Eye of Harmony
Encyclopedia
The Eye of Harmony is an artificial black hole
created by the Time Lords to provide energy for their home world of Gallifrey
and their time travel technology in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who
.
serial The Deadly Assassin
(1976), where it was revealed as the source of power that sustained Gallifrey
. According to the ancient records, the legendary Time Lord
figure Rassilon
captured and placed the Eye, a nucleus of a black hole
, beneath the Time Lord
's citadel on Gallifrey
(the Panopticon). Rassilon
placed the black hole
's nucleus in an eternally dynamic equation against the mass of Gallifrey
and so that as long as the Eye existed in this "balanced state", the power of the Time Lords would "neither flux nor wither". However, it remained there so long that it passed into legend. Until the Fourth Doctor
and the renegade Time Lord
known as the Master rediscovered it in The Deadly Assassin, the Time Lord
s had forgotten its location, some even believing it to be mythical or no longer in existence.
As seen in The Deadly Assassin, the Eye was linked to two other Gallifreyan artefacts, the Sash of Rassilon and the Great Key of Rassilon. The Sash was essential for the wearer to control and manipulate the Eye safely without being sucked into its gravity well and the Great Key was an ebonite rod that could be used to drain energy from the Eye. The Great Key was later renamed the Rod of Rassilon in The Invasion of Time
(1978) to distinguish it from the other Great Key, a component of the De-mat gun.
In The Deadly Assassin and the 1996 Doctor Who television movie
, the Master tried to use the Eye to steal himself a new set of regenerations
from the Eighth Doctor.
was a solar engineer who, in trying to provide an energy source for the Time Lords' time travel experiments, harnessed the power of a supernova
. However, this apparently killed Omega and created a black hole. Unknown to anybody for millennia, Omega was not dead, but merely trapped beyond the event horizon
of the black hole in an anti-matter universe.
The first connection between Omega and Rassilon was made by Alan Moore
in his 1980 Doctor Who Monthly
comic strip story Star Death (DWM #47). Although the canonicity of the non-televised media is open to interpretation, Star Death showed the proto-Time Lords trying to collapse the star Qqaba into a black hole and harness its "energy stream". Omega and Rassilon were both members of this project, and when sabotage sent Omega hurtling into the newly created black hole, he was presumed lost. Rassilon then took control of the project, and the power of the black hole. It was not made explicit, however, that this black hole was the same one that provided the Eye of Harmony. (Qqaba would also be mentioned in the 1998 novel The Infinity Doctors
by Lance Parkin
.)
This connection appeared next in the 1988 serial Remembrance of the Daleks
, where Omega's stellar manipulation device was dubbed the Hand of Omega
and became the object of a struggle between two competing factions of Dalek
s. Although the televised story made no mention of Rassilon, the 1991 novelisation of the serial (though again of unclear canonicity) by the story's writer Ben Aaronovitch
, drawing on elements of the so-called "Cartmel Masterplan
", made the connection between the two Time Lords explicit. The story of Omega's supernova becoming the black hole that provided Rassilon with the Eye of Harmony became part of the fan-accepted mythology
and was incorporated into the Virgin New Adventures
novels.
and, for the first time, was stated to be the TARDIS's primary power source, located in the centre of the TARDIS' cloister room. It was also shown that leaving the TARDIS's Eye open for too long would result in space/time distortion as the space around the Eye was exposed to the gravitational effects of the singularity.
However, having the Eye of Harmony on board the TARDIS contradicted the idea that the Eye itself was on Gallifrey. To reconcile this, fan speculation held that this was not the real Eye, but merely a name applied to a remote link to the actual Eye that powered the craft (possibly in the same way the Time Lords transmitted energy from Gallifrey to the TARDIS in The Three Doctors), or alternatively, the Eye had been somehow transferred to the TARDIS. The former conjecture became established fanon
, and was taken up in the spin-off media and was eventually confirmed by the official BBC website.
The Past Doctor Adventures
novel The Quantum Archangel
by Craig Hinton
offered another explanation by claiming that all TARDISes built after a certain point, including the Type 40 the Doctor uses, have a mathematically modelled duplicate of the Eye with all its attendant features, thus helping the TARDISes cope with the previously-discovered power problems inherent if they travel too far away from the original Eye.
