Howling:Eye of Harmony in the Doctor's TARDIS

The Howling → Eye of Harmony in the Doctor's TARDIS

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We all see the Eye of Harmony inside the Doctor's TARDIS in the TV Movie, apparently its main power source. Now "The Deadly Assassin" also features the Eye of Harmony, but there it resides on Gallifrey. Some have attempted to solve this discrepancy by saying that the Eye in the TVM was not the same as in TDA, but a duplicate that's part of all Type 40 TARDISes. But when you think about it, even that doesn't make much sense, because by the Doctor's time, no one on Gallifrey knew the location of the Eye; it had long ago been lost in the ancient past, and was regarded as mostly mythical. So how could the Time Lords have duplicated something they had so little knowledge of? 82.2.136.93 19:55, August 13, 2011 (UTC)

Well the real world answer is that the TV Movie wasn't very well written and had a lot of plot points that didn't make any sense. The eye being in the TARDIS makes about as much sense as the Doctor's mom being a human, or a human retinal pattern being neccessary to open the eye. In universe, one could argue that as the TARDIS was already a museum piece when the Doctor stole it, it could have been built back in the day when the Time Lords had more knowledge of the eye.Icecreamdif 21:37, August 13, 2011 (UTC)

It's not just a duplicate; it's also a link to the real thing. The power to run the TARDIS comes over that link, and the Master fell through that link into the Eye.

The idea that it's a duplicate comes from the EDA/PDA novels (The Eight Doctors and The Quantum Archangel). Other novels in that range refer to the TARDIS's link to the Eye. And later, RTD explicitly talked about the link that we saw in the movie no longer being available to power the TARDIS. Of course that was RTD talking off-camera, not the Doctor, so if you really want to, you can argue that the duplicate that we saw in the movie and the link that the Doctor has talked about in the new series are separate things, but that seems kind of silly.

The bit in The Deadly Assassin about everyone believing it was lost, some thinking it no longer existed or was always a myth, has never been officially explained. The best and most popular fan answer I've heard is that everyone knew the TARDISes drew energy over a link to something, but nobody knew that that something was the Eye of Harmony. A bit weak, but I don't think there is a really good explanation. (It's also worth considering The Invasion of Time, just a year after The Deadly Assassin, where it seems like everyone in the universe knows about the Eye. Of course the real answer is that Graham Williams didn't remember exactly what Robert Holmes had written a year ago, just as Matthew Jacobs didn't remember it 16 years later, but in-universe, you have to fanwank it to make sense of it.) --173.228.85.35 05:12, August 14, 2011 (UTC)

Okay, so how do we explain the Eye in the TARDIS only opening in response to a human retina? I think there's a line in the TV Movie about the Eye not having been opened in hundreds of years, so that would possibly indicate that it had been sealed since the Doctor "borrowed" it from Gallifrey, so the human retina scan would have been in place then, right? 82.2.136.93 10:21, August 14, 2011 (UTC)

There are two possibilities.

If you go with the idea from the IDW comics that the whole half-human thing was a ruse to fool the Master, the human retina bit was the whole point of that ruse, so it's just not true.

If you go with him actually being half-human, as in the EDA novels, either he or the TARDIS reconfigured the lock on the Eye to protect it from other Time Lords, since there are presumably very few other half-human Time Lords around. He'd had the TARDIS for at least 500 years (even going by truncated new-series ages), so there was plenty of time to change it and then for it to go unopened for hundreds of years. (If you don't want to accept any media other than TV, then nothing has ever contradicted his half-human statement, so it's the same as this one.) --173.228.85.35 11:24, August 14, 2011 (UTC)

I just remembered, the EDAs _do_ establish that what the Master fell into is the link to the Eye on Gallifrey. In The Gallifrey Chronicles, the Master talks to the Doctor through the same link that's used to channel energy back to the Eye of Harmony at the center of the warped bubble of spacetime where Gallifrey used to be. (Of course the Master also had a new body in Henrietta Street, and was embedded in the fabric of the TARDIS in Sometime Never…, but leave it to him to find three different ways of surviving permadeath…) --173.228.85.35 17:56, August 14, 2011 (UTC)

And one more even less-related thing: According to RTD, when the cracks in time were closed, so were all of the time rifts, which is why Torchwood has no reason to return to Cardiff. So… where is the TARDIS getting its power from now? --173.228.85.35 18:36, August 14, 2011 (UTC)

Isn't there a line in one of the novels or something about the Doctor's TARDIS being well over 5000 years old? Then again, the average Gallifreyan lives for well over a thousand years, so that's probably not really enough time for the location of the prime Eye to be forgotten by the majority of Time Lords. 213.121.200.42 11:32, August 15, 2011 (UTC)

