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Sci-Fi Entertainment

The Doctor's Every Journey 97

jc79 writes "David McCandless of InformationIsBeautiful.net has created a crowdsourced dataset of every time travel journey the Doctor made in every episode of the series since 1963. Who wants to visualise it?" Previous efforts have resulted in this amazing visualization of time travel intersecting Bill & Ted, Back to the Future, Time Bandits, Buck Rogers, Planet of the Apes and many more.
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The Doctor's Every Journey

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  • Last Post (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 23, 2010 @12:26PM (#33343004)

    Last Post

  • with how often the lead actor changes I'm like Dr. Who?

    • when they decide not to renew the contract, but it's all part of the storyline that each Timelord gets 12 regenerations (13 incarnations). Oh and the Master broke that limit already.
      • He got a new body when he has some powers of the Keeper of Traken remaining. I think he got more lives as a "thank-you" for his help in the Time Lord vs. Daleks Time War.
        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Nyder ( 754090 )

          He got a new body when he has some powers of the Keeper of Traken remaining. I think he got more lives as a "thank-you" for his help in the Time Lord vs. Daleks Time War.

          I figured it was limited because there was more timelords, since he's the only one left, there's no point in limiting it.

          Since the tardis helps with it, and the tardis is telepathic & whatnot, then that makes sense. It knows to keep regenerating him because there isn't any others left.

          At least, that's how I'd get around the limit if i wrote for them.

    • Hahaha BURN! I always thought they should call him Dr. When..cause you know, he's like always time-travelling! LOL!
  • by BSAtHome ( 455370 ) on Monday August 23, 2010 @12:29PM (#33343070)

    A convergence in the time-space continuum has resulted in clogged internet pipes. The pipes should be bigger on the inside than the outside.

    • Have some respect! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by dreamchaser ( 49529 )

      In the name of the late Senator Ted Stevens, they are TUBES man, TUBES!

      • by Sponge Bath ( 413667 ) on Monday August 23, 2010 @12:52PM (#33343386)

        In the name of the late Senator Ted Stevens...

        Hmmm... you know, I've never seen Ted Stevens and Davros in the same place at the same time. Coincidence, or something more sinister?

        • by tom17 ( 659054 )
          You also haven't seen ME and Davros in the same place at the same time. You better be careful.
          • by Fatal67 ( 244371 ) on Monday August 23, 2010 @01:26PM (#33343968)

            Yes we have. Oh wait.. maybe that hasn't happened yet for you..

            • Shhh. You're not suppose to tell them anything about their future. It will disturb the timeline. You know what happened last time. Observe. That's all we can do. Don't touch anything. Don't consume anything. Don't change anything. Look what happened last time. A fool with a sonic screwdriver hotwired your T-box and started mucking about all over the timeline. Do you want to get stuck on a planet primarily populated by those furless monkeys and blattaria again? Last time it took you

            • I hate spoilers >.>
        • by duguk ( 589689 )

          Coincidence, or something more sinister?

          Sir, was that an obscure quote from Time Gentlemen Please? If so, I heartedly applaud you!

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        You know what? You've inspired me. We should rename the Internet "The Ted Stevens Memorial Infotube Superhighway".

        Who's with me?
    • It just goes to show crowd-sourcing only works when you don't melt down the servers. Realistically with the slashdot community we could have had this project finished within the first five minutes, disputed and changed within the next, and finally edited back to some resemblance of validity within about 20 after that. Then again, this is Dr Who, so Steven Moffat episodes would require any visual display of the time line to be four dimensional.
  • Missing Time Tunnel (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Jheralack ( 1067056 )
    I notice that Time Tunnel [imdb.com] is missing. I don't think the list is restricted to good episodes and movies. Maybe including that would make the visualization too messy.
    • by DG ( 989 )

      Farscape,

      Primer,

      What others?

