Aftermath of the Last Great Time War
The aftermath of the Last Great Time War referred to the reprecussions of the massive temporal conflict between the Time Lords of Gallifrey and Daleks of Skaro.
Historians studying the Time War, which "had thrown up a bewildering jumble of alternate realities and superfluous timelines", observed that the the universe preceding it was not the same as the one that eventually survived the conflict as a result of changes to history. The Time War itself was time locked to its own timeline following the fall of Gallifrey, (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe) with the Ninth Doctor once declaring "the universe we once knew [was] gone". (WC: The Ninth Doctor vs the Cybermen)
Denouement of the War
Non-linear conflict
As the Time War did not exist in a linear sense, after what most considered the end with the Doctor relocating Gallifrey to a different universe and wiping out the Daleks, some events still occurred which were described by the Doctor or others as part of the conflict. (TV: Rose, Dalek, et. al)
Looking into what they believed to be mere possibilities for the Doctor's future via the Matrix, the Time War-era Time Lords watched some of these events, along with other post-War events involving the Daleks. Electing to treat post-War information as confidential, the data gleamed from these "future projections" was reserved for the eyes of section leaders only. As was noted in the Dalek Combat Training Manual edition that included these projections, some information about the post-War universe, such as data about the end of the Time War, was redacted from their security level as well. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual)
Nestene invasion of Earth
- Main article: 5 March 2005 incident
The aftermath of the Time War caused the Nestene Consciousness' biology to change drastically, leaving most of its form to be made of plastic. The effects of the Time War rewrote the Nestene's nature, rewriting much of what it used to be. (PROSE: Rose) Having lost their protein planets in the conflict, the Nestene sought to compensate for its losses by invading the Earth.
On 4 March 2005, the Ninth Doctor blew up Henrik's as it had been infested with a Nestene nest, where he met Rose Tyler. They tracked the Nestene to the London Eye using the head of an Auton duplicate of Mickey Smith, Rose's boyfriend. The Doctor intended to end the conflict peacefully but brought a vial of anti-plastic as insurance. When the Consciousness discovered this it begun a full-scale invasion of Earth, first taking control of all plastic objects from London (TV: Rose) and then using satellites above the Earth to spread all over the planet. (PROSE: Rose) Rose knocked the anti-plastic out of the hand of an Auton and into the Consciousness which destroyed it and stopped the invasion. Rose later joined the Doctor on his travels to become his companion. (TV: Rose)
During their confrontation with the Nestene, the Doctor translated to Rose that the invasion was the Consciousness still fighting "the war". (PROSE: Rose) One fragment of the Nestene survived in the body of an Auton and recalled its losses during the Time War as it walked through the post-invasion destruction. It decided that, in order to defeat the Doctor, it would need to form an alliance with the likes of the Daleks and Cybermen. It then formed its Auton into a copy of a blond haired politician. (PROSE: Revenge of the Nestene)
The Metaltron
- Main article: Battle of Geocomtex
Before the end of the War, one Dalek fell through time and landed on the Ascension Islands in the 1960s. Insane and screaming, it passed through several private collections in the 20th and 21st centuries. By 2012, it was in the possession of billionaire Henry van Statten, who kept it in the Cage. With the intention of reaching other Daleks, it sent out a distress signal which was detected by the Ninth Doctor and Rose Tyler. Initially unaware of the source of the distress signal, the Doctor came to investigate it.
The Doctor and the Metaltron had a hostile discussion about the end of the war and the Doctor tried to kill it before being stopped by van Statten. When Rose met with the creature, it seemed to be a harmless victim and, in an attempt to comfort it, she touched its dome. It absorbed her artron energy and DNA and regenerated itself, escaping from the Cage and making its way upwards through the the Vault to the surface, killing van Statten's personnel as it went.
By the time it reached the surface, it had begun to mutate and had started feeling emotions due to absorbing Rose's DNA. Considering all the new emotions to be "sickness", the "Metaltron" asked Rose to order it to self-destruct, preferring death to a life with emotions. She refused at first, but eventually gave the order, and it destroyed itself.
After the ordeal, Rose asked if, with the death of the only other known survivor, the Time War was over, which the Doctor affirmed, sadly declaring that he had won. (TV: Dalek [+]Loading...["Dalek (TV story)"]) Watching a projection of the "Van Statten Incident," the War-era Time Lords saw that any Dalek they encountered could absorb temporal energy from a time traveller to repair itself. Disturbed, the military ordered that no Time Lord have direct with a Dalek casing, (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual) which also had the ability to burn those who touched it. (TV: Dalek [+]Loading...["Dalek (TV story)"]) Meanwhile, the Time Lords began to experiment to see if they could introduce unfamiliar emotions to Daleks like Rose had, albeit without putting their own personnel at risk by seeing if it could be done remotely. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual)
The Battle of the Game Station
- Main article: Battle of the Game Station
A lone ship containing the Dalek Emperor of the War also barely survived the Time War, falling through time in a heavily damaged state. It went into seclusion at the edge of the Solar system "damaged but rebuilding" during the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire. Circa 199,909, it secretly installed the Jagrafess aboard Satellite Five to play the "long game" of slowly manipulating humans and re-establishing the Dalek species and fleet. A hundred years after the Jagrafess was killed, in the year 200,100, the Emperor was still using Satellite Five (now renamed the "Game Station") to manipulate humanity and conceal his fleet. (TV: Bad Wolf) The Emperor secretly used transmat technology aboard the space station to kidnap humans for nearly two hundred years. The kidnapped humans were harvested for their genetic material, and "one cell in a billion" was used to rebuild a new race of Daleks (TV: The Parting of the Ways) numbering roughly half a million aboard a fleet of 200 ships.
When the Ninth Doctor, Rose, and Jack Harkness were transmatted into the games, they quickly escaped and discovered from the Controller that the Daleks were her masters. Once detected, the Daleks begun their invasion plans (TV: Bad Wolf) and quickly killed all the humans that had either not evacuated yet or chosen to fight, including Jack, with the Doctor sending Rose back to 2005 to protect her. To make the Earth into their "paradise", the Daleks also heavily bombed the Earth with continents such as Australasia, being described as "gone" in the aftermath. Just as the Daleks were about to exterminate the Doctor, the TARDIS materialised and Rose, who had absorbed the energy of the Time Vortex and had become an entity known as Bad Wolf, stepped out.
