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A '''Time-Lock''' was a mechanism whereby an event or series of events was rendered unreachable by [[time travel]]. The Time-Lock only prevents entry into the [[Time War]] through the [[time vortex]] itself, meaning that all the events were not erased from history, and thus can still be referenced to by those who knew of the destruction of the Daleks and the Time Lords. The Doctor, however, would only be able to reach the Time War through time travel, and any entry into the events of the Time War would be considered a change in the time line (thus made impossible due to the time-lock).
{{first pic|Torchwood time-lock.jpg|[[Gwen Cooper]] examines the effects of a time lock at [[Torchwood Three]]. ([[TV]]: ''[[Journey's End (TV story)|Journey's End]]'')}}


It was known that after the [[Last Great Time War]], the entire war was time-locked (although it was not made clear whether the lock was in place during the war itself). ''It was known that the Time Lords strictly forbid any change, travel, even observation into past or future events of Gallifrey. Thus, it was likely that the Time Lords put the time-lock in place immediately, for they knew that time-traveller's would constantly be changing the events of the Time War, which could be extremely dangerous to the time line.'' [[Davros]] suggested once that emperors and [[Time Lord]]s had attempted to breach a time-lock, but failed. [[Dalek Caan]] was able to overcome the lock on the Time War after making an [[emergency temporal shift]], and travelled back to the [[Gates of Elysium]] to save Davros. The process drove Caan insane, but also seemed to grant him precognitive abilities. ([[DW]]: ''[[The Stolen Earth]]'') The only other things capable of breaching the time lock was something that was already in place (like the signal that had transmitted back through time into [[The Master|the Master's]] mind) and, on at least one occasion, very small objects (such as the [[White-Point Star]] diamond sent by [[Rassilon]] to follow the signal in the Master's head).
A '''time lock''', or '''temporal lock''', was a mechanism whereby an event or series of events was rendered unreachable by [[time travel]], blocking off a section of the [[Time Vortex]]. The effect was described as being like a wall, ([[AUDIO]]: ''[[1963: Fanfare for the Common Men (audio story)|1963: Fanfare for the Common Men]]'') and [[Ace]] explained that a time lock could seal a [[planet]] inside a spacetime envelope, wiping it out of [[history]]. ([[AUDIO]]: ''[[Random Ghosts (audio story)|Random Ghosts]]'')


The [[Tenth Doctor]] once said in Pompeii, before it was about to be destroyed by a volcano, that certain events in the timeline were fixed points in history.' ([[DW]]: ''[[The Fires of Pompeii]]'')
It was thought impossible to pass through a time lock, but this was proven false; [[Dalek Caan]] did so, but, in the process, ([[TV]]: ''[[The Stolen Earth (TV story)|The Stolen Earth]]'') saw the whole of Time and Space and turned against the [[Dalek Empire]], ([[TV]]: ''[[Journey's End (TV story)|Journey's End]]'') with his shift in behaviour leading [[Davros]] to the conclusion that the journey had "cost him his mind". ([[TV]]: ''[[The Stolen Earth (TV story)|The Stolen Earth]]'')  


Another sort of time-lock, created by [[Torchwood 3]]'s resident genius [[Toshiko Sato]], was designed to freeze the [[Torchwood 3]] Hub in a bubble in time, which was at the same time impenetrable but inescapable. ([[DW]]: ''[[Journey's End]]'')
There were also other workarounds to enter a location blocked by a time lock, such as the use of a [[stasis cube]] to displace and freeze a moment of time outside of the natural progression of reality. With the event in question suspended from the actual flow of time, one could then enter it directly without needing to physically travel through the [[Time Vortex]]. ([[TV]]: ''[[The Day of the Doctor (TV story)|The Day of the Doctor]]'')
It was possible that that Time Lock was destroyed when the hub blew up. ([[TW]]: [[Children of Earth: Day One]])
 
[[Category:Time travel]]
Another method of bypassing a time lock was to follow one's younger self through to a time locked time and place, through a very precise window. The older traveller would be recognised as their younger self, and allowed to pass through. A time traveller had only one opportunity to try this. ([[AUDIO]]: ''[[The Shoreditch Intervention (audio story)|The Shoreditch Intervention]]'')
 
