Post-Time War universe

"Post-Time War universe" is a title based upon conjecture.

Check the behind the scenes section, the revision history and discussion page for additional comments on this article's title.

The Ninth Doctor confronts a Dalek survivor of the Time War. (TV: Dalek)

You may be looking for Post-War universe or Unbound Universe.

At the cessation of the Last Great Time War's main conflict, the constant shifting timelines which had defined the war resolved into a single version of the Doctor's universe (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe, The Paradox Moon) into which the Ninth Doctor survived (TV: Rose, The Unquiet Dead, et al.) and the Tenth Doctor continued to exist in. (TV: New Earth, Journey's End, et al.) Indeed, historians observed that the universe that had "first felt the winds of change" was not the same as the one that eventually survived the conflict. The Time War itself was time locked to its own timeline following the fall of Gallifrey. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe) In the Time Lords' attempt to escape the time locked Time War, Rassilon, faced with the impending fall of Gallifrey, anticipated the return to "the universe" proper and the "waking world". (TV: The End of Time)

As the Doctor's life continued into his next incarnation, the universe would be rewritten by the total event collapse, nearly dying in its final form as the Starless World before being recreated as a rebooted universe. (TV: The Big Bang)

History

A day to come

Even on pre-Time War Gallifrey, (AUDIO: Songs of Love) it was a matter of historical record that the Eleventh Doctor would killed at Lake Silencio, Utah on the planet Earth at 5:02 PM on 22 April 2011 at the hands of River Song, born Melody Pond. (TV: Let's Kill Hitler) Information on River's species was restricted by the Celestial Intervention Agency. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual) The War Master was well aware of River and her marriage to the Doctor, (AUDIO: Concealed Weapon) having previously met her as the Decayed Master (AUDIO: Animal Instinct) and as the Bruce Master. (AUDIO: The Lifeboat and the Deathboat)

By looking into a Tomorrow Window, the Eighth Doctor saw several visions of his future before a single figure solidified out of the blur: a gaunt, hawklike face that gave him a broad, welcoming grin. (PROSE: The Tomorrow Windows) According to some accounts, the Eighth Doctor regenerated into this incarnation after using the Moment to end the Last Great Time War, (COMIC: The Forgotten, PROSE: Doctor Who and the Time War) but most accounts held that he was the successor to the War Doctor; as such, the "man with big ears" was the Doctor's tenth incarnation, but only the ninth to use the name "Doctor", (TV: The Day of the Doctor, The Time of the Doctor et. al) thus making him "the Ninth Doctor". He travelled with companions like Jack Harkness and Rose Tyler. (PROSE: Dr. Ninth, et. al)

During the Time War, this reality among others was observed as a Matrix extrapolation of the possible future. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual) The Dalek Time Strategist also foresaw post-Time War history as he studied the timelines, including the fall of Gallifrey, the Cult of Skaro, Dalek Caan and the New Dalek Paradigm, coming to understand that the Daleks' timeline and the Doctor's timeline were "impossibly entangled". (AUDIO: Restoration of the Daleks)

Origins

Main article: Fall of Gallifrey

The creation of this reality involved the wiping out of a trillion other timelines. (PROSE: He's Behind You) The time lock sealed off the fighting of the Time War, (TV: Journey's End, COMIC: Don't Step on the Grass) While sources would indicate the Time War ended in Gallifrey's destruction, (TV: The End of the World, COMIC: Don't Step on the Grass, PROSE: Doctor Who and the Time War) numerous incarnations of the Doctor would later change history without changing the Ninth and Tenth Doctor's lives so that Gallifrey secretly survived. (TV: The Day of the Doctor, PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual, COMIC: The Good Companion, et. al) Some accounts even suggested this was not a change to the timeline at all, which would mean Gallifrey had in fact always been saved and that the Doctor simply had been unable to remember it. (PROSE: The Day of the Doctor, et. al)

