Talk:Father's Day (Doctor Who)

Are the Reapers intelligent?

My version: The Doctor rushes forward, yelling to the creature that he is the oldest thing in the room. It swoops down and devours him.

Khaosworks's version: The Doctor rushes forward, pushing the others behind him as he is the oldest thing in the room. The creature swoops down and devours him instead.

OK, in either version it is clear that the Reapers hunger for people who are very old. But, is the Doctor telling the Reaper he is old to draw it away from the others? Or is he explaining to the others that his age will attract the Reaper to him so they will be safe? Discuss. Ravenswood 02:46, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

That's why I tried to write it to keep it a bit more ambiguous. In one version he's calling out to the Reaper to take him instead; but it doesn't quite gel with what he's said earlier, that the walls are keeping the Reapers out because the walls are old and older things are stronger.

If you take these two together (the remark about the walls and the remark about him being the oldest coupled with pushing the others back) an alternative interpretation presents itself, that he is pushing the people behind him because he thinks that he will make an effective shield... but it doesn't quite work out that way. --khaosworks 03:19, May 17, 2005 (UTC)

My personal feeling is that the Reapers like old people, but can't stand old things. Ravenswood 03:50, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

My interpretation is the Doctor is acting as shield. The idea of old things being resistant to the Reapers is open to questioning. The bricks that houses in the area are made of would be from clay despoits that were older than the construction date of the church walls. Presumably, people ensconsed in Norman churches (12C and earlier) would be safer a lot longer than that 19C one in the episode. (Stop rambling now, Graeme) GraemeLeggett 09:38, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

The Blinovich Limitation Effect

The treatment of changing history in this episode contradicts some elements from the classic series. Although changing history was always shown as a possibility in serials like Genesis of the Daleks, Day of the Daleks and Pyramids of Mars, it was always assumed that the Blinovitch Limitation Effect prevented anyone from "redoing" their own actions like Rose does here. -- Ah, but it did prevent Rose from having a do-over.

In "Day of the Daleks," Jo asks, concerning a group of assassins from the future, "If they failed the first time, why don't they just go back in time to the day before and try again?" The Doctor explains that they can't because of the "Blinovitch Limitation Effect." When Jo asks him what that is, though, they are interrupted before he can answer.

It is my theory that the Doctor's answer would have been, "Well, these giant repiloid creatures called Reapers would show up and eat everybody, that's what it is!" -- So it's not really a contradiction after all. (But since that's just a pet theory I'm not going to add it to the article.) Ravenswood 03:50, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

To counter that, though - or at least give you more data to work with  :) - in Mawdryn Undead, the Blinovitch Limitation Effect doesn't summon Reapers, it shorts out the "time differential" between the two Brigadiers. In Invasion of the Dinosaurs, the Doctor says that overcoming the BLE is one of the big problems of perfecting time travel technology. This implies that the Blinovitch Limitation Effect is not some kind of line that brings about retribution when crossed, but a physical effect of temporal physics. See Novikov self-consistency principle, which sounds an awful lot like what the Doctor was trying to say in Day of the Daleks, although Novikov came up with it about a decade later. --khaosworks 04:33, May 17, 2005 (UTC)

I'd have to re-watch it to check (or re-read the book), but I'm pretty sure the problem with the two Brigadiers was a discharge of Blinovich energy, not the BLE itself.

As for the Novikov self-consistency principle, I would personally label that puppy The Novikov self-fulfilling prophecy. I've noticed that a lot of physicists seem to find the very thing that they're looking for, for the simple reason that they're not looking for anything else. In other words, if you go to the zoo looking for elephants, you will only find elephants. If you go to the zoo with an open mind, you will discover monkeys and tigers and giraffes as well. Ravenswood 05:55, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Interesting. Of course, in the 'old days' (wrt the Doctor's personal timeline), the Time Lords were around to patch things up if any paradoxes got out of hand. So, possibly, the paradox 'radiates', and acts as a beacon allowing your friendly neighborhood Time Lord to drop in, fix the problem, and scoot out before the damage propagates. In the absence of the Time Lords, then all sorts of nasties can sneak in through the gaping hole in spacetime. They'll also fix things up in their own way, but it won't be so pleasant.