Most notably, the histories of both [[Gallifrey]] and [[Skaro]] were time locked during the [[Last Great Time War]], ([[AUDIO]]: ''[[Legion of the Lost (audio story)|Legion of the Lost]]'', ''[[The Shoreditch Intervention (audio story)|The Shoreditch Intervention]]'') as well as that of [[Earth]]. ([[AUDIO]]: ''[[The Shoreditch Intervention (audio story)|The Shoreditch Intervention]]'') The war itself would be time locked following its conclusion. ([[TV]]: ''[[The Stolen Earth (TV story)|The Stolen Earth]]'', ''[[The End of Time (TV story)|The End of Time]]'')
 
Places unfortunate enough to be partially caught in a time lock could be splintered between timelines, as was the fate of [[Lujhimene]] when it was caught on the edge of the time lock used to seal off the Last Great Time War. ([[COMIC]]: ''[[Running to Stay Still (comic story)|Running to Stay Still]]'')
 
The [[Sixth Doctor]] used his TARDIS to put a time lock on the [[TITAN Array]] by boosting its [[reality quotient]] above 1. ([[PROSE]]: ''[[The Quantum Archangel (novel)|The Quantum Archangel]]'')
 
== TARDIS component ==
[[The Doctor's TARDIS]] possessed a time lock. ([[GAME]]: ''[[TARDIS (video game)|TARDIS]]'') When the TARDIS was suspended in [[space]] by the [[Great Intelligence]], the [[Second Doctor]] wondered if the time lock had slipped, ([[TV]]: ''[[The Web of Fear (TV story)|The Web of Fear]]'') since the lock enabled smooth materialisation in and out of the Vortex. ([[PROSE]]: ''[[Harvest of Time (novel)|Harvest of Time]]'')
 
== Use ==
=== By the Doctor ===
When [[the Doctor's TARDIS]] and [[the Master's TARDIS]] had each [[Space loop|landed inside the other]], the [[Third Doctor]] and {{Delgado}} each put a time lock on the other's TARDIS to prevent escape. ([[TV]]: ''[[The Time Monster (TV story)|The Time Monster]]'')
 
In the [[New Earth System]], the [[Fourth Doctor]] used the [[Dalek]]s' [[time transporter]] to create a time lock that froze the Daleks and the [[Werelok|Werelox]] on board the [[Dalek battlecraft]] in one moment of space and time forever. ([[COMIC]]: ''[[Doctor Who and the Dogs of Doom (comic story)|Doctor Who and the Dogs of Doom]]'')
 
[[File:Time Lock in Outrun.jpg|thumb|left|The [[Eleventh Doctor]] shows his companions the time lock, which the [[human]] mind was unable to comprehend so simply saw as a wall, on the [[Last Great Time War]]. ([[COMIC]]: ''[[Outrun (comic story)|Outrun]]'')]]
When the Doctor used [[the Moment]] at the end of [[Last Great Time War]], the entire war was time locked. ([[COMIC]]: ''[[Don't Step on the Grass (comic story)|Don't Step on the Grass]]'') When the [[Eleventh Doctor]] showed [[Alice Obiefune]], [[the Squire (The Then and the Now)|the Squire]], and [[Abslom Daak]] the [[Last Great Time War]], he could only show them the time lock around it. He said the [[human]] mind did not have the capacity to fathom what it was seeing, so it appeared to them as a "big simple wall". ([[COMIC]]: ''[[Outrun (comic story)|Outrun]]'')
 
On one occasion when [[Donna Noble]] was beating the [[Tenth Doctor]] at [[backgammon]], he placed the board in a time lock until Donna became bored and gave up. ([[AUDIO]]: ''[[Time Reaver (audio story)|Time Reaver]]'')
 
[[Dalek Caan]] overcame the lock on the Time War after making an [[emergency temporal shift]] and travelled back to the [[Gates of Elysium]] to save Davros. The process flooded Caan's mind with total knowledge of the past, present and future, driving him insane. ([[TV]]: ''[[The Stolen Earth (TV story)|The Stolen Earth]]'') The only other things capable of breaching the time lock were those that were already in place, like the signal that had been transmitted back through time into [[the Master]]'s mind and, on at least one occasion, very small objects, such as the [[White-Point Star]] diamond sent by {{Dalton}} to follow the signal in {{Simm}}'s head. ([[TV]]: ''[[The End of Time (TV story)|The End of Time]]'')
 
