Last Great Time War
User:OncomingStorm12th/Sandbox 3
- You may be looking for the general concept of a time war.
The Last Great Time War was the war between the Time Lords and the Daleks "for the sake of all creation". (TV: Gridlock) In a linear sense, it lasted for at least 400 years. Fought throughout countless time periods and even alternate timelines, however, it more accurately lasted an eternity as both sides fought across space and time, opening up new fronts as the Daleks seeded themselves in different epochs. (PROSE: Engines of War)
At the heart of the war, millions were killed and brought back to life every second, (TV: The End of Time) on account of both sides' manipulations. (AUDIO: Legion of the Lost) The Dalek forces numbered in the billions (TV: The Day of the Doctor) and fielded a fleet of ten million flying saucers. (TV: Dalek) The Time Lords used over a million Battle TARDISes. (PROSE: Peacemaker)
It resulted in the apparent destruction of Gallifrey, (TV: The Day of the Doctor) leaving only three Time Lords (TV: Utopia, AUDIO: Divorced, Beheaded, Regenerated) and a small number of Daleks as survivors. (TV: Dalek, Doomsday, et al.)
Lead-up to the War
Prophecies
- Main article: War prediction
The Time Lords became aware of their future involvement in the Time War a long time before it began, and many prophecies, stories and legends were generated around the idea. One concerned the Hybrid, which some took to believe would be a creature, half-Time-Lord and half-Dalek, capable either of Gallifrey's salvation or destruction. Many years later, after the war, the Twelfth Doctor would claim that the Hybrid was destined to conquer Gallifrey and stand in its ruins. (TV: Heaven Sent)
The Time Lords foresaw the War during the life of the Eighth Doctor, as Straxus told the Doctor they saw "something terrible in the time tracks." (AUDIO: Fugitives)
Shortly before the war began, the Matrix prophesied that Gallifrey would be destroyed in a war, though there were other predictions that showed Gallifrey's destruction in other ways, (AUDIO: The Crucible of Souls) a time war. (AUDIO: Songs of Love)
Following the extinction of the Mechonoids, the Dalek Emperor's strategy computers and assessment engines predicted a coming war against an ancient enemy of the Daleks that would rage throughout time and space and require the Dalek Empire's every strategy and resource to survive. (PROSE: Birth of a Legend)
The Accord also foresaw a "great war spreading through time". They feared that the 1970s and 1980s, which had been temporally weakened due to the Doctor's frequent visits, would be damaged and set out to reinforce the two decades before they were hit by the war. They altered the DNA of every single person that lived through those decades on a temporal level so that they subconsciously realised that there were inconsistencies with history. (PROSE: The Enfolded Time)
Origins
The Last Great Time War had many simultaneous origin points across the histories of Time Lords and Daleks, beginning at the very start of the Daleks' existence. (PROSE: A Brief History of Time Lords)
Developing a time machine, the Daleks pursued the First Doctor and his companions through time in a failed attempt to kill them (TV: The Chase) in what one journalist suggested to be the first skirmish in the Time War. (AUDIO: The Dalek Conquests)
Early Dalek time machines, however, relied on taranium, creating a means of time travel that, while impressive, was highly unstable, (PROSE: The Chase) expensive to use (PROSE: Mission to the Unknown, The Mutation of Time) and unreliable in offensive operations. (COMIC: The Secret of the Emperor) Another means of time travel linking Skaro to Earth in 1866 was made possible only by accident, due to human experiments that the Daleks managed to exploit. (TV: The Evil of the Daleks) Eventually, the Daleks "discovered the secret of time travel" and learned how to change history on a larger scale than was previously possible. (TV: Day of the Daleks)
It was further suggested that (AUDIO: The Dalek Conquests) the Third Doctor negating an alternate timeline in which the Daleks successfully conquered Earth by starting World War III in the late 20th century, (TV: Day of the Daleks) brought them to the attention of the Time Lords, (AUDIO: The Dalek Conquests) who accepted the Doctor's plea to guide the TARDIS to Spiridon, where the Doctor neutralised the Dalek army in 2540. (TV: Planet of the Daleks)
By the end of the resulting Second Dalek War, the Daleks sought to master time travel, an essential step towards universal domination, and to harness the Arkheon Threshold to change history and break into the Time Vortex. Although the Arkheon gambit originated as a means of defeating the Earth Empire, Dalek time-travel theory stated that mastery of time travel would begin with the destruction of the Time Lords and end with the subjugation of humanity. Dalek X denounced the Time Lords as weak and inferior for failing to use their powers to assert their superiority over all other lifeforms.
When the Tenth Doctor "slipped a time track" and became involved in the Daleks' war against Earth, he fell prisoner to Dalek X who blackmailed him into cooperating with the Supreme Dalek's Temporal Research Team. However, Dalek X's decision to use the Doctor's TARDIS as a control element in their experiments allowed the Doctor to escape captivity and the Temporal Research Team was eradicated. The disaster threw the Dalek Fleet into disarray and put an end to their attempts to win the war via time travel. Earth Command later attacked the Dalek base on Arkheon and the Doctor closed the Threshold. (PROSE: Prisoner of the Daleks)
Although Dalek dominance kept at bay, the Time Lords continued to observe them growing stronger and more dangerous. They put aside their policy of non-interference (AUDIO: The Dalek Conquests) after "foresee[ing] a time when they will have destroyed all other lifeforms and become the dominant creature in the universe." (TV: Genesis of the Daleks) Sent by either a Time Lord from his own era (PROSE: Lungbarrow) or one from a future point when Gallifrey was threatened by Daleks, (AUDIO: Ascension) the Fourth Doctor was given a mission on Skaro during the Thousand Year War with certain objectives:
- If possible, to avert the creation of the Daleks
- Otherwise to alter their development and make them less aggressive
- To find some intrinsic flaw or weakness to exploit in the Daleks
The Doctor didn't avert their creation, but believed he might have set back Dalek history by a thousand years. Yet a serious side effect of this was that the Daleks were alerted to the concept of life on other worlds and time travel early, and that they now knew that aliens from the future had tried to avert their creation. (TV: Genesis of the Daleks) The incident generated Dalek hostilities towards Time Lords and would eventually lead to war. (WC: Monster File: Daleks, AUDIO: The Dalek Conquests) The Eternity Circle even considered this act the very beginning of the Time War, (PROSE: Engines of War) while Rojan considered it to be an early event before the War escalated. (PROSE: The Stranger) The Eleventh Doctor himself referred to it as the "first shot." (COMIC: Hunters of the Burning Stone) The Matrix however did not foresee the conflict that arose from this, it later being theorised that the possibility of it was too unlikely for the supercomputer to predict. (PROSE: A Brief History of Time Lords)
As the Doctor departed Skaro, the Time Lords observed the changes to the timeline resulting from his mission. The Dalek Empire was significantly diminished, with thousands of worlds becoming free from Dalek rule, but the Time Lords had hoped for this number to reach millions. They considered the Doctor's mission a failure but quickly identified an opportunity to counterbalance the shortfall and diverted the Doctor to Deepcity, a weapons research facility. They predicted that the success of the Doctor's actions there would give rise to a race of synthetic robots capable of bringing about the downfall of the Dalek Empire. (PROSE: A Device of Death)
Working with Shazar, a half-Time Lord, the Daleks took control of and captured the Fourth Doctor's TARDIS, which they replicated in anticipation of an invasion of Mutter's Spiral. Though Shazar attempted to fool the Time Lords into believing that the Doctor was the traitor, the Doctor was able to interfere with the Daleks' plot, resulting in the fleet of new TARDISes destroying themselves while Shazar was captured by the Time Lords, based on the planet Jewel. (COMIC: Return of the Daleks) The Time Lords later directed the Doctor to the planet Ecros, where he prevented the Daleks from using the Dalek driller to destroy Earth. (COMIC: The Dalek Revenge)
In line with the Time Lords' predictions, (PROSE: A Device of Death) the Daleks eventually engaged in a war with the robot Movellans. Much of the Dalek Empire collapsed as a result of the devastating Movellan virus, which set the stage for the Imperial-Renegade Dalek Civil War. (PROSE: Remembrance of the Daleks) Although the Dalek Prime later claimed the Movellan War was a fabrication, (PROSE: War of the Daleks) the Daleks continued to hold the Time Lords responsible for much of their recent misfortune. As revenge for the Time Lords' plot to destroy them, (AUDIO: The Dalek Conquests) the Daleks attempted to create a duplicate of the Fifth Doctor to send to Gallifrey and assassinate the High Council of the Time Lords. (TV: Resurrection of the Daleks)
The next Dalek attempt to attack the Time Lords (AUDIO: The Dalek Conquests) involved the Hand of Omega, which Davros attempted to use to make the Daleks have mastery over time like the Time Lords. The Seventh Doctor tricked Davros into using the Hand of Omega to destroy Skaro. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks) Rojan considered this attack to be an early event in the Time War. (PROSE: The Stranger) By one account, the Daleks' next step after this was to start a war with the Time Lords, (AUDIO: The Dalek Conquests) thought in the more immediate aftermath of the Shoreditch Incident, much Dalek attention was focused on clearing up after Davros' rebellion and rebuilding the Empire. (PROSE: War of the Daleks, AUDIO: Daleks Among Us, Terror Firma)
Following Skaro's apparent destruction, the newly-elected Lord President Romana made negotiations with the Daleks (PROSE: Lungbarrow) and a peace treaty was opened under the Act of Master Restitution. The Act was quickly broken, leading to the Time War, (PROSE: A Brief History of Time Lords) when the Bruce Master survived his execution on Skaro. (TV: Doctor Who)
Still in the early days of her presidency, Romana made a ceremonial visit to Etra Prime when it was removed from time and space by the Dalek Empire. 20 years later, the Daleks returned Etra Prime to attack the Archetryx Convention and gain access to the Monan Host time vessel to complete their synthesis of the Apocalypse Element. Romana was allowed to escape to inform the Sixth Doctor and Vansell of the Daleks' apparent plans, leading to the interim Lord President retreating to Gallifrey. The Daleks followed disguised as the Monan Host, invading Gallifrey to access to the Eye of Harmony to control the explosion they had set off in the Seriphia Galaxy. The Dalek squad died in the process of containing it and the invasion was defeated. Romana said that the Time Lords wouldn't tolerate a Dalek Empire on their doorstep in the new Seriphia Galaxy. (AUDIO: The Apocalypse Element) Rojan believed the Etra Prime incident to be one of the events that started the Time War. (PROSE: The Stranger)
The Daleks created the Dogma Virus, which could corrupt Time Lord DNA and eventually wipe out the Time Lords. They sent the virus to Gallifrey through an organisation known as Free Time, who were working for them. (AUDIO: Panacea, Ascension)
The Daleks then hacked into the Matrix, giving them a backdoor to invading Gallifrey. The Dalek Supreme led an invasion force into the Matrix with the intention of leading them out into Gallifrey itself. The plan was stopped by Romana II and her third incarnation, who created enough defences inside the Matrix to allow it to be shut down. Romana II trapped them in a time loop to ensure that a temporal war with the Daleks would be avoided.