The television movie also reveals a link between the Eye of Harmony on board the TARDIS and the Doctor's own eyes. The Master uses the Eye to see what the Doctor is seeing at the same moment. The symbiosis between a Timelord and his TARDIS has been hinted at before, such as in the sixth Doctor story "The Two Doctors" in which The Sontaran try to isolate the Doctor's symbiotic nuclei in an attempt to construct their own time machine.
revealed that Gallifrey and the Time Lords had been destroyed in a Time War
. It is unclear if this means that the Eye of Harmony was also destroyed. In the Episode "The End of Time" Gallifrey is shown to still exist, however trapped in a time lock. This suggests that the Eye should still exist.
In the episodes "Boom Town
" and "Utopia
", the TARDIS needed to "refuel" by absorbing energy from a "scar" left by a closed space/time rift
, implying that it is not powered entirely by the Eye at this time. The former episode also revealed that the TARDIS console concealed the "Heart of the TARDIS", a mysterious glowing energy source that the Doctor associated (in "The Parting of the Ways
") with the energies of the time vortex
.
The Tenth Doctor
makes an oblique reference to the Eye's creation in the episode "The Satan Pit
" when he says: "My people practically invented black holes. Well... in fact they did." The Master also mentions in Sound of Drums
that the rockets on Earth have "black hole manipulators", which suggests that the Time Lords have knowledge of the physics of black holes.
In the Doctor Who: The Adventure Games
episode City of the Daleks, it is revealed that a Time Lord artifact called the Eye of Time was lost when Gallifrey vanished during the Time War. The Eye then fell into the hands of the Daleks, who install it on Skaro
and use it to control all of time and space. The Doctor and Amy Pond are able to travel back to the moment when the Daleks activate the Eye and stop their plan, however, and the Eye vanishes once more. It is not clear if the Eye of Time is simply another name for the Eye of Harmony.
, lasting from approximately 1964–1974, during which key discoveries related to the power, energy, and possible time-related properties of black holes was undertaken. (See: Timeline of black hole physics
)
Black hole
A black hole is a region of spacetime from which nothing, not even light, can escape. The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass will deform spacetime to form a black hole. Around a black hole there is a mathematically defined surface called an event horizon that...
created by the Time Lords to provide energy for their home world of Gallifrey
Gallifrey
Gallifrey is a fictional planet in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who and is the homeworld of the Doctor and the Time Lords...
and their time travel technology in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
.
First appearances
The Eye was originally mentioned in the Fourth DoctorFourth Doctor
The Fourth Doctor is the fourth incarnation of the protagonist of the long-running BBC British television science-fiction series Doctor Who....
serial The Deadly Assassin
The Deadly Assassin
The Deadly Assassin is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from 30 October to 20 November 1976...
(1976), where it was revealed as the source of power that sustained Gallifrey
Gallifrey
Gallifrey is a fictional planet in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who and is the homeworld of the Doctor and the Time Lords...
. According to the ancient records, the legendary Time Lord
Time Lord
The Time Lords are an ancient extraterrestrial race and civilization of humanoids in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, of which the series' eponymous protagonist, the Doctor, is a member...
figure Rassilon
Rassilon
Rassilon is a fictional character in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. In the backstory of the programme, he was the founder of Time Lord society on the planet Gallifrey...
captured and placed the Eye, a nucleus of a black hole
Black hole
A black hole is a region of spacetime from which nothing, not even light, can escape. The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass will deform spacetime to form a black hole. Around a black hole there is a mathematically defined surface called an event horizon that...
, beneath the Time Lord
Time Lord
The Time Lords are an ancient extraterrestrial race and civilization of humanoids in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, of which the series' eponymous protagonist, the Doctor, is a member...
's citadel on Gallifrey
Gallifrey
Gallifrey is a fictional planet in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who and is the homeworld of the Doctor and the Time Lords...
(the Panopticon). Rassilon
Rassilon
Rassilon is a fictional character in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. In the backstory of the programme, he was the founder of Time Lord society on the planet Gallifrey...
placed the black hole
Black hole
A black hole is a region of spacetime from which nothing, not even light, can escape. The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass will deform spacetime to form a black hole. Around a black hole there is a mathematically defined surface called an event horizon that...