The Moment, a sentient superweapon which the War Doctor intended to use to end the Time War, allowed him to come into contact with the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors by opening time windows. The future Doctors were in turn allowed to follow the War Doctor back through the time lock to Gallifrey, where they formulated a plan to save Gallifrey. (TV: The Day of the Doctor)

Establishing the time lock

Main article: Time War time lock

Following the fall of Gallifrey, the Time War was time locked by either the surviving higher species (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe) or the Doctor. (COMIC: Don't Step on the Grass, et. al) Having seen that the War had nearly destroyed the entire universe and themselves, the higher species wanted to make sure no individual or faction from the new post-War universe could time travel into the conflict to try change or interact with its outcomes, believing that interfering with the conflict would be a danger to the integrity of the Time Vortex (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe) and the universe. (PROSE: The Secret Lives of Monsters) The Doctor knew the same, understanding the time lock stopped the Daleks, his own people, and the other horrors of the War from escaping its now-sealed events. (TV: The End of Time)

The War was effectively sealed off in another version of reality, (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual) leaving the Daleks, unable to escape from the War's specific timeline due to the time lock, almost entirely extinct after they were caught in their own crossfire. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe) Siblings Different and Same of the Faction insisted that the Doctor's actions had erased the Time War from history, (PROSE: The Paradox Moon) but every other account showcased that was not the case; the War had happened, but now it was inaccessible to the rest of creation, (TV: The Stolen Earth, et. al) leaving the great conflict between the Daleks and Time Lords to become the stuff of legend. (TV: The Parting of the Ways)

With the Last Great Time War over, with the exception of a very few survivors, the Time Lords and the Daleks thus disappeared from time and space. (TV: Dalek, et. al) With the disappearance of Gallifrey being instant to the rest of the universe, it looked as though both sides had wiped out the other, and the Dalek crossfire created a supernova that burned over one thousand years. Nonetheless, many historians pondered whether it was true that every Dalek in the fleet was destroyed that day. (PROSE: The Day of the Doctor) At least one Attack Ship did indeed survive but was sent flying off by the blast, (TV: The Day of the Doctor) and the Curator believed any Dalek that had survived the Doctors' display would be so consumed by fear that they would run away forever. (PROSE: The Day of the Doctor)

The Dalek Emperor's flagship had been present to lead the Daleks to victory, only for the Emperor to watch as its species was consumed in the "inferno" created by the Doctor. Although the Ninth Doctor believed the Emperor was destroyed with the rest of the Dalek Empire, the Imperial flagship was actually sent tumbling through time (TV: The Parting of the Ways) and the Void, (PROSE: The Whoniverse) leaving the Emperor "crippled but alive". (TV: The Parting of the Ways) Nonetheless, the Tenth Doctor and subsequent incarnations involved in the salvation of Gallifrey knew that the Emperor would survive (PROSE: The Day of the Doctor) but also knew the Dalek monarch would meet its end during the Battle of the Game Station. (TV: The Parting of the Ways)

Post-Gallifrey

Having lost his memory of the fall of Gallifrey, (TV: The Day of the Doctor) the Ninth Doctor believed that both the Time Lords bar himself and the Daleks had been wiped out, to the point that he initially took the sight of a Dalek on Earth in 2012 to be "impossible". This lone Dalek survivor, who was sceptical as to the Doctor's account of the war's end, searched for traces of its kind by scanning Earth's internet, satellites and radio telescopes, only to find "nothing". (TV: Dalek) Similarly, the Tenth Doctor was hesitant to consider that Yana, actually the War Master, was a disguised Time Lord, insisting that they had all died. (TV: Utopia)

In fact, humanity at the time of the Dalek Emperor's return in the year 200,100 knew of the Daleks, but understood that they had all disappeared thousands of years prior. Jack Harkness, a 51st century Time Agent, noted that the Daleks were "the greatest threat in the universe" before their sudden disappearance, which the Ninth Doctor confirmed was so they could fight the Time War. (TV: The Parting of the Ways) Jack, who recognised the bronze Dalek saucers, originally believed that they had been destroyed (TV: Bad Wolf) and that the Time War was just a legend. (TV: The Parting of the Ways)