Acting through his own authority and unaware that Romana had succeeded in defeating the Daleks, Narvin sent Valyes to Skaro to give the Fourth Doctor a mission to avert the creation of the Daleks, (AUDIO: Ascension) accidentally causing the Time War. (PROSE: Engines of War, COMIC: Hunters of the Burning Stone, et al.) Later, once the War had begun, Rassilon commended Narvin for his decisive thinking. Narvin admitted that he had been hasty in his choice of agent for the job. (AUDIO: Assassins)
150 years into Romana's Presidency, the Time Lords fought the War in Heaven. (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell, Alien Bodies, et al.) During the War, Chris Cwej negotiated an alliance between the Daleks and the Time Lords (PROSE: Dead Romance) which resulted in the Daleks agreeing to act as the Enemy in several microscopic models of the War in Heaven with far less scope and intensity. The only Gallifrey to survive one of these Time Wars did so by abandoning looms and returning to organic models of birth, allowing it to enact the victimhood ritual of an entrenched last stand by crying out to future, "Won't someone think of the children!" (PROSE: A Prelude to a Prelude) A similar survival occurred on the last day of the Last Great Time War. (TV: The Day of the Doctor)
The War in Heaven resulted in the Time Lords being nearly wiped from history save for a few survivors. (PROSE: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street) While during this War the Daleks were seen as far less dangerous than the Enemy, (PROSE: Alien Bodies) in the post-War universe, with the Time Lords no longer present to quell advanced time travel development in the lesser species, the Daleks began greatly growing in universal prominence. (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles) The Time Lords were eventually restored. (PROSE: The Tomorrow Windows) A veteran of the War in Heaven was involved in rising tensions before the Last Great Time War. (AUDIO: The Adventure of the Diogenes Damsel, X and the Daleks)
Brink of Time War
In a later period of the Eighth Doctor's life, the Time Lords began foreseeing the future Time War (AUDIO: Deeptime Frontier, Fugitives, The Crucible of Souls) as tensions rose between them and the Daleks. (AUDIO: X and the Daleks, et al.) The Daleks began fighting the Time War before it was formally declared by the Time Lords. (AUDIO: Sins of the Father)
Motivated by glimpses of his peoples' future, (AUDIO: Fugitives) Kotris partnered with the Dalek Time Controller to erase Time Lords from history by infecting the Eighth Doctor's companion Molly O'Sullivan with retro-genitor particles that would latch onto the Doctor's Gallifreyan DNA and undo its past. This attack was erased from history when Straxus' past self was killed, (AUDIO: X and the Daleks) but it began a sequence of events leading to the creation of the Eminence. (AUDIO: Eye of Darkness, et al.)
Concurrently, the Reborn Master was recruited by Narvin to fight against the Daleks in the potentially nearing Time War, (AUDIO: The Devil You Know) with the belief that he would be the perfect warrior due to his savagery. (TV: The Sound of Drums) He was instead instructed to use the Eminence, which now posed a greater threat, to fight the Daleks. (AUDIO: Eyes of the Master) The Master betrayed the Time Lords, first by allying with the Eminence (AUDIO: Rule of the Eminence) then the Dalek Time Controller. Both partnerships were brought down by the Eighth Doctor, Liv Chenka, and Molly O'Sullivan, and both the Eminence and the Time Controller were eliminated. The Dalek Time Strategist was created in the aftermath (AUDIO: Master of the Daleks) and went on to be a major player in the Time War. (AUDIO: The Shadow Vortex, et al.)
It became clear that the Matrix was "always predicting doom and gloom". (AUDIO: Deeptime Frontier) Padrac founded the Doom Coalition to prevent Gallifrey's future destruction by destroying the rest of the universe using the Crucible of Souls. (AUDIO: The Side of the Angels, Stop the Clock) Rasmus, Daria Visteron, and Brallix manned the Deeptime Frontier to mine dark chronons as a power source for Battle TARDISes if the Eye of Harmony were lost. Visteron experimented with time windows and was terrified by seeing a future where Time Lords at war used fleets of destructive TARDISes; to terrify the Time Lords back, she used Deeptime Frontier to release the Ravenous from their prison dimension. (AUDIO: Deeptime Frontier)
The War Master manipulated the society of Callous (AUDIO: Call for the Dead, The Glittering Storm, The Persistence of Dreams) to obtain large quantities of Swenyo for Time Lord battleships. In return, he was given a Chameleon Arch by Narvin. (AUDIO: Sins of the Father)
Preparing for the Time War, the Dalek Emperor created the Cult of Skaro to explore new methods of Dalek warfare. At that point, the Daleks had just succeeded in wiping out another old enemy, the Mechonoids. (PROSE: Birth of a Legend)
Beginning of the Time War
Fighting breaks out
The extermination or near-extermination of such allied Temporal Powers as the Monans, the Sunari, the Nekkistani and the Phaidonians led to Gallifrey formally declaring war against the Daleks. (AUDIO: Desperate Measures) From the perspective of humanity, the Daleks suddenly disappeared "thousands of years" prior to the battle of the Game Station in 200,100. As recalled by Jack Harkness, a former Time Agent from the 51st century, the Daleks vanished from time and space at a point when they were the "greatest threat in the universe", (TV: The Parting of the Ways) thus ending the Tenth Dalek Occupation. (PROSE: A Brief History of Time Lords)
One of the first acts in the war that the Daleks took to weaken Gallifrey was to destroy Phaidon. This led to the first conflict between the Celestial Intervention Agency and the War Council on whether to allow the remaining Warpsmiths to be granted asylum on the planet. By this time the War Council had set up six different facilities around Gallifrey to help their war effort, which were known to the CIA. A seventh facility was set up in the Death Zone, which was part of Project Revenant. (AUDIO: Celestial Intervention) The War Council also built munitions factories beneath the surface of Gallifrey where Gallifreyan children worked. (PROSE: The Stranger)
The Time Lords quickly assembled great battleships in the Quantum Yards for the Assault on Seriphia, including Dreadnought Septima. (AUDIO: Hostiles) The Anything Gun was used early in the war. (PROSE: The Third Wise Man) One account stated that the physical war was fought in the Time Vortex and Ultimate Void, (PROSE: Meet the Doctor) though others did indeed show that the conflict could be fought on terrain (COMIC: The Clockwise War) or in normal space. (PROSE: Engines of War)
The Time Lords turned away from governing established history and protecting the Web of Time, and instead threw all their resources into battling the Daleks and their allies. (PROSE: Ghost of Christmas Past)
The Time Lords sent an activation signal to any N-Forms laying dormant throughout history. (AUDIO: Desperate Measures) The Seventh Doctor, Chris Cwej, and Roz Forrester encountered one reactivated N-Form in 1987 Britain and stopped it from destroying the Earth. During a confrontation, the N-Form told the Doctor that its reactivation signal came from the future, adding, "Seems the War’s started all over again. Did [the Time Lords] forget to tell you?" (PROSE: Damaged Goods, AUDIO: Damaged Goods) The Doctor later confirmed that a deliberate reactivation impulse had been sent from the future to dormant N-Forms throughout time, with another N-Form being responsible for the destruction of the Quoth homeworld. He faintly traced parts of the signal to the 30th century, (PROSE: Damaged Goods) where he discovered that the Brotherhood of the Immanent Flesh had some responsibility for the N-Forms. (PROSE: So Vile a Sin)
In the first days of the war, the home planet of the Zygons was destroyed. (TV: The Day of the Doctor) During the Time War, the surviving Zygons became adept at making structures which couldn't be breached by TARDISes. (PROSE: The Day of the Doctor)
While "exploring possibilities", the War Master became stranded in a parallel dimension. When the dimension was invaded by Cybermen seeking to conquer the multiverse, the Master saw an opportunity to obtain technology to repair his TARDIS and return to his universe. The Cybermen proceeded to invade the universe of the Time War via virtual reality technology spread by the Auctioneers on 2010s Earth. The Master followed the Cybermen back to his home universe, where the Cybermen — influenced by Petronella Osgood — took his TARDIS and attempted to cyber-convert him. The Master collaborated with Kate Stewart and Sam Bishop to destroy the Cybermen by overloading them with power from infinite dimensions, syphoning some of it off to give his TARDIS enough energy to return to "the fray" of the war. (AUDIO: Master of Worlds)
At the age of fourteen, Cass Fermazzi stowed away on a star freighter to see the wonders of the universe to find that there were no wonders left. One day, whilst helping an old man to die in a crater of mud snakes under a burning moon, she realised there was nowhere left to hide. The following morning, the medtech who closed the man's eyes gave Cass his bandolier. Cass took the bandolier, tightened it around herself, and decided to start running in the opposite direction. The medtech involved was actually the Thirteenth Doctor. (PROSE: The Day of the Doctor)
Keetol was the site of a major battle. The Daleks wanted to mine the planet for its weapons-grade rocks. The Master helped the Time Lords achieve a victory, one of their first in the War. This victory was later negated when the Master later used the Heavenly Paradigm in an attempt to wipe the War from history. (AUDIO: The Heavenly Paradigm) The Spiral Furl occurred during the war. The Time Lord Harlan Castellos turned his TARDIS's death into an electromagnetic extinction event, and he made Daleks fall like hail. (PROSE: The Third Wise Man)
The Master's Dalek plan
Missing general info from Anti-Genesis needs to be added
In a later over-written strand of history, the War Master planted his agent Crazlus in the Celestial Intervention Agency on Gallifrey as part of a long-term plan to obtain the Genesis Codes. (AUDIO: He Who Wins) Krazlus infiltrated the CIA for a considerable period, during which Livia remained President. (AUDIO: From the Flames)
Using the Codes, the Master interfered with the creation of the Daleks and supplanted Davros as the Dalek's creator. This caused considerable damage to history, (AUDIO: The Master's Dalek Plan) threatening the existence of both sides of the Time War. The Dalek Time Controller recruited the Master of a parallel universe (AUDIO: Shockwave) which had once notably been visited by Bernice Summerfield. (AUDIO: The Library in the Body, et al.)