's nucleus in an eternally dynamic equation against the mass of Gallifrey
Gallifrey
Gallifrey is a fictional planet in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who and is the homeworld of the Doctor and the Time Lords...
and so that as long as the Eye existed in this "balanced state", the power of the Time Lords would "neither flux nor wither". However, it remained there so long that it passed into legend. Until the Fourth Doctor
Fourth Doctor
The Fourth Doctor is the fourth incarnation of the protagonist of the long-running BBC British television science-fiction series Doctor Who....
and the renegade Time Lord
Time Lord
The Time Lords are an ancient extraterrestrial race and civilization of humanoids in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, of which the series' eponymous protagonist, the Doctor, is a member...
known as the Master rediscovered it in The Deadly Assassin, the Time Lord
Time Lord
The Time Lords are an ancient extraterrestrial race and civilization of humanoids in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, of which the series' eponymous protagonist, the Doctor, is a member...
s had forgotten its location, some even believing it to be mythical or no longer in existence.
As seen in The Deadly Assassin, the Eye was linked to two other Gallifreyan artefacts, the Sash of Rassilon and the Great Key of Rassilon. The Sash was essential for the wearer to control and manipulate the Eye safely without being sucked into its gravity well and the Great Key was an ebonite rod that could be used to drain energy from the Eye. The Great Key was later renamed the Rod of Rassilon in The Invasion of Time
The Invasion of Time
The Invasion of Time is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in six weekly parts from 4 February to 11 March 1978...
(1978) to distinguish it from the other Great Key, a component of the De-mat gun.
In The Deadly Assassin and the 1996 Doctor Who television movie
Doctor Who (1996)
Doctor Who is a television movie based on the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. Developed as a co-production amongst Universal Television, BBC Television, BBC Worldwide, and the American network FOX, the 1996 television film premiered on 12 May 1996 on CITV in Edmonton,...
, the Master tried to use the Eye to steal himself a new set of regenerations
Regeneration (Doctor Who)
Regeneration, in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, is a biological ability exhibited by Time Lords, a race of fictional humanoids originating on the planet Gallifrey. This process allows a Time Lord who is old or mortally wounded to undergo a transformation into a new...
from the Eighth Doctor.
Omega and Rassilon
Prior to this, in the 1973 story The Three Doctors, another figure from Time Lord history was introduced. OmegaOmega (Doctor Who)
Omega is a fictional character from the long-running British science fiction television series, Doctor Who. In the context of the series, Omega is known as one of the founding fathers of the Time Lords of the planet Gallifrey, and is a revered figure in Time Lord history together with the equally...
was a solar engineer who, in trying to provide an energy source for the Time Lords' time travel experiments, harnessed the power of a supernova
Supernova
A supernova is a stellar explosion that is more energetic than a nova. It is pronounced with the plural supernovae or supernovas. Supernovae are extremely luminous and cause a burst of radiation that often briefly outshines an entire galaxy, before fading from view over several weeks or months...
. However, this apparently killed Omega and created a black hole. Unknown to anybody for millennia, Omega was not dead, but merely trapped beyond the event horizon
Event horizon
In general relativity, an event horizon is a boundary in spacetime beyond which events cannot affect an outside observer. In layman's terms it is defined as "the point of no return" i.e. the point at which the gravitational pull becomes so great as to make escape impossible. The most common case...
of the black hole in an anti-matter universe.
The first connection between Omega and Rassilon was made by Alan Moore
Alan Moore
Alan Oswald Moore is an English writer primarily known for his work in comic books, a medium where he has produced a number of critically acclaimed and popular series, including Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and From Hell...
in his 1980 Doctor Who Monthly
Doctor Who Magazine
Doctor Who Magazine is a magazine devoted to the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who...
comic strip story Star Death (DWM #47). Although the canonicity of the non-televised media is open to interpretation, Star Death showed the proto-Time Lords trying to collapse the star Qqaba into a black hole and harness its "energy stream". Omega and Rassilon were both members of this project, and when sabotage sent Omega hurtling into the newly created black hole, he was presumed lost. Rassilon then took control of the project, and the power of the black hole. It was not made explicit, however, that this black hole was the same one that provided the Eye of Harmony. (Qqaba would also be mentioned in the 1998 novel The Infinity Doctors
The Infinity Doctors
The Infinity Doctors is a BBC Books original novel written by Lance Parkin and based on the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who...
by Lance Parkin
Lance Parkin
Lance Parkin is a British author, best known for writing fiction and reference books for television series, in particular Doctor Who and Emmerdale...
.)