Though there was now silence on what had been the war front, those in the universe who knew of the War were left unsure of how the conflict had ended (PROSE: Meet the Doctor) before the various peoples forgot of the great conflict, with not a single word being uttered about the War unless someone looked into the Doctor's eyes. (PROSE: The Day of the Doctor) One account claimed the only certainty about its end was that the Doctor alone had walked away from the wreckage of Skaro and Gallifrey, (PROSE: Meet the Doctor) but others thought that all of the Time Lords were destroyed. If they knew of the Doctor, they were left with the belief that he was the last of his kind. (TV: The End of the World)

To the rest of the universe, the Daleks and the Time Lords had become creatures of legend, ancient races that had obliterated one another. The surviving higher species rejoiced, free at last from the conflict that had threatened their very existence. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe)

In 2007, Brother Lassar of the Krillitanes was aware of the Time Lords and their apparent fate. He suggested to the Doctor that he could use the Skasis Paradigm to prevent the war altogether, but the Doctor refused to allow the Krillitanes to unlock it. (TV: School Reunion) Before the Dalek Empire declared the Time War, they had targeted a group of Krillitane rebels. (PROSE: Father of the Daleks) Later, the Krillitane Empire as activity at the time of the Silence's war against the Doctor in the 52nd century. (PROSE: The Heist)

The Beast, who claimed to have lived before the universe, knew the Tenth Doctor as "the killer of his own kind". (TV: The Satan Pit)

In 3764, Gleda Ley-Sooth Marka Jinglatheen promoted what appeared to be the Ninth Doctor, who had offered his services as a keynote speaker for the Raxas Alliance peace conference on Clix, as the man who brought the Last Great Time War to a close. (COMIC: Doctormania) Additionally, there were species that did not even know of the War at all; as observed by surviving Gelth that appeared in 1869, the Time War's effects were "invisible to smaller species but devastating to higher forms". (TV: The Unquiet Dead) Of the species that knew of the War, many that had suffered during it blamed the Doctor. (PROSE: The Whoniverse)

At the end of the Ninth Doctor's life, Rose Tyler looked into the heart of the TARDIS and become the Bad Wolf entity. She then used her seemingly unlimited reality-warping powers to spread the Bad Wolf meme throughout space and time, so she would reach that moment (thereby creating an ontological paradox). (TV: The Parting of the Ways)

Into the Tenth Doctor's life, Dalek Caan manipulated the timelines to ensure a version of reality where the Doctor and Donna Noble travelled together and eventually created the Doctor-Donna to stop Davros' reality bomb. Caan believed that this would always have happened, and that he'd "only helped". (TV: Journey's End)

The surviving Osirans, who were in the process of leaving the universe behind and ascending to another, higher one at the time the Time War was fought, remembered it simply as a "petty squabble" between the Time Lords and the Daleks, (COMIC: Sins of the Father) even though the Osiran Court was not as powerful as the Great Houses of Gallifrey. (AUDIO: The Ship of a Billion Years) Following the Time War's end, the Tenth Doctor stated that the Axis was gone, with the disappearance of the Time Lords and Gallifrey from N-Space. (COMIC: Old Girl) The Eye of Orion became a shrine to the Time War, with a single human-sized stone in a meadow as a memorial to the uncountable casualties. (PROSE: Martha Jones' MySpace blog)

On the Masque Magestrix, The Saga of the Time Lords portrayed the history of Gallifrey. However, those who made the show were unsure how the war ended, only knowing that Gallifrey disappeared mysteriously. (PROSE: He's Behind You) Alternatively, far away from the Earth on Crafe Tec Heydra, a mountain face contained crude depictions of the so-called "invisible war" between a species of metal (representing the Daleks) and a species of flesh (representing the Lords of Time). These carvings and hieroglyphs depicted the end of the Time War as a great explosion, which one stranger, representing the Doctor, walked away from. However, under this, the phrase "you are not alone" was written. (PROSE: Meet the Doctor) Indeed, the Doctor did go on to encounter other survivors of the War, the first being the "Metaltron" Dalek, (TV: Dalek) but this exact phrase was known to the Face of Boe as well, who used it to warn the Tenth Doctor of the survival of the War Master. (TV: Gridlock)