The War Master and the parallel Master went back in time to the moment the War Master decided to have Krazlus infiltrate the CIA, urging the past Master to abandon the Genesis plan. The past Master was convinced and almost all the events which had resulted from Crazlus' infiltration were undone, although the parallel Master remained rescued from his universe. The War Master was separated from his TARDIS, (AUDIO: He Who Wins) leading to his trip to Gardezza. (AUDIO: Beneath the Viscoid)
Early losses
Irving Braxiatel along with Ace went to the Obscura to find information about a weapon there. This was a ruse from Braxiatel to use the power held in the Obscura and old soldier Danna to destroy a Dalek fleet. When this didn't succeed, Braxiatel killed Danna and wiped Ace's mind of all knowledge of the war. Ace was left on 20th century Earth, cast out of the Time War to live a normal life (AUDIO: Soldier Obscura) and eventually found A Charitable Earth. (AUDIO: In Remembrance, TV: Death of the Doctor) Ace later had contact with Time Lords from before the Time War. (AUDIO: Dark Universe)
After Romana II was informed of Ace's "death", she decided to get the help of the Master. (AUDIO: Soldier Obscura) The Master was on Gardezza when he was summoned to Gallifrey, posing as the Doctor to gain the trust of the Gardezzans and access the TARDIS he'd been separated from (AUDIO: Beneath the Viscoid) after an encounter with a parallel Master and an annulled future self. (AUDIO: He Who Wins) After betraying the Gardezzans and the Daleks he'd temporarily allied with, the Master retrieved his TARDIS and used it to return to Gallifrey. (AUDIO: Beneath the Viscoid)
Romana sent the Master and Leela to interrogate Finnian Valentine for the location of a power source that could fuel the Time Lord energy banks, (AUDIO: The Devil You Know) the Heart. (AUDIO: The Good Master) They discovered Valentine has been split in two separate beings by a temporal weapon he’d deployed. Discovering the Heart was on Arcking, the Master killed both Valentines. He subsequently betrayed Leela on the return flight by expelling her into the Time Vortex and headed to Arcking by himself. (AUDIO: The Devil You Know)
Leela was saved from the Vortex by the Trell who brought her to their dimension, Nateus. Leela subsequently foiled a War Council agent, Lady Zeno, who was attempting to infiltrate Nateus, preventing the War spreading into that dimension. (AUDIO: Mother Tongue)
The Master tried multiple times to steal the Heart from Arcking, bringing the War to its temporal grace sanctuary where a hospital had been estanlsihed non-combatants. When Arcking was eventually overrun by a Dalek invasion force that was pursuing him, the Master saved Cole Jarnish's life by taking him on as a companion as he made his escape. (AUDIO: The Good Master)
After travelling together for a while, avoiding helping others from the War, the Master offered Cole a challenge: to pick out a planet in peril and try and save its people from destruction with whatever means he saw fit. Cole choose a primitive farming planet. Cole's attempt to save the peaceful population of the planet backfired when he inadvertently turned them into a race of warlike semi-robotic creatures (AUDIO: The Sky Man) who spread into the wider universe. (AUDIO: The Heavenly Paradigm) The Master and Cole escaped the planet, with the Master assuring Cole that he would help him to undo his mistake. (AUDIO: The Sky Man)
The Master and Cole travelled to No.24 Marigold Lane, where the Master sacrificed Jarnish to use his paradoxical temporal energy to power the Heavenly Paradigm, wanting to use it to create a new and better timeline and end the War. The plan backfired, however, and the Master unintentionally caused both the Time Lords and Daleks to win several battles they had once lost. Because of this, he then saw the Dalek Emperor take control of the Time Lords' Cruciform, causing the Master to consider the Time War lost. Scared and tired of the fighting, the Master fled (AUDIO: The Heavenly Paradigm) by using a Chameleon Arch to hide himself as a human infant in the Silver Devastation. (TV: Utopia, AUDIO: The Heavenly Paradigm)
Return of Rassilon
Two months into the War, the Daleks discovered Project Revenant and thought it would be a way to convert Time Lords into Daleks, launching an assault into its pocket dimension. At the same time, Livia tended her resignation as President in favour of Admiral Valerian. Fearing he was a War Council puppet, Romana challenged the succession to an election. During the campaign, Romana negotiated with the Dalek Emperor to try and get him to stop the conflict as she knew that both sides would be utterly destroyed in the conflict, but failed to make it see reason. This act caused her to lose the presidential election when Valerian exposed it at the presidential debate. The CIA managed to stop the Daleks from using Project Revenant against them by arranging its destruction, however agent Karla went rogue and took the power core into the Matrix. Upon Valerian’s connection to the Matrix in the presidential inauguration, the War Council enacted their true scheme and used the power core to retrieve one of the oldest imprints from the Matrix - Rassilon. Valerian was forced to regenerate, with his body being possessed by Rassilon. Resurrected, Rassilon was declared Lord President Eternal. (AUDIO: Desperate Measures)
Rassilon established a new regime, making Livia his Prime Minister, and pardoned Romana from the charges of treason she’d faced for negotiating with the Emperor. Rassilon announced the establishment of an Interior Defence Unit, commanded by Cardinal Mantus, to replace the Chancellery Guard. At this time a future incarnation of General Trave arrived on Gallifrey, killing a Guard on arrival, and warned his past self that Rassilon’s regime would lead to Gallifrey’s fall. He attempted to deliver a warning to Narvin too, but perished in the process. Trave was held accountable for his future self’s crimes and publicly executed on Rassilon’s orders. (AUDIO: Havoc)
In the first year of the War, Rassilon wiped out the Tharils, the Porfue and the Krajonnu so that they didn't threaten the Time Lords’ supremacy. (PROSE: Lords and Masters)
By Rassilon's reign, the General, Ollistra, and Harlan had all been sent away from Gallifrey to the front lines. (AUDIO: Assassins)
Several months into the Time War, in 0.71 of the First Segment, Daleks from the future tunnelled through Gallifrey to find the War Council's underground munitions factories, intending to kill the children working in the factories and prevent future generations of Time Lords from ever fighting. The Daleks destroyed one such factory beneath the Mountain of Serenity, but the War Doctor, who had travelled back in time from the Fifth Segment, helped the children escape to the skimmer port with the assistance of Rojan. Senior Tahl sacrificed his life by creating an explosion which entombed this group of Daleks, saving the children's lives. (PROSE: The Stranger)
The planet Ysalus became embroiled in the War after both the CIA and War Council targeted it for interventions to ensure it didn’t fall into the hands of the Daleks, due to it having resources vital to fuel the Daleks‘ time machines. The missions were intended to turn the tide of the civil war to a more desirable outcome, however they instead caused the civil war on the planet to escalate, forcing the CIA to freeze Ysalus in a time lock to prevent its devastation. (AUDIO: Partisans) Rassilon subsequently decided to make an example of Ysalus, and arranged its destruction by intentionally breaching the time lock to attract scavengers, forcing the War Council to erase it from time to ensure the resources wouldn’t reach the Daleks. After being contacted by Ysalus native Kynla Shen, the CIA attempted to organise an evacuation, with agent Eris working with Kynla for a year to gather citizens. They saved a handful of citizens from erasure, but were too late for Kynla herself. Afterwards Romana discovered Eris had helped Kynla send a signal across Time calling for a resistance against the Time Lords. She had the signal preserved from erasure and helped Eris flee Gallifrey, believing he’d done the right thing. (AUDIO: Collateral)
After learning he’d arranged the destruction of Ysalus, Romana began planning an assassination of Rassilon, receiving support from Livia who’d become disillusioned with him. They enabled the Sicari to breach Gallifrey’s defences and manipulated events to get Rassilon alone. At the same time, Rassilon and Mantus attempted to win round Narvin to their side by promising to restore his regeneration cycle, however he realised what Romana had been plotting and interrupted the process to go to her aid. The Sicari succeeded in wounding Rassilon’s current incarnation, however failed to kill him completely. As Guards reached him, Rassilon was delighted that this generation‘s Time Lords were as cunning as his era and accepted Livia back into the fold. Mantus arranged for Romana and Narvin to leave Gallifrey in a stolen TARDIS, believing executing them would only make them martyrs, and the CIA was subsumed into the IDU. Rassilon’s regeneration was broadcast across Gallifrey, serving to reinforce his power. (AUDIO: Assassins)
Narvin and Romana began searching for Leela. They first arrived in the Capristan System and found the aftermath of Project Fury. They got involved in the eternal fight between Trellick and Qatal on Dreadnought Septima and ended it. (AUDIO: Hostiles) They then encountered the Orrovix on Njagilheim. (AUDIO: Nevernor)
Romana and Narvin found Leela on Unity, where she had been living for years. Local crimeboss Jarred McKenzie noticed their TARDIS and attempted to use it as leverage with the Daleks, bringing Unity to their attention. The Daleks betrayed McKenzie and tracked down the Time Lords, apparently killing Romana whilst Narvin and Leela fled. (AUDIO: Unity)
Eighth Doctor and Bliss
Missing considerable coverage of all boxsets of The Eighth Doctor: Time War.
The Doctor was initially nowhere to be found in the Time War (AUDIO: Master of Worlds, Soldier Obscura) because he was willfully avoiding the conflict. (AUDIO: The Starship of Theseus)
Following being augmented by the Celestial Intervention Agency to have reality-changing abilities, Quarren Maguire saw too much potential for his power to be abused by the Time Lords, wiped all evidence of his existence, and used a biodata module to hide as a human unaware of his true nature. This discrepancy in the timelines was noticed by the Chancellor, who assigned Aymor to trace the erased weapon and either claim or neutralise it. (AUDIO: One Life) Quarren and his wife Rupa went on the same luxury spaceliner that the Eighth Doctor and his companion Sheena were investigating disappearances on, bringing the Time War to the Doctor. Aymor located Quarren, however was pursued and wounded by Daleks, so resolved to kill him to prevent him falling into the enemy’s hands. Aymor arrived on the Theseus however died before he could shoot Quarren. As the spaceliner was approached by Daleks who had been following Aymor, local history was rewritten so that the Doctor's companion ceased to exist and the cruise ship became a refugee ship from the Time War. The Doctor escaped the Daleks aboard one of their time machines with Quarren, Rupa, Bliss, and Jefferson. (AUDIO: The Starship of Theseus) They crashed on a jungle planet ravaged with temporal distortion, and were guided to a safe zone by a wounded Dalek which had amnesia. In the safe zone they found wreckage from the Theseus, including the Doctor’s TARDIS. Time Lord forces, commanded by Cardinal Ollistra, arrived on the planet as part of a trap for a Dalek fleet, initiating the battle which caused the distortion. She had the Doctor and his companions captured, intending to press him into service. (AUDIO: Echoes of War)
They were taken to a base on the Moon of Tenacity where the Doctor was enrolled in training program of Commander Harlan, whilst his companions were held for processing. The Doctor proved a disruptive influence, in spite of Harlan‘s best efforts to maintain discipline. A Dalek hunter drone arrived on the Moon and identified the Time Lord presence, prompting a full evacuation as the Daleks launched an invasion. The Doctor was allowed to return to his TARDIS and reunited with his companions, however before they could leave he was confronted by Ollistra who threatened to force the Doctor’s regeneration in hopes of his next incarnation being more compliant. (AUDIO: The Conscript) Before she could carry out her threat, the Daleks landed on the Moon forcing her to flee with the Doctor and his companions in his TARDIS, which was still recovering from exposure to distortion. As the Doctor navigated his struggling ship through the reversal wave the Daleks had unleashed on the Tenacity system to break the Time Lord base’s defences, Ollistra identified Quarren as the missing weapon. He refused to return to his Time Lord identity however. The Doctor’s TARDIS escaped Tenacity and crashed on Jedris where Ollistra summoned Time Lord forces via a hypercube. The Time Lords engaged the pursuing Daleks, accelerating time on Jedris. As the landscape shifted, the Doctor and his TARDIS were lost and Ollistra used a temporal flare to attract a Battle TARDIS to escape with his companions. Quarren refused to let the Doctor die and returned to his previous identity to save him. Quarren rescued the Doctor and his TARDIS, leaving Bliss aboard as he thought he’d like to keep her as a companion, and then completely erased himself from existence. (AUDIO: One Life)
Travelling together, Bliss and the Doctor visited her home planet Derilobia to inform her family she was safe. They discovered Derilobia had been taken over by Time Lords led by Commander Carvil, with its recent history rewritten causing Bliss’ family to be erased. Carvil had placed each city in domes, each building a single rocket to strike back against the Daleks. The Doctor confronted Carvil and his superior Major Tamasan which exposed that Carvil had lied about there being a Dalek attack on Derilobia in order to turn it takeover the planet and turn it into a weapon. At the same time, a Dalek agent managed to make contact and warn her masters about the Time Lords’ arsenal on Derilobia. As the Daleks invaded, Tamasan organised an evacuation of Time Lord forces, leaving Carvil trapped in his TARDIS in the atmosphere as a distraction. The Doctor and Bliss fled, with her furious that her entire past no longer existed because of the Time Lords. (AUDIO: The Lords of Terror)
The Doctor and Bliss were again embroiled in the War when the Twelve approached them to help investigate the arrival of Doctor Ogron on Gallifrey in the Doctor’s TARDIS. The two Time Lords discovered the experiments that the Overseer has been carrying out in a Dalek base on the Ogron homeworld and paradoxically caused the creation of Doctor Ogron, who the Doctor let leave in his TARDIS to complete the loop, whilst Doctor Ogron and Bliss inspired the Ogrons to overthrow the Daleks. Before they could leave however, the Doctor, Bliss and Twelve were captured by a Dalek force that had been sent to relieve the Overseer of command, due to his experiments being seen as an abomination to Dalek purity. (AUDIO: Planet of the Ogrons) The Doctor, Bliss and the Twelve were held in the Dalek camp on Sangrey, with their memories being suppressed whilst on the surface and only returning when they were periodically teleported to the Dalek ship in orbit for interrogation. With the aid of her other personalities, the amnesiac Twelve was able to devise an escape plan and teleport herself, Bliss and the Doctor to the ship whilst the Daleks were transported to the surface. The Twelve then called for Time Lord forces to rescue them. (AUDIO: In the Garden of Death)
Ollistra discovered the Daleks had been interrogating the Twelve about her past visit to Uzmal, which the Daleks had occupied. She recruited the Twelve and the Doctor and Bliss to lead the native resistance, consisting of two submarines, in investigating the Daleks’ interest. The Time Lords and resistance discovered the Daleks were attempting to unearth the Ouarshima, a mythical creature which would see possible futures and which the Twelve had made contact with on her last visit, though she struggled to remember it. As the Daleks and submarines battled to reach the creature first, the Twelve began behaving more erratically which the Doctor realised was actually the Ourashima attempting to communicate through her. The Daleks were unable to understand the Ourahshima, so decided to kill it at the cost of their entire task force. As it died, the entity offered to confer its powers to the Time Lords however the Doctor refused, believing they should not have such power, to Ollistra’s fury. (AUDIO: Jonah) The Doctor and Bliss subsequently retrieved his TARDIS from Gallifrey, and Ollistra warned the Doctor about suspicious irregularities in Bliss’ timeline before he left. (AUDIO: State of Bliss)
The Valeyard was reconstituted from the Eighth Doctor when he used a transmat to leave Thellian. (AUDIO: Fugitive in Time, The War Valeyard) He was set to work by Tamasan to fight in the Time War. He won many battles for the Time Lords by not hesitating to sacrifice planets when necessary, as the Doctor never would.
The Time War ended shortly afterwards due to the Valeyard: he was sent to Grahv to secure weapon that completely erased species from existence, and he was able to successfully use it on the Daleks, but with the cost of damaging his own memory, along with the deaths of the native Grahvians. The Time Lords, upon discovering this, placed the planet in a time lock, trapping the Valeyard there for two centuries.