      DG

      • And Futurama is missing also. Fry goes into the future as the premiss of the show, but there is some other time travel in some of the other episodes also. In fact, in one of the new episodes, Professor Farnworth invents a time machine that can only go forward through time. They went much further than the minute they wanted to go, so just had to keep going forward looking for a time when people have built a backwards time machine. Eventually they loop around and try to stop in their time again, but they miss
      • Primer... glwt :-)
      • by HTH NE1 ( 675604 )

        Quantum Leap should be an easy dataset to compile: the dates are part of the episode titles, all available on IMDb, with the episodes involving multiple leaps being very few: Genesis, Lee Harvey Oswald, and Trilogy come to mind. Unless you also want to include how many days he spent in each leap.

        Is there a significance to which side of the timeline an arc is drawn? Is it forward vs. backward travel, or is that determined by which end of the arc gets an endpoint?

      • Red Dwarf.
        Life On Mars & Life On Mars (US)
  • by Anonymous Coward

    "Crowdsourcing" is one of the stupidest Web 2.0 terms yet devised.

  • by lostros ( 260405 ) on Monday August 23, 2010 @12:43PM (#33343262)

    It's not a crowdsourced dataset, it's more of a big timey-wimey ball.

  • by AGMW ( 594303 ) on Monday August 23, 2010 @12:48PM (#33343332) Homepage
    What about 1965 and Dr Who and the Daleks [wikipedia.org] with Peter Cushing as the eponymous Dr.

    Looks like they could use a bit more fandominium!

    • by SeNtM ( 965176 )
      Its not canon.
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by hal2814 ( 725639 )
        • The two movies with Peter Cushing are remakes of first-Doctor serials, specifically "The Daleks" and "The Dalek Invasion of Earth." Including them would be redundant and confusing. The time travel parts don't even change from the originals except for the framing bits at the start and end.

          What they did change was the characters and the nature of both the Doctor and the TARDIS. In the case of the movies, the Doctor was a human called Dr Who, an inventor who created a time machine called TARDIS. Susan was a l

    • If you're going to add that, then also add sequel, The Dalek Invasion 2150. Both, however, were big-screen adaptations earlier episodes, so they'd have the time travel taking place at points already in the dataset.
    • What about 1965 and Dr Who and the Daleks [wikipedia.org] with Peter Cushing as the eponymous Dr.

      Perhaps because it doesn't exist? It was just a hallucination from eating some bad curry.

  • Missing episodes (Score:5, Informative)

    by schon ( 31600 ) on Monday August 23, 2010 @12:49PM (#33343340)

    I noticed that on the master sheet, he went from "Day of the Dinosaurs" to "Ark in Space" - missing the Jon Pertwee stories "Death to the Daleks", "The Monster of Peladon", "Planet of the Spiders", and the Tom Baker story "Robot"

    I know he says that the master sheet only contains those which have time travel, but this is clearly false - "The Monster of Peladon" takes place a century after "The Curse of Peladon", which is also missing. Also, in "Planet of the Spiders", takes place both in the 1970s, and far in the future (he speaks with a civilization made up of the descendents of a wrecked Earth space ship.)

    • by gbrandt ( 113294 )

      And of course you let him know about the missing items........

      • by schon ( 31600 )

        I created an account and tried twice to add a comment, but got an error. I'm unable to add notes or anything else to the spreadsheet.

        So to answer your question - I certainly tried, but my post here will have to do.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by meringuoid ( 568297 )
      Well, look, we can analyse the details of the plot and deduce the necessity for off-screen time travel. I mean, we know full well the Doctor has all manner of adventures that don't get televised, he was only ~600 when we first met him and now he claims to be in his 900s and everyone knows he's fibbing about that (and by the way, Doctor, regenerating as a younger man every time is fooling nobody). So there's centuries of the Doctor's life we simply don't see happen.

      Plotting only the time journeys that made

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by schon ( 31600 )

        I realize that. However my criticism is about the time travel we *did* see on TV.

        Curse of Peladon/Monster of Peladon were series 9 and 11 respectively. We see the Doctor (with Jo in "Curse" and Sarah in "Monster") when he first arrives on the Peladon and steps out of the Tardis.

        Planet of the Spiders was Jon Pertwee's last series - we see the time travel actually happen.

