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In the episode Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS

This character

The Doctor

Goes through the rift to warn

Himself of the impending disaster and to tell himself to push the button

How can this even possible without destroying the fabric of space time? Or creating a paradox, or creating a time loop? For example, this paradox loop is created:

Because he pushed the button he does not need to go back in time to warn himself. Because he does not warn himself he does not push the button. So it does explode again, and then gets stuck in a loop forever, alternating between pushing and not pushing the button.

As far as I am aware, its never happened before, and he has only ever talked to

Other versions of himself, never the same incarnation

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    Sigh, suppose I'll have to explain it: It is some timey wimey wibbly wobbly stuff.
    – Saturn
    Commented May 17, 2013 at 2:10
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    @Omega is right. The answer to anything in Doctor Who is "wibbly wobbly timey wimey." The show focuses more on entertainment than continuity and consistency.
    – Tango
    Commented May 17, 2013 at 4:56
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    JK You are wrong about "it's never happened before". It did happen in [The Big Bang](en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Bang_(Doctor_Who%29)
    – Mr Lister
    Commented May 18, 2013 at 7:06
  • Anyway, I don't like several concepts behind this episode. How about the TARDIS being infinite? And the inside of the TARDIS behaving like a holodeck? Come on, that's not how a canonical TARDIS works!
    – Mr Lister
    Commented May 18, 2013 at 7:10

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Do you remember the episode with the Weeping Angels on the Byzantium (sp?) when Amy remembered the soldiers who couldn't remember each other? He states that because they are time travelers, they remember things no one else can because they see time in a different way. This would, in effect, allow the Doctor to see himself and send a message without the need to travel back again. Just because it didn't happen in the current timeline doesn't mean it hasn't already happened in another.

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The Doctor has encountered

himself

before in his current incarnation. It occurred multiple times in the shorts between episodes. In the two-part Comic Relief special, "Space" and "Time" the Doctor solves a very similar problem in much the same way.

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    And before anyone objects, Moffet has declared "Space" and "Time" to be canon (well, as close to canon as anything can get in Who).
    – KutuluMike
    Commented May 17, 2013 at 14:27
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"Other incarnations" are still past versions of himself; talking to them would be no different from talking to his current incarnation at another point in history.

The reason why it doesn't create a paradox is because, due to figuring out that the burn on Clara's hand was the result of a time loop, the Doctor is able to rewrite history because he knows there's a time loop at work that he can modify, and as it has been said multiple times in Doctor Who, "time can be rewritten."

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