She scattered the words "Bad Wolf" across time and space to inspire Rose to become the entity in the first place. She then divided the atoms of the entire Dalek fleet, turning them all, including the Emperor, to dust, (TV: The Parting of the Ways) though at least one time limpet survived. (AUDIO: The Year After I Died) Then, in what would be called by the Tenth Doctor the "last act" of the Time War, she resurrected Jack from the dead, accidentally giving him immortality. (TV: Utopia) To save her life, the Doctor absorbed the Time Vortex from Rose which caused him to regenerate into his next incarnation, with the Ninth Doctor being confident that the human race would rebuild. (TV: The Parting of the Ways)
Indeed, after making it to the ravaged Earth, Jack was responsible for overthrowing the Hope Foundation, composed of a rich elite of humans in space that sought to exploit the survivors of the Dalek invasion. When Trear Station, formerly the Game Station, crashed to Earth, Jack was confident that humanity would ultimately rebuild itself as he saw that an abundance of resources was salvaged from the grounded station. (AUDIO: The Year After I Died) Jack eventually left this time to search for the Doctor. (TV: Utopia) Prior to his regeneration, the Ninth Doctor had joked to Rose that he had defeated the Daleks by singing a song that forced them into a retreat, (TV: The Parting of the Ways) but A Brief History of Time Lords recorded this as the actual end of the battle. (PROSE: A Brief History of Time Lords)
The Time War-era Time Lords also watched a projection of this incident, teaching them that the already-known to be dangerous Dalek Emperor could survive the War. Nonetheless, they were relieved to see the Emperor would play a long game for centuries, rather that launching a new campaign right after escaping the Time War. The Time Lords also kept an index file on Rose under the name "Bad Wolf." (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual)
The day of the Doctor ends
Years later, in their thirteenth incarnation, the Doctor met Cass Fermazzi again and gave her a bandolier from a man that had recently perished and asked her about her life. She told the Doctor that she had been ready to fight all her life because she had a therapy bot growing up that was intended to take away some of her memories but instead someone else's memories kept spewing out about fighting for what was right, but never trying to hurt people and the promise to "Never be cruel and never be cowardly". Cass wrote it off as "cheesy stuff" but admitted that it got to her. This confirmed what the Doctor had already worked out: she was indirectly responsible for Cass' death by shaping her childhood in such a way that she became a fighter.
The Doctor lamented that she was impossible to save as she was too wrapped up in her timeline but was happy Cass had met her once without hating her. She wondered if the lesson the Moment was trying to teach her was that you can't save everyone, just the ones you can. After reflecting on the Moment's further conversations with her in Henry VIII's third-favourite garden and the banana groves of Villengard, she decided that she had done enough brooding and that the day of the Doctor was finally over.
Additionally, using the Doctor Papers, the Doctor wrote a book about the end of the Time War. The Curator had told Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart about his desire to write the book, explaining he would get around the fact that he needed to use classified material by marketing the book as fiction. The various chapters were authored by incarnations of the Doctor and others. (PROSE: The Day of the Doctor)
Aftermath
- Main article: Post-Time War universe
Recognition
Although many incarnations of the Doctor saved Gallifrey, due to the timelines being out of sync, the first eleven 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) After regenerating from his war incarnation, the Ninth Doctor was left with the belief that he had in fact activated the Moment, so, to deal with his guilt, he returned to his mission of helping people in need throughout the universe. (PROSE: The Whoniverse) His repentance was indeed sincere, as he brought love and help to wherever the TARDIS brought him. (PROSE: The Day of the Doctor) Believing all the Time Lords bar himself to be dead, (TV: Dalek [+]Loading...["Dalek (TV story)"]) the Doctor indicated to Liv Chenka that he did not expect to see the Master, the Monk, the Rani or the Eleven again. (AUDIO: Flatpack [+]Loading...["Flatpack (audio story)"])
The Tenth Doctor, as well, believed Gallifrey had been destroyed after he returned to his place in the timeline after its salvation. (TV: The Day of the Doctor) He remembered Gallifrey's fall as a legitimate destruction, (PROSE: The Eyeless) though his memory was similar to the Eighth Doctor's attempted aversion of the War in Heaven. (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles, The Eyeless) A historical account stated he lived hundreds of years before he learned he was not the last Time Lord. (PROSE: The Whoniverse) The knowledge of Gallifrey's survival brought joy to the Eleventh Doctor, (TV: The Day of the Doctor) but the horrors of the Time War were still burned into the Doctor's mind; the Twelfth Doctor once remarked that he heard "more screams than anyone could ever be able to count" every time he shut his eyes and that the War taught him "no one else" deserved to live through the pain of war. (TV: The Zygon Inversion) The war was mentioned by the Fifteenth Doctor as one of many memories which weighed on the Fourteenth Doctor when convincing him to go into rehabilitation on Earth. (TV: The Giggle [+]Loading...["The Giggle (TV story)"])
Though there was now silence on what had been the war front, those in the universe who knew of the War were left unsure of how the conflict had ended. One account claimed the only certainty about its end was that the Doctor alone had walked away from the wreckage of Skaro and Gallifrey, (PROSE: Meet the Doctor) but others thought that all of the Time Lords were destroyed. When such people met the Doctor, only then were they left with the belief that he was the last of his kind. (TV: The End of the World) The Curator claimed that the various species and cultures of the no longer war-torn universe eventually forgot about the great conflict, (PROSE: The Day of the Doctor) but there were actually numerous species who remembered the War, with Clara Oswald once stating that "everyone" hated the Time Lords because of it. Although such groups and species continued to remember it, (TV: Hell Bent, The Time of the Doctor) the Curator's book continued to claim that no one in the universe discussed the War unless they looked into the Doctor's eyes and questioned what had hurt the traveler. (PROSE: The Day of the Doctor)
In 3764, Gleda Ley-Sooth Marka Jinglatheen promoted what appeared to be the Ninth Doctor, who had offered his services as a keynote speaker for the Raxas Alliance peace conference on Clix, as the man who brought the Last Great Time War to a close. (COMIC: Doctormania) Still, there were species that did not even know of the War at all; as observed by surviving Gelth that appeared in 1869, the Time War's effects were "invisible to smaller species but devastating to higher forms". (TV: The Unquiet Dead) With the War now sealed off in its own timeline through the time lock, (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe) the conflict was finally over and had stopped the universe from being a battleground. (TV: Rose, et. al) Of the species that knew of the War, many that had suffered during it blamed the Doctor. (PROSE: The Whoniverse)
