Temporal Vehicles

(i) A "time machine" (antiquated terminology from HG Wells) moves fictitious characters pastwards or futurewards along a single timeline. A variation is a space-time machine, like Poul Anderson's Time Patrol timecycles or Doctor Who's Tardis, which can also move the characters to a different place.

(ii) A different kind of vehicle, with no agreed terminology, would move characters sideways into a different timeline, assuming that other timelines exist.

So how can a character with a mere time machine get into a different timeline? He might travel pastwards and (a) initiate a divergent timeline or (b) return futurewards, passing through the moment at which another time traveler had initiated a divergent timeline.

It follows that a time traveler cannot enter another timeline merely by traveling pastwards.

Space Time Wars

Although a war fought throughout space and time sounds like a straightforward idea, it is anything but. Doctor Who would have us believe that the Doctor is the last surviving Time Lord with no access to fellow Time Lords since they all died in a Time War. However, if they all died at a particular time, then surely he is able to travel to before they died? And, before dying, some of them would surely have traveled into their future? Therefore, some may exist now or, failing that, will in a while? And, if, as its name suggests, the Time War is fought at various times, then some of it is happening now or will in the future? Thus, even if all the Time Lords are to die in that war, they need not be all dead yet and, even if they were, a time traveler could still have access to them?

I am reading John Brunner's Threshold Of Eternity and expect some surprises before the end. The blurb informs us that:

"...there was a war going on throughout space and time. A war fought by men of different epochs, on planets of different cultures..." (Threshold Of Eternity, New York, 1959, p. 1)

So far in the text, however, the war, in our future, is only against an alien enemy in space. The time element consists of the fact that a battling spaceship can suffer a "...temporal surge..." that scatters its crew throughout history although they have a mechanism by which they can instantly return to their present (pp. 10-11). I expect that there is going to be more to it than that but I wonder if the "...men of different epochs, on planets of different cultures..." exist only in the blurb? (I will soon find out.)

As always, Poul Anderson comes to the rescue. His time travelers move through real history, not through abstract "space and time." In his The Corridors Of Time, rival human powers on a future Earth dispatch agents throughout history and prehistory. Unable to change events, they nevertheless recruit supporters and try to influence long term historical tendencies in order to determine an outcome in their future from which both sides are barred by their successors who, we learn, have transcended the conflict.

That really is a war fought throughout space and time.

Doctor Who

Doctor Who will celebrate its fiftieth anniversary in November, 2013. Like Superman, Star Trek and Flash Gordon, it is a story that needs to be retold from the beginning, getting it right this time. The Time Lords should be:

not aliens but our future;
not extraterrestrials but extra-temporals;
our evolutionary successors, like Poul Anderson's Danellians.

The originals of the Doctor and his companions fighting the Daleks are the Time Traveller and Weena against the Morlocks.

On a Doctor Who fan's shelves, I saw:

a boxed set of CD's of the first three Doctor Who stories - the beginning;
a boxed set of DVD's of the two feature films starring Peter Cushing - an alternative beginning;
a "Doctor Who: Lost in Time" CD collection of episodes of early stories that no longer exist in their entirety - truly "lost in time";
the DVD of the television film starring Paul McCann in his single appearance as the Doctor;
CD's of various stories featuring different Doctors;
thus, television and cinema history.

The TV series is Doctor Who but the first feature film is Doctor Who And The Daleks and the second is Daleks Invasion Earth 2150 AD so the Daleks take over the titles. In the TV series, the second story is "The Daleks". Curiously, the poster for the second film prominently features not a Dalek but a roboman with Daleks and other figures in the background.

I have stopped watching the TV series which cleverly presented the circular causality paradox in the first "Weeping Angels" story but mishandled causality violation when Rose tried to prevent her father's death. I advise Whovians to read The Time Machine, The Time Patrol and The Time Traveller's Wife.