Following the War, the Doctor confided his experiences to a number of his human companions such as Rose Tyler, (TV: The End of the World), Jack Harkness (TV: The Parting of the Ways) Martha Jones, (TV: Gridlock) Clara Oswald, (TV: The Day of the Doctor) and Bill Potts. (COMIC: The Clockwise War) In some cases, the Doctor revealed the War to others, such as Henry van Statten and Diana Goddard. (TV: Dalek) Rose would use her awareness of the Time War as leverage in an attempt to keep her, Mickey Smith and Rajesh Singh alive when facing the Cult of Skaro. (TV: Doomsday)

In 1580, the Eleventh Doctor prevented the Saturnyns from sinking Venice. (TV: The Vampires of Venice) According to one source, the planet Saturnyne was a forgotten casualty of the Time War. The planet had been a water world until it was hit by a shockwave of the War's temporal disruption; the world went from a planet filled with sealife to one where the Saturnyns evolved without natural laws of evolution. They became strange looking beings that could move from the darkest depths of the seas to dry land. Upon looking at their new forms, the unnatural creatures cursed those who were responsible for their new, semi-humanoid forms. (PROSE: The Monster Vault) Indeed, the Saturnyne matriarch Rosanna Calvierri knew of Gallifrey and its apparent fate. (TV: The Vampires of Venice)

In 1980, the Fisher King recalled that the Time Lords were "cowardly, vain curators who suddenly remembered they had teeth and became the most warlike race in the galaxy." (TV: Before the Flood)

By 2009, the Sontaran General Staal heard of legends which told of the War Doctor leading battles in the Time War, bitterly noting that the Sontarans were forbidden from participating in the conflict. (TV: The Sontaran Stratagem) Andrea Quill, a Quill, was aware of the Time War, and that the destruction of the Imperial Dalek fleet at the hands of the Seventh Doctor contributed to it. (AUDIO: In Remembrance) However, Time Agent Jack Harkness, a native of the 51st century (TV: Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang) at first believed the Time War to be a legend before learning the truth from the Doctor. He was, however, aware that the Dalek ships were meant to have been all destroyed by 200,100. (TV: The Parting of the Ways)

Having received warnings of his impending death, the Tenth Doctor named himself Time Lord Victorious and attempted to change history beginning with the destruction of Bowie Base One on 21 November 2059. While history originally recorded that the base on Mars was destroyed with all hands, the Doctor successfully Captain Adelaide Brooke along with Yuri Kerenski and Mia Bennett, who he returned to Earth. Adelaide, whose death was a fixed point in time, challenged the Doctor's claim as Time Lord Victorious before committing suicide, ensuring that history would run on more or less the same path, including the role of her granddaughter in humanity's Break-out. (TV: The Waters of Mars) The Doctor would later change history when he went back in time and wiped out the Kotturuh, instigating the Kotturuh crisis. (PROSE: All Flesh is Grass)

Just prior to the destruction of Earth in 5,000,000,000, Jabe of the Forest of Cheem had believed the Time Lords to be extinct, and was shocked to find the Ninth Doctor was one. Confiding her discovery with the Doctor, Jabe offered him her condolences. (TV: The End of the World) The Testimony later recorded the War Doctor's actions during the conflict in its data banks, specifically noting how it earned him the title "the Doctor of War". (TV: Twice Upon a Time) When they met the Twelfth and First Doctors, they played footage of the War Doctor arranging for Daleks to be shot down, for the Advent of Woe to be closed, making arrangements against the Nightmare Child, (PROSE: Twice Upon a Time) and confronting the Dalek drone he pushed back with the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors. (TV: Twice Upon a Time)

