Doctor Who has been around for many decades, but one of its most famous, oft-quoted scenes came in the episode “Blink” in 2007. The Tenth Doctor, played by David Tennant, exposits about how time is “complicated,” describing it as “a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff,” rather than a linear progression.
And you know why that quote has endured? Because it’s true. I mean, I wouldn’t go citing Doctor Who on your term paper, but according to University of Sydney astrophysicist Geraint Lewis, the Tenth Doctor at least got the broad strokes right.
Lewis was talking to Reuters about time dilation and black holes when he brought up Doctor Who. “In modern physics, time is a complicated thing,” he said. “Doctor Who had it right, that time is best described as ‘wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff.’ This means that we don’t really understand time and its limitation, and some things are still not ruled out: time travel, warp drives, etc. The future could be very exciting, though maybe not.”
Like Doctor Who said, time is “wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey”
See, all that time spent watching Doctor Who wasn’t wasted. It was science.
But seriously, it’s cool that Doctor Who came close to the mark here, insofar as we don’t really know where the mark is at the moment. That’s often the province of good sci-fi: to look at everything we don’t know about the universe and imagine how it might all work. Who knows? Maybe real-life science will vindicate these stories later on.
David Tennant will return as the Doctor later this year in a series of Doctor Who specials. We’ll see what further insights he has into the cosmos then.
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