Time Vortex (Doctor Who) - Appearances

Appearances

In the Virgin Missing Adventures novel The Well-Mannered War, the TARDIS accidentally wanders into the time spiral, which exists at the perimeter of the time vortex; its forces are strong enough to destroy even the TARDIS. The TARDIS is equipped with a device that forces materialization in the event it enters the spiral, but the Doctor stated that for this to happen, "there would have to be erosion in the systems circuitry on a massive scale". Like all spin-off media, the canonicity of the novel is open to interpretation, but the spiral is briefly mentioned in Episode One of The Sun Makers.

At the climax of the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip story The Flood (DWM #346-#353), the Eighth Doctor hurls himself into the vortex, partially merging with it and gaining tremendous power which he uses to destroy the Cybermen invading Earth. He is almost content to merge fully with the vortex until he is persuaded to return by his companion Destrii.

In the 2005 series episode "The Parting of the Ways", Rose Tyler inadvertently exposes herself to the energies of the vortex while attempting to activate the Ninth Doctor's TARDIS. The exposure gives her absolute power over time and space, allowing her to destroy the Daleks and resurrect fellow companion Jack Harkness (which explains Jack's immortality), but the energies overwhelm her and she collapses. The Doctor is able to save her life by absorbing the vortex energies at the cost of damaging his cells and forcing a regeneration.

In "Utopia" (2007), the Tenth Doctor says that if a Time Lord were to absorb the time vortex, he would become a "vengeful god". While the Ninth Doctor displayed no such tendencies when taking the power from Rose (although he expelled most of it back to its source), the Eighth did during The Flood before he emerged from the vortex.

"Doomsday" and "Invasion of the Bane" clarified that time travelers in the vortex, such as Rose Tyler and Sarah Jane Smith absorb background radiation called "artron energy" which some creatures such as Daleks can use as an alternative energy source. Other races such as the Bane can use other energy that is absorbed through travel in the time vortex to identify time travelers.

In "The Sound of Drums" the Doctor tells his companions that there was a portal on Gallifrey called the Untempered Schism, a gap in the fabric of reality where one could look directly into the vortex. Eight-year-old Gallifreyans were taken there as part of their initiation into the Time Lord Academy. "Some are inspired, some run away (as the Doctor says he did), and some (for example, according to the Doctor, the Master) go mad."

In The End of Time it is revealed that on the final day of the Last Great Time War the Time Lords used the Untempered Schism to send a signal back through time as part of a plan to escape their destruction. This signal, the sound of a Time Lord's heartbeats, was the constant four-beat drumming the Master heard throughout his life, driving him mad.

It is also revealed that the Time Lords were prepared to use a plan known as the Final Sanction to win the Time War, in which they would cause a rupture in time which would get worse until it ripped apart the Time Vortex and, by extension, all of creation. The Time Lords planned to survive this by ascending to another plane of existence but their plan is stopped by the Doctor who sends them back into the war, trapping them.

In "The Pandorica Opens" of Series 5 the redesigned vortex is seen in-episode for the first and so far only time. It is also the first time since the series was revived in 2005 that a different vortex has been used during an episode.

In "A Good Man Goes to War" of Series 6 it is revealed that the daughter of Amy Pond and Rory Williams shares genetic traits with Time Lord DNA due to exposure to the Time Vortex. This happened due to her being conceived within the TARDIS whilst the TARDIS was within the Vortex.