Everything We Know About The Time War

The Last Great a Time War was a conflict played out between the Time Lords of Gallifrey and the Daleks of Skaro, invisible to lesser beings but devastating to higher life forms. It wasn’t played out in conventional means of space and time, no real estimation can be placed upon its duration and its beginnings are still vague.

Some say the Daleks were the aggressors, creating the Dogma Virus to corrupt Time Lord DNA and managing to invade the Matrix, yet others say it was the Time Lords who were the first aggressors, sending the fourth Doctor to Skaro to destroy the Daleks at birth, this being the first shots of the war. Others say that this first event led to the second and consequently to the Daleks attempts to infiltrate the High Council of the Time Lords and the destruction of Skaro by the seventh Doctor. Yet it seems somehow Skaro survived and this was possibly the final act that triggered all out war between the two races. There is speculation that The Master may have been involved in the early days of the war, exterminated on Skaro for untold crimes, his remains were set to be brought back to Gallifrey by the seventh Doctor on the final day of his life.

Davros was seemingly killed in the first year of the war, lost at the Gates of Elysium when his ship flew into the so-called jaws of The Nightmare Child, despite an attempt by the Doctor to save him. It was at this time Dalek Caan time-shifted back into the war, being driven mad in the process. 

The Eighth Doctor refused to fight in the war despite it engulfing the cosmos, helping people where he could as he had tried to do even with Davros. It could be argued that he placed the needs of the one before the needs of the many, unwilling to end the suffering around him as he tried to stay true to his own morals. He willingly became a warrior on Karn after one death too many, Cass. There was no need for a Doctor in a universe consumed with fire - “Doctor no more”. It was in these flames that the War Doctor was forged, born into conflict at his own choosing.

The life of the War Doctor seems to have been long and bloody, he was so respected as a warrior even the Sontarans told tales of his exploits, even though they were forbidden from joining the fighting themselves. Yet the Time Lords were seemingly beaten back by the Daleks. The main Dalek force comprised of their immense fleet of saucers and the Deathsmiths of Goth, reports indicating as many as ten million saucers leading the fight against the Time Lords on the last day, the High Council in their increasing desperation resurrecting both Rassilon and The Master through the Act of Master Restitution. Though the means of their resurrection is unknown, we can speculate it was through the manipulation of time or use of Time Lord biodata, the Time Lords believing the Doctor’s nemesis to be another excellent warrior.

Was the Doctor responsible for the return of the Master? Did he make peace with his nemesis? We may never know, yet we do know that the Master was present at the Cruciform as it fell to the Dalek Emperor, fleeing in fear to the end of the universe.

The situation for Gallifrey became increasingly desperate, millions being killed and brought back to life every second as horrors such as the Skaro Degradations, the Horde of Travesties and the Could’ve Been King with his Army of Meanwhiles and Neverweres were seen. Meanwhile Rassilon devised a plan to save Gallifrey, to allow their race to ascend into beings of pure consciousness, destroying time in the process - The Ultimate Sanction. The Tenth Doctor ended the plan long after the Time War had ended, losing his own life as a result of events.

Near or on the final day of Gallifrey, the Daleks broke through the apparently impenetrable 400 sky trenches at Arcadia. The War Doctor was present as the city fell and Gallifrey burned, yet somehow came into possession of “the moment”, a super weapon so devastating it would end the war in a single strike.

Upon realising the War Doctor had the weapon, Rassilon and four other Time Lords escaped to Earth and from the time Lock, having implanted a signal in the mind of the Master who by that time had been found by the future Doctor on Utopia under the effects of the chameleon arch, regenerated, laid siege to Earth, died, been resurrected and was now completely insane. The Doctor and Master sent the Time Lords back to the hell of the last day as the White Point Star was destroyed.

Learning of Rassilon’s plot to destroy time itself meanwhile, the War Doctor used the moment to destroy both the Daleks and the Time Lords in an inferno, ten million Dalek ships burning as Gallifrey itself was destroyed. Speculation suggests that it also possibly resulted in the War Doctor killing himself in the process and forcing his regeneration into his tenth body, which once again took the name Doctor (9th), yet we still don’t know for certain which incarnation pushed the button. 

The entire war became time locked and with the exception of a few survivors, the Daleks and the Time Lords vanished from time and space…