I don't remember exactly that. But in The Gallifrey Chronicles, the Doctor's TARDIS is strongly hinted to be Marnal's (and Marnal definitely believes it is), and Marnal apparently had it for a few millennia before Ulysses got him out of the way. That's close enough to 5000 years, but it's also just one generation before the Doctor (literally; Ulysses was the Doctor's father). And if that's all true, the Doctor had very good reason to change the lock to require his half-human retinas, what with full-Time Lord Marnal stuck on Earth, his full-Time Lord son (possibly the Master) looking for vengeance, etc. Or, putting together that story with The Doctor's Wife, the TARDIS—heading for decomission with her owner lost and stuck on Earth—maybe at first chose the Doctor to get back to Marnal, but quickly decided she liked him better, and made the change so Marnal and the Master could never steal her back. --173.228.85.35 20:19, August 16, 2011 (UTC)

in the doctor's wife, it is stated that the doctor has had the tardis for about 700 years Imamadmad 12:02, August 15, 2011 (UTC)

"Eye of Harmony" could simply be the Timelords' name for Black Hole. TARDISes could have mini black holes with a very weak gravitational field. The Eye of Harmony on Gallifrey was presumably a much larger black hole. It would have been gravitationally shielded so it didnt swallow up the planet, hence it would be impossible to locate it exactly. And actually it *is* theoretically possible to generate power from a black hole, by capturing the Hawking Radation which is emitted from it. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation#Black_hole_evaporation) 187.58.98.57 12:12, August 15, 2011 (UTC)

They talk about black holes many times without calling them "eyes of harmony". The Doctor explained how the Eye and Gallifrey were kept in balance in The Deadly Assassin, so you don't need to explain it yourself. And the amount of energy you'd get from Hawking radiation is so tiny there would be no point, but there are much better ways to use one (Kip Thorne suggested a few, and then there's the Penrose process); in fact, the standard example of what a Kardashev Type III civilization does for energy is to harness a supermassive black hole in this way (the Time Lords are said to be "Kardashev Class 4", but presumably they were "Class 3" in the time of Omega and Rassilon, and time travel and dimensional technology are what brought them a step beyond Kardashev's imagination). --173.228.85.35 20:19, August 16, 2011 (UTC)

In The Doctor's Wife, it was also stated that the TARDIS was already a musuem piece when he was young. Whenever he went back to Gallifrey in the classic series, other Time Lords were amazed by the fact that an old type 40 would still exist, and would often want to take a look inside etc. because they were so amazed at how old it was. It is possible that more modern TARDISes don't contain an Eye of Harmony or link to they eye or whatever, and have developed a new system generating power. I doubt that "Eye of Harmony" is the Time Lord word for black hole, because they didn't use the term at all in The Three Doctors, when all of their power was being drained by a black hole.Icecreamdif 17:02, August 15, 2011 (UTC)

But the Eye of Harmony is not a regular black hole, is it? It's a singularity that's been specially adapted by Gallifreyan technology, right? Even without the prime Eye, the Time Lords could have designed the Eyes inside TARDISes using the same principles. It wasn't until after the prime Eye's rediscovery that all the mini-Eyes were linked up to it. Alternatively, just how many people in TDA don't know the precise location of the prime Eye? I find it a bit hard to believe that the Lord President and the High Council would have lost it so easily. 82.2.136.93 09:22, August 16, 2011 (UTC)

Well, the Eye may be a regular black hole, or it may be the singularity removed from the center of the black hole (it's pretty ambiguous). Either way, it's not said anywhere that they adapted it; they just had to use gravitational engineering to move it, keep it in balance with Gallifrey, and to draw energy from it. (That might involve a simple kind of "adaptation"—if you convert a bunch of its potential energy into angular momentum it's a lot easier to draw energy from, and probably a lot easier to work with. But that wouldn't help you build smaller black holes or singularities.)

As for your disbelief: go back and watch the episodes; it's clear that the Master is the only one who knows its location, until the Doctor figures it out, and some of the top people on Gallifrey believed it was a myth. --173.228.85.35 20:19, August 16, 2011 (UTC)

The link to the Eye on Gallifrey in the TV Movie could be unique to the Doctor's TARDIS. It seems to me that TARDISes are usually powered by the TARDIS Heart, which is seen in "Rose" and "The Parting of the Ways", et al. During the Seventh Doctor's tenure, it was frequently implied that the Doctor was some kind of reincarnation of the Other, a contemporary of Rassilon and Omega, the founders of Time Lord culture, from Gallifrey's distant past. It's my belief that while the "spirit" of the Other resides inside the Doctor's psyche, it only occasionally rises to the surface so he can remember his life as the Other; one such time was during his seventh life (This would explain why the Doctor often thinks of himself as just a Time Lord, while at other times he's aware that he's much more than that). I think the First Doctor might have been partially "possessed" by the Other when he initially fled from Gallifrey with Susan and the Hand of Omega (The Other might well have psychically prompted him to take the Hand, having foreknowledge of his future), and if the Other had been involved in the creation of the Eye, the First Doctor could've utilised that knowledge to build the link to the Eye that we see in the TVM, as a source of extra power. After the Other's spirit went dormant, the Doctor might've forgotten about the link/blocked it from his memory, until his seventh and eighth lives. I seem to recall a line of dialogue in the TVM that the Eye in the TARDIS hasn't been opened for hundreds of years, so I reckon the First Doctor is a prime candidate for its builder. Being linked to the prime Eye on Gallifrey, the TARDIS's Eye would probably be effected by any changes to the prime Eye, which could explain the need for a human retina pattern. Maybe. 82.2.136.93 11:05, August 16, 2011 (UTC)

