The Doctor's reality (Death Comes to Time)
"I am the course of Time. I am a God of the Fourth. Now die."
"But… but you'll die too! You'll die too!"
"I've been dead before." (WC: Death Comes to Time)
In one version of reality, the Seventh Doctor became the "last of the friendly Time Lords" and ultimately seemingly sacrificed himself in a final stand near Stonehenge to defeat a rogue Time Lord known as Tannis. In his absence, Ace, who had undergone training with the Doctor's old friend Casmus, was officially made the new Time Lord by the Kingmaker while the Minister, despite having lost his status as a Time Lord, continued to travel in the universe using the formula for doors.
When exposed to anti-time, the Eighth Doctor of the positive-time universe saw a reality where the Time Lords had "terrible mind powers", (AUDIO: Zagreus) matching the mysterious powers which, in this account, Time Lords were said to inherently possess as "Gods of the Fourth" despite being sworn never to use them. (WC: Death Comes to Time) According to one account relevant to the Eighth Doctor's life, the Doctor's parents Ulysses and Penelope Gate knew that Tannis was a threat which Gallifrey had yet to face; (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles) another account dealing with this same version of the Eighth Doctor acknowledged the Canisian invasion. (PROSE: Trading Futures) As the Seventh Doctor invoked his power as a "God of the Fourth" to destroy himself and Tannis, Tannis desperately cried out that the Doctor's actions would "disrupt the course of time", which the Doctor did not deny. (WC: Death Comes to Time)
Behind the scenes
The place of Death Comes to Time in wider Doctor Who continuity was a subject of controversy from the moment it was first released due to its depiction of an apparent death of the Seventh Doctor incompatible with his death in San Francisco and regeneration into Paul McGann's Eighth Doctor in the 1996 Doctor Who TV movie.
In its section for the then-recent webcast, the Doctor Who website featured one article which was an "completely unauthorised" explanation of how Death Comes to Time fit into wider Doctor Who continuity. It suggested that the webcast was set directly after Lungbarrow in an aborted timeline where, as Tannis said, the Doctor "disrupt[ed] the course of time" by using his Time Lord powers and averting his already-fixed future death in San Francisco. The resultant paradox then destroyed Tannis and the Doctor both. The BBC added a disclaimer that the page's "theories" were purely personal and could "[turn] out to be inaccurate, wrong or silly".[1]
Indeed, the unauthorised Striptease theories did prove inaccurate, as later BBC products referenced the events of Death Comes to Time not as an aborted timeline but as an established and contiguous piece of the Eighth Doctor's backstory. In Lance Parkin's BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures novel Trading Futures, the Canisian invasion which served as the climax of Death Comes to Time was referenced as a recent event. In Parkin's subsequent novel The Gallifrey Chronicles, he mentioned the Doctor's defeat of Tannis as an established part of the universe's history, and the Minister of Chance also appeared as a "man with a bent nose". If there was any doubt, Parkin's reference guide AHistory included Death Comes to Time not in the separate section accorded to Scream of the Shalka and Doctor Who Unbound but as a normal part of the Seventh Doctor's life, depicting the start of Ace's journey into becoming a Time Lord around the same time as Neverland and The Sirens of Time.
