Post by constonks on Oct 14, 2015 19:33:24 GMT
I’ve just finished Legacy of the Daleks and have some thoughts on chronology. So, fair warning: This post is both long and full of spoilers for Legacy of the Daleks and the fourth season of Big Finish’s Eighth Doctor Adventures.
Susan’s appearances after her departure form two distinct branching paths:
Path 1
The Dalek Invasion of Earth
-- Susan does not age, adopts Ian, Barbara and David Junior - Barbara meets the Seventh Doc in "A Time and a Place" --
Legacy of the Daleks
Path 2
The Dalek Invasion of Earth
-- Susan ages, Alex is born and David dies when Alex is young --
An Earthly Child
Relative Dimensions
Lucie Miller & To The Death
As Path 1 ends with Susan in possession of a TARDIS and Path 2 involves the direct involvement of both The Monk and The Dalek Time Controller, several possibilities present themselves as to why her timeline is such a source of divergence. After all, both paths affect other events in the main timeline. Legacy of the Daleks leads into The Deadly Assassin for the Master, while To the Death directly affects Dark Eyes and another recent Main Range trilogy. So how does it all fit together?
First, let's look at the distinctions:
1. In Legacy, Susan is distinctly (and tragically) Gallifreyan. She and David cannot have children - although they adopt three. She looks identical to her young self thirty years later. The Earthly Child Susan's heritage is more vague. She gives birth to Alex. There is no mention of adopted children. She has aged at the rate of a human, and Alex is potentially only 7% Gallifreyan.
These are pretty big differences but they do have some precedent. After all, the Doctor is (sometimes) half-human and fully Time Lord at once. Perhaps Susan’s heritage could have been tweaked by some outside force.
Should Legacy be the original timeline, this tweak could be positive – to give Susan a more normal, human life in An Earthly Child. If Legacy is the altered timeline, this may have been a focused effort to force Susan to kill the Master and travel the cosmos on her own – perhaps becoming entangled in the Second War in Heaven or the Time War.
2. The Legacy world seems hostile and has taken on some medieval customs (ie. Knights), while the world of An Earthly Child has reverted to about the 21st Century. If Legacy is the original timeline, this could be the Dalek Time Controller or the Monk at work, changing the landscape to create a better outcome for the invasion. If Earthly is the original timeline, this could be something similar to the interference regarding point #1 – another way to ensure Susan got out into the Master’s TARDIS on her own or that the Delgado Master was killed, etc.
3. In Legacy, St. Paul’s Cathedral was destroyed in the initial invasion but survived it according to Frostfire. This is an interesting fact to consider, as this means the difference between the timelines dates back as far as the 2150s when the Daleks first invaded. I’d doubt this is an intentional change, though – more a ripple effect from changes intended to affect point #2, regardless of which timeline comes "first".
4. In the 2190s of Legacy, an underground backup force Invasion-era Daleks are reawakened by the efforts of the Master. In the same period of time during the events of To the Death, the Daleks, led by the Monk and the Time Controller, invade from space. Essentially, this means that in the background of To the Death, there were static-dish Daleks buried underground since the 2160s, but they were never awakened (as far as we know). It all depends on which renegade Time Lord gets involved.
(There could be a fifth point noting that David Campbell died much earlier in the BF chronology of Susan's life, but ultimately it seems like more of a temporal aftershock than an actual point of interference.)
So, ultimately, if Legacy is the original timeline, the Dalek Time Controller and the Monk are the most likely culprits for three of these four changes. They altered the past at some point before or during (and maybe also after) the Dalek Invasion of Earth to make the world a bit more technologically advanced but ultimately peaceful. For the Monk, this makes perfect sense. That sort of thing is his whole deal. For the Daleks, it makes sense, as well – as the attacks of Legacy are thwarted by a war-like human race.
The only oddity in this train of thought is that Susan was made more human. This could be the result of her own time-travelling, of course. On her solo travels, she could have ultimately altered her own past in some way that made her a bit more human (perhaps making her grandfather a bit more human along the way – who knows?) and changed her own destiny as a result, possibly on purpose.
If the audio plays represent the original timeline, then it seems that someone really wanted Susan off-planet or really wanted the Delgado Master fried – and went about it in the strangest way possible – making Susan a little bit too Gallifreyan to have children and making the world violent enough to accept the Master’s assistance. I’d expect the most likely culprits in this order of things would be the Time Lords during one of their two major wars.
I am inclined to put Legacy first, if only because it provides the most answers. There are two central characters whose modus operandi involves corrective time travel and another – Susan herself – in possession of a TARDIS, full of grief and regret and relatively naïve in the ways of responsible time travel.
That's my fixing theory for that particular continuity snag. If you haven't read or listened to either of these things and I haven't spoiled them for you, I recommend checking them all out. I quite enjoyed all of the material mentioned in this post!