If you accept everything from the novels, then it's quite clearly not unique to the Doctor's TARDIS. The Eight Doctors explains that every TARDIS after the first few generations has an "avatar" of the Eye like the one we saw in the movie. Later novels tell us that TARDISes in general are powered by a link to the Eye, not just the Doctor's TARDIS. So all of your speculation doesn't work.

It's possible that the last time it was opened hundreds of years ago was right after the Doctor stole it; it's even possible that he did so as part of tinkering with it to add the human retinal scan (to protect it from Marnal and his son the Master), and of course it's possible that he used his knowledge of the Other to do so. But that doesn't mean he created it; it was there when he stole it.

As for the Heart vs. the Eye: the Heart doesn't seem to be an energy source; it's been called the "soul" (Parting of the Ways, The Doctor's Wife), the "space-time element" (Arc of Infinity and Terminus), and the thing that keeps its occupants in time with the outside world. The Heart is presumably powered by (the link to) the Eye, or rather was until the LGTW, and now the Doctor powers it off time rifts (possibly by annihilating time and anti-time, as in Zagreus). Also, notice that the Heart's presence is what makes it impossible for House to eat the energy in TARDISes unless he first removes it. --173.228.85.35 20:19, August 16, 2011 (UTC)

Well, I'm a tad skeptical about the reliability of the majority of DW novels, particularly those written during the "wilderness years" between the end of the classic series and the beginning of the new one. Anything they say, I take with a pinch of salt. But if there are Eyes inside all TARDISes, it could just be that they were initially entirely separate from the prime Eye on Gallifrey, and were artificial singularities named in honour of the semi-mythical artifact. The creation of singularities doesn't appear too difficult for Time Lord science, as the Tenth Doctor stated in The Impossible Planet that his people "practically created black holes." 213.121.200.42 09:41, August 17, 2011 (UTC)

You're free to come up with your own rules for canon and continuity. But if you don't accept anything from the novels, then all of the stuff I was answering there (the Doctor being the reincarnation of the Other, etc.) isn't relevant in the first place. And of course you don't need to resolve the two contradictory answers to the original question (duplicate or link?).

If you want a firm answer to what the Eye is, there just isn't one on TV. RTD gave us one off-screen, and it's the same one that was used in the novels (it's a link to the original—and maybe also an "avatar" or "symbol" of the original), but you're free to ignore that. In that case, we don't know what it is. It could be a link, it could be a duplicate, maybe the Doctor even stole the original the last time he was on Gallifrey or something. Of course all explanations make the two classic stories a little weird, but those stories were already hard to reconcile before the TV movie.

For the retina thing, ignoring everything non-TV makes it much easier: The Doctor is half-human, because the only places that was ever explained as not true are comics and audios; half-human Time Lords are presumably very rare or even unique, so it's pretty obvious that he or the TARDIS deliberately used the human retina scan to protect against other Time Lords—and, as the TV movie showed, they weren't being overly paranoid. --173.228.85.35 04:22, August 18, 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, didn't Omega create one using his hand. I doubt that an Eye of Harmony and a black hole are the same thing. We also know that the Doctor didn't open the eye hundreds of years ago, because he told Grace that he had never opened it before. I always assummed that either the writers of the TV movie didn't watch The Deadly Assassin too closely,or all type-40s have an eye in their big creepy basement, but more modern TARDISes have a newer and probably more efficient power source.Icecreamdif 19:35, August 17, 2011 (UTC)

In The Science of Doctor Who by Paul Parsons (not an official BBC guide to the show), there are a few references to the Eye of Harmony and its use as a power source. On p288, it's pointed out that one way to get energy out of a black hole is to drop stuff into it and the stuff being dropped in forms an accretion disc that has a hole in its centre. Viewed from the right angle, such an assembly would look somewhat like an eye. --89.242.66.20 21:44, August 17, 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that's exactly Kip Thorne's second design, which is very popular in scifi because it has a cool visual image that's easy to describe. Later, Penrose showed that you don't even really need to continually feed it matter (if it's spinning fast enough), which makes it a little more useful for embedding in a planet or a TARDIS. --173.228.85.35 04:22, August 18, 2011 (UTC)

Well, here's what I think: The TARDIS is so terrifically old that it was built during the rule of Rassilon, which explains the ancient architecture of the Cloister. When automobiles were first designed, they had internal combustion engines to power them. Now, electric cars are becoming slightly used and no longer need an engine. Therefore, as we would be surprised by anyone driving down the street in a Ford Model T or Benz Patent Motor Wagen, the Time Lords are surprised by somebody using Type 40 as a regular TARDIS. Because the Time Lords are so advanced by the time we first see them, they have reached the 'electric car' age, understanding how to power a TARDIS without linking them directly to the Eye of Harmony on Gallifrey, as we now have some level of understanding how to power a vehicle without the need of an internal combustion engine.