The blast of Gallifrey's apparent destruction was so powerful that the universe convulsed as planets, systems and galaxies were obliterated. (COMIC: Agent Provocateur) The Skrawn homeworld, Kolox, was reduced to the Kolox Nebula by the time winds at the end of the Time War. (COMIC: The Skrawn Inheritance) The Eye of Time, long possessed by the Time Lords on Gallifrey, vanished from the universe during the fall of the Homeworld, (GAME: City of the Daleks) as did the Cruciform, which fell when Gallifrey vanished at the War's end. (COMIC: The Forgotten) Ruins of the Time War, described as "a junkyard stretching across eternity" by the Ninth Doctor, were visited by the man. Amongst the destroyed remnants of the War are ruined Dalek casings, a dead Time Lord who had been reduced to bone, a destroyed Mechanoid, a surviving Cyber-Scout, a wrecked Dalek drill ship, and Sontaran helmets. (WC: The Ninth Doctor vs the Cybermen)
The surviving Osirans, who were in the process of leaving the universe behind and ascending to another, higher one at the time the Time War was fought, remembered it simply as a "petty squabble" between the Time Lords and the Daleks, (COMIC: Sins of the Father) even though the Osiran Court was not as powerful as the Great Houses (AUDIO: The Ship of a Billion Years) of Gallifrey. (PROSE: Lungbarrow, et. al) Following the Time War's end, the Tenth Doctor stated that the Axis was gone, with the disappearance of the Time Lords and Gallifrey from N-Space. (COMIC: Old Girl) The Eye of Orion became a shrine to the Time War, with a single human-sized stone in a meadow as a memorial to the uncountable casualties. (PROSE: Martha Jones' MySpace blog)
On the Masque Magestrix, The Saga of the Time Lords portrayed the history of Gallifrey. However, those who made the show were unsure how the war ended, only knowing that Gallifrey disappeared mysteriously. (PROSE: He's Behind You) Alternatively, far away from the Earth on Crafe Tec Heydra, a mountain face contained crude depictions of the so-called "invisible war" between a species of metal (representing the Daleks) and a species of flesh (representing the Lords of Time). These carvings and hieroglyphs depicted the end of the Time War as a great explosion, which one stranger, representing the Doctor, walked away from. However, under this, the phrase "you are not alone" was written. (PROSE: Meet the Doctor) Indeed, the Doctor did go on to encounter other survivors of the War, the first being the "Metaltron" Dalek, (TV: Dalek) but this exact phrase was known to the Face of Boe as well, who used it to warn the Tenth Doctor of the survival of the War Master. (TV: Gridlock)
Following the War, the Doctor confided his experiences to a number of his human companions such as Rose Tyler, (TV: The End of the World) Jack Harkness (TV: The Parting of the Ways) Martha Jones, (TV: Gridlock) Clara Oswald, (TV: The Day of the Doctor) and Bill Potts. (COMIC: The Clockwise War) Danny Pink recognised the Twelfth Doctor's character as that of a military officer, calling him a man who "[lit] the fire" of war. (TV: The Caretaker) In some cases, the Doctor revealed the War or its impact on them to others. (TV: Dalek, The Zygon Inversion) Rose would use her awareness of the Time War as leverage in an attempt to keep her, Mickey Smith and Rajesh Singh alive when facing the Cult of Skaro. (TV: Doomsday)
By 2009, the Sontaran General Staal heard of legends which told of the War Doctor leading battles in the Time War, bitterly noting that the Sontarans were forbidden from participating in the conflict. (TV: The Sontaran Stratagem) Andrea Quill, a Quill, was aware of the Time War, and that the destruction of the Imperial Dalek fleet at the hands of the Seventh Doctor contributed to it. (AUDIO: In Remembrance) However, Time Agent Jack Harkness, a native of the 51st century (TV: Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang) at first believed the Time War to be a legend before learning the truth from the Doctor. He was, however, aware that the Dalek ships were meant to have been all destroyed by 200,100. (TV: The Parting of the Ways)
Just prior to the destruction of Earth in 5,000,000,000, Jabe of the Forest of Cheem had believed the Time Lords to be extinct, and was shocked to find the Ninth Doctor was one. Confiding her discovery with the Doctor, Jabe offered him her condolences. (TV: The End of the World) The Testimony later recorded the War Doctor's actions during the conflict in its data banks, specifically noting how it earned him the title "the Doctor of War". (TV: Twice Upon a Time) When they met the Twelfth and First Doctors, they played footage of the War Doctor arranging for Daleks to be shot down, for the Advent of Woe to be closed, making arrangements against the Nightmare Child, (PROSE: Twice Upon a Time) and confronting the Dalek drone he pushed back with the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors. (TV: Twice Upon a Time)
Lord Cardinal Romana was believed to have perished with the fall of Gallifrey, but UNIT personnel hoped, should they somehow have survived, they would prove a valuable ally in Operation Time Fracture. (PROSE: Lord Romanadvoratrelundar) The historical account of N-Space mentioned above claimed that, "millennia" after the Doctor regenerated from his war incarnation, the true fate of Gallifrey was finally revealed. (PROSE: The Whoniverse) During the Siege of Trenzalore, "half the universe" fought to prevent the return of the Time Lords after learning the message that had brought them to Trenzalore was of Gallifreyan origin. (TV: The Time of the Doctor)
Consequences
The Twelfth Doctor once said that, even though it was over, the Time War could still kill someone due to that being the nature of a temporal paradox. However, he then claimed people should not worry and forget that warning, stating it would never happen. (PROSE: The Dangerous Book of Monsters) It was possible for individuals from the post-Time War universe to encounter combatants for whom the War was still going, as was the case when River Song and Kate Stewart's UNIT had encounters with the War Master. (AUDIO: Concealed Weapon, Master of Worlds) River also met the Eighth Doctor whilst he was in the midst of the conflict on two occasions. (AUDIO: The Rulers of the Universe, Lies in Ruins) The Tenth Doctor's TARDIS was once pulled back into the conflict's time lock by a telepathic summons from the War Master and he had to rapidly depart to prevent himself becoming trapped there. (AUDIO: The Last Line) In an aborted timeline, the Saxon Master was able to use a Time Scoop to collect his previous incarnation whilst he was fighting the Time War. (AUDIO: Masterful)
The disappearance of the Time Lords created a vacuum that may have left history more vulnerable to change. The Ninth Doctor explained to Rose Tyler, (TV: The Unquiet Dead) the Tenth to Donna Noble (TV: The Unicorn and the Wasp) and the Eleventh to Clara Oswald (TV: Cold War) that time was in flux and history could change instantly. One demonstration of this was when Rose created a temporal paradox by saving her father, Pete, just before his death in a traffic accident. This summoned the Reapers, who descended to sterilise the "wound" in time by devouring everything in sight. The Ninth Doctor said that if the Time Lords had been still around, they could have held back the Reapers and prevented or repaired the paradox. (TV: Father's Day)
