S6E8: Let's Kill Hitler

Scary wrote:

workstinx wrote:

Scary wrote:

workstinx wrote:

I'm a bit confused about something & the whole time travel thing has always been a bit of sticky subject for me.

The thing I find confusing about the timetravel thing ties in quite well with Let's kill Hitler.

Mels travels back in time with The Doctor, Rory & Amy. While there she gets shot & regenerates into River. This much I can work with. However, where it all starts to go a bit "squiffy" for me is......how can Mels then be in school with Rory & Amy....get in trouble with her teachers....get arrested....turn up in a stolen car in the middle of a cornfield....etc. Would she not cease to exist after being shot in Germany?

My head hurts!!

This is not a slight on the writer or the NuWho. This is a genuine conundrum I have never been able to get my head round!!

Because at the point where she was growing up she had still not seen the Doctor since she was a little girl in the Space suit and at Demon's Run. Just because 1938 is before when she grew up does not mean she would cease to exist, because at this point she had not died and regenerated in Berlin yet. This part of her future was in everyone else's past. This sort of thing happens all the time in DW, it's pretty simple to follow.

????? Clear as mud!!

She then went back in time after meeting The Doctor for the first time to 1938 & got shot. At this point, would teenage Mels/Melody not cease to exist due to her regenerating into the older Melody/River? How can someting cease to exist in 1938 only to exist in the 1990's/2000's - whenever it was they went to school........my head still hurts....if not a wee bit more now!!

No. If someone grew up between 1980 to 1996 and lived on to be grown up in 2011, but was then shot in 1989, the person would cease to exist 1989 onwards, meaning the 1996 version of that person never happened. But because Melody grows up in the future and dies in the past, as a means to her own time line, it would make no difference. It's not the time zone that matters here, but more the fact of which stage in her life she was shot, and she was shot as she was older. She had already grown up by the time she had gone back in time.

Really, this sort of thing happens all the time in Doctor Who. I just feel some people aren't putting much effort into working it all out. The facts are being handed to us on a silver plate, but whether or not you tuck into those juicy fact-pork-chops on that plate is down to whomever is handed said plate. Wake up guys, it's not hard.

Condescend much?

Workstinx, it's a matter not of when certain things happened, but of personal timelines. In Mels' timeline, she lived her life then went back in time. Now, while she was living life before the life she'd known in the late 20th and 21st Centuries, her timeline had not changed. When she got shot, had she been a normal person, she would have died before she was born.

Nothing about her past life would have changed if she had died before her earlier life.

And anyway, she wasn't a normal person. She had Time Lord DNA, so she didn't die, just regenerated.

jaredofmo wrote:

Nothing about her past life would have changed if she had died before her earlier life.

That right there is exactly the case.

jaredofmo wrote:

Workstinx, it's a matter not of when certain things happened, but of personal timelines. In Mels' timeline, she lived her life then went back in time. Now, while she was living life before the life she'd known in the late 20th and 21st Centuries, her timeline had not changed. When she got shot, had she been a normal person, she would have died before she was born.

Nothing about her past life would have changed if she had died before her earlier life.

And anyway, she wasn't a normal person. She had Time Lord DNA, so she didn't die, just regenerated.

But why was Marty McFly's picture fading during the Water under the sea dance?.....Why? Why? Why?

Think of it strictly as her personal timeline.

At age 6 she meets Rory and Amy (just picking a number there).
At age 23 years, five months, three days, ten hours she goes back in time.
At age 23 years, five months, three days, ten and a half hours she gets shot.
Getting shot at 23 does not end her life at age six. It doesn't even end her life a half hour earlier when she was still in the earth's future.

It's not a difficult concept. Time is relative to each individual object and person. That's simple, real-world physics. Taking a thing back in time and destroying it there does not nullify it's past, regardless of when in the world's future that past it.

Now, something that truly doesn't make sense is the watch from Somewhere in Time or the necklace from Time Rider.

workstinx wrote:

But why was Marty McFly's picture fading during the Water under the sea dance?.....Why? Why? Why?

Because he was changing his parents' past so that he was never born. Not the same thing as if he left them alone and got himself killed.

workstinx wrote:

But why was Marty McFly's picture fading during the Water under the sea dance?.....Why? Why? Why?

Technically, probably due to the flow of time catching up with the new changes.