The Doctor and Bliss continued travelling together into post-Time War peacetime, but the Doctor eventually recieved a psychic vision from the Valeyard. After learning what had happened to the Valeyard from Tamasan, the Doctor and Bliss stole Tamasan's TARDIS to break through the time lock. On Grahv, the Doctor was able to figure out what had happened, including that the Dalek Time Strategist had been there, and had escaped through a rift. The Doctor and Bliss followed the Strategist through the rift, leaving the Valeyard to remain trapped on Grahv as he’d found himself at peace in the time lock. (AUDIO: The War Valeyard) Thanks to the efforts of the Time Strategist, the Daleks were restored and the war resumed. (AUDIO: Restoration of the Daleks)
Susan in the Time War
The Doctor's TARDIS was caught by some temporal turbulence caused by a small skirmish between the Temporal Powers, sending him away from the War to Earth at Christmas. After receiving a hypercube from Susan Foreman, the Doctor was able to fix the TARDIS and return to the War. (PROSE: Ghost of Christmas Past)
Seeking to enlist Susan, the Time Lords sent Hypercube messages to her home in Shoreditch, where she lived following the second 22nd century Dalek invasion. Though the Doctor attempted to distract her and intercept the messages, Susan ultimately discovered a Hypercube and, believing she could be of help due to her experience fighting the Daleks, decided to accept the Time Lords' request and join the war despite the Doctor's protest, with a TARDIS arriving to collect her. (AUDIO: All Hands on Deck)
Susan's ship was immediately boarded by Daleks who used it to drain power from the Eye of Harmony. With the Time Lords unable to remotely trigger the TARDIS' self-destruct by its telepathic circuits, they, at Susan's suggestion, called in the Sensorties to do so. (AUDIO: Sphere of Influence) She later tracked down the Dalek agent who had infiltrated the Sense Sphere, (AUDIO: The Uncertain Shore) and prevented the traitor Rennis from turning a pack of Orrovix against the Time Lords. (AUDIO: Assets of War)
Manipulated by a Dalek duplicate, Susan was then sent back to 1963 to retrieve the Hand of Omega from where the First Doctor had hidden it. Doing her best to navigate around the Shoreditch Incident, Susan was nonetheless confronted by Renegade Dalek forces, being rescued by the Eighth Doctor who revealed that he'd hidden the Hand and duped everyone with a decoy. Though the Doctor still refused to take up arms, he returned Susan home where she was informed that Rassilon wished to speak with her. (AUDIO: The Shoreditch Intervention)
Twilight of the Eighth Doctor
By most accounts, the Eighth Doctor refused to fight in the war, claiming he was "a good man" and instead "helped out" when he could, and regenerated into the War Doctor (TV: The Night of the Doctor) within the first year of the Time War. (PROSE: The Third Wise Man) The Doctor quickly found that because of the nature of the Time War, timelines shifted about frequently, sometimes causing the people he rescued to never have been born, leaving him no one to save. (PROSE: Ghost of Christmas Past) The Eighth Doctor considered the Time War to be cruel and senseless. (AUDIO: The Sontaran Ordeal)
The Eighth Doctor decided to become part of the Time War after watching a child die at the hands of a Dalek. (PROSE: Museum Peace)
During the period of helping, the Eighth Doctor attempted to save a group of sentient suns from falling into another universe. (PROSE: Osskah) During the War, while trying to help people, the strain of the fighting started to show on the Eighth Doctor, as his TARDIS was shown to have scorch marks from laser fire, due to escaping the warzones. His outfit was becoming increasingly battered, degrading from tidy to scruffy. (TV: The Night of the Doctor)
The Daleks employed the Time Destructor, wiping out Polymos, its shockwave affecting systems from Grantaginus to Mellandrova, and from the Farflung Rift to the Wolf's Heart Nebula. The Eighth Doctor was also caught in the temporal wave, causing him to land on Rontan 9 to find mercury that would repair his TARDIS' fluid links. Whilst on Rontan 9, he found a group of scientists and relocated them to a new home, away from the War. (PROSE: Natural Regression)
While cleaning up the "mess" of the war, the Eighth Doctor was lured to the party ship of the Rulers of the Universe using knowledge from River Song's diary in order to get him to help them take control of a Sanukuma spore ship. Their plan backfired when the Sanukuma themselves also arrived, wishing to join the Time War. Using a chronon mine he recovered from the war, the Doctor managed to defeat them by banishing them to the early years of the universe while he escaped using a "souvenir" pendant of the type carried by Gallifreyan shock troops, and with the help of River, also defeated the Rulers. River contacted him only remotely, so as not to reveal her true identity to him. (AUDIO: The Rulers of the Universe)
The Doctor travelled to Drakkis and witnessed its timeline being devastated by a skirmish between Time Lord and Dalek forces. The Doctor discovered the Ninth Sontaran Battle Fleet had followed the combatants, in an attempt to join the War, and assisted Commander Jask survive his Ordeal and to expose General Stenk’s corruption. In return, Jask led the Sontarans away from Drakkis. (AUDIO: The Sontaran Ordeal)
The Doctor followed a distress signal to Synthesis Station, though arrived before it had been sent. His arrival coincided with a visit by Cardinal Ollistra to inspect genetically-engineered Vashta Nerada that the station had been developing for the Time Lords to use against Dalekanium. Dendry, a disgruntled employee, caused a system-wide shutdown whilst he attempted to abscond with Vashta Nerada to sell for himself. This allowed Vashta Nerada to escape, causing the crisis which the Doctor’s TARDIS has picked up the distress signal from. The Doctor and Ollistra managed to reach his TARDIS, as the Battle TARDIS she’d arrived in was contaminated by Vashta Nerada released when her Guards confronted Gendry, along with Eva Morrison and Commander Roxita. Vashta Nerada snuck aboard the TARDIS in Roxita’s staser, forcing them to abandon the TARDIS in spacesuits whilst the Doctor programmed it to dump them in the Time Vortex. Roxita died initiating the programming and Eva was killed by Vashta Nerada hidden in her suit. Saddened at his failure to save lives, the Doctor dropped Ollistra off at the nearest Time Lord outpost, still refusing her request to join the war effort. (AUDIO: Day of the Vashta Nerada)
The Doctor heard of the destruction of a hospital ship named after its owner‘s home planet. Fearing this may be the Traken, commanded by his old companion Nyssa, the Doctor travelled back in time and joined the Traken’s crew as “Doctor Foster” for a few months. The Traken travelled to Reave, one of Gallifrey’s neighbours, which was victim of a bombing campaign by the Time Lords due to it refusing to ally with them. There exposure to praxis gas wounded the Doctor, exposing him as a Time Lord and leading to him coming under suspicion as the terrorist. Eventually he and Nyssa worked out the true Time Lord agent was Doctor Isherwood, who had removed her second heart to be unaffected by the gas, and foiled her attempt to bomb the Traken whilst it was treating victims of a previous bombing. Content the Traken was now safe, the Doctor left without revealing his true identity to Nyssa. (AUDIO: A Heart On Both Sides)
After "so many tough decisions and so many good friends lost", the Doctor created Ria to comfort himself. (AUDIO: Lies in Ruins)
When the wreck of Tompino, Punshon, and Ankarrie's Prototype TARDIS appeared in the Time War (AUDIO: Lies in Ruins) after its voyage from Henlen was sabotaged by the Sirens of Time, (AUDIO: Collision Course) the Doctor mistook it for the temporally displaced ruins of a future Gallifrey and sought a second opinion from a Luna University archaeologist. Bernice Summerfield and River Song both arrived shortly before the TARDIS was discovered by scavengers. The Doctor initially tried to merely defend the ruins from being bombarded by the scavengers, but after Ria was critically damaged the Doctor came close to killing the scavengers. Realising the true nature of the TARDIS, River and Bernice talked the Doctor down. They left the Prototype TARDIS to be destroyed, accidentally freeing the Sirens of Time. (AUDIO: Lies in Ruins) The paradox caused by the TARDIS explosion spread throughout time, (AUDIO: Relative Time) destabilising Earth history (AUDIO: The Split Infinitive, The Sacrifice of Jo Grant, Relative Time, The Avenues of Possibility) and threatening pre-Time-War Gallifrey during Romana II's Presidency. With the help of nine incarnations of the Doctor, Romana piloted the Prototype TARDIS back to Henlen, setting history back to normal. (AUDIO: Collision Course)
During the Fifth Segment of the War, (PROSE: The Stranger) which was several months before the end of War's first year, (PROSE: The Third Wise Man) the Doctor tried to save a gun-ship pilot, Cass, as her spaceship was on a collision course with the planet Karn. Cass rejected his help after finding out he was a Time Lord, claiming he was no different than the Daleks. Both Cass and the Doctor died in the crash. The Sisterhood of Karn temporarily revived the Doctor and offered to control his regeneration so that he could become the person he needed to be to end the Time War. Having kept out of the war till this point, he eventually succumbed to their persuasive arguments. He told them he needed to become a warrior, and regenerated. This newly-regenerated incarnation rejected the title of "Doctor" immediately, his first words being, "Doctor, no more." (TV: The Night of the Doctor)
The Eleventh Doctor later thought that this was one of the millions of last days of the Time War. (PROSE: The Day of the Doctor)
Other accounts suggest the Eighth Doctor lived far longer into the Time War. (PROSE: Doctor Who and the Time War, COMIC: The Forgotten)
The Nightmare Child
This new incarnation of the Doctor witnessed the seven deaths of Davros during the war. (PROSE: The Day of the Doctor) A few months after the Doctor had changed his face and became a Warrior, (PROSE: The Third Wise Man) still in the first year of the war, Davros was killed at the Gates of Elysium when his command ship flew into the jaws of the Nightmare Child, (TV: The Stolen Earth) a new type of Dalek that Davros had created. Davros had called the Doctor to the gates to watch the ship's destruction, and he failed to save the Dalek creator. (PROSE: The Third Wise Man) Indeed, the Tenth Doctor remembered trying to save Davros from death. At the cost of his own sanity, Caan, the last survivor of the Cult of Skaro, was able to time shift back into the war and save Davros from the time-locked event, bringing him into the post-war universe. (TV: The Stolen Earth) The Advocate followed Caan and Davros out of the Time War. (COMIC: Don't Step on the Grass)
Goodbye, Doctor. My nightmare is over. I fear yours is just beginning.
According to an account of this event, the Time Lords at this time did not yet call the conflict a "Time War", viewing it as merely a simple series of skirmishes. The Nightmare Child incident occurred after there had been "silence on the front" for weeks and hope was beginning to return to Gallifrey. (PROSE: The Third Wise Man) Another account, a book covering the history of the universe, implied the Eighth Doctor had been the incarnation present, as it stated he had been "refusing to engage in the fighting" during the event. (PROSE: The Whoniverse)
Fighting intensifies
The Doctor called himself "the Warrior" at the start of his new incarnation. (PROSE: The Stranger) Sontarans told legends of the Doctor leading Time Lords into battle. (TV: The Sontaran Stratagem) In his centuries of fighting, the War Doctor fought to prevent the rise of the Nightmare Child; witnessed the seven deaths of Davros; took command at Skull Moon (PROSE: The Day of the Doctor) with Gastron at his side; (TV: Hell Bent) and led a final charge up the slopes of the Never Vault, (PROSE: The Day of the Doctor) where the Master fought with the Supreme Dalek. (TV: The Witch's Familiar) At an earlier point in her timeline, Cass Fermazzi, the very person who had led to the Doctor's regeneration into his War incarnation, had been at Skull Moon and wept at the battle's massacre. (PROSE: The Day of the Doctor) The Doctor also recruited Fey Truscott-Sade to aid him in the Time War.
