Time travel Time travel was , as the name suggested , the process of travelling through time , in any direction . In the 26th century , individuals who time travelled were sometimes known as persons of meta - temporal displacement . ( PROSE : " The Mary - Sue Extrusion " ) The Eleventh Doctor compared time travel to " a tear in the fabric of reality . " ( TV : " The Name of the Doctor " ) Methods . Technological or biotechnological methods . By space - time vessel . The Time Lord s were able to achieve time travel after Omega converted a star into a black hole . ( TV : " The Three Doctors " ) They used the Eye of Harmony thereafter . ( TV : " The Deadly Assassin " , " Doctor Who " , " Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS " ) By his ninth and tenth incarnations , the Doctor also used the Cardiff rift to " soak up " its radiation for his TARDIS to use . ( TV : " Boom Town " ) The Third Zone scientists Kartz and Reimer built a primitive time machine modelled on Time Lord technology . It almost worked , but ultimately only made one successful trip before it was destroyed . ( TV : " The Two Doctors " ) On Earth , the first pioneer in the field was Orson Pink in the early 22nd century , whose first trip accidentally brought him to the end of the universe . ( TV : " Listen " ) Hila Tacorien , great - great - great - great - great - granddaughter of a couple from the 20th century , was a human pioneer explorer of time , who accidentally got lost in a pocket dimension . ( TV : " Hide " ) Magnus Greel used an experimental time cabinet based on 51st century human technology . ( TV : " The Talons of Weng - Chiang " ) The Imperial Dalek s under Davros , who already had limited time travel technology , expected to obtain equivalent time travel to the Time Lords by stealing the Hand of Omega and replicating their process on Skaro ' s sun . ( TV : " Remembrance of the Daleks " ) Osmic projection was a means of time travel used by the Sontaran s . The Third Doctor referred to it as rather limited in its temporal range when used by the Sontaran scout . ( TV : " The Time Warrior " ) Time Scoop technology enabled the user to transport other people and objects remotely . Without any ally on the other end , it could leave the user stranded in another time period with no way to return . ( TV : " Carnival of Monsters " ) Time corridor technology was used by the Dalek s , ( TV : " The Evil of the Daleks " , " Resurrection of the Daleks " , " Remembrance of the Daleks " , " Victory of the Daleks " ) Osiran s , ( TV : " Pyramids of Mars " ) the Borad ( TV : " Timelash " ) and the Ra ' ra ' vis . ( COMIC : " Time Fraud " ) A kind of time viewer , called a quantum imager , enabled one to observe and ( to a limited degree ) communicate with people in the past . ( PROSE : " The Least Important Man " ) Pushing energy into a warp drive could create a time window . ( TV : " The Girl in the Fireplace " ) A warp drive accident fractured one individual , Scaroth , into " fragments " scattered through various eras of time and linked by telepathy . ( TV : " City of Death " ) Another warp drive accident had the effect of propelling the vehicle in question roughly sixty - five million years back in time . ( TV : " Earthshock " ) A rift manipulator could be used in conjunction with the temporal rift itself . ( TV : " Captain Jack Harkness " , " End of Days " ) A vortex manipulator was a crude time travel device . It could miss by hundreds of years and broke down easily . It was referred to by the Tenth Doctor as more of a " space hopper " compared to the TARDIS . ( TV : " Utopia " ) One was later used by River Song and the Eleventh Doctor after the TARDIS exploded in June 2010 . ( TV : " The Pandorica Opens " / " The Big Bang " ) Emergency temporal shift was a form of time travel used by the Cult of Skaro to escape being sucked into the Void , and was later used by Dalek Caan to escape from 1930s New York City . ( TV : " Doomsday " , " Evolution of the Daleks " ) Mirrors . Time travel by use of mirror s was based on the principle that mirrors reflect light and time travel is moving faster than light . If static electricity was passed through the mirrors , more than images could be reflected and whole objects could be sent back in time . As well , certain trace elements in the machine , like taranium , were also needed . ( PROSE : " The Wheel of Ice " ) Edward Waterfield and Theodore Maxtible attracted the attention of the Dalek s while experimenting with static electricity and mirror s . ( TV : " The Evil of the Daleks " ) The mysterious Gateway situated in the void between N - Space and E - Space provided access to different times and realities , sometimes through mirrors . ( TV : " Warriors ' Gate " ) General Mariah Learman and Professor Osric succeeded briefly in making a functioning time machine with over 100 clock s and 1000 mirrors in her prime ministerial house . The act of measuring time changed time and therefore time could be manipulated . The mirrors were coated in orthopositronium , a material where the positron and the electron orbited each