Talk:Gallifreyan history

according to The War gallifrey was destroyed after that, so how can it be destroyed again in the time war? I renember reading somewhere that it was "remade" or something. i'm confused.---Si http://images.wikia.com/tardis/images/e/e4/Si_HTL_Seal_Leader.PNG 15:47, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

In The Ancestor Cell Gallifrey is destroyed (in fact there isn't much left of the whole system.

At the end of The Gallifrey Chronicles it's revealed that the Doctor has the Matrix in his head.

At some point after The Gallifrey Chronicles, (it's assumed that) the Doctor and Marnal reconstitute Gallifrey and rebuild the Time Lords...just in time to fight the Last Great Time War.

But as with the time war there isn't any explanation of how it happened, just that it did some how happen.

RTD has stated that The War and the Last Great Time War are separate from each other. --Tangerineduel 16:58, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

one of the EDA's set before the amnesiac Doctor on Earth arc also describes the existence of nine(?) Gallifreys. the original got cloned as decoys for the Enemy.

That would be; The Taking of Planet 5 which mentions Nine Gallifreys, The Shadows of Avalon (I think) calls Romana War Queen of the Nine Gallifreys, The Ancestor Cell definatley refers to Romana as Mistress (or War Queen) of the Nine Gallifreys. --Tangerineduel 18:16, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Gallifreyan later history

This later history seems to be missing great chunks (I tried to write it but couldn't work out the best way to approach it); but basically (as discussed in Talk:The War) there were a few other Wars that went on (actually not just in the later history). But there is The War, there's the whole anti-time crisis with the Oubliette of Eternity and other such gadgets. Romana's challenge to Flavia's presidency (mentioned in NA: Happy Endings, Lungbarrow). There's also Gallifrey's first destruction (EDA: The Ancestor Cell). --Tangerineduel 03:35, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

I'd be inclined to do it by first having a section on Romana II's Presidency. That would take us through the later New Adventures and the Big Finish material. You could then follow that up with the Romana III/Eve of the War EDA stuff.

There's a few continuity problems here. Leela and Romana meet for the first time in Zagreus when they already know each other in Lungbarrow. There's no sign of Leela's son in the Big Finish stories. Big Finish also claim Andred is from House Deeptree rather than House Redlooms. Some people make a terribly big thing out of this, but myself I think it's pretty small potatoes for Doctor Who and there's no real problem with assuming Big Finish's account of the Rommana II presidency picks up where the Virgin account leaves off. Rommana forgot Leela for Some Unknown Reason, the kid went to Some Unknown Place and Andred's House has at least two names. Easy.

Things do get a bit confusing when you consider Braxiatel. The Gallifrey series is meant to be a prelude to the Bernice audios, but ends with Brax seemingly preparing for the Last Great Time War. Over in the Benny Audios however, Gallifrey has suffered it's Ancestor Cell destruction by the time of Season Two, but has been restored by Season Five and is still existant by Season Eight. What's going on here though are probably just problems we'll need to face when we write Braxiatel a full biography rather than a major worry now.

So I think the History of late Gallifrey looks something like this...

• The Eight Doctors (Flavia is still President, so the Eighth Doctor has travelled into Gallifrey's past. Naughty boy, but hardly a first offense.)

• Happy Endings (Romana II becomes President)

• Christmas on a Rational Planet (The escape of the Grandfather from Shada and thus the severing of House Paradox)

• Lungbarrow

• The Sirens of Time (occurs during the Twenty years Romana was missing on Etra Prime as established in the next story)

• The Apocalypse Element (Romana returns to power. The Sixth Doctor interacts with what for him is Gallifrey's future. Naughty boy.)

• Shada (The Webcast version. The first meeting between President Romana and the Eighth Doctor as they go back to experience the adventure which Borusa's timescoop sucked out of continuity.)

• Time of the Daleks/Neverland/ Zagreus

• The whole of the Gallifrey series of audios.

• An unseen resolution of the cliffhanger that series ends on.

• All of the EDA depictions of Gallifrey from Shadows of Avalon on.

