2-11: I thought of a possible reason

[beccaelizabeth]

for Jack to keep that secret - Time. Jonah was away 40 years, but only disappeared 7 months ago, right? So how long has he been locked up there. They might have mentioned this in the episode, but it applies to all the missing/returned. There will be people in there who haven't disappeared yet, and do you think Gwen is someone who'll take 'paradox' for an answer? So either she causes a paradox saving someone who she already knows walked into a rift, or she fails in some way, possibly getting hurt in the process - or she sets them up to fall in! And Jack knows from paradox. He spent how long avoiding it? So he'd know how important it is to not spread information around that could potentially cause a paradox. And it's information that's at the heart of paradox - not just things having happened but knowing they have. If she could only act because she knew a thing will happen then that's paradox. If she doesn't know... does she have a chance to save them? Could withholding information actually give people a chance? I don't think so, but... I don't know.

The Rift dumps people out elsewhere in spacetime. Okay. So... were those, what, 17? Those people in the Torchwood asylum... Had they been dumped elsewhere in space but in the past in time? Had they been dumped elsewhere on Earth but in the past? Would they lock someone up for that? Yes - but in cryo, they wrote about it on the website. Would Jack keep people in cryo to prevent paradox? Hell yes. So that undermines my theory, those returned but awake would have to be in their right place in time. If there's enough space in cryo for all of them. And if there's no other reason they're unsuitable for cryo. Maybe their physical damage would make cryo dodgy for them? Too many variables, not enough on-screen canon.

But what if they were dumped out in the future? What if he's been doing deals with time travellers to get them back? He'd restrict access to that data, again for good reason - Torchwood wanted to catch the Doctor and squeeze data out of him, they'd probably do it to other time travellers, and then hello paradox and goodbye future he grew up in. Big mess.

So he's hiding the returnees not because of their disabilities and the difficult of explaining them without outing Torchwood - he let Gwen tell Jonah's mother, Torchwood can be outed in the right circumstances apparently, and that's a big change on last year. Gwen keeps pushing back the boundaries... so yeah, partly to keep Torchwood's secrets. But he's keeping them hidden from Torchwood employees because... they're the tip of an iceberg of other secrets? Maybe?

... how does he get them back? The rift doesn't conveniently dump them out there, Jonah got rescued by spaceship. How much contact with other worlds does Jack have, and how much of it does Torchwood have, and what would TW think about the gap?

Of course there's other possibilities too. Now his staff know he can't put them there. Could get awkward. Leaves fewer options for dealing with it.

... oooh, I just had bunny of how Ianto knows about the place... it depends on there being a big enough gap after Cyberwoman at some point... Hmmm, possibly not a worky bunny. But it could be Ianto knows about it to stop himself ending up there? Maybe? Or not.


I'm not so sure about this one, I'll have to rewatch and think some more, but it do offer an explanation that doesn't boil down to 'Jack likes secrets', which isn't very helpful.

Comments

[louiex.livejournal.com]

*encourages your bunnies, they are always fantastic* :D

[beccaelizabeth]

:)

[halfspokenwords.livejournal.com]

This is fabulous.

There will be people in there who haven't disappeared yet, and do you think Gwen is someone who'll take 'paradox' for an answer?

That line especially made me go "Ooooh" because that makes so much sense. I wish Jack had mentioned it, only I don't, because you know Gwen would have tried to argue, "But we can save them, Jack!" (Didn't she pay attention in Small Worlds?)

*encourages plot bunnies of all sorts :D*

[beccaelizabeth]

Yeah, this was so tight to Gwen pov for most of it that we couldn't get Jack's side of the argument so well. Only if he'd told her, and the point was him not telling her. So we're left reaching for answers.

[http://users.livejournal.com/peasant_/]

Brilliant theory.

I have realised that the only way to deal with how much I hated 2.11 is to try to pick it apart and understand it, because if I leave it at the emotional level I will continue to just be upset. This idea of yours makes good sense and will be important in helping me to do that, so thank you. :o)

I've just spent a long time reading up theories of time travel in fiction. Annoyingly I can't find anything specific to Doctor Who, and I don't know any of the old canon so I can't work it out for myself. Do you know of any web pages which explain how time travel is supposed to work in TW and DW?

[beccaelizabeth]

I don't really do DW fandom, just TW. And watching DW obsessively, which isn't quite the same as fandom. If you want to see how time travel works, try the New series episodes Father's Day, Girl in the Fireplace, and Blink, all of which play with time in different ways. Father's Day is key for Paradox, Blink is all about Timey Wimey Stuff aka time loops or predestination, GitF is... a little bit predestination, a whole lot shiny. Or old school Mawdryn Undead. Has some useful about what happens if you meet yourself.

A few of 5s arcs like the one where they make the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs or the one where they make the great fire of London or the one where they find the time travel ship that made the universe (when it jumped too far and had to dump fuel) seem to be saying the DW 'verse has time travellers built in to the fabric, so stuff happens because it always did happen.

But episodes like Pyramids of Mars in the old series and, oh bother I forgot the name, the one with Dickens in the new series, they make it clear that once you're there anything is possible, the future is not set, and you can in fact screw the whole thing up and make it not exist even if you're from there. Except in neither case is that what actually happens. I don't know how it would work out if they really did that.

Sometimes in the new series the Doctor turns up and knows something is wrong because his history is perfect yet it doesn't match the bit of history he finds himself in. Other time travellers have therefore twisted it already. Or there's the thing where the Doctor says that Harriet Jones is Prime Minister in Britain's Golden Age... and then gets rid of her, anyway. So he can change things.

Basically time travel in the Who verse does as it pleases, and it has always been more about what's fun to play with today than being any kind of consistent or having actual rules. Mostly though history works out without noticeable changes. Mostly.

[http://users.livejournal.com/peasant_/]

Thank you! That is exactly the sort of stuff I need to know. I can go read up about those episodes now.