Gallifrey102 21:48, August 18, 2011 (UTC)

In The Deadly Assassin, Type 40s had recently been decomissioned when the Doctor stole his. So they're not _that_ ancient; they went out of service 700-odd years ago, while Rassilon's time was somewhere around 6500 years ago. Also, a young Time Lady like Romana has no problem with the Doctor's TARDIS, and neither does the Master or any other Time Lord who ever dealt with it, and I doubt that every one of them just happened to be ancient-technology specialists.

Most importantly, we never saw anyone be surprised that the Doctor's TARDIS was powered by (a link to) the Eye of Harmony; the one and only time it was mentioned on screen was the TV movie, and the Master seemed to treat is as a perfectly natural fact about TARDISes. So, I'm not sure what you're trying to explain. --173.228.85.35 02:47, August 19, 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Gallifrey102. Whenever the Doctor would go back to Gallifrey in the classic series, Time Lords would be amazed that a type-40 still existed, and the TARDIS herself said that she was a museum piece when the Doctor was young. They ever talked about the power source behind the TARDIS in the classic series, and it is possible that most people simply didn't know that it was different from modern TARDISes. If all TARDISes had a link to the eye, then why the elaborate plot of assassinating the Lord President. Why wouldn't the Master just use the eye in his own TARDIS. Just because the power source has been upgraded doesn't mean that the controls have damatically changed, and Romana did have to read the manual. At one point didn't she even mention how flying archaic ships wasn't a required course at the academy? Besides, just beccause the put the type-40s out of service only 700 years ago doesn't mean that they weren't commissioned 6500 years ago.Icecreamdif 04:35, August 19, 2011 (UTC)

Of course people were amazed that a type-40 still existed—they'd all been decommissioned centuries ago. If an 1860s ironclad showed up at Portsmouth, everyone would be amazed that it still existed, but that wouldn't mean it was from the original British fleet in the 9th century. --173.228.85.35 20:41, August 21, 2011 (UTC)

This is why I suspect that the Eye in the Doctor's TARDIS (and possibly other TARDISes) was originally totally separate from the Eye on Gallifrey, most likely a much smaller, artificial singularity. Then, after TDA, when the prime Eye was rediscovered, all mini-Eyes on all TARDISes were linked up to it. 82.2.136.93 15:11, August 19, 2011 (UTC)

But that would mean that all TARDISes _except the Doctor's_ had links to the Eye, which doesn't help at all, since it's the Doctor's that you're trying to explain. --173.228.85.35 20:41, August 21, 2011 (UTC)

Hang on, if there are Eyes of Harmony inside all TARDISes, built along the same principles as the semi-mythical Eye that Rassilon brought to Gallifrey, then why does the Master need to find the prime Eye to regenerate himself in TDA? Why doesn't he use the Eye inside a TARDIS, which are much easier to get hold of? Even if a TARDIS Eye is smaller, I should think it would still be adequate to his needs. 82.2.136.93 14:06, August 21, 2011 (UTC)

Assuming that we are to accept the details of the movie, we can fix this by assuming that the Eye inside a TARDIS doesn't have all the bells and whistles of the big one on Gallifrey.Boblipton 15:09, August 21, 2011 (UTC)

But he still could hae used the same plan that he used in the movie instead of assassinating the Lord President. He met Goth on Terserus didn't he, so if all TARDISes have the eye he could have used a TARDIS eye to steal Goth's remaining regenerations.Icecreamdif 18:06, August 21, 2011 (UTC)

It must be nice to be smarter than the Master. Let's see. Assuming he thought of this in time, would he prefer to kill some Time Lord who he has no feelings about and alert the Time Lords that he's pulling this stuff, or do it by killing his worst enemy and using his Eye of Harmony, which the Time Lords cannot track? Of course, Im sure that you can come up with flaws in the plan, but I am sure you could equally easily come up with solutions if you were interested in it. 66.108.91.28 19:06, August 21, 2011 (UTC)

But in The Deadly Assassin, his goal wasn't really to kill the Doctor any of his normal evil goals. In that episode, the aws afraid of death, and nothing was more important than staying alive. He would go with the plan that had the most likelihood of succeeding, not the one where he gets to kill the Doctor. Sneaking onto Gallifrey, assassinating the Lord President, framing the Doctor for murder, and finding the main Eye of Harmony that hasn't been seen ince the time of Rasillon is much more complicated than simply taking Goth down to the Eye of Harmony in his TARDIS and stealing his remaining regenerations. Even if he really wanted to incorporate killing the Doctor into his plan, it would have made more sense to find the Doctor and bring him down to the TARDIS eye like he did in the TV movie without bringing him to Gallifrey. It is much simpler to assume that not all TARDISes have an Eye of Harmony.Icecreamdif 19:40, August 21, 2011 (UTC)

Let me restate the answer given by RTD: Every TARDIS has a representation of the Eye of Harmony back on Gallifrey, linked to that Eye, through which it draws power, and that's what we saw in the movie. Because the other side of the link is no longer there, the Doctor has had to come up with different ways of powering his TARDIS. Besides being written by RTD, and being very simple, it also fits everything from the classic series, the TV movie, the new series, and both novel series (except for the inconsistency that was already there between TDA and TIoT in the classic series).