According to the Tenth Doctor, certain areas like the Null Zone became "tricky" places for time travel. (COMIC: Supremacy of the Cybermen) As well, the Tenth Doctor noted that when the Time Lords were around, travel between parallel worlds was far less difficult. With their disappearance, the barriers between worlds closed. (TV: Rise of the Cybermen) With a sudden power vacuum without the Daleks and Time Lords in the universe, many of the races that had suffered during the War wanted to exploit the vacuum, managing to rise to prominence with only the Doctor left to keep them in line. (PROSE: The Whoniverse) The end of the fighting also created a power vacuum specific to the Stellian Galaxy, which was consumed by centuries of war. (COMIC: Fugitive)
Additionally, the Time Lords' position as keepers of the Web of Time was fought over by many time-active races, including the Sontarans, the Cybermen, and the Unon. (COMIC: Weapons of Past Destruction) The Hajor too, after their dimension was damaged by a shockwave caused by the Time War ripping through their realm, attempted to become the new Lords of Time. (COMIC: The Futurists) It was the Time Agency that asserted itself as the new protectors of history. (COMIC: Weapons of Past Destruction) Time Agent Jack Harkness, however, initially believed the Time War to be merely a legend. (TV: The Parting of the Ways)
Due to the actions of Daleks near the end of the Time War, the Dalek Factor was left within the genetics of one in half a million humans, though dormant. When a Dalek casing was uncovered in England, the Dalek Factor became active in Kate Yates who's Dalek personality grew a new Dalek within the casing. The Dalek intended to travel forward to the year 500,000,000, knowing that the "impure creatures" of that time knew nothing of war or the Daleks, and use humanity's resources to rebuild its race but failed when Kate's human personality resurfaced and set the Dalek's Time Ring to self-destruct. The self-destruct caused a warp implosion that atomised the Dalek and made the Dalek Factor go dormant again in humanity. (PROSE: I Am a Dalek)
The entire chain of Hotel Historia was left destroyed. (COMIC: Hotel Historia) The Kin, locked away aeons ago by the Time Lords, escaped their temporal prison due to the Time War's mutilation of Time, Space and Matter. (PROSE: Nothing O'Clock) The Time Lords had left behind the Time Sentinels, who grew concerned that the Tenth Doctor's actions could damage the Time War's time lock. They allied with the Red TARDIS and attempted to lock the Doctor in an alternate timeline. After the Sentinels were corrupted by the Red TARDIS, the Osiran Anubis made the Circle of Transcendence collapse, destroying the Sentinels. (COMIC: The Good Companion)
As a result of the Time War, paradox eaters such as Reapers, Chronovores and Gramoryans ran wild. (AUDIO: Divorced, Beheaded, Regenerated) The Discordia discovered time travel technology on their home planet and began to spread chaos throughout time, with no one left to oppose them. (AUDIO: Time in a Bottle) Many Utopia windows were spread across the cosmos as flotsam and jetsam. (AUDIO: I Was Churchill's Double) The Tenth Doctor pursued designated "Time War fallout" with K9 Mark II. (AUDIO: Splinters [+]Loading...["Splinters (audio story)"], The Stuntman [+]Loading...["The Stuntman (audio story)"], Quantum of Axos [+]Loading...["Quantum of Axos (audio story)"])
The Encyclopedia Gallifreya dealt with the Time Lords now not existing by changing its settings so that all surviving Encyclopaedias auto-updated, each constantly encoding data from their owner and linking with others of their kind. Some Time Lords (who did things like taking over the universe) complained about this causing issues with privacy; the Doctor had forgotten their Encyclopaedia and thus was not really affected. If he had checked with his Encyclopaedia, he would have realised that he was not the only Time Lord left. (PROSE: Citation Needed)
The "chronological complications" brought about by the War and Gallifrey's apparent destruction resulted in Gallifrey and other artefacts native to its home universe landing within the universe of New Eden for a brief time. Inhabitants of New Eden's universe followed these artifacts on a path that brought them into conflict with Daleks, who had also arrived within New Eden. (GAME: The Interstellar Convergence) From his bubble universe, House had lured many TARDISes in order to feed on them, killing Time Lords such as the Ninth Corsair in the process. After some time without new arrivals, House lured the Eleventh Doctor, who identified himself as the last Time Lord with the last TARDIS, to his universe, where the TARDIS resisted his attempt to consume her. (TV: The Doctor's Wife)
Survivors
Most of the inhabitants of Gallifrey at the end of the War survived in stasis in another universe. (TV: The Day of the Doctor) The Doctor believed himself to be the only remaining Time Lord in the universe, (TV: The End of the World, Dalek, The Day of the Doctor) but in his tenth incarnation he encountered the Rani (COMIC: Untitled) and the War Master, who survived disguised as a human using the Chameleon Arch. (TV: Utopia) After he had left the War, the Master sent his TARDIS away, allowing it to survive. (AUDIO: The Heavenly Paradigm) The Master's Mark 212 was traumatised by his actions during the War, but this TARDIS was later reclaimed by Missy. (AUDIO: The Broken Clock)
The Monk also survived, by utilising a similar plan to the Master. (AUDIO: Divorced, Beheaded, Regenerated) K9 Mark I travelled through time to the year 2050 some point before the disappearance of Gallifrey. (TV: Regeneration) Leela survived the conflict but ended up in the captivity of the now-restored to power Z'nai, who tortured her for information about the Time Lords. Without the Time Lords to sustain her youth, she also rapidly aged. (AUDIO: The Catalyst) When the Eleventh Doctor visited Shada following the Time War, the artificial intelligence who ran the planet noted that it had several Time Lord criminals in stasis. (COMIC: The One)
A single Dalek survived and crashed on the Ascension Islands on Earth in 1962. (TV: Dalek) The Dalek Emperor also survived by falling through time to approximately the 2,000th century. (TV: The Parting of the Ways) The Cult of Skaro and the Daleks imprisoned in the Genesis Ark left the universe for the Void before the end of the war. (TV: Doomsday) UNIT encountered a heavily damaged elite Dalek. (AUDIO: The Dalek Transaction) Other Dalek survivors of the Time War[source needed] included an army of Daleks that was weakened and fell through time to 70 million years before the 21st century, where they were destroyed by dinosaurs, (PROSE: The Ryukyu Isles Mystery) a group of Daleks that massacred the pirate fleet of Captain Jack Lawrence in late September 1697, (PROSE: Pirates from the Sky!) and the complement of a Dalek ship that crashed in an island in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean. The Daleks there caused a disturbance in human vehicles, leading to the mysterious disappearances of aircraft and surface vessels throughout what became known as the the Bermuda Triangle. (PROSE: Bermuda Triangle Incident)
