Background first. If you are a fan of Dr. Who, you probably are familiar with the character Captain Jack Harkness (played by John Barrowman). Fans of Torchwood obviously know him. For those that are not, he is a human being from the 51st century that was able to time travel to the past (1939 roughly). He met up with The Doctor, and was brought to the future – around 100,000 or 1 million years in the future, I forget which.
It was at this time, called the Bad Wolf episodes, that Capt Jack is killed. But via forces to long to explain, he is brought back to life. Brought back "wrong" as we later find out.
Jack is virtually immortal. By that I mean that if you shoot him in the head he will die and then get back up. Ditto if you stab, burn, nuke or otherwise blow him up. He has been electrocuted, drowned, buried in cement, shot by lasers, had creatures attempt to drain his lifeforce (killing them via overfeeding) and way more – but he always gets back up. The Doctor describes him as a “…a fixed point in space and time. You are a fact.”
Now this is critical to my argument. We also find out via Dr. Who that some 10 million (or billion, I again forget) years from nowish, Capt Jack transforms into a being called the Face of Boh, and dies.
If you are not a fan of sci-fi, Dr. Who, or Torchwood I thank you for having read this far. If you are also not a bit of a science geek you really may get lost or hate the rest of this post.
So here is my argument. Does it make sense that Jack dies? Is this a contradiction in the 2 shows?
I think not. Because if you view time and space in terms of the Doctor’s universe, then they are not linear. They are like an enormously big, yet absolutely small ball of string. All points of the sting touch every other point. Thus time is simultaneous and instantaneous. We just see it as linear from our point of view.
That as a given, since Jack Harkness becomes a point AFTER the creation of the universe (and thus the start of time and space) he must not be eternal. Which means the Doctor is correct and the shows are right.
I view it like this:
If we view time as a ball, say that Jack is a point that starts maybe 2/3 into the ball. That is when he became a fact and fixed point. He continues to the end of the ball. But since he is not connected to 1/3 of the ball, he cannot be eternal. Because there is some point that is the beginning and end of time that he does not exist as a fact in. Which is one reason why the Doctor initially finds him repugnant after being brought back to life the wrong way.
My friend disagrees as being a fact implies being eternal in their view. That he must be forever, and since he is not The Doctor is wrong.
I told you this was geeky. But to me it’s on the same level as people arguing who deserves to win American Idol. Only better.
So, I leave it to the fans, and any quantum physicists out there. Am I right or is my friend?
No comments:
Post a Comment