All of the other explanations people are coming up with here are more complicated, and harder to fit into what we've seen on TV (even ignoring the novels and RTD's behind-the-scenes writing). For example, if there's a separate real mini-Eye rather than a link, whether it's in all TARDISes or only in the Doctor's TARDIS, then why did the destruction of Gallifrey mean the Doctor now has to power up from time rifts? --173.228.85.35 20:41, August 21, 2011 (UTC)

The fact that they eye was considered a myth in the classic series makes it more complicated than that though. It workds though if we assume that the eye in the TARDIS is a link to the eye on Gallifrey, and theat link exits in all Type 40s and earlier models, but more modern TARDISes have a more efficient power source. If the Doctor had stolen a newer TARDIS he wouldn't have to power up from rifts, but because he has an old type 40 and the eye on Gallifrey is destroyed, he now has to power up oon rifts. Of course, since RTD now claims that when the Doctor sealed the cracks he also sealed the rifts, that leaves the question as to how he is powering it up now.Icecreamdif 00:55, August 22, 2011 (UTC)

Yes, you've just restated the inconsistency that already exists between TDA and TIoT in the classic series. And assuming that type 57s use a different power source doesn't help at all. The last Type 40s were being decomissioned a few centuries before TDA (when the Doctor stole his), which means they were being maintained until slightly before that, which means probably half the TARDIS technicians on Gallifrey had worked on one in their lifetime, which means nobody would think it was a myth.

The only way you can reconcile that in-universe is to assume that they knew it was a link some power source, they just had no idea that power source was the legendary Eye of Harmony.

PS, I already brought up the issue with the rifts being closed earlier on this page, but I think it's a separate issue, so if you want to talk about that, let's start another article. --173.228.85.35 06:39, August 22, 2011 (UTC)

Where in The Deadly Assassin did they say that the Type 40s were only decmomissioned a few centuries ago? I was looking through the episode, and I found plenty of references to them being decommisioned, but no reference to how long ago this occurred. Baed on Goth's reaction to seeing the TARDIS ("extraordinary to think that an old type 40 is still operational," and "so this is an old type 40," it would seem that the type 40s must have been retired for quite some time. The Doctor's Wife also conifrms this, when the TARDIS claims to have already been a museum piece when the Doctor was young. Since a few centuries are nothing to the Time Lords, I would thinkk that the type 400s must have been decommissioned more than a few centuries ago.Icecreamdif 20:41, August 22, 2011 (UTC)

TDA doesn't say that Type 40s were only decommissioned a few centuries ago. A few centuries before TDA is when the First Doctor stole the TARDIS; that much is (I hope) beyond question. What TDA _does_ establish is that he stole it from the government's stockpile of TARDISes, which implies that it hadn't been decommissioned for too long, and that living Time Lords must still know how it works. (I'll ignore the novels here, which give a much firmer chronology, because it isn't important anyway.)

In fact, even without any of that, we know that Time Lords must still know how Type 40s work. For just one example, how could Maxil (who was not a historian of technology, or a super-genius like the Doctor or the Master, but just an ordinary chancellery guard) disconnect the Heart of the TARDIS from its power source and remove it unless the Time Lords knew what that power source was?

And anyway, if you believe that Type 40s go all the way to the time of Rassilon (and the Other), so they're too ancient for anyone alive to understand, you have to assume that they went through 40 types in the first few centuries, then only 17 more types in the next 6000 years (because Type 57s were current the last time the Doctor visited Gallifrey before Warriors of the Deep). Does that really seem plausible? Someone brought up the Model T earlier; Ford puts out more new models per year today than they put out per decade 100 years ago. --173.228.85.35 06:41, August 23, 2011 (UTC)

I've already argued that after the rediscovery of the prime Eye on Gallifrey, the mini-Eyes inside TARDISes were all linked up to it, so they were originally entirely separate pieces of technology, just built along similar lines to the legendary Eye and named in honour of it, but that was as far as it went. That clears up some of the problems, but not all. 194.168.208.42 12:36, August 23, 2011 (UTC)

But then how did the Doctor's TARDIS get modified? He didn't hang around and let them monkey with his TARDIS at the end of TDA. And his is the only one we know for sure has an Eye (if you only count TV, that is—if you count the novels, this problem has an answer but you get exciting new ones to deal with), so explaining every TARDIS but his doesn't really get you anywhere.

