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[rassilon-imprimatur]

The Book of the Ceasefires: The Eighth Man Bound, Part One: Now Unto War

To understand the paradoxes of the eighth Doctor, and the events that led to both this incarnation and the War, one must understand the history of Gallifrey itself. However, the reader must understand how unreliable any historical record of the pre-history of the Time Lords can be, as it is literally before history. It cannot be said how much of the records kept in the Time Lords’ Matrix is simply propaganda and tall tales, or how much is true. Chronicling the universe before the Anchoring of the Thread without any bias or tampering from the Homeworld is impossible. Please keep this in mind. [1]

According to official Homeworld record, the Gallifreyans were one of the Fledging Empires in the Dark Times of the universe. Gallifrey itself was a world of religious freedom and magical ritual, any scientific advancement forced back into shrouded mysticisms by the matriarchal Pythia. Even now, the foundations of modern Gallifrey’s aristocratic hierarchy was set in stone, as the elite of the planet dwelled in the sentient Houses of the mountains and lush plains, while the peasants and few Lesser Species were confined to the dry, hot wastes. [2]

The Technologist Revolution, led by Rassilon and his peers, brought about both the fall of the Pythia and the fall of (legal) religion on Gallifrey. Magic was gutted and replaced by science. The coup also brought the Pythia’s Curse on Gallifrey, condemning the aristocratic bloodlines to sterility. From this comes the familiar tale; Rassilon develops the Looms to continue the bloodlines of his chosen elite, the religious orders are hunted and burned, and the natural born becomes not only unfashionable, but also illegal. The great experiments began shortly thereafter (once the ice age the froze all Lesser Species inhabitants of the planet out of the minds and worry and of the Technologist Elite), with Rassilon and Omega detonating stars and punching holes in reality left and right in order to master the very concept of Time. [3]

Following the Anchoring of the Thread, Gallifrey became the center of history, and not in a figurative sense. By pulling the singularity from the collapsing star of Qqaba, the early Gallifreyans created the heart of a potential web, which they proceeded to carry to their Homeworld and isolate in within an emerald labyrinth. This “Eye of Harmony,” while powering everything on Gallifrey (from the awe inspiring transduction barrier to the hot water heaters) was the epicenter from which causality was mapped. As discussed previously, our understanding of Time and History (capitol letters fully intended) only exist because of the Time Lords; with the rare exceptions of one or two final frontiers and forbidden zones, the Time Lords essentially created every historical page of the Universe.

Naturally, many species and powers that would have existed in the pre-History universe were wiped out proactively by the Eye of Harmony’s placement at the Web of Time’s core. We can only speculate how many millions faded with a whimper, but a chosen few managed to go out with a bang. Species like the Ferutu and the Charon had made such a potential impact on the universe that their existence was allowed to continue as alternate timelines and paradoxical shadows on Gallifrey’s pristine universal vision. While the Ferutu were merely a “could have been” timeline, the Charon remains an example of temporal murder that retroactively built itself the mythology of a “Time War.” [4]

Following the initial years of Death Zone Games and galactic conflicts, Time Lord society fell into a ten million year period of absolute stagnancy. Rassilon, safe and secure in his slumber in his dark tower, ruled the council of Higher Evolutionaries. These omnipotent aliens tended to do most of the work for the Time Lords, and, either through Rassilon’s will or an unconscious sense of infinite complacency, the Time Lords simply became a race of tired protocols and dusty texts.

Of course, this changed with the rise of the Imperator. The crisis created by his insane ambition stirred Gallifreyan culture, and the ripples never truly stilled, even onto the early days of the War. House Dvora denizen Morbius has been isolated as one of the main four Loom “malfunctions” that both represented and created a generation of renegades. The other three according to official record, were the renegades that would later be known as the Master, Grandfather Paradox, and (speculatively) the Doctor. [5]

From here, Gallifreyan history more or less follows that of the Doctor. Some years after the Imperator Crisis, the Doctor had been exiled from his House of Lungbarrow, and (possibly) lived with his granddaughter in the Citadel. The Doctor had spent much of his early life as an offworld ambassador and low political figure, so after narrowly avoiding participation in the coup orchestrated by his friend the Master, the Doctor found himself the political enemy of presidential candidate, and later elect, Pandad VII. Escaping being “burned,” the Doctor and his granddaughter stole a faulty timeship (an obsolete Type-40) and left Gallifrey.

