As a lover of DW and the paranormal I have studied time anomalies for many years. Given the theme of the show it is perhaps not too surprising that the last episode of the new DW series has cast up a rather curious synchronicity.

This term was coined by quantum physicist Wolfgang Pauli and psychoanalyst Carl Jung and is in essence a meaningful coincidence, or a series of chance events that go beyond what you might expect to find within the bounds of logic.

I have unearthed many over the years in my writing - and have experienced several very weird ones first hand.

The DW link comes via the final episode of the US TV series 'Cold Case', transmitted by ITV just a few days after the last DW episode - but screened in the US during May. Clearly this was written independently of any DW link, making it, thus, just a synchronicity.

In the final episode the main character in 'Cold Case' - a woman detective called Lily (ie a plant, as is Rose), hunted a serial killer who had been taking the eyes out of the victims. There were several mentions throughout the early part of the episode to the term 'the darkness' - which at first seemned puzzling but led up to being a clue to the blindness that had been envoking this ritual. This would have resonated with any Who fan.

In the closing tense scenes Lily is trapped alone by a mad killer who holds her life in his hands. He is played (very chillingly) by the actor who also plays the doctor in Star Trek: Enterprise - ie whos is best known as a space travelling doctor.

Even more weirdly as he taunts Lily's would be rescuers with the claim that they cannot save her he actually sounds off to her a scene where he talks about the big bad wolf!

If I was not so used to the way the universe works through the wonders of synchronicity (this is not the weirdest case in my files by any means) I might not have had such a great chuckle.

Of course, if RTD had attempted to script such a tale then we would all consider it far fetched.

As I have noticed over the years, thinking about time, space, anomalies and coincidence seems to trigger the phenomenon into being - probably as it is connected with both quantum mechanics and its basis in statistics and the collective unconscious.

Still it can be fun.

Have you seen the pilot episode of 'The Lone Gunmen' - The basic plot, and the way it foreshadows the events of 911 (by six months!) is incredible - link: http://killtown.911review.org/lonegunmen.html

And I was listening to the Police album 'Synchronicity' when I spotted this thread! (actually I wasn't - but if I liked the Police and had that album, then I might have been!)

Yes, I saw the LG episode - although it was also predicted to some degree in a novel a few years earlier. Rather like the novel that 'foresaw' the sinking of the Titanic (The Wreck of the Titan) it is at times possible to use current knowledge to make educated guesses, rather like Arthur C Clarke and satellites or HG Wells and aerial bombing. So we sometimes have to be a little careful; although this was weird.

I had better not be tempted to describe my 'Police' / Radio story as it is rather off topic (unless you consider this subject SF in its own right).

But if someone asks then I will!

Dear Jaycee Dove,
Tell us your Police/Radio story! Please? In a thread about synchronicity, who's to say what is off-topic? Someone else might have had the same experience - or will have later!?

Okay, you did ask.

It was May 1983 and I had a weekly radio slot in Liverpool. Each week I presented a feature about the paranormal and announced that my next appearance would cover 'synchronicity. After the programme I was called in by the producer who said, 'Cant you call it something else...Our audience is young, record buying teens who will never have heard of that word.' So I agreed to stick to meaningful coincidence.

A day or so later I was awoken at home (on the Wirral) by the police and had to assist them with enquiries as some thoughtful robbers had dumped their get-away car outside our house overnight.

Then I got a phone call, channeled to me from a science institute, in which a witness described seeing a 'star fall from the sky' the previous night. I thought it was a meteor but promised to investigate. I

I went into the studios that morning to record my trail for the 'meaningful coincidence' programme to be greeted with the shock local news that two youths had died overnight. They had abandoned bikes, walked across a railway line in the early hours and been hit by a freight train. I checked the Radio City news files and it turned out that the location and timing was exacty where the star fall had just been reported to me in that phone call.

I went into the studio to chat with a friend who was the on air DJ (during the time that he was playing records) and ask his advice. I said that I was not sure whether to call the police about the sighting as it might / might not be relevant. However, the police were puzzled as to why the youths left their bikes to go onto the line. I suspected that they might have seen the UFO (or meteor) and wandered into tragedy as a result. But dare I implicate the caller to me by telling the police of their innocently reported story?

Even as I discussed this with the DJ there was yet another huge shock. At the time a large glass partition separated the studio from the reception and I watched as two uniformed police walked in to there right on cue. I turned to the DJ and said my mind had been made up for me. They were actually there to interview another DJ for a story that made the national press next day.

Anyhow I knew that I had to tell the police what I knew - however stupid it sounded. They were grateful for my theory.

On my way out of the studio to get the bus home I was handed a free newspaper containing news of forthcoming music releases. There was a big story about the soon to be released album by The Police with the title 'Synchronicity'. I had never heard of it before as it was not yet out.

I did the radio show a few days later, stuck to using the word synchronicity and told my producer not to worry. Less than a month later the album was number one, the single (also called 'synchronicity') was riding high and teenage record buying listeners to Radio City all knew the word.