A physical analogy might be this. By stripping lots of electrons off a metal ball, you leave it with a positive charge. It'll start to attract negative charge to itself, which will tend to neutralise it. Any negative charge will do, whether bare electrons, negative muons, whatever. The Time Lords and Reapers are like the different types of negative charge, attracted by the BLE to neutralise the paradox. And although they are each of the same charge, their other attributes mean that they handle the neutralisation in a different manner when they get to the epicenter of the paradox.

All IMHO, of course. --DudeGalea 17:20, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Hey, I like that theory. Very good. Ravenswood 18:01, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

In Day of the Daleks, never mind the Daleks coming back to try again--the entire Dalek-ruled future is already a change in history. The Daleks have had this future for hundreds of years with no Reapers at all appearing (and no Time Lord intervention to fix the future either).

In Pyramids of Mars, the Doctor takes Sarah to a 1980 where Sutekh has won. In this alternate 1980, history has been different for decades from what Sarah previously knew--yet the Reapers have not appeared (unless the Doctor meant to tell Sarah that that the destruction seen was caused by the Reapers, not by Sutekh). Ken Arromdee 16:58, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

The implication from that being that the Reapers are a phenomenon that arose to fill the vacuum left by the Time Lords. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 17:10, August 14, 2005 (UTC)

The problem with idea being that in those two cases the altered histories existed for decades or centuries without Time Lord intervention (unless the Time Lords acted to stop only the Reapers while allowing the change itself to continue). Ken Arromdee 23:06, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

But time is all relative and wooly when it comes to time travel, though. From the Time Lords' relative perspective, it is entirely possible that when they got around to looking at fixing the problem, the Doctor had already fixed it. In other words, although decades passed for Earth, for the Time Lords it was just a blink of an eye... an edit conflict, perhaps. ;)

Alternatively, what we see in Pyramids and Day is the pre-Time War situation, where Reapers are not part of the universal fabric. Perhaps the elimination of the Time Lords created the necessity for Reapers to keep the universe functioning neatly, where they had not existed prior. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 23:21, August 14, 2005 (UTC)

The idea of an edit war ignores the problem that just because it's a blink of an eye for the Time Lord doesn't mean it was the blink of an eye for the Reapers. If there was an edit war, then history would have been altered, the new history would have had a couple of minutes change and then destruction by the Reapers, and then when the Doctor fixed the problem, fixing the problem would have wiped out both the change and the Reapers. The Time Lords would have seen that as happening in the blink of an eye, but it wouldn't have meant no Reapers during the blink.

The theory about creating the necessity for Reapers works, of course, but you're making it up to cover a plot hole, which is that Father's Day was unlike every other treatment of time changes in the series. You could as easily say "it wasn't Sutekh who destroyed the Earth, it was the Reapers but the Doctor didn't mention it." (This also brings up the idea of the Reaper Bomb. If you want to destroy a planet, send a bomb back in time a couple of years. It kills some random guy, which summons the Reapers to wipe out the planet.) Ken Arromdee 14:07, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

Of course I'm making it up to cover up a plot hole - that's why I'm saying it here instead of in the notes, since it's pure speculation on my part. :) The article itself does note that the treatment of time travel in Father's Day is indeed contradictory to the earlier depictions of it. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 14:16, August 15, 2005 (UTC)

At the Gallifrey convention last weekend, Paul Cornell said that it wasn't fair for people to criticize the episode for being inconsistent with the Blinovitch Limitation Effect — he even said, "the whole episode's about the Blinivitch Limitation Effect!" He pointed to the line, "Two lots of us being there made that a vulnerable point" as the explanation for why the Reapers don't show up in any other altered timelines seen in the series. (Perhaps if the Third Doctor or Jo had tried to alter time at the end of "Day of the Daleks" the Reapers would have shown up. Perhaps they did and the Time Lords [who at that point were keeping a pretty close eye on the Doctor, let's remember] took care of them.)

