nuWho: sorry about this
Nov. 9th, 2013 09:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
avevale_intelligencerSo, from the trailer that's been popping up on Youtube, it seems that the 50th anniversary special will be about the Last Great Time War.
So let's talk about that. (Well, I'll talk. You listen and tell me if I'm wrong afterwards. Note: I'm ruling out arguments such as "it's just a kids' show" and "you need to get out more" on the grounds that good drama needs to have internal logic no matter what age group it's aimed at, and nuWho clearly aspires to be, and is commonly hailed as, good drama. I'm also ruling out "wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey" because it's an uncommonly stupid argument. It's "because I said so" given a pseudo-scientific coat of paint, okay? For everyone who isn't a time traveller, time is an orderly progression of events from past to future, and if that were not the default state of time then time travel in any meaningful sense would be impossible even if it weren't already, if you see what I mean. You can't drive if the ground isn't there. So. Taking the story seriously, and ignoring WWTW, off we go.)
As I understand it, we're postulating here a war between two implacably opposed species, the Daleks and the Time Lords. Both are completely committed to winning at all costs, both have sacrificed their guiding moral principles (non-interference; racial purity) on the altar of necessity, and both have unlimited resources and unlimited time and space travel capabilities. They can go anywhere in time and space within this universe.
Why is there anything left?
There's no place in space or time that could possibly remain untouched by this war. There's no planet, no solar system, no galaxy, that would not be claimed by one side, disputed by the other, and subsequently reduced to a small cloud of orbiting dust by one side or the other. Every war that has ever been fought would be subsumed into this war, every peace treaty nullified by it. There's no power that could possibly maintain neutrality, because they would have to be more powerful than both the Time Lords and the Daleks, and we'd have heard about them.
When did it start?
Nowhen. Unlimited time travel means that every moment in time, just as every planet in space, would become a battlefield. From the Big Bang to the Final Dribble, there would be fighting, with each side trying to go further back, grab an advantage, further forward, establish a beachhead. To seek a first outbreak of hostilities is meaningless. All the little local struggles in which the Doctor defeated the Daleks would be wiped away, consumed in the total onslaught of Time Lord forces against Dalek forces. That the war eventually came to a stalemate means that every cubic inch and every square second of space and time must have been involved somehow in this war.
When did it finish?
Again, meaningless. We've heard that there was a decisive final engagement, which the Doctor resolved, but when? If it was at the very end of the universe it would have been subject to what one might call the Very Good Dinner or Tersurus Effect, with ever more forces from both sides coming in beforehand to tip the balance. If it was at the very beginning, where that wouldn't be possible, then it can't have been the final engagement, because the whole subsequent universal history is full of battling Daleks and Time Lords. Anywhere in between is subject to both problems.
Did it actually happen at all?
We're told that it did. The Time Lords were apparently destroyed, the Daleks were defeated, all by the Doctor. He didn't make it unhappen by doing this. If he had, it would have been a huge paradox, since he couldn't have done it if the war hadn't happened. If he had simply removed the Time Lords from history, the Daleks would have had no opposition. If he had removed the Daleks from history, as Bad Wolf Billie apparently tried and failed to do, there would have been no need to destroy the Time Lords. He was forced to defeat both, which means the war happened.
And finally...
So the Last Great Time War happened, and the universe was burned, and the Doctor did his thing, and it ended. Who put everything back the way it had been? Who repopulated the devastated planets, who guided the multifarious histories of billions of worlds back into the old tracks, who rekindled the stars consumed to feed the engines of countless battle TARDISes?
The Doctor, all on his own, traumatised into Northernness and with a wounded TARDIS? I don't think so. Not even he.
So why is there anything left?
This is the problem when you put a bunch of words together and don't think about them. "The Last Great Time War" sounds fab, till you actually consider what it would involve.
I'll probably be watching. I owe the first forty-two years that much. But I don't expect it to make any sense.
