Talk:Time field

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Final Name

The Series is over, the discussions archived and the article is still called Time Field.

They look like cracks, they were caused by an explosion, they are called cracks on screen and (at least to me it seems that) "Time Field" was just part of some technobabble.

Can this page be renamed please? Or do we have to wait through Series 6 and see who caused them?

82.82.49.189 16:04, January 1, 2011 (UTC)

I'm trying to make a list of uses of "time field" or some variant. Some of these are from finding them on this wiki. It looks like it is being used to describe various timey-wimey effects which may or may not be related.

• TV: City of Death: The Fourth Doctor "crossed the time field" bunches of times. There is a time bubble created by a field generator. Until it is stabilised, the time field could either age or de-age someone depending on the polarity. Scaroth is trying to use it to time travel somehow. There's also something about time cracks. PROSE: The Eight Doctors: time bubbles are a little different.
• AUDIO: Square One: The Monan Host conquered their own ancestors in ten different time periods because their planet had messed up time fields. They harnessed the fields.
• COMIC: Blooms of Doom!: Time spillage is a distortion of the time fields. Time spillage is some kind of time rift here?
• PROSE: Harm's Way: Tosh uses the Rift Manipulator to create a localised time-field to slow down the personal time of an enemy.
• PROSE: Longest Day: Hirath has colliding time-fields making travel dangerous. A ship is aged when it is hit by one.
• COMIC: 4-Dimensional Vistas: Lots of confusing talk about manipulating temporal fields or some time field keeping the Doctor off of the "real" Earth. Parallel universes have different frequencies for this field ... I think. PROSE: Psi-ence Fiction: something about fields from a messed up half a time machine creating paranormal whatsits by generating multiversal loops of technobabble or the other way around. I can't remember.
• COMIC: Signs of Life: Gelezen has some impenetrable time field around it which means the TARDIS ricochets off it. It is hilarious.

--Nyktimos 22:24, April 17, 2011 (UTC)

Removed DWM: Ship of Fools because the actual comic didn't say "time field". --Nyktimos 19:01, May 1, 2011 (UTC)

Just to add to the above list:

• TV: The Time Monster: Jo says, to the Doctor's approval and delight, that the time sensor detects disturbances in the time field.

Now, I dunno if that means we have to change the name of this article. But it definitely means that we've got to greatly expand this article. Looks to me like time field means a whole lot of different things in the DWU.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 00:22:10 Sat 25 Jun 2011 

Or alternatively, if you don't consider books and comics as canon - there are a mere 2 instances of time field being used, and many more uses of cracks. Even Moffat called them cracks. Can we please just put this to a vote?

109.170.212.79 21:37, June 28, 2011 (UTC)

Our cannon policy states that comics and books ARE canon, so it dosent matter if you consider them canon are not. OS25 (talk to me.) 12:52, December 30, 2011 (UTC)

This is getting seriously dull

Just move it to "The Cracks"! I'm sorry to be rude, but this is the same sort of pedantry that has "Jabba the Hutt" at "Jabba Desilijic Tiure" over on the Star Wars wiki. NOBODY is going to search for "Time Field" unless they've already been on the article and seen that title.--The Traveller 14:31, July 31, 2011 (UTC)

Your 100% correct, no one WOULD search "time field," would they? Well, it's a good think The Cracks redirects here, or it would actually matter! OS25 (talk to me.) 12:50, December 30, 2011 (UTC)

Okay, so: I was re-watching the episode "Rise of the Cybermen", and it's stated that the TARDIS fell through a "crack in time" to get to the alternate universe. Does this mean that the cracks have existed as early as series 2?

Uniplex ☎ 22:21, April 11, 2014 (UTC)

I would just like to point out that in the Time of the Doctor" we saw what the Doctor saw in Room 11 of "The God Complex" and it was one of these cracks, and yet there is no mention of that here. It is currently mentioned in the plot synopsis of "The God Complex. Shouldn't there be an entry on this page about that crack as well? Kremlin16 ☎ 23:04, April 12, 2014 (UTC)

Cracks in the skies of Venice

Removed:

When the Doctor saved Venice, the shape of the cracks appeared in the sky (though this may have just been a coincidence). Just before the Doctor left, silence abruptly fell over Venice. (TV: The Vampires of Venice)

"Shape of the cracks"?