When the Tenth and [[Eleventh Doctor]]s confronted the [[War Doctor]] as he prepared to use [[the Moment]], the Tenth Doctor noted that they shouldn't have been there as the events should be time locked. The Eleventh Doctor [[deduce]]d that something let them through (this being the Moment itself). Later, the Doctor's other incarnations were able to breach the time lock to save Gallifrey. ([[TV]]: ''[[The Day of the Doctor (TV story)|The Day of the Doctor]]'')
 
=== By Time Lords ===
[[Rassilon]], fearing the alterations to history, timelocked the time before the Time Lords, declaring the [[Dark Times]] off limits. ([[PROSE]]: ''[[What the TARDIS thought of "Time Lord Victorious" (short story)|What the TARDIS thought of "Time Lord Victorious"]]'') Despite this, both the [[Tenth Doctor|Tenth]], ([[COMIC]]: ''[[Old Girl (comic story)|Old Girl]]'') and [[Eleventh Doctor]]s had made trips to pre-Time Lord Gallifrey. ([[COMIC]]: ''[[The Lost Dimension (comic story)|The Lost Dimension]]'')
 
It was one of the [[Time Lord]]s' ancient weapons, ([[AUDIO]]: ''[[Random Ghosts (audio story)|Random Ghosts]]'') used to hide their secrets and misdeeds. When [[Skagra]] used ''[[The Worshipful and Ancient Law of Gallifrey]]'' to access [[Shada]], [[Romana II]] hypothesised that they were passing through a time lock, ([[PROSE]]: ''[[Shada (novelisation)|Shada]]'') and later referred to a time lock as "Shada technology."
 
[[Matthias]] quarantined Time Lords infected by the [[Dogma Virus]] in time-locked facilities. ([[AUDIO]]: ''[[Ascension (Gallifrey audio story)|Ascension]]'')
 
The entirety of the [[Last Great Time War]] was time locked, the edges of the time lock even tearing through the middle of planets such as [[Lujhimene]]. ([[COMIC]]: ''[[Running to Stay Still (comic story)|Running to Stay Still]]'')
 
Gallifrey's [[history]] was protected from potential Dalek incursions by a [[Gallifrey's time lock|time lock]] during the Last Great Time War. ([[AUDIO]]: ''[[Legion of the Lost (audio story)|Legion of the Lost]]'') Nevertheless, the Daleks tried to travel back to prehistoric Gallifrey to prevent the Time Lords from [[evolution|evolving]], ([[PROSE]]: ''[[Engines of War (novel)|Engines of War]]'') and the [[War Doctor]] himself travelled back to the [[First Segment]] of the war to thwart a Dalek plot. ([[PROSE]]: ''[[The Stranger (short story)|The Stranger]]'') however, the [[Twelfth Doctor]] unknowingly arrived on Gallifrey in his past in [[The Doctor's TARDIS|his TARDIS]], which led [[Clara Oswald]] into meeting the [[First Doctor]] when he was still a child. ([[TV]]: ''[[Listen (TV story)|Listen]]'')
 
Following the removal of Gallifrey from the universe, it was no longer time-locked and could be reached by TARDIS at its new position at the [[end of the universe]] following its release from the [[pocket universe]]. ([[TV]]: ''[[Hell Bent (TV story)|Hell Bent]]'')
 
=== By Daleks ===
Led by a new [[Dalek Emperor (The Eternity Clock)|Emperor Dalek]], the Daleks of the [[New Dalek Paradigm]] planned to remove [[Gallifrey]] from existence and become the new [[Lords of Time]]. They used a piece of the [[Eternity Clock]] to put a time lock around a large part of [[London]] in [[2106]]. Once they perfected their time lock technology, they planned to use it to put temporal bubbles around other planets, making them unstoppable. However the [[Eleventh Doctor]] and [[River Song]] stole a Time Capsule from the [[Silent]]s to break through the Daleks' time lock. They infiltrated the [[Dalek Flagship|Emperor's Flagship]] managed to take back the piece of the clock. ([[GAME]]: ''[[The Eternity Clock (video game)|The Eternity Clock]]'')
 
