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The Fall of Gallifrey, (GAME: City of the Daleks) also known as the 'Falls No More' Incident, (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual) 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 on a backwater, destroying both the Daleks and his own people. (PROSE: Doctor Who and the Time War) Another account suggested the final battle had been the Last Battle of the Seventh Galaxy. (PROSE: The Eyeless)
History
A day to come
Shortly after Rassilon's resurrection and elevation to Lord President Eternal, a future version of General Trave arrived on Gallifrey. After visiting his younger self, Trave was killed by guards trying to deliver a message to the Celestial Intervention Agency's Deputy Coordinator, Narvin. Narvin discovered the holographic message was from his own future self standing in the Capitol under siege, warning that Rassilon's regime would lead to Gallifrey's fall. (AUDIO: Havoc)
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 dead great-grandson, Alex Campbell. (AUDIO: Restoration of the Daleks)
Through the extrapolations of the Matrix, the Time War-era Time Lords foresaw this event from their theoretical future, which was recorded in the Dalek Combat Training Manual. Due to the sensitive nature of the information relating to the outcome of the Time War, tactical analysis for this event was suspended. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual)
Under the command of the Dalek Time Fleet Commander, a massive Dalek Time Fleet was launched in a planned final attack on Gallifrey. However, the force was destroyed by the War Doctor using a Time Destructor. (AUDIO: The Innocent) After taking the Cruciform, in a change to the timeline which the War Master had inadvertently caused by using the Heavenly Paradigm, (AUDIO: The Heavenly Paradigm) the Daleks brought the Time War directly to Gallifrey. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual)
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) He disappeared from the Time Lords’ observation, however they inferred that 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 Saxon 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. Rassilon planned to use this link to break Gallifrey out of the time lock, beginning a chain reaction which would tear the Time Vortex apart and destroy the universe entirely which would enable the Time Lords to ascend to beings of pure consciousness.
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. Rassilon revealed the full extent of the plan, to even the Master’s horror. 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 realised they had long since thought up an alternative, to the joy of his other selves.
The Twelfth Doctor once stated that "all thirteen" incarnations of the Doctor then teamed up to save Gallifrey, (TV: The Day of the Doctor) only to also admit that he was unsure how many versions of themself used their TARDISes to place Gallifrey in a pocket universe, (PROSE: The Day of the Doctor) with the Time Lords claiming that every incarnation of the Doctor was present. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual) 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, which he likened to Earth Death. (TV: The End of the World, PROSE: The Eyeless) The Tenth Doctor recalled that the Cruciform fell at the same time that Gallifrey was "burned". (COMIC: The Forgotten)
Aftermath
Wake of Gallifrey
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, who returned to Skaro and restored the capital city of Kaalann. Under the leadership of a new Dalek Emperor, the Daleks declared themselves the new Time Lords and planned to use the power of the eye to totally rewrite time to their designs. However, the Eleventh Doctor and Amy Pond, after learning the Daleks had now exterminated humanity in 1963, travelled back to Skaro and prevented the Paradigm from ever using the Eye of Time, restoring the true timeline. (GAME: City of the Daleks)
Under the leadership of a different emperor, the Daleks obtained a fragment of the Eternity Clock. With this, the Daleks launched an invasion of Earth in 2106 and plotted to remove Gallifrey from time to become the new Time Lords, but the Doctor and his wife, River Song, took the clock fragment from them, undoing the Earth invasion and preventing their further plans. (GAME: The Eternity Clock)
Dalek survivors
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)
The Cult of Skaro, who survived the Time War by hiding in a ship within the Void, were aware of the fall of Gallifrey. Emerging on Earth in 2007, they brought with them the Genesis Ark, a dimensionally transcendental prison ship which Dalek Sec believed to be all that survived of the Time Lords' homeworld. Coming into conflict with the Tenth Doctor, (TV: Doomsday) the Cult escaped via emergency temporal shift to 1930 where they faced the Doctor again, with the resulting confrontation ending in the deaths of all the Cult bar Dalek Caan, who the Doctor believed to be the last surviving Dalek in the universe. In light of the deaths that he had witnessed, both Dalek and human, the Doctor offered Caan his help only to be rejected as the Dalek initiated another temporal shift. (TV: Evolution of the Daleks)
