This is a nifty Google feature I discovered accidentally a couple of weeks ago, thanks to Dr Who, and the River Song character in particular.
I’m not a massive Dr Who fan, but the boys are, so I tag along for the ride if there’s nothing more interesting to do when an episode is on. I’ve seen an above average number of episodes this season, for some reason, so was regularly exposed to River Song wittering on about when the Dr would find out who she really was. Putting on my “I could write this” hat, I had a bit of a ponder, came up with a theory, then was a bit chuffed when it turned out to be right in the last episode. Once I’d finished doing my victory dance, I sat down with Google to see whether other folks had also guessed right, and to check whether I’d inadvertently picked up on any big hints in earlier episodes without realising it. Because of the whole time travel thing, searching to see if anyone had documented River Song’s timeline seemed like a good place to start – which is when I noticed this option in the Google search results:
Hmmm… never noticed that before – interesting.
So I clicked, and this is what appeared:
Ooo! Pretty!
And it gets better. Click any segment in the main timeline to get a more detailed timeline for that period just below. Keep clicking there to drill down to finer and finer detail, or click another segment in the overall timeline to jump to another period. Every time you select a time segment, the search results below are filtered to reflect the period of interest.
In the case of my particular search, for a fictional time-travelling character, this tool turns out not to be all that useful, but if you’re searching for something more sensible (like timelines of genuine historic events or real people) there’s huge potential there. And for pure entertainment value it’s a whole lot of fun, and a great alternative way to represent data. Me likey. Go have a try.