Generations interweaving
Jul. 13th, 2011 12:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI dreamed (a lot of things including the most demented 3D disco in musical theatre costumes)
that River Song was talking with a young man and he said he lived cross generationally, with his grandparents not his parents, and from that she could extrapolate he was related to her and the Doctor, descendant of Time Lord civilisation.
I've been vaguely turning the thought over since. If the Doctor and Susan together was a Time Lord norm, if grandfathers raise their grandchildren, how does that happen? Seems it could make sense with Time Lord society: they spend a very long time in education, and consider themselves mature very late, probably after that first regeneration. For that to lead to children being raised by an older generation, rather than just children being left until a later life, there would have to be some routine limit on fertility. Like with humans, we have our best fertile years when modern education and careers say we've barely got started. If first life Time Lords are the fertile ones, and only first lifes, then they'd have children then and let the olders raise them while they studied. Teenage parents the lot of them. But not particularly close to their offspring. They reserve that for when they've got time. And you can imagine why a society of near-immortals would restrict their own fertility. That or be wildly expansionist (Rassilon, Dark era, early wars) or invent some more space (bigger on the inside). Of course if Time Lords spin up their kids on machines routinely then biological limits are no reason for anything. It could still be a social residual of an earlier biological limit. Also it would do interesting things to age gap relationships, or possibly only age gap relationships in your first life. Dating someone who already did that phase would be awkward. And relationships outside of your first lifetime would have a different basis, not be a precursor to children or way of raising them cooperatively.
I'm not saying canon is this shape, just it seemed like an interesting shape.
that River Song was talking with a young man and he said he lived cross generationally, with his grandparents not his parents, and from that she could extrapolate he was related to her and the Doctor, descendant of Time Lord civilisation.
I've been vaguely turning the thought over since. If the Doctor and Susan together was a Time Lord norm, if grandfathers raise their grandchildren, how does that happen? Seems it could make sense with Time Lord society: they spend a very long time in education, and consider themselves mature very late, probably after that first regeneration. For that to lead to children being raised by an older generation, rather than just children being left until a later life, there would have to be some routine limit on fertility. Like with humans, we have our best fertile years when modern education and careers say we've barely got started. If first life Time Lords are the fertile ones, and only first lifes, then they'd have children then and let the olders raise them while they studied. Teenage parents the lot of them. But not particularly close to their offspring. They reserve that for when they've got time. And you can imagine why a society of near-immortals would restrict their own fertility. That or be wildly expansionist (Rassilon, Dark era, early wars) or invent some more space (bigger on the inside). Of course if Time Lords spin up their kids on machines routinely then biological limits are no reason for anything. It could still be a social residual of an earlier biological limit. Also it would do interesting things to age gap relationships, or possibly only age gap relationships in your first life. Dating someone who already did that phase would be awkward. And relationships outside of your first lifetime would have a different basis, not be a precursor to children or way of raising them cooperatively.
I'm not saying canon is this shape, just it seemed like an interesting shape.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-13 04:05 pm (UTC)