Though Davros was believed by the Doctor to have been killed in the war (consumed by the Nightmare Child), Dalek Caan temporal shifted into the war and rescued him. (TV: The Stolen Earth) The Advocate escaped following Caan's path. (COMIC: Fugitive, Don't Step on the Grass) In the 22nd century, the Tenth Doctor would encounter a group of Daleks who attempted to capture the rare Krikoosh species and destablise humanity. Believing they were unworthy to survive, the Daleks would destroy themselves after their failure. (COMIC: Carnage Zoo, Extermination of the Daleks)
A Time Lord veteran of the Eternal War survived through the Time War trapped in a time loop with the Qwerm. (PROSE: River of Time) Several Daleks who had survived various pre-Time War encounters with the Doctor on the planets Kembel, Spiridon, Exxilon, Aridius and Vulcan would be encountered by the Eleventh Doctor in the Dalek Asylum. (TV: Asylum of the Daleks) A Dalek that had been captured by fibre-optic cables during the Cloister Wars remained in captivity within the Cloisters on Gallifrey as late as the coup against Rassilon. (TV: Hell Bent)
Several races which were erased from existence during the war persisted as echoes displaced from time on a plane of non-reality, banding together to become the Bygone Horde. (AUDIO: The Other Side) Eve was the only one of her species to escape being wiped out in the Last Great Time War due to their abilities to see timelines. (TV: SJAF 2)
Based on what they told the Ninth Doctor, the Gelth survived but lost their physical bodies, reduced to a gaseous state. (TV: The Unquiet Dead, et. al) The Twelfth Doctor later noted that, as the Gelth "lied about a lot of things", he wasn't convinced that their claims that they had "come from another dimension after losing their bodies in the Great Time War" were true. (PROSE: A History of Humankind) However, he also treated the claim that they had lost their planet in the conflict as true in his monster guide, which was later copied in a book by the Thirteenth Doctor. (PROSE: A Short History of Everyone) Other historical texts also treated the idea that the Gelth had lost their bodies in the War as true. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe, The Whoniverse) Alternatively, the Monster Vaults book claimed the War presented "the perfect opportunity" for the Gelth; according to it, the Gelth simply took advantage of time rifts the conflict created, entering new star systems and claiming themselves to be "higher forms" who'd been hurt in the conflict. (PROSE: The Monster Vault)
The Zygon homeworld apparently burned in the first days of the war. The Zygon race survived this attack. (TV: The Day of the Doctor) The Skrawn, which were lucky to have survived their planet's destruction, were left drifting aimlessly, bitter and vengeful, (COMIC: The Skrawn Inheritance) whilst Perganon and Ascinta also fell. (TV: School Reunion, PROSE: Doctor Who: The Encyclopedia)
A temporal mine survived due to waiting in a pocket dimension throughout the War's duration, unable to find a big enough target. (PROSE: Keeping up with the Joneses) Millions of war seed-created soldiers loyal to the Time Lords survived. Without orders or an enemy to fight, they returned to the planets they'd originated from. A war seed which had failed to blossom survived on Earth, being experimented on for his undying abilities, and was eventually tracked down by Missy who disposed of him. (AUDIO: War Seed)
Nyssa of Traken, who provided assistance during the War, (AUDIO: A Heart on Both Sides) pursued fallout from the conflict in the post-War universe, catching up with the Tenth Doctor. (AUDIO: The Stuntman)
Using the erased days of Viola Wordsmith's timeline that his eighth incarnation had preserved, the Ninth Doctor was able to restore her to existence and by extension her home planet Gernica which had fallen victim to the Time War. (AUDIO: Death Will Not Part Us)
Access to the original timeline
After the War's conclusion, it was sometimes still possible for time travellers to arrive in the universe as it had been prior to the Time War's outbreak. On two occasions, the Tenth Doctor found himself in the pre-Time War universe. Once when his TARDIS jumped a time track, resulting in it arriving in the midst of pre-Time War era Second Dalek War, (PROSE: Prisoner of the Daleks) and again as an accidental side effect of the temporal catastrophe caused by the Nun's meddling with George Sheldrake's time tunnels, which required the Tenth Doctor to abduct his own past self to rectify. (AUDIO: The Wrong Woman)
River Song became embroiled in the pre-Time War timeline during her involvement with the Doom Coalition, even visiting Gallifrey. (AUDIO: Songs of Love) Whilst a captive of the Nine after helping the Eighth Doctor foiling the Coalition, she was forced to help him kidnap the Doctor's companions. She suggested Bliss as a candidate for capture, however upon her capture Bliss proved to have no experience with the Doctor as in the pre-Time War era her timeline had yet to be altered such that she met the Doctor. (AUDIO: Companion Piece)
The Eleventh Doctor made visits to the pre-Time War Dalek Empire, arranging a series of truces with Davros so the two could meet during Christmas on various worlds. He sought to teach the Dalek creator that words like "Christmas," or even a word that Darvos related to like "father," could have many meanings across cultures, while "Dalek" would only ever relate to the hatred present within the mutants, only for Davros to reject his offers to change the Dalek species and accept that the exterminators would never see him as a father. After the Doctor helped Krillitane rebels on Gryphon's Reach work out a form of cloaking technology, which helped the rebels to beat back a Dalek invasion overseen by Davros, the creator met with him for another Christmas on Alacracis IV, where the Doctor admitted he was scared of what their future clashes would lead to. Nonetheless, Davros used the encounter as a trap to try to kill the Time Lord, only for the Daleks, which Davros had designed cloaking technology for, to fail. One day later, the Daleks declared the Time War. (PROSE: Father of the Daleks)
Return of the Daleks
Rise of the Cult of Skaro
- Main article: Cult of Skaro
Return to reality
- Main article: Battle of Canary Wharf
The Cult of Skaro, believing the Daleks could not win the Time War without destroying themselves, devised a Void Ship to hide in the the Void between universes and waited for the conflict to end. (PROSE: The Whoniverse) They had also taken the Genesis Ark, a dimensionally transcendental Time Lord prison ship containing millions of Daleks, with them into the Void Ship, remaining hidden until the ship broke down the barriers between worlds. Though this allowed an army of Cybermen from Pete's World to breach into the Earth of N-Space, the four Daleks emerged not long after the Cybermen. Now in Torchwood One, which had been monitoring the spherical ship, the cult was confronted by Rose Tyler, Mickey Smith, and Doctor Rajesh Singh.
Rose, being a companion of the Doctor and having fought them before, recognised the Daleks and used that fact to keep the three of them alive. However, the Daleks soon killed Singh by extracting information from his mind and, rejecting Cyber-Leader One's offer of an alliance, then waged war on the Cybermen. Needing the touch of a time traveller to activate the ark, they then attempted to force Rose to touch the prison ship, but the Daleks were distracted when Rose told them of the fate of the Emperor during the Battle of the Game Station and by the arrival of the Tenth Doctor, who unleashed the Cybermen and a force of Preachers into the room.
