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Time travel

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Time travel was, as the name suggested, the process of travelling through time , in any direction. In the 26th century , individuals who time travelled were sometimes known as persons of meta-temporal displacement. ( PROSE : The Mary-Sue Extrusion ) The Eleventh Doctor compared time travel to "a tear in the fabric of reality". ( TV : The Name of the Doctor ) In fact, some accounts held that time travel buried and overwrote the original state of linear reality . ( PROSE : The Infinity Doctors , Mr Saldaamir )

• 1.1.1 By space-time vessel
• 1.1.2 Mirrors
• 1.2 By psychic power or other natural ability
• 1.3 By space-time anomaly
• 2 Blending in
• 3 Other references
• 4.1 Information from invalid sources
• 4.2 Other matters

Methods [ ]

Technological or biotechnological methods [ ], by space-time vessel [ ].

The Time Lords were able to achieve time travel after Omega converted a star into a black hole . ( TV : The Three Doctors ) They used the Eye of Harmony thereafter to power their civilisation and power their time travel facilities from TARDISes to the extraction chambers which could pluck individuals out of the timeline safely before they died. ( TV : The Deadly Assassin , Doctor Who , Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS , Hell Bent ) By his ninth and tenth incarnations, the Doctor also used the Cardiff rift to "soak up" its radiation for his TARDIS to use. ( TV : Boom Town )

The Third Zone scientists Kartz and Reimer built a primitive time machine modelled on Time Lord technology. It almost worked, but ultimately only made one successful trip before it was destroyed. It needed a Time Lord's Rassilon Imprimatur to work properly. ( TV : The Two Doctors )

On Earth , the first pioneer in the field was Orson Pink in the early 22nd century , whose first trip accidentally brought him to the end of the universe . ( TV : Listen ) Hila Tacorien , great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter of a couple from the 20th century , was a human pioneer explorer of time, who accidentally got lost in a pocket dimension . ( TV : Hide )

Magnus Greel used an experimental time cabinet based on 51st century human technology. ( TV : The Talons of Weng-Chiang )

The Imperial Daleks under Davros , who already had limited time travel technology, expected to obtain equivalent time travel to the Time Lords by stealing the Hand of Omega and replicating their process on Skaro 's sun. ( TV : Remembrance of the Daleks )

Osmic projection was a means of time travel used by the Sontarans . The Third Doctor referred to it as rather limited in its temporal range when used by the Sontaran scout. ( TV : The Time Warrior )

Time Scoop technology enabled the user to transport other people and objects remotely. Without any ally on the other end, it could leave the user stranded in another time period with no way to return. ( TV : Carnival of Monsters )

Time corridor technology was used by the Daleks , ( TV : The Evil of the Daleks , Resurrection of the Daleks , Remembrance of the Daleks , Victory of the Daleks ) Osirans , ( TV : Pyramids of Mars ) the Borad ( TV : Timelash ) and the Ra'ra'vis . ( COMIC : Time Fraud ) According to the Dalek Time Strategist , the Daleks had been trying to develop time travel from the onset of their existence, fearing the Time Lords' attempt to interfere with their genesis. ( AUDIO : The Eternity Cage ) Another account held that they had only begun temporal research after the Thal-Dalek battle . ( AUDIO : The Lights of Skaro ) The Council of Eight made use of a form of time corridor technology to despatch their agents to different eras to affect history; the corridors were unstable and anything passing through them was dispersed by the time winds . ( PROSE : Sometime Never... )

A kind of time viewer , called a quantum imager , enabled one to observe and (to a limited degree) communicate with people in the past. ( PROSE : The Least Important Man )

Pushing energy into a warp drive could create a time window . ( TV : The Girl in the Fireplace )

A warp drive accident fractured one individual, Scaroth , into "fragments" scattered through various eras of time and linked by telepathy . ( TV : City of Death ) Another warp drive accident had the effect of propelling the vehicle in question roughly sixty-five million years back in time. ( TV : Earthshock )

A rift manipulator could be used in conjunction with the temporal rift itself. ( TV : Captain Jack Harkness , End of Days )

A vortex manipulator was a crude time travel device. It could miss by hundreds of years and broke down easily. It was referred to by the Tenth Doctor as more of a "space hopper" compared to the TARDIS. ( TV : Utopia )

A temporal shift was a form of time travel used by the Daleks . ( PROSE : Exit Strategy ) The War Doctor labelled it as a dangerous method of time travel, one that the Daleks used only as a last ditch option for escape. ( AUDIO : The Lady of Obsidian ) Following the Last Great Time War , the Cult of Skaro enacted a temporal shift to escape being sucked into the Void , with Dalek Caan later using it to escape from 1930s New York City . ( TV : Doomsday , Evolution of the Daleks )

At some point after the Last Great Time War during which the Time Lords deceived the universe into thinking they were extinct barring the Doctor, the Time Lords sent Missy and Yayani to the Kyme Institute where Doctor Kalub had been experimenting with genetically engineering a whole new creature with time and space travel ability and then imprisoning it within a stasis field. The energies were then harnessed for perpetual energy for time travel. Kalub died, but the creature itself was imprisoned within Missy's TARDIS . ( PROSE : Lords and Masters )

Teri Billington 's time dilation project allowed the Sentinels of the New Dawn to achieve time travel. After some adjustment by the Third Doctor , her particle accelerator took him and Liz Shaw to 2014 . Upon returning, Liz disassembled Billington's particle accelerator, preventing the Sentinels from discovering time travel. ( AUDIO : The Sentinels of the New Dawn )

Mirrors [ ]

Time travel by use of mirrors was based on the principle that mirrors reflect light and time travel is moving faster than light . If static electricity was passed through the mirrors, more than images could be reflected and whole objects could be sent back in time. As well, certain trace elements in the machine, like taranium , were also needed. ( PROSE : The Wheel of Ice )

Edward Waterfield and Theodore Maxtible attracted the attention of the Daleks while experimenting with static electricity and mirrors . ( TV : The Evil of the Daleks )

The mysterious Gateway situated in the void between N-Space and E-Space provided access to different times and realities, sometimes through mirrors. ( TV : Warriors' Gate )

General Mariah Learman and Professor Osric succeeded briefly in making a functioning time machine with over 100 clocks and 1000 mirrors in her prime ministerial house. The act of measuring time changed time and therefore time could be manipulated. The mirrors were coated in orthopositronium , a material where the positron and the electron orbited each other in the same direction. It briefly worked when the Daleks' ship ran aground in the Time Vortex and they homed in on it and made it work. It needed chronons to work, which were sourced when the Eighth Doctor 's companion , Charley , held the master clock. It took her and Viola Learman to William Shakespeare 's time. This ceased to function when Charley entered the Doctor's TARDIS . ( AUDIO : The Time of the Daleks )

A time machine was created by UNIT with the help of Rose Tyler and the dying TARDIS to send Donna Noble back from a universe the time beetle created. ( TV : Turn Left )

The Arkive tried to create a mirror-based time machine , but didn't have the necessary parts or skills to make it ( PROSE : The Wheel of Ice )

By psychic power or other natural ability [ ]

The Eight Legs could teleport as easily through time as through space. K'anpo Rimpoche , a highly advanced Time Lord with great mental discipline, could do the same. ( TV : Planet of the Spiders )

The enigmatic Bilis Manger could also also teleport at will through both time and space. This ability was only seen in the vicinity of the Cardiff Rift however. ( TV : Captain Jack Harkness , End of Days )

Fenric could transport other living beings via time storms . The people displaced by the time storm often believed they had caused the time storm themselves. ( TV : Dragonfire , Silver Nemesis , The Curse of Fenric )

The Fairies could travel through time and space naturally. ( TV : Small Worlds )

The Weeping Angels had the ability to send others back in time with a touch. ( TV : Blink )

The Trickster , prior to manifesting as a corporeal being, could traverse time and space with ease, though not at any given moment. ( TV : Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? , The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith )

The Androzani trees travelled through the Time Vortex by using Madge Arwell as a host. ( TV : The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe )

By space-time anomaly [ ]

The Tharils "rode the time winds ". ( TV : Warriors' Gate )

A warp ellipse could possibly make time travel possible. ( TV : Mawdryn Undead )

Travel via time rift was possible. The Weevils arrived on Earth via this method, ( TV : Everything Changes ) as did a human aeroplane , the Sky Gypsy . ( TV : Out of Time ) During rare "negative spikes", the Rift also occasionally abducted random people in time and space from Earth, and disastrously attempted to correct itself. ( TV : Adrift )

Sarah Jane Smith acquired a Time Converter which allowed her to open and close time fissures , but these usually only linked two particular places in time. ( TV : The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith )

Both the Great Intelligence and Clara Oswald time travelled by entering the Doctor 's time stream from his tomb, both becoming splintered in time. Clara was retrieved by the Eleventh Doctor , while Madame Vastra presumed the Intelligence to have been killed. ( TV : The Name of the Doctor )

The Tenth Doctor , in order to defeat some surviving Cybermen from the Battle of Canary Wharf created a space-time portal to the Jurassic era by linking the Cybermen's teleportation equipment to the TARDIS and then setting the portal to open at the last place in time the TARDIS departed from. This linked the two eras together and allowed a Tyrannosaurus Rex to partially emerge in the present and destroy two Cybermen. The Doctor closed the portal when he pulled the main power cable and told Martha Jones that creating one was simple and was something he played with a lot while in school. ( PROSE : Made of Steel )

Professor Whitaker , who was fascinated with the idea of time travel, used time eddies in order to transport dinosaurs to modern London. This was done as a part of Operation Golden Age , which consisted of first using the dinosaurs to evacuate London and then rolling back time via the time eddies to colonise the Earth's past before mankind was born in order to replace mankind's history with a new, better civilisation free of corruption and pollution. However, after the Third Doctor reversed the polarity of Whitaker's machine, the scientist and his accomplice Charles Grover were teleported through time, possibly to their "Golden Age", as the Doctor believed. ( TV : Invasion of the Dinosaurs )

Mother G claimed to "not really" be a time traveller despite apearing within multiple time periods. ( COMIC : Mistress of Chaos )

Blending in [ ]

The First Doctor normally hid his clothing with a large cloak, while he and his companions pilfered appropriate garments. ( TV : The Aztecs , etc.) However, from at least his third incarnation onwards, he forwent wearing the correct clothing himself. The Eleventh Doctor claimed to be a "temporal chameleon" able to blend into any point of time despite what he wore. ( COMIC : The Chains of Olympus ) It was indeed true that the Doctor often made use of perception filters during their adventures. ( TV : The Sound of Drums , et. al)

Companion Rory Williams was annoyed that he and Amy would have to wear togas for visiting Athens when the Doctor didn't. ( COMIC : The Chains of Olympus ) Alternatively, sometimes, while it was not common, later Doctors did make use of period-accurate clothing. The Twelfth Doctor and his companion Bill Potts wore period clothing when visiting the 1814 frost fair . ( TV : Thin Ice )

Other references [ ]

The Aja'ib contained tales involving time travel. ( PROSE : Bafflement and Devotion )

On Planet Bedtime Stories , the Fourteenth Doctor told an audience he loved time travel. ( TV : Doctor Who: The Bedtime Story [+] Oliver Jeffers , adapted from The Way Back Home , CBeebies Bedtime Stories ( CBeebies , 2023 ). Timestamp 00:00:42. )

Behind the scenes [ ]

Information from invalid sources [ ].

Upon entering the Doctor's TARDIS , Data remarked that time travel was "very dangerous ", but that it was okay because he knew what he was doing. ( GAME : LEGO Dimensions )

Other matters [ ]

In General Relativity , travelling to the future is somewhat easy, if you stay near a massive body or travel fast enough. However, travelling to the past is impossible unless you live in a universe with an exotic geometry or some form of exotic matter. These could allow closed timelike curve s, due to something like the Tipler cylinder .

• 1 Weeping Angel
• 2 The Doctor
• 3 The Toymaker

How does time travel actually work in Doctor Who?

You can't rewrite history! (Except when you can.)

"Let me get this straight... a thing that looks like a police box, standing in a junkyard, it can move anywhere in time and space?"

"Quite so."

"But that's ridiculous!"