The rest, as they say, is history. The Doctor led a long and adventurous series of lives until his seventh incarnation, preempting further cultural shift to Gallifrey’s noosphere. In fact, it seems the only major disruption to standard Gallifreyan life was the rise of Faction Paradox (difficult to chronicle as no one is quite sure if the mysterious Grandfather Paradox, and the stories of his actions against the High Council, ever truly existed...). 

The Seventh Doctor’s regeneration into the Eighth came at a very interesting time for the both the renegade Time Lord and his Homeworld. Following the reemergence, and then inevitable collapse of the House of Lungbarrow, Gallifrey’s millennia-long stagnancy and cultural dormancy was shattered by the birth of Leela and Andred’s child. Leela was a former companion of the Doctor, a human from a savage colony planet, and Andred was a member of the Chancellery Guard (who, ironically, perhaps represented everything stagnant about Gallifreyen society; he was Loomed, fully formed and as an adult, and marched into service mere weeks after creation). The Pythia Curse could no longer be sustained, and a new era dawned over Gallifrey’s citadel. Houses and bloodlines that had still been practicing natural birth, long since hiding in the shadows, emerged. A new generation of Time Lords appeared, both inspired and effected by the change brought on by Leela and Andred’s union.

Lady Romanadvoratrelundar’s presidency had already been a politically charged time for the Homeworld. The alliance of the Temporal Powers was the first time Gallifrey had ever peacefully reached to other time active species since the formation of the Higher Evolutionaries and the alliance with the Althrace System, and only the first time Gallifrey had many any significant outside contact since the Imperator Crisis. President Romana’s brief tenure saw such brave, unprescedented shifts to the Time Lord political sphere. This was also the time of the Daleks’ invasion of Gallifrey (repelled and defeated), as well as the exposure of the Vampire Cult of Rassilon.

(By this point, Gallifrey’s timeline was not in sync with that of the Doctor’s, a rare and dangerous breach in Gallifrey’s Protocols of Inner Time. A rough outline of events follows, from Gallifrey’s point of view, not the Doctor’s:

The future Eighth Doctor aids his Sixth incarnation in overcoming the corrupt trial, spearheaded by Niroc’s Presidency and manipulated by the Valeyard.

Flavia resumes her presidency.

Romana is returned to N-Space.

Romana warns the Fifth Doctor of Ruath’s escape to the past.

Romana becomes Lady President.

Romana develops treaties and alliances with other races, creating the Temporal Powers. The Land of Fiction is annulled to the Matrix. She continues to fight for the rights of the Tharils.

Romana is kidnapped by the Daleks, along with all of Etra-Prime. Twenty-Seven years pass before the Sixth Doctor rediscovers Romana, and the Dalek Invasion of Gallifrey is thwarted.

The Eighth Doctor escorts Romana to Cambridge, and from there, to Shada.

Romana suffers an epileptic fit, brought on by the Carnival Queen, and releases many criminals incarcerated in Shada (including Grandfather Paradox, Voodoo Priest of the House of Lungbarrow).

The Sixth Doctor becomes Time’s Champion amidst the Chaplain of Spite’s assault on the Matrix, regenerating into a version of the Seventh Doctor that becomes a genuine “God of the Fourth.” However, the Sixth Doctor uses his powers to allow Gallifrey and his companion Mel to circumvent this timeline, creating an alternate reality where his Seventh self perishes in a conflict with Tannis, and the Minister of Chance becomes the champion of a Post-War reality. The Gallifrey allowed to circumvent this reality experiences an ultimately different fate for the Sixth Doctor, who regenerates after a final encounter with the Valeyard into an initially playful and silly Seventh.

The Seventh Doctor returns to the House of Lungbarrow, leading to its collapse. Leela and Andred have their child. The survivors of Lungbarrow are, eventually, joined into the Faction Paradox.  