Mickey fell onto the ark and accidentally activated it, an act that the Doctor understood had stopped the Daleks from destroying the sun to activate it, allowing for the cult to unleash their army of millions against the Cybermen and people of London. The Doctor then activated the portal into the Void, sucking the Cybermen and Daleks away and saving the Earth. This had come at the cost of Rose Tyler, who was left trapped in Pete's World with no way of reaching the Doctor, (TV: Doomsday) and the Cult of Skaro also survived, using most of the energy in their power cells to temporal shift away, which dropped them in 1930. (TV: Evolution of the Daleks)
Still looking into projections of the Doctor's future, the Time War-era Time Lords were thus made aware of the Cult of Skaro despite their intelligence services having had no information on the group, validating rumours about the "Black Ops" unit and how it had worked independent of the Emperor. The revelation of the cult created concerns about how far the Dalek Empire was willing to go to achieve victory, yet psyche evaluation teams also speculated that Daleks like the group, thanks to their individuality, could be suggestable and reasoned with. While research was undertaken to find and identify these Daleks on Skaro, the Time Lords also sought to open negotiations with the Cybermen for help in defeating their common enemy. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual)
Attempt to rebuilt the Empire
- Main article: Invasion of Manhattan
Having arrived in 1930 New York City, the post-War cult failed to rebuild the Dalek race before deciding to use humans as their soldiers for an invasion of Manhattan. The leader of the cult, Dalek Sec, even became a Human-Dalek hybrid to begin a new future for the Daleks, but the Doctor, now joined in his travels by companion Martha Jones, had arrived as well. The Doctor encouraged the non-Dalek ideas Sec began to experience and stopped the humans the cult had captured from becoming mindless slaves, but the encounter still ended with the deaths of Sec, Dalek Jast, Dalek Thay, and the Daleks' human army. Unwilling to cause a genocide, the Doctor offered Dalek Caan, who he believed to be last Dalek in the universe, a chance to come with him, but Caan instead temporal shifted away. (TV: Evolution of the Daleks)
The Time War-era Time Lords also saw a node of this event, teaching them that Sec seemed to be the most open of the cult to new ideas, while the other three members defaulted to typical Dalek responses when faced with such options, and that the group's individuality could cause strife amongst them. Recognising that the human-hybird Sec knew much about Dalek strategy while also being welcome to emotions, the military, despite seeing the node foretell Sec's death, sought permission from the High Council to extract the Human-Dalek from that moment in the timeline, hoping to recruit him. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual)
The survival of Davros
- Main article: New Dalek Empire
At the cost of his sanity, Caan broke through the Time War's time lock to save Davros from dying at the jaws of the Nightmare Child in its first year, bringing Davros into the post-conflict universe. Using his own DNA, Davros created the New Dalek Empire, which was overseen by a new Supreme Dalek and based out of the Crucible in the Medusa Cascade. Davros then created the reality bomb, a superweapon the Daleks could use to destroy the entire omniverse, which needed to be powered by 27 specific planets, including the Earth. Caan, now able to see the flow of time thanks to breaking into the War, claimed that the Dalek plan would succeed. (TV: The Stolen Earth) Learning of these events—which they considered the Daleks' most diabolical plan yet—through the matrix projections, the Time War-era Time Lords were concerned that Davros was once again working with his creations, yet they were alarmed even more by how a single bronze Dalek, even if it had enhanced mental capacity, was able to break through a time lock. The Time Lords began to investigate the matter. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual)
After being banished to the Vault with Davros, Caan reflected on all he had seen during the War and the future events to come. (PROSE: Dalek Caan) Taking the 27 worlds out of time and space, placing them in the Medusa Cascade and one second out of sync with the rest of N-Space, the Daleks launched a full-scale invasion of Earth, quickly overwhelming humanity's attempts at resisting and fulfilling their long held ambition to claim the planet. Elsewhere in the universe, the Doctor, still in his tenth incarnation but now joined by companion Donna Noble, learned the planets had been taken to the cascade and fled from the Shadow Proclamation. With the help of his various Earth-bound companions, the TARDIS entered the out of sync cascade, but, to the Time Lord's horror, Davros revealed he had returned.
After reuniting with Rose, who had returned to N-Space now that the dimensional barriers were weakened, and, due to being shot by a Dalek drone, avoiding a complete regeneration by sending the remaining energy into his old severed hand, the Doctor, Rose, Donna, and Captain Jack Harkness were brought aboard the Crucible, where the TARDIS and Donna were seemingly killed in the craft's heart, but they were saved by a Human-Time Lord Meta-Crisis. This created a a clone of the Doctor and gave Time Lord traits to Donna. However, every plot launched by the clone Doctor and the Doctor's various companions, the so-called Children of Time, ended in defeat, with the reality bomb only a second away from detonation before Donna.
Now with her Time Lord traits activated thanks to a blast of electricity from Davros, Donna shut down the Dalek defences. With the empire powerless, Caan revealed he had indeed seen time; he had seen the massacres the Daleks had inflicted upon the universe, turned against his own kind, and engineered events to ensure Donna would become part Time Lord to defeat the Dalek race once and for all. After the Doctors and Donna had sent all but the Earth back to their proper positions in space, as the original Doctor worked on using the TARDIS to return the Earth back home, the Meta-Crisis clone overwhelmed the Daleks' casings using the controls, intending to destroy the entire species to spare the universe from the invasions the empire would have launched.