Skaro's [[history]] was protected from potential Time Lord incursions, such as the [[Fourth Doctor]]'s original mission to prevent the [[creation of the Daleks]], ([[TV]]: ''[[Genesis of the Daleks (TV story)|Genesis of the Daleks]]'', [[AUDIO]]: ''[[Ascension (Gallifrey audio story)|Ascension]]'') by a [[Skaro's time lock|time lock]] during the [[Last Great Time War]]. ([[AUDIO]]: ''[[Legion of the Lost (audio story)|Legion of the Lost]]'') Evidently, the time lock was no longer in effect following the war as the [[Twelfth Doctor]] unintentionally arrived on Skaro during the [[Thousand Year War]], leading to him meeting [[Davros]] as a child. ([[TV]]: ''[[The Magician's Apprentice (TV story)|The Magician's Apprentice]]'')
 
=== By Torchwood ===
Another sort of [[Torchwood's time lock|time lock]], created by [[Torchwood 3]]'s resident genius [[Toshiko Sato]] before her death ([[TV]]: ''[[Exit Wounds (TV story)|Exit Wounds]]''), was designed to freeze the Torchwood 3 Hub in a bubble in time. It was at the same time impenetrable but inescapable. The time lock was either shut down or damaged when a [[Dalek]] trapped at the edge of the bubble was blown up by the [[Meta-Crisis Tenth Doctor]]. ([[TV]]: ''[[Journey's End (TV story)|Journey's End]]'')
 
=== By Ace ===
At the [[Time Lord Academy]] on [[Gallifrey]], [[Ace]] was given the planet of [[Talmeson]] to watch over. The planet was eventually wiped out by the Daleks. That was when she decided to wipe out the Daleks by time locking [[Skaro]] using an [[Omega device]]. When the Doctor found out that Ace went missing, he sent [[Bernice Summerfield]] to find and stop her. ([[AUDIO]]: ''[[The Lights of Skaro (audio story)|The Lights of Skaro]]'')
 
=== By the Weeping Angels ===
The [[Weeping Angel]]s could create something that essentially functioned like a time lock by causing too many time displacements, such as the one that separated the Doctor from [[Amy Pond]] and [[Rory Williams]] in New York. ([[TV]]: ''[[The Angels Take Manhattan (TV story)|The Angels Take Manhattan]]'')
 
=== By the Horofax ===
The [[Horofax]] placed a time lock on [[Earth]] in the [[1970s]], stopping everything on the [[planet]] aside from the [[Third Doctor]] and [[Adam Rigg]], who were protected by their being a [[Time Lord]] and wearing a [[timesuit]] respectively. ([[AUDIO]]: {{cs|Storm of the Horofax (audio story)}})
 
== Expression ==
The [[Vist]] looked down upon the "time-locked races" in reference to their natural [[time travel]] ability. ([[AUDIO]]: ''[[The Forbidden Time (audio story)|The Forbidden Time]]'')
 
== Time streams ==
All individuals had personal [[time stream]]s that were difficult and dangerous to travel into, much like a time lock; however, this only applied to the time stream of a particular individual, and it was more easy to cross. ([[TV]]: ''[[The Wedding of River Song (TV story)|The Wedding of River Song]]'', [[TV]]: ''[[The Name of the Doctor (TV story)|The Name of the Doctor]]'')
[[Category:Last Great Time War]]
[[Category:Time technology]]
[[Category:Locks]]
[[Category:Defensive technology]]
[[Category:Suspension of time]]
[[Category:TARDIS components]]

Latest revision as of 14:22, 5 November 2024

Gwen Cooper examines the effects of a time lock at Torchwood Three. (TV: Journey's End)

A time lock, or temporal lock, was a mechanism whereby an event or series of events was rendered unreachable by time travel, blocking off a section of the Time Vortex. The effect was described as being like a wall, (AUDIO: 1963: Fanfare for the Common Men) and Ace explained that a time lock could seal a planet inside a spacetime envelope, wiping it out of history. (AUDIO: Random Ghosts)

It was thought impossible to pass through a time lock, but this was proven false; Dalek Caan did so, but, in the process, (TV: The Stolen Earth) saw the whole of Time and Space and turned against the Dalek Empire, (TV: Journey's End) with his shift in behaviour leading Davros to the conclusion that the journey had "cost him his mind". (TV: The Stolen Earth)