So let's talk about that. (Well, I'll talk. You listen and tell me if I'm wrong afterwards. Note: I'm ruling out arguments such as "it's just a kids' show" and "you need to get out more" on the grounds that good drama needs to have internal logic no matter what age group it's aimed at, and nuWho clearly aspires to be, and is commonly hailed as, good drama. I'm also ruling out "wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey" because it's an uncommonly stupid argument. It's "because I said so" given a pseudo-scientific coat of paint, okay? For everyone who isn't a time traveller, time is an orderly progression of events from past to future, and if that were not the default state of time then time travel in any meaningful sense would be impossible even if it weren't already, if you see what I mean. You can't drive if the ground isn't there. So. Taking the story seriously, and ignoring WWTW, off we go.)
As I understand it, we're postulating here a war between two implacably opposed species, the Daleks and the Time Lords. Both are completely committed to winning at all costs, both have sacrificed their guiding moral principles (non-interference; racial purity) on the altar of necessity, and both have unlimited resources and unlimited time and space travel capabilities. They can go anywhere in time and space within this universe.
Why is there anything left?
There's no place in space or time that could possibly remain untouched by this war. There's no planet, no solar system, no galaxy, that would not be claimed by one side, disputed by the other, and subsequently reduced to a small cloud of orbiting dust by one side or the other. Every war that has ever been fought would be subsumed into this war, every peace treaty nullified by it. There's no power that could possibly maintain neutrality, because they would have to be more powerful than both the Time Lords and the Daleks, and we'd have heard about them.
When did it start?
Nowhen. Unlimited time travel means that every moment in time, just as every planet in space, would become a battlefield. From the Big Bang to the Final Dribble, there would be fighting, with each side trying to go further back, grab an advantage, further forward, establish a beachhead. To seek a first outbreak of hostilities is meaningless. All the little local struggles in which the Doctor defeated the Daleks would be wiped away, consumed in the total onslaught of Time Lord forces against Dalek forces. That the war eventually came to a stalemate means that every cubic inch and every square second of space and time must have been involved somehow in this war.
When did it finish?
Again, meaningless. We've heard that there was a decisive final engagement, which the Doctor resolved, but when? If it was at the very end of the universe it would have been subject to what one might call the Very Good Dinner or Tersurus Effect, with ever more forces from both sides coming in beforehand to tip the balance. If it was at the very beginning, where that wouldn't be possible, then it can't have been the final engagement, because the whole subsequent universal history is full of battling Daleks and Time Lords. Anywhere in between is subject to both problems.
Did it actually happen at all?
We're told that it did. The Time Lords were apparently destroyed, the Daleks were defeated, all by the Doctor. He didn't make it unhappen by doing this. If he had, it would have been a huge paradox, since he couldn't have done it if the war hadn't happened. If he had simply removed the Time Lords from history, the Daleks would have had no opposition. If he had removed the Daleks from history, as Bad Wolf Billie apparently tried and failed to do, there would have been no need to destroy the Time Lords. He was forced to defeat both, which means the war happened.
And finally...
So the Last Great Time War happened, and the universe was burned, and the Doctor did his thing, and it ended. Who put everything back the way it had been? Who repopulated the devastated planets, who guided the multifarious histories of billions of worlds back into the old tracks, who rekindled the stars consumed to feed the engines of countless battle TARDISes?
The Doctor, all on his own, traumatised into Northernness and with a wounded TARDIS? I don't think so. Not even he.
So why is there anything left?
This is the problem when you put a bunch of words together and don't think about them. "The Last Great Time War" sounds fab, till you actually consider what it would involve.
I'll probably be watching. I owe the first forty-two years that much. But I don't expect it to make any sense.
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no subject
Date: 2013-11-09 12:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-14 04:28 pm (UTC)When a Tardis seems to contain and control its own black hole, one limit is the rest mass of the universe. The numbers have a lot of zeroes, but how much energy can you get out of such a system? There might be infinities, but they're on the far side of an event horizon.