Time War (Doctor Who)
The Time War, also called the Last Great Time War,[2][3] is a conflict within the fictional universe of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. The war occurs between the events of the 1996 film and the 2005 revived series, with the Time Lords fighting the Daleks until the apparent mutual destruction of both races. The war was frequently mentioned when the show returned,[4][5] but was not directly seen until the show's 50th anniversary special.[1]
Over the course of several episodes, the conflict is only implied by short clues and comments, particularly the discussion in the 2007 episode "The Sound of Drums",[6] and part two of the 2010 episode "The End of Time".[7] The Time War is finally depicted in the 50th anniversary special "The Day of the Doctor", featuring the climax of the final battle and the Time Lords' fate.[1]
The Last Great Time War[edit]
Origins[edit]
The Last Great Time War pitted the Time Lords of Gallifrey against the Daleks of Skaro.[2][1] The specific incident that sparked the conflict remains unclear, but according to executive producer Russell T Davies, the origins dated back to conflicts between the Doctor and the Daleks. In Genesis of the Daleks (1975), the Time Lords—having foreseen the possibility of the Daleks conquering the universe—send the Fourth Doctor into the past in an attempt to avert the Daleks' creation, affect their development to make them less aggressive, or discover an inherent weakness they could exploit.[8][9][10]
In retaliation for this ultimately unsuccessful mission, the Daleks attempt to infiltrate the High Council of the Time Lords with duplicates of the Fifth Doctor in Resurrection of the Daleks (1984), followed by an open declaration of hostilities by one of the Dalek Emperors in Remembrance of the Daleks (1988).[11][12][13]
Two specific events led up to the outbreak of the war: a peace treaty was attempted by President Romana under the "Act of Master Restitution". This attempt was followed by the "Etra Prime Incident" (The Apocalypse Element), which some say "began the escalation of events". Weapons used by the Time Lords included Bowships, Black Hole Carriers and N-Forms (the last from Davies' 1996 New Adventures novel Damaged Goods), while the Daleks wielded "the full might of the Deathsmiths of Goth" (from the comic strip story Black Legacy by Alan Moore and David Lloyd) and launched a massive fleet led by the Emperor into the vortex.[11][14][15][16]
Progression[edit]
The 'duration' and extent of the War has been unclear. The statement made by Jack Harkness in "The Parting of the Ways" – confirmed by the Doctor – that the Daleks "vanished out of time and space" to fight the War, would indicate that it was not waged in normal space-time.[17] Nonetheless, there was fighting on the planet Gallifrey.[1] At some point, however, the conflict engulfed a sufficient bulk of the cosmos for Cass, a character from "The Night of the Doctor", to declare that the Daleks and Time Lords had not yet succeeded in their efforts to destroy it - some of it was "still standing".[18] Several races hostile to the Time Lords, e.g. the Sontarans, wished to participate but were forbidden to do so.[19]
The Doctor claims to have fought on the front lines and was present at the Fall of Arcadia.[1][20] Arcadia was Gallifrey's second city fortified with four hundred "sky trenches". These were thought to be impregnable until an invading Dalek squadron swept them away (as seen in the 2013 mini-episode "The Last Day").[21]
The 2013 mini-episode "The Night of the Doctor" reveals that the Eighth Doctor at first was a conscientious objector, instead working to help where he could. This led him to attempt to save a woman from a spaceship crashing towards the planet Karn, who refused his aid because he was a Time Lord, apparently believing that the Time Lords had become just as destructive as the Daleks. The Doctor was killed in the crash, but was restored to life temporarily by the Sisterhood of Karn, who finally convinced him that for the sake of the universe, he had to take a stand and fight. They further offered an elixir that would control his regeneration and allow him to take a form best suited for the task. The Doctor accepted, remarking that there was no need for a Doctor in a universe consumed by war, and regenerated into the War Doctor.[18]
Davros, the creator of the Daleks, also fought during the war after his creations (which had turned against him during Genesis of the Daleks[10] but caused his revival in Destiny of the Daleks[22]) rehabilitated him to a leadership position. In the first year of the War, Davros' command ship was seemingly destroyed at the Gates of Elysium after flying into the jaws of the Nightmare Child. Unbeknownst to the Doctor, who had tried to save him, Davros was rescued by Dalek Caan, who had escaped the events of "Evolution of the Daleks" (2007) via an emergency temporal shift.[23][24]