Total Event Collapse

Main article: Cracked universe (The Eleventh Hour)

Near the end of the Doctor's time with Donna, a complicated tangle of events centralized in the Eleventh Doctor's lifetime began intersecting with the Doctor's present. (TV: Silence in the Library, The Time of the Doctor) Into the beginning of the Eleventh Doctor's life, cracks in time erasing the universe, creating a dwindling incomplete reality in which many pieces of the Tenth Doctor's reality no longer existed. (TV: Flesh and Stone, The Pandorica Opens) Reality was nearly completely destroyed save for a momentary Starless World, but the Doctor was able to use a few surviving particles from the original reality to initiate a Big Bang Two to create a rebooted version of the post-Time War universe. (TV: The Big Bang)

Return of the Time Lords

The historical account of N-Space mentioned above claimed that, "millennia" after the Doctor regenerated from his war incarnation, the true fate of Gallifrey was finally revealed. (PROSE: The Whoniverse) During the Siege of Trenzalore, "half the universe" fought to prevent the return of the Time Lords after learning the message that had brought them to Trenzalore was of Gallifreyan origin. (TV: The Time of the Doctor)

Relation to other realities

The planet Lujhimeme was cut in half by the time lock which contained the Time War. (COMIC: Running to Stay Still)

When the Eighth Doctor of the post-War universe looked into his further future in a Tomorrow Window, this timeline emerged as the dominant potential reality. However, other parallel potential realities included (PROSE: The Tomorrow Windows) one where a different Ninth Doctor planned on marrying his companion Emma. (PROSE: The Tomorrow Windows, TV: The Curse of Fatal Death) Marnal investigation of the temporal complexity around the Eighth Doctor found that it continued into the Doctor's ninth incarnation, with the Eighth Doctor's timeline non-linearly leading to three different Ninth Doctors. (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles)

The Aubertides pursued the Seventh Doctor to England prior to the First World War, where he was disguised as a human teacher named John Smith. (PROSE: Human Nature) A similar incident occurred when the Tenth Doctor became John Smith in an attempt to elude the Family of Blood. (TV: Human Nature/The Family of Blood) Daughter of Mine, of the Family of Blood, was aware that this was a "story that happened many times in many ways", not all of which she was present for. (AUDIO: Shadow of a Doubt)

Due to a Time Beetle, this universe once branched into Donna's World. (TV: Turn Left)

At the end of the Time War the time lock tore right through the planet Lujhimene, severing it in half. The time lock maintained the planet's gravity and atmosphere, and also spun its core as if nothing had happened. The Eleventh Doctor visited Lujhimene looking for the Volatix Cabal. (COMIC: Running to Stay Still)

From his bubble universe, House had lured many TARDISes in order to feed on them, killing Time Lords such as the Ninth Corsair in the process. After some time without new arrivals, House lured the Eleventh Doctor, who identified himself as the last Time Lord with the last TARDIS, to his universe, where the TARDIS resisted his attempt to consume her. (TV: The Doctor's Wife)

Continuity with other versions of reality

Whilst dealing with a N-Form which the Time Lords had activated for the future Time War, the Seventh Doctor encountered James Greco, who worked for the Torchwood Institute, an organisation which the Doctor had not heard of. (AUDIO: Damaged Goods) According to another account, Greco was from the Brotherhood of the Immanent Flesh. (PROSE: Damaged Goods) The Eighth Doctor later found reference to Torchwood at the Edinburgh Herald, intending to look into them in the future. (AUDIO: The Scent of Blood)

In fact, the Tenth Doctor had inadvertently inspired the formation of the Institute following an encounter with Queen Victoria at Torchwood House, which led to him being both knighted banished from the British Empire by the Queen. (TV: Tooth and Claw) Attending the knighthood ceremony of his friends Henry Gordon Jago and George Litefoot in the 1890s, the Sixth Doctor used an alias as he had been made aware that the Queen was not a fan of his, which he attributed to the actions of a then unknown future self. (AUDIO: Jago & Litefoot Forever) The Tenth Doctor would later claim that he had never heard of the Institute before his arrival at Torchwood One. (TV: Army of Ghosts)

