the central character of the BBC TV series, Doctor Who;
a time traveller;
an alien who periodically "regenerates," i.e., is played by a different actor, as Poul Anderson's Dominic Flandry would have to be after his biosculp and as another BBC TV series character, Andromeda, also was.
Like any time traveller, the Doctor can meet his younger or older self. Thus, when Doctor Four travelled to the period of Doctor Three, we suddenly saw and recognized Doctor Three punting on a canal. A friend commented to me, "I didn't realize that, when the Doctor changed actors, the old versions of the Doctor were still around somewhere!" Of course they are not still around anywhere. She had forgotten that we are talking about time travel. With that kind of misunderstanding, no wonder time travel is confusing.
Poul Anderson would have been able to do this well, e.g., Manse Everard has occasion to intervene in his earlier missions without his younger selves suspecting that he is doing so.
4 comments:
As I understood it, the Time Patrol strongly discouraged meetings between older and younger versions of the same person, for fear of creating temporal "vortexes" -- or short-circuits, as I think of it.
I agree. Everard would only intervene in his own earlier missions in an extreme emergency - but they have plenty of them.
And when they do intervene like that, they try very hard to minimize the contact and transfer of information.
As far as possible as if they weren't there.
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