So Shall You Reap

[scarfman]

I've just rewatched Father's Day, and it reaffirms what I've already commented once or twice to people complaining of continuity errors in A Christmas Carol.

I've seen more than one person complaining that the physical contact between the old Sardick and the boy Sardick is inconsistent with time travel physics as presented in Father's Day, when the contact between the adult Rose and the baby Rose excaberated the anomaly and empowered the Reapers. But there's a crucial difference pointed up in the dialog in Father's Day: in Father's Day the contact between the duplicated person, Rose, occurs during an existing anomaly with Reapers already present, which anomaly the Doctor nevertheless states he can repair by manifesting the TARDIS, which device he has been separated from by the consequences of the anomaly, and which manifestation attempt is undone by the accidental contact. Contrariwise, in A Christmas Carol the Doctor brings about the meeting of the duplicated person, Sardick, by means of the TARDIS. The Doctor states during the anomaly in Father's Day that, once he regains the TARDIS, he can solve the problem resulting from Rose's rescue of her father without having to undo the rescue. Surely if he can repair, or could have repaired, an already-existing Reaper anomaly using the TARDIS, even with the strain on spacetime presented by Rose's rescue of her father, then he can or could initiate a similar strain (probably a lesser strain, since crossing your time stream is a temporary effect while living after you were meant to have died is a longterm effect) using the TARDIS in such a manner as not to cause a Reaper anomaly at all.

To restate, the temporal physics in A Christmas Carol is not inconsistent with the temporal physics in Father's Day because in the latter case the Doctor was separated by the Reaper anomaly from the TARDIS, was thwarted in his attempt to regain it, and stated that its possession would have solved everything even after how bad things'd got; while in the former case the Doctor was in possession of the TARDIS, and will have taken any and all necessary precautions to keep any Reaper anomaly from occurring in the first place.

Edit In hopes of disseminating my argument more easily, I've committed it to triangle:

So let's please stop with the complaints that this is an instance of Moffat's having changed how time works, because it isn't.

crossposted to scarfman and doctorwho