On Spoilers in Doctor Who

[danieldwilliam]

Doctor Who and River have a relationship that runs in different directions. From River’s point of view she is meeting the Doctor as she gets older and he gets younger. And vice versa.

They have an agreement about no spoilers. Neither tells the other what they know about the future of the other one.

This presumably happens a lot to Timelords and those who associate with them.

Occasionally bits of future knowledge explicitly leak out (character A hands offers character B a drink they don’t drink, yet).  More subtly how people behave when they know something is likely to be different than how they behave when they don’t know that thing.  Therefore information about the Doctor’s future, held by River, could leak out based on how she behaves when they are together or the topics she avoids.

Thinking about Cryptonomicon and Enigma and the suspiciously successful and efficient RAF reconnaissance flights it should be possible for someone to work out something about their future from looking at the behaviour of people travelling in different directions or at different speeds in their timelines. Quite a bit if you put a lot of effort into it and had several different sources to work from.

Comments

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Ah.

A nanny also.

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

Well, you're not completely lacking in available time, or these essays couldn't exist.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

This is true - but I find these things have a different shape than other types of writing to which I would apply myself if my writing time was measured in whole days and secure from interuption rather than measured in minutes and subject to disruption.

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

I guess it's individual. I've ended up making the decision that I want to do the most creative work that I can, even though I only have the minutes and disruption, because I'm much happier doing that than pretending to myself that I can create the whole days, or waiting until I make them. But that might be completely wrong for you.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

You may be right.

At the moment I find certain types of creative work easier to do in small bursts - so I do them.

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

That's got to be better than not doing any.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Yes it is.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

When I say, you may be right, I mean you may be right, the choice you have made for yourself might be the better one for me, rather than the choice you have made for yourself might be the better one for you.

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

I kinda assumed you meant that.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

and I assumed that you would assume that but just in case you didn't assume the thing that I assumed you would assume I wanted to say it out loud.