With even Caan and Davros presumed dead in the explosion, the Doctor assumed the entire Dalek race had been destroyed. (TV: The Stolen Earth / Journey's End) Despite forseeing how the encounter ended, the Time Lords noted that moving the Earth was one of their own tactics, having done so during the Ravolox affair. Therefore, they realized the Daleks were willing to employ their own tactics against them. Furthermore, the fact that the Daleks managed to move the Earth without devastating the planetary biosphere proved to the Gallifreyans that their enemy had better technology than their own. The ways through which the New Dalek Empire moved entire planets thus became a matter that they began to urgently study. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual)
The final rebirth
- Main article: New Dalek Paradigm
- Main article: Resurrected Dalek Empire
Unknown to the Doctor, (TV: Journey's End) Davros somehow survived the destruction of the Crucible, (PROSE: The Whoniverse) as did one flying saucer and its crew of three drones. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe) Having fallen through time but picking up the trace of a progenitor, (TV: Victory of the Daleks) a device leftover from the Time War (PROSE: A History of Humankind) containing pure Dalek DNA, the three Daleks set out to activate the device to rebuild their species. (TV: Victory of the Daleks)
As the progenitor was unable to recognise the trio of Daleks due to their impure DNA, the Daleks set themselves up in 1941 Great Britain as Professor Edwin Bracewell's Ironside Project to draw in the Doctor, understanding the testimony of their greatest foe would prove they were Daleks. When the Eleventh Doctor and his companion Amy Pond arrived, they eventually managed to manipulate him into verbally confirming as such before escaping back to their ship. When the Doctor arrived in the saucer, he bore witness to the creation of five new pure Daleks, the first of the now-formed New Dalek Paradigm. The Paradigm Daleks exterminated their predecessors for their impurity before confronting the Doctor, who escaped when the saucer was attacked by Danny Boy's squadron. Ultimately, the Doctor was forced to allow the Daleks to escape back to their own time period to shut down the Oblivion Continuum inside Bracewell. (TV: Victory of the Daleks)
Foreseeing this event through the Matrix, the Time War-era Time Lords recognised the danger of Progenitors giving the Daleks a virtually limitless source of reinforcements in strategic points across the universe and so tasked CIA operatives with finding the devices and either destroying or disabling them, whilst Panopticon Scholars investigated the purpose of the Paradigm's Eternal Dalek. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual)
After the Time War, with the annihilation of the Dalek Empire and supposed annihilation of Gallifrey, the Daleks and Time Lords had become myths to the rest of the universe. (PROSE: A Brief History of Time Lords) However, the Paradigm eventually restored the Daleks to a full empire that was known and feared by the citizens of the universe, (COMIC: The Only Good Dalek, et. al) although the Daleks had yet to rise to the same numbers they held during the Time War. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual) The original five Paradigm Daleks had first used the facilities on the planet Goth to build up their new army of red Drone Daleks, but the five founders, due to the Time War significantly changing history, had little chance at verifying the Dalek Pathweb's information on the Time War. Nonetheless, they chose to focus upon what was clear, which included taking advantage of the absence of the Time Lords. In fact, the Daleks decided they had effectively won the Time War. (PROSE: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe)
Upon finding the Eye of Time, which had been lost at the end of the Time War, the Daleks 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 Doctor and Amy, 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)
Elsewhere, the Daleks engaged in another war with humanity (COMIC: The Only Good Dalek) and, under the leadership of a different emperor, eventually 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)
With it clear that the Paradigm was enduring defeat after defeat at the hands of the Eleventh Doctor, the Paradigm began to lose influence in the restored Dalek Empire they had established, (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe) with Daleks that no longer wore the distinctive multi-colored Paradigm casings coming to represent the empire as it expanded. (TV: The Witch's Familiar, et. al) To distance itself from the Paradigm's many defeats, the Dalek state reorganised itself under the Parliament of the Daleks and its Dalek Prime Minister, creating the resurrected Dalek Empire. To further downplay their connection to the New Paradigm, the Prime Minister also promoted the red Paradigm drones to be officers, ordering that standard drones return to the bronze casings seen in the Time War because it felt this casing was more likely to strike fear into their enemies. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe)
As the now-Parliament commanded Dalek Empire expanded, Oswin Oswald, a human who had been converted into a Dalek and also a temporal splinter of Clara Oswald, 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 Parliament, until the knowledge of their foe was restored during the Siege of Trenzalore, was left to debate as to who their forgotten arch-nemesis had been. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe) The Matrix's projection of this event confirmed to the Time Lords that the Pathweb, which was ever elusive to them, could indeed be hacked, and so they devoted additional resources to this means of attack. They also learnt from Oswin's experience that not all Dalek conversions were successful, understanding that the discovery of even one drone that was not totally subservient to Dalek control would give Gallifrey a massive tactical advantage. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual)
The Daleks captured the Yearn which had been exiled from Medrüth by the Doctor. It told them it had encountered a surviving Time Lord, to the surprise of the Daleks who now believed none had survived the Time War. To lure the survivor out, the Supreme led an invasion of Medrüth, accompanied by the Eternal and a Strategist. The gambit succeeded; luring the Doctor back to Medrüth. He was captured and interrogated on if he was the only surviving Time Lord, but refused to give any information so the Scientist connected him to the Yearn in hopes of it attacking his mind to provide data. This led to the Doctor striking a deal with the Yearn instead for it to consume the Dalek Pathweb, immobilising the invaders. The effect proved short-lived as the Daleks reasserted their collective identity over the Yearn and regained control of themselves in time to destroy a fleeing freighter carrying Medrüthian refugees.
Taking this victory as proof the Daleks were truly unstoppable, though the Doctor had escaped, the Prime Minister ordered the Dalek Empire begin a new invasion of the universe. Numerous worlds were immediately targeted by the Daleks across the galaxy, which the Doctor feared was the start of a new war. (AUDIO: Daleks Victorious)
The Doctor transported the invading Daleks into an Arkheon device and tricked them into conquering the pocket universe it generated. The device was then infected with the Darinthian Blight by Valarie Lockwood. As the contents of the device were it’s currency, which the Daleks owned in its entirety, the Blight killed the Daleks. The Doctor expected that there would be survivors however. (AUDIO: Victory of the Doctor)
Return of the Time Lords
The siege begins
- 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)
War against the Doctor
- Main article: War against the Doctor
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. (TV: The Time of the Doctor) Through the Matrix's projections, the Time War-era Time Lords foresaw the destruction and the subsequent reboot of the universe and were aware that Big Bang Two would cause subtle changes to Earth's timeline, resulting in the 21st century Dalek invasion being forgotten by most humans. They also observed that the Daleks who attempted to prevent the total event collapse were reduced to stone afterimages, and Weapons Architects explored the possibilities of exploiting Localised Event-Collapse Time Fields as a means of petrifying whole fleets of Daleks. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual)
The chapter also tried to engineer an assassin to kill the Doctor, but this agent, River Song, and him fell in love and married. Ultimately, if he had never met Song, the Doctor would never have survived long enough to reach Trenzalore. (TV: The Time of the Doctor) Additionally, Song helped the Eighth Doctor in the series of pre-Time War events surrounding the Doom Coalition (AUDIO: The Sonomancer, et al.) and against the Nine. (AUDIO: Companion Piece) She had also helped the Eleventh Doctor with his post-Time War trauma, as she once implied she had removed the number of how many children had supposedly burned from his mind when he still believed the War had ended with the destruction of Gallifrey. (PROSE: The Day of the Doctor)
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)
The Daleks descend
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)
Now, 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) As with the Fall of Gallifrey, tactical analysis for the Siege of Trenzalore in the Dalek Combat Training Manual was suspended due to the sensitive nature of the information relating to the outcome of the Time War. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual)
According to the book The Secret Lives of Monsters, "some" considered the Siege of Trenzalore 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)
Restoration of Gallifrey and Skaro
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 and now home to Davros. Brought before Davros, who claimed to be dying, the Twelfth Doctor revealed to him that Gallifrey had survived. Upon hearing this, Davros appeared to sincerely congratulate the Doctor and went on to urge him not to lose his people again, to protect them as Davros did the Daleks. However, it became apparent that Davros was manipulating the Doctor to harvest his regeneration energy, which he saw as the "ancient magic of the Time Lords" and the "blood of Gallifrey". Successfully transferring it into himself and all Daleks on Skaro, Davros gloated that the Daleks would "rise stronger than ever" and that he had achieved the "final defeat of Gallifrey". The scheme went awry when the energy was channeled into the decaying Daleks of the sewers, enabling them to rise up and destroy the city, (TV: The Witch's Familiar) though Davros and the Daleks would survive this incident. (PROSE: Secrets of the Dalek Laboratory)
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)
Other battles with the Daleks
The Time War-era Time Lords continued to follow the Doctor's encounters with the Daleks following their thirteenth regeneration. The Twelfth Doctor's encounter with Rusty fascinated the Time Lords, who realised that a Dalek could be "conditioned" to turn against their own kind. Making note of the Doctor's mental contact with Rusty, the psi division investigated the possibility of creating other such Daleks.
