Cardiff Rift
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Cardiff Rift is a fictional wormhole in the science fiction television series Doctor Who and Torchwood, one end of which is located in Cardiff Bay, Wales. The other end is apparently floating freely through spacetime, and matter and radiation can pass through the Rift, allowing extraterrestrial and extratemporal artifacts, and occasionally lifeforms, to "wash up" in Cardiff.[1] It is described as "Unpredictable and elusive, it’s a gateway for alien creatures, alien weapons, all manner of alien technology and time anomalies to enter our world" and the "flotsam and jetsam of the universe since the dawn of time."[2]
The Rift has been featured in both Doctor Who and Torchwood, the latter of which is based around a branch of the Torchwood Institute created to monitor activity around the Rift. The Rift acts as a plot generator, providing a wide and potentially unlimited array of possible plots for the series, much like the Hellmouth in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Contents |
[edit] Appearances in the Doctor Who universe
[edit] Doctor Who
The Rift first appeared in the Doctor Who episode The Unquiet Dead. The episode takes place in 1869, when the Gelth, gaseous humanoid organisms, pass through the Rift into a funeral parlour, where they are able to 'possess' the corpses. It is established that the Rift releases radiation, prolonged exposure to which can grant people psychic powers, including Gwyneth, a servant in the parlour. The Doctor speaks with the Gelth via Gwyneth in a séance, where they claim to be few in number following the Time War, and ask for the Rift to be widened, allowing the remaining Gelth to live in the corpses. However, after the Doctor discovers that the Gelth are in fact far more populous than first claimed, Gwyneth kills herself by gas explosion, which seals the Rift and apparently kills the Gelth.
The episode Boom Town revisited the Rift. Set in modern day Cardiff, the Rift said to run through Roald Dahl Plass, and emits a form of radiation which the TARDIS can use as a form of fuel. However, the Slitheen,Margaret Blaine, having become elected to Mayor of Cardiff, planed to build a nuclear power station on the Rift, which would then cause a nuclear meltdown. The resulting energy shockwave would destroy the planet, but allow Blaine to escape on a tribophysical waveform macro-kinetic extrapolator, described as a "pandimensional surfboard". The Doctor, Rose and Jack Harkness manage to foil her plan, but the extrapolator latches onto the TARDIS and causes the Rift to split open, which causes earth tremors across Roald Dahl Plass. The Rift is sealed by the TARDIS.
[edit] Torchwood
The Rift is a central component of Torchwood, with almost every episode being based around material or lifeforms which have passed through the Rift. The Torchwood Institute website suggests that Torchwood Three was formed in Cardiff as soon as the Torchwood Institute became aware of the Rift's presence.[1][3] Torchwood Three has also been described as merely a "monitoring station" for the rift.[4] The website lists among the items found in the Rift "3 new Weevil clusters... [7] items of unknown provenance... 2 weapons... 2 EBEs".[3] However, the Rift appears to be one-way; craft sent through the Rift have been unable to either return or to send back a signal.[1]
In Out of Time, the Rift facilitates the misplacement of people on board a plane from 1953 to the show's present day. In the episode's conclusion, a temporal immigrant, feeling it will take her home or somewhere new, ventures back into the sky, with her ultimate fate left unclear.
In Captain Jack Harkness, the Rift is responsible for sending Jack and Tosh back to 1941. In the present day, Owen uses a "Rift machine" designed by Toshiko to open the rift and bring them back (this episode shows the Rift's event horizon properly for this first time).
The consequences of Owen's actions resonate in the next episode, the first series finale End of Days. By opening the Rift, he has allowed more "flotsam and jetsam" to come through, including a Roman soldier, a group of mediaeval plague sufferers, and even a large UFO. As Jack puts it, opening the Rift has caused the cracks in time to widen on a global scale. The time travelling Bilis Manger shows Gwen a vision of the death of her boyfriend Rhys, convincing her to open the Rift even wider to reverse the damage that has already been done. When this happens, the entity known as Abaddon rises from "beneath the Rift". Jack sacrifices himself to destroy Abaddon, and the Rift immediately closes. The team (including Jack, who has come back from the dead again thanks to his past experiences) still retains the memory of what happened, but some of the actual events have been reverted (such as Rhys returning to life), and Owen spearheading a minor clean-up mission.[5]
[edit] Other media
In the Torchwood novel Border Princes by Dan Abnett, it is revealed that several other planets border permanent points where the Rift has anchored. One such planet has a similar organization to Torchwood entitled The First Senior, whose title for the Rift translates as The Stumble, The Misstep or The Border. When The First Senior heard of Torchwood, they inserted a Principal, a spy who could observe how they handle the Rift, purely for research into how other "Rift guardians" operate. Like all Doctor Who and Torchwood spin-off media, the canonicity in relation to the television series is unclear.
[edit] Attributes and effects
The Rift has facilitated an underground Weevil infestation and allows for alien technology to wash up in Cardiff, which are sometimes acquired by Torchwood Three. Creatures have been known to pass presumably through time because of the Rift, including a pterodactyl. It can be used as a source of power for the TARDIS, perhaps replacing the Eye of Harmony. The landing of the TARDIS near the fountain in Roald Dahl Plass resulted in the ship's "perception properties" being welded to the Rift, creating a "perception filter" that prevents anyone outside that spot from noticing anything inside. In 19th century Cardiff, Gwyneth developed telepathic powers as a result of life-long exposure to the Rift. Out of Time suggests that the Rift can act as an unpredictable window through time in certain weather conditions.
On April 1913, "preshocks" of the Rift's opening in End of Days manifested as ground tremors.[6] Before the dawn of time, as with the Beast, Biblical demon Abaddon had been sealed away in Earth, using the Rift as a means for his imprisonment. This suggests that it happened "before the universe's creation" as with the Beast, and that the Beast's captors, the "Disciples of Light" may have had a hand in the formation of the Rift as they did with the gravity field in The Impossible Planet. The Rift is not dependent on Abaddon, however, in fact Jack warns that it will be more violent then ever following his release.
[edit] Similar anomalies
It should be noted that in Boom Town, the Ninth Doctor refers to the Rift in the plural, indicating that there are others elsewhere, one of which is possibly located in Fetch Borough in the West Country of England, as seen in Image of the Fendahl though in that serial the Fourth Doctor refers to the phenomenon as a "time fissure".
A "scar in time and space" in San Francisco featured in the 1999 Eighth Doctor novel Unnatural History by Jonathan Blum and Kate Orman. It was also created by the TARDIS malfunctioning (this time as seen at the end of the eighth Doctor's only television adventure) and also had the consequence of creating a hole in time which was a magnet to strange phenomena, including timeslips and creatures which appeared magical.
[edit] References
- ^ a b c Torchwood Institute: The Rift, URL accessed 2006-10-30
- ^ Torchwood Institute: What is the Rift? URL accessed 2006-10-31
- ^ a b Torchwood Institute: Rift report, URL accessed 2006-10-30
- ^ Torchwood Institute: Ianto Online Counselling session, URL accessed 2006-11-08
- ^ Torchwood Institute: Clean-up Operation
- ^ Rift Memo, 1913