Time travel has been at the heart(s) of Doctor Who since the series' very beginnings. But the show's approach to exactly how it works, and what the rules of changing history are, has changed more times than the Doctor's face.

Ten years into the show's run, it was established that the Time Lords have their own Laws of Time, practically all of which the Doctor has broken over the course of his/her adventures: they include a strict policy of non-interference in the history of others, and a rule banning Time Lords from ever crossing over into their own time-stream (i.e. meeting their past self).

But those are all just self-imposed edicts. What are the fundamental rules of time travel, as far as Doctor Who is concerned? And do they make any sense? Let's find out.

"You can't rewrite history!"

In one of Doctor Who 's very earliest jaunts into history, 1964's 'The Aztecs', the first Doctor (William Hartnell) reprimands his companion Barbara (Jacqueline Hill) for planning to intervene in the Aztecs' practice of human sacrifice. "You can't rewrite history!" he insists. "Not one line!"

His words here are, of course, open to interpretation. When the Doctor says Barbara "can't" rewrite history, he could either be saying that the act is physically impossible – that time travellers cannot impact events in a way that would change their future – or arguing that she simply shouldn't interfere, because the results could be catastrophic.

Let's be generous and assume that it's the latter, because later Doctor Who makes it very clear that time can be rewritten. Well, sometimes.

The eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith) puts it in blunt terms in the 2010 episode 'Flesh and Stone': "Time can shift. Time can change. Time can be rewritten."

Events in the past can be changed, and this will directly affect the future. 'Pyramids of Mars', a fourth Doctor's outing (portrayed by Tom Baker) from 1975, provides us with a clear illustration of this, with companion Sarah Jane (Elisabeth Sladen) briefly returning to a version of 1980 that's been transformed into an apocalyptic wasteland by the time tinkerings of villain Sutekh in 1911.

"Back to the Future... it's like Back to the Future!"

But what happens to the time-travellers themselves when history is altered?

Well, in 2007's 'The Shakespeare Code', the tenth Doctor (David Tennant) tells Martha (Freema Agyeman) that if the Carrionites succeed in taking over Earth in 1599, she would vanish – Back to the Future- style – because the future she's from would no longer exist.

If Prem lives, we're told, Yaz will blink out of existence.

However, other stories established that time travellers could survive certain changes to history, small alterations that don't impact their being born, since they were 'outside of time'. 'Flesh and Stone' even suggests that they'd be able to remember the original timeline – though the same year's 'Cold Blood' indicates that the more directly the change affects someone's life, the more difficult it is for that person to retain their memories.

Thus, Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) is able to remember the clerics swallowed up by the cracks in time in 'Flesh and Stone', but has to fight to remember her fiancé Rory (Arthur Darvill) after he's similarly written out of history in the later episode.

Still with us? Good.

How, though, does Doctor Who deal with that pitfall of all time-travel stories, the question of why 'the past' is sacrosanct, while 'the future' is malleable? If Barbara couldn't meddle with the Aztecs' history, why is it alright for the Doctor to overthrow the Dalek invasion of Earth in the 22nd century? That's still meddling with established events, right?

"Some things are fixed"

To tackle this problem, Doctor Who has introduced the idea of "fixed points" existing in history – sequences of events that must not be disturbed, or a thread will be pulled that could end up unravelling the universe.

"I'm history to you, [but] you saved me in 2008," Donna (Catherine Tate) challenges the tenth Doctor in 'The Fires of Pompeii'. "Why is that different?"

"Some things are fixed, some things are in flux," he responds, insisting that the 79 AD eruption of Mount Vesuvius which buried Pompeii and its surrounding cities must not be averted.

What is and isn't a fixed point tends to be entirely dependent on the demands of the story, but, importantly, we're assured that the Doctor is able to tell the difference. "I can see what is, what was, what could be, what must not," he tells Donna. "That's the burden of a Time Lord."

Conveniently, most of these fixed points tend to fall in Earth's history, which is how the show excuses fiddling with our future. (Though, to be fair, not all of them – the death of Bowie Base One's entire crew in 2009's 'The Waters of Mars' was also established as a fixed point in the year 2059, one that a reckless Doctor attempted and ultimately failed to defy.)

"It's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey... stuff."

Clearly, like the TARDIS, the question of how time-travel works in Doctor Who is far more expansive than you might suspect.

But these are the essential points to remember...

Time isn't fixed, and you can rewrite history, every single line. In fact, simply by arriving in a new time and place, you've already made an impact.

For the most part, it's safe enough to make small alterations to the past – you can save the odd life here, overthrow the odd corrupt government there, so long as there's no major disruption to history.

It was implied, in episodes like 2005's 'The Unquiet Dead', that changing history was more perilous after the demise of the Time Lords in the wake of the Last Great Time War. This suggests that they were previously able to somehow paper over the cracks caused by minor changes to history, with the same year's 'Father's Day' revealing that they'd long held the Reavers – creatures who fed on time paradoxes – at bay.

However, major alterations should be avoided at all costs. (The Doctor appears to be the arbiter of what does and doesn't count as "major" – the annihilation of Earth in 1985, for example, would disrupt the web of time, as established in that year's 'Attack of the Cybermen'.)

You should also resist making significant alternations to your own personal history. While these might not affect the wider universe, they could impact on your memory, or even, in extreme circumstances, on your very existence.

Other than that, the only periods of history you shouldn't change at all are "fixed points", because any and all changes made to these will set off a chain reaction of sorts that will destabilise all of time.

It's a rather complicated lot of rules to remember. But essentially, any time-traveller in the Who-niverse would do well to mind the Doctor's advice from 'Demons of the Punjab': "Tread softly."

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Doctor Who: Every single journey through time detailed by Information is Beautiful

Last year, I created a visualisation of Time travel in TV & Films . You know. Star Trek, Back To The Future, Planet Of The Apes etc.

I deliberately left out Doctor Who . It would've spaghetti-fied an already pretty hectic image.

All the time, though, I really wanted to do a mega-visualisation of all of the Time Lord's journeys. But faced the cosmic task of trawling through well over 200 episodes, logging every time TARDIS was hurled through time and space.

I like Doctor Who. But not that much. So I decided to crowdsource the endeavour , relying on geek juice and weapons-grade fandominium to power the project.

A stream of people came forward - programmers, researchers, fans (even a few people who sent pictures of themselves in floppy hats and homemade sonic screwdrivers)

Here is the fruit of our labour - a list of every single journey through time made by the doctor, featuring start year, end year, and location.

It's twinned with a previous datablog dataset - Every Doctor Who Villain

How many times do you think the Doctor has travelled through time?

Check out the data to see. You might be surprised.

Download the data

DATA: get the full spreadsheet on Google docs Download a copy of the data

A few notes on the data (before you lynch me)

Accuracy We endeavoured to double-check the data whenever possible. However, it's possible that mistakes may have crept in. Please don't attack me or burn my family's house down. Instead, feel free to comment below if you spot any errors.

Detail In the mastersheet, we've only included episodes that featured time travel. But every single episode is archived on the separate sheets.

Gaps In some episodes, the time or location were ambiguous. We've tried to make educated guesses and even watch the individual episodes to find extra detail. If you can help with any gaps, please fill in below.

Thank you to all the people who diligently researched and helped compile this dataset.

David McCandless, Ollie Glass, Anish Bhatt, Alex Livingstone, Matt Borg, James Key, Caroline Flyn, Pearl Doughty-White, Alexia Wdowski, Jo Carter, Jon rickert, Bronwen Densmore, Gabriel, Jon rickert, Marco, Ron Murphy, Josh, Math Scott.

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Flickr Please post your visualisations and mash-ups on our Flickr group or mail us at [email protected]

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Doctor Who: Is time travel possible?

This content is associated with The Open University's Science courses and qualifications .

In Doctor Who , our hero regularly travels forwards and backwards in time, visiting any epoch, anywhere in the Universe, thanks to his time machine the TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimensions In Space). But is time travel really possible?

The simple answer to this question is: Yes! In fact as you read this, you are travelling through time at a rate of one second per second. OK, that’s not quite the answer you were expecting, but it is time travel nonetheless – we can’t help but travel through time, because that’s the nature of time itself. It flows relentlessly from past to future, and the instant of ‘now’ is an infinitesimally short period of time that it’s impossible to remain in. However it turns out that the rate at which time flows forwards is not necessarily a fixed quantity.

So, what about travelling into the future or the past – is that sort of real time travel possible? Well, the first of these is certainly possible, but as far as we know, the other is impossible to achieve.

Time travel into the future is easy – in principle at least. Albert Einstein’s theory of special relativity, which he devised in 1905, shows that ‘moving clocks run slow’. This is an effect known as time dilation. Quite simply, if a clock moves at a constant speed with respect to a stationary observer, that observer would see the moving clock ticking more slowly than one at rest next to her. And the faster the clock moves, the more slowly it ticks. This isn’t just a trick either – all physical or biological process, or anything at all that you care to measure, would indeed happen more slowly when moving rapidly, as viewed from a stationary view point.

Special relativistic time dilation has been measured many times in laboratory experiments, and the results agree precisely with Einstein’s predictions. One such example concerns the subatomic particles known as muons. These are a somewhat heavier counterpart of the electron which decay into electrons with a typical lifetime of around two microseconds. A ready source of muons is from cosmic rays (high energy nuclei originating from the depths of space) that strike atoms in the Earth’s upper atmosphere. If the number of muons liberated in the upper atmosphere is measured at the top of a mountain, then knowing the lifetime of a muon and the fact that they are travelling close to the speed of light, it’s possible to calculate the proportion of muons that should survive to be measured at sea level. However, far more muons survive to reach sea level than would be predicted based on non-relativistic assumptions. This can be understood by the realisation that, for the rapidly moving muons, time runs more slowly, so allowing more of them to survive the trip.

The faster you travel, the further into the future you can jump. For instance, in order to jump 1000 years into the future, but only have 1 year elapse on your spaceship, you would need to travel at 99.99995% of the speed of light.

So much for time travel into the future – but why is time travel into the past so difficult? This all comes down to what’s known as causality and is perhaps best summed up by the Grandfather paradox. If time travel into the past were possible, then you could (if you really wanted to) travel into the past to a time before your parents were born and kill your Grandfather. Then your parent would never be born, so neither would you, so you couldn’t travel into the past to kill your Grandfather after all… Because paradoxes like this simply don’t occur in the Universe (as far as we know), time travel into the past cannot be possible.

My favourite exploration of this time travel paradox is in a short story by Robert A. Heinlein from 1958 called “All you zombies”. The plot concerns a character who is eventually revealed (by a series of time travel experiences) to be both his own father and mother. Thankfully, such paradoxes seem not to occur in the real world or, if they do, there must be someone like the Doctor, who travels around ironing them all out!

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Who had more fun in life, Albert Einstein or Richard Feynman? Whichever one of them was travelling faster

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Doctor Who: How Does the TARDIS Work? (Is Time Travel Possible?)

Episode #4 of the course Sci-Phi: Philosophy through science fiction by David Kyle Johnson, PhD

Einstein’s relativity suggests space and time exist as one entity, spacetime, and that spacetime can be warped and curved by mass and acceleration. This raises questions about whether we could alter the rate or direction in which we travel in time. And indeed, we could—and we can see how in one of my favorite sci-fi TV shows, Doctor Who .

Traveling to the Future

For example, massive objects like black holes warp spacetime in such a way that the closer you get, the slower time passes. And the effect can be quite pronounced. In the Doctor Who episode, “World Enough and Time,” a 400-mile-long spaceship is trying to reverse away from a black hole. While those on the top of the ship (closest to the black hole) age only a few hours, those in the bottom of the ship age years. (In the extra time they have, those in the bottom of the ship become the Doctor’s archenemy: the Cybermen.) Because the gravitational effects of a black hole increase exponentially as you approach it, such a disparity in time dilation is possible (if the black hole has the right mass).

Acceleration can also dilate time. According to relativity, if you were to travel away from the Earth at high speeds for decades, turn around, and then come back—by the time you returned, centuries would have passed on Earth. This method of time travel is used in classics like Planet of the Apes to facilitate travel into the future but could also be used to explain how The Doctor’s TARDIS allows him to travel both forward and backward in time. How?