Practically... rising tension for the conflict resolution. If all the changes happened instantly, there is no opportunity to save anyone. Marty gets wiped out, and can't have that in a fun happy movie

Yeah....well....my head still hurts though!

workstinx wrote:

Yeah....well....my head still hurts though!

Take an aspirin. Or an ibuprofen. Then take a nap.

jaredofmo wrote:

workstinx wrote:

Yeah....well....my head still hurts though!

Take an aspirin. Or an ibuprofen. Then take a nap.

Thank you Dr Ofmo!

bret_owen99 wrote:

ok, i'm posting in this thread, because i have a take on things that i don't think anyone's mentioned. Does anyone besides me think the title "Let's Kill Hitler" could actually mean "let's Kill the Doctor"?. Mels/River hates the Doctor, blames him for everything from the titanic to WWII, so isn't he her "Hitler"? Or am i reading too much into this?

The Let's kill Hitler comes from what Mels says, and it is a very common thing to discuss when talking about time travel. IE, if you could travel through time, would you kill Hitler as a child, thus preventing the Holocaust, or would that even prevent it,or make things worse?? So, I think it is just a natural thing for her to say, when she gets to ride in a time machine for the first time. The other discussion would always be the what would happen if you killed your Grandfather paradox question.

Nope, nothing wrong with Mels growing up with Amy and Rory in the 1990's and then getting shot in 1938. Makes perfect sense.

Little Girl left alone on the street regenerating several times between 1970 and 1990 so that she'd once again be a little girl to grow up with Amy is a bit suspect. But better left unexplained by Moffat and we just all assume that Eye Patch Lady's master plan all went smoothly with as much or little involvement as required.

workstinx wrote:

jaredofmo wrote:

Workstinx, it's a matter not of when certain things happened, but of personal timelines. In Mels' timeline, she lived her life then went back in time. Now, while she was living life before the life she'd known in the late 20th and 21st Centuries, her timeline had not changed. When she got shot, had she been a normal person, she would have died before she was born.

Nothing about her past life would have changed if she had died before her earlier life.

And anyway, she wasn't a normal person. She had Time Lord DNA, so she didn't die, just regenerated.

But why was Marty McFly's picture fading during the Water under the sea dance?.....Why? Why? Why?

Because his parents were missing their first dance, and would not get together, and thus, he would never be born.

workstinx wrote:

Yeah....well....my head still hurts though!

And to quote Captain Janeway "Time travel, gives me a headache."

Will stop thinking about it now...think I've gotten a grasp of it? From now on......

OH,and isn't it a wheat field and not a corn field??

Ronpur wrote:

OH,and isn't it a wheat field and not a corn field??

I refer you to my previous post!!

workstinx wrote:

Ronpur wrote:

OH,and isn't it a wheat field and not a corn field??

I refer you to my previous post!!

I grew up on a farm, just wanted to know if we were making corn chips or bread?

workstinx wrote:

Condescend much?

I am not patronising you, I'm getting frustrated with you. Please, do not accuse me of patronising you when all you have done since Saturday is end every smart-allack comment with a row of exclamation marks and smiley faces. How much more condescending could you get?

I am merely 'ranting' because you're just being plain stubborn now. We all decide and point out that the things 'wrong' with NuWho are present in the classic series too. Then you start going on about how 'your head hurts' over something that seems perfectly logical, and then when it is explained to you, you continue to say 'your head still hurts.'

I think people on this forum can vouch for me and say that if Scary was wrong then he'd face it and move on. But it seems that just because for every bad remark against this episode you make everyone else counter-acts it with a valid point, you try and find something else that is vulnerable and subject to ranting over for being "wrong" or "confusing."

And before you quote me, no I'm not patronising you, I'm simply telling it how it is.

workstinx wrote:

CRAP,I thought that was some virus thing when I opened this thread!!! Scared the crap out of me!!


LOLZ!

Wow, Workstinx. Very nice way of proving my point and contradicting yourself. Who's condescending now?

Don't worry, Scary. I've come to know that on here, people saying they don't care is sort of like them saying "I can't think of any arguments against that, I guess I was wrong".


Guys, is it going to be like this EVERY WEEK? If so, why don't we start insulting each other on the 'Night Terrors' thread starting now and get it over with quicker?

Oh, please, let's not turn into IMDb!