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

[andrewducker]

It is pretty much a matter of fact, as I agree with you.

He, again, does great Sensawunda, awesome plot setups, and then clearly has no idea how to tie it up, so doesn't.

This works fine in Hyperion (which doesn't have an ending), less well in The Fall of Hyperion (which doesn't try to explain things too much), and increasingly badly in the two further sequels.

[andrewducker]

See, also, BSG. Oodles of awesome setup, big flailing ending.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

One could almost buy a Dan Simmons novel and decide in advance not to bother reading the last 100 pages.