CROSSING ZONE: THE DOCTOR AND "THE LAST FLIGHT"

I've written in the past about how the Quantum Leap project in New Mexico created rogue temporal wormholes which ended up scattered across the American Southwest. They were responsible for the events chronicled in 'The Twilight Zone' episodes "One Hundred Yards Over The Rim" and "The 7th Is Made Up Of Phantoms".

Time Travel creates excess temporal energy which should be responsibly stored to prevent such occurrences. This is probably even true of the temporal engines in the TARDIS, which - like the temporal engines at the Two Streams facility on Apaluchia (as seen in "The Girl Who Waited) - need to vent every so often to prevent an overload.

Yeah, I'm just talking out of my ass.....

The Doctor must have guidelines as to when and where he can vent this temporal build-up, and I would think the safest place would be in the upper atmosphere of Earth (since he's always hanging around the big blue marble) at some point in the past when Mankind didn't have the means to reach such heights. (He couldn't just vent it into space, because no matter how far in the past he went, there were always going to be space-faring aliens who might get caught in those temporal wormholes when they swooped by to buzz Earth Prime-Time.)

When the Doctor fled to the Norfolkshire region of Great Britain in 1913 to elude the "Family of Blood", he may have paused long enough in 1917 to make an emergency venting of those temporal energies in the upper atmosphere over France. Perhaps it was supposed to serve as a ruse to make the Family of Blood think that he was in that time period, rather than in England four years earlier.

At any rate, I think it was the Doctor who was responsible for the creation of the mysterious white cloud that formed a temporal wormhole between March 5, 1917 and March 5, 1959 over Reims, France.

From Wikipedia (slightly revised):

Second Lieutenant Terry Decker, of the British Royal Flying Corps, lands his World War I era biplane on an American airbase in France, after flying through a strange cloud. He is immediately taken into custody and questioned by the American base commander General Harper and his deputy, Major Wilson, who ask Decker if he was trying to make a film or was part of an air show. Decker identifies himself and his squadron and informs the American officers that the day is March 5, 1917. He is then informed that the day is not actually March 5, 1917, but the day is March 5, 1959, and Decker realizes that he traveled 42 years into the future.

(By the way, that 42 year span in Time utilized one of "The Numbers" from the Valenzetti Equation oft mentioned in 'Lost'.)

Because the TARDIS is a sentient being which often takes the Doctor where he needs to go rather than where he wants to go, perhaps "she" took the initiative to vent those temporal energies in order to ensure that Decker would carry through with his destiny.....

BCnU!