Anti-time

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Anti-time is a term used the fictional universes of Star Trek and Doctor Who.

[edit] Star Trek

Within this universe, anti-time is a temporal and spatial phenomenon. In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode All Good Things..., anti-time is first discussed by Data in the year 2370 and is mentioned as a fairly new theory. As described in that episode, the relationship between normal time and anti-time is analogous to that between matter and antimatter. When time and anti-time interact, the two annihilate each other. Because of the nature of anti-time, this disruption essentially runs "backwards" through time.

The time/anti-time interaction also causes disruptions in space. Anti-time has unusual effects on organic tissue, which essentially causes it to revert to an earlier stage. This can result in old scars healing themselves or fetal tissue breaking down.

The anti-time phenomenon in "All Good Things..." was caused by the convergence of three tachyon pulses from three different times at a single point, and it became larger as it continued backward through time, eventually disrupting space to such a degree that it prevented the evolution of life on Earth.

[edit] Doctor Who

Anti-time is mentioned in Big Finish Productions' Doctor Who audio dramas. The canonicity of the audio dramas with respect to the television series, like other Doctor Who spin-offs, is open to interpretation.

In the audio play Neverland Anti-time is an other-dimensional realm which has inhabitants sometimes referred to as "Neverpeople". Some, if not all, of these people are Time Lords who were thought to have been executed for treason by the Celestial Intervention Agency. The device used for the executions, the Oubliette of Eternity, was supposed to erase the Time Lords from history but instead transformed them into Neverpeople.

The culmination of these events was the attempted destruction of Gallifrey by the Neverpeople by using a casket of Anti-Time. However The Doctor materialising his TARDIS around the Time Station protected Gallifrey from the impending destruction by containing the force of the anti-time explosion within the TARDIS. These events then led into the audio play Zagreus.

Zagreus documents the effects of anti-time seepage into the normal universe as historical anachronisms cause the Web of Time to break down. Both the Eighth Doctor and the TARDIS are "infected" by anti-time and/or its inhabitants, who harbor ill will toward the normal universe.