10 Things About Doctor Who That Seem To Confuse Non-Fans

4. Time Travel

Time traveller? Check. Time travelling machine? Check. So why does the concept of time travel still seem to give people headaches? Sometimes it's better for everyone if you just accept that it is what it is. The Doctor travels in time because he can and if you had the ability to visit other time periods at your leisure, the chances are you would, too. It doesn't come without its confusion, though.

Even fans have trouble getting their heads around some of the show's more mind-boggling plots but the show always does its best to explain them in simple terms in its own unique scientific way. The Tenth Doctor put it pretty well himself in Series 3. "People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect but actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly timey-wimey stuff".

So there you go.

Time doesn't progress in chronological order for the Doctor so he's got his very own timeline which means he could take a picture of the Empire State Building and then go back in time and show it to the workmen as it's being built so they know what they're making. He doesn't change the events or alter how they actually happened. The Empire State Building is what it is - time just sort of bends itself around him as he becomes part of its events.

It's like the grandfather paradox. If you went back in time and killed your grandfather, you were never born to kill him in the first place. But in Doctor Who terms, something like that is possible. The consequences of doing it would be dire for all concerned but time isn't a strict progression of cause to effect so it would result in a new timeline running adjacent to the "proper" one. It's all a big ball of stuff.

Remember that. It's very important. Of course, there are some moments that a time traveller can never, ever change, which brings us to...