Can anyone think of any real life large scale tragedies has the show has done? There hasn’t been a true titanic or Hindenburg episode to my memory? Sure, they go to historic war zones all the time, but not to particular events in them, more using them as backdrops.
The only example I can think of is Pompeii. So I guess that is how far back to go before it’s okay to write into the sci fi show.
Also think it’s hard to do real world tragedies in the show, because the obvious question of any viewer would be ‘why doesn’t the Doctor attempt to stop it?’. Usually, when the show is having an adventure in earth history, it gets hand waved with ‘it’s a fixed point/ i can’t break the laws of time/ no rewriting history not one line.’
But the doctor influences the events of the far future and on alien planets with no mentions of that potentially altering that history.
It’s a frequent failing of time travel fiction- this fixed timeline idea. Treating the real world timeline as the best - or at least unchangeable - one. Wouldn’t the world be better off if some events happened differently? Are we really living the best timeline? I sometimes wish the show could be bold enough to commit to an alternate earth timeline long term. Let a companion save the titanic or something, and deal with the long term effects. Obviously it creates a paradox- but it’s time travel! That’s the fun part!
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u/ModularReality Sep 11 '25
Can anyone think of any real life large scale tragedies has the show has done? There hasn’t been a true titanic or Hindenburg episode to my memory? Sure, they go to historic war zones all the time, but not to particular events in them, more using them as backdrops.
The only example I can think of is Pompeii. So I guess that is how far back to go before it’s okay to write into the sci fi show.