Breaking the time lock, the temporal shift took Caan into the Time War where he rescued Davros from the Nightmare Child. Emerging in the post-war universe, Davros created a New Dalek Empire which invaded Earth. (TV: The Stolen Earth) Having saw time, Caan was believed to have gone insane; infact, he had come to believe that the Daleks must be destroyed, setting in motion a chain of events which led to the destruction of the empire. (TV: Journey's End) Nevertheless, a one ship survived and, having found the last of the Progenitor devices, created a New Dalek Paradigm. (TV: Victory of the Daleks)
The Master
The Master, who had fought in the Time War, was overcome by fear after witnessing the Dalek Emperor seize the Cruciform and so fled the conflict, making himself human so that he would not be found. (TV: Utopia) He was ultimately discovered by the Tenth Doctor, who believed that the two of them were the last surviving Time Lords. Regenerating, the Saxon Master was shocked to learn of the apparent destruction of Gallifrey at the Doctor's hand. (TV: The Sounds of Drum) The ensuing confrontation ended with the Master mortally wounded and choosing to die rather than regenerate and be captured by the Doctor. (TV: Last of the Time Lords) However, the Master had made arrangements for himself to be resurrected which was only partly successful due to an attempt at sabotage by Lucy Saxon, resulting in the Master living with dwindling life force. As well as coming into contact with the Doctor again, the Master was embroiled in Ultimate Sanction, leading to him returning to Gallifrey on the last day of the Time War as he confronted Rassilon. (TV: The End of Time)
Having been cured of his "little condition", the Master left Gallifrey; when asked if the Time Lords had "kicked" him out, he claimed that it was a "mutual kicking me out". Back to using a TARDIS, he eventually landed on a Mondasian colony ship caught in the pull of a black hole, stranding him. Overseeing the creation of a race of Cybermen, he encountered his next incarnation who, calling herself Missy, had arrived with the Twelfth Doctor. Provided with a spare dematerialisation circuit by his future self, the Master was enabled to escape but not before he was mortally wounded by Missy, who now sought to stand with the Doctor. The Master in turn killed Missy before returning to his TARDIS and regenerating, aware that he would lose most of his memories of meeting his future self. (TV: World Enough and Time/The Doctor Falls)
Following the Master's regeneration, Missy found that the Eleventh Doctor had supposedly been killed by River Song. As such, she claimed herself to be the sole living Time Lord in the universe. After meeting River, Missy learnt that the Doctor had survived. (AUDIO: The Bekdel Test) Learning of the Doctors' part in relocating Gallifrey, Missy would later teasingly observe to the Twelfth Doctor that he had saved her, and that Gallifrey was just "collateral damage". (TV: Death in Heaven)
The Monk
Like the Master, the Monk had fled the war in fear of the Daleks, travelling to Earth and turning himself human to escape the conflict. To prevent detection by the Time Lords, the Monk removed his TARDIS' components, but didn't perform a careful job of removing them, badly damaging the TARDIS in the process. He still kept a connection to the Matrix, to see what was going on. The Monk hid away in an abbey in England during the 16th century. Through his connection to the Matrix he witnessed the disappearance of Gallifrey and its subsequent return to the universe. Trapped on Earth in one time zone, the Monk tried to raise Gallifrey's attention by meddling with time but only caught the attention of Missy, who left him stranded after plundering his TARDIS. Furious, the Monk sought to confront both Missy and the Doctor (AUDIO: Divorced, Beheaded, Regenerated) and ultimately escaped from his predicament. (AUDIO: Treason and Plot)
Return of the Time Lords
- Main article: Siege of Trenzalore
Though it would be easy for the Lords of Time to restore themselves to the universe, Rassilon needed to figure out which universe was their actual home. Luckily for them, the Matrix found cracks in a universe that could be used to enter it, although they needed to find the right point in history and place to do so. If they entered at an undesirable point or place, they would be spotted, and the Time War would simply begin once again. Using the last crack in time (PROSE: A Brief History of Time Lords) in the town of Christmas on the planet of Trenzalore, they broadcasted the first question to the universe to draw the Doctor in. If the Doctor answered the question by saying his real name, (TV: The Time of the Doctor) the Time Lords would know they could safely return from their pocket universe.
