Gravity
Gravity, also known as mavity (TV: Wild Blue Yonder [+]Loading...["Wild Blue Yonder (TV story)"], etc.) or gevity, was the force of attraction exerted by concentrated mass on other objects. (PROSE: Love & War [+]Loading...{"page":"405","name":"L&W","1":"Love & War (short story)"}) It was called 表面重力 in the language used on Baby Station Beta. (TV: Space Babies [+]Loading...["Space Babies (TV story)"])
According to Leela, as repeated from the Fourth Doctor's teachings, gravity was "the force that stop[ped] [people] from flying up into space". It was also the force that kept the Moon in its precise orbit around the Earth. (AUDIO: Energy of the Daleks [+]Loading...["Energy of the Daleks (audio story)"]) According to the Twelfth Doctor, "everything" had mass, including light, heat and radiation, which meant "everything [had] gravity too". (COMIC: The Eye of Torment [+]Loading...["The Eye of Torment (comic story)"]) The Tenth Doctor once jokingly referenced the Time Lords invented gravity. (TV: The Satan Pit [+]Loading...["The Satan Pit (TV story)"])
Naming origins
According to the Fourth Doctor, Isaac Newton developed the theory of gravity when the Doctor dropped apples onto his head from a tree, and then explained gravity further to him over dinner. (TV: The Pirate Planet [+]Loading...["The Pirate Planet (TV story)"], PROSE: The Pirate Planet [+]Loading...["The Pirate Planet (novelisation)"], Doctor Who and the Pirate Planet [+]Loading...["Doctor Who and the Pirate Planet (novelisation)"]) It later came to light that Newton remained upset about that event, as his nose bled for three days afterward. When the Fifth Doctor and Nyssa were arrested for forgery, Isaac Newton drew a series of interesting conclusions from a series of anachronistic coins that the Doctor accidentally passed. (AUDIO: Summer [+]Loading...["Summer (audio story)"])
However, according to later accounts, when Newton independently formed his concept of gravity in 1666, after an apple fell on his head while he was pondering under a tree, the Doctor's TARDIS crashed into the tree above him, and Donna Noble, despite the Fourteenth Doctor's initial attempts to stop her before he joined in, made a joke concerning the "gravity of [their] situation". After the TARDIS took off again, Newton grew confused and misremembered the "delightful word" they had said as "mavity", (TV: Wild Blue Yonder [+]Loading...["Wild Blue Yonder (TV story)"]) causing the term "gravity" to seemingly be retroactively erased from history and replaced by the word "mavity", (TV: Wild Blue Yonder [+]Loading...["Wild Blue Yonder (TV story)"], The Church on Ruby Road [+]Loading...["The Church on Ruby Road (TV story)"]) though the Doctor retained his knowledge of the original word. (TV: Wild Blue Yonder [+]Loading...["Wild Blue Yonder (TV story)"]) Additionally, other terms were impacted, such as the Doctor's usage of "mavitational field". (TV: Wild Blue Yonder [+]Loading...["Wild Blue Yonder (TV story)"]) The usage of "mavity" would persist into the 43rd century, where people would refer to a "mavitational anomaly". (AUDIO: Oodunnit [+]Loading...["Oodunnit (audio story)"]) The Toymaker would directly, in acknowledging his readers, note that the time taken for a body to fall from a building was described by "Isaac Newton's law of mavity". (PROSE: The Giggle [+]Loading...["The Giggle (novelisation)"])
A good-natured though clumsy time-interventionist attempted to correct the meta-historical alteratiouns caused by the controversy on the proper way to refer to the Newton's concept, but they inadvertently caused Newton's name to become known as "Isaac Mewton". For a brief "interregnum", the term was also changed to gevity, an action seemingly creditable to either Epsilon the Watcher or one of his followers. (PROSE: Love & War [+]Loading...{"page":"405","name":"L&W","1":"Love & War (short story)"})
Examples
Gravity pockets were known to cause slight turbulence and tremors. (TV: The End of the World [+]Loading...["The End of the World (TV story)"])
According to the Fifth Doctor, the gravity of a celestial body was dependent on its mass, not necessarily how big it was. Peri Brown added, "And how fast [it was] spinning and what the core [was] made of." (AUDIO: Red Dawn [+]Loading...["Red Dawn (audio story)"])
Gravity was measured in gees. (COMIC: Terrorformer [+]Loading...["Terrorformer (comic story)"])
4.6 billion years BC, rocks were pulled towards a Racnoss webstar, creating the Earth. (TV: The Runaway Bride [+]Loading...["The Runaway Bride (TV story)"])
The Daleks planned to counteract gravity and make the Moon leave Earth's orbit on 31 January 2025, making the planet's axis shift wildly, causing natural disasters and severe climate changes. (AUDIO: Energy of the Daleks [+]Loading...["Energy of the Daleks (audio story)"])