I'm not sure where the DWM stuff like The Final Chapter could fit. Maybe in Romana's twenty-year absense?--Richard Jones 22:17, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

• That actually makes some sense. Though the whole Leela/Andred and Romana stuff is still a jarring factor (one solution is see: Andred, which there is just a statement that some things are disparate about the accounts).
• What leads you to place Benny season 2 around the Ancestor Cell (or what clues are there)? Could whatever clues be mistaken for Gallifrey being busy with; the whole anti-time thing, the lead up to the War in Heaven...or something else?
• While the Gallifrey (audio series) can/is a prelude to the Benny series, it doesn't mean it has to take place (chronologically) before the Benny series as Brax could time travel back to whenever 2590 or thereabouts.
• It's generally been established that the Doctor visits Gallfrey 'in sync' with his visits (The Apocalpyse Element being the exception), so why is Flavia monitoring the Eighth Doctor...(ok the possible explantion is the 7th Doctor drops Romana back to Gallifrey after this event so the 8th can do what he has done, which has already happened for the 7th...which was actually happened for the previous as the 8th meets the 7th just before SanFran. However there's no evidence of this, but it's a nice work around).
• The DWM stuff either happens in an alternate universe (as explaining the Ground Zero stuff where Ace gets the boot, yet lives on in Set Piece) is the only way I can think of it working (the exception are the crossover comics with Benny and Ace in their NA guises). But placing The Final Chapter in the 20 year gap doesn't pose any immediate problems, in the Final Chapter Gallifrey's all techno-cool, in The Apocalypse Element/Neverland it's more of a return to classic Doctor Who, but there's stuff like the TimeStation which is more in the DWM vein (and the The War warTARDIS arena than classic Doctor Who).

• Although one other possibilty (though it's more a 'this is all a dream get out clause' than an actual solution), is to say all the events of The Final Chapter take place as a Matrix projection some time prior to the Doctor getting involved in Neverland, which would neatly explain the differences in Gallifreyan tech, and would suggest that the DWM adventures happened (if the Matrix can project their existence something must have happened), that was just my on the spot idea. --Tangerineduel 12:45, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Addressing your points and questions one at a time...

• Such a statement is probably a good idea, though 'incompatable' seems far too strong a word. 'Conflicting' would be better, as Big Finish confirm far more of Virgin's Gallifrey than they deny.

• In The Extinction Event then Brax considers his homeworld to have been destroyed. By Death and the Daleks he considers contacting Gallifrey to be an option. That strongly suggests that in his timeline then The Ancestor Cell has occured by The Extinction Event, but that the planet has been restored by Death and the Daleks.

• From what we've seen in the EDAs and the New Series then it looks like when Gallifrey's destroyed, it's destroyed wherever you are in time. When it exists then it's contactable in Bernice's time and when it doesn't exist then it isn't.

• The Doctor should definately visit Gallifrey 'in sync'. Its timeline is meant to be the absolute - you can travel backwards and forwards in the timeline of the wider universe, but you're supposed to observe linearity within Gallifrey's timeline (Lungbarrow,The Book of the War, stuff like that). That hasn't stopped the Doctor from breaking the rule scads of times though - The First popping back to the Old Time (Lungbarrow), the Fifth popping back to the Morbius Crisis (Warmonger), the Sixth popping forward to the Etra Prime Incident (The Apocalypse Element) and the Eighth's many interactions with the War-Era. It's a law, but it's a breakable one. As you say, it's just a work around to explain what's what's happening in The Eight Doctors, but it seems the best way to make sense of Flavia being President in that book and Romana having the gig in all the other EDAs. The only other work-around I can think of is for Flavia to have resumed her post at some time during the 20-year gap, but I'm not sure how well that fits.

• I'm reluctant to reposition anything in alternate universes, bottle universes, matrices, or cloneworlds if we can possibly avoid it, since that inevitably means playing favourites. Reconciling the stylistics of Gallifrey shouldn't worry us too much either if we can get the narrative stuff to fit - how you percive the place depends on who's looking, as the Sontarans explain in The Invasion of Time. Even putting that aside, someone landing in New York and then in the Sudan might well conclude that they couldn't be the same planet. --Richard Jones 14:52, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Alrighty, you make good arguments for all points. Conflicting is a better word.

I'm going to have to go back and re-listen to the Extinction Event, but could Brax be referring to Dellah? I'm sure at some point he calls it his home (albeit adoptive), which would make more sense within the Benny universe.

Though I do agree, bottle universes are not the wider answer, I'd like everything to be a part of the one universe. (But I do occasionally have trouble wrapping my head around the fact that the Time Lords went into the bottle universe to escape 'one of the wars be it the Gods from Dellah, the War in Heaven or something else' then they came back out of the bottle...from the planet formerly known as Earth and went back to their original planet...) (all from BNA: Dead Romance)

Wasn't Flavia found drunk in charge of the Sash or Rod of Rassilon? Not the sort of person you'd give a job back to.

We'll need to touch on clone worlds eventually with the Nine Gallifreys and the aformentioned bottleverse and Earth-bottleuniverse / new Time Lord planet. --Tangerineduel 17:01, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Don't remind me! As I continue to (slowly) flesh out the Miles Material, I'm painfully aware that we're edging towards the point where we'll have to grasp that nettle. --Richard Jones 23:48, 2 December 2007 (UTC)