However, Rassilon's attempt at creating a safe way into the universe accidently created the most dangerous situation possible; the message was spread throughout the history of the universe, striking fear in all who heard it. Various species, including the Daleks, sent their fleets to investigate. (PROSE: A Brief History of Time Lords) The Daleks had attempted and failed to translate the message remotely, and the Eternal Dalek told the Supreme Dalek of the prophecy of the Fall of the Eleventh. (PROSE: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe)
The Church of the Papal Mainframe, after putting up a force field around the planet, sent the Eleventh Doctor and his companion Clara Oswald down, where he translated the message and learned it came from the Time Lords. (TV: The Time of the Doctor) When the Supreme Dalek heard this, he recognised it to be a Time Lord's voice. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe) Understanding that "half the universe" would descend upon Trenzalore and restart the War, the Doctor fought for centuries in the Siege of Trenzalore to prevent this, unwilling to leave the planet to its destruction (TV: The Time of the Doctor) or abandon his own people, (PROSE: A Brief History of Time Lords) but equally unwilling to release the Time Lords and restart the conflict. (TV: The Time of the Doctor) Nevertheless, even as he defended the world, he understood that the Daleks would eventually mount a full-scale invasion to finally end the Time War. (PROSE: A Brief History of Time Lords)
Elsewhere, the Kovarian Chapter and its silents broke away from the Church, embarking on their own campaign to try to stop the Doctor from ever reaching Trenzalore and prevent a new time war. To do so, they made the Doctor's TARDIS explode, causing the total event collapse that made the cracks in time. (TV: The Time of the Doctor) Earlier in his life, the Eleventh Doctor closed the cracks and restored the universe, including his TARDIS, with the Big Bang Two, (TV: The Big Bang) but the Time Lords had been using the "scar tissue" that was the last surviving crack, meaning the Kovarian Chapter had only ensured the siege occurred. In short, the Kovarian chapter's efforts ended in a destiny trap; they had tried to prevent a new time war from breaking out at Trenzalore, yet they were part of the history unfolding over the planet and thus could not alter it. They had only ensured the siege would happen. (TV: The Time of the Doctor)
Back at Trenzalore, after so many species had made failed attempts to kill the Doctor to stop the return of the Time Lords, the Daleks made their move after calling for reinforcements on a daily basis in preparation for war. They attacked the Church itself, overwhelming their forces and converting its members into Dalek puppets. They also extracted knowledge of the Doctor from the mind of the Church's leader, Tasha Lem. (TV: The Time of the Doctor) At an earlier point, Oswin Oswald, a human who had been converted into a Dalek and also a temporal splinter of Clara Oswald, had erased all knowledge of the Doctor from the Dalek Pathweb, (TV: Asylum of the Daleks) an act that crippled the Dalek war effort for centuries as the Dalek Parliament debated as to who their forgotten arch-nemesis had been. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe)
Now, however, the Daleks were able to remember who their greatest foe was, although the remembrance made the Prime Minister of the Daleks, having already gone insane after centuries pondering who their great enemy had been, dash itself against its case. The Supreme Dalek then exterminated it and assumed control of the paradigm. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe) Shortly afterward, the Daleks confronted the Doctor and Clara Oswald, voicing their intention to make sure he died in silence to stop the return of the Time Lords. (TV: The Time of the Doctor)
With the Church's force field down, the Daleks, Cybermen and other species were free to attack the town of Christmas. (TV: The Time of the Doctor) 750 years into the siege, the Mara arrived in the town, but, unlike the other invaders, it actively wanted a new Time War to break out, but it was defeated by the Doctor. (PROSE: The Dreaming) Eventually, even after all other races had fled or been defeated, the Daleks continued their offensive, with only the Doctor and the Church standing in their path. Nevertheless, the exterminators pushed forward and eventually overcame all defences. The Doctor, who was in his final incarnation, (TV: The Time of the Doctor) had previously seen a future where Trenzalore was in ruins.
Though not as destructive as the Time War, millions had still died in this version of the siege, including the Doctor himself. (TV: The Name of the Doctor) As the Doctor left Clara one last time, content that this was his destined fate, she spoke to the Time Lords through the crack, begging them to save the Doctor. They complied and changed the future by granting the Doctor a new regeneration cycle before closing the crack. With this new energy, the Doctor destroyed the Dalek force attacking Christmas, preventing the Time War from starting anew and saving the planet. He then completed the regeneration into his next body, the Twelfth Doctor, in the TARDIS with Clara. (TV: The Time of the Doctor)
According to Justin Richards' book The Secret Lives of Monsters, "some" considered the siege to have been the last battle of the Time War, though the alleged recount of the battle claimed the Time Lords themselves, working through the crack in time, destroyed the Dalek saucer. (PROSE: The Secret Lives of Monsters) Additionally, Human historians dubbed the Siege of Trenzalore the final defeat of the Daleks, but, given the many other loses previously assumed to be their final end, they were not fully convinced. Indeed, they were aware that Skaro, (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe) which had been restored by the Daleks, (TV: The Witch's Familiar) persisted behind an invisible barrier. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe)
Skaro existed in this state when it was again the centre of the Daleks' empire, with the Dalek City rebuilt and thriving in the post-Time War era. (TV: The Witch's Familiar) Elsewhere, now understanding that they had in fact found the correct universe, Rassilon returned Gallifrey to N-Space. Though they returned to their original spatial coordinates, the Time Lords, in an attempt to remain safe, placed themselves at the end of the universe (PROSE: A Brief History of Time Lords) "give or take a star system". When he arrived on Gallifrey during the Hybrid crisis, 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)
Until the next time
Discussing the Gallifrey Falls No More painting with Doctor Henry Black, the Curator told him it would be better described as "Gallifrey Falls No More (Until the Next Time)"; (PROSE: Dr Black) as a future incarnation of the Doctor, (COMIC: The Then and the Now) the Curator knew that strife would return to Gallifrey after the Time War. (PROSE: Dr Black, TV: The Timeless Children)
Despite living as Missy and the Lumiat, lives where they had sought to do good in the universe, (AUDIO: The Lumiat) the Spy Master returned to his dark ways and ravaged Gallifrey after learning about the secret of the Timeless Child, much to the horror of the Thirteenth Doctor. After learning of her past as the Timeless Child, (TV: The Timeless Children) the Thirteenth Doctor began to hunt leads on a Time Lord organization known simply as the Division. (TV: The Halloween Apocalypse)