Time war
The Last Time War was a universe altering conflict between the Time Lords and the Daleks.
Dalek-Time Lord Time War
The facts of the Time War are little known.
The origins of the war date back to when the Time Lords sent the Doctor into the past in an attempt to avert the Daleks' creation or affect their development to make them less aggressive. (DW: Genesis of the Daleks)
Subsequently, Daleks planned to infiltrate the High Council of the Time Lords with duplicates (DW: Resurrection of the Daleks) and the open declaration of hostilities by one of the Dalek Puppet Emperors; although the Daleks claimed that these were merely in retaliation for the Time Lords' sending of the Doctor back in time to prevent their creation.
The Time Lords made some attempts to make peace. The first was an attempted Dalek-Time Lord peace treaty initiated by President Romana under the Act of Master Restitution.
The second was the Etra Prime Incident, which some say began the escalation of events. Weapons used by the Time Lords included Black Hole Carriers and N-Forms. The Daleks, wielding the full might of the Deathsmiths of Goth and launched a massive fleet into the Time Vortex. This war lasted for years and took place throughout space and time. The last action of the Time War was by the Doctor, who destroyed all of the Daleks and Time Lords. He also removed all traces of both races out of time. (Doctor Who Annual 2006)
The war had a few survivors. The Doctor lived. On the Dalek side, one survivor crashed on Earth (DW: Dalek) as well as the Dalek Emperor escaped and the Cult of Skaro along with the Daleks captured in the Genesis Ark. (DW: Dalek, The Parting of the Ways, Doomsday)
Effects
The war was unseen by "lower species" but devastating to the "higher" ones.
The Nestene Consciousness' justified its 21st century invasion of Earth due to its "protein planets" being destroyed in the war. (DW: Rose) The Forest of Cheem also knew of the war and its effects on the Time Lords. (DW: The End of the World) The Gelth lost their bodies because of the war, being turned into gaseous forms. (DW: The Unquiet Dead) The Eternals apparently fled this reality in despair, never to be seen again, and the Animus died in the conflict. (Doctor Who Annual 2006)
The destruction of the Time Lords created a vacuum that may have left history itself more vulnerable to change. The Doctor told Rose that time was in flux and history could change instantly- a more fluid definition to that which had been seen before. (DW: The Unquiet Dead)
The most dramatic demonstration of this was when Rose created a paradox by crossing her own time stream to save her father's life just before his intended death in a traffic accident. This summoned the Reapers, who descended to sterilise the "wound" in time by devouring everything in sight. The Doctor stated that if the Time Lords had been still around, they could have prevented or repaired the paradox. The consequences of creating a paradox were also why the Doctor could not go back in time and save the Time Lords. (DW: Father's Day)
As well, the Doctor noted that when the Time Lords were around, travel between parallel universes was less difficult, but with their demise, the paths between worlds were closed. (DW: Rise of the Cybermen)
Other Time Wars
The term Time War can be applied to at least two types of time-spanning conflicts. The first type of time war is where the two sides are fighting the war across different points in history, separated by centuries or millennia. The second type of time war is where Time itself is used as a weapon, with preemptive strikes, time loops, temporal paradoxes and the reversal of historical events. While the last great Time War appears to be of the latter variety, there have been other wars. There have been difficulties studying these wars, since they tend to erase the damage before it was made.
The Time Lords fought a time war early in their history against the Order of the Black Sun, based some thirty thousand years in the Gallifreyan future. The first strike of the war, from the Time Lords' point of view, was when a Black Sun agent travelled back in time and attacked the Time Lords just as they were about to turn the star Qqaba into a power source for their time experiments. This also caused the apparent demise of the stellar engineer Omega. The Time Lords did not know why the Black Sun (whom they had never encountered before the attack) should have wanted to strike at them, and surmised that it was for something they had yet to do. (DW: Star Death and The 4-D War) Years later, at a diplomatic conference, a representative of the Order was murdered by the Sontarans and this was blamed on the Time Lords. This provided the motivation for the war's beginnings, as from the Order's point of view, the Time Lords were the ones who struck first. (DW: Black Sun Rising)
Yet another war was one lasting thirty thousand years. It was fought between Time Lords and other races that were developing time travel. The Time Lords destroyed one such race, the Charon, before they even existed. This war took place a generation after the time of Rassilon, the founder of Time Lord society. (DW: Sky Pirates!)
Other Time Wars include the skirmish between the Halldons (DW: We are the Daleks). Another was the brutal slaughter of the Omnicraven Uprising. Neither of these wars directly involved the Time Lords, though they intervened both times.
At one point in the Doctor's future a war was fought between the Time Lords and an unnamed Enemy. Although Gallifrey was also destroyed as a result of the Eighth Doctor attempting to prevent the war from beginning (DW: The Ancestor Cell) this was a different occurance to the Last Time War. At some point, Gallifrey was restored, only to be destroyed again in the Last Time War.
Behind the Scenes
- A fan-turned-pro, Russell T. Davies has considerable knowledge of the Doctor Who Universe mythology, In his Doctor Who Magazine column, Russel T Davies compared Gallifrey being destroyed twice with Earth's two World Wars. He also said that he was "usually happy for old and new fans to invent the Complete History of the Doctor in their heads, completely free of the production team's hot and heavy hands." Despite Davies' unequivocal statement that the two wars are distinct, Lance Parkin, in his Doctor Who chronology AHistory, suggests in a speculative essay that the two destructions of Gallifrey could be the same event seen from two different perspectives, with the Eighth Doctor present twice (and both times responsible for the planet's destruction).