Also, if the Eye of Harmony was a legend that many people didn't even believe in, how did they build similar devices along similar lines in every TARDIS?

Even without the TV movie, novels, and new series: In TDA, the Eye was a lost legend that most people didn't believe ever existed, while a year later in TIoT, the Eye was the power source for all of Gallifrey (whether or not it was also the power source for all of their TARDISes) and even the Sontarans knew about it. I realize it sounds lame to say, "They knew they had a massive power source, they just didn't realize that's what the legendary Eye of Harmony was, which means they didn't know some of the other cool things they could do with it," but really, the lameness is inherent in the problem, not part of the answer. Fans haven't been trying unsuccessfully to come up with something that works since 1978, and nobody's got anything better. --173.228.85.35 03:48, August 24, 2011 (UTC)

It really would be so much easier if we could just disregard the TV Movie outright, then we wouldn't have to worry about how the TARDIS had the Eye in its cloister room. But then, the 8th Doctor's image has appeared a number of times in the new series. 194.168.208.42 10:18, August 24, 2011 (UTC)

There could still have been ancient diagrams of the prime Eye available long after the Eye itself was lost, so smaller versions of it could have been created that way. And the Time Lords have shown some control of the TARDIS regardless of the Doctor in the past, as shown in "The War Games", when they prevent it from fleeing from them, and when they restore its ability to travel of its own accord at the end of "The Three Doctors." Or maybe they contacted the Doctor and asked him if he'd like his mini-Eye linked up to the main Eye, and he agreed. However, that still doesn't entirely explain why the Master couldn't have used such a mini-Eye for his purposes in TDA. 194.168.208.42 10:55, August 24, 2011 (UTC)

Who says you can't ignore the TV movie? There were plenty of fans in the early 90s who did—and plenty in the late 70s who ignored TDA, for that matter. Fans don't engage in fanwanking because it's required, but because it's part of the fun. The new series has established that there was an 8th Doctor and that he looked like actor Paul McGann, but that could still be true if the movie didn't happen, or happened in an alternate universe, or happened but was then undone by changes in history, or whatever, right? (Of course as far as writing articles for this wiki is concerned you can't ignore the TV movie, but then you can't ignore the EDAs either, so the answer in the EDAs is the answer. Anyway, the point is that this wiki's policy only goes as far as this wiki's articles; there's no official policy for the Whoniverse at large.)

Anyway, if there were ancient diagrams of the Eye giving enough details that they could, and regularly did, create smaller versions of it, people would hardly consider it a myth, would they? --173.228.85.35 05:19, August 25, 2011 (UTC)

Instructions for how to create the Eye might still exist, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the Eye itself does. Even if it did, its location had been lost. So who could say Rassilon had even gotten around to creating it? 82.2.136.93 20:45, August 25, 2011 (UTC)

That's true. But then why wouldn't they have built another one to replace the lost original? And, if they did, who cares about the original one? The Master could have just used the modern one. Sure, historians of science and Rassilon experts would get a big geeky thrill from rediscovering the original one but who else would care? Just like if we found George Stephenson's first steam engine today.

Really I think even if you ignore Invasion of Time and the movie and everything else that came later Deadly Assassin is already too silly. As much fun as it is, and as important as it is for all kinds of later stories, it's probably better not to think about any of the details too much. For thousands of years the Eye of Harmony has provided the power for all of Gallifrey and nobody knew about it? Where did they think their power came from? The London Electric Board? Electricity fairies? The Master was still in his 1st incarnation when he was tangling with the 3rd Doctor, we don't see him for a few years, and suddenly he's on his 13th, with no explanation? If Goth is near death and on his last regeneration too, why is he so obsessed with becoming President that he's willing to help the Master? How did people get to the 53rd floor of a 52-story building? Why is the Doctor's trial in 309906 when Goth finds the Master in 6241, and when every other date in the classic series is also in the 5000s or 6000s? --12.249.226.210 00:55, August 26, 2011 (UTC)

Is it actually established anywhere that the Delgado Master is the 1st, or just that the Doctor recognizes the Delgado Master despite not having seen him since he left Gallifrey? Time Lords sometimes recognize each other (and Daleks and others recognize the Doctor) even across regenerations, and the Master's personality is strong enough, and consistent enough, across regenerations that he's probably even easier to recognize than most. For that matter, I don't think it was established that the Terserus Master and the Delgado Master were the same incarnation until much later, in Legacy of the Daleks, so why was that a problem for TDA in the first place?