Susan’s appearances after her departure form two distinct branching paths:
Path 1
The Dalek Invasion of Earth
-- Susan does not age, adopts Ian, Barbara and David Junior - Barbara meets the Seventh Doc in "A Time and a Place" --
Legacy of the Daleks
Path 2
The Dalek Invasion of Earth
-- Susan ages, Alex is born and David dies when Alex is young --
An Earthly Child
Relative Dimensions
Lucie Miller & To The Death
As Path 1 ends with Susan in possession of a TARDIS and Path 2 involves the direct involvement of both The Monk and The Dalek Time Controller, several possibilities present themselves as to why her timeline is such a source of divergence. After all, both paths affect other events in the main timeline. Legacy of the Daleks leads into The Deadly Assassin for the Master, while To the Death directly affects Dark Eyes and another recent Main Range trilogy. So how does it all fit together?
First, let's look at the distinctions:
1. In Legacy, Susan is distinctly (and tragically) Gallifreyan. She and David cannot have children - although they adopt three. She looks identical to her young self thirty years later. The Earthly Child Susan's heritage is more vague. She gives birth to Alex. There is no mention of adopted children. She has aged at the rate of a human, and Alex is potentially only 7% Gallifreyan.
These are pretty big differences but they do have some precedent. After all, the Doctor is (sometimes) half-human and fully Time Lord at once. Perhaps Susan’s heritage could have been tweaked by some outside force.
Should Legacy be the original timeline, this tweak could be positive – to give Susan a more normal, human life in An Earthly Child. If Legacy is the altered timeline, this may have been a focused effort to force Susan to kill the Master and travel the cosmos on her own – perhaps becoming entangled in the Second War in Heaven or the Time War.
2. The Legacy world seems hostile and has taken on some medieval customs (ie. Knights), while the world of An Earthly Child has reverted to about the 21st Century. If Legacy is the original timeline, this could be the Dalek Time Controller or the Monk at work, changing the landscape to create a better outcome for the invasion. If Earthly is the original timeline, this could be something similar to the interference regarding point #1 – another way to ensure Susan got out into the Master’s TARDIS on her own or that the Delgado Master was killed, etc.
3. In Legacy, St. Paul’s Cathedral was destroyed in the initial invasion but survived it according to Frostfire. This is an interesting fact to consider, as this means the difference between the timelines dates back as far as the 2150s when the Daleks first invaded. I’d doubt this is an intentional change, though – more a ripple effect from changes intended to affect point #2, regardless of which timeline comes "first".
4. In the 2190s of Legacy, an underground backup force Invasion-era Daleks are reawakened by the efforts of the Master. In the same period of time during the events of To the Death, the Daleks, led by the Monk and the Time Controller, invade from space. Essentially, this means that in the background of To the Death, there were static-dish Daleks buried underground since the 2160s, but they were never awakened (as far as we know). It all depends on which renegade Time Lord gets involved.
(There could be a fifth point noting that David Campbell died much earlier in the BF chronology of Susan's life, but ultimately it seems like more of a temporal aftershock than an actual point of interference.)
So, ultimately, if Legacy is the original timeline, the Dalek Time Controller and the Monk are the most likely culprits for three of these four changes. They altered the past at some point before or during (and maybe also after) the Dalek Invasion of Earth to make the world a bit more technologically advanced but ultimately peaceful. For the Monk, this makes perfect sense. That sort of thing is his whole deal. For the Daleks, it makes sense, as well – as the attacks of Legacy are thwarted by a war-like human race.
The only oddity in this train of thought is that Susan was made more human. This could be the result of her own time-travelling, of course. On her solo travels, she could have ultimately altered her own past in some way that made her a bit more human (perhaps making her grandfather a bit more human along the way – who knows?) and changed her own destiny as a result, possibly on purpose.
If the audio plays represent the original timeline, then it seems that someone really wanted Susan off-planet or really wanted the Delgado Master fried – and went about it in the strangest way possible – making Susan a little bit too Gallifreyan to have children and making the world violent enough to accept the Master’s assistance. I’d expect the most likely culprits in this order of things would be the Time Lords during one of their two major wars.
I am inclined to put Legacy first, if only because it provides the most answers. There are two central characters whose modus operandi involves corrective time travel and another – Susan herself – in possession of a TARDIS, full of grief and regret and relatively naïve in the ways of responsible time travel.
That's my fixing theory for that particular continuity snag. If you haven't read or listened to either of these things and I haven't spoiled them for you, I recommend checking them all out. I quite enjoyed all of the material mentioned in this post!
. Seriously though, This isn't a case of possible alternate timelines or just squinting hard enough and you can ignore the discrepancies between the two, you really can't so pick one. I tend to pick BF's material because it's (a) usually coherent and doesn't arse up TV continuity, (b) is actually performed by the actors which for me lends a reality to it that the novel doesn't, (c) , Legacy is actually dreadful nonsense and (d), the only possibility of saving any of the events of Legacy would be if BF were to adapt it and radically restructure it to align with "An Eartlhly Child" et al.