Because assuming that's referring to the illustrated screenshot, that's not a crack, that's clearly the sunlight hitting a cloud. -- Tybort (talk page) 21:27, January 22, 2015 (UTC)

Cracks and Collapse

So name aside... What is the difference/link between the cracks in time and the total event collapse, if both come from the TARDIS blowing up? I can understand some time explanation, but if the whole universe will never have happened, how does that also create cracks from two parts of space and time that should never have touched? Steed ☎ 02:59, August 1, 2015 (UTC)

Post-11

Now that we're over a year past Time of the Doctor, I think it's pretty clear that we've got the entire story on the cracks in time, so the 6-year-old decision to put off renaming things seems a little silly.

The article is clearly about one of two things:

1. The cracks in time caused by the TARDIS explosion through which Prisoner Zero traveled, the time field spilled out to remove the Angels from history, the Time Lords communicated with the Doctor on Trenzalore, etc.; or
2. Those cracks in time, plus the ones in Rise of the Cybermen and Time of the Daleks (which similarly connect two parts of spacetime that weren't supposed to be connected, but don't have the same cause, don't all have a consistent shape and orientation, etc.).

The first thing that someone (or collectively everyone) needs to decide is which of the two. Should it be an article about 11's cracks, with a section at the end about other similar cracks in time? Or an article about cracks in time in general, with a section specifically on 11's?

Either way, the one thing it's definitely not about the "time field". If the wiki needs an article on all the zillion things that have be inconsistently called "time field" (I don't know why the wiki needs to try to pretend the technobabble is used consistently when even Craig Hinton's novels don't try to keep up that pretense, but that's a separate issue), it should be about all of those things, not about the time cracks that one of those things sometimes spilled from. And it should be in the "temporal theory" category rather than "space-time anomalies", and it should be linked to things like "chronon" and "temporal energy", and so on. Meanwhile, this article should just scrap most of the "Other Time Fields and Cracks" section (which could be used to start that separate "time field" article).

That also means this article should be called "crack" or "crack in time" or "time crack" or similar. And the first sentence of the lede needs to go, and the first section needs to be renamed.

Separately, the "History" section also should be reorganized to tell things in in-universe causal order—and to be complete (the "Closing" section currently says all of the cracks were closed; you have to read "Notable Cracks" and get to the God Complex and Time of the Doctor paragraph to discover otherwise).

The "Notable Cracks" section might also need another name. It's equivalent to the narrative-ordered section on the detailed adventures that you find on a character or organization page, which makes sense, it's just a weird name. --50.0.128.145^{talk to me} 12:09, December 23, 2016 (UTC)

I have never (or maybe once, briefly) heard the Doctor call the cracks in time a "time field," and if anyone could give the source, please do. But regardless, "time field" became the name for the this article. While the term is not consistent, granted, it is still used in a myriad of instances, independent of the cracks in time caused by the Doctor's exploding TARDIS. Think of it as a bomb and the explosion, or perhaps the explosion and the blast/force resulting from it: they are essentially the same thing. The total event collapse caused the cracks in time, described as the "fires at the end of the universe," where the universe ended because of the collapse. Therefore, I suggest the bulk of this article (all information concerning the cracks in time) be relocated to the total event collapse page. This article will then cover time fields in general, with a reference to the collapse. I would think this would better organize the information; I know a few people liked the idea when I proposed it on the Panopticon. But does anyone else have something for or against this? Steed ☎ 02:24, January 25, 2017 (UTC)

I totally support your view, Steed. --HarveyWallbanger ☎ 13:09, January 25, 2017 (UTC)

Thread:189696 is a currently active forum thread discussing the name and status of this article and Total event collapse. Shambala108 ☎ 03:12, May 30, 2019 (UTC)

So what's happening with the merge?

