B00DPX9ST8 EBOK (24 page)

[
69
] According to a highly suspect account from the vampire Tepesh, part of a historical simulation in
Zagreus
.

[
70
]
State of Decay.
Vampires appear in that story,
Blood Harvest,
"Blood Invocation"
, Death Comes to Time, The Eight Doctors, Goth Opera, Jago & Litefoot
Series 2,
Managra, Project: Lazarus
,
Project: Twilight,
“Tooth and Claw” (
DWM
),
UNIT: Snake Head
,
Vampire Science
,
World Game
,
Benny: The Vampire Curse
and
Gallifrey: Annihilation. The Vampires of Venice
featured “vampires” that were disguised fish people. Vampires also appear as a part of the holographic record in
Zagreus
.

[
71
]
Project: Twilight

[
72
]
State of Decay

[
73
]
Cat’s Cradle: Time’s Crucible

[
74
]
Gallifrey: Weapon of Choice

[
75
]
The Shakespeare Code.
Eternals were seen in
Enlightenment
.

[
76
]
Forever Autumn

[
77
] “The Tides of Time”

[
78
]
So Vile a Sin

The Eternal War

On screen, we learn that the Time Lords fought campaigns against the Great Vampires (
State of Decay
), that they time-looped the homeworld of the Fendahl (
Image of Fendahl
), that they protected other races from invaders (
The Hand of Fear
), that they maintained a prison planet that contained alien species (
Shada
) and that they destroyed huon particles and the Racnoss (
The Runaway Bride
). In the New Adventures, particularly
Cat’s Cradle: Time’s Crucible, The Pit
and
Christmas on a Rational Planet
, this was the Eternal War in which the forces of rationality and science defeated the forces of superstition and magic.

[
79
]
The Pit

[
80
]
Sky Pirates!, The Infinity Doctors
.

The Three Time Wars

This is not the Last Great Time War between the Time Lords and the Daleks that’s the backdrop to the 2005 television series. In the
Doctor Who Annual 2006
, Russell T Davies states, “There had been two Time Wars before this - the skirmish between the Halldons and the Eternals, and then the brutal slaughter of the Omnicraven Uprising, and on both occasions, the Doctor’s people had stepped in to settle the matter.” Although they don’t mention those specific incidents, the books concur that there were indeed two previous Time Wars - one in the ancient past (which, to avoid confusion, we might term the Ancient Time War, although it’s not a term used in the stories themselves) and the War against the Enemy in the eighth Doctor’s future (which has become known in
Faction Paradox
circles as the “War in Heaven”).

[
81
]
Sky Pirates!

[
82
]
Heart of TARDIS

[
83
]
Sky Pirates!, The Infinity Doctors, Heart of TARDIS.

[
84
]
The Gallifrey Chronicles

[
85
]
The Crystal Bucephalus

[
86
] In
The Game of Death
, the TARDIS data bank says that the galaxies collided “over a hundred billion years ago” - that number was presumably derived from the year in which
Utopia
takes place, but if so, the Devastation must be somewhat younger than that. (If the two numbers were equal, it would mean that the galaxies collided at the universe’s very start, before galaxies had formed.) The Face of Boe is said to hail from the Silver Devastation, and the Master/Professor Yana was found there as a small child (
Utopia
). Why dead suns and dark matter look silver is not explained.

[
87
] “Mortal Beloved”

[
88
]
The Forgotten Army

[
89
]
Castle of Fear

[
90
]
The Time Warrior, Horror of Fang Rock.

[
91
] The Progress of the Sontaran-Rutan War

The length of time we’re told the Sontarans and Rutans have been fighting is wildly inconsistent. It’s “ten centuries” before “Pureblood”; been raging since before the Time Lords had a civilisation in
The Infinity Doctors
; “six million years” according to
FP: The Eleven-Day Empire
, “thirteen million years” according to
FP: The Shadow Play
; “fifty thousand years” according to
The Poison Sky
and The
Taking of Chelsea 426
.

We hear a number of status reports from the battlefront of the Sontaran-Rutan War over the course of the TV series. Both sides have periods of success and failure, but implicitly, the Sontarans visit Earth far earlier and far more often than the Rutans. Earth is some way from the front lines (but close enough to strike the enemy using their most powerful emplaced weapons), with the Sontarans between us and the Rutans. According to “Pureblood”, when Earth becomes a spacefaring power, its territory borders the Sontaran Empire, but it’s in neither human nor Sontaran interests to pick a fight with each other.