Traveling to the Past

In short, if you use this method to time-dilate one end of a wormhole (a bridge between two distant spacetime points), you could travel into the future or the past by stepping into one end of the wormhole and emerging from the other. If the Doctor’s race—the Time Lords—figured out how to keep wormholes open (Kip Thorne says doing so would require “negative energy”), they could create a whole collection of them, call it a “time vortex,” build ships called TARDISes capable of traversing it, and thus travel anywhere and anywhen they wanted.

Now, this is all just theoretical, but the mere possibility of backward time travel seems to raise a logical paradox. As the Doctor’s companion Martha observes in “The Shakespeare Code,” with the ability to travel to the past, one could kill one’s grandfather before he sires one’s father. Such “self-annihilation” paradoxes are thought to entail that backward time travel is impossible. And contrary to the Doctor’s reply to Martha, one cannot solve them by simply not including grandfather killing in one’s time travel plans. It’s logically impossible for one to make it the case that one never existed, and logical impossibilities can’t even possibly be true.

Solving the Grandfather Paradox

But philosophers have concocted two ways to describe backward time-travel that makes self-annihilation impossible. The first is that of David Lewis, who suggests that backward time travel would not enable one to change the past; so if you traveled back in time and tried to kill your grandfather, you would necessarily fail. Indeed, since the actions you “will take” while in the past were already a part of the past before you hopped in your time machine, if you travel back to try to prevent something, you might find that you were actually the cause of it. In 50-plus years of Doctor Who , The Doctor has turned out to be the cause of everything from the extinction of the dinosaurs to the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius.

The second possible solution, belonging to Nuel Belnap and David Deutsch, suggests that traveling back in time would create an alternate timeline—one identical to the one you left up to the moment in the past to which you traveled. Any changes you make there will affect that timeline, but not the one you left. Thus, if you kill your grandfather, you won’t negate your own existence—but prevent the birth of someone with your DNA in the new timeline you created.

Now, one might argue that this looks more like “alternate universe creation” than time travel, but it also raises another question: Would a genetically identical doppelgänger of you in another universe actually be you ? This is a question about personal identity, and we shall use another long-running science fiction TV show— Star Trek —to explore it next lesson.

Recommended books

Doctor Who and Philosophy: Bigger on the Insid e edited by Courtland Lewis and Paula Smithka

Who Is Who? The Philosophy of Doctor Who by Kevin S. Decker

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RTD's Timeless Child Tease Supports A Major Doctor Who Theory About Ruby Sunday

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• Gallifrey, home of the Time Lords, has been destroyed twice, but continues to play a key role in dramatic Doctor Who stories.
• The destruction of Gallifrey by the Master was due to a bitter jealousy over the Doctor's identity as the Timeless Child.
• Despite the fixed point in time preventing the Doctor from saving Gallifrey, its return in Doctor Who seems inevitable.

Gallifrey's history in Doctor Who is long and complicated, largely owing to the fact that the Doctor's homeworld has been destroyed not once, but twice. First depicted in the 1969 serial The War Games , Gallifrey is the home planet of the Time Lords, the race of people to which the Doctor belongs. Over the years, Doctor Who has returned to Gallifrey on a number of occasions. The last time it appeared onscreen, however, Gallfrey was completely obliterated for the second time.

Despite its habit of being destroyed, Gallifrey has played a part in some of Doctor Who 's greatest stories , and throughout the show's run, has been the setting for some truly dramatic sci-fi moments. With Doctor Who season 14 just around the corner, it's possible that Gallifrey might once again play a key role in the show.

RTD taking influence from the Timeless Child arc for Doctor Who season 14 could suggest a major theory about Ruby Sunday was true all along.

The Master Destroyed Gallifrey In Doctor Who Season 12

The doctor's worst enemy did it out of sheer jealousy.

In the opening two-parter of Doctor Who season 12, titled "Spyfall", the Master (Sacha Dhawan) tells the Thirteenth Doctor (Jodie Whitaker) that Gallifrey has been destroyed. At the end of the story, the Doctor returned to her homeworld to find it in ruins. A recorded hologram of the Master informed the Doctor that her old foe was responsible for the destruction. After learning a terrible secret regarding the origins of the Time Lords, the Master took matters into his own hands and wiped out his people . The secret that the Master discovered is to be that of the Timeless Child.

In the season 12 finale, Doctor Who's The Master used the Matrix to inform the Doctor that, despite what she has been told, she is not originally from Gallifrey and that her unique regenerative powers were used as the foundation of Time Lord society. The Doctor's memories were erased and she, along with most other Time Lords, were lied to for centuries. The Master, bitter about the Doctor's status as the Timeless Child , converted the corpses of the Time Lords into cybermen and uses a death particle to obliterate all organic life on the planet. The Doctor and her companions narrowly survived.

Gallifrey Had Only Just Been Rediscovered After Doctor Who's Time War

The planet was destroyed twice in the space of a few years.

The Master's attack on Gallifrey wasn't the first time the planet had been wiped out of existence. When Doctor Who was brought back in 2005, the show introduced the idea of the Time War , a massive conflict between the Time Lords, the Daleks, and other races that resulted in the destruction of Gallifrey and the extinction of the Time Lords. For modern Doctor Who's first few seasons, the Doctor was thought to be the last of their kind until the Master showed up in season 3. Eventually, the Time Lords briefly returned in "The End of Time."

The Doctor used a weapon known as the Moment to annihilate every single Time Lord and Dalek in order to bring the war to an end.

The 50th Anniversary special, "The Day of the Doctor," explored the events surrounding the Time War in greater depth than ever before. The episode confirmed what had previously been hinted at - that it was the Doctor who was ultimately responsible for killing the Time Lords. As the War Doctor - a previously unknown incarnation between the Eighth and Ninth Doctors - the Doctor used a weapon known as the Moment to annihilate every single Time Lord and Dalek in order to bring the war to an end.

However, the same episode also depicts the War Doctor, with the help of his Tenth and Eleventh incarnations, saving Gallifrey at the last minute by freezing it in time within a pocket universe. Essentially, both Gallifrey and the Time Lords survive intact, but their exact whereabouts are unknown. The season 9 episode finale, "Hell Bent" involves the Doctor returning to Gallifrey for the first time since it was saved. It was also the only time Gallifrey was shown onscreen before it was ultimately destroyed again in season 12.

After it was saved, Gallifrey survived precisely 53 episodes before being destroyed again.

Can't The Doctor Travel Back To Before Gallifrey Was Destroyed?

The tardis is a handy tool, but it can't fix every problem.

Though Doctor Who is a show about time travel, there are strict rules that prevent the Doctor from doing whatever they want . Otherwise, every episode of Doctor Who would involve the Doctor encountering a threat, then immediately using the TARDIS to travel back in time to prevent the threat from ever existing. Episodes would be repetitive, and they'd be over pretty quickly. As such, there are reasons that stop the Doctor from simply using time travel to avert the Master's destruction of Gallifrey.

It's likely that the destruction of Gallifrey, a massive event, is a fixed point, and therefore, the Doctor cannot prevent it.

For starters, the show regularly brings up the idea of fixed points in time. While they aren't always obvious to the viewer, fixed points in time are key historical events that must not be meddled with, otherwise there could be dramatic consequences. Doctor Who previously explored this notion in the episode, "The Fire of Pompeii," where the Doctor was forced to let the people of Pompeii die because any intervention on his part would've resulted in further catastrophe . It's likely that the destruction of Gallifrey, a massive event, is a fixed point, and therefore, the Doctor cannot prevent it.

Additionally, because of Gallifrey's status as being time-locked in a pocket universe, even if the Doctor did want to go back to back, it wouldn't be easy. The Doctor spent a long time searching for Gallifrey after it had been restored with no luck. The only reason he ended up on Gallifrey in season 9 was because he was brought there by the Time Lords. Even in season 12, it is the Master who takes the Doctor to Gallifrey. All in all, the Doctor probably won't be using the TARDIS to save Gallifrey again any time soon.

Doctor Who is an outstanding TV series that has been on the air for many decades, and featured some incredible companions along the way.

Are Any Time Lords Still Alive?

It's possible some may have escaped.

Theoretically, the Doctor is, once again, the last of his kind. "The Timeless Child" implies that every Time Lord other than the Doctor and the Master has been killed and, following the Master's own demise in "The Power of the Doctor", that just leaves the Doctor. Dialogue from the 60th anniversary special, as well as the 2024 Christmas episode, "The Church on Ruby Road", and Doctor Who season 14 trailer , appear to confirm that the Doctor is the last surviving Time Lord again.

That being said, Doctor Who is a show that is constantly changing and not many people stay dead for long . For example, the Master has died on multiple occasions, only to be resurrected again and again. The fact that the Time Lords have already been killed off and brought back once before demonstrates that they can (and probably will) be revived at some point in the future. There has been lots of speculation that a Time Lord character such as the Master, the Rani, or the meddling Monk could appear in the upcoming season 14, though nothing has been confirmed.

Doctor Who teased "The One Who Waits" in the 60th-anniversary specials, and audiences have formed several theories about who the mysterious person is.

Gallifrey Can Still Return In Doctor Who

It's been brought back once before.

Much like the Master and the rest of the Time Lords, Gallifrey's destruction likely isn't permanent. The last time Gallifrey was supposedly wiped from existence, never to be seen again, it was restored seven seasons later. How exactly it will return is hard to say. Following Gallifrey's first destruction, it took thirteen incarnations of the Doctor to save it. While it's certainly possible that every known version of the Doctor could once again band together to rescue their homeworld, it seems unlikely. It's also doubtful that the pocket universe ex machina will be used a second time.

Gallifrey's capital is known as the Citadel, while its second city is called Arcadia.

Whatever the case, Gallifrey's return to Doctor Who is almost inevitable. After all, the planet is so closely tied to who the Doctor is, and with the Timeless Child storyline still unresolved , it feels like Gallifrey is once again where the series is headed. Though Gallifrey's habit of being obliterated is somewhat repetitive, Doctor Who is, arguably, a better show when the Doctor is the last of his kind. The Time Lords and Gallifrey work well in small doses, and a permanent return for both could harm the show.

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Originally premiered in 1963, Doctor Who is a sci-fi series that follows a powerful being known as a Time Lord, referred to as the Doctor. Using an interdimensional time-traveling ship known as the TARDIS, the Doctor travels time and space with various companions as they solve multiple problems and help avert catastrophe as much as they almost cause it. Though the Doctor is always the same character, they experience regenerations, allowing them to be recast every few seasons as a unique immortal being with new personality traits.

Time travel: Is it possible?

Science says time travel is possible, but probably not in the way you're thinking.

Albert Einstein's theory

• General relativity and GPS
• Wormhole travel
• Alternate theories

Science fiction

Is time travel possible? Short answer: Yes, and you're doing it right now — hurtling into the future at the impressive rate of one second per second. 

You're pretty much always moving through time at the same speed, whether you're watching paint dry or wishing you had more hours to visit with a friend from out of town. 

But this isn't the kind of time travel that's captivated countless science fiction writers, or spurred a genre so extensive that Wikipedia lists over 400 titles in the category "Movies about Time Travel." In franchises like " Doctor Who ," " Star Trek ," and "Back to the Future" characters climb into some wild vehicle to blast into the past or spin into the future. Once the characters have traveled through time, they grapple with what happens if you change the past or present based on information from the future (which is where time travel stories intersect with the idea of parallel universes or alternate timelines). 

Related: The best sci-fi time machines ever

Although many people are fascinated by the idea of changing the past or seeing the future before it's due, no person has ever demonstrated the kind of back-and-forth time travel seen in science fiction or proposed a method of sending a person through significant periods of time that wouldn't destroy them on the way. And, as physicist Stephen Hawking pointed out in his book " Black Holes and Baby Universes" (Bantam, 1994), "The best evidence we have that time travel is not possible, and never will be, is that we have not been invaded by hordes of tourists from the future."

Science does support some amount of time-bending, though. For example, physicist Albert Einstein 's theory of special relativity proposes that time is an illusion that moves relative to an observer. An observer traveling near the speed of light will experience time, with all its aftereffects (boredom, aging, etc.) much more slowly than an observer at rest. That's why astronaut Scott Kelly aged ever so slightly less over the course of a year in orbit than his twin brother who stayed here on Earth. 

