PT, Beyond Collinwood

[Zahir]

Don't know about anyone else, but I always found the whole idea of Parallel Time fascinating!  And should anyone be interested here is an interesting and entertaining documentary on the scientific basis for the idea:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnnA3sgMXCI

Anyway, I take part in a group investigating the idea the Wold Newton Universe--a premise that many fictional stories are in fact historical accounts (with varying degrees of accuracy) of a parallel world to our own.  In this place, Sherlock Holmes solved a mystery involving Tarzan's uncle in "The Adventure of the Priory School" while an associate of Zorro was bitten by a vampire and came to be known (eventually) as Vampirella, where James Bond and Hercule Poirot as well as U.N.C.L.E. may have all crossed swords at one point or another with Fu Manchu.

DS is part of this, and some of us recently began to investigate how many times we may have encountered Parallel Time in other works, such as...

The television show Fringe involves a parallel world, one with somewhat more advanced technology but where 9/11 destroyed the White House, Nixon's face is on the half-dollar coin, comic book heroes include the Red Arrow and Red Lantern, etc.

Another show, Doctor Who, encountered a parallel time very much like that in Fringe--one where Britain is a republic and airships are a popular form of travel.

Both are places were terrible things have happened, resulting in more militaristic governments that may have eventually given rise to the "Mirror Universe" in Star Trek.

Plus maybe the alternate Friends where Monica never lost all that weight, Joey became a soap star,  Ross stayed married, Phoebe became a stock broker, etc.  And the world where Buffy the Vampire Slayer never came to Sunnydale.

Just something fun to think about!     Just as I've always wondered if PT Collinwood were rebuilt, and might the room allow some later member of the Collins family to meet Quentin and Maggie's children?

[Gerard]

I always wondered what the rest of the PT world beyond Collinwood was like.  Who was President?  Were there ever World Wars?  Was My Mother the Car a critical and commercial success?  All we heard was that there was a Genoa, Italy.

Gerard

[Lydia]

Just as I've always wondered if PT Collinwood were rebuilt, and might the room allow some later member of the Collins family to meet Quentin and Maggie's children?

What if parallel time Collinwood were torn down after the fire?  Some unsuspecting person from our time might be in the room in the east wing one day when it changed, and fall down a ten feet or so to the ground, and then have to climb a ladder and sit on it like St. Simeon Stylites until the room changed again.

Or maybe one of the essential properties of the room's mutability was that there was a room in both time bands, so if the room ceased to exist in one time band, it would no longer change.

[DarkLady]

What if parallel time Collinwood were torn down after the fire?  Some unsuspecting person from our time might be in the room in the east wing one day when it changed, and fall down a ten feet or so to the ground, and then have to climb a ladder and sit on it like St. Simeon Stylites until the room changed again.

I can just see Professor Timothy Elliot Stokes volunteering! 

[Gerard]

In my what-if-DS-had-continued synopsis, I did have a plot where Barnabas returned to PT, finding that Collinwood had, indeed, been torn down and all that was beyond the door of the room was an empty field.  Rather than dealing with a ten-foot drop, in true DS style, I ignored the inconsistency simply because I didn't want to bother with it and had him step through right into the field.  It would've been too much to have him ignore Julia's pleas, followed by a piercing shriek and a thud, Julia leaning into the doorway, looking down and seeing his crumpled figure below, doing her "Bbbaarrrnnnaaabbbasss!" with him responding in a muffled tone:  "I'm aaalll right."

Gerard

[Zahir]

Gerard--I almost choked on my coffee reading that image!  Thank you!   

[Nightfall59]

It would have been fun if Barnabas and Julia had stumbled onto a PT room that took them somewhere else. They did all this time traveling and never got further than Collinwood. 

[Uncle Roger]

Was it ever established if the PT 1970 and the PT 1841 were the same universe?

[MagnusTrask]

What if parallel time Collinwood were torn down after the fire?  Some unsuspecting person from our time might be in the room in the east wing one day when it changed, and fall down a ten feet or so to the ground, and then have to climb a ladder and sit on it like St. Simeon Stylites until the room changed again.

And I thought I was the only one asking things like this!   If you're going back to PT, you really have to deal with this, as undignified as it is.   Avoid the complexities, and you avoid being interesting, I think.   I like the image of (our) Stokes up there gnawing on some luxury assortment of cheeses of the world, talking to himself, singing some opera, maybe...

It wasn't "established" that both PT storylines were in the same PT, but I think it never occurred to them that they needed to.  Still, that's a loophole any fanfic writer can take advantage of.