Plot

[edit] "Space"

Amy is trying to get the Doctor's attention while he fixes the TARDIS. She discovers that Rory is helping the Doctor by installing thermal couplings underneath the glass floor of the TARDIS. Rory and Amy then start a small argument, when the TARDIS suddenly shakes and the lights go out. The Doctor asks Rory if he dropped a thermal coupling, which Rory admits to and apologises for doing. Amy then apologises as well, and, at the Doctor's confusion, explains that Rory was looking up her skirt through the glass floor when he dropped the thermal coupling. The Doctor then notes that they have landed through "emergency materialisation" which should have landed the TARDIS in the safest space available. The lights come on, revealing another TARDIS inside the control room - the TARDIS has materialised inside itself. The Doctor experimentally walks through the door of the TARDIS inside the control room and instantly walks back into the control room through the door of the outer TARDIS. The Doctor tells Rory and Amy that they are trapped in a "space loop" and that nothing can enter or exit the TARDIS ever again. Despite the Doctor's words, another Amy walks through the TARDIS door.

[edit] "Time"

Continuing from the ending of "Space", the other Amy reveals that she is from a few moments in the future, and is able to come into the current outer TARDIS because "the exterior shell of the TARDIS has drifted forwards in time". The other Amy knows what to say and do because, from her perspective, she is repeating what she heard herself say earlier on. The Doctor sends the current Amy into the TARDIS within the current TARDIS, in order to "maintain the timeline". However, not long before the current Amy is gone when another pair of Rory and Amy walk in through the door of outer TARDIS, explaining that the Doctor, from their perspective, just sent them into the inner TARDIS. The current Doctor promptly sends the current Rory and now current Amy through the inner TARDIS. The Doctor then explains that he will set up a "controlled temporal implosion" in order to "reset the TARDIS", but in order to do so he must know which lever to use on the control panel. Moments after he speaks, another Doctor walks though the outer TARDIS door and tells him to use "the wibbly lever", which he quickly pulls, then steps into the inner TARDIS to tell his past self which lever to use. The inner TARDIS dematerialises while the outer TARDIS (being the same TARDIS) does the same, and the Doctor assures Amy and Rory that they are now back in "normal flight", and then advises Amy to "put some trousers on".

[edit] Continuity

The situation where a TARDIS materialised within a TARDIS in a recursive loop has occured before in previous episodes in the Third Doctor and Fourth Doctor's era, "The Time Monster" and "Logopolis". However, in both cases, it was the Master's TARDIS that had joined with the Doctor's, whereas in "Space" and "Time", the same TARDIS materialised within itself.

In attempting to explain "conceptual space" to Rory, the Doctor used the analogy of the curve of a banana, the mentioning of which being a running joke since the episodes of the Ninth Doctor.

Amy's line "Ok kids. This is where it gets complicated" is similar to one she delivered in "The Big Bang".

[edit] Production

This is the third charity short produced since the program's return in 2005, the other two having been made for Children in Need. The first, with an official title of only "Doctor Who: Children in Need", aired in 2005. The second, "Time Crash" (also written by Moffat, and also featuring a time loop and ontological paradox), aired in 2007. An earlier charity short in aid of Comic Relief, The Curse of Fatal Death, also written by Moffat, aired in 1999. This story also involved a time loop within a time loop.

[edit] Broadcast and reception

The Guardian responded positively, noting it "manages brilliantly to nod to just about every Whovian in-joke, demographic and fetish within the span of two tiny instalments". ^[1]

[edit] References