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. (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)

See also

• Time fissure