This connection appeared next in the 1988 serial Remembrance of the Daleks
Remembrance of the Daleks
Remembrance of the Daleks is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from 5 October to 26 October 1988....
, where Omega's stellar manipulation device was dubbed the Hand of Omega
Hand of Omega
The Hand of Omega is a fictional device from the British science fiction television series Doctor Who.In Remembrance of the Daleks the Seventh Doctor explains that the "Hand of Omega" is the mythical name for the remote stellar manipulator invented by Omega, the first of the Time Lords of the...
and became the object of a struggle between two competing factions of Dalek
Dalek
The Daleks are a fictional extraterrestrial race of mutants from the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. Within the series, Daleks are cyborgs from the planet Skaro, created by the scientist Davros during the final years of a thousand-year war against the Thals...
s. Although the televised story made no mention of Rassilon, the 1991 novelisation of the serial (though again of unclear canonicity) by the story's writer Ben Aaronovitch
Ben Aaronovitch
Ben Denis Aaronovitch is a London-born British writer who has worked on television series including Doctor Who, Casualty, Jupiter Moon and Dark Knight...
, drawing on elements of the so-called "Cartmel Masterplan
Other (Doctor Who)
The Other is a fictional character in the expanded universe of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. A legendary figure in Time Lord history, the Other does not appear in the television series itself, but is mentioned several times in the spin-off media based on the...
", made the connection between the two Time Lords explicit. The story of Omega's supernova becoming the black hole that provided Rassilon with the Eye of Harmony became part of the fan-accepted mythology
Fanon (fiction)
In works of fiction, fanon is a customary and unofficial canon established in a spontaneous manner by the community of fans at large, for example fan clubs, whenever the official canon is not clear on some points of its narrative....
and was incorporated into the Virgin New Adventures
Virgin New Adventures
The Virgin New Adventures were a series of novels from Virgin Publishing based on the British science-fiction television series Doctor Who...
novels.
The television movie
The 1996 television movie revealed a new function for the Eye. No longer just a power source for Gallifrey, in the movie an artefact referred to as the Eye of Harmony was part of the TARDISTARDIS
The TARDISGenerally, TARDIS is written in all upper case letters—this convention was popularised by the Target novelisations of the 1970s...
and, for the first time, was stated to be the TARDIS's primary power source, located in the centre of the TARDIS' cloister room. It was also shown that leaving the TARDIS's Eye open for too long would result in space/time distortion as the space around the Eye was exposed to the gravitational effects of the singularity.
However, having the Eye of Harmony on board the TARDIS contradicted the idea that the Eye itself was on Gallifrey. To reconcile this, fan speculation held that this was not the real Eye, but merely a name applied to a remote link to the actual Eye that powered the craft (possibly in the same way the Time Lords transmitted energy from Gallifrey to the TARDIS in The Three Doctors), or alternatively, the Eye had been somehow transferred to the TARDIS. The former conjecture became established fanon
Fanon (fiction)
In works of fiction, fanon is a customary and unofficial canon established in a spontaneous manner by the community of fans at large, for example fan clubs, whenever the official canon is not clear on some points of its narrative....
, and was taken up in the spin-off media and was eventually confirmed by the official BBC website.
The Past Doctor Adventures
Past Doctor Adventures
The Past Doctor Adventures were a series of spin-off novels based on the long running BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who and published under the BBC Books imprint. For most of their existence, they were published side-by-side with the Eighth Doctor Adventures...
novel The Quantum Archangel
The Quantum Archangel
The Quantum Archangel is a BBC Books original novel written by Craig Hinton and based on the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It features the Sixth Doctor and Mel, the Master, and an appearance by an alternate version of the Third Doctor...
by Craig Hinton
Craig Hinton
Craig Paul Alexander Hinton was a British writer best known for his work on various spin-offs from the BBC Television series Doctor Who....
offered another explanation by claiming that all TARDISes built after a certain point, including the Type 40 the Doctor uses, have a mathematically modelled duplicate of the Eye with all its attendant features, thus helping the TARDISes cope with the previously-discovered power problems inherent if they travel too far away from the original Eye.
The television movie also reveals a link between the Eye of Harmony on board the TARDIS and the Doctor's own eyes. The Master uses the Eye to see what the Doctor is seeing at the same moment. The symbiosis between a Timelord and his TARDIS has been hinted at before, such as in the sixth Doctor story "The Two Doctors" in which The Sontaran try to isolate the Doctor's symbiotic nuclei in an attempt to construct their own time machine.