The war resulted in countless millions dying endless deaths, as time travel was used by both sides to reverse battles that caused massive fatalities on both sides.[7] These excesses of temporal warfare eventually led to the whole of the conflict becoming "time-locked", so that no time traveller could go back into it.[24][note 1] The Doctor described the final days of the war as "hell", featuring "the Skaro Degradations, the Horde of Travesties, the Nightmare Child, the Could-Have-Been King with his army of Meanwhiles and Never-Weres".[7]
As the war progressed, the Time Lords became increasingly aggressive and unscrupulous. Growing in desperation, they accessed a cache of forbidden doomsday weapons fashioned by the ancients of Gallifrey known as the Omega Arsenal. All were wielded against the Dalek menace save one: "the Moment".[1] Moreover, they resurrected the Master, a renegade Time Lord and nemesis to the Doctor, as they believed him to be the "perfect warrior for a time war". However, after the Dalek Emperor gained control of the Cruciform, the Master deserted his post, used the chameleon arch to disguise himself as a human and escaped to a time period shortly before the end of the universe. Genetically a human, he escaped the destruction of all Time Lords as well as detection by the Doctor – who was unaware of his resurrection in the first place. The Master also remained ignorant of the latter phase and outcome of the war until he emerged from hiding, when he was told by the Doctor many years later.[6]
Leadership among the Time Lords remained vague during the earlier phase of the war. Ultimately, Rassilon, founder of the Time Lord society and its time travel technology who had discovered the secret of immortality, returned to assume leadership as Lord President, a position he was first to hold. Refusing the possibility of his civilisation being destroyed by the Daleks, Rassilon prepared a doomsday scenario, the so-called "Ultimate Sanction". This genocidal scheme included sacrificing all of time itself, thereby destroying the Daleks and all life in the universe. The Time Lords themselves would have transcended into a non-corporeal collective consciousness that would be the only sentient form of life in existence. The Time Lords, apparently hardened by the horrors of war, gave near-unanimous support for this plan – only two Time Lords dissented when the issue was put to a full vote. Prior to the vote, when one of the Council, the Partisan, suggested shelving the Ultimate Sanction and that it may be better if Gallifrey were destroyed, Rassilon disintegrated her.[7]
While the High Council continued to lead Time Lord society during the war, a separate War Council was tasked with overseeing the war itself, as well as Gallifrey's defences. The War Council was led by an unknown Time Lord general. During the last days of the Time War, the War Council apparently became disillusioned with the High Council.[1]
Conclusion[edit]
On the last day of the Time War, the Dalek fleets surrounding Gallifrey launched what was said to be their biggest attack ever on the planet. The ten million Dalek ships subjected Gallifrey to a massive orbital bombardment and deployed numerous Daleks to invade the surface. Dalek forces captured the city of Arcadia, then laid siege to the capital itself. However, they were unable to break through the capital's sky trenches.[1] Upon learning of Rassilon's "Ultimate Sanction", the War Doctor stole an ancient Gallifreyan weapon known as the Moment, or the Galaxy Eater, and intended to reduce Gallifrey into "rocks and dust" with the inferno wiping out the Dalek fleet.[4][1][7][17] By this point, the entire period of war had become "time locked", so that no time traveller could enter or exit it.[7][24]
Fearing that the Doctor would use the Moment, Rassilon and his fellow councillors attempted to escape the Lock by retroactively planting a four-note drumbeat (the rhythm of a Time Lord's heartbeats) into the Master's brain as a child and cause his descent into madness. From there, once the signal is made tangible enough, a Whitepoint Star, a diamond only found on Gallifrey, is used to create a link between the final day of the Time War and Earth so the Master could release Gallifrey from the Time Lock. The plan ultimately failed, as the Doctor destroyed the diamond link and the Master apparently sacrificed his life to take revenge on Rassilon, sending the Time Lords back to their apparent doom.[7] Unknown to almost everyone involved however, this was not the final end of the Time Lords. As "the Moment" had a will of its own, it showed the War Doctor an alternative solution and ultimately enabled thirteen incarnations of the Doctor, ranging from the First Doctor through the Twelfth Doctor, to gather to save Gallifrey by freezing it in time and removing it from the universe. The sudden disappearance of Gallifrey left the Daleks firing upon and subsequently annihilating themselves, while the Time Lords remained; albeit powerless and forgotten.[1]
