{"id":2378,"date":"2009-12-26T23:19:10","date_gmt":"2009-12-27T04:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.net\/?p=2378"},"modified":"2009-12-26T23:19:10","modified_gmt":"2009-12-27T04:19:10","slug":"on-magnificently-mental-musings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=2378","title":{"rendered":"On Magnificently Mental Musings"},"content":{"rendered":"

As some of you know, I have a theory about where Russell T. Davies, henceforth RTD, is taking Doctor Who<\/i> before he’s done next week.<\/p>\n

My theory is that it involves RTD pressing a Reset Button on his way out the door. The reasons are both narrative and personal. It lets RTD have his spectacle with no consequences. He can make the threat as big as possible, make it as public as possible, things that would change the fabric of society irrevocably, and then returns things to a status quo<\/i> not unlike the present day, that kids behind the couches can relate to.<\/p>\n

However, that theory is not<\/i> without its consequences. Not necessarily within Doctor Who<\/i> itself, but certainly for the Doctor Who<\/i> universe. Because the past few years have shown us that Doctor Who<\/i> is not alone. There are other shows to consider, like Torchwood<\/i> and Sarah Jane<\/i>. It really depends on what kind<\/i> of reset button RTD presses. Is it a small button, that maybe only undoes a season or two? Or is it a big button that wipes out the entirely of the RTD-era?<\/p>\n

RTD is not a writer who does things small. He’s a showman. He loves his spectacle. Naturally, I think RTD would gravitate toward the large reset button. To be more specific, I expect that, when RTD passes the baton to Steven Moffat, the baton is going to be pretty much the same baton that RTD received from Philip Segal not long past the turn of the millennium. I expect that the mythology of the past five years — the Time War, the destruction of Gallifrey, the “lonely god,” Bad Wolf, all of it — will be gone. Erased.<\/lj-cut><\/p>\n

But where does this leave the spin-offs? John Barrowman has been talking recently about another season of Torchwood<\/i>, while RTD has been trying to walk that back. (I actually cite this as a point in favor<\/i> of the reset; if history is being reset and the Time War-era timelooped, the Torchwood Institute wouldn’t exist.) Sarah Jane<\/i> would be relatively unaffected by a reset, but Torchwood<\/i> would be mortally wounded. To be honest, you could even argue that Jack Harkness wouldn’t have become immortal — if the Daleks didn’t take over the GameStation, if Jack Harkness didn’t fall in battle, if Rose didn’t absorb the Heart of the TARDIS, then Jack Harkness wouldn’t become a fixed point in time. Indeed, Jack Harkness might never have left his life as a trans-temporal grifter behind…<\/lj-cut><\/p>\n

Unless…<\/p>\n

We know that Jack Harkness is a fixed point in time. What, however, does that mean?<\/p>\n

Here’s my theory.<\/p>\n

Let’s suppose that the history of the past five years (and the history before that) collapses on itself, and that history reverts\/reboots to its pre-Time War state. Rose made Jack into a fixed point in time. What if that is something that cannot unhappen? Jack’s not a time lock; he’s not a dam in the time stream. He is, rather, a part<\/i> of the time stream.<\/lj-cut><\/p>\n

So what happens to Jack? Well, that’s where we go magnificently mental…<\/p>\n

Jack becomes an artifact of a timeline that no longer happens. Does Jack retain his memories of that timeline? Does Jack retain the memories of the GameStation, of Torchwood, of traveling with the Doctors, of Owen and Gwen and Tosh and and Ianto and Alice and Stephen. But Jack arriving in Cardiff in the 1880s, Jack working with Torchwood 3 for a century, Jack having a family — these didn’t happen anymore. All of the people he knew in the “old” timeline may exist in the new timeline, but they don’t know him<\/i>. He’s now a stranger to them. Or in the case of Alice and Stephen, they may never have existed at all.<\/lj-cut><\/p>\n

Talk about something that would fuck with Jack Harkness even more<\/i>. He’s already lost his grandson. Now he’s lost his entire existence.<\/lj-cut><\/p>\n

All of that said, this sounds way<\/i> too X-Men<\/i>. Really. It does. Survivor of a timeline that no longer exists. Yeah, definitely X-Men<\/i>. \ud83d\ude06<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As some of you know, I have a theory about where Russell T. Davies, henceforth RTD, is taking Doctor Who before he’s done next week. My theory is that it involves RTD pressing a Reset Button on his way out the door. The reasons are both narrative and personal. It lets RTD have his spectacleContinue reading “On Magnificently Mental Musings”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,65],"tags":[4082,10,281,9],"class_list":["post-2378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-doctor-who","category-general","tag-doctor-who","tag-jack-harkness","tag-tenth-doctor","tag-torchwood","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2378\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}