There were also other workarounds to enter a location blocked by a time lock, such as the use of a stasis cube to displace and freeze a moment of time outside of the natural progression of reality. With the event in question suspended from the actual flow of time, one could then enter it directly without needing to physically travel through the Time Vortex. (TV: The Day of the Doctor)

Another method of bypassing a time lock was to follow one's younger self through to a time locked time and place, through a very precise window. The older traveller would be recognised as their younger self, and allowed to pass through. A time traveller had only one opportunity to try this. (AUDIO: The Shoreditch Intervention)

Most notably, the histories of both Gallifrey and Skaro were time locked during the Last Great Time War, (AUDIO: Legion of the Lost, The Shoreditch Intervention) as well as that of Earth. (AUDIO: The Shoreditch Intervention) The war itself would be time locked following its conclusion. (TV: The Stolen Earth, The End of Time)

Places unfortunate enough to be partially caught in a time lock could be splintered between timelines, as was the fate of Lujhimene when it was caught on the edge of the time lock used to seal off the Last Great Time War. (COMIC: Running to Stay Still)

The Sixth Doctor used his TARDIS to put a time lock on the TITAN Array by boosting its reality quotient above 1. (PROSE: The Quantum Archangel)

TARDIS component[[edit] | [edit source]]

The Doctor's TARDIS possessed a time lock. (GAME: TARDIS) When the TARDIS was suspended in space by the Great Intelligence, the Second Doctor wondered if the time lock had slipped, (TV: The Web of Fear) since the lock enabled smooth materialisation in and out of the Vortex. (PROSE: Harvest of Time)

Use[[edit] | [edit source]]

By the Doctor[[edit] | [edit source]]

When the Doctor's TARDIS and the Master's TARDIS had each landed inside the other, the Third Doctor and the Master each put a time lock on the other's TARDIS to prevent escape. (TV: The Time Monster)

In the New Earth System, the Fourth Doctor used the Daleks' time transporter to create a time lock that froze the Daleks and the Werelox on board the Dalek battlecraft in one moment of space and time forever. (COMIC: Doctor Who and the Dogs of Doom)

The Eleventh Doctor shows his companions the time lock, which the human mind was unable to comprehend so simply saw as a wall, on the Last Great Time War. (COMIC: Outrun)

When the Doctor used the Moment at the end of Last Great Time War, the entire war was time locked. (COMIC: Don't Step on the Grass) When the Eleventh Doctor showed Alice Obiefune, the Squire, and Abslom Daak the Last Great Time War, he could only show them the time lock around it. He said the human mind did not have the capacity to fathom what it was seeing, so it appeared to them as a "big simple wall". (COMIC: Outrun)

On one occasion when Donna Noble was beating the Tenth Doctor at backgammon, he placed the board in a time lock until Donna became bored and gave up. (AUDIO: Time Reaver)

Dalek Caan overcame the lock on the Time War after making an emergency temporal shift and travelled back to the Gates of Elysium to save Davros. The process flooded Caan's mind with total knowledge of the past, present and future, driving him insane. (TV: The Stolen Earth) The only other things capable of breaching the time lock were those that were already in place, like the signal that had been transmitted back through time into the Master's mind and, on at least one occasion, very small objects, such as the White-Point Star diamond sent by Rassilon to follow the signal in the Saxon Master's head. (TV: The End of Time)

When the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors confronted the War Doctor as he prepared to use the Moment, the Tenth Doctor noted that they shouldn't have been there as the events should be time locked. The Eleventh Doctor deduced that something let them through (this being the Moment itself). Later, the Doctor's other incarnations were able to breach the time lock to save Gallifrey. (TV: The Day of the Doctor)

By Time Lords[[edit] | [edit source]]

Rassilon, fearing the alterations to history, timelocked the time before the Time Lords, declaring the Dark Times off limits. (PROSE: What the TARDIS thought of "Time Lord Victorious") Despite this, both the Tenth, (COMIC: Old Girl) and Eleventh Doctors had made trips to pre-Time Lord Gallifrey. (COMIC: The Lost Dimension)

It was one of the Time Lords' ancient weapons, (AUDIO: Random Ghosts) used to hide their secrets and misdeeds. When Skagra used The Worshipful and Ancient Law of Gallifrey to access Shada, Romana II hypothesised that they were passing through a time lock, (PROSE: Shada) and later referred to a time lock as "Shada technology."

