Obverse physics

Obverse physics were a metafictional structuring of reality from Obverse which ran against the Time Lords' principles of rationality and canonicity. Originating from the Obverse, Iris Wildthyme's timeline functioned along the principles Obverse physics.

Canine once explained that the Obverse operated as a sort of fugue of contradiction, where there were always alternative versions of events and there was no natural ending to chronologies. Events were best thought of as being like stories, and no story could fully contradict another or take precedence because they were all equally made-up. Canine suggested that this lack of hierarchy even applied to the Doctor's universe and the different realities of the Obverse, but Fitz Kreiner insisted that some realities had to be less real and valid than others.

Daedalus's Corridors were fashioned from Obverse physics he had "imported without license" or "copyright" into the Doctor's universe. By bringing together different realities within one universe, Iris speculated that the intrusion of Obverse physics could have had a profound effect on the universe, altering it.

In a reality of the Obverse where the Eighth Doctor lived in a council estate, he sometimes had dreams or premonitions on the state of the TARDIS-travelling Eighth Doctor's timeline. He sensed that something was happening to the timelines. This was connected to a garden of vines he kept, which could either be tangled and twisted into fantastic patterns or straightened into linear, parallel lines. (PROSE: The Blue Angel ^[+]Loading...["The Blue Angel (novel)"]) The TARDIS-travelling Eighth Doctor once observed that his life was "looping back on itself and tangling like a horrid vine thing". (PROSE: Bafflement and Devotion ^[+]Loading...["Bafflement and Devotion (short story)"])

Behind the scenes

• What The Blue Angel terms "Obverse physics" is an in-universe explanation for the general mechanics by which Paul Magrs' works share continuity.
• The implications of Obverse physics in the Doctor's universe were to have been further explored in a sequence deleted from The Blue Angel. The Doctor would have begun experiencing a fracturing of narrative and continuity while adrift in the Corridors, with sequences where he relived memories of the Fifth Doctor's meeting with Iris Wildthyme mentioned in PROSE: The Scarlet Empress ^[+]Loading...["The Scarlet Empress (novel)"] and of the Second Doctor's exile seen in TV Comic, with a party scene that would later be repurposed into PROSE: In the Sixties ^[+]Loading...["In the Sixties (short story)"]. The Doctor would eventually find himself in Venice, connecting to AUDIO: The Stones of Venice ^[+]Loading...["The Stones of Venice (audio story)"]. Intercut with the Doctor's experience would be a segment analyzing the nature of his stories, suggesting that his timeline sometimes had tangents and that "an infinity of distinct universes exfoliate from every moment ... of every temporal sequence in this cosmos." Aspects of this would later appear in Bafflement and Devotion ^[+]Loading...["Bafflement and Devotion (short story)"].[1]