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Black Holes Encyclopedia
FAQ

Doctor Who 'The Three Doctors' (1973)

TV Show

Doctor Who, 'The Three Doctors'

The Time Lords are in trouble. A black hole is draining the energy of their home planet, Gallifrey. To save themselves, they dispatch all three incarnations of their most famous renegade, the Doctor. He and his companions are drawn into the black hole, where they meet what is left of Omega, a founder of the Time Lords, who used the black hole to create the ability to travel through time. Now he threatens to use the black hole to destroy the universe if the Doctor refuses to change places with him.

The Science

Traveling through a black hole is a popular concept in science fiction, but it just doesn’t work. Anything that enters a stellar-mass black hole is first ripped apart by the tidal forces, then its atoms are crushed into a new form of existence as they reach the overpowering gravitational field at the center. Even a clever engineer like Omega, who gave the Time Lords the power of time travel, could not set up a cozy nook inside the black hole’s event horizon.

Next TV Show: Doctor Who 'Impossible Planet' »