        So I'm not sure what you're on about. Perhaps you're responding to the wrong post? :)

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by jd ( 1658 )

        He was 750 in the first season. Some of his off-screen adventures we know. Susan looked at a book on Revolutionary France and exclaimed that it wasn't right. Well, how did she know? The answer would seem obvious. She later mentions that the TARDIS has been a Sedan chair and an Iconic pillar. Given the gaps in her historical knowledge, it should be possible to infer which periods/places would most likely have been involved. (Susan only knows Earth history to the extent that she has been there, so what she kn

    • I never saw an episode of Dr. Who prior to the new series'.

      Where would be a good starting point to watch the older stuff? My understanding is that the first episodes are just "gone".

      • That depends on how much 'history' you want to absorb. There are a plethora of sites around that have timelines, plot summaries, and even some of the dialogue of the early Hartnell episodes. My suggestion is to pick out a villian (Daleks, Cybermen, Martians, whatever) and grab the DVD's of each Doctor dealing with 'em. There are Dalek episodes from EVERYBODY available at Netflix. I've done that, and used it to judge just exactly who my 'favorite Doctor' is (and no, I'm not telling). But that will give
      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by JWSmythe ( 446288 )

        The good starting point is at the beginning. 679 episodes, that take up 202Gb, and are available on your friendly neighborhood bit torrent (titled "Doctor Who Seasons 1 to 26"). Don't worry, it'll take a few months to download.

        If my script worked properly, the total runtime is 1,023,749.521 seconds. Or in something a little easier to understand. 11 days, 20 hours, 22 minutes, and 26.521 seconds. That's assuming all the files worked, there is no gap between episodes (add 11

        • You will want to take out the opening credits / recap / closing credits though as they get really annoying after the first few dozen times. It would also make sense to stitch the four parts of each episode into one video file.

    • When you said Missing Episodes, I thought you meant these http://www.paullee.com/drwho/ [paullee.com]
  • Height of Geek (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Wow, I think that the construction of a visualised dataset of Dr Who's journey has created a new pinnacle of geekiness. Anyone know of anything more geeky?
  • by Anonymous Coward

    Forget geek cruises, conventions, LARPs, and every other means to the imaginative potential of a herd of geeks. Reenaction of any show (not just DW) in the db, with scavenger hunts and puzzle solving analogous to that episode(e.g. building a simple radio or solving a scientific problem), with interludes of discussion sessions on real-world or philosophical ideas in the episode. Teams could be made based on different skills, and organizers could cherrypick the stories that provoke the most discussion. As a b

  • Buck Rogers? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by multimediavt ( 965608 ) on Monday August 23, 2010 @01:09PM (#33343650)

    I will have to RTFA, because I don't remember Buck Rogers ever time traveling. Even the old Buster Crabb version was devoid of time travel.

    I did notice that Star Trek was missing from the summary. I know they time traveled a lot! Especially, the Kirk Enterprise.

    • by v1 ( 525388 )

      the Kirk Enterprise.

      To say nothing of the movies

      And in Voyager, a time traveling antagonist was an ongoing part of the plot for quite some time

    • I will have to RTFA, because I don't remember Buck Rogers ever time traveling.

      On January 7, 1929, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century A.D., the first science fiction comic strip, debuted. Coincidentally, this was also the date that the Tarzan comic strip began. The first three frames of the series set the scene for Buck's 'leap' 500 years into Earth's future:

      "I was twenty years old when they stopped the world war and mustered me out of the air service. I got a job surveying the low

    • Ok, I get it. He was frozen. I don't call that time travel as it wasn't his intent to travel through time, neither did he make any kind of jump in time. He was frozen and floating through space for 504 years. I don't consider that time travel, or we'd ALL be time travelers, without the frozen part.

      Just because the dude missed a few years while he was sleeping doesn't make him a time traveler. You would have to lump Rip Van Winkle and Woody Allen's 'Sleeper' in the mix if you're counting guys that were

      • by Sabriel ( 134364 )

        If you check out the visualisation, which colour-codes the time travel methods involved, you'll see Woody Allen's 'Sleeper' gets a mention... (grey lines are the "Deep Freeze" method).

