Army Of Ghosts (2812/212)

[iLemon]

For those of you asking about Jack Harkness, they never said what timeline the series Torchwood would be in, there's every chance that it could take place in the future or the past meaning Jack wasn't there in episode 12.

[DigiFluid]

Yes, but that requires smarter people then myself to understand it....

Oh not really. It's actually really rather simple when you break it down to its most basic principles.

Simply put, one cannot alter the past, because the past has already happened. Suppose you travel back in time, and using the proverbial paradox, plot to murder your grandfather--thereby preventing your own existence, which would prevent him from being murdered in the first place, and so on.

The Novikov Principle essentially states that this would be impossible. Something would happen which would prevent you from doing so. The gun might jam, or you'd lose your nerve, or someone would walk into the path of the bullet at the last conceivable second. Anything may happen, but something will happen which would prevent any temporal paradox from occurring.

According to this, history is essentially written in stone; nothing can alter what has already happened. What happens as a result of time travellers has already been written. The example on the Wiki article is fantastic:

Potential implications for free will
In another example, let us examine the following situation: A person travels back in time to discover the cause of a famous fire. While in the building where the fire started, he or she accidentally knocks over a kerosene lantern and causes a fire, the same fire that would inspire him or her, years later, to travel back in time. This situation is entirely consistent — after travelling back in time the person "fulfills" the events in the "past" which "already happened" (from the perspective of the future). In this example the person lacked free will — it is impossible for him or her not to have set off the fire -- that would be inconsistent. Even if the person somehow knew that this would happen, he or she would be somehow bound to "follow" history by the self-consistency principle. Note that there are other equally plausible series of events for this case. For example, the fire could have never happened, and the person would then never travel back in time to discover its cause and make it happen. This is also entirely consistent. Thus we see that under this principle there may be many valid "solutions" to the same initial conditions.

[iLemon]

In another example, let us examine the following situation: A person travels back in time to discover the cause of a famous fire. While in the building where the fire started, he or she accidentally knocks over a kerosene lantern and causes a fire, the same fire that would inspire him or her, years later, to travel back in time. This situation is entirely consistent — after travelling back in time the person "fulfills" the events in the "past" which "already happened"

I disagree, if that person who travelled back in time started that fire then they would never have had the need to travel back in time in the first place. You cannot fulfil a past event, the past happens before the future, past events have already happened and when someone from the future goes back in time they alter these past events resulting in either a new timeline or a parallel universe.

[The Signal]

1) How is Earth in danger when we know that humanity survives another 5 billion years or so, and we actually watch the Earth get destroyed last season? That killed a lot of suspense for me.

Did you even watch the unquiet dead? Rose made the same comment you do and the Doctor put her straight, Time is forever changing, simple, it is not a straight line.

The episode was extremly predictable, I felt like I was watching WWE (I was saying what was happening five minutes before it happened.....

You have admitted yourself you have seen spoilers on the net.

then I turned to my wife and said, "I could write this s?#t!")

No offence, but I doubt that you could.

7) Speaking of which, hard to belive that next week is the last episode. 13 episodes in a season? Man, that's too little. I don't know how the British do it! I go nuts when the Olympics are on, and I have to wait two weeks to see a new episode of The Apprentice.

We have smaller budgets, so to spread that budget, we have less episodes.

8) I said it once, I will say it 1000 times, I don't belive Rose will die next week. It's too obvious. If Satan was so good at predicting deaths why didn't he know he was going to be thrown out of a spaceship window and into a blackhole? I mean, he is Satan!!!

I have to agree with you there, it seems too obvious.

[DigiFluid]

So, I had a thought on the whole Rose death issue. Dimensions are being broken, right? Suppose this is an AU Rose doing the narration?

Yes I know there was no Rose in the AU in Cybermen/Age of Steel, but suppose there actually had been and Jackie had given her up for adoption as a child. Not exactly farfetched, considering the AU Jackie we saw there.

[ShadowMaat]

The Novikov Principle essentially states that this would be impossible. Something would happen which would prevent you from doing so. The gun might jam, or you'd lose your nerve, or someone would walk into the path of the bullet at the last conceivable second. Anything may happen, but something will happen which would prevent any temporal paradox from occurring.

So it's the idea of "history" being self-correcting? That's kind of a fun line of thought. It gets played with a bit in one of my favorite books, To Say Nothig of the Dog where they talk about historians going back and trying to change the outcome of various battles and whatnot and the sometimes extreme lengths history (for lack of a better word) will go to in order to keep the outcome the same. One of the examples given involved a miniscule change decades before the event and other things were smaller like a horse losing a shoe or a message getting smudged. I should look that up, it was quite nifty.

[pbellosom]

Did you even watch the unquiet dead? Rose made the same comment you do and the Doctor put her straight, Time is forever changing, simple, it is not a straight line.

Infact in an earlier draft of the episode the doctor proved this point by taking Rose back to her own time and seeing the world being run by the Gelth.

i thought of another one of those points I forgot yesterday. If only the population of London was cyberised in the AU and they were all defeated by removing the emotional inhibitor, how were there so many cybermen?

[Wraith Scientist]

Infact in an earlier draft of the episode the doctor proved this point by taking Rose back to her own time and seeing the world being run by the Gelth.

i thought of another one of those points I forgot yesterday. If only the population of London was cyberised in the AU and they were all defeated by removing the emotional inhibitor, how were there so many cybermen?

