Meta: Time and Choice in the Whoniverse
This meta is informal and rambly; if I felt up to doing formal writing right now, I'd be working on my thesis.
Title: Time and Choice in the Whoniverse
Author: lefaym
Beta: Many thanks to lionessvalenti
Fandom: Doctor Who/Torchwood/Sarah Jane Adventures
Summary: This meta uses The Waters of Mars as a starting point for an informal examination of the relationship between choice and fluctuating time in the Whoniverse.
Spoilers/Warnings: Spoilers for The Waters of Mars, Children of Earth, Sarah Jane Adventures S3, and a bunch of earlier episodes that I'm sure everyone has seen already.
Word Count: Approx 1,750 words.
Time and Choice in the Whoniverse
The Waters of Mars asks us to examine exactly what constitutes a fixed point in time, and raises questions regarding whether or not we ever really have a choice in our actions. These questions have no answers, but they do raise some interesting points in relation to episodes like The Christmas Invasion, The Fires of Pompeii, and Turn Left and the way in which these episodes inform (and are informed by) The Sarah Jane Adventures and the Torchwood mini-series Children of Earth.
One way we can read the ending of The Waters of Mars is that Adelaide killed herself because she had no choice-because her death was inevitable, one way or another, and even the Doctor couldn't stop it. Another way to read it is that Adelaide unnecessarily believed what the Doctor had said earlier about fixed points, and that had he not said that, and that her death was not, in fact, necessitated by the timeline. I think it's great that both of these possibilities were left open; I imagine (or perhaps I hope) that the next two episodes will be about the Doctor testing that, to see what he can change, and what he can’t.
The references to The Fires of Pompeii in The Waters of Mars are, of course, highly pertinent here, insofar as the Doctor walked into Pompeii believing that it was a fixed point, only to discover that he apparently had a choice: he could choose whether to make Mount Vesuvius erupt, he could choose to alter history at this point. But could he? Did the Doctor really have a choice at that point? Or was he being manipulated by the timeline as much as anyone else? If it was really a choice, then why did he cite Pompeii as an example of something that had to happen in The Waters of Mars?
These answerless questions also play a big role in the resonances between The Fires of Pompeii and Children of Earth. Children of Earth replicates the moral dilemma of The Fires of Pompeii: Do you sacrifice a small number of people to save a large number of people? Do you destroy Pompeii in order to save everyone else on earth (and their decendents)? Do you sacrifice 10% of the children in order to save the entire population of Earth? Do you sacrifice your grandson to save 10% of the Earth's children? And when you reach that point, is it really a choice at all?
These resonances are further intensified by Peter Capaldi's roles in both of these stories. I know that RTD wrote Children of Earth before Capaldi was cast as Frobisher, and that his explanation for the resemblance between Caecilius and Frobisher was created after the scripts were finalised. Nonetheless, RTD claims that Frobisher is a descendent of Caecilius, who should have died in Pompeii-who would have died, but for the Doctor's interference; when Frobisher kills himself and his family, he is setting the timeline right (and perhaps his own suicide was as inevitable as Adelaide's -- perhaps). I know a lot of people dislike this explanation, but I think it’s actually really clever: Frobisher's actions in Children of Earth -Frobisher who would not be there if not for the Doctor's actions in Pompeii-ensure that the moral dilemma of Pompeii is replicated, and Frobisher only takes himself out of the timeline after this replication has occurred.
All of this raises the question of whether or not Children of Earth is a fixed point. I know that a lot of people have assumed as much, as it seems to be the only viable explanation for the Doctor's absence: Gwen, in a moment of utter desperation, may have believed that the Doctor was too ashamed to help, but I don't think that, as an audience, we're supposed to feel the same way. Certainly, the first half of The Waters of Mars had me thinking that RTD was subtly trying to tell us that Children of Earth was a fixed point, but the final ambiguous moments of The Waters of Mars, plus The Fires of Pompeii are making me doubt that.