On "the worst day of the Time War", the Doctor, Fey and the Sisterhood of Karn fought the Morlontoa of the Seventh Sky on the Dorian Nexus. The Doctor constructed a machine that would fire pulses of pure reason at the creature to defeat it. While this was happening, Fey ordered Time Lord Captain Dolios to get the childlike inhabitants of the planet, the Loshann, to a TARDIS. The Sisterhood was then struck by a stream of pure chaos, leading the Loshann to be hit by the spores of the Morlontoa. They were quickly inverted, turned into monsters and attacked. To save themselves and other Loshann on the planet, the Doctor ordered Fey to shoot each of the Loshann. After she did so, the Doctor's machine to save the planet failed, meaning the planet would fall anyway. While the planet was saturated by the spores, the Doctor ordered his allies back to his TARDIS. However, Fey instead went to save a child in the wreckage and was touched by the spores before she could return to the TARDIS. She was believed to be dead. (COMIC: The Clockwise War)
When word of the Doctor's involvement in the War reached the Daleks, a Dalek Supreme attempted to trap and capture him only for the Doctor to see through the ruse and escape. (COMIC: Ambush)
A Dalek Patrol Ship skirting the shoulder of the Epsilon Reach was flung through a temporal schism by Time Lord forces and became stranded on a mining planet in the 64th century. (PROSE: Lost Patrol)
The Master was present at the Siege of the Chronotide, and found himself screaming for the General's mercy when the Multiform closed in. (PROSE: Lords and Masters)
The Voord sided with the Time Lords during the War and mounted a resistance against the Daleks. During the year A10%?, the Daleks attacked Marinus. The War Doctor defended the planet with a chronic tripwire and promised the Voord that he would speak to the Time Lords on their behalf. (COMIC: Four Doctors)
At the time of Strax's birth, the Sontaran Subliminal Education Matrix contained an entry on Time Lords which noted that "perhaps there is a universe-spanning war going on just out of sight, an apocalyptic crusade fought in the space between one second and the next." (PROSE: A Soldier's Education)
Schemes of the Volatix Cabal and involvement of the Cyclors
The War Doctor teamed up with the Master for a time. (COMIC: The Organ Grinder) They travelled to Veestrax, a planet on the front line of the Dalek advance through the star cluster banks of the Gallifreyan Planetbirth Nursery. The War Doctor transported part of Veestrax to another part of the universe in order to wipe out three Dalek assault battalions. (COMIC: Outrun)
The Daleks recruited the Cyclors to fight alongside them after witnessing them destroy the spiral arm of a galaxy. The War Doctor was sent by the Time Lords to deal with them. (COMIC: The Then and the Now) Alice Obiefune, a companion of the Eleventh Doctor, found her way into the Time War by using the Master's TARDIS and met up with the War Doctor. The Master proposed a plan to cut off the Cyclor's psychic bond with the Overcaste, but the Doctor had other ideas, intending to use the Psilent songbox to sacrifice himself to defeat the Cyclors. (COMIC: The Organ Grinder) The Master left before the Doctor carried his plans out, believing them to be too evil even for him. (COMIC: The One, Kill God) The Master's next incarnation would be present both before (AUDIO: Sins of the Father) and during the early stages of the War. (AUDIO: The Devil You Know) To stop the Doctor using the Psilent songbox, Alice herself activated it, creating a paradox that interacted with the Cyclors. A member of the Volatix Cabal interacted with the effect of the songbox, deforming it to transform the Cyclors into the Malignant. (COMIC: Fast Asleep) The Malignant went on to wipe out over fifty generations of the Overcast. (COMIC: The Then and the Now) To return Alice home, the Doctor removed the tracker dart from her left there by the Then and the Now, leaving it to interact with the songbox to create the Then and the Now originally. He then placed Alice inside it and sent her back to her Doctor. He told her that because of the paradoxes, they would all forget the events that happened there. (COMIC: Fast Asleep)
The Doctor was later surrounded by members of the Volatix Cabal when Abslom Daak descended from the skies, ever accompanied by the corpse of Princess Taiyin of Mazam, preserved within a cryogenic freezer-unit. The Doctor expressed his concern as Daak fired upon the Volatix. (COMIC: Physician, Heal Thyself)
Keska incident
When the Dalek Fleet began massing for a planned final assault on Gallifrey, Ollistra ordered Bennus and Arverton to destroy the fleet by detonating a Time Destructor on Omega One. The War Doctor arrived on Omega One and activated the Destructor himself, surviving by crash-landing his TARDIS on the planet Keska, where he entered a healing coma that lasted 100 days, during which he was nursed to health by a Keskan named Rejoice. Upon regaining consciousness, the Doctor helped the Keskans stop the Taalyens from wiping them out in their war, constructing a force field to protect Keska. The Doctor remained on Keska until he was found by Veklin. The Doctor was dragged back to Gallifrey in the TARDIS under Ollistra's command (AUDIO: The Innocent) and assigned a mission to locate Seratrix in the Null Zone with Veklin, Bennus, and Arverton.
However, the Doctor decided to enter the Null Zone on his own. He landed on Keska again and discovered that the Daleks had helped the Taalyens bypass the force field. Meeting up with Rejoice again, though many years later from her perspective, the Doctor discovered that Seratrix had made an alliance with the Daleks to stop the Time War and ensure peace by allowing them dominion over the Null Zone, at the cost of the Thousand Worlds within it, which were to be destroyed in the Daleks' final assault on Gallifrey. (AUDIO: The Thousand Worlds)
The Dalek plan was to, when each of the Thousands Worlds had been equipped with engines, fire the planets at Gallifrey at fifty times the speed of light. The Doctor and Rejoice tried to convince Seratrix of the Daleks' deception, only to discover that Seratrix, Bennus and Arverton were part of a Time Lord Conspiracy sect that was trying to form a peaceful truce with the Daleks. After Seratrix, Bennus, and Arverton were killed by the Daleks after being convinced of the Daleks' treachery, the Doctor allied himself with the leading Taalyen to destroy the Daleks by deafening them and had his Keskan allies detonating the drill early to stop the Daleks' scheme. However, the Doctor was betrayed by the Taalyens, and Rejoice was killed by Traanus. With their mission complete, the Doctor and Veklin were collected by Ollistra, who revealed the entire incident was her attempt to purge out Seratrix's conspiracy. (AUDIO: The Heart of the Battle)
Anima device affair
Travelling to Vildar to destroy the Annihilator, the Doctor was assisted by a reluctant soldier named Collis, but she was killed protecting him from a Varga plant. Knocked unconscious by the destruction of the Annihilator, the Doctor was deemed dead and taken to Aldriss, the planet of the Technomancers that had been reviving dead Time Lords, such as Collis. Discovering that the Valdarians were being sacrificed to revive the dead, and that a small part of the Technomancer's masters, the Horned Ones, were being placed in the revived Time Lords, the Doctor and Collis ran to the Crypt of Non-Time, where the Annihilator resided after the Doctor had used it to wipe itself from time. After Collis died at the hands of the Technomancer leader, Shadovar, the Doctor set the Annihilator off, wiping the Technomacers and the Horned Ones from time.
Escaping Aldriss with co-ordinator Jared, the Doctor was apprehended by Ollistra, who informed the Doctor that he was to be arrested as a war criminal. (AUDIO: Legion of the Lost) The Doctor was placed in an Artron leash, and tasked with discovering the purpose of the anima device on Asteroid Theta 12 with Ollistra, Jarad and Captain Solex. After losing Jared, they discovered that the Daleks were retro-engineering themselves back into Kaleds in order to gain a new insight into war. After Solex sacrificed himself to save him, the Doctor allowed Ollistra to use the anima device for their escape and then freed himself from the Artron leash to leave in his TARDIS. (AUDIO: A Thing of Guile) However, Ollistra had programmed the TARDIS to travel into the explosion of the anima device; the Neverwhen. There, the Doctor initially helped a set of soldiers against an aggressor, until the time phasing revealed he had been assisting retro-evolved Kaleds battle primitive Time Lords.
Once Ollistra caught up with him, and told him to dismantle the Neverwhen so that she can use it in conjunction with the anima device to destroy Skaro, the Doctor instead stopped it from working in the first place, attempting to use it to create a state of peace where both Daleks and Time Lords were farmers. However, the conflict was so ingrained that the residents of the new timeline still ended up fighting. When Ollistra insisted on resuming her initial plan, the Doctor modified the Neverwhen so that the experiment would be deemed a failure, as he felt that there was no way to predict the side-effects of Ollistra's plan on the wider universe. (AUDIO: The Neverwhen)
The Dalek Time Strategist's front
The Dalek Time Strategist decided to wound the Doctor's timeline by destroying Earth before the native eras of most of the Doctor's human companions. It ordered Lara Zannis, who had been recruited during the Battle of Zahl, to breach the quantum shield around Earth by operating the Shadow Vortex in 1961 Berlin. The Daleks began an invasion of Earth, but the War Doctor used his TARDIS to contain it in an alternate timeline.
Returning to the Time War, the Doctor was informed by Heleyna that Ollistra had been kidnapped. (AUDIO: The Shadow Vortex) He devised a plan to get onto Rovidia to rescue Ollistra from the Sontarans, who were also ransoming the Dalek Time Strategist to the Daleks. Using a stealth ship, the Doctor and Heleyna led a platoon of Time Lords with Muren, arrived on Rovidia, and, with the help of Kalan, they got to the citadel where the Sontarans were holding Ollistra. While experiencing a psychic pain, the Doctor came to realise that the Sontarans were aiming to become a third front in the war and that their hostages were bait for a trap.
Stopping the Sontarans from using the Eternity Cage with the aid of Vassarian, the dying Time Lord powering the cage, the Doctor managed to escape in Vassarian's Battle TARDIS with Ollistra, Kalan and Heleyna, only for Ollistra to expose Heleyna as a traitor. Heleyna tried to kill the Doctor by ejecting him from the TARDIS, (AUDIO: The Eternity Cage) but Ollistra used the TARDIS' transmat to bring him back on the ship after Heleyna was dealt with. However, Heleyna was able to escape into the ship with Ollistra, leaving the Doctor and Kalan to avoid her traps as they searched for them.
The Doctor and Kalan eventually located them at the Eye of Harmony chamber, just as the Dalek Time Assault Squad arrived in the ship. He used Heleyna's idea of manipulating the reconfiguration system and destroyed the chamber to stop the Daleks, stranding the TARDIS in the Vortex. With Kalan fatally wounded, the Doctor convinced Heleyna to detonate a Dalek Dark Matter bomb to give the TARDIS enough energy to materialise into real-time, at the cost of her life. (AUDIO: Eye of Harmony) Escaping the Time Vortex to a space station, (AUDIO: Pretty Lies) Kalan died from his injuries as the Daleks arrived after them. (AUDIO: Eye of Harmony) The Doctor and Ollistra were then captured and sent to the Daleks as a peace offering, but the Doctor managed to avoid capture by flying the capsule to Beltox.
Crashing on the planet, the Doctor and Ollistra were met by journalist Schandel, who wanted to interview the Doctor as a war hero, much to his irritation. After Schandel let slip that the Daleks were due to arrive on Beltox, the Doctor alerted the locals in the city of Fergil, and helped to defend them by augmenting their climate control system to become a shield. When Schandel offered his assistance, the Doctor realised he could trick the Daleks into thinking that he had tremendous firepower by editing a message to them, securing his victory. After Schandel was killed by a Dalek straggler, the Doctor and Ollistra took Schandel's time ship to its next destination in the hopes they could contact Gallifrey. (AUDIO: Pretty Lies)
Learning of someone called the "Lady of Obsidian" from Schandel's files, the Doctor asked Rosata Laxter to help him locate her while Ollistra remained on Grend to contact the Time Lords. Arriving at the Obsidian Nebula, the Doctor discovered that the Lady was really Leela, who had been struck by a Disruptor Dalek during the Battle of the Pillars of Consequence early in the War and displaced from time and space until she reformed with her memories altered to include all of her possible timelines. The Doctor was able to convince Leela of their shared history and friendship and helped her close a breach that caused the Unlived to get into the universe, though at the cost of Rosata's life.
With Ollistra having contacted the Time Lords, the Doctor was reunited with his TARDIS, and took Ollistra and Leela back to Gallifrey. (AUDIO: The Lady of Obsidian) When Leela began feeling a sadness and seeing Dalek shadows on Gallifrey, the Doctor and Ollistra found that a force from another universe called the Enigma was communicating with them through Leela, before it erased the Time Lords from history on the orders of the Dalek Time Strategist.
