Authors: Lance Parkin,Lars Pearson
[
584
]
The Fires of Pompeii
[
585
]
Dalek
[
586
]
The Doctor’s Wife
[
587
] “Agent Provocateur”
[
588
] “The Forgotten”. This is apparent confirmation that Susan no longer exists after the Time War.
[
589
]
The Stolen Earth
[
590
] Jack, in
The Parting of the Ways
, for one.
[
591
]
The Vampires of Venice
[
592
] Says the eighth Doctor in “The Forgotten”. A line cut from
The Eyeless
said that the eighth Doctor was betrayed by his then-companions.
[
593
]
Journey’s End
. On when the eighth Doctor might have regenerated into the ninth, see The Last Great Time War sidebar.
[
594
] “The Forgotten”. This is apparent confirmation that
Rose
occurs soon after the end of the Last Great Time War.
[
595
]
The End of the World
[
596
]
School Reunion
[
597
]
Dalek
[
598
]
Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways
[
599
]
Victory of the Daleks
[
600
]
The Unquiet Dead
,
Father’s Day.
[
601
]
Rise of the Cybermen
The Last Great Time War
The new TV series is set after The Last Great Time War, and although we know the broad strokes of what happened, there’s been little detail. Stories that provide hints about the event include
Rose, The End of the World, The Unquiet Dead, Dalek, Father’s Day, Bad Wolf
and
The Parting of the Ways
.
Doctor Who Annual 2006
contains a short account of the Time War written by Russell T Davies, which echoes his thoughts in a
Doctor Who Confidential
interview that the roots of the War lie with the Time Lords trying to prevent the Daleks’ creation in
Genesis of the Daleks
. The article links the story to
Lungbarrow
and
The Apocalypse Element
, mentions the Deathsmiths of Goth (from the
DWM
back-up strip “Black Legacy”) and adds the information that the Animus (
The Web Planet
) and the Eternals (
Enlightenment
) were caught in the fighting. The article was the first place related to the 2005 series that names Gallifrey as the Doctor’s destroyed home planet (the new series later named it in
The Runaway Bride
and
The Sound of Drums
), and says Skaro was in “ruins” by the end - a reference that seems to support the claim in
War of the Daleks
that Skaro wasn’t destroyed in
Remembrance of the Daleks
.
There is no indication (beyond an ambiguous statement from the tenth Doctor in
Journey’s End
) whether it was the eighth or ninth Doctor who fought in the Last Great Time War, or whether he regenerated during (as a result of?) events during the War. The Dalek in
Dalek
doesn’t seem to recognise the Doctor’s face, but responds to his name. Many fans have speculated that the Doctor has recently regenerated in
Rose
, as he seems unfamiliar with his reflection. There’s a broad fan consensus that it’s the eighth Doctor who fought the Time War and that its climax somehow triggered the regeneration - but there’s no actual evidence that this is the case, and it seems clear from Clive’s website in
Rose
that the ninth Doctor’s an established incarnation.
Only One Destruction of Gallifrey?
The intention of both the creative team behind the EDAs and the new series producer Russell T Davies is that the destruction of Gallifrey seen in
The Ancestor Cell
and the destruction of Gallifrey reported in the new series are entirely separate events. As the Doctor destroys Gallifrey once while preventing the Enemy and Faction Paradox from taking control of his homeworld, then (presumably after rebuilding Gallifrey, as he pledges to do at the end of
The Gallifrey Chronicles
) he destroys Gallifrey again in a great war with the Daleks, it would seem clear these are indeed mutually exclusive. Russell Davies likened it, in a
DWM
column, to the two World Wars humanity fought in quick succession.
But could Gallifrey have been destroyed just once? The Doctor certainly experiences the destruction of Gallifrey twice, in two different contexts. But this doesn’t rule out it being the same
event
. If there was only one destruction of Gallifrey, he and his future self would have to be present, and both culpable.
Surprisingly, this already fits what we know from
The Ancestor Cell
- the Doctor’s future self, Grandfather Paradox was there. Moreover, this future eighth Doctor fits everything we know about the Doctor who fought the Time War: fighting a vast time war has scarred him, made him lose his faith in humanity, made him a little callous. In
The Gallifrey Chronicles
recap of the end of
The Ancestor Cell
, Grandfather Paradox even wears a leather coat. As for the destruction of Gallifrey - the Doctor’s description in
Dalek
, “I watched it happen ... I made it happen... I tried to stop it” is a neat summary of his actions in
The Ancestor Cell.
