Time war

For the Last Great Time War between Daleks and Time Lords, see separate article.

The term Time War can be applied to at least two types of time-spanning conflicts.

The first type of time war is where the two sides are fighting the war across different points in history, separated by centuries or millennia. The second type of time war is where Time itself is used as a weapon, with preemptive strikes, time loops, temporal paradoxes and the reversal of historical events. While the last great Time War appears to be of the latter variety, there have been other wars. There have been difficulties studying these wars, since they tend to erase the damage before it was made.

The Time Lords fought a time war early in their history against the Order of the Black Sun, based some thirty thousand years in the Gallifreyan future. The first strike of the war, from the Time Lords' point of view, was when a Black Sun agent travelled back in time and attacked the Time Lords just as they were about to turn the star Qqaba into a power source for their time experiments. This also caused the apparent demise of the stellar engineer Omega. The Time Lords did not know why the Black Sun (whom they had never encountered before the attack) should have wanted to strike at them, and surmised that it was for something they had yet to do. (DW: Star Death, The 4-D War) Years later, at a diplomatic conference, a representative of the Order was murdered by the Sontarans and this was blamed on the Time Lords. This provided the motivation for the war's beginnings, as from the Order's point of view, the Time Lords were the ones who struck first. (DW: Black Sun Rising)

Yet another war was one lasting thirty thousand years. It was fought between Time Lords and other races that were developing time travel. The Time Lords destroyed one such race, the Charon, before they even existed. This war took place a generation after the time of Rassilon, the founder of Time Lord society. (DW: Sky Pirates!)

Other Time Wars include the skirmish between the Halldons. . Another was the brutal slaughter of the Omnicraven Uprising. Neither of these wars directly involved the Time Lords, though they intervened both times. (DWA: 2006 Doctor Who Annual)

At one point in the Doctor's future a war was fought between the Time Lords and the Enemy, who had no other name. Although Gallifrey was also destroyed as a result of the Eighth Doctor attempting to prevent the war from beginning (DW: The Ancestor Cell) this was a different occurence to the Last Great Time War.

At some point, Gallifrey was possibly restored, only to be destroyed again in the Last Time War.

Behind the Scenes

A fan-turned-pro, Russell T. Davies has considerable knowledge of the Doctor Who Universe mythology, In his Doctor Who Magazine column, Russel T Davies compared Gallifrey being destroyed twice with Earth's two World Wars. He also said that he was "usually happy for old and new fans to invent the Complete History of the Doctor in their heads, completely free of the production team's hot and heavy hands." Despite Davies' unequivocal statement that the two wars are distinct, Lance Parkin, in his Doctor Who chronology AHistory, suggests in a speculative essay that the two destructions of Gallifrey could be the same event seen from two different perspectives, with the Eighth Doctor present twice (and both times responsible for the planet's destruction).