Dr. Who: When Do Milestones Begin and End

[Darwin123]

The doctor travels through both time and space. He meets many alien races. For instance, he met an alien race of fish-vampires in Renaissance Venice. Now, I have been hypothesizing that most of these aliens don't have time travel. However, many of these alien races acknowledge the events in the Doctors life as having occurred in the past. The fish-vampire queen said that the Doctor belongs in a Museum, as the rest of his race were dead.
Furthermore, when someone looks for him in the museums they only see one incarnation of him at a time. When Correy and Amy see him send messages from him, they only see the one incarnation of him that they knew.
So the question is how are
1) Why are his past milestones always in the past, regardless of who is observing?
In the episode where he meets the Christmas Shark, he has an old man interact with himself. I thought it was against the rules. So,
2) Under what conditions can a person interact with a past version of himself without the end of the universe?

The milestones in his life occur in his subjective timeline in a certain order. What I don't understand is how other observers see the milestones in his life in the same order. Other observers should see the milestones in his life in a jumbled order.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Why are his past milestones always in the past, regardless of who is observing?

Because the person observing wouldn't know about the ones in the future...?

2) Under what conditions can a person interact with a past version of himself without the end of the universe?

Reminds me of the question "how fast is warp speed", answer: the speed of plot. Longer answer is that Dr Who is SF so soft that you could spread it on butter by blowing on it. There is no internal consistency to the science/rules of Dr Who, the writers come up with an idea they think will be cool and pack it with technobabble. If some of that technobabble conflicts with earlier babble they either ignore it or get the Dr to say "but that's impossible" before waving his screwdriver or building a MacGuffin.

 

[JonDE]

The doctor travels through both time and space. He meets many alien races. For instance, he met an alien race of fish-vampires in Renaissance Venice. Now, I have been hypothesizing that most of these aliens don't have time travel. However, many of these alien races acknowledge the events in the Doctors life as having occurred in the past. The fish-vampire queen said that the Doctor belongs in a Museum, as the rest of his race were dead.
Furthermore, when someone looks for him in the museums they only see one incarnation of him at a time. When Correy and Amy see him send messages from him, they only see the one incarnation of him that they knew.
So the question is how are
1) Why are his past milestones always in the past, regardless of who is observing?
In the episode where he meets the Christmas Shark, he has an old man interact with himself. I thought it was against the rules. So,
2) Under what conditions can a person interact with a past version of himself without the end of the universe?

The milestones in his life occur in his subjective timeline in a certain order. What I don't understand is how other observers see the milestones in his life in the same order. Other observers should see the milestones in his life in a jumbled order.

I love this show, but one of the problems that the writers have, is keeping everything in chronological order. I have noticed at times, when he travels to the past, that people recognize him that very well shouldn't.

Unfortunetly, you just have to take it with a grain of salt sometimes.

 

[FalseVaccum89]

The doctor travels through both time and space. He meets many alien races. For instance, he met an alien race of fish-vampires in Renaissance Venice. Now, I have been hypothesizing that most of these aliens don't have time travel. However, many of these alien races acknowledge the events in the Doctors life as having occurred in the past. The fish-vampire queen said that the Doctor belongs in a Museum, as the rest of his race were dead.
Furthermore, when someone looks for him in the museums they only see one incarnation of him at a time. When Correy and Amy see him send messages from him, they only see the one incarnation of him that they knew.
So the question is how are
1) Why are his past milestones always in the past, regardless of who is observing?
In the episode where he meets the Christmas Shark, he has an old man interact with himself. I thought it was against the rules. So,
2) Under what conditions can a person interact with a past version of himself without the end of the universe?

The milestones in his life occur in his subjective timeline in a certain order. What I don't understand is how other observers see the milestones in his life in the same order. Other observers should see the milestones in his life in a jumbled order.

The best reason I can think of would be that, because he's a time traveler, and most of them aren't (per your post), they're restricted to knowing only things that have happened to whichever incarnation is before them at the moment. Whereas time travelers, such as River Song, wouldn't have that limitation (or blessing, depending on how you look at it).

 

[Jow]

The doctor lives outside of time, like all timelords. In my opinion timelords travel in a second temporal dimension. It's like a bunch of dominos lined up. Each domino is all of time and space. The doctor can be at any point on a domino, however, he can only be on one domino at a time and he has to keep moving dominos in order. It's like us, except each domino for us is one instant in time. We must keep moving in order across each instant.