If this theory is true, the Doctor’s memories of the War are conflicted because he was
literally
fighting his (earlier) self over “pulling the lever” that destroyed Gallifrey. So it’s
Grandfather Paradox
who has fought the Last Great Time War, the Daleks, the Nestenes and so on. He goes back to
The Ancestor Cell
having done all that, confronts his earlier self... who then outsmarts him by blowing up Gallifrey. Following this defeat, it’s Grandfather Paradox who regenerates into Eccleston (growing his arm back in the process).
For this to be the case, it involves the introduction of the tiniest bit of extra information: the War that’s being fought in the future has the Daleks in it and at some point they make a decisive move on Gallifrey. What the “current” eighth Doctor doesn’t know - but which his future self does - is that, in the future, the War’s going so badly that the Daleks are heading for Gallifrey. The Daleks were ruled out as “the Enemy” in
Alien Bodies
, but they don’t need to be for this theory to work - they just need to be capable of hitting the Time Lords hard.
[
602
] The Shadow Proclamation
This group is first referenced in
Rose
, is seen on screen in
The Stolen Earth
, and also appears in “Fugitive” (set circa 2545) and
The Darksmith Legacy
books. The Proclamation’s native time zone is never specified, and it’s unclear if it has access to time travel (meaning the characters seen there might not even originate from the same era) or if the Proclamation perhaps operates (as with Gallifrey) on its own continuum. It’s evidently been around for some time, though - in
The Stolen Earth
(set in 2009), the Shadow Proclamation consider the disappearance of Pyrovillia as a “cold case”, suggesting they investigated it at the time. “Agent Provocateur” has them active at the time of Ancient Egypt.
[
603
] Donna, the Doctor in
The Stolen Earth.
[
604
] “Fugitive”. This is difficult to reconcile with the actions of Rassilon in
The End of Time
(TV), so it might represent the actions of another Time Lord authority, although seemingly not the Doctor himself.
[
605
]
The Stolen Earth
has one of the Shadow Proclamation talk of the Holy Writ, and another tell Donna “God save you”, suggesting this might be some form of religious organisation.
[
606
]
Beautiful Chaos
(p211).
[
607
]
The Beast of Orlok
[
608
]
The Eleventh Hour
[
609
]
The Pictures of Emptiness
(p15).
[
610
]
The Depths of Despair
[
611
]
Borrowed Time
[
612
]
The Glamour Chase
[
613
] How Many Times Has the Doctor Been Married?
Depending on how you define terms, at least five.
The earliest we know of in the Doctor’s lifetime was seen in flashback in
Cold Fusion
, a book that established that prior to the Doctor leaving Gallifrey, he was married to Patience, his former tutor (also seen in
The Infinity Doctors
). Patience is presumably Susan’s grandmother. Much later in
The Adventuress of Henrietta Street
, the eighth Doctor married a ritualist named Scarlette on a platonic basis, as a means of becoming vested with the authority to serve as a protector of Earth.
Since 2009, the new
Doctor Who
has married off its central character three times. The tenth Doctor is said to have married Queen Elizabeth I – while this event isn’t seen on screen, it’s referred or alluded to so often (
The Shakespeare Code
,
The End of Time
(TV),
The Beast Below
and
Amy’s Choice
), it seems safe to assume that it happened. The eleventh Doctor very prominently marries River Song in
The Wedding of River Song
, and prior to that winds up married to Marilyn Monroe in
A Christmas Carol
.
An alternate future seen in
Human Nature
(TV) entailed the Doctor’s “John Smith” persona living out his life as the husband of nurse Joan Redfern.
The Aztecs
, amusingly enough, entails the first Doctor becoming accidentally engaged to an Aztec woman, Cameca, when he fails to realise the cultural significance of making her a cup of cocoa.
To date, the Doctor has not literally married the TARDIS, despite
The Doctor’s Wife
(as the title suggests) taking this ongoing element of the programme’s subtext and, in large measure, turning it into text.
None of the Above
There are a number of stories without the references needed to place them in any meaningful relation to the rest of universal history.
Some (such as
The Celestial Toymaker
) take place in a reality that is completely detached from the universe’s timeline. Some, such as the E-Space Trilogy (
Full Circle
to
Warriors’ Gate
) and the Divergent Universe Series (the Big Finish audios
Scherzo
to
The Next Life
), take place in locations clearly outside the universe’s physical boundaries.