Moloch (mythology)
Moloch was the oldest and most powerful of the Elder Gods, who according to legend was born in "the fires of creation", and was the god of chaos.
He had agents to do his work for him and they took the form of several real life humans including Albert and Peggy Marsden, who were instructed to destroy the Earth. But these two were trapped inside a pocket dimension created by the Seventh Doctor. The dimensional prison takes the form of a ten-day time loop and only exists as long as the Great Old Ones are trapped within it, preventing Moloch from freeing them. The Doctor meant them to understand what it was to live and die as mortal humans, and promised to release them once they could do this; they had been trapped for several hundred years in their efforts, however.
In the alternative timeline created by Moloch in the hope of destroying Earth, the militant hardliner Vladimir Kryuchkov became the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union following the death of Konstantin Chernenko in 1985 rather than the considerably more moderate Mikhail Gorbachev. Significant international tensions began following the democratic uprisings in the Eastern Bloc countries. Kryuchkov instructed the protestors to disperse and, when they refused to do so, he sent in the tanks. The Red Army fired on the protesters, even the children, resulting in a massacre. Following the massacre, there were protests on the Berlin Wall, which resulted in the Soviet Union entering West Berlin on the pretext of restoring order. This meant that the American airbases fell into the possession of the Soviet Union. In response, the United States issued an ultimatum to the Soviets. The Western powers' satellites detected a Soviet army amassing on the border of West Germany, which was destroyed by an American tactical nuclear weapon on 6 November of this year.
Consequently, a nuclear war which came to be known as World War III broke out between the United States and its allies including the United Kingdom on the one hand and the Soviet Union on the other hand on 9 November of this year. Given that nuclear weapons were used by both sides, hundreds of millions of people were killed in the conflict. This timeline was ultimately negated by the Seventh Doctor. (AUDIO: Protect and Survive)
