Welcome back. Hope you had a nice time

Thank you, it was very good.

I'm in the minority on this one.After a promising start it all went a bit messy for me.And everybody except the Dr and Jemma were just one dimensional IMO.And the D Tennant impression at the end,oh dear.

Two dimensional, surely?

I haven't had the time or stomach to read through every post here, but to my shame, I've only just cottoned on to the nice little self-referential in-joke:
"This plane is protected!" (the underlined word would of course normally end in a "t"!)

Another great episode.

Why would reading it as 'planet' be an in-joke?

"Plane" seemed like a perfectly reasonable thing to call it as "plane", in this case, is essentially another name for dimension. They were encroaching on the 3rd dimension and that dimension (i.e. plane) is protected. I don't think there were any clever word games going on, IMO.

No it isn't another name for dimension. It is a 2D surface that is flat. It was used as a barrier. Also in response to your earlier posts the TARDIS is not a Tesseract because a Tesseract does not allow a small 3D object to contain a larger 3D object.

It could be seen as a clever spin on Ten's speech to the Sycorax at the end of "The Christmas Invasion", i.e. "this planet..."
Last edited by ProfMarius : 24-10-2014 at 13:39

Have you never played D&D? There are other planes of existence. "Plane" is a common term in Fantasy to refer to other dimensions. That's the context it was used in, as far as I can see.

As for the tesseract idea I think you are just not grasping the concept but I don't want to belabour the point. Let's just agree to disagree.

No I never played D&D (no idea what D&D stands for) I have however done basic Maths and that barrier is a plane.

As for a Tesseract, I know what it is it does not allow for the concept of the TARDIS.

Sure, if that's all it was.

The outside of the TARDIS could be the projection of one 3D portion of the tesseract into "our" 3D universe.

By analogy... Imagine a hole or tear in a 2D plane punched through by a hollow cube or square cross-section tube. How big would the inside of the square tube appear to be to a 2D entity? Could it appear to be bigger? The answer is yes.

How would the 2D entity conceptualise the "space" in the tube?

Entering the tube they'd be in 3D space without being able to perceive it. And one face of the tube could be much longer and so bigger in area than the area of the intersection with the 2D plane. Thus it could easily appear to be "bigger" to a 2D entity.

And so, by analogy, could the TARDIS. Just increase the dimension count by 1.

You're failing to think inside the tesseract.

Finally saw it last night ......

best start ive seen for nu who. novel problem with tardis. with good special effects. references to Flatland (the famous book). and Banksy (artist). thought it was going to be the first nu who I liked. but after 15 mins it was "just vampires, as usual" oh dear ......

i suspect moffy had the bright idea of "flattening things" - it is a good one - but then just "sletched stuff in" around it ......

re dimensionalising a tardis has cropped up quite a few times in old who. it is not new.

4D was a victorian "explanation" for spiritualism. supposedly how ghosts appeared
and vanished ......

note that, 4D is "a different thing" from the 4 dimensions of minkowski spacetime through which the tardis supposedly travels ......

He didn't.

thanks 4 the link. i never thought of tex avery cartoons but anyway dr who is not really about "toons" ..... although much of nu who is "almost video games".

those were interesting first ideas for the sfx,which could have been much better. personally i though making the flatworlders become 3D was a big mistake. takes something very eerie and frightening and makes it "just one more monster" ......

That's precisely the explanation I was getting at.

Thinking about it, there is another possibility. Passing through the TARDIS doors could, be the equivalent of moving in a "direction" within this 4th (or 5th, or whatever) dimension.

So the 2D to 3D analogy would be like having a postage stamp on top of large poster. A 2D creature could walk all around the postage stamp and then enter the doors to find themselves moved downwards (a direction foreign and unperceivable to them) leaving them inhabiting a much bigger 2 dimensional space than the one they had envisaged when walking round the outside of the postage stamp.

I have found that maths has a lot of definitions for things that have other meanings to the non-mathematician!

Anyway, this link should help:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plane_(...ns_%26_Dragons)

Maybe it's just because I've been playing D&D since 1981 that the term "Plane" when used in genre shows pretty much always means another plane of existence rather than just a 2 dimensional area.

I found this link which shows other places the trope is used:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...ElementalPlane