Matthias quarantined Time Lords infected by the Dogma Virus in time-locked facilities. (AUDIO: Ascension)

The entirety of the Last Great Time War was time locked, the edges of the time lock even tearing through the middle of planets such as Lujhimene. (COMIC: Running to Stay Still)

Gallifrey's history was protected from potential Dalek incursions by a time lock during the Last Great Time War. (AUDIO: Legion of the Lost) Nevertheless, the Daleks tried to travel back to prehistoric Gallifrey to prevent the Time Lords from evolving, (PROSE: Engines of War) and the War Doctor himself travelled back to the First Segment of the war to thwart a Dalek plot. (PROSE: The Stranger) however, the Twelfth Doctor unknowingly arrived on Gallifrey in his past in his TARDIS, which led Clara Oswald into meeting the First Doctor when he was still a child. (TV: Listen)

Following the removal of Gallifrey from the universe, it was no longer time-locked and could be reached by TARDIS at its new position at the end of the universe following its release from the pocket universe. (TV: Hell Bent)

By Daleks[[edit] | [edit source]]

Led by a new Emperor Dalek, the Daleks of the New Dalek Paradigm planned to remove Gallifrey from existence and become the new Lords of Time. They used a piece of the Eternity Clock to put a time lock around a large part of London in 2106. Once they perfected their time lock technology, they planned to use it to put temporal bubbles around other planets, making them unstoppable. However the Eleventh Doctor and River Song stole a Time Capsule from the Silents to break through the Daleks' time lock. They infiltrated the Emperor's Flagship managed to take back the piece of the clock. (GAME: The Eternity Clock)

Skaro's history was protected from potential Time Lord incursions, such as the Fourth Doctor's original mission to prevent the creation of the Daleks, (TV: Genesis of the Daleks, AUDIO: Ascension) by a time lock during the Last Great Time War. (AUDIO: Legion of the Lost) Evidently, the time lock was no longer in effect following the war as the Twelfth Doctor unintentionally arrived on Skaro during the Thousand Year War, leading to him meeting Davros as a child. (TV: The Magician's Apprentice)

By Torchwood[[edit] | [edit source]]

Another sort of time lock, created by Torchwood 3's resident genius Toshiko Sato before her death (TV: Exit Wounds), was designed to freeze the Torchwood 3 Hub in a bubble in time. It was at the same time impenetrable but inescapable. The time lock was either shut down or damaged when a Dalek trapped at the edge of the bubble was blown up by the Meta-Crisis Tenth Doctor. (TV: Journey's End)

By Ace[[edit] | [edit source]]

At the Time Lord Academy on Gallifrey, Ace was given the planet of Talmeson to watch over. The planet was eventually wiped out by the Daleks. That was when she decided to wipe out the Daleks by time locking Skaro using an Omega device. When the Doctor found out that Ace went missing, he sent Bernice Summerfield to find and stop her. (AUDIO: The Lights of Skaro)

By the Weeping Angels[[edit] | [edit source]]

The Weeping Angels could create something that essentially functioned like a time lock by causing too many time displacements, such as the one that separated the Doctor from Amy Pond and Rory Williams in New York. (TV: The Angels Take Manhattan)

By the Horofax[[edit] | [edit source]]

The Horofax placed a time lock on Earth in the 1970s, stopping everything on the planet aside from the Third Doctor and Adam Rigg, who were protected by their being a Time Lord and wearing a timesuit respectively. (AUDIO: Storm of the Horofax [+]Loading...["Storm of the Horofax (audio story)"])

Expression[[edit] | [edit source]]

The Vist looked down upon the "time-locked races" in reference to their natural time travel ability. (AUDIO: The Forbidden Time)

Time streams[[edit] | [edit source]]

All individuals had personal time streams that were difficult and dangerous to travel into, much like a time lock; however, this only applied to the time stream of a particular individual, and it was more easy to cross. (TV: The Wedding of River Song, TV: The Name of the Doctor)