Doctor Who Series 10: 7 Big Questions We're Asking After 'World Enough And Time'

4. What's The Science Behind The Black Hole And Time?

Doctor Who World Enough And Time Master Missy
BBC

For those who prefer science-fiction over fantasy the central conceit of World Enough and Time will have been a welcome tonic to the likes of the Moon-egg in Kill The Moon. There is a lovely piece of real science behind this week’s episode that would surely even please the science orientated former script-editor Christopher H Bidmead who once claimed that ‘the sonic screwdriver was magical-baggage we had to lose.”

Explaining the science of time dilation is the easy part. Because of its immense gravitational pull the closer an object is to a black hole the slower the passage of time. On a ship as vast as 400 miles long a 100 miles wide time could theoretically pass much faster from one end to the other. Even on Earth we are subject to a similar effect, though to a much lesser extent. Unless we spend most of the time upside down, our heads will age just a fraction faster than our feet.

It’s not quite so easy to explain why the Doctor is unable to at least partially circumvent the effects. The Doctor’s explanation about why the TARDIS cannot be used seems all too convenient to the plot ("this close to a black hole we'll never able to pilot her accurately" which didn't seem to have been a problem in Time Crash, The Satan Pit of The Family of Blood). But even outside the TARDIS, as a Time Lord we have seen the Doctor transcend the usual laws of time and space (Invasion of the Dinosaurs, Robot, The End of the World).

Contributor
Contributor

Paul Driscoll is a freelance writer and author across a range of subjects from Cult TV to religion and social policy. He is a passionate Doctor Who fan and January 2017 will see the publication of his first extended study of the series (based on Toby Whithouse's series six episode, The God Complex) in the critically acclaimed Black Archive range by Obverse Books. He is a regular writer for the fan site Doctor Who Worldwide and has contributed several essays to Watching Books' You and Who range. Recently he has branched out into fiction writing, with two short stories in the charity Doctor Who anthology Seasons of War (Chinbeard Books). Paul's work will also feature in the forthcoming Iris Wildthyme collection (A Clockwork Iris, Obverse Books) and Chinbeard Books' collection of drabbles, A Time Lord for Change.