Escaping the onslaught in his TARDIS, the Doctor, Ollistra and Leela ventured into the Enigma's dimension, where the Doctor learned that the Enigma was being forced to do the Daleks bidding and was using emotions to communicate with Leela, and had given the Doctor a warning due to Leela's trust in him. While Ollistra wanted to use the Enigma to restore the Time Lords and wipe out the Daleks, the Doctor instead chose to ask it to bring an end to both races to truly end the Time War. However, the Enigma chose to do neither, restoring the Time Lords and the Daleks. The TARDIS was then ejected from its dimension. (AUDIO: The Enigma Dimension)
Final days of the Time War
The Eleventh Doctor would later admit to himself that millions of days along his timeline were the last day of the Time War. (PROSE: The Day of the Doctor)
In the later days of the conflict, Ollistra ordered the Great Vampires released from their prison, turning them on a Dalek Fleet. (COMIC: The Bidding War)
In the last months of the war, the War Doctor enlisted the help of Dorium Maldovar to help him destroy the thirteen weapons factories of Villengard before the Dalek Fleet arrived to take control of them. Using a molecular fruit bomb, the Doctor transformed the factories into palm trees, creating a banana grove. (COMIC: The Whole Thing's Bananas)
Horrors and terrors were seen in the final days of the war, including the Nightmare Child, the Skaro Degradations, the Horde of Travesties, and the Could've Been King with his Army of Meanwhiles and Neverweres. The Tenth Doctor described the war's final days as "hell." (TV: The End of Time)
Around this time that the Doctor was sent to look for the Master, but could not find him. (PROSE: Engines of War)
Activity in the Tantalus Eye
Several key battles of the Time War were the Fall of the Riven Manciple, the Maldervian Cluster, the Nevermass Reach and the Ending of Fulmarch, the Krovian Delay, the Night of the Reborn, the Severance of Skaro, and the Resurrection Breach. (PROSE: The Whoniverse)
Another key event was the Battle for the Tantalus Eye, which occurred towards the end of the conflict (PROSE: The Whoniverse) when the Time War had been raging for four hundred years of linear time (though temporal war zones had left no era of history unscathed). It started with the War Doctor, who had been fighting in the Time War for a hundred years or more, leading the Fifth Time Lord Battle Fleet against the Daleks in the Tantalus Eye. They defeated the Daleks there but were soon wiped out by nearby Dalek stealth ships. The Doctor then crash-landed on a nearby planet, Moldox. Here, he met a Dalek hunter going by the name "Cinder", an orphaned victim of the Time War at a very young age who survived the extermination of her family by hiding. She helped the Doctor infiltrate a Dalek base and uncover their plans to create a De-mat weapon that could erase its victims from history, and the Daleks planned to do the same to Gallifrey. The Doctor brought Cinder aboard his TARDIS en route to Gallifrey to warn the Time Lords of the Daleks' plan.
The Doctor spoke to Rassilon and the High Council of Time Lords in a meeting, where Rassilon planned to detonate the Tear of Isha in the Tantalus Eye. Rassilon consulted Borusa on his plan, who told him it would succeed. However, it would have caused the destruction of many innocent lives. The Doctor opposed the plan, which made Rassilon throw both him and Cinder in a prison cell.
Cinder was also kidnapped by the Time Lords Karlax and the Castellan and received a mind probe to back up the Doctor's claims that the Daleks were going to eliminate their world. After finding out about the mind probe, with Cinder's help, the Doctor broke free of the prison. The Doctor took Cinder from the Capitol and took her to the Death Zone, where the two of them retaliated by kidnapping the immortalised Borusa from his imprisonment in the Dark Tower. Under Rassilon's orders, Karlax pursued them with some help from the Celestial Intervention Agency to assassinate them. During the chase, the CIA and their Battle TARDISes were attacked by Dalek stealth ships, leaving Karlax the only survivor. When Karlax then tried to take over the TARDIS following his regeneration, the Doctor dematerialised his ship, setting the controls so that Karlax would be left behind in the middle of the Dalek Eternity Circle. There, he faced extermination as retribution for what he had done. The Doctor used Borusa to wipe out the Dalek presence from the Eye, thus ending the Dalek plan.
Once the Doctor had foiled Rassilon's plan to detonate the Tear of Isha and spared the lives Rassilon would have let die, Rassilon condemned the Doctor's actions and declared him an enemy of the Time Lords because of it. In honour of Cinder's death, the Doctor promised he would put an end to the War, declaring, "no more". (PROSE: Engines of War)
Nearing the end
The day before the end of the Time War, the Doctor went to Skaro and destroyed most of the Dalek Emperor's fleet. Using a stolen gunship, he burned the message "no more" into the Dalek City. (PROSE: The Day of the Doctor)
By the last day of the war, the Daleks had begun to invade Gallifrey itself. (COMIC: Sky Jacks, TV: The Last Day, The Day of the Doctor) On this final day, after millions of Dalek flying saucers laid siege to it, a key battle came with the Fall of Arcadia, (PROSE: The Whoniverse) a Dalek assault on Gallifrey's second city, Arcadia, (TV: The Day of the Doctor) after they broke through all 400 of its sky trenches. (TV: The Last Day) The Doctor fought on the front lines (TV: Doomsday, The Day of the Doctor) and used a Soldier's fusion blaster to write "no more" on the side of a building. (TV: The Day of the Doctor) Following the fall of the city, the Daleks began to attack the Capitol and completely surrounded Gallifrey (PROSE: The Whoniverse) with their fleet. The Daleks bombarded the planet from space with their remaining ships, all the while moving towards the Capitol. (TV: The Day of the Doctor)
The Player tried to escape the war by hiding in his art, but, when the Daleks began to attack the First Doctor's timeline, the Time Lords made him go and convince the Doctor to go to his regeneration at the South Pole to keep the timeline on track. At the time, a new front of the war was opening at the Last Hour, and rumours were beginning about the Fall of Arcadia. (AUDIO: Volume Two trailer, The Plague of Dreams)
In the final hours of the war, as Daleks approached the Capitol after the fall of Arcadia, (COMIC: The Memory Feast) hundreds of Time Lords recorded their cherished memories into memory lanterns and set them adrift in the Time Vortex (PROSE: Engines of War, AUDIO: The Memory of Winter, COMIC: The Memory Feast) in an effort to seed remnants of Gallifrey in the distant corners of the universe. (PROSE: Engines of War)
Unknown to anyone, the Daleks created a time capsule launched during the final battle with a single Dalek with the plan to spread the Dalek Factor on Earth to use humanity's life force and raw materials to build more Daleks for back-up in the war. The capsule's engines failed in the journey and the Dalek within ejected, falling to Earth in 70 AD. The Dalek died but released a small amount of Dalek Factor that remained dormant in the genetic structure of humanity. (PROSE: I Am a Dalek)
The Doctor stole the Moment from the Omega Arsenal, took it to a barn in Gallifrey's drylands, (PROSE: The Day of the Doctor) and was ready to destroy Gallifrey. (TV: The End of Time, The Day of the Doctor)
Priyan believed that the Doctor now stood against the Time Lords, and would use the Moment to his own ends. Time Lords were dying at such an exponentially increasing rate that Engin worried the APC net would overload. Instead of overloading, the influx of new Time Lord minds granted the Matrix sentience and it abandoned the seemingly doomed Gallifrey by uploading a copy of itself in the Doctor's TARDIS. (COMIC: Sky Jacks)
In the barn, the Doctor struggled to work out how the device operated. While in the midst of examining it a woman in the form of Rose Tyler appeared. After conversing with her for a time he worked out that she was the Moment's interface and it told him that as punishment for his actions he would survive the war and have to live with his guilt. Then, a time fissure appeared and a fez came out of it. (TV: The Day of the Doctor)
Rassilon's Ultimate Sanction
As the Dalek Empire circled Gallifrey, President Rassilon grew more desperate (PROSE: The Whoniverse) and proposed the Ultimate Sanction. The Time Lords would become creatures of pure consciousness and all of creation would be destroyed. (TV: The End of Time) According to a history of the universe, it was learning about this plan, and seeing just how far his people had fallen, that made the Doctor steal the Moment. (PROSE: The Whoniverse) Learning the Doctor possessed the Moment, the Time Lord High Council tried to escape the time lock by implanting a signal in the mind of the Master when he was a boy. They then sent a Gallifreyan diamond called a White-Point Star to Earth in 2009, where the Saxon Master had escaped to. With the signal inside the older Master and six billion humans converted by the Immortality Gate into the Master Race to triangulate it, the Master made a connection with the Time Lords' signal.
Rassilon escaped to 2009 Earth, flanked by four Time Lords including the Woman (TV: The End of Time) and the Patriarch of Stillhaven. (PROSE: Lords and Masters) Gallifrey itself started to return and everything from the war could escape. The Tenth Doctor, who had already ended the war sometime before, broke the connection by shooting the White-Point Star; the Time Lords, Gallifrey, and the Master, who had seen how monstrous his people had become and decided to take revenge on Rassilon for making him a monster, vanished in a burst of white light and were sent, according to the Doctor, "back into [the] hell" of the Time War.
As a consequence of this incident, Wilfred Mott became trapped in a radiation booth nearing a meltdown. The Tenth Doctor sacrificed himself to rescue his companion and exposed himself to a lethal 500,000 rads of radiation which began his regeneration into the Eleventh Doctor. (TV: The End of Time)
Eighth Doctor at the end
By some dissenting accounts, the Eighth Doctor survived to the end of the Time War to destroy Gallifrey. (PROSE: Doctor Who and the Time War, COMIC: The Forgotten) According to one account, he was also involved in the Battle of Rodan's Wedding, during which years were used as ammunition. (PROSE: Doctor Who and the Time War)
Prior to the end of the War, the Eighth Doctor tried to regain the Great Key of Rassilon, (COMIC: The Forgotten) which had been missing since before Rassilon's presidency. (AUDIO: Desperate Measures) He found the forces keeping the Key and was imprisoned by them for a month. He overpowered the guards with the help of Chantir and escaped with the Key. The Doctor planned to use the Key to replicate the De-mat Gun and then modify the gun so that instead of removing only one individual from time and space, it would remove millions. (COMIC: The Forgotten) By one account, this modified De-mat gun was the Moment, (COMIC: Don't Step on the Grass) the weapon in the Doctor's possession on the last day of the Time War which could "destroy Daleks and Time Lords alike". (TV: The End of Time) The Eighth Doctor experienced a memory wipe shortly after obtaining the Key, which the Tenth Doctor attributed to using the modified De-mat Gun. (COMIC: The Forgotten) The Tenth Doctor and the Advocate believed that the Doctor used the Great Key to activate the Moment, time locking the war (COMIC: Don't Step on the Grass) and "doom[ing] them all". (COMIC: The Forgotten)
The blast of Gallifrey's destruction was so powerful the universe convulsed as planets, systems and galaxies were obliterated. (COMIC: Agent Provocateur) The Skrawn homeworld, Kolox, was reduced to the Kolox Nebula by the time winds at the end of the Time War. (COMIC: The Skrawn Inheritance) The Cruciform fell when Gallifrey vanished. (COMIC: The Forgotten)
Another account supported the notion that the Time Lords died at the hands of a Moment-wielding Doctor on the last day of the Time War, with the Eleventh Doctor later encountering a version of the Matrix who had been driven mad by the process of the experiences of all Gallifreyans and Battle TARDISes' dying experiences being uploaded into itself as they died. (COMIC: Sky Jacks)
Another account indicates that a weapon was indeed used to end the Time War (PROSE: The Eyeless) by ultimately annihilating the Time Lords and most Daleks. The weapon notably matched some descriptions of the Moment. (COMIC: The Forgotten, Don't Step on the Grass, PROSE: The Eyeless)
In yet another account, the fact that the Doctor had forsaken his name during the Time War was acknowledged, but the Eleventh Doctor was shown encountering incontrovertible evidence that the Time Lords had indeed died, in the form of the Matrix, which had been driven to insanity by the shock of every Time Lord's mind being uploaded into it at once. (COMIC: Sky Jacks)
Multi-Doctor event
Summons to the National Gallery
In need of the Doctor's assistance regarding figures that had apparently broken out of their paintings, Kate Stewart and UNIT airlifted the TARDIS by helicopter to the National Gallery, unaware that the Eleventh Doctor and Clara Oswald were inside at the time.