Anyway, I doubt you're seriously suggesting ignoring TDA as part of the canon, so I'll stop there. --173.228.85.35 03:17, August 26, 2011 (UTC)

I'll say it again: If there are miniature versions of the Eye of Harmony inside every TARDIS, the Master would have no need to discover the prime Eye on Gallifrey, even if the TARDIS Eyes weren't directly hooked up to it at the time; the principle would be the same. In fact, no one would ever have to invade Gallifrey to gain control of the prime Eye, as they could just as easily capture a TARDIS and use the Eye inside that! So the inclusion of an Eye inside the TARDIS simply doesn't work. No, in order for the previous stories to make sense, there has to be only one Eye - the one on Gallifrey. Of course, that does pose a significant problem for those who wish to keep the TV Movie in continuity; if it wasn't the Eye, what was that thing the Master used to steal the Doctor's life-force and destroy the Earth, and which needed a human retina pattern to access it? 82.2.136.93 10:07, August 26, 2011 (UTC)

I agree that's one of multiple reasons why an Eye in each TARDIS doesn't work. But again, there's a very good explanation for the TV movie, the one that the EDA novels used and that RTD used off-camera: it was a link to the one and only Eye back on Gallifrey, every TARDIS has one. And the reason the Doctor's needed a human retina pattern was obviously because the Doctor is half-human and other Timelords aren't, which makes it a great security measure for him. --173.228.85.35 02:44, August 27, 2011 (UTC)

I haven't put a lot of thought into this theory, so it mght be filled with holes, but maybe the TARDIS eyes are a relatively new technology. Maybe TARDISes ran on some other form of power before The Deadly Assassin, then after the main eye under the Panopticon was discovered they realized that adding miniature eyes that were linked to the main eye isnide of all TARDISes was a more efficient system. Then, during The Invasion of Time, Arc of Infinity, or another story where the Doctor went to Gallifrey the Timelords upgraded his TARDIS.Icecreamdif 18:59, August 26, 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that's sort of my idea too. It might have been sometime after Arc of Infinity though, because in that story, the High Council thought that just removing the TARDIS Heart would deprive it of power. 82.2.136.93 19:40, August 26, 2011 (UTC)

No, removing the Heart would deprive it of the ability to move. You can immobilize an electric car by removing its engine just as easily as by removing its battery, but that doesn't mean the engine is a battery. Plus, while this may have only been in the novelization, Maxil actually had to disconnect the Heart from the power source, which makes it pretty clear they were separate things.

Anyway, the big question is, if you've got a link to the Eye on Gallifrey, why does it also have to be a mini-Eye of its own? Going back to the same metaphor, when you run a wire from the battery to the engine, you don't need a mini-battery in the engine to connect it to, just a pair of terminals. --173.228.85.35 02:44, August 27, 2011 (UTC)

The TARDIS Eye functions quite differently from the prime Eye, when you think about it. For one thing, you could safely observe the TARDIS Eye once it was opened, but in TDA, the raw power surging from it would destroy you unless you had the Rod and Sash of Rassilon. Why was it safer to open the TARDIS Eye? And at one point in the TV Movie, the Doctor says that if he looks into the Eye, his soul will be destroyed.....Well if it's that hazardous to a Time Lord's health, why have it around?!!! 82.2.136.93 21:10, August 26, 2011 (UTC)

Because they need the power. Same metaphor: opening up the battery in your car is a very dangerous thing to do (and even more so with fuel cells, flywheels, and other technologies they're researching to replace batteries), but you still want to have one in your car.

As for why it's different: because it's a link with limited conductance. It can conduct far more power than you want to be exposed to, but nowhere near the insane levels of power that opening up the actual source back on Gallifrey would expose you to. (From The Gallifrey Chronicles, it seems like the limits to what the link can conduct are about one H-bomb's worth of energy, which is still quite a bit, but obviously not nearly as much as it takes to run Gallifrey and their whole fleet of TARDISes.) --173.228.85.35

When the Heart is removed from the TARDIS in The Doctor's Wife, doesn't the TARDIS lose all its power, becoming essentially "dead"? 82.2.136.93 11:10, August 27, 2011 (UTC)

The TARDIS Matrix (Heart) isn't the power source, it's the top-level control (and personality, albeit a slightly weird personality). Probably, had the Matrix been removed and not replaced by House, the TARDIS would eventually have died. The other TARDISes did die. The TARDIS seemed dead because, until House took over, there was nothing operating the lower-level systems. House removed the Matix for the specific purpose of consuming the TARDIS -- that is, its power, not its physical components. The pysical components of the dead TARDISes remained in the junkyard. House wouldn't (couldn't) have done what he did if removing the Matix had removed what he wanted to eat. When the Doctor and the TARDIS Matrix (in Idris' body) built a makeshift TARDIS, they did manage to power it temporarily but we saw in The Age of Steel that, in an emergency, the Doctor himself could do that. --2.96.16.169 16:33, August 27, 2011 (UTC)

To expand the (suspect) metaphor, if you live on batteries, you need to pop the hood and disconnect the leads before you take the battery. Boblipton 16:37, August 27, 2011 (UTC)

Of course you don't need to actually take the engine out of the car to eat the battery… (Hey, it's my metaphor, I can stretch it beyond the breaking point if I want.)

