Fall of Gallifrey
The Fall of Gallifrey (GAME: City of the Daleks) was the final battle of the Last Great Time War between the Dalek Empire and the Time Lords of Gallifrey.
On the last day of the Time War, after the Daleks attacked Arcadia and the city fell, the Daleks focused their attention on bombarding the planet from orbit, whilst the War Doctor stole the Moment, intending to destroy other sides to finally end the War. However with help from his other incarnations, he found a way to save Gallifrey whilst destroying all the Daleks in orbit. (TV: The Day of the Doctor)
Other accounts suggested the War had ended in different ways. One different account of the fall claimed the Eighth Doctor detonated the Moment, destroying both the Daleks and his own people. (PROSE: Doctor Who and the Time War) Another account claimed the final battle had been the Last Battle of the Seventh Galaxy. (PROSE: The Eyeless)
History
A day to come
Speaking with the Eighth Doctor after it had travelled through the multiverse, the Dalek Time Strategist claimed to him that the Time War would end with the destruction of Gallifrey. In an attempt to enlist the Doctor to ensure the destruction, it offered him a counterpart of his great-grandson, Alex Campbell. (AUDIO: Restoration of the Daleks)
The siege begins
A fragmented Dalek transmission from the Time War, one of several salvaged and recorded in The Dalek Conquests having been found echoing through the Void or squeezed through temporal anomalies and black holes, spoke of an attack formation, the extermination of the Time Lords and an impending Dalek victory. (AUDIO: The Dalek Conquests)
After centuries of conflict between the Daleks and Time Lords, an invasion fleet made up of millions of Dalek flying saucers laid siege to Gallifrey. (PROSE: The Whoniverse) Despite the 400 sky trenches defending Arcadia, the Daleks broke through and invaded the second city. (TV: The Last Day)
Whilst rumours spread of the fall of Arcadia and a new front opened at the Last Hour, the Time Lords were alerted that the First Doctor’s timeline was under attack by the Daleks. (AUDIO: Volume Two trailer) The Player was recruited to meet the Doctor and convince him to go the South Pole to keep his timeline on track. (AUDIO: The Plague of Dreams)
Arcadia fell to the Daleks, with the Doctor fighting on the frontlines. (TV: Doomsday) On the battlefield one soldier encountered the Doctor. The Doctor borrowed his fusion blaster and left a message for the Time Lords carved into a wall: NO MORE. He then proceeded to the Time Vaults and stole the last weapon in the Omega Arsenal - the Moment. (TV: The Day of the Doctor) disappearing from the Time Lords’ observation. His intent was to destroy Daleks and Time Lords alike. (TV: The End of Time)
As the Daleks approached the Capitol, hundreds of Time Lords recorded their cherished memories into memory lanterns and set them adrift in the Time Vortex. (AUDIO: The Memory of Winter, COMIC: The Memory Feast) Unable to breach the Capitol’s sky trenches, the Daleks surrounded Gallifrey and began bombarding the planet from orbit with all their remaining ships. (TV: The Day of the Doctor)
During the final battle, the Daleks created a time capsule launched 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 Ultimate Sanction
With the planet utterly surrounded and on the verge of destruction, the President of the High Council, Rassilon, grew more desperate and refused to admit defeat. (PROSE: The Whoniverse) After the Visionary revealed two Time Lords would survive the coming fall, the Doctor and the Master, Rassilon devised the Ultimate Sanction. A link was forged with the future Master on Earth in 2009 by implanting a signal, a rythmn of four beats, in his mind as a child via the Untempered Schism. Rassilon then sent a White-Point Star to the Master to make the link physical, bypassing the time lock. With the signal inside him 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.
Before proceeding, Rassilon put the Sanction to the vote of the High Council. Only two opposed; the woman (TV: The End of Time) and the Patriarch of Stillhaven. (PROSE: Lords and Masters) Rassilon led a delegation to Earth, flanked by four Time Lords including the two opponents, who he had kneel in shame, where he confronted the Master and the Tenth Doctor. With the time lock broken, Gallifrey itself began to manifest above Earth which the Doctor warned was just the beginning; all the terrors of the war were descending. The Doctor broke the connection by shooting the White-Point Star, sending the Time Lords and Gallifrey back to the Time War. The Master decided to take revenge on Rassilon for making him a monster and attacked him, being brought back into the War with him. (TV: The End of Time) Rassilon's battle with the Master caused him to regenerate, (PROSE: Pandoric's Box) reportedly because the Master "shoved White Point Stars down his throat". (PROSE: Lords and Masters)
Relocation of Gallifrey
The Doctor took the Moment to a barn in Gallifrey's drylands, (PROSE: The Day of the Doctor) intending to activate it far from the sight of his TARDIS. The Moment arranged for a meeting with two future incarnations, the Tenth Doctor and Eleventh Doctor. After an adventure on which they negotiated peace between UNIT and the Zygons, the three prepared to detonate Gallifrey together, making sure the War Doctor did not need to bear the responsibility alone. However after the Eleventh Doctor’s companion, Clara Oswald, objected they reconsidered and ultimately decided against it. Inspired by the stasis cubes that the Zygons had been using a suspended animation, the Eleventh Doctor came up with an alternative to the joy of his other selves.
Working with ten other incarnations, the Doctors used their TARDISes to place Gallifrey in a pocket universe. They contacted the War Council beforehand and received the General‘s reluctant approval for the plan. The Dalek fleet, which was still surrounding the planet and firing on it at a constant rate, intensified the bombardment in response to the Doctors’ activity. It was left suddenly firing on itself when Gallifrey disappeared, nearly destroying the entire Dalek race. (TV: The Day of the Doctor) The result was, in the Emperor’s words, an “inferno”. (TV: The Parting of the Ways)
Though the effect had been instantaneous on the Daleks, 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. Meanwhile in the War Room, the Twelfth Doctor entered and helped coordinate disaster relief with the General. (PROSE: The Day of the Doctor)
Afterwards the Doctors were left unsure if they’d succeeded or not, but concluded it was better to have failed doing the right thing than succeeding at the wrong. Due to the timelines being out of sync, the first eleven incarnations involved would forget this act. This caused the Doctor to reject his war incarnation until the memories of saving Gallifrey caught up with the Eleventh Doctor. (TV: The Day of the Doctor) Until then, he remembered Gallifrey's fall as a legitimate destruction. (TV: The End of the World, PROSE: The Eyeless)
Aftermath
To the rest of N-Space, it looked as if the Time Lords had been destroyed as well, making it seem that the War had ended with the destruction of both factions. (TV: The Day of the Doctor) The Eye of Time, which had been possessed by the Time Lords, was lost during the “Fall” of Gallifrey. The Eye later fell into the hands of the New Dalek Paradigm. (GAME: City of the Daleks)
Some Daleks survived the destruction. One Dalek fell through time and crashed on Earth in the 20th Century. (TV: Dalek) The Emperor’s flagship ended up in the distant future, crippled but with the Emperor himself still alive. Over the centuries he manipulated the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire and rebuilt the fleet. It was exposed by the Ninth Doctor in 200,100, resulting in the Battle of the Game Station. (TV: The Parting of the Ways)