It is unclear to what extent the Time Lords were aware of just how tangled the Doctor’s lives were becoming, as it is unclear how much of these Inner Time breaches could have occurred. This author chooses to blame either the looming War, already causing ripples in the Homeworld’s history, or the Effect created by the Needle.)

When the Seventh Doctor regenerated into the Eighth, in a cold San Francisco morgue, he managed to become a representation of the biological change that overtook Gallifrey. After years of traveling with humans, the Doctor’s fractured, impaired biodata extrapolated human DNA, and created a Doctor that was, for all intents and purposes, half-human “on his mother’s side.” [6]

Following his “birth,” the Eighth Doctor began an atypical series of adventures, collecting loved companions from the Lesser Species (once again seeming to hold a bias for humans). While his adventures in his first timeline can only really be speculated, it is the opinion of this author that he still managed to travel with Bernice Summerfield, Stacey Townsend and Ssard, Izzy Sinclair, Fey Truscott-Sade, the rouge Cyberman Kroton, and the young Samantha Jones. However, these adventures can only be speculated upon, as the Doctor, according the original destiny of the War, would take a separate path of adventures than that of his temporal predecessor who came under the machinations of Faction Paradox.

All of these shifts to the cultural norm had come at an inopportune time for Gallifrey. As discussed by another historian, Romana’s Presidency had finally become fully aware of the warnings of the Order of the Weal. The War and its implications had become frightened whispers amongst the President’s cabinet, and, while the new Doctor gallivanted through the universe. This led to the conspiracy of the Nine Gallifreys, and to Romana’s replacement. The replacement Presidency refused to even consider the idea of the War, and remained fairly stagnant in its denial until the arrival of a mysterious incarnation of the Master. While one should consult The Book of the War for a much more detailed (and better) written account of this incarnation of the renegade’s warnings to the High Council, this author focuses on how, eventually, Gallifrey was forced to accept the cold truth of the War’s coming. Umbaste became president, and the Master his ordained Magistrate, and while the other eight Gallifreys circled in their ghosted Spiral Poltic, Umbaste’s Gallifrey silently and secretly prepared for the War with the mysterious enemy.

This was the Gallifrey that the (original) Eighth Doctor was eventually forced to return to prior to his battle with, and defeat of, the renegade Time Lord named Varnax. Several different and conflicting accounts of this event exist (suggesting temporal rewriting or even attempted erasure, from either the Time Lords or the enemy), but it seems that, in some manner, the Doctor was either forced or willing decided to retire on Gallifrey, and work as a tutor for the new generation of Time Lords spurred by Leela and Andred’s status quo alteration. [7]

Eventully, the Magistrate replaced Umbaste, and became the War King when the War began properly, following the Doctor’s death on Dronid. Again, the full chronicle of the War is covered in excellent texts such as The Book of the War. Just know that, following his death, the Doctor’s corpse was traded amongst the various War powers before finally finding its way into the hands of the greedy and opportunistic Mr. Qixotl. From here, the “Relic” became the center of an auction, where the War powers gathered in order to bid on the rich potential the corpse’s biodata promised them. However, all members of the War had to swallow their distaste when a surprise guest arrived at the bidding of the dead body of the Doctor.

This guest was, naturally, the Doctor.

[1] As uncomfortable a thought as it might be, the most reliable and unbiased account of the universe’s pre-Time Lord existence may be that of the Carnival Queen. Certainly, the mystic tales of the Eternals and the Carrionites seem to imply the same thing.

[2] It is worth noting that, despite predating the Anchoring of the Thread, the (Great) Houses of Gallifrey certainly seem designed to fully comply with the society built by Rassilon. The ancient buildings, while living, and sometimes presenting their own agendas, are irreversibly connected to the breeding engines romantically christened Looms, and are mere cogs in the clockwork of Time Lord civilization. This again proves the bias that History cannot help but hold over us when trying to chronicle the Time Lords… everything, even their pre-History, is just a little too convenient.

[3] The Yssgaroth crisis has been discussed at length by many other historians and chroniclers. Please consult the excellent The Book of the War and Interference for more information regarding the earliest “prototypes” of the Eye of Harmony.