These doubts are compounded further by The Christmas Invasion. In many ways The Christmas Invasion is basically the same story as Children of Earth: a bunch of aliens turn up, they do this weird scary hypnotic thing to a large number of people, and demand that the Earth turn over a percentage of their population. The key differences are that, in The Christmas Invasion, the Prime Minister’s first actions are to (a) get Torchwood on her side (instead of having a civil servant blow them up), and (b) stand up to the Sycorax, and that the Sycorax, unlike the 456, lack the means to kill off most of the Earth’s population in a matter of minutes. It seems appropriate, then, that the final minutes of The Christmas Invasion sow the seeds for Children of Earth: Harriet Jones, in her destruction of the Sycorax ship, ensures that the message, “We are defended,” does not go out into space, with the possible result that the 456 believe that Earth will capitulate as easily as in 1965 and, more significantly, the Doctor ensures that when the 456 do turn up, Britain will not have a Prime Minister who is willing to fight back.
Of course, this is yet another instance of the Doctor interfering in the timeline-Harriet Jones was supposed to be the architect of Britain’s Golden Age, but the Doctor deposed her. Caecilius was supposed to die in Pompeii, but the Doctor saved him. And Children of Earth is the consequence of those actions. It is not so much a fixed point in time, as it is a consequence of the Doctor causing time to fluctuate: a consequence of supposedly fixed points becoming unfixed (it seems rather fitting then, that Jack, the walking, living fixed point in time and space is the one to put it right). Perhaps, user="lionessvalenti"> points out to me, he wasn’t there because he very rarely faces the consequences of his own actions unless he’s forced into it. Or maybe the Doctor didn’t turn up simply because Children of Earth didn’t register with him (or with the TARDIS) as a major event-it was just a ripple caused by his own interference in time.
This might explain something that has been bothering me about both The Waters of Mars and the current series of The Sarah Jane Adventures: that is, that both of them seem to be set in a universe where Children of Earth doesn’t seem to have happened. I do not buy, “It’s a kids’ show,” as an excuse for this; it is quite possible to reference Torchwood in a way that will go over the heads of kids too young for an adult show; SJA did this, in fact, in its first series-Sarah Jane referred to underground alien-fighting organisations that use too many guns, we saw that Abaddon was included in Mr. Smith’s database of aliens, in the first episode, Sarah Jane uses a telepathic device to speak to an alien from Arcateen V, etc-we have all these tiny little points of continuity that let us know that the two shows inhabit the same universe. The “kids’ show” excuse is even less effective in relation to The Waters of Mars, which ends, after all, with one of its principle characters killing herself. It seemed very strange to me that Adelaide would not even reference the events of Children of Earth-particularly since she would have been one of the children affected-when looking back on 2009.
It may just be that RTD doesn’t want to deal with the political and social ramifications of Children of Earth, and that’s just lazy. But maybe it’s a timey-wimey thing too. Maybe Children of Earth, as an event that occurred as the result of fluctuating timelines gone wrong, doesn’t have the impact on the timeline that it realistically should. This also makes me wonder about the extent to which RTD is going to play with a potential reset button in The End of Time. To be completely clear-I very much doubt that RTD is going to reset Children of Earth, or anything else-but I think that The End of Time might be about all of time being in such a state of flux than any type of reset is possible.
This has been hinted at, I think, in the current series of The Sarah Jane Adventures, particularly in the story The Madwoman in the Attic, in which we see two alternative futures for Rani-and I am quite sure that it is absolutely no coincidence that both of those future sequences were set in 2059, indicating, perhaps, that that particular year is (to use a term suggested by lionessvalenti) some sort of temporal fault-line-maybe even because of the Doctor interfering on Mars.
The Sarah Jane Adventures has also, of course, explored the notion of fluctuating timelines extensively in the three Trickster episodes. In each of these episodes, people must choose to die in order to preserve the timeline, to prevent fluctuations in time that will destroy the world. Likewise, in Turn Left-in which Donna is comes under the sway of one of the Trickster’s minions-Donna must choose to die to put the timeline right. All of these deaths, however, ostensibly appear to be accidents-a fall from a pier, a car crash, a tumble down the stairs, hit while crossing the road. In contrast, Adelaide’s death cannot be concealed in this way. She put the gun to her own head. It seems like it’s the clearest choice of them all-and yet, we still can’t be sure that it really was a choice, that she wasn’t being swayed by forces larger than herself.
As I said at the beginning, none of the questions raised here have answers, but they do raise some very interesting possibilities regarding how the dark!Doctor will develop in The End of Time-what will the ramifications of his attempts to assert authority over fixed points in time be? How will it tie into the ways in which he has already attempted to assert this authority (Harriet Jones, Pompeii, Donna)? How will this affect the way we view choice in the Whoniverse? And to what extent will time (and established canon) be in flux at the end of it all?