Related: Controversially, physicist argues that time is real

There are other scientific theories about time travel, including some weird physics that arise around wormholes , black holes and string theory . For the most part, though, time travel remains the domain of an ever-growing array of science fiction books, movies, television shows, comics, video games and more. 

Einstein developed his theory of special relativity in 1905. Along with his later expansion, the theory of general relativity , it has become one of the foundational tenets of modern physics. Special relativity describes the relationship between space and time for objects moving at constant speeds in a straight line. 

The short version of the theory is deceptively simple. First, all things are measured in relation to something else — that is to say, there is no "absolute" frame of reference. Second, the speed of light is constant. It stays the same no matter what, and no matter where it's measured from. And third, nothing can go faster than the speed of light.

From those simple tenets unfolds actual, real-life time travel. An observer traveling at high velocity will experience time at a slower rate than an observer who isn't speeding through space. 

While we don't accelerate humans to near-light-speed, we do send them swinging around the planet at 17,500 mph (28,160 km/h) aboard the International Space Station . Astronaut Scott Kelly was born after his twin brother, and fellow astronaut, Mark Kelly . Scott Kelly spent 520 days in orbit, while Mark logged 54 days in space. The difference in the speed at which they experienced time over the course of their lifetimes has actually widened the age gap between the two men.

"So, where[as] I used to be just 6 minutes older, now I am 6 minutes and 5 milliseconds older," Mark Kelly said in a panel discussion on July 12, 2020, Space.com previously reported . "Now I've got that over his head."

General relativity and GPS time travel

The difference that low earth orbit makes in an astronaut's life span may be negligible — better suited for jokes among siblings than actual life extension or visiting the distant future — but the dilation in time between people on Earth and GPS satellites flying through space does make a difference. 

Read more: Can we stop time?

The Global Positioning System , or GPS, helps us know exactly where we are by communicating with a network of a few dozen satellites positioned in a high Earth orbit. The satellites circle the planet from 12,500 miles (20,100 kilometers) away, moving at 8,700 mph (14,000 km/h). 

According to special relativity, the faster an object moves relative to another object, the slower that first object experiences time. For GPS satellites with atomic clocks, this effect cuts 7 microseconds, or 7 millionths of a second, off each day, according to the American Physical Society publication Physics Central .  

Read more: Could Star Trek's faster-than-light warp drive actually work?

Then, according to general relativity, clocks closer to the center of a large gravitational mass like Earth tick more slowly than those farther away. So, because the GPS satellites are much farther from the center of Earth compared to clocks on the surface, Physics Central added, that adds another 45 microseconds onto the GPS satellite clocks each day. Combined with the negative 7 microseconds from the special relativity calculation, the net result is an added 38 microseconds. 

This means that in order to maintain the accuracy needed to pinpoint your car or phone — or, since the system is run by the U.S. Department of Defense, a military drone — engineers must account for an extra 38 microseconds in each satellite's day. The atomic clocks onboard don’t tick over to the next day until they have run 38 microseconds longer than comparable clocks on Earth.

Given those numbers, it would take more than seven years for the atomic clock in a GPS satellite to un-sync itself from an Earth clock by more than a blink of an eye. (We did the math: If you estimate a blink to last at least 100,000 microseconds, as the Harvard Database of Useful Biological Numbers does, it would take thousands of days for those 38 microsecond shifts to add up.) 

This kind of time travel may seem as negligible as the Kelly brothers' age gap, but given the hyper-accuracy of modern GPS technology, it actually does matter. If it can communicate with the satellites whizzing overhead, your phone can nail down your location in space and time with incredible accuracy. 

Can wormholes take us back in time?

General relativity might also provide scenarios that could allow travelers to go back in time, according to NASA . But the physical reality of those time-travel methods is no piece of cake. 

Wormholes are theoretical "tunnels" through the fabric of space-time that could connect different moments or locations in reality to others. Also known as Einstein-Rosen bridges or white holes, as opposed to black holes, speculation about wormholes abounds. But despite taking up a lot of space (or space-time) in science fiction, no wormholes of any kind have been identified in real life. 

Related: Best time travel movies

"The whole thing is very hypothetical at this point," Stephen Hsu, a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Oregon, told Space.com sister site Live Science . "No one thinks we're going to find a wormhole anytime soon."

Primordial wormholes are predicted to be just 10^-34 inches (10^-33 centimeters) at the tunnel's "mouth". Previously, they were expected to be too unstable for anything to be able to travel through them. However, a study claims that this is not the case, Live Science reported . 

The theory, which suggests that wormholes could work as viable space-time shortcuts, was described by physicist Pascal Koiran. As part of the study, Koiran used the Eddington-Finkelstein metric, as opposed to the Schwarzschild metric which has been used in the majority of previous analyses.

In the past, the path of a particle could not be traced through a hypothetical wormhole. However, using the Eddington-Finkelstein metric, the physicist was able to achieve just that.

Koiran's paper was described in October 2021, in the preprint database arXiv , before being published in the Journal of Modern Physics D.

Alternate time travel theories

While Einstein's theories appear to make time travel difficult, some researchers have proposed other solutions that could allow jumps back and forth in time. These alternate theories share one major flaw: As far as scientists can tell, there's no way a person could survive the kind of gravitational pulling and pushing that each solution requires.

Infinite cylinder theory

Astronomer Frank Tipler proposed a mechanism (sometimes known as a Tipler Cylinder ) where one could take matter that is 10 times the sun's mass, then roll it into a very long, but very dense cylinder. The Anderson Institute , a time travel research organization, described the cylinder as "a black hole that has passed through a spaghetti factory."

After spinning this black hole spaghetti a few billion revolutions per minute, a spaceship nearby — following a very precise spiral around the cylinder — could travel backward in time on a "closed, time-like curve," according to the Anderson Institute. 

The major problem is that in order for the Tipler Cylinder to become reality, the cylinder would need to be infinitely long or be made of some unknown kind of matter. At least for the foreseeable future, endless interstellar pasta is beyond our reach.

Time donuts

Theoretical physicist Amos Ori at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel, proposed a model for a time machine made out of curved space-time — a donut-shaped vacuum surrounded by a sphere of normal matter.

"The machine is space-time itself," Ori told Live Science . "If we were to create an area with a warp like this in space that would enable time lines to close on themselves, it might enable future generations to return to visit our time."

Amos Ori is a theoretical physicist at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel. His research interests and publications span the fields of general relativity, black holes, gravitational waves and closed time lines.

There are a few caveats to Ori's time machine. First, visitors to the past wouldn't be able to travel to times earlier than the invention and construction of the time donut. Second, and more importantly, the invention and construction of this machine would depend on our ability to manipulate gravitational fields at will — a feat that may be theoretically possible but is certainly beyond our immediate reach.

Time travel has long occupied a significant place in fiction. Since as early as the "Mahabharata," an ancient Sanskrit epic poem compiled around 400 B.C., humans have dreamed of warping time, Lisa Yaszek, a professor of science fiction studies at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, told Live Science .  

Every work of time-travel fiction creates its own version of space-time, glossing over one or more scientific hurdles and paradoxes to achieve its plot requirements. 

Some make a nod to research and physics, like " Interstellar ," a 2014 film directed by Christopher Nolan. In the movie, a character played by Matthew McConaughey spends a few hours on a planet orbiting a supermassive black hole, but because of time dilation, observers on Earth experience those hours as a matter of decades. 

Others take a more whimsical approach, like the "Doctor Who" television series. The series features the Doctor, an extraterrestrial "Time Lord" who travels in a spaceship resembling a blue British police box. "People assume," the Doctor explained in the show, "that time is a strict progression from cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff." 

Long-standing franchises like the "Star Trek" movies and television series, as well as comic universes like DC and Marvel Comics, revisit the idea of time travel over and over. 

Related: Marvel movies in order: chronological & release order

Here is an incomplete (and deeply subjective) list of some influential or notable works of time travel fiction:

Books about time travel:

• Rip Van Winkle (Cornelius S. Van Winkle, 1819) by Washington Irving
• A Christmas Carol (Chapman & Hall, 1843) by Charles Dickens
• The Time Machine (William Heinemann, 1895) by H. G. Wells
• A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (Charles L. Webster and Co., 1889) by Mark Twain
• The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (Pan Books, 1980) by Douglas Adams
• A Tale of Time City (Methuen, 1987) by Diana Wynn Jones
• The Outlander series (Delacorte Press, 1991-present) by Diana Gabaldon
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Bloomsbury/Scholastic, 1999) by J. K. Rowling
• Thief of Time (Doubleday, 2001) by Terry Pratchett
• The Time Traveler's Wife (MacAdam/Cage, 2003) by Audrey Niffenegger
• All You Need is Kill (Shueisha, 2004) by Hiroshi Sakurazaka

Movies about time travel:

• Planet of the Apes (1968)
• Superman (1978)
• Time Bandits (1981)
• The Terminator (1984)
• Back to the Future series (1985, 1989, 1990)
• Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)
• Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989)
• Groundhog Day (1993)
• Galaxy Quest (1999)
• The Butterfly Effect (2004)
• 13 Going on 30 (2004)
• The Lake House (2006)
• Meet the Robinsons (2007)
• Hot Tub Time Machine (2010)
• Midnight in Paris (2011)
• Looper (2012)
• X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)
• Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
• Interstellar (2014)
• Doctor Strange (2016)
• A Wrinkle in Time (2018)
• The Last Sharknado: It's About Time (2018)
• Avengers: Endgame (2019)
• Tenet (2020)
• Palm Springs (2020)
• Zach Snyder's Justice League (2021)
• The Tomorrow War (2021)

Television about time travel:

• Doctor Who (1963-present)
• The Twilight Zone (1959-1964) (multiple episodes)
• Star Trek (multiple series, multiple episodes)
• Samurai Jack (2001-2004)
• Lost (2004-2010)
• Phil of the Future (2004-2006)
• Steins;Gate (2011)
• Outlander (2014-2023)
• Loki (2021-present)

Games about time travel:

• Chrono Trigger (1995)
• TimeSplitters (2000-2005)
• Kingdom Hearts (2002-2019)
• Prince of Persia: Sands of Time (2003)
• God of War II (2007)
• Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack In Time (2009)
• Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time (2013)
• Dishonored 2 (2016)
• Titanfall 2 (2016)
• Outer Wilds (2019)

Additional resources

Explore physicist Peter Millington's thoughts about Stephen Hawking's time travel theories at The Conversation . Check out a kid-friendly explanation of real-world time travel from NASA's Space Place . For an overview of time travel in fiction and the collective consciousness, read " Time Travel: A History " (Pantheon, 2016) by James Gleik. 

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Ailsa is a staff writer for How It Works magazine, where she writes science, technology, space, history and environment features. Based in the U.K., she graduated from the University of Stirling with a BA (Hons) journalism degree. Previously, Ailsa has written for Cardiff Times magazine, Psychology Now and numerous science bookazines. 

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Ncuti Gatwa Delights in Disney+’s Audacious and Adventurous ‘Doctor Who’: TV Review

By Aramide Tinubu

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As the new Doctor at the helm of the Tardis, the police box-shaped time-traveling ship, Ncuti Gatwa takes “ Doctor Who ” on a thrilling ride that doesn’t disappoint. The ancient alien and his latest companion, Ruby Sunday ( Millie Gibson ), embark on a vibrant season jammed with all the magical elements that have made the show a British television staple for 60 years.

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The episode opens with Ruby scoping out the Tardis and the Doctor explaining his origin on the planet Gallifrey. Intrigued by the knowledge, Ruby is overwhelmed when the Doctor activates his ship, landing them in the age of the dinosaurs. Since the Mesozoic Era wasn’t exactly human-friendly, their stay is brief, and they catapult into the future, landing in the 22nd century on a stinky space station run by a group of talking babies. While the episode is full of adorable tots and one very special guest star, its critiques of forced birth and Western societies’ refusal to protect children also resonate.

With the new season, Davies offers callbacks to past iterations of the show — with a twist. The Tardis has a stark white interior and backlit circles, echoing the original 1960s ship. However, the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver has been updated with a new look and bears a Rwandan proverb, a nod to Gatwa’s heritage.

