Time field The time field was a body of time energy that spilled from cracks in the fabric of time and space . The cracks were created by the Silence when they blew up the Doctor ' s TARDIS on 26 June 2010 , as a means of preventing the Doctor from reaching Trenzalore and answering the Time Lord s ' message which was sent through the very same cracks the Silence created when they blew up the TARDIS . ( TV : " The Time of the Doctor " ) Cracks . The cracks were described by the Eleventh Doctor as " two parts of space and time that should never have touched , pressed together " . They were present in the very fabric of spacetime — a crack that appeared to be part of a wall would still be there if the wall were removed . ( TV : " The Eleventh Hour " ) They were also described as " cracks in the skin of the universe " ( TV : " The Pandorica Opens " ) and a " split in the skin of reality " . ( TV : " The Time of the Doctor " ) According to Rosanna Calvierri , the cracks ranged in size from tiny to " as big as the sky " , and some connected to other worlds , while others led only to " silence , and the end of all things " . ( TV : " The Vampires of Venice " ) Some cracks acted like wormholes and could be opened to allow a passage between the places on either side . Rosanna Calvierri and her family travelled through a crack of this kind , ( TV : " The Vampires of Venice " ) as did Prisoner Zero . ( TV : " The Eleventh Hour " ) A sonic screwdriver could widen a crack , and if a crack was open wide enough , the forces would invert , and the crack would snap itself shut . ( TV : " The Eleventh Hour " ) Other cracks released pure time energy able to wipe individuals from time itself and remove events from history . Time travellers such as the Doctor would still remember them , at least so long as the removed event or person did not relate to the time traveller ' s direct past . ( TV : " Flesh and Stone " , " Cold Blood " ) Also , when the time energy erased people and events , the consequences would still remain : the " Byzantium " remained crashed when the Weeping Angel s who had caused it were erased ; ( TV : " Flesh and Stone " ) Amelia Pond still existed when her parents were erased from history , ( TV : " The Big Bang " ) as did River Song when her father met the same fate . ( TV : " Cold Blood " , " The Pandorica Opens " / " The Big Bang " ) This time energy was visible as a glow of bright white light , which sometimes extended tendrils from the crack towards nearby people and objects to consume them . ( TV : " Cold Blood " , " Flesh and Stone " ) The Doctor guessed that the time energy from these kind of cracks had erased events such as the CyberKing walking over London in the Victorian era , and the 2009 Dalek invasion of Earth , the latter being one of Earth ' s most publicly visible invasions . ( TV : " Flesh and Stone " ) Regardless of the size and what was on the other side , all cracks appeared to be of the same shape and orientation . The Doctor stated that the only way to close such a crack was for it to consume a complicated space - time event , such as himself or a large group of Weeping Angels ; all of them together were equivalent to him . River Song volunteered to let herself be consumed , but the Doctor — potentially from a position of ignorance — sneered at the idea and said that she wasn ' t even as complicated as one Angel . ( TV : " Flesh and Stone " ) The Doctor later proved that being a complicated space - time event could allow temporary immunity to the erasing effects of the time field ; he used this to his advantage to pull a piece of the destroyed TARDIS out of a crack . ( TV : " Cold Blood " ) History . Origin . The cracks in time originated in the destruction of the Doctor ' s TARDIS when it came under the control of the Silence ( TV : " The Time of the Doctor " ) which made it materialise outside Amy Pond ' s house on 26 June 2010 . River Song tried to prevent the explosion , but completely lost control of the TARDIS . ( TV : " The Pandorica Opens " ) It exploded , cracking points in time and space , some of which the Eleventh Doctor had been to . This resulted in the majority of the universe never existing , but the TARDIS preserved Earth by putting itself in a time loop at the moment of its death . The heat from the perpetual explosion heated the alternate Earth in place of the sun . ( TV : " The Big Bang " ) Tasha Lem later revealed that a rogue faction of the Church of Silence was behind the attempted destruction of the TARDIS — in an effort to stop the Doctor from bringing the Time Lords and Gallifrey back ( thus potentially restarting the Last Great Time War ) . This action resulted in a " Destiny Trap " by which the renegade Silence faction ended up creating the very cracks through which the Time Lords could return . ( TV : " The Time of the Doctor " ) In short , their efforts were pointless . Closing . Having determined that the Pandorica — designed as the perfect prison — still contained some atoms of the original universe that