Title: Time and Choice in the Whoniverse
Author: lefaym
Beta: Many thanks to lionessvalenti
Fandom: Doctor Who/Torchwood/Sarah Jane Adventures
Summary: This meta uses The Waters of Mars as a starting point for an informal examination of the relationship between choice and fluctuating time in the Whoniverse.
Spoilers/Warnings: Spoilers for The Waters of Mars, Children of Earth, Sarah Jane Adventures S3, and a bunch of earlier episodes that I'm sure everyone has seen already.
Word Count: Approx 1,750 words.
Time and Choice in the Whoniverse
The Waters of Mars asks us to examine exactly what constitutes a fixed point in time, and raises questions regarding whether or not we ever really have a choice in our actions. These questions have no answers, but they do raise some interesting points in relation to episodes like The Christmas Invasion, The Fires of Pompeii, and Turn Left and the way in which these episodes inform (and are informed by) The Sarah Jane Adventures and the Torchwood mini-series Children of Earth.
One way we can read the ending of The Waters of Mars is that Adelaide killed herself because she had no choice-because her death was inevitable, one way or another, and even the Doctor couldn't stop it. Another way to read it is that Adelaide unnecessarily believed what the Doctor had said earlier about fixed points, and that had he not said that, and that her death was not, in fact, necessitated by the timeline. I think it's great that both of these possibilities were left open; I imagine (or perhaps I hope) that the next two episodes will be about the Doctor testing that, to see what he can change, and what he can’t.
The references to The Fires of Pompeii in The Waters of Mars are, of course, highly pertinent here, insofar as the Doctor walked into Pompeii believing that it was a fixed point, only to discover that he apparently had a choice: he could choose whether to make Mount Vesuvius erupt, he could choose to alter history at this point. But could he? Did the Doctor really have a choice at that point? Or was he being manipulated by the timeline as much as anyone else? If it was really a choice, then why did he cite Pompeii as an example of something that had to happen in The Waters of Mars?
These answerless questions also play a big role in the resonances between The Fires of Pompeii and Children of Earth. Children of Earth replicates the moral dilemma of The Fires of Pompeii: Do you sacrifice a small number of people to save a large number of people? Do you destroy Pompeii in order to save everyone else on earth (and their decendents)? Do you sacrifice 10% of the children in order to save the entire population of Earth? Do you sacrifice your grandson to save 10% of the Earth's children? And when you reach that point, is it really a choice at all?
These resonances are further intensified by Peter Capaldi's roles in both of these stories. I know that RTD wrote Children of Earth before Capaldi was cast as Frobisher, and that his explanation for the resemblance between Caecilius and Frobisher was created after the scripts were finalised. Nonetheless, RTD claims that Frobisher is a descendent of Caecilius, who should have died in Pompeii-who would have died, but for the Doctor's interference; when Frobisher kills himself and his family, he is setting the timeline right (and perhaps his own suicide was as inevitable as Adelaide's -- perhaps). I know a lot of people dislike this explanation, but I think it’s actually really clever: Frobisher's actions in Children of Earth -Frobisher who would not be there if not for the Doctor's actions in Pompeii-ensure that the moral dilemma of Pompeii is replicated, and Frobisher only takes himself out of the timeline after this replication has occurred.
All of this raises the question of whether or not Children of Earth is a fixed point. I know that a lot of people have assumed as much, as it seems to be the only viable explanation for the Doctor's absence: Gwen, in a moment of utter desperation, may have believed that the Doctor was too ashamed to help, but I don't think that, as an audience, we're supposed to feel the same way. Certainly, the first half of The Waters of Mars had me thinking that RTD was subtly trying to tell us that Children of Earth was a fixed point, but the final ambiguous moments of The Waters of Mars, plus The Fires of Pompeii are making me doubt that.
These doubts are compounded further by The Christmas Invasion. In many ways The Christmas Invasion is basically the same story as Children of Earth: a bunch of aliens turn up, they do this weird scary hypnotic thing to a large number of people, and demand that the Earth turn over a percentage of their population. The key differences are that, in The Christmas Invasion, the Prime Minister’s first actions are to (a) get Torchwood on her side (instead of having a civil servant blow them up), and (b) stand up to the Sycorax, and that the Sycorax, unlike the 456, lack the means to kill off most of the Earth’s population in a matter of minutes. It seems appropriate, then, that the final minutes of The Christmas Invasion sow the seeds for Children of Earth: Harriet Jones, in her destruction of the Sycorax ship, ensures that the message, “We are defended,” does not go out into space, with the possible result that the 456 believe that Earth will capitulate as easily as in 1965 and, more significantly, the Doctor ensures that when the 456 do turn up, Britain will not have a Prime Minister who is willing to fight back.
