User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Reference Desk/@comment-63.143.235.110-20130510130704/@comment-78.128.194.120-20130522171356

63.143.238.98 wrote: So what about the Matrix, the "heart and soul of the Tardis" that downloaded into Idris? Or the Time Vortex that Rose and then the Ninth Doctor absorbed from the hatch in the Control Room?

It is implied on different episodes that both of these are power sources for the TARDIS. How are they connected to the Eye of Harmony?

As for the Rift, I thought this was considered an energy source, a place where the TARDIS could go to "recharge", so to speak but wasn't actually powering the TARDIS. A bad analogy might be that the Rift provided energy to the TARDIS like a gas station provides gas to enable cars to move. But gas isn't an engine, it's not the power source, it's just the fuel for the power source.

As for DWU authoritative sources, I'm not sure why the 1996 movie is any more or less authoritative that any other Doctor Who story. I don't think there has been a consistent answer and I was hoping one of the smart Wikia users here would have found a way to link all of these TARDIS power/energy elements together.

The Eye is not the engine, the engine is the "Heart". I think that the Matrix is something like a computer or something and the eye is a power source. As for the power - you can have more form of power, in the rift it was said the TARDIS harnessed the "chronon energy", the energy of a collapsing star - the eye could not provide this. Maybe the engines need two different types of energy and the time vortex provides the same as the rift, but the rift provides more energy, so the TARDIS recharges quicker than just from the vortex...