Faster-than-light travel

Faster-than-light travel is one of one method of travelling interstellar distances without resorting to relativistic travel or generation starships. Other, rarer methods include travelling via Time Vortex, a method which TARDISes use, and transmat systems.

Most advanced civilisations seem to have developed faster-than-light travel at some point during their history. Humans seemed to have developed it during or after the fourth millennium.

Examples

Common means of faster-than-light travel involve passing a spacecraft through hyperspace, which is located outside of spacetime as Humans know it. (DW: The Stones of Blood) Other technologies include warp drive. (DW: The Girl in the Fireplace, etc)

• The Nestene Consciousness used warp shunt technology to travel between planets. (DW: Rose)

• The people of the Arcateen system used superluminal technology, specifically communications and travel technology, to transport themselves to other planets and communicate over long distances. (TW: Greeks Bearing Gifts, SJA: Invasion of the Bane)

Mary arrived on Earth via a transporation device. Sarah Jane Smith's star poet friend of the same species, arrived on Earth through unspecified means, though we can assume they used much of the same kind of technology.

• Raxacoricofallapatorians had slipstream engine technology, which the criminal Slitheen Family used to hoax a UFO crash before an alien invasion. (DW: Aliens of London / World War Three)

• Cellular transmission was an experimental 39th century technology designed to transport Humans across galaxies by means of a transmat-like interface. (DW: The Daleks' Master Plan).