I don't know if there's a way to find the thread, but it's been several years now. Swear I never saw "Time Field" in the transcripts for Flesh and Stone now all of a sudden it's there -_-

So okay, it's called a time field, but it's still one of many, it's "a rupture in time" caused by the total event collapse, and leads to the Void. I'm not sure now if the bulk should be relocated to "total event collapse," maybe the cracks are separate from the time field. Either way the page for time field should be reworked, can we make a decision? Steed ☎ 02:31, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

Moved information

At this point for the sake of clarity, since we had two pages apparently, information from the "other time fields and cracks" section was moved to the Temporal field article, or to the Crack in time page. Now the "Time field" article can focus solely on the Series 5 cracks in time. Still might have some minor adjustments to clean things up and make the pages look nice. Have a good day. Steed ☎ 14:35, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Time field is a generic term and should absolutely not specifically be about the time field generated by the cracks in time. I'm undecided as to whether it should redirect to Temporal field or remain its own page. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 17:25, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

I propose this:

Time field is merged into Total event collapse, without leaving a redirect, this'll merge the edit histories and that way we'll have a combination of everything all finally in one place.

Then Temporal field is moved to Time field, leaving a redirect, that way we have the generic term for the page again in one place. --Tangerineduel / talk 06:26, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

This is close to the solution… The additional problem though is that I think the page on the crisis actually ought to be on Crack in time/Cracks in time, while Total event collapse ought also to be its own page. The "total event collapse" is the projected outcome of the cracks, not a name for the cracks itself; the cracks appear in The Time of the Doctor but "total event collapse" certainly doesn't, for example. So I think that ought to be split/reorderd as well. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 12:07, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

I think a subsection of Total event collapse, on the cracks in time, as they're a symptom of the event. I think the info on cracks in time can just be copied into the total event collapse page. And/or on the Total Collapse Event Incident page.

The Crack in time page also probably needs a rewrite to help define what it is, as the article is quite vague on the descriptions. --Tangerineduel / talk 14:04, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't think I'm convinced. The cracks in time and the actual total event collapse are phenomena which occur withint he wider Total Collapse Event Incident, but in themselves the cracks are not "part" of total-event-collapse, total-event-collapse is just something that can happen if the cracks grow too rapidly; again, Time of the Doctor shows a controlled crack existing outside the context of the onset of collapse. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 15:08, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

I'd imagine rewriting the cracks in time with a re-write / restructure of it to go into more detail with the "Cracks" and "Notable cracks" part of the Time field page on there, with links off to Total event collapse and Total Collapse Event Incident.

The history portion of Time field would go on the Total event collapse page.

Anything else left would be covered either as part of the Temporal field/Time field page. --Tangerineduel / talk 07:26, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

I agree with this breakdown, if I understand it right. But this being the case, surely more of the current "Time field" page's wordcount will end up at Cracks in time than at Total event collapse, so why should the page history be transferred there? Or am I misunderstanding you in that respect? Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 13:48, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Apologies, that's my mistake in being a little vague in my reply.

Just to lay out (for myself too so I know where things will go).

• A merge between Temporal field and Time field.

Then, the current Time field page will be split up:

• Cracks sub section > Crack in time
• Notable cracks > Crack in time
• History sub section > Total event collapse

With anything else being incorporated into the new time field page. With all of them requiring a little bit of a rewrite/restructure to handle all this. --Tangerineduel / talk 05:29, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

I see! Thank you. Again it seems to me like most of the History section belongs at Cracks in time too. As written here, it's a history of the cracks phenomenon, not of the final collapse. IMO Total event collapse should exclusively be about the event of The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang; earlier instances of the crack are before the onset of T.E.C.. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 12:57, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

I've given the TEC page another read through and I sort of agree with you.

I think there still needs to be something of the cracks on there, but not as major as initially I'd suggested. A subheading with a small breakdown and a main article link off to the Crack in time page.

Now I'm just wondering if it'd be best to merge Time field into crack in time as that's where the majority of the info will be residing (rather than TEC as I'd orginally proposed). Do so without a redirect, and then temporal field can be moved into its place. --Tangerineduel / talk 13:20, 28 January 2024 (UTC)