Even with this new energy, some episodes are more riveting than others. Episode 2 leans into the twist-dancing and beehive hair of the ’60s. But it doesn’t quite come together, despite “Drag Race” winner Jinkx Monsoon’s appearance as the music-stealing Maestro. Yet the profound bond between Ruby and the Doctor keeps the season from ever going off-kilter. While the voyagers share a zest for excitement, their true connection is born of the sense of loss that simmers in both their hearts. The series’ strange adventures and the chemistry between the leads will be enough to keep viewers tuned in. But it’s Gatwa’s star turn that elevates the season. With his megawatt smile and colorful costumes, he dives into the role, delivering a refreshing dynamism that makes the season a uniquely mesmerizing watch.

The first two episodes of “Doctor Who” premiere May 10 on Disney+ with new episodes dropping weekly on Fridays.

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19 Time-Travel Dramas You Really Should Be Watching

A detective from 2000 and a cold case criminal profiler from 2015 solve old cases, as well as prevent new ones, by communicating through a mysterious walkie-talkie.

A man finds 9 magical incense sticks that allow him to travel 20 years back in time. He attempts to change the current world by saving his family from dangers 20 years ago, but the consequences are bigger than he can handle.

A detective accidentally travels to the future while chasing a serial killer through a mysterious tunnel. He discovers that the serial killer was never caught and continues to kill. With the help of the detectives in the future, he sets out to catch him once and for all.

4. Moon Lovers

An ordinary 21st-century woman gets transported back in time to year 941. She encounters royal princes of the Goryeo Dynasty and falls in love with the 8th prince.

5. Tomorrow, With You

A time traveling man foresees into the future to find himself living a miserable life. In order to change his fate, he marries a woman who ultimately teaches him how to love.

6. Saimdang, Light’s Diary

A Korean art history lecturer finds the mysterious diary of a historical figure named Saimdang. Through the diary, he tries to discover the truth behind her history.

7. Confession Couple

A divorced couple in their late-30s gets sent back in time to their college days. They try to change their life around by meeting new people, but destiny has its own plans.

8. Hit The Top

A famous idol travels to the future and meets his son, who is training to be an idol.

9. Live Up To Your Name

An oriental doctor from the past travels to the future and meets a doctor who firmly believes in modern medicine.

10. Splash Splash Love

A high school girl who has the ability to transport anywhere on a rainy day travels back to the Joseon dynasty, where she meets the young king.

11. Queen In Hyun’s Man

A noble-born scholar, who is the last remaining member of his family after a massacre, travels to the future and falls in love with an actress who stars in the drama about the massacre.

12. Rooftop Prince

A prince from the Joseon dynasty is sent to the future after he loses his lover. In the 21st century Seoul, he finds the reincarnation of his lost love who tries to help him back home.

13. Dr. Jin

A successful doctor travels back in time to the Joseon dynasty and meets a girl who looks exactly like his lover.

14. Somehow 18

A man travels back in time to try to save his first love who died when she was 18.

15. God’s Gift: 14 Days

A child gets kidnapped and is found dead. The mother of the child child travels back in time to save her child and catch the kidnapper.

16. Run Toward Tomorrow

A troublemaking high school student accidentally travels to the future, where he learns that his father was severely injured while looking for him. He tries to go back in time to change the future.

17. Manhole

A man travels between present and past in order to stop his ideal girlfriend from getting married.

18. Marry Him, If You Dare

A woman who regrets the choices she made in life travels back to her 32-year-old self, and tries to guide her away from making the same mistakes. One of the main mistakes being that she married the wrong person!

19. Bing Goo

A man from 1979 travels to the year 2016 and falls in love with a girl from the future.

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Books to read if you love Doctor Who

Whether you’re a seasoned TARDIS traveller or an occasional time-hopper, here are the books to read if you want to see all of time and space.

The Doctor is back – with a new face, a new companion, and brand-new adventures. The hit show returns to BBC1 on Saturday 11th May for the first series of a new era, with Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson taking over the reins of the TARDIS as the Fifteenth Doctor and companion Ruby Sunday, respectively.

Doctor Who has been entertaining the world for over 60 years, its continual renewal (or, more accurately, regeneration) bringing adventure and wonder to viewers of all ages.

And the adventures aren’t confined to our TV screens. The Doctor’s universe is vast, complicated and exciting – and there are plenty of novels about our favourite Time Lord to get lost in. Or, if you’re more of a fact and trivia fan, you can dive into a range of non-fiction books exploring the Whoniverse. There are also a fair few classic science-fiction books that have inspired the show's storylines, which will have you feeling like a time-travelling pro.

So, when you feel like swapping your sonic screwdriver and psychic paper for the pages of an absorbing book, here are our top reads for any fan of Doctor Who :

Must-read Doctor Who books

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New season of 'Doctor Who' on Disney+ makes history, blazes new path for main character

NEW YORK CITY -- The new season of "Doctor Who" is coming to Disney+ and it's breaking new ground for its iconic main role.

Since the BBC series debuted in 1963, only a handful of actors -- William Hartnell, David Tennant, and Matt Smith just to name a few -- have been lucky enough to step into the time-traveling extraterrestrial's shoes, or Tardis.

But a new era has arrived as Ncuti Gatwa is the 15th actor to take on the title character.

Gatwa is the first Black actor to play iconic lead role after 60 years.

"I think about time as well, about time and is a show that isabout time," said Gatwa. "And about input and lends itself so beautifully to inclusion. I think that like the show has been making people feel, has been giving people an outlet for escapism for a long time. It feels really beautiful to be at the helm of in this time that we're in."

Gatwa is joined in his adventures fighting of new monsters and villains by his companion, Ruby, played by Millie Gibson.

When asked by entertainment reporter Joelle Garguilo what is going on in the "Who-niverse," neither gave any spoilers, but acknowledged fans will be in for a thrill ride.

Showrunner, executive producer and writer Russell Davies said that viewers won't see much change this season from what made the show so legendary.

"Absolutely nothing," Davies said. "Everything is explained to you from scratch. We meet The Beatles, we go to 'Bridgerton,' but really Ncuti and Millie are the heart of the show."

"Doctor Who" hits Disney+ on May 9.

Disney is the parent company of this station.

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New Doctor Who Is a 45-Minute ‘Escape' From a ‘Difficult World,' Says Russell T Davies

Your appointment with the Fifteenth Doctor is nigh.

This Friday at 7/6c on Disney+, the TARDIS will embark on a new season of adventures, with Ncuti Gatwa - introduced in the December special "The Giggle" - at the helm, and impromptu companion Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson, from the holiday special "The Church on Ruby Road") at his side.

"Season 1," as the Gatwa/Gibson era is being called, opens on Friday with the cries of mysterious (and talking) space babies, followed by a second episode that cues up a malevolent Maestro. The eight-episode builds to a finale that will answers some questions, while raising new ones.

TVLine spoke with returning showrunner Russell T Davies about his play to bring 45-minute increments of "joy" to a "difficult" world.

TVLINE | First and foremost, settle the debate: Is this Season 1, or Season 14? It's Season 1. We previously had a Series 1, so don't worry about it. It's as timey-wimey as the rest of Doctor Who is.

TVLINE | Because I noticed, in the premiere, you sprinkled some exposition for any potential first-time viewers.

A lot of first-time viewers. I'm here for first-time viewers. It's what we want. We're on this bigger platform now, so it's an open door. Ruby Sunday walks into that TARDIS and says, "What do you mean, ‘TARDIS'?What's a police box?" It's designed to start for new viewers, while making old viewers feel very, very comfortable. It's a tightrope I've done before, to be honest, and I think we got it right.

TVLINE | How does Ruby's relationship with the Doctor subvert, or reinforce, previous dynamics we've seen on the series? Well, it's unusual, it's a new take on these two, in how much they correspond with their lives and their families. She comes in with an unusually strong story, which is she was a foundling left on the church doorstep on Christmas Eve in 2004. [ Ed. Note: Rose Tyler first met the Tenth Doctor just after midnight, on Jan. 1, 2005 .] That always takes me back, but that will be a spine of the show, and at the same time, before I came back [for the sci-fi series' 2005 revival], the Doctor had already discovered, in the show, that he was a foundling, that he'd been found abandoned as a child and taken in by the Time Lords. So, you've got the two of them corresponding in this way. They have an unusually detailed story that progresses subtly, slightly week by week, building up to a great, big series finale in which many things are answered. Some new questions are asked, as well, but you will be delivered of an ending. I can promise you that.

TVLINE | You said last week that people will be "screaming" when they watch the finale…. I did. Every time I watch it, my colleagues say, "Will you stop screaming at your own episode, please?" The penultimate episode, which is called "The Legend of Ruby Sunday," the cliffhanger to that…. It's a two-parter, so it has a proper cliffhanger leading [to the finale]. Genuinely, I sit and watch that if I need to wake myself up or give myself a thrill. I love it. I'm so proud of it.

TVLINE | What about Millie's chemistry with Ncuti struck you right out of the gate? Oh, it's amazing, and what I think is very unusual - because Millie is, what 19 years old? - is what an accomplished comedy performer she is. She's so funny. And it's not a comedy part, it's that she covers the full emotional range. She's heartfelt, heartbroken, passionate, angry as Ruby, but sometimes it's a very witty show, and you need to crack open the one-liners, and she does that so brilliantly for someone so young. And I didn't really spot that in the audition. We loved her. Full stop . When it actually came to shooting, that was quite an amazing thing to discover, and of course Ncuti bounces off that…. The two of them, it's like watching the most sizzling game of ping-pong you could ever imagine.

TVLINE | I was going to say, the two of them combined, there's this youthful energy and vibrance that just pops off the screen. Yes. Yes . That's what I wanted, exactly those words. And joy . I wanted joy to come off the screen. I think it's a difficult world these days. I think we can all spend the time watching the news being very, very worried, profoundly worried by what's happening in the world, and if Doctor Who can be 45 minutes of an escape from that, an oasis in which you will go through many emotions, I think you'll come out with a great big grin on your face. I think we need that a lot of television like that.

TVLINE | What do you think will make Ncuti a great Doctor? Well, Exhibit A - the episodes . There he is. It's beyond great. I consider myself to be magnificently lucky. In the year that I came back to [showrun] Doctor Who , that was the same year that he decided to leave Sex Education , and I am the luckiest man in the world, because he brings everything. He simply has that thing that you want in all great actors, but which is, nonetheless, very rare, which is a wide open range that is limitless.

He can do the heavy stuff. He can do the light stuff. He can do the stuff you can't imagine, which is the most important thing. Things that I've never planned or prepared for, he'll suddenly give the Doctor a look or a spin or a likeness or a complexity that brings the whole thing to life, and frankly, makes my writing look better, so I'm all for that. But I love him. I'm loving working with him.

TVLINE | Now, what happened back in January that there were these reports that Millie was going to be one-and-done? Because that seems like the kind of rumor the studio could have gotten ahead on. Do you think? I think if we start responding to Internet messages, I'd have no time for this interview. I'd still be chasing my tail, because by the time you've answered, the rumor's moved on. You just need to have the patience and confidence to know that these [Season 2] episodes are coming. There she is. She's magnificent. She's absolutely magnificent. The story is absolutely astonishing.

TVLINE | Lastly, and without spoiling anything about Episode 2, I have to rhetorically ask: Could anyone in the world have played the Maestro but Jinkx Monsoon? Again, we're lucky. How lucky are we that Jinkx had just been crowned the all-star of all-stars on [ RuPaul's ] Drag Race [ All Stars Season 7]? I went and saw Jinkx in Little Shop of Horrors last night. And [her Doctor Who appearance] was just before she'd gone and done Chicago , so she was already looking at more of an acting career, but still doing magnificent tours and coming out of Portland and doing sort of Christmas shows and things. It was good timing. I'm very glad we were able to make that offer. Brilliant.

Want scoop on Doctor Who , or for any other TV show? Email [email protected] , and your question may be answered via Matt's Inside Line!

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Perspective

When pto stands for 'pretend time off': doctors struggle to take real breaks.