On a more serious note, although I still don't like the idea that the Eye was only used for powering TARDISes after TDA, Arc of Infinity actually does answer my main argument against it, when the Doctor's TARDIS could have been retrofitted.

Say that Rassilon originally intended for all TARDISes to be powered by a link to the Eye. Over the millennia, they forgot about the Eye, and those links. The link was still there in every TARDIS, but nobody knew what it was for, or tried drawing power through it. After TDA, technicians quickly figured out they could be used to power the TARDIS, and began retrofitting all of the existing ones (or at least using the link in new ones). In AoI, Maxil disconnects the Heart (or at least the space-time element; I've never been sure if those are the same thing, one is part of the other, or what…) of the Doctor's TARDIS from the power. At the end, the Damon gives the Doctor a new space-time element to connect up. Damon could easily have turned on the link to the Eye in the mean time (which involves "opening the Eye"), so that's what the power couplings are connected to rather than the old power source, so when the Doctor connects the new element to those couplings, it's now powered via the link. He wouldn't even necessarily have to know about it at that point; he's got centuries to figure it out before the TV movie. So, when he said the Eye in his TARDIS hadn't been opened in centuries, he was talking about Damon doing so, which is why he apparently hasn't experienced it but knows about it.

Personally, I still prefer the idea that they'd been using the Eye for power all along, just not realizing it was the Eye (and therefore not knowing that it had the power to give new regeneration cycles, etc.). But I have to accept that the other idea is possible. --173.228.85.35 02:37, August 28, 2011 (UTC)

Hasn't RTD said that the Doctor's TARDIS doesn't have an Eye now, and draws power some other way? Well, maybe that was how TARDISes always operated before the links to the Eye were installed after TDA, if you believe that theory. 82.2.136.93 09:59, August 28, 2011 (UTC)

Well, he didn't say it doesn't have an Eye anymore, but he did say it can no longer draw power through the link from the Eye on Gallifrey. And the way the Doctor charges his TARDIS now is by opening up the engines directly over a time rift, like the one in Cardiff (as seen in Boom Town and Utopia). Come to think of it, the Doctor uses the metaphors of recharging the battery and of fueling with petrol, so those metaphors can't be too far off…

Anyway, I doubt that the Time Lords recharged all of their TARDISes at time rifts before TDA, but the same principle presumably would work fine with a fueling station on Gallifrey (and maybe emergency backups at various places in spacetime), and that could be what they used before TDA. As I said, I still don't like the theory that they changed all the TARDISes after TDA, but I can't find any solid evidence against it. --173.228.85.35 11:18, August 28, 2011 (UTC)

Maybe before The Deadly Assassin the TARDISes had some completely seperate power system from either the eye or the time rifts. Once the eye, was instaalled, the old power source was removed, and once Gallifrey was destroyed the Doctor had to find n entirely new power source and began using time rifts.Icecreamdif 22:20, August 29, 2011 (UTC)

As I recall, the Doctor's TARDIS was unregistered (he'd stolen it), so changes made to TARDISes generally might not have been made to that one. --89.241.68.131 01:50, August 30, 2011 (UTC)

This is now going in circles. Icecreamdif just repeated a suggestion made early in the conversation, and 89.241 has repeated the obvious objection to it that I made (we only know that the Doctor's TARDIS that has the Eye, or link to it, that we're trying to explain, and his TARDIS is the only one not likely to have been modified after TDA). I've already retracted that objection based on rewatching AoI, and I don't want to go around it all yet again. Anyway, at this point, here's where we stand:

From both RTD's writings in DWA, and his comments elsewhere, and from multiple EDA novels, we know that every TARDIS except very early models (ancient even in the days of Type 40s) had a link to the Eye back on Gallifrey, that's what used to power the TARDISes, that's the thing the Doctor opened in the movie (and in the last EDA), and it no longer works for obvious reasons so he uses the link. If you choose to ignore both non-TV sources and off-camera writing and comments by the producers, then all we know is what we saw in the movie; the novel/RTD explanation still works at least as well as every other explanation, but you're not bound by it. --173.228.85.35 04:07, August 30, 2011 (UTC)

Yes, the Doctor's TARDIS is unregistered, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the Time Lords have no power over it. Remember, they were able to stop it escaping from them in "The War Games", and supplying it with power in "Three Doctors". What's to stop them sending a signal to the TARDIS that actives a technology modification programme? And it may have only been during the Time War that all TARDIS Eyes were linked up to the prime Eye. 82.2.136.93 13:47, August 31, 2011 (UTC)

If you accept that the novels, the DWA article, or RTD's interviews are canon, then every TARDIS has had a link since the very early models. If you throw them all out, there's no justification for the link at all, except some fan speculation by people like Gary Russell and Lance Parkin, and I can't imagine that anyone would say their speculations are canon but their novels aren't. There's no way to go half-way, and why do you even want to? --12.249.226.210 02:31, September 1, 2011 (UTC)