Ok, so, in tonights episode, it was mentioned that the future can be altered. If so, when they engage the Tardis's time drive to move forward in time, how do they know where they're going? Is there, from the moment they leave, only one possible path forward?
My thought would be that they know where (date) in time they are going, but not necessarily know what that future would be like.
Case in point... in an upcoming episide, |spoiler: Rose, while in her past saves her Dad from being killed, thus altering the past and present. The Doctor becomes VERY cross with her for doing it, because all Hell breaks loose! |
Well, there are a couple of decades of history, but my understanding is that it is all relative, so to speak. The Timelords have a strange relationship with time/space, and seem to be in their own independent timelines (the convoluted history of the Daleks, for example).
Makes perfect sense if you think along the scope of infinite parallel realities. For every action, there are an infinite number of possible reactions, and every single action and associated reaction can and will occur, each to its own instance of time passage.
Instead of "manipulating time," all one would really be doing is choosing to follow an alternate course of events. The "original" still occurs, isn't altered or destroyed in any way, and the occupants of that reality are completely oblivious to a change in the timeline.
Was it just me, or did anyone else have trouble with understanding some of the thickly accented English banter? It took several times before I figured out what the carriage driver was saying, for example.
I like Robert A. Heinlein's explanation much better in "Number of the Beast" it just makes more sense. Heinlein says that any changes result in a split leaving one universe that you failed to make the change and another where you succeeded. Anyway it's a great read.
The fun part of all this is, it seems like the Tardis is able to navigate, for the most part, to a specific point in a specific time-space. Either that, or the doctor's mind is so infinite or so well tuned to shifting space-time realities that he's aware of what's going on no matter which when they arrive into.
The fun part of all this is, it seems like the Tardis is able to navigate, for the most part, to a specific point in a specific time-space. Either that, or the doctor's mind is so infinite or so well tuned to shifting space-time realities that he's aware of what's going on no matter which when they arrive into.
And somehow they manage to see through time to what will be at their destination and not materialize, say, inside a nuclear reactor core!
