Skip to main content

Why can't The Doctor save his own planet from destruction?


Once The Doctor told Rose that his planet was destroyed before its time. They were at war. He was emotional too just to show how much he missed his planet.


The Doctor is a Time Lord but he didn't talk like a Time Lord. Why can't he save his planet from destruction before time?



Answer



Because he can't travel to that part of history anymore.


The events which caused the destruction of Gallifrey are known as the Last Great Time War. We don't know many of the details of the War (it happened off-screen between the first adventure of the Eighth Doctor and the revival of the series with the Ninth Doctor), but it was a time-travel battle between Time Lords and Daleks, with many other participants.


The LGTW featured efforts of both races to preemptively destroy each other (including at least one semi-successful attempt by the Fourth Doctor). Messing about with time on such a grand scale created paradoxes and monstrosities and was set to rip apart all of history. To end it, the Doctor used something called the Moment. This ended the conflict, but also time-locked the War. It is speculated that everything which was part of the Time War (including Gallifrey, the Daleks, and many other places/creatures) was not physically destroyed, just sealed off from the rest of space and time, effectively sealing the War in a pocket universe.


Because the Last Great Time War is time-locked, this means its events cannot be revisited, even through use of the TARDIS. A handful of creatures/objects have passed through the time lock, but it has dire consequences when it works at all. Dalek Caan managed, at the cost of his sanity and by we know not what means, to enter the time lock and then exit it with Davros. The entire might of the Time Lord empire within the time-lock was sufficient to pass a sound and a small object out into the post-war future, and they could then use this as a link to pull their planet out of the time-lock entirely--but only with significant help from outside, including an entire planet of identical and insane Time Lords on the outside lending their aid.


So the Doctor can't travel through time to save his planet because he purged it from the timeline in order to save the history of the entire universe.


EDIT: The events of The Day of the Doctor have done nothing to substantially change this answer. We're more confident that The Moment was probably responsible for the locking of the LGTW, but we still don't know any of its particulars. The speculation that Gallifrey is locked in a pocket universe is confirmed, but the rest of the War's participants/time periods/locations must have had something similar done to them (probably by The Moment of its own accord, because the Warth Doctor didn't press the Big Red Button) or the Cult of Skaaro --among others-- wouldn't have found traveling to and from those events so difficult.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

harry potter - Do the Kwikspell courses work?

In Harry Potter we are introduced to Kwikspell course in The Chamber of Secrets (and never hear about it again). We see Filch taking courses, presumably by mail. The descriptions of Kwikspell make me think it is for people who are weak in magic (kind of like how Neville was supposed to be when he was younger), but had magic in them nonetheless. However, Ron's comments later in the chapter make it sound like it is mainly for Squibs to learn magic. However, it is strongly implied through out all the books that Squibs are essentially Muggles, and will never be able to do magic. How then is a Kwikspell course supposed to work? Do we have any information to know if it works at all? Is it a scam? An answer from any level of canon is welcome. Answer Kwikspell courses are (probably) useful to some wizards, but not to squibs. The Kwikspell course literature comes with two testimonials. Madam Z. Nettles of Topsham writes: ‘I had no memory for incantations and my potions were a family joke...
Post a Comment
Read more

futurama - How much time is lost in 'Time Keeps on Slippin''

In time Keeps on Slippin' , Farnsworth creates a basketball team which he matures by abusing Chronitons. This leads to time skipping forward by random, but ever increasing amounts. How much time was skipped in this way? Answer Unfortunately, I don't think a good estimate can be made for this, for two reasons: Many of the time skips move forward by an indeterminate amount of time. At one point, the Professor mentions localized regions of space skipping forward much more than others. We then see two young boys on the street below complaining about having to pay social security, only to suddenly become senior citizens and start complaining about wanting their money. Thus, each individual could have experienced a different amount of time skippage.
Post a Comment
Read more

languages - Do we ever see written English in the Star Wars films?

In Empire Strikes Back , we see a transcription of what R2's beeps and bloops mean, but it's not English (sorry for the low quality, it's from the 2004 DVDs): I'd assume it's what Basic looks like when written, but is there some point in the the Star Wars films we see written English instead? (This sort of spun off from a discussion in How do people understand astromech droids? .) Answer At one point there was English but it has been phased out in subsequent versions of the films. Chris Gould at DVD Active did a comparison of all versions of each of the Star Wars films, and in his comparison of Episode 4 , there are a couple of screenshots showing how the power gauge for the Death Star tractor beam was changed. I imagine there are probably more to be found in his other comparisons but I haven't got around to reading those yet.
Post a Comment
Read more

star wars - What "exactly" happens when someone turns to the Dark Side?

When I saw the original Star Wars saga as a kid, the concept of the Dark Side imprinted in me was quite simple. You did a bad thing, so you're a bad person so you go to the Dark Side and keep doing bad things. Now, obviously this doesn't hold true in reality. In my mind it is perfectly reasonable for Luke to kill the Emperor and Vader and then just flee the Death Star and rejoin the Alliance. After all they are at war, those are enemy officers that have captured him and are taunting him by threatening with death of all loved ones and the whole operation was intended to kill the Emperor anyway. The same would hold true for Anakin. He could have killed Mace Windu to save the Chancellor and Padme but that doesn't mean he's going to then go mad and kill all Jedis including children. It doesn't add up from a merely psychological point of view. He had a set of objectives and that made him want to keep the Chancellor alive (quite valid by the way, Mace Windu is quite clums...
Post a Comment
Read more