existed prior to the TARDIS exploding , the Doctor flew it into the heart of the TARDIS explosion . Using the remaining atoms of the original universe inside the Pandorica and the restoration field , he repaired the damage caused by the cracks . The universe and the timeline were reset , all of the cracks began to close and the versions of Amy , Rory , and River that were relevant to the old timeline were restored to their proper places in time . To fully close the cracks , the Doctor allowed himself be absorbed by one and erased from existence . Using the ability given to her by the crack in her room , Amy ' s remembrance of her parents and Rory undid their erasure in the rebooted universe . The Doctor , however , remained erased until Amy remembered him and their adventures and brought him and the TARDIS back . Despite everything being repaired , the Doctor remained clueless as to what was responsible for the destruction of the TARDIS in the first place . ( TV : " The Big Bang " ) Notable cracks . Around Easter of 1996 , a crack in Amy Pond ' s bedroom wall connected it to an Atraxi prison . This crack also erased Amy ' s parents from existence , and Prisoner Zero was able to escape through it to Earth from the Atraxi prison . The Eleventh Doctor closed this crack by widening it with his sonic screwdriver . ( TV : " The Eleventh Hour " , " The Big Bang " ) Cracks also appeared on the side of Starship UK in the 33rd century ( TV : " The Beast Below " ) and in the Cabinet War Rooms in 1941 . ( TV : " Victory of the Daleks " ) Another crack opened to a vast size aboard the spaceship " Byzantium " in the 51st century . It erased Crispin , Marco , Pedro , Phillip and many Weeping Angels from existence , then closed . The Weeping Angels had feared it and attempted to escape , only to be dropped into it after they had absorbed all of the " Byzantium " s energy , disabling the ship ' s artificial gravity . The Angels , combined , were a sufficiently complex space - time event to seal the crack for a while . ( TV : " Flesh and Stone " ) According to Rosanna Calvierri , she and the other Saturnynian s fled Saturnyne because of the " silence " they saw through some of the cracks . They fled through one of the cracks to " an ocean like ours " on Earth , after which the crack closed behind them . Just before the Doctor left Venice , the Doctor heard an abrupt silence ; the previously busy market had suddenly become empty . ( TV : " The Vampires of Venice " ) There was a crack in the Silurian city beneath the Earth in 2020 . The Doctor , Amy and Rory found it while leaving the base . Examining it , the Doctor reached inside the crack for " shrapnel " from the original explosion , and retrieved a burnt piece of the TARDIS . Before leaving , Rory was fatally shot by Restac , and his corpse came in contact with the light from the crack . Despite Amy ' s protests , the Doctor left Rory behind . The crack subsequently absorbed Rory and erased him from existence . ( TV : " Cold Blood " ) The Doctor still remembered him and mentioned him later , ( TV : " Vincent and the Doctor " ) and the engagement ring which he had bought Amy still existed in the TARDIS . Amy lost all recollection of Rory due to the crack directly affecting her past . ( TV : " Cold Blood " ) There was a crack in Craig Owens ' flat in 2010 in the kitchen wall , next to the fridge . Shortly after the Doctor left the flat , the Time Field energy began to emit from the crack and it began to expand . ( TV : " The Lodger " ) Craig and his girlfriend Sophie were later revealed to still exist . ( TV : " Closing Time " ) Another crack appeared in the TARDIS itself whilst it was parked next to Amy ' s house on 26 June 2010 . The TARDIS monitor read the time and place , and the glass cracked into the shape of the cracks . This was followed by a sinister voice rasping , " Silence will fall " . ( TV : " The Pandorica Opens " ) A crack appeared on one of the walls in the temple of Artemis in 1929 . ( AUDIO : " The Hounds of Artemis " ) Some time in the 41st century , a crack appeared on a tank that held a Dalek Mutant . ( COMIC : " The Only Good Dalek " ) On the Minotaur ' s prison ship , the ship generated a series of rooms , one for each person who got transported inside , containing their worst fear . While he was on board the ship , the Doctor discovered a room of his own , ( TV : " The God Complex " ) which contained the illusion of a crack in time . He intuitively dreaded that his business with the cracks in time was not over yet , since they had weakened the integrity of the entire universe and left " scar tissue " . His fear was justified and later confirmed . ( TV : " The Time of the Doctor " ) A residual crack on the planet Trenzalore was used by the Time Lord s to reach out to the universe from where they were trapped in a pocket dimension in an attempt to return . The Doctor spent hundreds of years defending the planet and crack as he refused to restore the Time Lords as it would cause the Last Great Time War to