other in the same direction . It briefly worked when the Daleks ' ship ran aground in the Time Vortex and they homed in on it and made it work . It needed chronon s to work , which were sourced when the Eighth Doctor ' s companion , Charley , held the master clock . It took her and Viola Learman to Shakespeare ' s time . This ceased to function when Charley entered the Doctor ' s TARDIS . ( AUDIO : " The Time of the Daleks " ) A time machine was created by UNIT with the help of Rose Tyler and the dying TARDIS to send Donna Noble back from a universe the time beetle created . ( TV : " Turn Left " ) The Arkive tried to create a mirror - based time machine , but didn ' t have the necessary parts or skills to make it ( PROSE : " The Wheel of Ice " ) By psychic power or other natural ability . The Eight Legs could teleport as easily through time as through space . K ' anpo Rimpoche , a highly advanced Time Lord with great mental discipline , could do the same . ( TV : " Planet of the Spiders " ) The enigmatic Bilis Manger could also also teleport at will through both time and space . This ability was only seen in the vicinity of the Cardiff Rift however . ( TV : " Captain Jack Harkness " , " End of Days " ) Transcendental being s had free movement through space and time . Fenric could transport other living beings via time storm s . The people displaced by the time storm often believed they had caused the time storm themselves . ( TV : " Dragonfire " , " Silver Nemesis " , " The Curse of Fenric " ) The Fairies could travel through time and space naturally . ( TV : " Small Worlds " ) The Weeping Angel s had the ability to send others back in time with a touch . ( TV : " Blink " ) The Trickster , prior to manifesting as a corporeal being , could traverse time and space with ease , though not at any given moment . ( TV : " Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane ? " , " The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith " ) The Androzani tree s travelled through the Time Vortex by using Madge Arwell as a host . ( TV : " The Doctor , the Widow and the Wardrobe " ) By space - time anomaly . The Tharil s " rode the time wind s " . ( TV : " Warriors ' Gate " ) A warp ellipse could possibly make time travel possible . ( TV : " Mawdryn Undead " ) Travel via time rift was possible . The Weevil s arrived on Earth via this method , ( TV : " Everything Changes " ) as did a human aeroplane , the " Sky Gypsy " . ( TV : " Out of Time " ) During rare " negative spikes " , the Rift also occasionally abducted random people in time and space from Earth , and disastrously attempted to correct itself . ( TV : " Adrift " ) Sarah Jane Smith acquired a Time Converter which allowed her to open and close time fissure s , but these usually only linked two particular places in time . ( TV : " The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith " ) Both the Great Intelligence and Clara Oswald time travelled by entering the Doctor ' s time stream from his tomb , both becoming splintered in time . Clara was retrieved by the Eleventh Doctor , while Madame Vastra presumed the Intelligence to have been killed . ( TV : " The Name of the Doctor " ) The Tenth Doctor , in order to defeat some surviving Cybermen from the Battle of Canary Wharf created a space - time portal to the Jurassic era by linking the Cybermen ' s teleport ation equipment to the TARDIS and then setting the portal to open at the last place in time the TARDIS departed from . This linked the two eras together and allowed a " Tyranosaurus Rex " to partially emerge in the present and destroy two Cybermen . The Doctor closed the portal when he pulled the main power cable and told Martha Jones that creating one was simple and was something he played with a lot while in school . ( PROSE : " Made of Steel " ) The mad scientist Professor Whitaker , who was fascinated with the idea of time travel , used Time eddys in order to transport Dinosaurs to modern London . This was done as a part of Operation Golden Age , which consisted of first using the dinosaurs to evacuate London and then rolling back time via the time eddys to colonize the Earth ' s past before mankind was born in order to replace mankind ' s history with a new , better civilization free of corruption and pollution . However , after the Third Doctor reversed the polarity of Whitaker ' s machine , the scientist and his accomplice Charles Grover were teleported through time , possibly to their " Golden Age " , as the Doctor believed . ( TV : " Invasion of the Dinosaurs " ) Blending in . The First Doctor normally hid his clothing with a large cloak , while he and his companions pilfered appropriate garmets . ( TV : " The Aztecs " , etc . ) However , from at least his third incarnation onwards , he forwent wearing the correct clothing himself . The Eleventh Doctor claimed to be a " temporal chameleon " able to blend into any point of time despite what he wears ; companion Rory Williams was annoyed that he and Amy would have to wear togas for visiting Athens when the Doctor didn ' t . ( COMIC : " The Chains of Olympus " )