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- For Time Wars in general, see Time war.
The Last Great Time War was the war between the Time Lords and the Daleks, which destroyed Gallifrey and left few survivors.
The War
Origins of the War
The facts of the Time War are mostly a mystery, but its origins are slightly more clear. At one point, the Time Lords predicted that in one possible timeline, the Daleks would make themselves the dominant life form in the universe. A Time Lord, who did not give his name at the time but later named as Ferrain (NA: Lungbarrow), sent the Doctor on a mission to 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
- Find some intrinsic flaw or weakness to exploit in the Daleks
The Doctor believed he managed only to, perhaps, set back the history of the Daleks for a thousand years. (DW: Genesis of the Daleks)
The Daleks soon learned of what the Time Lords tried to do, and planned to infiltrate the High Council of the Time Lords with duplicates. (DW: Resurrection of the Daleks) One of the Dalek Puppet Emperors opened declaration of hostilities; although the Daleks claimed that these were merely in retaliation for the Time Lords sending the Doctor back in time to prevent their creation.
The Etra Prime Incident (BFA: The Apocalypse Element) began an escalation of hostilities. Lady President Romana made diplomatic overtures. (NA: Lungbarrow) She later initiated a Dalek-Time Lord peace treaty under the Act of Master Restitution. (DWA: 2006 Doctor Who Annual)
- This Act enabled the Doctor to safely visit Skaro to retrieve the Master's remains. (DW: Doctor Who: The TV Movie)
The Main War
The Daleks, wielding the full might of the Deathsmiths of Goth, launched a massive fleet into the Time Vortex, launching the war. Weapons used by the Time Lords included Bowships, Black Hole Carriers and N-Forms. they also resurrected The Master, as they thought him an ideal warrior for the war. However, when confronted with the scale of the war, the Master fled.
The war lasted for years and took place throughout space and time. As the Doctor said, "A war with the Daleks against the Time Lords, and the whole of creation at stake." (DWA: 2006 Doctor Who Annual). The Sontarans were aware of the war, but weren't allowed to take part. (DW: The Sontaran Stratagem)
During the very first year Davros was killed at the Gate of Elysium, when his command ship flew into the jaws of the Nightmare Child. The Doctor tried to save him, but failed. Eventualy, Caan, a survivor of the war managed to time shift back into the war and extract him from the time-locked event, transporting him into the post-war universe.
Another of the known theatres was Arcadia, where the Doctor fought on the front lines and which eventually fell to the Daleks. (DW: Doomsday)
Towards the end of the war the Daleks sent a capsule to 70 AD Earth in order to spread the Dalek Factor amongst Humans. The capsule's engine exploded, and the Dalek was killed soon after impact. It was only able to release a small amount of the Dalek Factor, leading to only one in a half a million Humans having it. (TDA: I am a Dalek)
Conclusion
- For more information see Battle of Gallifrey (Time War)
During the last act of the Last Great Time War, Gallifrey, many planets, star systems and even galaxies were destroyed in a single instant. (IDW: Doctor Who #1). With the exception of a few survivors, both the Time Lords and the Daleks disappeared from time and space.
It is also known that the planets Gallifrey and Skaro themselves were destroyed. The Doctor implied that he played a major part in finally destroying both sides. (DW: Dalek). It is because of this that the Beast referred to the Doctor as "killer of his own kind". (DW: The Impossible Planet)
After the conclusion, the war became time-locked, making it (in theory) impossible to revisit the events. (DW: The Stolen Earth) This is probably why the Doctor was unable to go back and save his people, although he has hinted that it occurred to him. (DW: Father's Day (TV story))
Aftermath and aftershocks
The war was mostly invisible to "lower species", but devastating to the time-aware "higher" ones.
The Nestene Consciousness justified its 2005 invasion of Earth by claiming that its "protein planets" had been 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, reduced to 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. (DWA: 2006 Doctor Who Annual)
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 big change from the way it had been. (DW: The Unquiet Dead)
The most dramatic demonstration of this was when Rose created a temporal 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 sterilize 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. (DW: Father's Day)
As well, the Doctor noted that when the Time Lords were around, travel between Parrallel worlds was less difficult. With their demise, the paths between worlds were closed. (DW: Rise of the Cybermen)
The survivors and their fates
Time Lords
- The Doctor survived. He stated that if any other Time Lords lived, he would have sensed their presence. (DW: Dalek)
- The Doctor's survival may have entailed a regeneration. Though he did not say so categorically, he implied unfamiliarity with his new face when he first met Rose Tyler.
- The Master (or rather a version of the Master created, revived or resurrected by the Time Lords) survived by turning himself into a Human and escaping to the end of the universe, beyond the furthest reaches of the Time Lords and Daleks. His transformation meant that the Doctor could not sense his existence, but the Face of Boe remembered encountering him many millenia earlier when he was still the human Capt. Jack Harkness. (DW: Gridlock, Utopia / Last of the Time Lords / The Sound of Drums) (This presumes Jack Harkness is the Face of Boe.)
- The fate of Romana has yet to be revealed, but Susan is apparently dead, as the Doctor states numerous times (most recently in The Doctor's Daughter) that he has no surviving family. (This assumes that Susan is in fact a blood relative of the Doctor and/or is actually a Time Lord. Similarly, this assumes that the televised continuity coincides with that of the novels and audio dramas, which indicate Romana eventually returned to her home universe from the pocket universe called E-Space (DW: Warriors' Gate.)
- The Face of Boe's final words to the Doctor, "You. Are. Not. Alone." were thought to be a warning to the Doctor that Professor Yana (an acronym of Boe's last words) was in fact the Master in human form. However, whether or not his words suggested there are more survivors was left ambiguous.
Daleks
- A lone Dalek survived and crashed onto the Ascension Island on Earth in 1962 (DW: Dalek)
- The Dalek Emperor also lived, although he had fallen through time to approximately the 2,000th century and set about re-building an army from the DNA of Humans. (DW: Bad Wolf) Transformed temporarily into the Bad Wolf entity, Rose Tyler stated, "the Time War ends now", and obliterated every Dalek in the universe. (DW: The Parting of the Ways, TDA: I am a Dalek)
- The Cult of Skaro and the Daleks imprisoned within the Genesis Ark escaped the attentions of the Bad Wolf, having left the universe for the Void before the end of the war. Except for the Cult of Skaro members who escaped via temporal shift, the Daleks were sucked back into the Void. (DW: Doomsday) Dalek Sec, after he had become a Human-Dalek hybrid, was killed when he sacrificed himself to save the Doctor. Daleks Thay and Jast were killed when they were exterminated by the Human-Daleks, leaving Dalek Caan the only surviving Dalek, who in turn activated another temporal shift, escaping the Doctor.
- Davros, who was revealed to have been killed in the 1st year of the war by flying his ship into the mouth of the Nightmare Child, in fact survived the Time War as Dalek Caan's temporal shift took him back into the War and allowed him to save Davros. The effect of bypassing the Time-Locked Time War resulted in Caan losing his mind. Davros then set about creating a new Dalek army from his own cells and moved 27 celestial bodies into the Medusa Cascade, a second out of place with the rest of the Universe. (DW: Evolution of the Daleks, The Stolen Earth, Journey's End)