Time and Relative Dimensions in Spoilers

8:41 PM

DOCTOR: I've come from the future. I've seen the chaos you cause. The bloodshed.
FISHER KING [OC]: Tell me what you have seen.
DOCTOR: Ghosts.
FISHER KING [OC]: Ghosts?
DOCTOR: Souls wrenched from the dead. Repeating directions to here, to this spot, over and over.
FISHER KING [OC]: How many ghosts do I create? How many!
DOCTOR: Four that I know of. Maybe five by now. Probably more since I left.

but it's long after he makes the scratches in his ship and kills ~~that one alien guy~~ Prentis

rand al'thor

@Ixrec Ah, had he already made the symbols by the time he killed Prentis? I ~~stand~~ sit corrected then.

Ixrec

(They see the Undertaker lying on the bandages and run in.)
DOCTOR: Prentis. Prentis!
(The Doctor checks for a pulse.)
O'DONNELL: Guess that dead body wasn't so dead after all.
BENNETT: And now we've got the writing.
DOCTOR: The Fisher King did it himself. The future is still coming.

yep

@randal'thor I guess I could've just pointed out that Prentis has to see the symbols before he dies or he doesn't become a ghost

rand al'thor

Unless the Prentis ghost was all part of the Doctor's bootstrapping paradox too. Maybe all the ghosts were!

Ixrec

true, but there's no evidence of that

whereas the Doctor's ghost behaves very differently and is later confirmed by the Doctor to be a fake

if the others were fakes he wouldn't have to haul them out into space at the end

rand al'thor

I suppose so. The whole thing seems weird and ambiguous though. The extent of the bootstrapping paradox should have been explained better at the end IMO.

Also, why didn't O'Donnell's ghost appear earlier, if she'd been killed all the way back in 1980?

Ixrec

8:53 PM

@randal'thor that one I don't think has a good explanation, just characters moving at the speed of plot

@randal'thor the part at the end where he tells us his ghost was fake and how he's going to get rid of the others seemed like a pretty clear explanation to me

Richard

@randal'thor - Shall we all just pretend that the Doctor doesn't exist within a multiverse where multiple paradoxical timestreams can co-exist? Bootstrap? Hah! That's for amateurs.

Ixrec

there are also many other DW episodes with bootstrap paradoxes in them (Blink, for instance), this is just the first time the Doctor has used that term for it in-universe

rand al'thor

Can we get messages migrated here from Mos Eisley?

Ixrec

I'll move my spoiler-y messages in Mos Eisley over here then delete them

I don't think there's a built-in feature for it but there aren't that many so I'll just do it manually

rand al'thor

Also, cool background! I've never seen it properly before.

@Ixrec Too old to delete.

We'd need to flag them, and we all know how much trouble THAT can cause.

Ixrec

9:02 PM

ah damn, I forgot there was a time limit on that

Feeds

Ixrec has added rand al'thor to the list of this room's owners.

Ixrec

9:13 PM

Before the Flood transcript: chakoteya.net/doctorwho/35-4.html

Praxis

9:32 PM

← 1 message moved from Mos Eisley

@randal'thor @Ixrec : Is there anything you want deleted from here, or are you happy to have everything that is here remain here?

Ixrec

this is fine for now, not enough content yet for messiness to matter

Praxis

Cool. Enjoy. Adios @Ixrec! :-)

Ixrec

@randal'thor I'm failing to think of anything else to discuss about that episode, shall I assume you're done too?

rand al'thor

9:48 PM

@Ixrec Sorry, been AFK. Yes, I think we're done :-)

Thanks a lot @Praxis!

rand al'thor

11:40 PM

Would it be on-topic to ask a question about whether something will happen over the course of Doctor Who series 9? There is some extremely damning evidence to show it almost certainly will happen, but of course there'll be a canonical answer in a few months' time.

As for what this something is:

Transcript for

Time and Relative Dimensions in Spoilers