Timeline
A timeline was a method of ordering chronology, creating a history for an individual, place, event, etc. The term was sometimes used to mean the whole of a version of history, such that a divergent version of the universe could be termed an alternate timeline. However, in other contexts, the Web of Time was said to be made of a number of interweaving timelines or "threads", with individual planets or even people having their own "timelines" which could theoretically be altered independent of the rest of history.
Uses of the term
Universe-wide timeline
Centring on what the Time Lords called the "primary timeline" (AUDIO: Reborn) alternate timelines could diverge, which if left unchecked, would end the real universe millions of years before it was meant to due to there being only a finite amount of matter and energy in the uni-verse. Such a "sub-universe", the Silurian Earth, was destroyed by the Seventh Doctor. (PROSE: Blood Heat) Owen Harper told Rhys Williams that the Cardiff Space-Time Rift connected to not only other planets, but "other timelines". (TV: Meat)
The Eleventh Doctor referred to the "natural timeline", which he restored when he prevented the New Dalek Paradigm from seizing the Eye of Time, thus averting the alternate timeline they would have established. (GAME: City of the Daleks)
The Eleventh Doctor identified the 2020 Cwmtaff incident as a "temporal tipping point", explaining that it was not a fixed point in time. He claimed that such a tipping point would "change future events, create its own timeline, its own reality." (TV: Cold Blood)
The Eighth Doctor later stated that Time Roaches couldn't be let out of the Time vortex into "the timeline". (AUDIO: Foreshadowing)
On two occasions, the Seventh Doctor pondered that Daleks would think twice before doing something to alter "the timeline". (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks) He made a similar statement about "the timestream", suggesting the terms could be used interchangeably. (PROSE: Transit)
Sarah Jane Smith corrected Maria Jackson when she referred to Andrea Yates's world as a parallel world, clarifying that it was their timeline, having been changed. Later, whilst speaking with Sarah Jane, the Trickster identified the world of Andrea Yates as a timeline that he had created. (TV: Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?) As a result of a later attempt by the Trickster to change history, Clyde Langer found himself in what he repeatedly referred to as an alternative timeline. (TV: The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith)
When Rhys Williams expressed shock at the sight of a pterodactyl, which he knew to be extinct, Captain Jack Harkness clarified that pterodactyls were extinct in "[his] timeline". (TV: Meat)
Stressing the danger of using the null field generator on Earth in 2011, Captain Jack told Esther Drummond and Rex Matheson that he had seen the future, that he had "walked the future world". He warned that, with the generator, the timeline would become "terminal". (TV: End of the Road)
When dealing with the interference of the Star Men, the Fifth Doctor mentioned that they were damaging the "timeline," the "timelines," and that they had inserted themselves into "this reality's timestream." (AUDIO: The Star Men
Plural timelines
The meta-structure of history, (PROSE: The Book of the War) often "the Web of Time", (TV: Attack of the Cybermen, etc.) was made up of interweaving "threads" or "lines" of causality, which converged at the caldera on the Homeworld. (PROSE: The Book of the War) When the timelines began converging on Donna Noble, in part due to Dalek Caan's manipulation, (TV: Journey's End [+]Loading...["Journey's End (TV story)"], etc.) Caan himself described this process as "draw[ing] together the strands of time into a web of death." (PROSE: Dalek Caan [+]Loading...["Dalek Caan (short story)"])
As such, the whole of history could be referred to as "the timelines", multiple rather than singular. The Reborn Master and the Daleks manipulated and shifted "the timelines" to conquer Earth in 1921 (AUDIO: Master of the Daleks) and the Sanukuma described the Last Great Time War as being raged across "the timelines," (AUDIO: The Rulers of the Universe) the effects of the war affecting "the timelines". (AUDIO: The Starship of Theseus, One Life) During the war, the Daleks developed the annihilator weapon which could erase a whole species without "affecting the timelines", meaning they would still be remembered even though they'd never existed. (AUDIO: Legion of the Lost)
Following his first regeneration during the Last Great Time War, Rassilon dismissed the Daleks as "microbes" who were "tied to one timeline". (AUDIO: Homecoming)
The dimension cannon was capable of "measuring" timelines. (TV: Journey's End)
The Eleventh Doctor found that "the timelines [were] too scrambled" for him to return to New York, preventing him from recovering Amy Pond and Rory Williams after they were displaced in time by a Weeping Angel. (TV: The Angels Take Manhattan)
The Thirteenth Doctor told her companions that Orphan 55 was but "one possible future" and "one timeline" which was not fixed. (TV: Orphan 55)
The Thirteenth Doctor sent a message from the TARDIS "through the timelines" into the Time Vortex, purposefully drawing the attention of a Dalek ship which lay in wait there. (TV: Revolution of the Daleks)
Professor Chronotis's TARDIS could interfere with an individual's time stream. (TV: Shada [+]Loading...["Shada (TV story)"], WC: Shada [+]Loading...["Shada (webcast)"])