    • on the TV show, he gets frozen and the hot chick with the horns unfreezes him....
  • Paradox (Score:3, Funny)

    by Smivs ( 1197859 ) <smivs@smivsonline.co.uk> on Monday August 23, 2010 @01:17PM (#33343822) Homepage Journal
    I didn't have time to RTFA !
  • by Fallingcow ( 213461 ) on Monday August 23, 2010 @01:17PM (#33343826) Homepage

    There ought to be some kind of wiki for fictional predictions. Not like "2430 - The Borg fight The Enterprise at Vega" but more like "2190 - First contact with aliens (Star Trek: First Contact)" or "2050 - World War III begins (some other show)" or "October 23, 2077 - Nuclear war between China and the US (Fallout)" (all dates made up by me except the last one).

    It'd be really cool to be able to see what sort of huge events were supposed to have happened on a given date according to some TV show, movie, book, or video game.

    Wikipedia has some pages that sort of serve this function, but they're all very incomplete or mixed up with real-life predictions, which are lame.

    • My favorite was August 29, 1997. I came into work that day and was like, "Happy Judgment Day, everyone!" I was disappointed when no one knew what I was talking about.
      • Seriously? I thought that would count as mainstream.

        I was still in school at that time, but everyone there was talking about it.

        • The precise date would escape many, though.
          Similarly if he had walked into work, and, at the watercooler sometime during the day, mentioned the AI he just turned on, many would not get the reference.

          Plus, we all know that a judgement day on 8/29/97 didn't/doesn't happen, as they delayed the birth(?) of SkyNet in 1992 by destroying the Cyberdyne Systems laboratory.
    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Yaztromo ( 655250 )

      It'd be really cool to be able to see what sort of huge events were supposed to have happened on a given date according to some TV show, movie, book, or video game.

      In 2010, a joint American-Soviet crew will take the Leonov to Jupiter, in order to investigate a strange object orbiting the planet, and to ascertain what happened back in 2001 to the Discovery, whose orbit around Io is deteriorating rapidly.

      [Looks at calendar...]

      [Checks NASA's website...]

      Thanks a lot, you insensitive clod!!!

      Yaz.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by mano.m ( 1587187 )

      "2190 - First contact with aliens (Star Trek: First Contact)"

      First Contact happens on 5 April, 2063.

    • Fictional Predictions? Like these: http://www.paullee.com/ghosts/bookofpredictions.html [paullee.com]
    • September 13, 1999: The day the moon left Earth's orbit.

    • September 25th, 2010, is the last recorded Code 187 (MDK) in San Angelas according to Lenina Huxley.
  • Not quite complete (Score:5, Informative)

    by Mercano ( 826132 ) <mercano.gmail@com> on Monday August 23, 2010 @01:47PM (#33344304)

    It does seem miss some instances of time travel in the middle of a story. For instance, near the end of Smith and Jones, he goes back to the beginning of the day to take his tie off at Martha, and during Vincent and the Doctor, there were two round trips from 2010 to 1890, of which only the first leg is reported here.

    OK, I may be over-nerding here even on a nerd topic.

    • You clearly haven't even begun to over-nerd it...

      For instance, how many of those trips were done with the TARDIS and how many were with a simple wrist-bound Vortex Manipulator?

      Stick around... we skool y'all on how ta nerd it up.

  • You know, It is amazing so much time is being spent on analyzing fictional data. Is the US Government funding this? :)
  • In the episode Wargames, it's clear that the Wargames are taking part in some alternate dimension, and by travelling from zone to zone the Doctor is not travelling through time but rather from one zone that is set up to emulate a certain time period to another zone which is set up to emulate a different time period. On the spreadsheet, it shows the Doctor making several journeys through time during this episode which isn't what happened.

  • The visualization has several areas labeled "mega paradox". So what should Roswell have been labeled? That would have had Quark and his brother, the Futurama crew, and who knows how many other scifi characters.

  • What about The Tomb of the Cybermen, or The Macra Terror, or any of the other omissions? Why don't these count?

A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always valuable. -- Thomas Jefferson

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