Learning that the Doctor had tried to demonstrate mercy to a young Davros, the Time Lords saw that he had shown some way of circumnavigating the Blinovitch Limitation Effect, allowing him to return to an exact space-time event multiple times and influencing the outcome of that event. Investigations were undertaken as to how the Doctor was able to achieve this, and discussions took place at High Council level to determine whether they constituted a breach of the First Law of Time. The Time Lords believed that the Doctor had failed in his mission, as they could find no evidence that any Daleks in their current relative time zone had any understanding of mercy. They also saw that, at the end of his life, the Doctor met with Rusty again in order to access the Pathweb in the midst of an encounter with the First Doctor immediately preceding their respective regenerations.
The Time Lords saw the Thirteenth Doctor's encounters with the Reconnaissance Dalek, who was initially defeated upon arriving on Earth in the 9th century, reconstructed itself in the 21st century and ultimately created a "new strain" of Dalek. Realising that the reconnaissance scouts boasted considerably more abilities than standard Dalek drones, the Time Lords were amazed that primitive humans were able to defeat such a Dalek but were nonetheless wary of encountering one in wartime. It also came to their concern that the Dalek was able to create a new army without the advanced skills of the Cult of Skaro, the Emperor or Davros, and so research was undertaken into the genetic make-up of Reconnaissance Daleks to further understand the extent of their abilities. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual [+]Loading...["Dalek Combat Training Manual (novel)"])
Until the next time
- Main article: Razing of Gallifrey
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)
After the failure of the Final Sanction, the Time Lords cured the Master's condition and he left Gallifrey in what he later referred to as "a mutual kicking me out." (TV: The Doctor Falls) Despite trying to do good as Missy, (TV: The Doctor Falls) the Master later returned to their dark ways as the Spy Master and ravaged Gallifrey, apparently killing all Gallifreyans, after learning about the secret of the Timeless Child, much to the horror of the Thirteenth Doctor. Having made sure to preserve the corpses of the Time Lords in the event they would be useful, the Master came upon the Cyberium, the artificial intelligence of far future Cybermen which gave him the resources to convert the deceased Time Lords into an army of what he called CyberMasters.
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, who had survived in a facility located between universes and chose to unleash the Flux and the Ravagers on their original universe whilst they moved on to the next one. (TV: Survivors of the Flux) By virtue of destroying the universe in its wake, the Sontarans hoped the Flux would bring about a war that dwarfed any conflict that had come before. (TV: The Halloween Apocalypse)
However, as noted by Ohila, the Time War would remain "the deadliest conflict history will ever know". Her remark was published in a book by the Curator, (PROSE: The Day of the Doctor) who, being a future incarnation of the Doctor, (COMIC: The Then and the Now) had lived through the Flux conflict already. Nevertheless, the Sontarans' hope led the warrior race to embark on a Temporal Offensive (TV: War of the Sontarans) and the Flux Offensive.
The Doctor succeeded in saving the universe from the Flux, though not before it destroyed the assembled Dalek War Fleet as well as the Cyber-Fleet and the Sontaran fleet, (TV: The Vanquishers) with Dalek Command holding the Doctor responsible for their losses. (TV: Eve of the Daleks) Recognising their hatred for her, the Master gained the allegiance of the Daleks and the Cybermen in a plot to eliminate the Doctor and seize the Earth, with the Daleks now being aware of the Master's ransacking of Gallifrey. This was thwarted by the Doctor, though the confrontation led to both her and the Master being gravely wounded, with the former regenerating into the Fourteenth Doctor. (TV: The Power of the Doctor)
Behind the scenes
- Every series finale by Russell T Davies featured a villain who'd escaped from the Time War. Series 1's Bad Wolf / The Parting of the Ways had the Dalek Emperor and a whole fleet of Daleks; series 2's Army of Ghosts / Doomsday had the Cult of Skaro; series 3's Utopia / The Sound of Drums / Last of the Time Lords had the Master; series 4 had Davros; and the 2009 Specials' The End of Time had Rassilon and the High Council.
- Until 2017, every one of the Doctor's regenerations within the revived series occurred following an event that was in some way related to the Time War:
- The Eighth Doctor regenerated during the Time War with the help of the Sisterhood of Karn who turned him into the man he needed to be to end the war. (TV: The Night of the Doctor)
- The War Doctor regenerated after growing too old following years of fighting in the Time War. He regenerated shortly after he and all of the other Doctors saved Gallifrey from destruction and obliterated the Dalek fleet. (TV: The Day of the Doctor)
- The Ninth Doctor regenerated after a battle with the Dalek Emperor who had survived the Time War. He came to his end saving Rose Tyler after she eviscerated the Daleks and saved Jack Harkness, (TV: The Parting of the Ways) something the Tenth Doctor would later describe as the "final act of the Time War". (TV: Utopia)
- The Tenth Doctor regenerated after defeating Rassilon who was attempting to free Gallifrey from the time lock, bringing the rest of the war with him. (TV: The End of Time) Earlier, the Tenth Doctor also aborted a regeneration which was caused when he was shot by a Dalek of a new empire created by Davros who had escaped the Time War with the help of Dalek Caan. (TV: The Stolen Earth [+]Loading...["The Stolen Earth (TV story)"] / Journey's End) The Eleventh Doctor later confirmed that this did indeed count as a regeneration. (TV: The Time of the Doctor)
- The Eleventh Doctor also died of old age after centuries of defending Trenzalore, preventing the Time Lords from returning and the Time War from starting anew. The Time Lords intervened to save the Doctor and change the future so this could happen. (TV: The Time of the Doctor)
