Jeapes' Syndrome

From Tardis Wiki, the free Doctor Who reference

Jeapes' Syndrome was a condition where a living creature experienced time backwards.

Faulty time travel experimentation or exposure to massive doses of temporal energy could cause the syndrome. Typically, when an afflicted individual awoke from sleep, it would be the prior day and not the following one. The syndrome usually only lasted a few days. The memories of the afflicted and those that knew them would adjust, often making it so that they did not even realise they had the condition.

Ezekiel Child had an extreme form of Jeapes' Syndrome as a result of being exposed to the temporal blast from Lord Roche's TARDIS. He suffered, half-aware of the changes, for twenty-seven years. He contracted the syndrome in 1999, when he was 19. By the time it ended in 1972, he was 46. He then lived his life forwards again, as far as anyone knew making his birth year 1926 instead of 1990.

This aggravated form of the syndrome created a time fracture lasting the entire period. It was considered a navigation hazard by the Time Lords and increased the level of universal entropy. The Third Doctor managed to stop the chain of events that caused Child to be affected. In that new timeline, he was never afflicted by Jeapes' Syndrome and lived his life normally forward. Also, the time fracture was never created. (PROSE: The Suns of Caresh)