It’s also worth noting that in
The Time Warrior
, Linx states “there is not a galaxy in the Universe which our space fleets have not subjugated”, and Styre talks about invading “Earth’s galaxy” in
The Sontaran Experiment
. Sontarans and Rutans are both prone to boasting but, even so, a war fought across one galaxy is already incomprehensibly vast, and one suspects the writers - as happens on occasion elsewhere in the TV series - are confusing “solar system” with “galaxy”.

We never hear about either the Sontarans and Rutans coming into conflict with other space powers. From this, we might infer that Skaro, Draconia, Telos and Ice Warrior territory are all located on one side of Earth, the Sontarans and (a little further away) the Rutans lie in the other.

In Ancient Egypt (“The Gods Walk Among Us”), Earth is a suitable place for the Sontarans to “outflank” the Rutans (given both sides’ use of rhetoric, this might suggest that the Rutans are making a major advance).

In the Middle Ages (
The Time Warrior
), Earth is of no strategic importance, but the Sontarans send a reconnaissance mission there. A pair of Rutans conduct cloning experiments on Earth in 1199 (
Castle of Fear
). The Sontarans and Rutans both have fighter squadrons. Then in the seventeenth century (“Dragon’s Claw”), the war is being fought close enough to Earth for a Sontaran ship to crash there.

By the early twentieth century, the Rutans are losing the war. They had dominated the Mutter’s Spiral (our galaxy), but now were beaten back to the fringes (curiously, mention of their withdrawal from Mutter’s Spiral happens as early as
Castle of Fear
). Earth is of strategic importance. In the late twentieth century (
The Two Doctors
), Earth is “conveniently situated” for the Sontarans’ attack on the Rutan-held Madillon Cluster.

As humans spread into space, they encounter the Sontarans and find themselves caught in the crossfire (“Conflict of Interests”,
Lords of the Storm
). Humanity and the Sontarans sign a non-aggression pact in 2420.

In Benny’s time, the Rutans made great advances, and even manage to devastate the Sontaran homeworld. Following the Doctor’s intervention, the Sontarans survive to serve as a buffer between humanity and the Rutans (“Pureblood”). In 2602 (
Benny: The Bellotron Incident
), the Sontaran-Rutan war dangerously approaches Earth’s trade routes.

There is a demilitarised zone between the later Earth Empire and the Sontarans. The Rutans directly attack the Sontaran homeworld (again) circa 3915 (
Sontarans: Conduct Unbecoming
). The Sontarans lose a war to the Federation in the sixty-third century, and their Empire soon lies in ruins.

Then in the far future (
The Sontaran Experiment
), a Sontaran invasion fleet is poised to invade Earth (the story says “Earth’s galaxy”, but see above), which is of tactical importance. The Doctor says there’s a “buffer zone” between human and Sontaran territory. At some point after that (
Heroes of Sontar
), the Sontarans achieve a victory on the planet Samur, but then suffer defeats owing to a flaw in their cloning process, and are forced to consolidate their forces within the Madillon Cluster.

The war ended three hundred thousand years before the end of humanity, resulting in the greatest demobilisation in universal history (
The Infinity Doctors
). Far, far in the future, the two races apparently merge (
Father Time
).

[
92
]
FP: The Eleven-Day Empire

[
93
]
The Infinity Doctors
. The war has lasted as long as the Time Lord civilisation.

[
94
] “Pureblood”. The Doctor’s assertion that the Sontaran/Rutan war started “ten centuries” before can’t be right, as it would mean it started in the 1500s - in other words, after
The Time Warrior
. Other stories place the start of the war far back in Earth’s prehistory.

[
95
]
The Quantum Archangel

[
96
]
Underworld

[
97
]
Death Comes to Time

[
98
]
The War Games

[
99
]
The Two Doctors, The Empire of Glass.

[
100
]
Carnival of Monsters, The Empire of Glass.

[
101
]
Death to the Daleks

[
102
]
Frontier Worlds, The Taint, Eternity Weeps
.

[
103
]
TW: Trace Memory

[
104
] Dating
The Nowhere Place
(BF #84) - The Doctor dates a tool of the original species - a mysterious door in 2197 - as being “more than fifty billion years old”. This is a scientific absurdity, given that the universe is no more than fifteen billion years old.

[
105
]
The God Complex

[
106
] Dating
A Death in the Family
(BF #140) - The Doctor tells Hex that they’ve arrived, “billions of years before your time, billions of years before your sun’s time... the universe is a baby”. Scientific consensus is that Earth’s sun formed about 4.6 billion years ago, so this is some time prior to that.