The Ninth Doctor actively remembered having three parallel lives before the Time War: one where he travelled with Sam Jones, one where he travelled with Charley Pollard, and one where he travelled with Izzy Sinclair. The Doctor remembered these lives as "happy jumbled days" which coalesced into the War Doctor's life and remained in the Doctor's past following the Time War. (PROSE: The Eighth Doctor Part 2)

Sarah Jane Smith, companion to the Third Doctor in the Exxilon Incident (TV: Death to the Daleks) and the Fourth Doctor in the Genesis Incident, (TV: Genesis of the Daleks) remembered the Daleks following her travels in the TARDIS (TV: School Reunion) and was later embroiled in the invasion of Earth by the post-war New Dalek Empire. (TV: The Stolen Earth/Journey's End) Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, who led UNIT forces in the Time Paradox Incident, (TV: Day of the Daleks) recalled his encounter with the Daleks following the aforementioned invasion. (TV: Enemy of the Bane)

Abslom Daak, a Dalek Killer who fought the Daleks prior to the Time War, came to find that there were little to no Daleks left in the universe to kill or seek revenge on, much to his frustration. (COMIC: Downtime) He was later allowed to enter the Time War timeline by the Then and the Now. (COMIC: Physician, Heal Thyself)

Human historians who were aware of the Time War and its impact on universal history studied the history of the Daleks back to their creation. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe) The Time War was also acknowledged by The Dalek Conquests. (AUDIO: The Dalek Conquests)

The Twelfth Doctor influenced pre-war history when he inadvertently arrived on Skaro during the Thousand Year War and met a young Davros. (TV: The Magician's Apprentice/The Witch's Familiar) The Thirteenth Doctor confronted the Reconnaissance Dalek, one of the first reconnaissance scouts to have left Skaro, first in the Recon Scout Incident, then in the Security Drone Incident. (TV: Resolution, Revolution of the Daleks) Due to the involvement of these post-war incarnations, the Time War-era Time Lords projected these events as part of the then "theoretical" future. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual)

Behind the scenes

• John Dorney has addressed the Time War's effect on the timeline.

But in terms of the Doctor's timeline (and that of the Time Lords and Daleks) there clearly is a universe in which they're not fighting the Time War (the classic series), and a universe when the Time War is over and done (the new series) and the Doctor has crossed from one to the other (despite this basically being borderline impossible). So the Doctor can literally be in the exact same time and place but on different sides of the war. If that's a little confusing, I'd argue that's exactly how it should be as the Time War is a battle fought by beings who live four dimensionally and shouldn't be wholly comprehensible to those of us who have to limit ourselves to three.John Dorney

• In a deleted scene from Return of the Cybermen, the Time Lord messenger from Genesis of the Daleks was to reappear and warn the Doctor that his failure on Skaro may have instigated a time war. This was also used as a way of explaining various continuity discrepancies, such as how the events of Return of the Cybermen and Revenge of the Cybermen could coincide, the occurrence of both the novel and televised versions of Human Nature, and the contradictions in the stories of companions such as Liz Shaw and Mary Shelley. Although the scene was never recorded, John Dorney shared the extracts of the script on Twitter.
• The trailer for the third Ninth Doctor Adventures boxset, Lost Warriors, depicts ruins of the Time War described as "a junkyard stretching across eternity" by the Ninth Doctor. Amongst the destroyed remnants of the War are ruined Dalek casings, a dead Time Lord who has been reduced to bone, a destroyed Mechanoid, a Cyber-Scout of the same design as the Cyberman featured in Monsters in Metropolis, a wrecked Dalek drill ship, and Sontaran helmets. (NOTVALID: The Ninth Doctor vs the Cybermen)