Tuesday Twofer
Oct. 6th, 2015 11:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
capri0mni'Cause I can't guarantee I'll remember Five Things on Friday:
1) The "Robot Hugs" strip, dated 2015-10-06 gave me a chuckle: http://www.robot-hugs.com/decor/
Artistically speaking, I love the way they render the softness of their cats' fur -- especially the fur just at the inside of the ears (For those who don't follow this strip, the grey cat is named "Hippo" and the orange cat is named "Oskar"). Here's an announcement on their site which features the felines photographically: http://www.robot-hugs.com/merch/
2) There is a fair amount of chatter in Doctor Who fandom -- some playful and some combative (as is typical) -- about the Doctor's age. Does he lie about it? Has he forgotten? Has he ever known it, in the first place?
My own answer is that Earthling humans have such a limited concept of "Time" and "Personal (biographical) Age" compared to his own understanding of Time that he can't give a single, "straightforward" answer -- because there isn't one. And that's even before you take into account the fact that he's been living in a time ship, and going back and forth (And sideways) through time for *mumble*-hundred years.
Consider:
First: the unspecified terms "year," "month," "day," etc. are only relevant to a single, specific, planet. An Earth year is ~365 Earth days, for example. But a Martian year is ~669 Martian days -- but ~687 Earth days ... And that's just the difference between two relatively close planets in a single star system.
The difference in number of Earth days in a Martian year and Martian days in a Martian year are close enough that, if the Doctor were a Martian, and if his were lifespan within a single order of magnitude of a human's life span, he could just double the number of Martian years he'd been counting off in his diary, multiply by (let's say, for example) 8.5, and come up with a ballpark figure for his equivalent age in human years. But neither of these "ifs" is true. You see how it's getting complicated already?
Second -- It's well established in Doctor Who canon (At least, since the airing of "Gridlock") that Gallifrey has an orange sky. But the planet where the War Doctor landed, in order to activate the Moment, in "Day of the Doctor" had a blue sky -- which I take as a clear sign that this a different planet from Gallifrey.
Toward the end of "Listen," we get a brief, partial, in-the-dark glimpse of the interior of a barn which kinda-sorta looks like the dilapidated barn the War Doctor hid out in, back when it was new. And here, we see Future!Doctor as a child.
So (Assuming, for the moment, and for the sake of argument, that Child!Future!Doctor is living on that same Not!Gallifrey planet) he must've spent some extended periods of his life living between at least two different planets. We're given no clues as to how long each planet's year actually is, but it's a safe bet that they differ from each other. So even before he's tall enough to reach the top shelf of the cupboard, the question: "What's your age, anyway?" has gotten tricky.
Third -- Add all the time he'd spent before coming to Earth, with Susan. How many different planets had he been living on, each with a year-length unique to them? And, considering the very real possibility that the cultures he'd been interacting with had all (like him) had experience with the concept that "year" is a very specific and provincial notion that doesn't mean much when you have to deal with interplanetary trade and diplomacy, the Doctor probably never thought much about his life in any "yearly" framework.
Fourth -- the people who insist on asking this question have tended to be starry-eyed innocents who've barely traveled outside their current time zone, and whose mind would be blown if you try to explain time dilation to them (What do you mean -- the clock on the third floor runs faster than the clock in the basement? My heart, too?)
Fifth -- Now it's time to add time travel into the equation.
Sixth -- Whoever is asking expects an immediate answer -- and they'll start to mistrust you if you pull out a calculator. And, considering this is Doctor Who, their lives will likely depend on them trusting you. ...
So -- how would you answer that question, if you were in the Doctor's shoes?
1) The "Robot Hugs" strip, dated 2015-10-06 gave me a chuckle: http://www.robot-hugs.com/decor/
Artistically speaking, I love the way they render the softness of their cats' fur -- especially the fur just at the inside of the ears (For those who don't follow this strip, the grey cat is named "Hippo" and the orange cat is named "Oskar"). Here's an announcement on their site which features the felines photographically: http://www.robot-hugs.com/merch/
2) There is a fair amount of chatter in Doctor Who fandom -- some playful and some combative (as is typical) -- about the Doctor's age. Does he lie about it? Has he forgotten? Has he ever known it, in the first place?
My own answer is that Earthling humans have such a limited concept of "Time" and "Personal (biographical) Age" compared to his own understanding of Time that he can't give a single, "straightforward" answer -- because there isn't one. And that's even before you take into account the fact that he's been living in a time ship, and going back and forth (And sideways) through time for *mumble*-hundred years.
Consider:
First: the unspecified terms "year," "month," "day," etc. are only relevant to a single, specific, planet. An Earth year is ~365 Earth days, for example. But a Martian year is ~669 Martian days -- but ~687 Earth days ... And that's just the difference between two relatively close planets in a single star system.
The difference in number of Earth days in a Martian year and Martian days in a Martian year are close enough that, if the Doctor were a Martian, and if his were lifespan within a single order of magnitude of a human's life span, he could just double the number of Martian years he'd been counting off in his diary, multiply by (let's say, for example) 8.5, and come up with a ballpark figure for his equivalent age in human years. But neither of these "ifs" is true. You see how it's getting complicated already?
Second -- It's well established in Doctor Who canon (At least, since the airing of "Gridlock") that Gallifrey has an orange sky. But the planet where the War Doctor landed, in order to activate the Moment, in "Day of the Doctor" had a blue sky -- which I take as a clear sign that this a different planet from Gallifrey.
Toward the end of "Listen," we get a brief, partial, in-the-dark glimpse of the interior of a barn which kinda-sorta looks like the dilapidated barn the War Doctor hid out in, back when it was new. And here, we see Future!Doctor as a child.
So (Assuming, for the moment, and for the sake of argument, that Child!Future!Doctor is living on that same Not!Gallifrey planet) he must've spent some extended periods of his life living between at least two different planets. We're given no clues as to how long each planet's year actually is, but it's a safe bet that they differ from each other. So even before he's tall enough to reach the top shelf of the cupboard, the question: "What's your age, anyway?" has gotten tricky.
Third -- Add all the time he'd spent before coming to Earth, with Susan. How many different planets had he been living on, each with a year-length unique to them? And, considering the very real possibility that the cultures he'd been interacting with had all (like him) had experience with the concept that "year" is a very specific and provincial notion that doesn't mean much when you have to deal with interplanetary trade and diplomacy, the Doctor probably never thought much about his life in any "yearly" framework.
Fourth -- the people who insist on asking this question have tended to be starry-eyed innocents who've barely traveled outside their current time zone, and whose mind would be blown if you try to explain time dilation to them (What do you mean -- the clock on the third floor runs faster than the clock in the basement? My heart, too?)
Fifth -- Now it's time to add time travel into the equation.
Sixth -- Whoever is asking expects an immediate answer -- and they'll start to mistrust you if you pull out a calculator. And, considering this is Doctor Who, their lives will likely depend on them trusting you. ...
So -- how would you answer that question, if you were in the Doctor's shoes?
no subject
Date: 2015-10-07 08:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-07 10:01 am (UTC)I suspect his calculations (on what to tell people), go something like this:
In Gallifreyan years, I'm W
In [Blue_Sky_Planet] years, I'm X
In Skaron years, I'm Y,
In Karnian years, I'm Z
In Earth years ... lessee... um... multiply by 3, divide by square root-2, convert to base 13... aw, heck. I'm Old.