Current status
In the 2005 series, the Ninth DoctorNinth Doctor
The Ninth Doctor is the ninth incarnation of the protagonist of the long-running BBC television science-fiction series Doctor Who. He is played by Christopher Eccleston....
revealed that Gallifrey and the Time Lords had been destroyed in a Time War
Time War (Doctor Who)
The Time War, more specifically called The Last Great Time War, is a conflict within the fictional universe of the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who...
. It is unclear if this means that the Eye of Harmony was also destroyed. In the Episode "The End of Time" Gallifrey is shown to still exist, however trapped in a time lock. This suggests that the Eye should still exist.
In the episodes "Boom Town
Boom Town (Doctor Who)
"Boom Town" is an episode in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast on 4 June 2005. The Doctor, Rose and Jack travel to modern-day Cardiff and meet up with Rose's boyfriend, Mickey...
" and "Utopia
Utopia (Doctor Who)
"Utopia" is an episode of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was broadcast on BBC One on 16 June 2007 and is the eleventh episode of series three of the revived Doctor Who series...
", the TARDIS needed to "refuel" by absorbing energy from a "scar" left by a closed space/time rift
Cardiff Rift
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...
, implying that it is not powered entirely by the Eye at this time. The former episode also revealed that the TARDIS console concealed the "Heart of the TARDIS", a mysterious glowing energy source that the Doctor associated (in "The Parting of the Ways
The Parting of the Ways
"The Parting of the Ways" is an episode in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast on 18 June 2005. It was the second episode of the two-part story that featured Christopher Eccleston making his last appearance as the Ninth Doctor...
") with the energies of the time vortex
Time vortex (Doctor Who)
In the science fiction television series Doctor Who, the time vortex is the medium that the TARDIS and other time machines travel through...
.
The Tenth Doctor
Tenth Doctor
The Tenth Doctor is the tenth incarnation of the protagonist of the long-running BBC television science-fiction series Doctor Who. He is played by David Tennant, who appears in three series, as well as eight specials...
makes an oblique reference to the Eye's creation in the episode "The Satan Pit
The Satan Pit
"The Satan Pit" is an episode in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It is the second part of a two-part story, following "The Impossible Planet". With the TARDIS seemingly lost, Rose and the remaining humans are trapped on the base with the possessed Ood, while the planet...
" when he says: "My people practically invented black holes. Well... in fact they did." The Master also mentions in Sound of Drums
Sound of Drums
Sound of Drums may refer to:* "The Sound of Drums", an episode of the TV programme Doctor Who* "Sound of Drums", a song on Kula Shaker's 1999 album Peasants, Pigs & Astronauts* The Sound of Drums , a compilation album by the Rogue Traders...
that the rockets on Earth have "black hole manipulators", which suggests that the Time Lords have knowledge of the physics of black holes.
In the Doctor Who: The Adventure Games
Doctor Who: The Adventure Games
Doctor Who: The Adventure Games is a series of episodic third-person adventure games, based on the BBC TV series Doctor Who and developed by Sumo Digital. Charles Cecil served as executive producer and worked with Sean Millard and Will Tarratt on the design...
episode City of the Daleks, it is revealed that a Time Lord artifact called the Eye of Time was lost when Gallifrey vanished during the Time War. The Eye then fell into the hands of the Daleks, who install it on Skaro
Skaro
Skaro is a fictional planet from the British science fiction television series Doctor Who created by the writer Terry Nation as the home planet of the Daleks and, at times, the centre of the Dalek Empire....
and use it to control all of time and space. The Doctor and Amy Pond are able to travel back to the moment when the Daleks activate the Eye and stop their plan, however, and the Eye vanishes once more. It is not clear if the Eye of Time is simply another name for the Eye of Harmony.
Scientific context
This 1976 explanation of Time Lord power followed closely from a period of extensive scientific exploration and validation relating to black holes in the scientific worldScience
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
, lasting from approximately 1964–1974, during which key discoveries related to the power, energy, and possible time-related properties of black holes was undertaken. (See: Timeline of black hole physics
Timeline of black hole physics
Timeline of black hole physics* 1640 — Ismael Bullialdus suggests an inverse-square gravitational force law* 1684 — Isaac Newton writes down his inverse-square Law of universal gravitation...
)