In the year 100,000,000,000,000 when all the stars had burned out, planets were found through a gravitational field navigational system. (TV: Utopia [+]Loading...["Utopia (TV story)"])
During a crisis in midflight, the Tenth Doctor claimed his TARDIS would lock onto the nearest place of gravity and land there. (TV: Voyage of the Damned [+]Loading...["Voyage of the Damned (TV story)"])
When the creature within the Moon began to hatch and leave its egg, namely the Moon, the Moon began to gain weight, therefore leading the Moon's gravitational pull to increase in strength. (TV: Kill the Moon [+]Loading...["Kill the Moon (TV story)"])
Many celestial bodies had gravity that was significantly lower than that of Earth's. On one asteroid, the First Doctor, John and Gillian were able to jump high in the air. (COMIC: The Therovian Quest [+]Loading...["The Therovian Quest (comic story)"]) Later, on the Moon, they reminded two astronauts who had fallen down a crevasse that because of the low gravity they could escape by jumping. (COMIC: Moon Landing [+]Loading...["Moon Landing (comic story)"]) On another visit to the Moon, the Second Doctor, Ben, Polly and Jamie amused themselves by jumping around in the low gravity until Jamie accidentally injured himself. (TV: The Moonbase [+]Loading...["The Moonbase (TV story)"]) According to the Fifth Doctor, Mars had gravity which was "about a third" of the sorts of planets the human, Peri Brown, was used to. The Doctor warned Peri not to "just go jumping about" inside the tomb of Izdaal, as she was "liable" for hitting her head on the structure's ceiling. (AUDIO: Red Dawn [+]Loading...["Red Dawn (audio story)"])
Manipulating gravity
The Gravitron was installed in the moonbase in the year 2050. By using it to alter the Earth's tides, people were able to control the Earth's weather. In 2070, the Cybermen attempted to take over the Gravitron as part of their invasion of Earth. (TV: The Moonbase [+]Loading...["The Moonbase (TV story)"])
The Doctor's TARDIS generated its own gravitational field, normalising the gravity in a small region surrounding the capsule. (PROSE: Twilight of the Gods [+]Loading...["Twilight of the Gods (MA novel)"])
When a Morestran probe ship tried to leave Zeta Minor with anti-matter minerals onboard, it found that the gravity pull of the planet increased. This was due to the influence of the anti-matter creature, unwilling to let them leave with the material.
After the Fourth Doctor fulfilled his promise to return the anti-matter, the ship was able to leave Zeta Minor. (TV: Planet of Evil [+]Loading...["Planet of Evil (TV story)"])
The Tractators could control gravity with their minds. This power could be amplified by tunnel systems built in a precise way. On Frontios, the Tractators used an excavation machine to create a series of tunnels with which to create a gravity motor. (TV: Frontios [+]Loading...["Frontios (TV story)"])
The Byzantium had artificial gravity. On Alfava Metraxis in the 51st century, the Eleventh Doctor shot a gravity globe floating above him and ordered his companions to jump. (TV: The Time of Angels [+]Loading...["The Time of Angels (TV story)"]) This caused them to land on the Byzantium above them. The failure of this gravity caused the Weeping Angels pursuing the Doctor, Amy Pond and River Song to fall into a crack in the universe. (TV: Flesh and Stone [+]Loading...["Flesh and Stone (TV story)"])
Professor Alice Dubrovnik worked on the graviton inverter, which was used on the Pollyanna on its mission to circumnavigate the Sun. It could flip gravitational force and turn it back on itself. Without it, the Pollyanna would have been "squished" by the Sun's gravitational force. (COMIC: The Eye of Torment [+]Loading...["The Eye of Torment (comic story)"])
The Celestial Toymaker could control the gravity within the Toyroom; he used this ability to his advantage when Gaylord Lefevre tried to shoot him with a revolver, making the bullet merely fall to the table between them. (COMIC: The Greatest Gamble [+]Loading...{"page":"42","1":"The Greatest Gamble (comic story)"})
The Fifteenth Doctor possessed a pair of gloves that could reduce or increase the mass of a person, taking into account "mavity" among other factors. (TV: The Church on Ruby Road [+]Loading...["The Church on Ruby Road (TV story)"])
Behind the scenes
- In the real world, Isaac Newton did not coin the word "gravity". The etymology of the word is derived from the Latin gravitas, meaning "weight". Newton simply discovered the effects of what eventually became known as "gravity".
- Despite "mavity" being translated as "表面重力" on Baby Station Beta, the mavity joke did not translate. "表面重力" has a literal translation of "surface gravity".