As the War Doctor regenerated into the Ninth Doctor, his memory of him and his other incarnations saving Gallifrey was wiped as a means for his timeline to correct itself, leaving the Doctor with the belief he had in fact used the Moment to destroy Gallifrey, the Time Lords, and the Daleks. The Doctor was haunted with the false knowledge of his home planet's demise,[1] with even some of his enemies like the Beast using that guilt against him.[6][26] The Doctor's later incarnations even displayed a self-loathing towards their War Doctor incarnation before the Eleventh Doctor and Tenth Doctor learned the truth and accepted him as a legitimate Doctor incarnation.[1] Though the destruction of both races marked the end of the war, the Ninth Doctor learns of the Dalek Emperor's survival with Rose wiping out both him and his fleet in "The Parting of the Ways" as Bad Wolf while proclaiming the final end of the War.[17] This is affirmed by the Tenth Doctor, who describes to Jack Harkness in "Utopia" that his resurrection by Rose was part of the final act of the War.[27]
Consequences[edit]
Removal of the Time Lords[edit]
Following what was for all intents and purposes the removal of the Time Lords, the Doctor believed himself to be the last of his race. The removal of the Time Lords also had a profound impact on time travel. In the 2006 episode "Rise of the Cybermen" when the Tenth Doctor, Rose Tyler and Mickey Smith are trapped in an alternate reality, the Doctor explains that, when the Time Lords were around, travel between parallel universes was less difficult but, with their demise, the paths between worlds are now closed.[28] The Time Lords could also prevent or repair paradoxes such as the one created by Rose in an attempt to save her father's life in a traffic accident. After the Time Lords' disappearance, such a paradox summons the Reapers, who descended to "sterilise the wound" in time by devouring everything in sight, and are only stopped by Pete Tyler killing himself.[29]
Because of the Time Lock, along with the danger of creating a paradox, the Doctor is prevented from going back in time and saving the Time Lords. The Tenth Doctor warns another character against trying to alter his own timeline as such meddling would "destroy two-thirds of the universe"[30] and resists an offer by Krillitane Mr Finch, using the Skasis Paradigm, which would have given the Doctor the ability to reorder the universe and allowed him to stop the war.[31] The Doctor would only change his decision and assure his race's survival after contributing to it as the Eleventh Doctor during the events of "The Day of the Doctor".[1]
Throughout series 5, the Eleventh Doctor encounters cracks in "the skin of the universe".[32][33][34][35] The Doctor learns that the cracks, which erase those they consume from history, are a result of the Silence causing the Doctor's TARDIS to explode on 26 June 2010.[36] During the events of "The Big Bang", the Doctor manages to close all the cracks using the TARDIS explosion and the Pandorica to produce a second Big Bang that restores the universe.[37] During the events of "The Time of the Doctor", the Doctor discovers one remaining crack on the planet Trenzalore, through which the Time Lords transmit a "truth field" that ensures that all inhabitants speak the truth, along with the First Question: "Doctor Who?". The intention is for the Doctor to give his true name, which will verify to the Time Lords it is safe for them to return to the universe. Fleets of various races, some being former War participants, gathered in Trenzalore's orbit to either prevent the Doctor from speaking his name, or resume the War if the Time Lords return. The Church of the Papal Mainframe undergoes a faith change into the Church of the Silence as a dedication to keeping the peace,[36] with a rogue chapter led by Madame Kovarian unknowingly causing the events in series 5 and 6 and leading to the Doctor's arrival on Trenzalore.[32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45] In the end, the Time Lords remain in exile and close the remaining crack, but not before heeding Clara's plea for them to save the Doctor, old and weary from his years protecting Trenzalore, granting him a new cycle of regenerations, which allow him to destroy the Dalek fleet surrounding the planet.[36]
Remnants of the Daleks[edit]
Despite the Doctor's efforts, not all Daleks perished in the war. The Ninth Doctor encounters a single, dysfunctional Dalek in a museum on Earth in 2012, which had apparently been on Earth for 50 years. It eventually commits suicide after gaining human feelings via Rose Tyler touching it.[2] The Doctor later discovers that the Dalek Emperor itself had also survived, and had gone on to build a whole new Dalek race, using the organic material of human cadavers by completely rewriting their DNA. The destruction of the Emperor and its fleet in the year 200,100 during an attack on Earth at the conclusion of the 2005 series by a time vortex-augmented Rose Tyler is accompanied by her declaration that "the Time War ends".[17]
