Any Doctor Who fans?

[Kovu]

Okay it occured to me while I was doing an exam this morning, why doesn't Doctor Who ever go back in time and save people that die partly due to him. Like I was watching one with my brother the other day and why doesn't he just go back in time and save Rose?

He's not much of a time travelling lord.

 

[Fnaar]

You can't meddle with things like that, or the vortex will collapse!

 

[MadoneRider1991]

You can't meddle with things like that, or the vortex will collapse!

indeed

 

[Arch]

Okay it occured to me while I was doing an exam this morning, why doesn't Doctor Who ever go back in time and save people that die partly due to him. Like I was watching one with my brother the other day and why doesn't he just go back in time and save Rose?

He's not much of a time travelling lord.

Well, a) he can't, that would be messing with time and he's not allowed and it would make for lousy drama. It has to matter if someone dies. If anyone could just be saved by going back, what would be the point of watching? (Well, in my case, to drool over David Tennant, but you know what I mean)

 

[TheDoctor]

There's a limit to how much you can interfere with the fabric of space and time. Remember the episode 'Fathers Day' where Rose saves her dad from getting killed, and those big pterodactyl things start destroying the world?
.
.
.
I've obviously thought about this far too much...

 

[Aperitif]

With a bit of luck he could vortex himself backwards and throttle the tosser from the BBC who commissioned this tripe in the first place.

 

[marinyork]

It was like that in the original series. Three companions died. If they went back to save them there'd be two versions of people wandering around, which was never a problem in some stories!

The Doctor was also put on trial for meddling in the affairs of others, although part of that was fabricated itself!

 

[MacB]

Ah, to meddle or not to meddle, that is the paradox of time, the first time I remember itm being approached in any 'seriousness' was with Tom Baker. When he had the opportunity to destroy the Daleks at their inception, he chose not to.

 

[Mr Pig]

With a bit of luck he could vortex himself backwards and throttle the tosser who commissioned this tripe in the first place.

Best to think of it as a bad children's program that some simple-minded adults also watch.

 

[Kovu]

So basically it would mess with the whole time travelling vortex continueing thingy?
Well that isn't good then. He's not a very good time lord. Does that mean we could never do time travel then if Doctor Who is anything to go by?

 

[TheDoctor]

Well, there's all sorts of difficulties, certainly. All time travel fiction has to deal with the paradoxes that can happen - Back to the Future, Doctor Who, Sound of Thunder, there's always the problem that if you change the past, that changes the present.

 

[marinyork]

I think you are allowed to meddle a bit e.g. Doctor saving family in Pompeii as that doesn't have a big effect on the timeline but not for bigger events e.g. Meddling Monk trying to see off Hardrada before he got to Stamford Bridge or saving Adric or Rose as those are both big events where the Cybermen were trying to mess up earth and failed and they were both parts of stopping them.

However there are a few occasions where a future version of the doctor (not spelt out explicitly) comes and meddles at some point in his own life e.g. The Watcher, The Valeyard or other stories where the Doctor teams up naturally with future/past incarnations.

Doctor Who has the theme of being able to see what happens in the future, yet being relatively powerless to stop it. This is a theme throughout sci-fi but expressed in different ways e.g. Philip K. Dick.

 

[Kovu]

Doctor Who is supposed to be the lord of time though, and he does meddle in things and always stops bigger things occuring (like stopping the titanic crashing into london) so why can't he meddle to help himself?

OK, but in theory then, say if we did sort out time travel, then shouldn't someone get picked up or whatever in the present time?

 

[Fnaar]

I think he can meddle with events if it suits the plot, but otherwise it's a bit of a no-no.

 

[Arch]

Doctor Who is supposed to be the lord of time though, and he does meddle in things and always stops bigger things occuring (like stopping the titanic crashing into london) so why can't he meddle to help himself?

OK, but in theory then, say if we did sort out time travel, then shouldn't someone get picked up or whatever in the present time?

a) He's not the Lord of Time. He's a Time Lord. He doesn't control time, he can merely travel through it.

He can stop something happening if he's there. He can't cherry pick and go back to stop specific things. If he hadn't been on that Titanic, it'd have hit Earth. Anyway, the Tardis navigation system is pretty ropey by now, and he rarely ends up exactly where and when he wants to be.