Kate told the Doctor that UNIT were acting on orders from Queen Elizabeth I and they went inside where Kate showed him her credentials, the painting, Gallifrey Falls No More. (TV: The Day of the Doctor) It was at this point the Doctor remembered the various last days of the war and christened this day one of them. (PROSE: The Day of the Doctor)
They proceeded to the Under Gallery where the Doctor saw empty 3D paintings that used to have figures in them. After determining from the shatter pattern that the glass was broken from the inside and that lots of dangerous somethings had escaped, a time fissure appeared. The Doctor first threw his fez in and then jumped through himself leaving Clara and Kate in the Gallery. (TV: The Day of the Doctor)
Seducing the queen
Acting on intel from River Song, the Tenth Doctor travelled to England in 1562 to track down a Zygon nest. (PROSE: The Day of the Doctor)
Several weeks later, the Doctor had infiltrated the Royal Court and become romantically involved with Queen Elizabeth. At a picnic, the Doctor proposed to her and she accepted which confirmed his suspicions about her being a Zygon. However, she was not a Zygon and his Machine That Goes "Ding" had detected their horse. The Doctor and Elizabeth fled and they reunited in the forest but the Zygon had taken the form of the Queen and the Doctor was confronted with two versions of her.
At this moment, the time fissure appeared and a fez emerged. Soon after, the Eleventh Doctor came through as well and greeted his tenth incarnation. They were joined by the War Doctor who, at first did not recognise the two men as his future incarnations. The trio were then surrounded by guards who they presumed were being commanded by the Zygon Queen. After a brief conversation with Kate and Clara, they were escorted to a prison cell in Richmond. (TV: The Day of the Doctor)
Stopping the Zygon invasion
The three Doctors talked in the cell about the war, with the Tenth Doctor becoming violent when the Eleventh Doctor couldn't remember how many children supposedly perished on the last day. (PROSE: The Day of the Doctor)
The Eleventh Doctor inscribed the codes for Jack Harkness' vortex manipulator which was then found by UNIT and almost used by the Zygon copy of Kate but Clara activated the device first and teleported to the Doctors' location. Clara burst into the unlocked cell just as the Doctors had devised a clever plan to break down the door. Elizabeth then appeared and took all four of them to the Zygon ship where they saw the Zygons put themselves in the paintings from the Gallery via stasis cubes. After they all left, Elizabeth revealed herself as the real Queen and she and the Tenth Doctor got married before the Doctors and Clara travelled to the Gallery.
After calling McGillop from the past and ordering him to take Gallifrey Falls to the Black Archive the Doctors and Clara used stasis cubes to gain access to the Archive, where Kate was threatening to destroy London to prevent a Zygon invasion. The Doctors wiped the memories of everyone in the room so a treaty could be agreed fairly. The Osgoods discovered who was who (TV: The Day of the Doctor) and this fact would later be crucial to Operation Double and preserving the treaty. (TV: The Zygon Invasion/The Zygon Inversion)
Relocation of Gallifrey
Back in the barn, the Moment allowed the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors through the time lock to support and console him in the destruction of Gallifrey but the Doctors instead came up with a plan to save Gallifrey.
Gallifrey had not been destroyed, but merely transported to an alternate dimension by the first thirteen incarnations of the Doctor; it was spared, but stored in stasis, waiting to be recovered. At the same time, all of the Daleks, having surrounded Gallifrey and bombarding it from space, suddenly became a spherical firing squad and destroyed themselves in a massive explosion that was believed by the rest of the universe to be Gallifrey's destruction as well. (TV: The Day of the Doctor)
Gallifrey’s relocation took almost a day to complete, longer than the Doctor had predicted, causing the planet to burn and rage. A town on the shore of Lake Calasper was ripped apart by an earthquake. The Doctor, in all their incarnations up to the Ninth (Minus the War Doctor), helped to get civilians trapped in dangerous situations to safety. (PROSE: The Day of the Doctor)
The Eye of Time, long possessed by the Time Lords, vanished from the universe as well, later being possessed by the Daleks of the New Dalek Paradigm. (GAME: City of the Daleks)
The Time War was time locked. (COMIC: Don't Step on the Grass, Running to Stay Still, TV: The Stolen Earth, The End of Time) With the exception of a very few survivors, the Time Lords and the Daleks disappeared from time and space. (TV: Dalek, The Parting of the Ways, Army of Ghosts / Doomsday)
Denouement of the War
As the Time War did not exist in a linear sense, after what most considered the end with the Doctor relocating Gallifrey to a different universe and wiping out the Daleks, some events still occurred which were described by the Doctor or others as part of the conflict.
Nestene invasion of Earth
- Main article: 2005 Nestene invasion of Earth
The stresses of the Time War caused the Nestene Consciousness' biology to change drastically, leaving most of its form to be made of plastic. The effects of the Time War rewrote the Nestene's nature, rewriting much of what it used to be. (PROSE: Rose)
On 4 March 2005, the Ninth Doctor blew up Henrik's as it had been infested with a Nestene nest, where he met Rose Tyler. They tracked the Nestene to the London Eye using the head of an Auton duplicate of Mickey Smith, Rose's boyfriend. The Doctor intended to end the conflict peacefully but brought a vial of anti-plastic as insurance. When the Consciousness discovered this it begun a full-scale invasion of Earth, first taking control of all plastic objects from London (TV: Rose) and then using satellites above the Earth to spread all over the planet. (PROSE: Rose) Rose knocked the anti-plastic out of the hand of an Auton and into the Consciousness which destroyed it and stopped the invasion. Rose later joined the Doctor on his travels to become his companion. (TV: Rose)
During their confrontation with the Nestene, the Doctor translated to Rose that the invasion was the Consciousness still fighting "the war". (PROSE: Rose)
The Metaltron
- Main article: Battle of GeoComTex
Before the end of the War, one Dalek fell through time and landed on the Ascension Islands around 1962. Insane and screaming, it passed through several private collections in the 20th and 21st centuries. By 2012, it was in the possession of billionaire Henry van Statten, who kept it in the Cage. With the intention of reaching other Daleks, it sent out a distress signal which was detected by the Ninth Doctor and Rose Tyler. Initially unaware of the source of the distress signal, the Doctor came to investigate it.
The Doctor and the Metaltron had a hostile discussion about the end of the war and the Doctor tried to kill it before being stopped by van Statten. When Rose met with the creature, it seemed to be a harmless victim and, in an attempt to comfort it, she touched its dome. It absorbed her artron energy and DNA and regenerated itself, escaping from the Cage and making its way upwards through the the Vault to the surface, killing van Statten's personnel as it went.
By the time it reached the surface, it had begun to mutate and had started feeling emotions due to absorbing Rose's DNA. Considering all the new emotions to be "sickness", the "Metaltron" asked Rose to order it to self-destruct, preferring death to a life with emotions. She refused at first, but eventually gave the order, and it destroyed itself.
After the ordeal, Rose asked if, with the death of the only other known survivor, the Time War was over, which the Doctor affirmed, sadly declaring that he had won. (TV: Dalek)
The Battle of the Game Station
- Main article: Battle of the Game Station
A lone ship containing the Dalek Emperor also barely survived the Time War, falling through time in a heavily damaged state. It went into seclusion at the edge of the Solar system "damaged but rebuilding" during the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire. Circa 199,909, it secretly installed the Jagrafess aboard Satellite Five to play the "long game" of slowly manipulating humans and re-establishing the Dalek species and fleet. A hundred years after the Jagrafess was killed, in the year 200,100, the Emperor was still using Satellite Five (now renamed the "Game Station") to manipulate humanity and conceal his fleet. (TV: Bad Wolf) The Emperor secretly used transmat technology aboard the space station to kidnap humans for nearly two hundred years. The kidnapped humans were harvested for their genetic material, and "one cell in a billion" was used to rebuild a new race of Daleks (TV: The Parting of the Ways) numbering roughly half a million aboard a fleet of 200 ships.
When the Ninth Doctor, Rose, and Jack Harkness were transmatted into the games, they quickly escaped and discovered from the Controller that the Daleks were her masters. Once detected, the Daleks begun their invasion plans (TV: Bad Wolf) and quickly killed all the humans that had either not evacuated yet or chosen to fight, including Jack, with the Doctor sending Rose back to 2005. The Daleks also heavily bombed the Earth with continents such as Australasia being described as "gone" in the aftermath.
Just as the Daleks were about to exterminate the Doctor, the TARDIS materialised and Rose, who had absorbed the energy of the Time Vortex and had become an entity known as Bad Wolf, stepped out. She scattered the words "Bad Wolf" across time and space to inspire Rose to become the entity in the first place. She then divided the atoms of the entire Dalek fleet, turning them all, including the Emperor, to dust. (TV: The Parting of the Ways) Then, in what would be called by the Tenth Doctor the "last act" of the Time War, she resurrected Jack from the dead, accidentally giving him immortality. (TV: Utopia) To save her life, the Doctor absorbed the Time Vortex from Rose which caused him to regenerate into his next incarnation, with the Ninth Doctor being confident that the human race would rebuild. (TV: The Parting of the Ways)
Indeed, after making it to the ravaged Earth, Jack was responsible for overthrowing the Hope Foundation, composed of a rich elite of humans in space that sought to exploit the survivors of the Dalek invasion. When Trear Station, formerly the Game Station, crashed to Earth, Jack was confident that humanity would ultimately rebuild itself as he saw that an abundance of resources was salvaged from the grounded station. (AUDIO: The Year After I Died) Jack eventually left this time to search for the Doctor. (TV: Utopia)
The day of the Doctor ends
Years later, in their thirteenth incarnation, the Doctor met Cass Fermazzi again and gave her a bandolier from a man that had recently perished and asked her about her life. She told the Doctor that she had been ready to fight all her life because she had a therapy bot growing up that was intended to take away some of her memories but instead someone else's memories kept spewing out about fighting for what was right, but never trying to hurt people and the promise to "Never be cruel and never be cowardly". Cass wrote it off as "cheesy stuff" but admitted that it got to her. This confirmed what the Doctor had already worked out: she was indirectly responsible for Cass' death by shaping her childhood in such a way that she became a fighter.
The Doctor lamented that she was impossible to save as she was too wrapped up in her timeline but was happy Cass had met her once without hating her. She wondered if the lesson the Moment was trying to teach her was that you can't save everyone, just the ones you can. After reflecting on the Moment's further conversations with her in Henry VIII's third-favourite garden and the banana groves of Villengard, she decided that she had done enough brooding and that the day of the Doctor was finally over. (PROSE: The Day of the Doctor)
Aftermath
Recognition
Although the first thirteen incarnations of the Doctor saved Gallifrey, due to the timelines being out of sync, the first eleven would forget this act. This caused the Ninth Doctor to reject his war incarnation until the memories of saving Gallifrey caught up with the Eleventh Doctor. The Tenth Doctor, obviously, believed Gallifrey had been destroyed when he was returned to his timeline. (TV: The Day of the Doctor) He remembered Gallifrey's fall as a legitimate destruction, (PROSE: The Eyeless) though his memory was similar to the Eighth Doctor's attempted aversion of the War in Heaven. (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles, The Eyeless)
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)
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)
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) and Martha Jones. (TV: Gridlock) 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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
Repercussions
The disappearance of the Time Lords created a vacuum that may have left history more vulnerable to change. The Ninth Doctor explained to Rose Tyler, (TV: The Unquiet Dead) the Tenth to Donna Noble (TV: The Unicorn and the Wasp) and the Eleventh to Clara Oswald (TV: Cold War) that time was in flux and history could change instantly.