But nothing could prepare me for the first time that I heard Sting's words for that song that summer. I would love to know where he got them from.

As if they were written for me there is a line in that song that goes ' - A star fall, a phone call, it joins all - synchronicity.

That is a bizarre collection of 'meaningful co-incidences' - but as Terry Pratchett said, million-to-one chances come up nine times out of ten!

A friend rang me up a good few years ago, and excitedly told me he'd been helping a girl with her history homework. 'Amazing,' he said, ' she asked me the date of (can't remember which) battle and I guessed the date!'
'17th August 1917' I said.
'Yeah - but I guessed it! What's the chances of that?'
And so had I! - but it was just a lucky guess. It is odd, but the trillions-to-one chances through Universal history that brought me in front of this computer right now are far more mind-boggling!

Hmm, not sure if the following counts as synchronicity but it's a pretty amazing coincidence.

My wife is expecting a baby and as you'd expect has linked up with other expectant mums. She had lunch with one of them the other day and she happened to mention my company. She said she knew someone else from my company, who turned out to be my boss. She was the one who employed my company to provide IT support for her company and I just happen to be on that support team.

Synchronicity, aka "it happens" (I may have left a couple of letters off that first word )


You meant Sky One, of course


Damn! I stopped watching CC a while back. Got bored with it. I wondered if/when that character would come back. Shoulda guessed really, shouldn't I?

You meant Sky One, of course


Was waiting to see who would spot my absolutely deliberate mistake...



As if ITV would transmit anything that good.


Coincidence can, of course, just be coincidence.

Another time when I was working at Radio City the DJ I knew well there, Brian Ford, was rumoured to be moving on but when I asked his producer about this the story was denied. Leaving the studio I nearly fell over a billboard carrying the story 'Ford's Boss Denies Rumours'

Spot on and personally meaningful, but refering to the car company, of course. So this was great fun but really just a coincidence - no more.

We all experience so many events that sooner or later something is bound to match up to facts that we seem to have seen in advance or been alerted to via a chain of coincidence.

As I was constantly reminded when talking to my quantum
physics professor at uni about the (to me) extraordinary precognitive dream that got me into this sort of thing - there are billions of dreams dreamed every night, it is statistically certain that by sheer chance some of them will match a future reality. We ignore the 99.99999% of those that do not match and invest meaning in the tiny few that do. Hence the phenomenon of 'dreaming the future'.

Sounds great in theory until you start having the sort of experiences where the odds of the dream matching reality are trillions to one against. When that happens often enough you start to wonder if qauntum physicists are really all knowing.

To be a synchronicity the event has to have some kind of emotional meaning. Indeed the emotional link is the key to most time anomalies, as I have found again and again in my research.

BTW - If you thought the Sting case was a strange one I might get time to tell you about how Quatermass and the Space Shuttle earn their place in synchronistic heaven.

No, Jaycee, none of us are remotely interested in that story.

Quantum statistics suggest that there is a 50/50 chance of everything happening. Example; I wake up tomorow morning and either aliens have landed on Earth or they haven't. I win the lottery tonight or I don't. I like this way of thinking.

To a degree; although it is more complicated than that as many events do not just have two possible outcomes. Even a toin coss could feasibly include the coin standing on its edge,making three options to take into account from what seems a simple50/50 heads\tails choice.

Then again there is the many worlds interpretation in which all the possibilities happen and reeality splits at every intersection into a multitude of new universes.

This solves some of the riddles posed by quantum physics but at the expense of a multiverse so vast that it is essentially infinite - and in which every possible event happens in some version or other.

In other words a universe would exist where you win the lottery and another where you invent the lottery as both are credible events. But a universe might not exist where you turn into a cat at midnight, as that involves events that seem incompatible with science.

But then, does a universe exist where you never die owing to future advances of medicine? Is that credible? If so, then because some version of you in some (more probably in many) universes somewhere is immortal have we just proven that we are all immortal via the many worlds theory?

Quantum mechanics is the physicists equivalent of a nightmare, not least because it makes time travel credible as well.

Hope to post that shuttle/Quatermass tale tomorrow.

I'd still split the coin toss into 50/50 odds (perhaps this isn't called quantum statistics but it's something like that). Anyway, the coin either lands on heads or it doesn't (50/50) lands on tails or it doesn't (50/50) on it's side or it doesn't (50/50) it doesn't land at all or it does (50/50).

i was trying to remember the name of that book yesterday! how very odd.

i also used to get frequently weirded out when i was younger, because i would often get an urge to see a certain film and then find it on tv the next week.

If I see an odd episode of, say, the Professionals or the Sweeney, on a theme night or something, it'll almost always be one I've seen before, even though I've watched hardly any episodes of either. (Unless they were both really that formulaic?!)