Mara Gordon

A survey shows that doctors have trouble taking full vacations from their high-stress jobs. Even when they do, they often still do work on their time off. Wolfgang Kaehler/LightRocket via Getty Images hide caption

A survey shows that doctors have trouble taking full vacations from their high-stress jobs. Even when they do, they often still do work on their time off.

A few weeks ago, I took a vacation with my family. We went hiking in the national parks of southern Utah, and I was blissfully disconnected from work.

I'm a family physician, so taking a break from my job meant not seeing patients. It also meant not responding to patients' messages or checking my work email. For a full week, I was free.

Taking a real break — with no sneaky computer time to bang out a few prescription refill requests — left me feeling reenergized and ready to take care of my patients when I returned.

But apparently, being a doctor who doesn't work on vacation puts me squarely in the minority of U.S. physicians.

Research published in JAMA Network Open this year set out to quantify exactly how doctors use their vacation time — and what the implications might be for a health care workforce plagued by burnout, dissatisfaction and doctors who are thinking about leaving medicine.

"There is a strong business case for supporting taking real vacation," says Dr. Christine Sinsky , the lead author of the paper. "Burnout is incredibly expensive for organizations."

Shots - Health News

Health workers know what good care is. pandemic burnout is getting in the way.

Researchers surveyed 3,024 doctors, part of an American Medical Association cohort designed to represent the American physician workforce. They found that 59.6% of American physicians took 15 days of vacation or less per year. That's a little more than the average American: Most workers who have been at a job for a year or more get between 10 and 14 days of paid vacation time , according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

However, most doctors don't take real vacation. Over 70% of doctors surveyed said they worked on a typical vacation day.

"I have heard physicians refer to PTO as 'pretend time off,'" Sinsky says, referring to the acronym for "paid time off."

Sinsky and co-authors found that physicians who took more than three weeks of vacation a year had lower rates of burnout than those who took less, since vacation time is linked to well-being and job satisfaction .

And all those doctors toiling away on vacation, sitting poolside with their laptops? Sinsky argues it has serious consequences for health care.

Physician burnout is linked to high job turnover and excess health care costs , among other problems.

Still, it can be hard to change the culture of workaholism in medicine. Even the study authors confessed that they, too, worked on vacation.

"I remember when one of our first well-being papers was published," says Dr. Colin West , a co-author of the new study and a health care workforce researcher at the Mayo Clinic. "I responded to the revisions up at the family cabin in northern Minnesota on vacation."

Sinsky agreed. "I do not take all my vacation, which I recognize as a delicious irony of the whole thing," she says.

She's the American Medical Association's vice president of professional satisfaction. If she can't take a real vacation, is there any hope for the rest of us?

I interviewed a half dozen fellow physicians and chatted off the record with many friends and colleagues to get a sense of why it feels so hard to give ourselves a break. Here, I offer a few theories about why doctors are so terrible at taking time off.

We don't want to make more work for our colleagues

The authors of the study in JAMA Network Open didn't explore exactly what type of work doctors did on vacation, but the physicians I spoke to had some ideas.

"If I am not doing anything, I will triage my email a little bit," says Jocelyn Fitzgerald , a urogynecologist at the University of Pittsburgh who was not involved in the study. "I also find that certain high-priority virtual meetings sometimes find their way into my vacations."

Even if doctors aren't scheduled to see patients, there's almost always plenty of work to be done: dealing with emergencies, medication refills, paperwork. For many of us, the electronic medical record (EMR) is an unrelenting taskmaster , delivering a near-constant flow of bureaucratic to-dos.

When I go on vacation, my fellow primary care doctors handle that work for me, and I do the same for them.

But it can sometimes feel like a lot to ask, especially when colleagues are doing that work on top of their normal workload.

"You end up putting people in kind of a sticky situation, asking for favors, and they [feel they] need to pay it back," says Jay-Sheree Allen , a family physician and fellow in preventive medicine at the Mayo Clinic.

She says her practice has a "doctor of the day" who covers all urgent calls and messages, which helps reduce some of the guilt she feels about taking time off.

Still, non-urgent tasks are left for her to complete when she gets back. She says she usually logs in to the EMR when she's on vacation so the tasks don't pile up upon her return. If she doesn't, Allen estimates there will be about eight hours of paperwork awaiting her after a week or so of vacation.

"My strategy, I absolutely do not recommend," Allen says. But "I would prefer that than coming back to the total storm."

We have too little flexibility about when we take vacation

Lawren Wooten , a resident physician in pediatrics at the University of California San Francisco, says she takes 100% of her vacation time. But there are a lot of stipulations about exactly how she uses it.

She has to take it in two-week blocks — "that's a long time at once," she says — and it's hard to change the schedule once her chief residents assign her dates.

"Sometimes I wish I had vacation in the middle of two really emotionally challenging rotations like an ICU rotation and an oncology rotation," she says, referring to the intensive care unit. "We don't really get to control our schedules at this point in our careers."

Once Wooten finishes residency and becomes an attending physician, it's likely she'll have more autonomy over her vacation time — but not necessarily all that much more.

"We generally have to know when our vacations are far in advance because patients schedule with us far in advance," says Fitzgerald, the gynecologist.

Taking vacation means giving up potential pay

Many physicians are paid based on the number of patients they see or procedures they complete. If they take time off work, they make less money.

"Vacation is money off your table," says West, the physician well-being researcher. "People have a hard time stepping off of the treadmill."

A 2022 research brief from the American Medical Association estimated that over 55% of U.S. physicians were paid at least in part based on "productivity," as opposed to earning a flat amount regardless of patient volume. That means the more patients doctors cram into their schedules, the more money they make. Going on vacation could decrease their take-home pay.

But West says it's important to weigh the financial benefits of skipping vacation against the risk of burnout from working too much.

Physician burnout is linked not only to excess health care costs but also to higher rates of medical errors. In one large survey of American surgeons , for example, surgeons experiencing burnout were more likely to report being involved in a major medical error. (It's unclear to what extent the burnout caused the errors or the errors caused the burnout, however.)

Doctors think they're the only one who can do their jobs

When I go on vacation, my colleagues see my patients for me. I work in a small office, so I know the other doctors well and I trust that my patients are in good hands when I'm away.

Doctors have their own diagnosis: 'Moral distress' from an inhumane health system

But ceding that control to colleagues might be difficult for some doctors, especially when it comes to challenging patients or big research projects.

"I think we need to learn to be better at trusting our colleagues," says Adi Shah , an infectious disease doctor at the Mayo Clinic. "You don't have to micromanage every slide on the PowerPoint — it's OK."

West, the well-being researcher, says health care is moving toward a team-based model and away from a culture where an individual doctor is responsible for everything. Still, he adds, it can be hard for some doctors to accept help.

"You can be a neurosurgeon, you're supposed to go on vacation tomorrow and you operate on a patient. And there are complications or risk of complications, and you're the one who has the relationship with that family," West says. "It is really, really hard for us to say ... 'You're in great hands with the rest of my team.'"

What doctors need, says West, is "a little bit less of the God complex."

We don't have any interests other than medicine

Shah, the infectious disease doctor, frequently posts tongue-in-cheek memes on X (formerly known as Twitter) about the culture of medicine. Unplugging during vacation is one of his favorite topics, despite his struggles to follow his own advice.

His recommendation to doctors is to get a hobby, so we can find something better to do than work all the time.

"Stop taking yourself too seriously," he says. Shah argues that medical training is so busy that many physicians neglect to develop any interests other than medicine. When fully trained doctors are finally finished with their education, he says, they're at a loss for what to do with their newfound freedom.

Since completing his training a few years ago, Shah has committed himself to new hobbies, such as salsa dancing. He has plans to go to a kite festival next year.

Shah has also prioritized making the long trip from Minnesota to see his family in India at least twice a year — a journey that requires significant time off work. He has a trip there planned this month.

"This is the first time in 11 years I'm making it to India in summer so that I can have a mango in May," the peak season for the fruit, Shah says.

Wooten, the pediatrician, agrees. She works hard to develop a full life outside her career.

"Throughout our secondary and medical education, I believe we've really been indoctrinated into putting institutions above ourselves," Wooten adds. "It takes work to overcome that."

Mara Gordon is a family physician in Camden, N.J., and a contributor to NPR. She's on X as @MaraGordonMD .

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Why Wife of Doctor Who Drove Tesla Off Cliff Thinks His Return Home Will 'Restore Our Family'

“We are not a family without him," Neha Patel recently told a California judge of her husband Dharmesh Patel, who is accused of attempted murder

The wife of a doctor who is accused of driving his car off a California cliff with his family inside in January 2023 believes he should avoid prison time and return home to their family while receiving mental health treatment, claiming that his time in custody has been difficult for her and their two children.

"We need him in our lives and it has been over a year and a half since my children or I have seen or spoken to Dharmesh,” Neha Patel told a judge during a virtual court hearing on May 2, according to the San Francisco Chronicle . “We are not a family without him.”

“The mental health treatment … will not only restore him back to himself, but will restore our family,” Neha added.

Neha’s first public remarks come over 16 months after her husband Dharmesh A. Patel, then 40, allegedly drove his Tesla off a 250-foot cliff along Highway 1 in San Mateo County while she and their two children, a 7-year-old girl and 4-year-old boy, were inside.

The Jan. 2, 2023 crash occurred on a notorious stretch of highway on the state's coast known as " Devil's Slide ," which has been the location of several fatalities over the last five decades. 

Neha and the couple’s two children survived and Dharmesh, a local radiologist, was later charged with three counts of attempted murder, PEOPLE previously reported.

Two doctors have since testified that Dharmesh was suffering a psychotic episode at the time of the crash, leading him to believe that his children would be sex trafficked,  San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said in April, per the Los Angeles Times . Doctors for the defense also reportedly said he suffered from major depressive disorder.

At the hearing, Neha claimed her husband “never had an episode" in the 25 years that she knew him.

“Now that we understand and know he has a treatable condition, things will be different,” she said, per the L.A. Times. “I want members of the court to know the health and safety of my family is of paramount importance.”

Wagstaffe previously told PEOPLE that Neha allegedly told paramedics after they had plunged down the cliff that "he intentionally tried to kill us.”

"She made that statement when asked, 'What happened? What happened?' " the district attorney prosecuting the case said at the time. "'He intentionally tried to kill us.' … We have multiple people who heard her say that."

Dharmesh has pleaded not guilty to his charges, the L.A. Times reported. If granted a mental health diversion, he would be released from jail and put on a two-year treatment plan.

A judge has yet to determine whether Dharmesh’s mental state contributed to the crash.

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R.F.K. Jr. Says Doctors Found a Dead Worm in His Brain

The presidential candidate has faced previously undisclosed health issues, including a parasite that he said ate part of his brain.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has emphasized his vitality and relative youth compared with the leading Democratic and Republican candidates. Credit... Eduardo Munoz/Reuters

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By Susanne Craig

• May 8, 2024

In 2010, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was experiencing memory loss and mental fogginess so severe that a friend grew concerned he might have a brain tumor. Mr. Kennedy said he consulted several of the country’s top neurologists, many of whom had either treated or spoken to his uncle, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, before his death the previous year of brain cancer.

Several doctors noticed a dark spot on the younger Mr. Kennedy’s brain scans and concluded that he had a tumor, he said in a 2012 deposition reviewed by The New York Times. Mr. Kennedy was immediately scheduled for a procedure at Duke University Medical Center by the same surgeon who had operated on his uncle , he said.

While packing for the trip, he said, he received a call from a doctor at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital who had a different opinion: Mr. Kennedy, he believed, had a dead parasite in his head.

The doctor believed that the abnormality seen on his scans “was caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died,” Mr. Kennedy said in the deposition.

Now an independent presidential candidate, the 70-year-old Mr. Kennedy has portrayed his athleticism and relative youth as an advantage over the two oldest people to ever seek the White House: President Biden, 81, and former President Donald J. Trump, 77. Mr. Kennedy has secured a place on the ballots in Utah, Michigan, Hawaii and, his campaign says, California and Delaware. His intensive efforts to gain access in more states could put him in a position to tip the election.

He has gone to lengths to appear hale, skiing with a professional snowboarder and with an Olympic gold medalist who called him a “ripper” as they raced down the mountain. A camera crew was at his side while he lifted weights, shirtless, at an outdoor gym in Venice Beach.

