Time field

The Time Field were a series of mysterious cracks in the fabric of time and space caused by an unidentified explosion that originates from the date 26/06/2010. (DW: The Eleventh Hour)

Types of Crack

There are two types of cracks. One type of crack releases energy of "pure time" that can wipe individuals out of time itself and remove events from history (though time-travellers such as the Doctor still have the ability to remember them). This type of crack seemingly erased events such as the CyberKing walking over London in the Victorian era (DW: The Next Doctor) and the Dalek invasion of 2009, two of Earth's biggest invasions. (DW: The Stolen Earth/Journey's End). The other type of crack acts like a wormhole and can be opened to allow passage between the places on either side of the crack. One device known to be able to open this type of crack is a Sonic Screwdriver.

Notable Cracks

A crack in Amy Pond's bedroom connected it to an Atraxi prison in Easter of 1996. (DW: The Eleventh Hour) Later appearances of the crack were on the Starship UK in the 33rd century (DW: The Beast Below) and the Cabinet War Room in 1941. (DW: Victory of the Daleks) The crack later opened to an incredibly large size aboard the Byzantium spaceship in the 51st century. It erased Crispin, Marco, Pedro, Phillip and many Weeping Angels from existence and subsequently closed. The Weeping Angels themselves had feared it, and attempted to escape. (DW: Flesh and Stone)

The crack was mentioned again in Venice, when Rosanna Calvierri claimed that she and the other vampires were forced to flee their planet which was being consumed by a crack. She also claimed that they saw two different types of cracks; one through which they saw other worlds and people and the other through which they saw only silence and the end of all things. According to her, the cracks could be tiny, or as big as the sky. The crack also appeared breifly in the sky when the dark cloud was fading, but the crack faded before the Doctor noticed it. Just before the Doctor left, however, silence fell over Venice, which the Doctor picked up on. (DW: The Vampires of Venice)

Although the crack did not appear in Amy's Choice, it was hinted by the Dream Lord when the Doctor, Amy and Rory first met him. He told them that they had to choice a world: One in the TARDIS, and one in the village time forgot. In Flesh and Stone, it is said that the cracks consume something and makes time forget it. The Dream Lord also states that both worlds will result in doom, but it is never stated what the final doom is on Earth, hinting that it could have been the crack

Function

The Doctor stated that the only way to close the first type of crack is for it to consume a complicated space-time event. An example being either him or the Weeping Angels (needing all of them to be equivalent to himself). River Song volunteered to let herself be consumed, but the Doctor laughed at her idea, and stated that she wasn't even as complicated as one Angel. The Doctor, River, and Amy managed to escape the crack by allowing the Angels to drain the ship's power, causing its artificial gravity to switch off and the Angels to fall into the crack, sealing it. At the end of the episode, he traced the origin of the temporal explosion behind the crack to the day of Amy's wedding: 26th June, 2010.

Time Field gallery

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  Amy Pond's bedroom wall (DW: The Eleventh Hour)

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  Within the Doctor's TARDIS on the scanner. (DW: The Eleventh Hour)

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  On the side of Starship UK. (DW: The Beast Below)

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  On a wall in the London Cabinet War Rooms, 1944. (DW: Victory of the Daleks)

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  On a wall within the Byzantium (DW: Flesh and Stone)

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  In the sky above Venice, 1580. (DW: The Vampires of Venice)

Behind the Scenes

• The Time Crack was inspired by a crack Steven Moffatt saw in his son's bedroom.

• Moffat has confirmed that the Crack will appear in most episodes.

• The Cracks arc is, like the previous series (excluding the Bad Wolf meme), foreshadowed in a previous series, in this case in "The Next Doctor" (though, perhaps unintentionally).