Of course, this is yet another instance of the Doctor interfering in the timeline-Harriet Jones was supposed to be the architect of Britain’s Golden Age, but the Doctor deposed her. Caecilius was supposed to die in Pompeii, but the Doctor saved him. And Children of Earth is the consequence of those actions. It is not so much a fixed point in time, as it is a consequence of the Doctor causing time to fluctuate: a consequence of supposedly fixed points becoming unfixed (it seems rather fitting then, that Jack, the walking, living fixed point in time and space is the one to put it right). Perhaps, user="lionessvalenti"> points out to me, he wasn’t there because he very rarely faces the consequences of his own actions unless he’s forced into it. Or maybe the Doctor didn’t turn up simply because Children of Earth didn’t register with him (or with the TARDIS) as a major event-it was just a ripple caused by his own interference in time.
This might explain something that has been bothering me about both The Waters of Mars and the current series of The Sarah Jane Adventures: that is, that both of them seem to be set in a universe where Children of Earth doesn’t seem to have happened. I do not buy, “It’s a kids’ show,” as an excuse for this; it is quite possible to reference Torchwood in a way that will go over the heads of kids too young for an adult show; SJA did this, in fact, in its first series-Sarah Jane referred to underground alien-fighting organisations that use too many guns, we saw that Abaddon was included in Mr. Smith’s database of aliens, in the first episode, Sarah Jane uses a telepathic device to speak to an alien from Arcateen V, etc-we have all these tiny little points of continuity that let us know that the two shows inhabit the same universe. The “kids’ show” excuse is even less effective in relation to The Waters of Mars, which ends, after all, with one of its principle characters killing herself. It seemed very strange to me that Adelaide would not even reference the events of Children of Earth-particularly since she would have been one of the children affected-when looking back on 2009.
It may just be that RTD doesn’t want to deal with the political and social ramifications of Children of Earth, and that’s just lazy. But maybe it’s a timey-wimey thing too. Maybe Children of Earth, as an event that occurred as the result of fluctuating timelines gone wrong, doesn’t have the impact on the timeline that it realistically should. This also makes me wonder about the extent to which RTD is going to play with a potential reset button in The End of Time. To be completely clear-I very much doubt that RTD is going to reset Children of Earth, or anything else-but I think that The End of Time might be about all of time being in such a state of flux than any type of reset is possible.
This has been hinted at, I think, in the current series of The Sarah Jane Adventures, particularly in the story The Madwoman in the Attic, in which we see two alternative futures for Rani-and I am quite sure that it is absolutely no coincidence that both of those future sequences were set in 2059, indicating, perhaps, that that particular year is (to use a term suggested by lionessvalenti) some sort of temporal fault-line-maybe even because of the Doctor interfering on Mars.
The Sarah Jane Adventures has also, of course, explored the notion of fluctuating timelines extensively in the three Trickster episodes. In each of these episodes, people must choose to die in order to preserve the timeline, to prevent fluctuations in time that will destroy the world. Likewise, in Turn Left-in which Donna is comes under the sway of one of the Trickster’s minions-Donna must choose to die to put the timeline right. All of these deaths, however, ostensibly appear to be accidents-a fall from a pier, a car crash, a tumble down the stairs, hit while crossing the road. In contrast, Adelaide’s death cannot be concealed in this way. She put the gun to her own head. It seems like it’s the clearest choice of them all-and yet, we still can’t be sure that it really was a choice, that she wasn’t being swayed by forces larger than herself.
As I said at the beginning, none of the questions raised here have answers, but they do raise some very interesting possibilities regarding how the dark!Doctor will develop in The End of Time-what will the ramifications of his attempts to assert authority over fixed points in time be? How will it tie into the ways in which he has already attempted to assert this authority (Harriet Jones, Pompeii, Donna)? How will this affect the way we view choice in the Whoniverse? And to what extent will time (and established canon) be in flux at the end of it all?