Comments on: When is a TV Show About Time Travel Not About Time Travel?

By: Fiona

Fiona — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 15:39:41 +0000

I'm not entirely sure yet, actually. I adore Stephen Moffat, don't get me wrong – did you see Jekyll a few years back?? And his episodes from the last few series have been amazing. BUT they have also been very self-contained, kind of weird and off the wall. And that's a really good thing – two or three times in a series. I wonder whether Moffat-style overarching plotlines are going to be (fingers crossed) as brilliant as his one or two episode ones, or whether, well, they might just be a bit too weird to work. Who knows? We shall surely see.

As for the workings of time travel… *brainache* I think I'm going to need a pen and paper…

By: jenny_mohan

jenny_mohan — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 00:40:36 +0000

become part of the tweeting hive mind. I like Twitter. S'good.

By: Dickie

Dickie — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 23:58:03 +0000

Not being part of the Tweeting Hive Mind, I can't reply directly to the tweet so I'll do it here…

The link you posted to the Charlie Brooker thing – its sickening how true it is, innit?

By: aiusepsi

aiusepsi — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 21:41:06 +0000

Well, we don't know terribly well what the Physics of time travel are. The experiment hasn't been done, so it's all a big what-if right now.

I'd say what's most likely is that scenarios which are explicit inconsistent paradoxes, e.g. going back in time and killing your own grandfather, are probably impossible, but I can't think of a reason why a sitation with looped causality like in Blink would obviously be forbidden, as it is at the very least consistent.

As to how such a thing would form, given that classically it appears impossible, I would make an appeal to quantum theory; a system is allowed to pass into classically allowed states by passing through classically forbidden states. A quantum gravitational fluctuation could well be responsible for such an apparently paradoxical structure to come into existence.

And yeh, I'm going to love the Moffat era

By: aiusepsi

aiusepsi — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 21:41:06 +0000

Well, we don't know terribly well what the Physics of time travel are. The experiment hasn't been done, so it's all a big what-if right now.

And yeh, I'm going to love the Moffat era

By: Dickie

Dickie — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 18:04:09 +0000

I really think Moffat being in charge is only gonna be a good thing. I've not yet seen a bad show that he's written, and his previous on Doctor Who has been excellent (although in Blink, wasn't there a problem with the way time travel was portrayed? The whole "conversation through time" thing couldn't happen surely, because for the Doctor to speak to her requires the guy to note down her responses to the Doctor talking to her, which requires the Doctor to talk to her, which... you get the picture. You're likely to know more than me about this, so plausible or not?)

Oddly enough, I watched this film last night which is all about time travel. It has Chris O'Dowd (Roy from the excellent IT Crowd) in it, and it's pretty funny. Worth watching.