Original artwork, not a still
It's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff.
— Doctor Who • 2005
Behind the line
What it means
Our interpretation.
It is a joke at the expense of explaining time travel: the Doctor skips the physics and gives you a shrug in the form of a catchphrase. Fans took it up as shorthand for any plot that loops back on itself, and the wording gave the show a phrase that works as technobabble and as an affectionate admission that it cannot really be explained.
Context reviewed
In context
Spoilers for Doctor WhoShow the scene
In "Blink" (2007), the Doctor-light episode written by Steven Moffat, the Tenth Doctor appears mostly through a recording that answers one side of a conversation with Sally Sparrow, who is being hunted by the Weeping Angels. Explaining how he can reply to a conversation that has not happened yet, he describes time as a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff. The phrase was picked up by the story itself: in 1969 the Doctor builds a Timey-Wimey Detector, a modified lunch box that detects someone from a different time.
Sources (1)
- Tardis Data Core: BlinkInfobox and plotReference checked
Context reviewed