[4] The only real Time War (as the War against the Yssgaroth was only one of Space) that the Time Lords waged in their early years was the conflict against a future version of the Order of the Black Sun. This clash managed to be “real” because it existed on both sides of the Time Lords’ order. The earliest accounted skirmish of the war was on the very day that Omega detonated Qqaba, while the following encounters and battles only occurred after the Thread was Anchored. Perhaps this is was what solidified the war as “real.” However, it should be noted that this conflict never seemed to rise above the infrequent terrorist attack. There is also no telling how much of the Order’s motivation lay in their rage and grief for what their coalition would have been in a universe that was not molded by the will of Gallifrey.

(NOTE: Never mention how influential the Order’s temporal directional units were to the development of Gallifryan timeship directional circuits. You may find yourself unwritten.)

[5] The Doctor’s renegade tendency has often been associated with the hypothesis that his Looming was influenced by the biodata of “the Other.” While the Doctor has certainly exhibited memories from this mysterious Time Lord (and, in fact, seems to have inherited his widow!), this author prefers to view the biodata tangling as a further symptom of the Doctor being one of the four “retroshocks” of the War. Certainly, the Other’s biodata entangled into the young Doctor’s in a manner that, for historians past and present, will be impossible to unknot. However, it is also absolutely impossible to tell how much of the Other’s influence on the Doctor is native to the prime universe(s), and how much of it is an effect from the leakage from I. M. Foreman’s Bottle Universe. By definition, causality and history that leaks from Foreman’s Bottle becomes inseparable from the inherent causality of the prime universe(s). The Other certainly has a stronger influence on the Doctor in I. M. Foreman’s bottle (as the Doctor’s granddaughter bases her entire origin on the Other and Gallifrey’s Dark Time), and it is expected that much of that chronicle has intertwined itself with whatever could have possibly claimed to be “real” because of the trickle of history from the bottle universe.

[6] Naturally, as biodata is wont to do, the Doctor’s timeline eventually found an “excuse” for his half-human heritage, by blending his biodata with that of his companion Sam Jones. And, as is typical of fractured biodata, his new half-human heritage (filled with a childhood spend with a Time Lord father and human mother (Ulysses and Penelope being obvious candidates, but that is for another discussion…)) existed side by side with the conflicted origin of being the Other’s reincarnation.

(NOTE: The Doctor had already collected a few contradictory origins (including being a hyper-evolved human from the 42nd century), adding to this author’s belief that being on of the four “retroshock” renegades damaged his biodata before it was even woven into his physical form.)

[7] This period, eventually, produced the Doctor’s star pupil Larna. Following this timeline’s Ohm Crisis (in which Omega once more attempted to return to the universe), Larna left Gallifrey to investigate the Effect, the temporal instability created by Omega and sourced from the Needle. From here, she eventually traveled into Gallifrey’s past, and allied herself with Ulysses and Saldaamir in an attempt to ensure that Gallifrey was prepared for the War.

Previously...

The Book of the Ceasefires: The Eighth Man Bound, Introduction 

To come...

The Eighth Man Bound, Part Two: The Last Contact

The Eighth Man Bound, Part Three: Journey to the Needle

The Eighth Man Bound, Part Four: The Gallifrey of Charlotte Pollard

The Eighth Man Bound, Part Five: The Ninth Doctors

(The First (“original”) Eighth Doctor Timeline:

The Enemy Within

The Eight Doctors

Bounty

Dead Time

Model Train Set

The Dying Days

Dreadnought

Descendance

Ascendance

Perceptions

Coda/Deceptions

Shada

The Company of Friends: Benny’s Story

Endgame

The Keep

A Life of Matter and Death

Fire and Brimstone

By Hook or By Crook

Tooth and Claw

The Final Chapter

Wormwood

Happy Deathday

The Fallen

The Road to Hell

TV Action!

The Company of Thieves

The Glorious Dead

The Autonomy Bug

The Company of Friends: Izzy’s story

Ophidius

Beautiful Freak

The Way of All Flesh

Children of the Revolution

Uroboros

Oblivion

… Be Forgot

Vampire Science

The Bodysnatchers

Genocide

War of the Daleks

Dead Time

Alien Bodies (I)

[...?]

The Infinity Doctors

The Book of the War

Alien Bodies (II))