Still, over the years, he has faced serious health issues, some previously undisclosed, including the apparent parasite.

For decades, Mr. Kennedy suffered from atrial fibrillation, a common heartbeat abnormality that increases the risk of stroke or heart failure. He has been hospitalized at least four times for episodes, although in an interview with The Times this winter, he said he had not had an incident in more than a decade and believed the condition had disappeared.

About the same time he learned of the parasite, he said, he was also diagnosed with mercury poisoning, most likely from ingesting too much fish containing the dangerous heavy metal, which can cause serious neurological issues.

“I have cognitive problems, clearly,” he said in the 2012 deposition. “I have short-term memory loss, and I have longer-term memory loss that affects me.”

In the interview with The Times, he said he had recovered from the memory loss and fogginess and had no aftereffects from the parasite, which he said had not required treatment. Asked last week if any of Mr. Kennedy’s health issues could compromise his fitness for the presidency, Stefanie Spear, a spokeswoman for the Kennedy campaign, told The Times, “That is a hilarious suggestion, given the competition.”

The campaign declined to provide his medical records to The Times. Neither President Biden nor Mr. Trump has released medical records in this election cycle. However, the White House put out a six-page health summary for President Biden in February. Mr. Trump released a three-paragraph statement from his doctor in November.

On Wednesday afternoon, hours after this article was published, Mr. Kennedy posted a comment on his X profile. “I offer to eat 5 more brain worms and still beat President Trump and President Biden in a debate,” the post read. “I feel confident in the result even with a six-worm handicap.”

Doctors who have treated parasitic infections and mercury poisoning said both conditions can sometimes permanently damage brain function, but patients also can have temporary symptoms and mount a full recovery.

Some of Mr. Kennedy’s health issues were revealed in the 2012 deposition, which he gave during divorce proceedings from his second wife, Mary Richardson Kennedy. At the time, Mr. Kennedy was arguing that his earning power had been diminished by his cognitive struggles.

Mr. Kennedy provided more details, including about the apparent parasite, in the phone interview with The Times, conducted when he was on the cusp of getting on his first state ballot. His campaign declined to answer follow-up questions.

In the days after the 2010 call from NewYork-Presbyterian, Mr. Kennedy said in the interview, he underwent a battery of tests. Scans over many weeks showed no change in the spot on his brain, he said.

Doctors ultimately concluded that the cyst they saw on scans contained the remains of a parasite. Mr. Kennedy said that he did not know the type of parasite or where he might have contracted it, though he suspected it might have been during a trip through South Asia.

Several infectious disease experts and neurosurgeons said in separate interviews with The Times that, based on what Mr. Kennedy described, they believed it was likely a pork tapeworm larva. The doctors have not treated Mr. Kennedy and were speaking generally.

Dr. Clinton White, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, said microscopic tapeworm eggs are sticky and easily transferred from one person to another. Once hatched, the larvae can travel in the bloodstream, he said, “and end up in all kinds of tissues.”

Though it is impossible to know, he added that it is unlikely that a parasite would eat a part of the brain, as Mr. Kennedy described. Rather, Dr. White said, it survives on nutrients from the body. Unlike tapeworm larvae in the intestines, those in the brain remain relatively small, about a third of an inch.

Some tapeworm larvae can live in a human brain for years without causing problems. Others can wreak havoc, often when they start to die, which causes inflammation. The most common symptoms are seizures, headaches and dizziness.

There are roughly 2,000 hospitalizations for the condition, known as neurocysticercosis, each year in the United States, according to the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases .

Scott Gardner, curator of the Manter Laboratory for Parasitology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said that once any worm is in a brain, cells calcify around it. “And you’re going to basically have almost like a tumor that’s there forever. It’s not going to go anywhere.”

Dr. Gardner said it was possible a worm would cause memory loss. However, severe memory loss is more often associated with another health scare Mr. Kennedy said he had at the time: mercury poisoning.

Mr. Kennedy said he was then subsisting on a diet heavy on predatory fish, notably tuna and perch, both known to have elevated mercury levels. In the interview with The Times, he said that he had experienced “severe brain fog” and had trouble retrieving words. Mr. Kennedy, an environmental lawyer who has railed against the dangers of mercury contamination in fish from coal-fired power plants , had his blood tested.

He said the tests showed his mercury levels were 10 times what the Environmental Protection Agency considers safe.

At the time, Mr. Kennedy also was a few years into his crusade against thimerosal, a mercury-containing preservative used in some vaccines. He is a longtime vaccine skeptic who has falsely linked childhood inoculations to a rise in autism, as well as to other medical conditions .

In the interview, Mr. Kennedy said he was certain his diet had caused the poisoning. “ I loved tuna fish sandwiches. I ate them all the time,” he said.

The Times described Mr. Kennedy’s symptoms to Elsie Sunderland, an environmental chemist at Harvard who has not spoken to Mr. Kennedy and responded generally about the condition.

She said the mercury levels that Mr. Kennedy described were high, but not surprising for someone consuming that quantity and type of seafood.

Mr. Kennedy said he made changes after these two health scares, including getting more sleep, traveling less and reducing his fish intake.

He also underwent chelation therapy, a treatment that binds to metals in the body so they can be expelled. It is generally given to people contaminated by metals, such as lead and zinc, in industrial accidents. Dr. Sunderland said that when mercury poisoning is clearly diet-related, she would simply recommend that the person stop eating fish. But another doctor who spoke to The Times said she would advise chelation therapy for the levels Mr. Kennedy said he had.

Mr. Kennedy’s heart issue began in college, he said, when it started beating out of sync.

In 2001 he was admitted to a hospital in Seattle while in town to give a speech, according to news reports. He was treated, and released the next day. He was hospitalized at least three additional times between September 2011 and early 2012, including once in Los Angeles, he said in the deposition. On that visit, he said, doctors used a defibrillator to shock his heart to reset the rhythm.

He said in the deposition that stress, caffeine and a lack of sleep triggered the condition. “It feels like there’s a bag of worms in my chest. I can feel immediately when it goes out,” he said.

He also said in the deposition and the interview that he had contracted hepatitis C through intravenous drug use in his youth. He said he had been treated and had no lingering effects from the infection.

Mr. Kennedy has spoken publicly about one other major health condition — spasmodic dysphonia, a neurological disorder that causes his vocal cords to squeeze too close together and explains his hoarse, sometimes strained voice.

He first noticed it when he was 42 years old, he said in the deposition. Mr. Kennedy for years made a significant amount of money giving speeches , and that business fell off as the condition worsened, he said.

He told an interviewer last year that he had recently undergone a procedure available in Japan to implant titanium between his vocal cords to keep them from involuntarily constricting.

Susanne Craig is an investigative reporter. She has written about the finances of Donald J. Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and has been a journalist for more than 30 years. More about Susanne Craig

Our Coverage of the 2024 Election

Presidential Race

President Biden announced the creation of an A.I. data center in Wisconsin , highlighting one of his administration’s biggest economic accomplishments in a battleground state — and pointing to a significant failure by former President Donald Trump.

Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, one of the top contenders to become Trump’s running mate, will host a fund-raiser that includes Republican donors who so far have been resistant to Trump .

After years in which his privacy has been fiercely guarded, Barron Trump, the former president’s youngest son, was chosen to be one of Florida’s delegates to the Republican National Convention .

Sensing Shift on Abortion:  Are Latinas — once considered too religious or too socially conservative to support abortion rights — changing their views on the issue? Demorcats are optimistic .

A Wild Card in Texas:  Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the independent presidential candidate, expects to be on the ballot in Texas. His addition could lend a hand to the Democratic challenger seeking to unseat Senator Ted Cruz .

1968 Looms:  As Chicago prepares to host the Democratic National Convention in August, the city wants to shed memories of chaos  from half a century ago even as protests are growing.

Talk of Escape:  At Washington dinner parties, dark jokes abound  about where to go into exile if Trump reclaims the White House.

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Stormy Daniels concludes her testimony as prosecutors call next witness

Rfk jr. claims doctor said parasite 'ate' part of his brain.

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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 's campaign on Wednesday responded to a New York Times report that described an incident where the independent candidate claimed a doctor told him that a parasitic worm was found in his brain more than a decade ago.

In a 2012 deposition during a divorce from his second wife, Kennedy revealed that a doctor found a dead parasite in his brain -- one of multiple health conditions Kennedy said may have caused what he described in the deposition as "cognitive problems" he had experienced at the time, according to according to The New York Times .

In a statement, Kennedy spokeswoman Stefanie Spear said the candidate contracted a parasite during his travel as an environmental advocate -- likely when he visited either Africa, South America or Asia.

MORE: RFK Jr.'s 'clever move' to help earn ballot access nationwide: Allying with little-known parties

"The issue was resolved more than 10 years ago, and he is in robust physical and mental health," Spear said. "Questioning Mr. Kennedy's health is a hilarious suggestion, given his competition."

Kennedy, 70, who is working to gain ballot access nationwide , is aiming to run against two of the oldest people to ever run for president: 81-year-old President Joe Biden and the presumptive Republican nominee, 77-year-old former President Donald Trump .

Doctors interviewed by ABC News say that the parasitic brain infection he described could cause a wide range of health problems, but the health impacts can also be relatively limited and short-lived for most people.

These types of infections are more common in lower-income countries, but in the United States they lead to an estimated 2,000 hospitalizations per year, according to the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases .

The parasite was discovered in 2010, when doctors scanning his brain concluded that a cyst there contained the remains of a parasite, Kennedy said, according to the New York Times.

In the deposition, the contents of which ABC News has not independently verified, Kennedy cited a doctor who told Kennedy he believed a parasite had eaten part of his brain before dying. Doctors interviewed by ABC News clarified that these types of parasites don't actually eat brain tissue. Rather, they absorb nutrients passively before dying.

MORE: RFK Jr.'s ability to sway 2024 election depends on ballot access: Where he stands

According to doctors interviewed by ABC News, an infection like this could lead to seizures, which could potentially cause short-lived memory problems as Kennedy described, but most patients would mount a full recovery. The health impact would all depend on the specific location of the parasite within the brain, and many other factors related to a person's health history.

However, the parasite is not the only medical issue Kennedy revealed in the deposition, as the Times reported he disclosed he had contracted mercury poisoning, something he attributed to a diet heavy on fish.

This is also plausible, according to doctors interviewed by ABC News. Similarly, mercury poisoning could potentially lead to cognitive issues, but in most cases, those issues are short-lived and a person can make a full recovery.

In an interview on Pushing the Limits podcast on Wednesday, Kennedy appeared to attribute the brain fog he had at the time to high levels of mercury.

"My mercury test came back sky high ... they were over 10 times what anybody considered safe. And I had that chelated out and all of that brain fog went away," Kennedy said.

Asked if he had made "a full recovery," Kennedy laughed and said, "Yeah."

Spear did not address the poisoning in her statement to ABC News. She also did not respond to a request to share Kennedy's medical records.

Later Wednesday, RFK Jr. tried to make light of the news about the parasitic worm.

"I offer to eat 5 more brain worms and still beat President Trump and President Biden in a debate," he posted on X.

RFK Jr. claims doctor said parasite 'ate' part of his brain originally appeared on abcnews.go.com

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Human-sounding AI can plan, help book your travel. But can you trust it?

It wasn’t so long ago that travelers planned trips without the internet.

“Back in the day, our parents used to go to these travel agents and really kind of express what they were looking for and what kind of vacation they wanted,” said Saad Saeed, co-founder and CEO of Layla, an AI travel planner whose website launched this year. “Slowly, we kind of acclimatized ourselves to start using these search boxes, clicks, these forms and filters.”

Artificial intelligence-driven tools like Layla can now turn back the clock on that experience, engaging with users almost like humans to customize travel plans with lightning speed plus all the resources of the web. But does AI actually make travel planning easier and can it compare to human expertise? 

Yes and no. Here’s why.

Can AI actually understand us?

It can try. 

“What are you personally looking for in this trip and what do you want out of it?” asked Saeed. “Do you want to reconnect with your partner, for example, or do you want to just feel some adventure and thrill?” 