I'm not sure how much of this we can or should say in the article page — I've probably gone too far already. I suppose that reportage of convention interviews counts as original research? —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 04:51, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

The End

At the end of the episode, is everything changed back to the way it was or are the dead people still dead?

Dead people are alive again. We see Stuart's father coming out of the church, when he was eaten by a Reaper before. But there are differences, as seen in the difference between Rose's flashback at the start and at the finish. --khaosworks 15:38, May 18, 2005 (UTC)

And also obviously, the Doctor is now alive again.--Codenamecuckoo 18:58, September 6, 2005 (UTC)

Speculation

User:TheDoctor10 wrote in an edit summary:

no, you canNOT just revert. tidy if you want, talkpage if you want. how DARE you just revert.

From Wikipedia:Verifiability:

Articles should contain only material that has been published by reputable or credible sources, regardless of whether individual editors regard that material to be true or false. As counter-intuitive as it may seem, the threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. For that reason, it is vital that editors rely on good sources.

I say: Give a reputable or credible source that the character was pregnant with Adam. She isn't even given a surname. As to "how DARE I" - look on the Main Page

Welcome to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.

So don't claim "newbie biting" when your own user page says you've been editing for two years.

--TimPope 09:32, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

Don't worry Tim, I think everybody understands. It looks like we've reached a decent compromise here.--Sean|Black 09:35, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

The version where Khaosworks left it had only statements of fact in it, and cited The Shooting Scripts, so Hammond has no business reverting it. I'll put it back...but I've explained here that it's got a source, so no 3RR please.--TheDoctor10 (talk|email) 16:38, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

But see, he does have the right. Look, I agree with you here- it's fine the way it is. You don't need to complain everytime someone reverts one of your edits, okay? Just let it go.--Sean|Black 22:24, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

Isle of Wight

Can someone explain this quote? PMA 15:06, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

The saying is, "The past is another country." 1987 isn't that far away from the present, and probably a bit naff, so it's just the Isle of Wight. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 15:18, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Cornell thought 19 years ago isn't all that different? On the surface maybe but i can remember plenty of things that were there in 1987 where i lived that aren't there now (the metal slides at the playground, the milk bars, the State Bank of Victoria branch that is now a pizzeria, only non-pay TV, ciggarette companies sponsoring the cricket telecasts, Young Talent Time, high schools and technical schools not secondary colleges...) PMA 15:40, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, nobody said it was a good metaphor. :) --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 16:31, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

I think the implication was something along the lines of "going back to the time of the dinosaurs crosses lots of generations; the time gap between 2005 & 1987 isn't even one generation", just as going from London to Australia would cross loads of countries, but London to the Isle of Wight wouldn't even cross one. smurrayinchester^{(User), (Talk)} 19:58, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

But the reference to "naff" could also apply to both 1987 and the Isle of Wight. -- Beardo 02:30, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Stupid ape note

The Doctor's line, "I've picked another stupid ape," may be a reference to the attempt by his former companion Barbara to alter the course of Aztec history during The Aztecs. It also may be a reference to Adam Mitchell, who attempted to use knowledge of the future to advance Earth technology in The Long Game.

Given that this is speculation but the second part actually happened in the previous episode, would it better to swap these two possibilities around? We have no evidence either way but in deciding the emphasis of the note I'd suggest the new series is more likely to be referencing itself than the classic series if this is intended as a reference. —Whouk (talk) 15:28, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

I've swapped it around, but I think the reason why the note was phrased the way it was is because of the Doctor saying "another stupid ape" in reference to Rose. A reading of that statement might seem to refer to someone before Rose, and Adam was picked up after. But it works either way. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 15:36, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

The Doctor's jacket

This is the only 9th Doctor episode where he takes his jacket off, but I am not sure if it is notable enough to be mentioned in the article. Also, has anyone been able to tell if his shirt changes color? I noted in this episode that it is a light green color. (I hope that he had at least changes his shirt over the 13 episodes.)
—Lady Aleena talk/contribs 15:38, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Are we forgetting the scene in Dalek when he had no top on at all?