One demonstration of this was when Rose created a temporal paradox by saving her father, Pete, just before his death in a traffic accident. This summoned the Reapers, who descended to sterilise the "wound" in time by devouring everything in sight. The Ninth Doctor said that if the Time Lords had been still around, they could have held back the Reapers and prevented or repaired the paradox. (TV: Father's Day)
According to the Tenth Doctor, certain areas like the Null Zone became "tricky" places for time travel. (COMIC: Supremacy of the Cybermen)
As well, the Tenth Doctor noted that when the Time Lords were around, travel between parallel worlds was far less difficult. With their demise, the paths between worlds were closed. (TV: Rise of the Cybermen)
The Time Lords' position as keepers of the Web of Time was fought over by many time-active races, including the Sontarans, the Cybermen, and the Unon. (COMIC: Weapons of Past Destruction) The Hajor too, their dimension damaged by the Time War, attempted to become the new Lords of Time. (COMIC: The Futurists) It was the Time Agency that asserted itself as the new protectors of history. (COMIC: Weapons of Past Destruction) Time Agent Jack Harkness, however, initially believed the Time War to be merely a legend. (TV: The Parting of the Wars)
As a result of changes in history, the Nestene Consciousness was now composed of plastic, a material which it had the power to control. (PROSE: Rose) Seeking to compensate for the loss of its protein planets which were destroyed in the war, the Nestene attempted to conquer Earth in 2005 only to be destroyed by the Ninth Doctor and Rose Tyler. (TV: Rose)
The Kin, locked away aeons ago by the Time Lords, escaped their temporal prison due to the Time War's mutilation of Time, Space and Matter. (PROSE: Nothing O'Clock)
Due to the actions of Daleks near the end of the Time War, the Dalek Factor was left within the genetics of one in half a million humans, though dormant. When a Dalek casing was uncovered in England, the Dalek Factor became active in Kate Yates who's Dalek personality grew a new Dalek within the casing. The Dalek intended to travel to the future and use humanity's resources to rebuild its race but failed when Kate's human personality resurfaced and set the Dalek's Time Ring to self-destruct. The self-destruct caused a warp implosion that atomised the Dalek and made the Dalek Factor go dormant again in humanity. (PROSE: I Am a Dalek)
The entire chain of Hotel Historia was left destroyed. (COMIC: Hotel Historia)
As a result of the Time War, paradox eaters such as Reapers, Chronovores and Gramoryans ran wild. (AUDIO: Divorced, Beheaded, Regenerated) The Discordia discovered time travel technology on their home planet and began to spread chaos throughout time, with no one left to oppose them. (AUDIO: Time in a Bottle) Many Utopia windows were spread across the cosmos as flotsam and jetsam. (AUDIO: I Was Churchill's Double)
The Encyclopedia Gallifreya dealt with the Time Lords now not existing by changing its settings so that all surviving Encyclopedias auto-updated, each constantly encoding data from their owner and linking with others of their kind. Some Time Lords (who did things like taking over the universe) complained about this causing issues with privacy; the Doctor had forgotten their Encyclopedia and thus was not really affected. If he had checked with his Encyclopedia, he would have realised that he was not the only Time Lord left. (PROSE: Citation Needed)
Survivors
Most of the inhabitants of Gallifrey at the end of the War survived in stasis in another universe. (TV: The Day of the Doctor) The Doctor believed himself to be the only remaining Time Lord in the universe, (TV: The End of the World, Dalek, The Day of the Doctor) but in his tenth incarnation he encountered the Rani (COMIC: Untitled) and the War Master, who survived disguised as a human using the Chameleon Arch. (TV: Utopia) The Monk also survived, by utilising a similar plan to the Master. (AUDIO: Divorced, Beheaded, Regenerated)
K9 Mark I travelled through time to the year 2050 some point before the disappearance of Gallifrey. (TV: Regeneration)
A single Dalek survived and crashed on the Ascension Islands on Earth in 1962. (TV: Dalek) The Dalek Emperor also survived by falling through time to approximately the 2,000th century. (TV: The Parting of the Ways) The Cult of Skaro and the Daleks imprisoned in the Genesis Ark left the universe for the Void before the end of the war. (TV: Doomsday)
Several races which were erased from existence during the war persisted as echoes displaced from time on a plane of non-reality, banding together to become the Bygone Horde. (AUDIO: The Other Side)
Though Davros was believed by the Doctor to have been killed in the war (consumed by the Nightmare Child), Dalek Caan temporal shifted into the war and rescued him. (TV: The Stolen Earth) The Advocate escaped following Caan's path. (COMIC: Fugitive, Don't Step on the Grass)
A Time Lord veteran of the Eternal War survived through the Time War trapped in a time loop with the Qwerm. (PROSE: River of Time) Several Daleks who had survived various pre-Time War encounters with the Doctor on the planets Kembel, Spiridon, Exxilon, Aridius and Vulcan resided in the Dalek Asylum. (TV: Asylum of the Daleks)
Eve was the only one of her species to escape being wiped out in the Last Great Time War due to their abilities to see timelines. (TV: SJAF 2)
The Gelth survived but lost their physical bodies, reduced to a gaseous state. (TV: The Unquiet Dead) The Zygon homeworld apparently burned in the first days of the war. Several Zygons survived this attack. (TV: The Day of the Doctor) The Skrawn which were lucky to have survived their planet's destruction were left drifting aimlessly, bitter and vengeful. (COMIC: The Skrawn Inheritance)
A temporal mine survived due to waiting in a pocket dimension throughout the War's duration, unable to find a big enough target. (PROSE: Keeping up with the Joneses)
Return of the Time Lords
When the Time Lords made contact with the universe through a crack in time on the planet Trenzalore, they broadcasted the first question to the universe to draw the Doctor in to free them from the pocket universe in which they were trapped. This also drew in "half the universe" who would descend upon Trenzalore if the Time Lords were released, and restart the Time War. The Doctor fought for centuries in the Siege of Trenzalore to prevent this, unwilling to leave the planet to its destruction but equally unwilling to release the Time Lords and restart the Time War which would bring Hell upon the whole universe once more. Ultimately, the Time Lords themselves closed the crack in time, closing the only known way for them to return, but not before granting the Doctor a new regeneration cycle, allowing him to defeat the Daleks besieging the planet (everyone else having been destroyed or retreated) and changing his future. (TV: The Time of the Doctor)
The Time Lords eventually unfroze Gallifrey and moved it to "the end of the universe, give or take a star system" for protection. The Doctor was unsure how they did this as he didn't ask. While confronting the Time Lords at the end of the universe, Clara Oswald told them that "everybody" hated them as a result of the war. (TV: Hell Bent)
After the failure of the Final Sanction, the Time Lords cured the Master's condition and he left Gallifrey in what he later referred to as "a mutual kicking me out." (TV: The Doctor Falls)
Other realities
In an alternate timeline created when Rassilon allied with the Cybermen to rewrite history, (COMIC: Supremacy of the Cybermen) the Time War was fought against the Cybermen. The War Doctor actually used the Moment to destroy Gallifrey and the Cybermen. (COMIC: Prologue: The War Doctor)
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Gallifrey
Allies of the Time Lords included the Sisterhood of Karn, (COMIC: The Clockwise War) who were responsible for resurrecting and enabling the deceased Eighth Doctor to regenerate into the War Doctor, (TV: The Night of the Doctor) the Technomancers (AUDIO: Legion of the Lost) and the Voord. (COMIC: Four Doctors)
Another ally, recruited by Rassilon, was the Nestene Consciousness, who provided Autons. (PROSE: Decoy)
On one occasion, Cardinal Ollistra gave the order to open a rift to the home dimension of the Time Lords' old enemies, the Great Vampires, in a bid to wipe out a Dalek fleet. (COMIC: The Bidding War)
Skaro
The Daleks made alliances with the Taalyens, (AUDIO: The Innocent) the Cyclors, (COMIC: The Organ Grinder) and the Morlontoa. (COMIC: The Clockwise War) Varga plants were used by the Daleks during the Time War, (AUDIO: Legion of the Lost) as well as the Ogrons. (AUDIO: Planet of the Ogrons)
Other combatants
Cybermen fought in the Time War; the husk of a giant Cyberman was left in the wreckage of a Dalek mothership on Veestrax. (COMIC: Outrun)
Though the Sontarans were aware of the war, they were not allowed to take part, much to their dismay. (TV: The Sontaran Stratagem) However, they did try to get involved. (AUDIO: The Eternity Cage, The Sontaran Ordeal)
The Graxnix were one of the lowest races to take part. (COMIC: Hotel Historia)
Bystanders
The Eighth Doctor was once imprisoned along with a Sea Devil and a Malmooth. (COMIC: The Forgotten)
Abandoning the conflict, the Nestene Consciousness developed a rapport with the Embodiment of Gris, only for both to be ravaged by fallout from the war. (PROSE: Revenge of the Nestene)
The Forest of Cheem witnessed the war and wept at the bloodshed. (TV: The End of the World)
Technology
The Daleks created temporal mines to use against the Time Lords, which would sit and wait in another dimension before destroying what they deemed a large enough fleet. The Time Lords captured many of the mines and repurposed them to attack Dalek fleets instead. (PROSE: Keeping up with the Joneses) They also employed continuity bombs, explosives that would rewrite a Gallifreyean's history and make them a Dalek Slave. (COMIC: Four Doctors)
Douglas Henderson was created as a living weapon during the War. (COMIC: The Big, Blue Box)
Behind the scenes
- Every series finale by Russell T Davies featured a villain who'd escaped from the Time War. Series 1's Bad Wolf / The Parting of the Ways had the Dalek Emperor and a whole fleet of Daleks; series 2's Army of Ghosts / Doomsday had the Cult of Skaro; series 3's Utopia / The Sound of Drums / Last of the Time Lords had the Master; series 4 had Davros; and the 2009 Specials' The End of Time had Rassilon and the High Council.
- Though a frequent theme in the entirety of the RTD era, the Time War itself was not depicted until 2013's The Last Day and The Day of the Doctor. Until then, the audience was only treated to brief, scattered mentions. The End of Time did depict Gallifrey and the actions of the High Council during the last days of the Time War but nothing of the fighting against the Daleks.
- Every one of the Doctor's regenerations within the revived series has occurred following an event that is in some way related to the Time War:
- The Eighth Doctor regenerated during the Time War with the help of the Sisterhood of Karn who turned him into the man he needed to be to end the war. (TV: The Night of the Doctor)
- The War Doctor regenerated after growing too old following years of fighting in the Time War. He regenerated shortly after he and all of the other Doctors saved Gallifrey from destruction and obliterated the Dalek fleet. (TV: The Day of the Doctor)
- The Ninth Doctor regenerated after a battle with the Dalek Emperor who had survived the Time War. (TV: The Parting of the Ways)
- The Tenth Doctor regenerated after defeating Rassilon who was attempting to free Gallifrey from the time lock, bringing the rest of the war with him. (TV: The End of Time) Earlier, the Tenth Doctor also aborted a regeneration which was caused when he was shot by a Dalek of a new empire created by Davros who had escaped the Time War with the help of Dalek Caan. (TV: The Stolen Earth / Journey's End) The Eleventh Doctor later confirmed that this did indeed count as a regeneration. (TV: The Time of the Doctor)
- The Eleventh Doctor also died of old age after centuries of defending Trenzalore, preventing the Time Lords from returning and the Time War from starting anew. The Time Lords intervened to save the Doctor and change the future so this could happen. (TV: The Time of the Doctor)
- The events that led to the Twelfth Doctor's regeneration are more tenuous, but still by proxy related to the Last Great Time War, as the Doctor was shot by a Cyberman, created by the Master following the aforementioned encounter with Rassilon. (TV: The Doctor Falls)
- A 2005 faux-documentary produced by BBC Radio, The Dalek Conquests, attempts to put the Time War into context with the Doctor's recurring conflicts with the Daleks over the years.
- A long-running story arc featured in the BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures book series concurrent with the return of Doctor Who to television in 2005 featured another Time War, the War in Heaven, which also ended in the Doctor's destruction of Gallifrey. However, Russell T Davies clarified in DWM 356 that, though fans were free to invent their own interpretations, the BBC's merchandise regulations meant that there could be no official connection between the Time War of the novels and the Time War of the television show.
- The "Mission Complete" message of the video game NOTVALID: The Last Dalek deems that the Time War is ended when the eponymous Dalek exterminates the Ninth Doctor, the last Time Lord, and his TARDIS, the last TARDIS, thus making the Daleks the new Lords of Time, fulfilling the ambition of Davros as stated in TV: Remembrance of the Daleks.
Doctor Who: Battles in Time
Non-narrative material in Doctor Who: Battles in Time magazine revealed further survivors of the Time War.
- According to DWBIT 51, an army of Daleks was weakened and fell through time to 70 million years before the 21st century and was destroyed by dinosaurs.
- According to DWBIT 11, a Dalek ship crashed in an island in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean, causing a disturbance in human vehicles and the mysterious disappearances of aircraft and surface vessels, which alludes to the eerie phenomenon of the Bermuda Triangle. Their ultimate fate is unknown.
- Also, DWBIT 19 stated a group of Daleks massacred the pirate fleet of Captain Jack Lawrence in late September 1697.