A human travel agent may ask a series of questions to understand a client’s needs. So can generative AI , which picks up on keywords. Mindtrip, an AI planner launched publicly on May 1, has an actual travel quiz that asks users to rank priorities like “Is your ideal vacation day an exhilarating adventure or a relaxing break?” using sliding scales.

“What we get at the end of that quiz, using the AI, is a really customized description,” explained  Mindtrip Founder and CEO Andy Moss. That then informs what the AI suggests to the traveler. 

Informed suggestions can save users time in narrowing down destinations and experiences, as well as  introduce places users may never have discovered on their own.

AI travel planning is here: How to use it to plan your next vacation and what you should know first

Can AI fully replace humans?

No. Layla may sound human, using conversational phrases like “I've got three cozy nests that won't make your wallet cry.”

“She has a personality. We try to make her funny and so on, where it's really that friend that can get to know you and then recommend you the perfect stuff,” Saeed said.

But part of Layla’s expertise comes from the real-life experiences of some 1,600 travel content creators  the Berlin-based platform has partnered with. Their videos and insights can give users a richer picture of what to expect.

Mindtrip also leans on human expertise, having tapped a limited group of travel influencers for curated content with plans to eventually open it up so anyone can share their travel itineraries and experiences with the public.

Story continues below.

Is AI a threat to privacy?

With all the rapid advancements in AI in just the past year, some users are wary of its safety .

“Data privacy is definitely one of our biggest concerns, and we ensure that none of the personal identifiable information ever reaches basically the model providers. That will all stay with us,” Layla’s Saeed said. “None of their personally identifiable data can ever be basically used to profile them or basically go into any of these systems, which are training these different models.”

Booz Allen Hamilton, the nation’s largest provider of AI to the federal government , focuses heavily on ethical and  secure AI, as well as adhering to the government’s policies on data collection. 

“We collect as little information as we can in order to provide a secure transaction,” said Booz Allen Hamilton Senior Vice President Will Healy, who heads up their recreation work, including Recreaton.gov , the government’s central travel planning site for public lands like national parks. “We don't save your searches. We don't save your credit card data. We're very careful about the data that we store.”

Yoon Kim, an assistant professor in MIT’s Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department and Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory , isn’t too worried about security in the initial brainstorming stages of travel planning with AI.

“I don't see, at this point, how AI-generated advice is spiritually different from travel guide articles that you might read on certain websites,” he said. “Travel planning is one really nice use case of these models, as narrow as it is, because it's a scenario in which you want to be given ideas but you don't actually need to commit to them.” 

What’s next for AI? 

Things could be different, though, if AI is used beyond trip planning. Deloitte sees AI being woven into all parts of travel.

“There is an opportunity for a real engine – I'm going to just use a generic term, engine – that allows you to search and pull it all together and to sort based off of your personal reasons for prioritization and then not stopping at ‘hey give me a list’ or ‘here's what to do,’ but ‘OK, now go create my itinerary, help me book it, track it all the way through that travel process,” said Matt Soderberg, principal, U.S. airlines leader for Deloitte. 

Deloitte’s Facing travel’s future report, released in early April, identifies seven stages where AI can intersect with a trip, from personalized recommendations based on past travel, online purchases and tendencies to day-of issues to a post-travel pulse, where travelers may be asked about their experience and start thinking about future trips. 

“When you solve across all of those, that's going to be the Holy Grail,” Soderberg said. “The difficulty is that doesn't all sit in one place. And so how do you get the right information and the right data to bring all of that together for a single experience for the consumer? And who's going to own that?”

Layla and Mindtrip, among others, already offer booking through partners like Booking.com. “It's all about making things actionable,” Moss said.

But for now, if issues come up mid-trip, AI tools can’t fix them like humans can. Humans still have to get involved.

Her family thought her death was a tragic accident. It was years before the truth came out.

Theresa Neubauer was at work five years ago at a Georgia university when she got a phone call that stunned her.

Her son-in-law — a prominent fertility doctor who’d authored or edited several medical books — had just been arrested on suspicion of murder in the mysterious death of her daughter, Susann Sills, 45.

Susann’s body had been found at the bottom of a staircase in the couple's suburban Southern California home in 2016.

Up until that April 2019 phone call, Neubauer said, her family hadn’t even known that authorities were investigating the death as suspicious. She’d viewed her daughter’s husband, Scott Sills, 59, as a man who’d lost his wife in a tragic accident, she said, and she viewed herself as his ally as he raised the couple’s twins on his own.

“I thought the police were satisfied with the investigation — that he had nothing to do with it and he was this poor single father,” Neubauer told “Dateline” in her family’s first interview. 

“I hadn’t thought of him as a threat in any way,” she said. “It did not enter my mind.”

During Sills' murder trial last year, the prosecutor said there had been a violent struggle that ended with him strangling his wife and staging her body on the staircase. His lawyer attributed the death to an accidental fall.

Sills was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced in March to 15 years to life in prison.

At the bottom of the stairs

On the morning of Nov. 16, 2016, Sills dialed 911 and said that he’d found his wife’s body at the bottom of the stairs in their home in San Clemente, roughly 60 miles south of Los Angeles. 

“I don’t have a pulse, and she’s cold,” he told the 911 operator, according to audio of the call.

Paramedics arrived minutes later, and Susann was pronounced dead at 6:35 a.m., her death certificate shows.

When Sills told his mother-in-law what happened in a phone call the next day, Neubauer recalled him saying that he’d heard a noise overnight but didn’t bother checking since the couple had two dogs and 12-year-old twins.

“There’s always noise in the house at night — somebody’s always doing something — so it didn’t concern him,” she recalled Sills saying. “But then in the morning, he found her downstairs.”

Sills told investigators from the Orange County Sheriff’s Department that he thought his wife’s death was a tragic result of migraine medication that may have caused her to lose her balance and tumble down the stairs, investigator Eric Hatch told “Dateline.”

Neubauer believed her daughter must’ve suffered a sudden and unexpected ailment — an aneurysm, perhaps — because she had always been especially agile and graceful. She’d done ballet and gymnastics as a child, Neubauer said, and as a teenager, she’d been a cheerleader and ran hurdles. 

As an adult, Susann — who helped her husband run their fertility clinic, the Center for Advanced Genetics — even made an audition video for the reality show “Survivor.”

“She never fell,” Neubauer said. “She didn’t even fall when she was a child.”

Neubauer said she wanted the detectives to know how “physically capable” her daughter was. When she related that information, she said, one of the investigators responded: “Yes, well, but accidents do happen.”

“Which, of course, is true,” Neubauer said. “I had no reason to think they would not have done a thorough investigation. So I thought it was done and it was over.”

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Another investigator looking into the death, Dave Holloway, described their communication with the family as typical for a law enforcement investigation: sympathetic but limited. 

“We wouldn’t come right out and tell the family that it was definitely an accident,” he said. “We wouldn’t come out and say it was definitely a murder. We would tell them that we are conducting our investigation because at some point, we may need to ask them questions and we wouldn’t want to prejudice their answers.”

A fight, injuries and a topless photo 

That meant Susann's relatives were unaware that investigators found possible evidence early on indicating that there could be more to her death than her husband’s theory suggested. 

In the bedroom where she had slept the night of her death, the detectives found hair and bloodstains on a curtain and baseboard, Hatch said. A preliminary autopsy showed that she suffered a considerable number of injuries, including what appeared to be defensive wounds on her arms and a ligature mark across her neck, he said.

Her husband also had an injury that the detectives found suspicious — a fresh-looking laceration on his head that he’d covered with a beanie, Hatch said. When detectives questioned Sills about it, Hatch recalled, he said it had happened while fixing his car a few days earlier. He denied knowing anything about the blood in the bedroom, Hatch said.

The investigators also found evidence that there may have been problems in the couple’s relationship. One of their children recalled his parents arguing the night of Susann’s death, Hatch said, and text messages showed her telling her husband that she was “trapped” and would “never be free.”

In Sills’ office, the detectives found a cryptic note — a message they later learned was linked to a bet Susann had made on a conservative website that Donald Trump would win the 2016 presidential election. 

When Trump won, Hatch said, Susann fulfilled her end of the bet and posted a topless photo of herself on the site. The message, which had been printed out and was sitting on Sills’ printer, was in response to her photo. 

“All I’ve got to say is you must have a super cool husband,” the message said.

“That told me that this posting had been on someone’s mind,” Holloway said. “That wasn’t something that just happened to be up there that day.”

When investigators asked Sills about the note, he denied printing it and said his wife had probably put it there. The argument was about his wife needing to get rest when she wasn’t feeling well, Hatch recalled Sills saying, and the texts were about finances in their business, according to his lawyer.

A long-awaited cause of death

Despite the detectives’ suspicions about Sills, the coroner was yet to determine the cause or manner of his wife's death. That process took a year.

Elise Hatcher, a former Orange County prosecutor who later handled the case, attributed the delay to the complexity of the woman’s injuries. With gunshots or stabbings, she told “Dateline,” the cause of death is clear and it’s far easier for prosecutors to file charges in those cases.

But with Susann, Hatcher said, the case couldn’t move forward until the coroner completed extensive testing looking at the ligature marks and her neck structure. 

“They’re very methodical,” Hatcher said. “In this case, it took a very long time.”

By November 2017, that testing was finally complete: Susann's death was a homicide, Hatch said. She’d been strangled with a ligature. 

Forensic testing showed that the blood in the bedroom belonged to both the dead woman and her husband, Holloway said. Stains on a shirt that Sills wore in the aftermath of his wife’s death that he attributed to chocolate milk were actually her blood, Holloway said, and his blood was found under her fingernails. 

While a toxicology analysis found pain medication in Susann's system, there didn’t appear to be enough to affect her balance, according to the report.

As the investigators worked 

Susann’s relatives had no idea about the coroner’s findings. Nor was her mother aware of any problems in the couple’s relationship. Neubauer said she spoke with her daughter weekly, and the only issues Susann's related to her about her husband were minor.

“If there was a problem there, she never brought it up,” Neubauer said. “And she was not the meek kind of person.”

After Susann's death, Neubauer said, she’d remained in touch with Sills about the twins and found they worked well together. For a vacation to the Caribbean with his wife’s family, Sills updated the twins’ passports, filled out all the paperwork for diving classes and “seemed very happy about it,” she said.

“He did nothing to prevent them from coming out and being with us,” she said. 

For Sills, life continued as though he were not the subject of a homicide investigation.

Sympathetic neighbors said they organized prayers and meal drop-offs while Sills continued to raise their twins at the home where his wife died. He appeared on a Las Vegas radio show to discuss the dangers of a now-discontinued birth control device, and he worked on a new book, “Ovarian Reboot: A Personal Journey to Hormone & Fertility Renewal.”

The detectives, meanwhile, had returned to Sills and interviewed him again about the results from the coroner and the forensics testing. He was cooperative, Hatch said, but “he didn’t have an answer. He continued to deny that he had anything to do with Susann’s death — that it was an accident or she fell down the stairs.”

Although the investigation hadn’t uncovered a clear motive, investigators believed Sills was responsible in the murder of his wife and forwarded their findings to the Orange County District Attorney’s Office. Hatcher, the prosecutor assigned to the case, said that by the time she reviewed the two boxes of evidence, it had been roughly two years since Susann’s death.

“I felt very disturbed for the family and for Susann that it took so long to get to the bottom of it,” Hatcher said. “But by the time I reviewed it, there was enough there.”

Hatcher said she came to believe there had been a violent struggle in the bedroom where the blood was found. That struggle ended with Sills strangling his wife and staging her body on the stairs, she said. 

His lawyer, Jack Earley, maintained that Susann's death was from an accidental fall and said the ligature marks may have come from her dogs tightly pulling a scarf that had been found around her neck. 

On April 25, 2019, as Sills drove to work, undercover deputies pulled him over and arrested the doctor on suspicion of murder. 

Hatcher alerted Neubauer to the news, and five years later — after Covid-related delays — she was in court when her son-in-law went on trial. A jury convicted Sills of second-degree murder.

“Initially, there’s a moment of relief,” she said, recalling what it was like to hear the guilty verdict. “And then after that — but there’s no Susann. And there never will be.”

Tim Stelloh is a breaking news reporter for NBC News Digital.

Michelle Madigan is a producer for "Dateline."