San Dimas Time: Difference between revisions

* Whenever the protagonist of Octavia Butler's ''Kindred'' is dragged back in time to save Rufus, the time that passes in the present before her return is compressed but proportional to how long she spends in the past. When, for example, she spends a few minutes in the past, she disappears in the present for a mere second or two, but when she accidentally leaves her husband in the past, she spends three weeks in the present before going back and learning that her husband has been stranded for over five years.

* The short story [http://www.tor.com/stories/2011/08/wikihistory "Wikihistory"] by Desmond Warzel would seem to operate on San Dimas time; otherwise there would be no suspense regarding AsianAvenger's return.

* Lynne Reid Banks' [[Indian in The Cupboard]] series has the titular cupboard's method of time travel actually function this way, with Omri's dad speculating that time is like a corkscrew.

 

** Thus, if the Doctor experiences event A followed by event B, the Master must also experience event A followed by event B, though the number of years in between might differ considerably for the two. The same applies to the Doctor meeting earlier regenerations.

** In the [[Doctor Who Expanded Universe]], the BBC Books novel ''Emotional Chemistry'' maintains a continuous narrative crossing between three time periods, with four separate means of time travel, and only one point at which one of the characters is "out of sync" with the others.

*** River Song is a strange type of ''[[Inverted Trope|Inversion]]'', in that she apparently routinely experiences events in the opposite order to The Doctor. (Sometimes they experience events in the same order; otherwise their tradition of comparing diaries would be pointless.) She is aware that the first time she meets The Doctor will be the last time he meets her, which (although it is a [[Foregone Conclusion]] for the audience) isn't really necessitated by anything she knows.

*** This same subversion had been done in the previous series, though on a smaller scale. Within their personal timeline, the Doctor and Martha are falling prey to Mr. Saxon's manipulations ''before'' they {{spoiler|travel to the end of the universe, release the Master and accidentally give him the means to go back in time and establish himself as Mr. Saxon on 21st century Earth.}}

*** Mel and the Sixth Doctor "first" met each other in a different order, too.

** Interestingly, the few occasions when time-travelers do appear to be out of sync with each other there is generally non-Gallifreyan technology involved (Like Captain Jack's [[Time Agent]] wrist band).

** In the revived series, this trope is required to make the Doctor being the [[Last of His Kind]] meaningful. Otherwise, he could run into pre-Timewar Time Lords and Daleks.

** In one [[Doctor Who Expanded Universe]] book, the villainess, a Time Lady, monologues (to the readers; she's alone in the room) that she ought to be going up against the (then-current) [[Chessmaster|Seventh Doctor]]. She then decides that he'd be too much for her, looks at all thirteen regenerations, and decides to pick on the Fifth instead, even though that's breaking the rules about meeting out of order. [[Beware the Nice Ones|He's still too much for her.]]

** The Doctor always has this situation when on an inter-temporal phone call for obvious reasons.

** Don't try to make sense of the events of "The Pandorica Opens" and "The Big Bang" without assuming that in the Doctor Who universe, time goes in two directions at once; while the TARDIS can go back and forth in linear time, there's clearly some sort of clock running in a different way, just so {{spoiler|The TARDIS exploding causing every star in the universe to simultaneously supernova at every point in time}} makes sense.

* Played with [http://www.the-whiteboard.com/autowb183.html here] in ''[[The Whiteboard]]''.

* Almost justified in ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]''. At the end of ''The Storm Breaker Saga'', it's revealed the time travelling in this and previous stories has worked as follows: {{spoiler|First, the demon K'Z'K is blast into the past accidentally, taking with him Gwynn's soul, leaving Gwynn's body in a coma in the present. He "cuts a noticeable trail" through time and space. Next, Riff's malfunctioning time machine sends Zoe and Torg into the past along that same trail (though it seems they actually arrive somewhat after K'Z'K, which would probably be a blatant example of this trope). They fight and temporarily destroy K'Z'K in that time, whereupon Gwynn's soul returns through time to her body to the present. In the present, Riff and Dr. Schlock have been trying to figure out a way to go after Torg and Zoe for some time, not knowing what time they went to. When Gwynn regains consciousness, she is able to report seeing them, and Riff travels along the trail her soul left, thus explaining why he only arrives in the time after Torg and Zoe have defeated K'Z'K. The question that remains unanswered, besides of why Torg and Zoe don't appear in exactly the same time as K'Z'K, is: why didn't Gwynn's soul return to the time when it left her? One theory is that Gwynn's soul had to maintain a chronological parallel with the physical component.}}

** An example of this in action is the big End of Act 5 Flash, [S] Cascade, which involves no less than four different chronologies happening "simultaneously". For example, the villain {{spoiler|destroys a universe from the outside, shortly after that universe was created. At the "same time", his past self in the future of the same universe is trying to escape from it's destruction. This universe then explodes at the "same time" as another universe, even though the second universe had existed ''before'' the first one.}}

** In Act 6 {{spoiler|two characters are given a chat program that let's the communicate with two other characters in the distant past. The program is basically designed to run on San Dimas Time.}}