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I wonder if the Silence's power is related to creating split timelines where you didn't see them.
Kind of what I was dancing around with the quantum stuff I was yammering on about. Obviously the Silence are the key to all this, and I'm wondering if it's not so much that you can't remember them when you can't see them, or if they literally don't exist when you can't see them.
One of the axioms of quantum physics is that any observer becomes a part of the observed system. It's easy to guess how pop-sci-fi can exploit that concept, albeit in slightly dumbed-down form.
Imagine the Silence as entities whose native environment is a state of quantum flux. They are less creatures than they are events. At everywhere and every time, every point in the Universe is the potential for a Silent -- but it requires the introduction of an observer into the equation to bring that potential into existence. In the vast majority of cases, of course, no Silent will occur. But when one does, its occurrence will persist only insofar as it continues to be observed.
The point of Schrodinger's thought-experiment with the cat is that the cat is both alive and dead -- or neither alive and dead -- as long as it is in the in the box and unobserved. What determines its actual state is the observer; by opening the box and checking on the cat, we are taking it out of a state of flux and nailing it down into one state -- either alive, or dead. Moffatt's game, I suspect, is that the Silence similarly both exist and not-exist, or neither exist nor not-exist, until the presence of another sentient life-form "opens the box," as it were.
Now do the Stupid Writer Trick, and extrapolate that to familiar WHO terms: timelines. In one timeline, the cat is dead; in another, the cat is alive. In one timeline, there's a Silent standing right behind you; in another, there is no Silent.
The conditions that are -- I can't say "causing the Silence to occur," so let's just say "making these multiple occurrences vs. non-occurrences of Silence more likely" -- are also messing with the timeline in other ways. And my suspicion (which right now s hardening in to a contention) is that the gray-lined areas in the infographic linked above -- the "and then they fell deeply in love" stuff -- is all going to get erased from the Doctor's in-show timeline.
Which is a good thing, IMHO, because even in science fiction one can only suspend one's disbelief so much. It's an impossible relationship, and I cannot imagine any writer being able to make it convincing.
And that's how I am thinking about the series -- from the perspective of a writer. And I cannot stop doing so. I find this slightly worrisome. |
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