The elite Cult of Skaro also survived by fleeing into the Void between dimensions in a specialised ship, taking with them the Genesis Ark, a Time Lord prison ship containing millions of Daleks. The new Dalek army released from the Ark on Earth in the 21st century – after the Ark is touched by a time-traveler, Mickey Smith – is sucked back into the Void due to the actions of the Tenth Doctor, but the specially-equipped cult members use an "emergency temporal shift" to escape that fate.[20] They reappear in 1930 in New York where they try to use humans to create a new race of Daleks. While three members of the Cult of Skaro are killed, the fourth – Dalek Caan – escapes through another emergency temporal shift.[23] Dalek Caan returns to the Time War and, at the cost of its sanity, rescues the Daleks' creator, Davros. Davros subsequently uses cells from his own body to create a new Dalek Empire and keeps Caan close at his side because of the latter's prophetic abilities.[24] The Daleks attempt to destroy all reality with a 'Reality Bomb' powered by 27 stolen Worlds, leaving themselves the only creatures. However, Caan manipulated Davros to help the Doctor and Donna Noble defeat the Daleks after seeing the damage the Daleks had caused throughout time. The Daleks are destroyed by a clone of the Tenth Doctor, while Davros and Caan are left behind on the Dalek flagship as it is destroyed.[46]
One ship containing three Daleks escaped that defeat after accidentally falling through time, where it then picked up a trace of a Progenitor device that contained pure Dalek DNA. However, because these Daleks had been created from the DNA of Davros, the Progenitor did not accept them as true "Daleks"; to restart the Progenitor, the Daleks trick the Eleventh Doctor into activating it for them during World War II by declaring them Daleks (which the device accepts). Once activated, the Progenitor device created a new "Paradigm" of Daleks that destroyed the previous Daleks and escaped through time, forming a new race of Daleks.[47] Eventually learning of the Time Lords' survival alongside various other races during the events of "The Time of the Doctor", the Daleks laid siege on the planet Trenzalore for centuries to either resume the Time War or kill the Doctor before he could release the Time Lords back into the universe. In the end, the Dalek fleet was wiped out by the Eleventh Doctor during the first phase of his regeneration.[36]
Survival of the Master[edit]
After the Time War, the Doctor is convinced that he is the only surviving Time Lord, saying that he would know of any others if they had survived.[2] The last words of the Face of Boe were "You Are Not Alone".[3] The cryptic statement is explained when the Doctor encounters a man named Professor Yana who is revealed to be the Master. The Master had been hiding in human form at the end of the universe using a Chameleon Arch, having escaped the destruction of both the Time Lords and the Daleks. By taking human form, he avoided detection by the Doctor, who was apparently unaware of his nemesis' resurrection during the Time War.[27] (Later spin-off stories reveal that the Doctor and the Master had fought together during the War for a time, but the Doctor was simply unaware that the Master had escaped death in the War itself.)
Impact on other species[edit]
The timelines of other races and planets shifted without the inhabitants of the worlds affected being aware of the changes in history, as they were a part of them. Most affected were the Greater Animus, which died;[11] the Zygons, who lost their home planet, Zygor, and attempted to conquer Earth for its resources;[1] the Eternals, who apparently fled this reality in despair;[11] and the Gelth, who lost their physical form and were reduced to gaseous beings, who attempted to possess human corpses in 1869 using a Time Rift in Cardiff. The Gelth described the war's impact as "invisible to lower species but devastating to higher forms",[5] such as the Forest of Cheem, which was distraught at the bloodshed.[11] It is also said to have destroyed the unnamed race that Eve originated from.[49]
The Time War and continuity[edit]
The Time War provides a convenient in-story explanation for any contradictions in series continuity: for example, writer Paul Cornell has suggested that Earth's destruction by an expanding sun in "The End of the World" five billion years hence, as opposed to the original depiction of its demise around the year 10,000,000 AD in The Ark (1966), can be attributed to changes in history due to the War.[50] Steven Moffat, writer and later executive producer for Doctor Who, has gone further, arguing that "a television series which embraces both the ideas of parallel universes and the concept of changing time can't have a continuity error—it's impossible for Doctor Who to get it wrong, because we can just say 'he changed time—it's a time ripple from the Time War'".[51][52]