restart — but also refused to abandon the people of the town of Christmas to the armies of his enemies surrounding the planet . Eventually Clara Oswald used the crack to implore the Time Lords to save the Doctor who was dying of extreme old age due to having no more regeneration s . They were able to move the crack and use it to grant the Doctor a new cycle of regeneration before closing it , changing the future of the Doctor and Trenzalore . ( TV : " The Time of the Doctor " ) Other time fields and cracks . The phrase " time field , " as well as " cracks in time , " was used in relation to a number of temporal phenomenon that had different properties in different situations . The Third Doctor ' s time sensor detected disturbances in the time field , serving as a means of locating the Master ' s TARDIS . ( TV : " The Time Monster " ) The Sixth Doctor stated his TARDIS possessed a temporal field , and even called a residual TARDIS trace as a resonating time field ; ( AUDIO : " The Four Doctors " ) he used his TARDIS to create a competing time field to prevent a Dalek time machine from dematerialising , which constituted the TARDIS and Dalek ship trying to materialise at the same co - ordinates in the Time Vortex . ( AUDIO : " Patient Zero " ) The Doctor was sensitive to disturbances in time - fields , ( COMIC : " Ophidius " ) feeling a tickling at the top of his spine , like someone walking over his grave . Ace felt she could detect temporal disturbances because she had crossed the time field so much . ( PROSE : " Set Piece " ) Axos attempted to penetrate the time field and gain time travel . ( TV : " The Claws of Axos " ) The temporal manipulation achieved by Whitaker involved the use of a time field for the reversal of time . ( TV : " Invasion of the Dinosaurs " ) Romana I mentioned a time field while figuring out how to disable Zanak . ( TV : " The Pirate Planet " ) Folly ' s prison had a time field that made would - be escapees experience time longer : one minute outside the field was a week within the field . Elliptical warp drive s would spasm within the field . ( AUDIO : " Doing Time " ) Sacrificing his life , Jamie McCrimmon destroyed a worldshaper , creating a time field that fast - evolved Marinus into Mondas with aeons passing in minutes across the planet . ( COMIC : " The World Shapers " ) Disruptions in Earth ' s temporal field threw off a series of parallel Earths , also helped by an attempt to mask the planet with a time - field . ( COMIC : " 4 - Dimensional Vistas " ) Monan was caught in a rupture of temporal radiation and split into multiple variations all occupying the same co - ordinates . The most advanced of the various Monan civilisations was able to control the shifting time fields and conquer / rehabilitate their ancestors . ( AUDIO : " Square One " ) Jodafra believed the Horde had manipulated the temporal fields around Oblivion , erasing it from the memory of the universe . ( COMIC : " Oblivion " ) The Library on Kar - Charrat was protected by a time barrier projected by a time field generator ; ( AUDIO : " The Genocide Machine " ) the perimeter of a time loop was interchangeably referred to as a time field , time threshold , and time barrier . ( AUDIO : " The Feast of Axos " ) The Garvond hoped to feed on and ravage the " field of times . " ( PROSE : " The Dimension Riders " ) The skull of Vilus Krull existed in a para - chronic time field , meaning it existed partially outside of the continuum . ( AUDIO : " The Dark Flame " ) The Windigo , described as a " Time Manipulator , " was able to paralyse time - fields with its scream , effectively freezing people between seconds . ( COMIC : " Bad Blood " ) The time fields of Skaro were out of alignment when the planet was put into a time lock , causing various time jump s between the different times . ( AUDIO : " The Lights of Skaro " ) The time field was among the various defences employed by the Time Lord s to protect Gallifrey . Bennus noted that none of Gallifrey ' s defences , including the time field , would be able to withstand the impact of the Thousand Worlds which the Dalek s planned to forcibly crash into Gallifrey at fifty times the speed of light . ( AUDIO : " The Heart of the Battle " ) The Time Lords had earlier used time - fields around Skaro to control the timeline during the Fourth Doctor ' s interference in the creation of the Daleks . ( TV : " Genesis of the Daleks " , PROSE : " A Device of Death " ) Charley Pollard described a time fissure as a crack in time , ( AUDIO : " The Time of the Daleks " ) with the Tenth Doctor ' s TARDIS falling through a " crack in time " which led to Pete ' s World . ( TV : " Rise of the Cybermen " ) Skak ' s attempts to release Ephnol from his temporal imprisonment caused a crack in time . The crack caused the temporal displacement of both the house of John O ' Brian in 2009 and a Victorian house from 1884 , swapping them . The Bannerman Road gang helped Deathy to close it before it spread all over the world . ( AUDIO : " The Ghost House " )