This article was taken from the April 2012 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
Time is "a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff", according to the Doctor; David McCandless's dizzying diagram of the time lord's travels -- crowdsourced with the help of hardcore Whovians -- sees it as more of a day-glo spaghetti heap. Either way, keeping tabs on his trips is no easy task, as the designers of a new Doctor Who video game discovered. "It was tough to work out how many time periods to produce," says Nick Dixon, lead designer on Doctor Who: The Eternity Clock. "We have the beginning at the end and the end at the beginning, and it all wraps around full circle."
Dixon settled on four time zones (Elizabethan, Victorian, present day and the future), all of which are connected.
Gamers must change events in the past, so the Doctor can progress in the future. For a low-budget game it's an ambitious idea, "But this isn't Grand Theft Gallifrey, or Doctor Skyrim," says Dixon. "We had to stick to only a few environments - pay attention to how those change, and you'll solve the puzzles." As for our infographic, let us know if we've missed anything -- we'll go back in time and change it...
View the full-screen, high-resolution version in our gallery.
Key:
Light green: Hartnell
Red: Troughton
Orange: Pertwee
Purple: T Baker
Dark Green: Davidson
Dark pink: C Baker
Yellow: McCoy
Brown: McGann
White: Eccelston
Light pink: Tennant
Blue: Smith
Dotted lines: Guestimated origin based on previous episodes
Doctor Who: The Eternity Clock is out in March for PS3, PS Vita and PC.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
