oswin.

Where it becomes interestingly different is that Clara-prime - the "real" Clara appears to have some "memory" of actions undertaken by her millions of "copies" - which should be impossible but can no doubt be given a suitable DW-ish explanation by the writers - plus, of course, she was saved from the timestream, unlike the Great Idiot (really should have planned ahead if he was that smart).

how can it be ? , GI is changing things , it can't be the same .

Cos the GI didn't enter the timestream until after the Doctor had died

The second line of the episode is "what kind of idiot would try to steal a faulty TARDIS?" and Clara doesn't say that the TARDIS has "a few quirks", she says "the navigation system's knackered".

It's not an idea original with Moffat, but the TARDIS was definitely faulty when the Doctor stole it.

You've taken that out of context. The post you're quoting was in response to a comment from another poster saying that ALL of the Tardises were "faulty" - I had, in fact, already stated that "someone was stealing a knackered Tardis."

You said that Clara specified that they were working, which she didn't, and that she said that the TARDIS the Doctor ended up stealing "had a few quirks", which she didn't.

Yes, we do see a progression from Marty's PoV. But he was in 1955 a second time before he knew he was going to be. He was in 1955 the second time without his earlier version being aware of it and without affecting those events. He was there to correct changes in the timeline he'd witnessed that were caused by Biff having the Sports Almanac- to stop them from happening.

It's arguable that the restored the timeline was exactly the way it always was or that it was similar, but subtly different. The logic in BTTF is dodgy, like it is in Doctor Who. It's possible to sensibly argue that the net result of the GI/Clara intervention subtly changed the timeline or kept it perfectly the same.

The flaw in your argument - that nothing changed until Gi and Clara entered the Doctor's timeline is that we saw splinters of Clara in the future and in the past before she entered his timeline from both Clara prime's PoV and the Doctor's.

How could he have met Oswin or Victorian Clara if she hadn't already entered his timeline?

You see? The truth is neither version quite makes sense.

The same way he can meet Orson Pink who hasn't been born yet - the effect of a cause that hasn't happened yet.

Why SHOULDN'T the Doctor meet "Oswin" before Clara enters the timestream? For him not to be able to do so makes the whole premise of the show impossible - that's just how time travel works in Doctor Who and always has done. The only difference here is that she "surfed a timestream" instead of "riding a blue box" - the end result is the same.