Rift

For the Cardiff rift, specifically, see separate article.

Some areas of spacetime weaknesses known as a time rift (or temporal rift) through which people or objects may pass from one location in spacetime to another.

Effects

Individual people (DW: Image of the Fendahl, The Unquiet Dead) or even whole species, such as the Owse (PDA: The Quantum Archangel) may develop a degree of time sensitivity or other psychic powers.

Certain rifts could transport living or non living matter through space and time. (TW: Adrift)

Interactions with technology

Technology, such as the Torchwood Institute's device can to a limited degree control such rifts but inexactly. (WEB: Torchwood website, TW: Captain Jack Harkness, End of Days).

The Doctor's TARDIS could use time rifts to power up. (DW: Boom Town)

Possibly, the rifts leak out temporal energy, which the TARDIS can absorb. Following the destruction of Gallifrey, the TARDIS would have needed a new source of power with the Eye of Harmony presumably now gone.

Known locations of temporal rifts

• Earth possesses at least one major time rift, located in Cardiff. (DW: The Unquiet Dead, Boom Town, TW: Everything Changes onwards).

• A region of space near the planet Kaesov, homeworld of the Owse (PDA: The Quantum Archangel)

• The eruption of the Vesuvius in 79 AD briefly resulted in a time rift, echoing back in time and thus giving some inhabitants of the city of Pompeii precognitive powers. This rift was created because of how powerful the eruption of Vesuvius was, but it was only open for a second and presumably never reopened. (DW: The Fires of Pompeii)

• The Medusa Cascade once had a time rift, it was healed at some point by the Doctor. (DW: Last of the Time Lords, "The Stolen Earth)

See also

• Time fissure