For the time rift located in Cardiff specifically, see separate article.

Time rifts, also known as temporal rifts, were weaknesses in space and time through which people or objects could pass from one location in spacetime to another.

Effects

Individuals (TV: Image of the Fendahl, The Unquiet Dead) or even whole species, such as the Owse (PROSE: The Quantum Archangel) developed a degree of time sensitivity or other psychic powers from developing or growing up near a time rift.

On some occasions, the leakage from a time rift would cause things to either age or de-age, sometimes both at the same time. On other occasions, it would simply freeze time. (PROSE: ...And Eternity in an Hour)

Certain rifts could transport living or non-living matter through space and time from one end to another. (TV: Adrift)

Interactions with technology

Technology, such as the Torchwood Institute's Rift Manipulator, could, to a limited degree, control time rifts but inexactly. (WEB: Torchwood website, TV: Captain Jack Harkness, End of Days, COMIC: Rift War!)

The Doctor's TARDIS could use time rifts to power up. (TV: Boom Town)

Known locations of temporal rifts

• Cardiff possessed one major time rift. (TV: The Unquiet Dead, Boom Town, Everything Changes et al)
• A small rift was located in Mexico, where John Hart collected alien artefacts. (COMIC: Shrouded)
• One time rift was located in a region of space near the planet Kaesov. (PROSE: The Quantum Archangel)
• The Daleks once found a time rift, one end of which was attached to time experiments being performed in New Britain in the mid-21st century. (AUDIO: The Time of the Daleks)
• The eruption of the Vesuvius in 79 AD briefly created a time rift, echoing back in time and giving some inhabitants of the city of Pompeii precognitive powers. This rift was created because of the immense power of Vesuvius' eruption, but it opened for only a second and presumably never reopened. (TV: The Fires of Pompeii)
• The Medusa Cascade once had a time rift, which was healed at some point by the Doctor. (TV: Last of the Time Lords, The Stolen Earth) The Eighth Doctor intended to use the Great Key to seal this rift near the end of the Last Great Time War. (COMIC: The Forgotten)
• A mobile time rift travelled through Mutter's Spiral, likely from an accident on Heracletus. (PROSE: Zeitgeist) The Third Doctor was eventually able to stop it on Alrakis. (PROSE: ...And Eternity in an Hour)
• Washington, D.C. was once about to disappear up a time rift, until stopped by the Seventh Doctor. (PROSE: Vampire Science)
• The Arkheon Threshold was a time rift in the core of the planet Arkheon. (PROSE: Prisoner of the Daleks)
• A time rift called the Dreadful Flap opened above Darlington in 1965. (PROSE: The Dreadful Flap)
• A time rift opened in the TARDIS itself when it was caught in a salvage ship's magnetic hobble-field. This caused the near past and the near future to start leaking inside the TARDIS. The Eleventh Doctor was able to use the rift to change things by traveling back in time to the moment the TARDIS was caught by the salvage ship and instruct his past counterpart on how to break free. (TV: Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS)

See also

• Time fissure