glass said:
Time flowed at the same rate while the portal was connected. Each time it disconnected it jumped forward again. This was by design: the clockworks were deliberately scanning through her life, looking for the right time.
No, the droids were scanning through her life by opening
multiple time windows, each one locked to a particular period (apart from the faulty fireplace). From the conversation with the female repair droid:
DROID: She is incomplete.
DOCTOR: What, so that's the plan, then? Just keep opening up more and more time windows, scanning her brain, checking to see if she's done yet?
If the fireplace's jumping forward was deliberate on the part of the droids, they would have had no need to make any other time windows.
There are at least two things wrong with this theory. For one thing, the 'loose connection' was caused by Rainette's moving the fireplace.
No, it wasn't. It was explicitly stated to be present from the start. From the scene where the Doctor first appears in Reinette's room:
DOCTOR: We were talking. Just a moment ago. I was in your fireplace.
YOUNG REINETTE: Monsieur, that was weeks ago. That was months.
DOCTOR: Really? Hmm... [
starts tapping fireplace] Must be a loose connection. Need to get a man in.
If you were correct then there would have been no jump between looking through the fireplace and moving through it at the beginning, because it was still in Rainette's childhood room at that point.
No. As I said, it was the action of operating the fireplace -- going through it from the ship to Versailles -- which jogged the loose connection and caused it to jump to a different time.
Secondly, the jump forward through Rainette's life occured with all the portals, not just the one in the fireplace.
Eh? All of the portals were at fixed points in Reinette's life, except the fireplace.