It's canon that The Master, the most evil being in the Doctor Who universe, watches The Clangers, a children's TV show, and tries to understand the culture it depicsts. The prosaic explanation is that he isn't aware it's fiction. But what if he knows something we don't... This presentation was prepared for a symposium on Clangers at the UK National SF Convention in 2009.

1. Space-Time for Clangers
A possible explanation of certain
anomalies in the apparent structure of
the Clanger planet.
Marcus L. Rowland

2. No Clanger would have believed,
in the first years of the 1970s,
that their world was being
watched by an intelligence vaster
and less sympathetic than any
Clanger...

3. But why were the Time Lords interested
in such a small insignificant world?
Perhaps its size is itself the clue…
Everything that we know about it leads to one
inescapable conclusion…
It’s bigger on the inside
than on the outside!

4. The interior of the Clanger planet is a tunnel
complex whose volume appears to exceed
that of the outer planet.

5. The gravity behaves oddly:
• It fades rapidly with altitude.
• Passing objects are not attracted to the
surface, they must be pulled down.
• Gravity does not increase inside.
Where else have we seen these phenomena?

6. The Clanger “planet” appears to
be an example of Time Lord
dimensional engineering.
The only off-world use for this
technology we’ve seen is in the
TARDIS and its sister ships.
Could the entire world be an
abandoned TARDIS?

7. • It is in an area where alien species and
odd alien devices often appear.
• Such areas are known as “rifts”
• The TARDIS recharges on “rift energy”
Hypothesis 1: A TARDIS developed a
dangerous fault while recharging and
was subsequently abandoned by its
occupants.

8. Hypothesis 2: The doors were left open,
or were non-operational.
Hypothesis 3: If left in space, a TARDIS
will camouflage itself as a moon or
planetoid, even a full-sized planet, if
that will ensure that it goes unnoticed.
Note the example of the planet Calufrax,
originally part of the Key to Time, a
relatively small device.

9. Hypothesis 4: It was subsequently
colonised by creatures from the rift,
such as the Clangers.
Hypothesis 5: A TARDIS is aware of the
needs of its occupants, and provides
appropriate quarters, food, etc.
The Clangers were cave-dwellers on
their native world, and the interior of
the TARDIS was shaped accordingly.

10. Given this history, why would a Time
Lord such as The Master be interested
in an inoperable TARDIS?
Hypothesis 6: The Clanger TARDIS
may be repairable to some extent.
Given the Master’s history, this is not
good news for the rest of the universe.

11. Hypothesis 7: If the Clanger TARDIS is
repairable, it is NOT repairable as a
functioning time machine
•The Master has gone to great lengths
to steal alternatives.
•He has not been shown attempting to
repair the Clanger machine.

12. Hypothesis 8: The Master knows that
the Clanger TARDIS is charging at a
Rift. He plans to use the energy it
accumulates for his own purposes.
But what are his purposes?

13. Hypothesis 9: The Master has made it
clear that he regards the universe as
expendable, if he does not control it.
Hypothesis 10: A planet sized TARDIS
left to accumulate Rift energy is the
ultimate doomsday device. Sooner or
later it will explode and take the
universe with it.

14. The conclusion is inevitable. The
Master intends to use the Clanger
TARDIS to destroy the whole of space-
time, probably after his death.
In order to prevent this the Clanger
TARDIS must be destroyed. A funding
proposal for this project will be
submitted at the next meeting of this
symposium.