Captain Carter explained to the Eleventh Doctor that the Justice Department's Teselecta extracted criminals near the end of their established timelines before they punished them. (TV: Let's Kill Hitler [+]Loading...["Let's Kill Hitler (TV story)"])
On Gallifrey, the Time Lords had access to the timelines/time streams of individuals, (TV: The Three Doctors [+]Loading...["The Three Doctors (TV story)"], Hell Bent [+]Loading...["Hell Bent (TV story)"], etc.) sometimes extracting them with temporal energy, (TV: The Three Doctors [+]Loading...["The Three Doctors (TV story)"]) Time Scoops, (PROSE: "Technology" [+]Part of Whotopia: The Ultimate Guide to the Whoniverse, Loading...{"namedpart":"Technology","1":"Whotopia: The Ultimate Guide to the Whoniverse (reference book)"}, TV: The Five Doctors [+]Loading...["The Five Doctors (TV story)"]) and extraction chambers. (TV: Hell Bent [+]Loading...["Hell Bent (TV story)"])
Combining the resources of time travel with their memory extraction techniques, the Testimony Foundation lifted the near-dead momentarily from their time streams in order to duplicate their memories before returning their physical selves to the moment of their dissolution without pain, distress or any recall of the process. (TV: Twice Upon a Time [+]Loading...["Twice Upon a Time (TV story)"])
Time Roaches consumed time streams, either ageing or de-ageing individuals. (AUDIO: Foreshadowing [+]Loading...["Foreshadowing (audio story)"])
The Two Streams Facility of Apalapucia used time streams (which was the source of the name). Apalapucians with the Chen-7 plague were kept in the facility in different time streams, allowing them to live out their whole lives in one day. This also meant that each patient was kept isolated in a different time stream, but in the same place. (TV: The Girl Who Waited [+]Loading...["The Girl Who Waited (TV story)"]) Depending on the timestream, 1 January marked several New Year's Days in a row on Apalapucia. (PROSE: Time Traveller's Diary [+]Loading...["Time Traveller's Diary (novel)"])
The Guardians of Time were able to "insert" themselves into the time stream, where upon they either took over or created the personas of powerful individuals in history. (AUDIO: The Destroyer of Delights [+]Loading...["The Destroyer of Delights (audio story)"])
The Graxnix were removed from the time stream by the Tenth Doctor, trapping them between seconds. (COMIC: Hotel Historia [+]Loading...["Hotel Historia (comic story)"])
Synonyms
"Time stream" was a common synonym for timeline. (TV: The Name of the Doctor [+]Loading...["The Name of the Doctor (TV story)"], AUDIO: Reborn [+]Loading...["Reborn (audio story)"], PROSE: Asylum [+]Loading...["Asylum (novel)"], A History of Humankind [+]Loading...{"page":"13, 144","1":"A History of Humankind (novel)"}, etc.) Other less-used synonyms included time track, (AUDIO: Disassembled [+]Loading...["Disassembled (audio story)"]) parallel universe, and reality. (AUDIO: Forever [+]Loading...["Forever (audio story)"])
Personal timelines
- Main article: Personal timeline
In this understanding of the word "timeline", individuals, planets, species and objects had their own personal, relative timelines.
Altering a timeline
Internal forces
The ability for a subject to alter or change their own personal timeline was a matter of contention between accounts.
Unable
In some accounts, if an individual altered their own personal timeline, a time paradox would be created.
to be added
Able
In some accounts, individuals could alter their own personal timelines without issue.
Amy Pond was once able to alter her own timeline without adverse effects when she gave her younger self a new ice cream after she dropped her first. (HOMEVID: Good Night [+]Loading...["Good Night (home video)"])
External forces
The vortex energy inside the Doctor's TARDIS could "reverse" a person's time stream. (PROSE: "Technology" [+]Part of Whotopia: The Ultimate Guide to the Whoniverse, Loading...{"namedpart":"Technology","1":"Whotopia: The Ultimate Guide to the Whoniverse (reference book)"}) The Time Lords similarly possessed the ability to reverse an individual's life-stream. (PROSE: Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons [+]Loading...{"chaptname":"Sabotage at the Space Probe","name":"\"terror\"","chaptnum":"2","1":"Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons (novelisation)"})
The Resurrectionists were able to reverse time for the recently deceased, returning them to an earlier point in their time stream and psychically directing them away from the actions that lead to their death. (AUDIO: You Are the Doctor [+]Loading...["You Are the Doctor (audio story)"])
more to be added
Universal history
The timeline of the universe spanned billions of years. However, most of the Doctor's involvement seemed to be in what was sometimes called the Humanian Era, that part of history which encompassed human existence. As a result, the Doctor's TARDIS was most often seen between the time humans first evolved through to about the 82nd century. Occasionally, the Doctor went further than the 100th century, into what might be called the "far future".
The Doctor was known to have visited, or at least been affected by, people and places in the following broad divisions of time as measured by at least one human dating system:
However, their travels were usually known to have occurred at much more specific times. The Doctor and their companions were active in the following Earth centuries:
- 1st century
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