Time field

The Time Field is a series of mysterious cracks in the fabric of time and space caused by an unidentified explosion that originates from 26/06/2010, and is the focus of the main story arc for Series 5.

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, one 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

One crack, in Amy Pond's bedroom, connected to an Atraxi prison in Easter of 1996. (DW: The Eleventh Hour) A crack also appeared on the Starship UK in the 33rd century (DW: The Beast Below) and in the Cabinet War Room in 1941. (DW: Victory of the Daleks) Another 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 briefly 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)

For an unknown reason, the cracks have appeared in every location Amy and the Eleventh Doctor have been, appearing wherever they went after they arrived ever since the incident that involved the Doctor sealing the first crack from Amelia's bedroom in 1996. The Doctor and Amy didn't notice this until their encounter with the Weeping Angels.

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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  The Crack on Amelia's wall. (DW: The Eleventh Hour)

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  A Crack shape seen on the TARDIS's television. (DW: The Eleventh Hour)

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  The Starship UK Crack. (DW: The Beast Below)

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  The World War II Crack. (DW: Victory of the Daleks).

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  The Byzantium Crack. (DW: Flesh and Stone).

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  Crack 6

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  A crack in the TARDIS scanner screen.

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  Promotional picture for Series 5

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 DW: The Next Doctor (though, perhaps unintentionally).