A fixed point in history

Introducción de "A fixed point in history", el primer capítulo de The bliss of fatal death and other timey wimeys:

In his letter to Robert Hooke dated February 5, 1675, Sir Isaac Newton wrote the now famous phrase “if I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants”. When storytelling is involved, paying attention to what other stories (and streams of stories) have told, especially which of them have succeeded and lasted, can also help us see further than usual. I don’t just refer to using the storytelling basic pieces that make a traditional, folk, legendary or mythical story; it’s not semiotics and Propp or even Lévi-Strauss’ structuralism that I am approaching. It’s the bare and wise influence of ancient stories in new stories. One of the main ways Doctor Who has built a good mythology of his own is by reflecting bits, morsels and chunks of other, older mythologies, repeating tropes, locus communis, even names, places and times with a very strong meaning tied to them. And among all of those, death-related names, places and times are the most plot-wise relevant.