Nope - that happens all the time with me. The one that springs to mind is *shudder* "Father Dowling Investigates" I only ever see the one with his evil twin...

i quite often use this method of thinking, i.e can i do something about it, yes or no.
If no then dont worry about it, its gonna happen why get stressed
If yes then- well will i do something etc etc

comes in handy sometimes

Originally Posted by chrisfass:
“i was trying to remember the name of that book yesterday! how very odd.

i also used to get frequently weirded out when i was younger, because i would often get an urge to see a certain film and then find it on tv the next week.”

One of the working theories about deja vu, the peculiar sensation that most of us experience from time to time, connects it with quantum physics.

At a quantum level all possible states of any event, such as a sub atomic interaction, have a virtual reality until something occurs that will cause one particular version of that interaction to crystalise out. It is sometimes called 'collapsing the wave function'.

There are various theories as to what turns virtual reality into actual reality - they are as wide ranging as just some form of mathematics, our consciousness during the act of observation - and even in some versions an unseen force that we might as well call God!

If consciousness is involved then deja vu could be a product of the mind being aware millseconds ahead of the actual crystalising of the myriad possible states that might exist.

We will have seen these ahead of time (via the neurones in one part of our brain) detecting the various possible outcomes one of which almost instantly then comes into existence.

Our mind may well then perceive this access to the quantum fluctuation of possibilities as knowing just beforehand what was about to happen.

And if you did not understand that - dont worry - most physicists find quantum physics harder to follow than the average episode of DW.

Of course, taking this a little further - if we have a role in collapsing the wave function - it is even possible tha somehow we determine future quantum interactions - meaning that if you want to see a particular film and it appears this coincidence need not be merely a chance occurrence.

Or then again.....

On the Off-topic thread twenty minutes ago, I noted that a once-regular poster hadn't been on for ages (six days actually!) - I posted the comment, and found that, in the thirty seconds or so it took to type, she'd posted, apologising for being away for so long!
I automatically thought: Synchronicity!

My 6 day absence was in fact, an elaborately planned demostration of the theory!

By the way,I had not forgotten about posting the Quatermass/Space Shuttle synchronicity.

My problem is that I reread my notes last night and realised that I had devoted an entire chapter to it in a book 10 years ago and it has grown since then owing to subsequent developments.

In order to do it justice the message would probably end up far too long to post on here without DS blowing a fuse or most readers thinking I was hogging the site with a personal story.

Jaycee, this is your thread, and I for one would be interested! Can you post it in installments?

[QUOTE=onion3000]On the Off-topic thread twenty minutes ago, I noted that a once-regular poster hadn't been on for ages (six days actually!) - I posted the comment, and found that, in the thirty seconds or so it took to type, she'd posted, apologising for being away for so long!
I automatically thought: Synchronicity! [/quote]

Actually,one of the few things that I can say with assurance about synchronicity is that it becomes more commonplace in your life the moment that you start to think about it.

This oddity has been recorded numerous times during studies and may just be because this phenomenon happens at a subconscious level that for 99% of the time we consciously ignore. Once we raise it into conscious thought then we suddenly spot it happening as a regular part of that great collective consciousness that is the sea of life.

It is like not noticing the fact that you are breathing in and out - until reading this sentence and suddenly you all pay attention to this act. It occurs constantly below the threshold of your normal awareness but needs to be brought into your awareness. Then it suddenly 'materialises' into your perception - even though it was there all of the time.

Ditto synchronicity, it would seem.

Okay - part one!

In November l983 I was in the US researching a book. I was lucky enough to be introduced to and then have dinner with an astronaut planning the first shuttle mission that was going to carry a civilian passenger. We discussed at length who this might be.

A few days later I was again lucky to go to Cape Canaveral and watch a shuttle launch.

When writing up my book (which was about UFOs) I chose a chapter title for the data researched on this trip 'Houston - we have a problem!' There were reasons for this (to do with a case in Texas and NASA). But you will, of course, know that this quote comes from the Apollo `13 flight when the capsule was named Columbia and there was indeed a big problem with the mission.

So far, so trivial. The book was published in October l984 and I went on a tour of promotions around the UK. The night before I was due to go to Wolverhampton I had a terrible dream in which I saw the space shuttle take off,its fuel tank explode and I woke up in a cold sweat.

Off I went by train to do that days interviews and approaching Wolverhampton a few hours after the dream the train was halted. We crawled forward and right next to the window where I was sat passed a scene of devastation. Fire crews and ambulances were there only a few feet from where I sat a some kind of plant.

Only when I got to the radio station to do my first interview did I learn that there had been a massive explosion in a chemical tank and in the resulting disaster at least one life was lost.

I thought that this tragedy had 'broke my dream' - with the link being the chemical tank/exolosion and the shuttle symbolising this as something in my recent experience that served this illustrative purpose. Dreams nearly always work like that - rarely being exact visions of future events but forming a personal image that reinforces the emotional impact.

Shaken, but in a sense relieved that my dream had not spelt danger to the astronaut that I had befriended,I thought that this was the end of the story.

It was only to be the introduction.

See, much easier in installments.... Now, onto part two....