There were tons more Lumic factories around the world, and in the TARDISODE it said that thousands has gone missing in South America: presumably converted into Cybermen, although London seems to have been Lumic's first attempt at actually taking control and forcibly converting everyone

Presumably, there has been a long war between humans and cybermen in the AU, then the Cybermen found the void ship and followed it to the Doctor's Earth.

There must be an AU Doctor somewhere

[Darkseid]

Do the Dr Who episodes make sense to you? Whenever he goes to a particular time something happens that shouldn't have happened, and then the Dortor intervenes and corrects the problem. What doesnt make sense is how these events happen in the first place, or whether they were supposed to happen and the Doctor interfered with its course.
There was an episode in Season 27 called Bad Wolf where the future had been altered because of something the Doctor changed in the past. The future is constantly changing because of the Doctor's intervening, Torchwood wouldn't exist if it wasn't for the Doctor.

The Doctor cant go back and save them, remember the episode Fathers Day where Rose saved her father? You cant stop death.

THAT WAS THE WHOLE POINT!!!!

You seem to be missing completly what I was saying. What I am saying is this; I don't believe Rose will die. Just because Satan said it in one episode doesn't mean it will happen.

Do the Doctor Who episodes make sense to me?? WTF does that mean? Not everywhere he goes does something happen that isn't supposed to.

Sometimes he thwarts a government.

Sometimes he goes back in time and meets Aztecs.

Sometimes he goes to the future to watch the Earth be destroyed.

Sometimes he gets caught up in a drug smuggling opperation.

Sometimes he fights a warewolf

Sometimes he visits the Tomb of The Cybermen.

Sometimes he solves a murder mystery.

None of these stories has anything to do with time being messed with by anyone or anything. If time has zero consistancy in the show from episode to episode then the whole series is moot and a colossal waste of the veiwers time.

Time is not the main theme or issue with Doctor Who. It's a means to get various stories told to the veiwer.

[Darkseid]

Oh not really. It's actually really rather simple when you break it down to its most basic principles.

Simply put, one cannot alter the past, because the past has already happened. Suppose you travel back in time, and using the proverbial paradox, plot to murder your grandfather--thereby preventing your own existence, which would prevent him from being murdered in the first place, and so on.

The Novikov Principle essentially states that this would be impossible. Something would happen which would prevent you from doing so. The gun might jam, or you'd lose your nerve, or someone would walk into the path of the bullet at the last conceivable second. Anything may happen, but something will happen which would prevent any temporal paradox from occurring.

According to this, history is essentially written in stone; nothing can alter what has already happened. What happens as a result of time travellers has already been written. The example on the Wiki article is fantastic:

Which practically prooves my point....

Since the events from The End of the World took place in the past from the point of view from New Earth, it's written in stone and can't be changed.

Ok, let's put this in a more simple way;

If anyone here actually thinks they are going to destroy the Earth and everyone on it for the sake of this show, you are seriously fooling yourself. They would NEVER do such a thing.

So, with that in mind, the "suspense" for me is non-existant. The only real suspense I have felt with the series all season was in The Impossible Planet cliffhanger. They could have destroyed that planet in a moments notice and it would have worked story wise. All these Earth bound episodes aren't doing anything for me at all because I know they are not going to be hurting Earth. Earth will be just fine. Most of the "suspense" of Earth getting "invaded" was worn off for me during the Pertwee years.

[silverdamascus]

For those of you asking about Jack Harkness, they never said what timeline the series Torchwood would be in, there's every chance that it could take place in the future or the past meaning Jack wasn't there in episode 12.

Huh, I'm sure I read somewhere, Radio Times I think that it was set in modern day.

[beale947]

THAT WAS THE WHOLE POINT!!!!

You seem to be missing completly what I was saying. What I am saying is this; I don't believe Rose will die. Just because Satan said it in one episode doesn't mean it will happen.

Do the Doctor Who episodes make sense to me?? WTF does that mean? Not everywhere he goes does something happen that isn't supposed to.

Sometimes he thwarts a government.

Sometimes he goes back in time and meets Aztecs.

Sometimes he goes to the future to watch the Earth be destroyed.

Sometimes he gets caught up in a drug smuggling opperation.

Sometimes he fights a warewolf

Sometimes he visits the Tomb of The Cybermen.

Sometimes he solves a murder mystery.

None of these stories has anything to do with time being messed with by anyone or anything. If time has zero consistancy in the show from episode to episode then the whole series is moot and a colossal waste of the veiwers time.

Time is not the main theme or issue with Doctor Who. It's a means to get various stories told to the veiwer.

Doctor who isn't about the time travel, thats jsut a great plot device, its the great things that happen in he episodes, that is doctor who

[iLemon]

Huh, I'm sure I read somewhere, Radio Times I think that it was set in modern day.

Did it? Well then maybe the Doctor arrived before Jack joined?

[Darkseid]

Doctor who isn't about the time travel, thats jsut a great plot device, its the great things that happen in he episodes, that is doctor who

Didn't I just say that...?

[ShadowMaat]

My guess would've been that the finale will set up the spinoff by (re)introducing Jack and arranging his place in the Torchwood hierarchy.

Unless he's been there all along and Nasty Lady is just his henchrat and he'll step from behind the curtain next week.