#gallifrey time war 4

[trailmixtime]

the chicken reviews

after time war 3 i began rating gallifrey episodes based on how many chickens appeared in them. last night i found the reviews again, so i figured i'd post them here so i can continue the tradition when war room 2 comes out :D

(quick disclaimer: these are just fun reviews, not to be taken too seriously)

enjoy :)

time war 4

time war 4.1: deception

no actual chickens, but there is a reference to a Large Beast when leela's trying to get back to the tardis. no description is given, so it is entirely possible it was a Very Large Chicken. but, given the lack of description, we can't know for sure. 1/10.

time war 4.2: dissolution

once again, no chickens, despite them being on a luscious green planet. no chickens are mentioned. if you listen carefully, you can hear some birds chirping in the background, but none of them are chickens. disappointing. 0/10.

time war 4.3: beyond

no physical chickens yet. however, it's made clear the ravenous can possess characteristics of that which they eat, so it's possible a ravenous that ate a chicken has characteristics of a chicken, but we don't know for sure. 0.5/10

time war 4.4: homecoming

no chickens appear. no chickens are mentioned. there aren't even any animals i could try to headcanon as chickens. rassilon probably killed all the chickens. -100/10.

war room 1

the last days of freme: -100/10

no chickens, and whatever chickens may have been there previously, died. very disappointing.

the passenger: 0/10

no chickens. no places there could plausibly have been chickens :( once again left disappointed.

collateral victim: 0.01/10

once again, no chickens :( however, there was the POTENTIAL for chickens, and i will give it .01 points for that.

the first days of phaidon: 0.01/10

same as the previous story: no chickens, but there is potential for chickens, and therefore it gets the .01 points.

[gotyouanyway]

i think i like war room leela so much because i got so tired of her just being the noble savage/perpetual victim of the time lords. this too is dehumanizing and denies her agency. i wish they'd actually go further and free her from being a prisoner and let her choose to stay to fight for romana for real. because from day 1 she's been there on purpose supporting her batshit time lords. even if they're racist to her she always stays and comes back. let's get into that. let's also get into how living somewhere for decades and getting involved with people/events/politics there will change you no matter how hard you try to resist it. remember that guy calling her out in the devil you know for pretending to be above it all while acting just like a time lord? let's revisit it. i dunno. i think there's a lot of like. putting leela above the time lords morally because she disapproves of their whatever but it's not like she ever actually leaves and it's not like she's immune to being shaped by the culture she lives in. it's nice to finally see some negative character development from her about it and actually like, some character development period

[notthetraveler]

At this point I am speedrunning through Gallifrey let's be honest

[doctor-who-binge]

Davros speaking to 10: The Doctor, the man who keeps running never looking back, because he dare not, out of shame, this is my final victory Doctor

..... This face coming back, is it perhaps The Doctor finally looking back? Mature enough to handle pride and shame equally.

[magicofthepen]

#like yeah romana textually hates her a little bit but the way livia always acts around romana is so charged #her asking romana to take a day off to grieve in enemy lines? #[spoilers for my mutuals who havent finished the time war audios] #the way livia kept warning romana and playing on her side during tw2 to the point of assassinating fucking rassilon #just because romana yelled at her to get a backbone #when even narvin wouldnt help her??? #her being in complete disbelief that romana could be dead in tw4 because despite everything livia actually believed in her #she literally dies in homecoming (still mad about that) to give romana and leela a chance to escape! #anyways. repressed lesbianism for your political rival for the win. (@the-oracle-of-the-lost)

if we're talking about gallifrey rarepairs today can we please talk about romana/livia because they've really been living in my brain since at least time war 2 came out.

[intuitive-revelations]

Random headcanon I came up with early this morning, because I’ve been thinking about Gallifreyan language recently:

The reason why so many Time Lord things are decorated with circular Gallifreyan, often too impractically to actually be read (eg. on the Moment), is because it’s a cultural touchstone that remains from pre-/early-Pythian Gallifrey’s use of magical runes and sigils.

Presumably it was more typically Old High Gallifreyan used in that time (though The Timeless Children does seemingly confirm circular Gallifreyan existed at least as far back as Rassilon's time, if not earlier), however. Twelve describes it as ‘the language of the Pythia’ in The Lost Magic, and as Eleven says in The Time of Angels:

ELEVEN: There were days, there were many days, these words could burn stars and raise up empires, and topple gods.

This is obviously very reminescent of the Carrionites' (themselves from the Dark Times too) "word-based science" from The Shakespeare Code:

MARTHA: What did you do? TEN: I named her. The power of a name. That's old magic. MARTHA: But there's no such thing as magic. TEN: Well, it's just a different sort of science. You lot, you chose mathematics. Given the right string of numbers, the right equation, you can split the atom. Carrionites use words instead.

In other words, while they probably weren't actually intended as such and may have their own specific meaning, whether they be poetry, namesakes, histories, instructions, whatever... these are basically protective wards:

[ID: Five screenshots of Circular Gallifreyan in New Who.

1. Rassilon's Inner High Council meeting in The End of Time Part 2. The table and headrests are inscribed with circular Gallifreyan.

2. The Moment in Day of the Doctor. Gallifreyan writing bends round the edges of the wooden frame.

3. The 'whirligig' rotar in Eleven's second TARDIS, inscribed with individual Gallifreyan symbols.

4. Set photo of the glowing Gallifreyan writing on the steps of Thirteen's TARDIS.

5. Tecteun's laboratory in The Timeless Children. Circular Gallifreyan lines the light above her, and a door in the background.]

As a side note - if they actually are kind-of intended as a form of protection, perhaps this is why we were only introduced to Circular Gallifreyan in New Who, despite it seemingly existing through Gallifreyan history. Because it was retroactively inserted into Gallifreyan culture as a form of defense during the War in Heaven / Last Great Time War?

Regardless, this also opens up questions how many other Time Lord traditions are holdovers from the Dark Times.

For example, who's to say that the renegade naming tradition didn't begin as a form of protection from hexes - either from hostile forces in the pre-anchoring universe, or from oppressive magic-users back on the homeworld? This may also be connected to the change in Gallifreyan name format before and after the Intuitive Revelation (eg. ancestral -sti and -sor names), though shifting power structures, gender roles etc. presumably played a role too.

Heck, is this one reason why Gallifrey's own name has changed over its history? From Jewel to Gallifrey in Rassilon's time to try and protect it from vengeful Pythian curses. From Gallifrey to just 'the Homeworld' in the War to protect it from new rituals of alternative histories and paradox?

[thelittlecoughsomewhere]

Whenever I think about how the Doctor and Donna causing the eruption in "Fires of Pompeii" narratively functions as a parallel/microcosm to the Doctor destroying Gallifrey in the Time War I go insane and have to lie down.

Because this time he isn't alone, Donna is with him and he says the words out loud "Push this lever and it's over. Twenty thousand people." and he is waiting for her reaction and she puts her hands on his and they pull the lever together. And this time he doesn't have to make the choice alone, so he subsequently doesn't have to carry the burden of guilt alone.

And maybe, just maybe, this can be seen as his first step into his healing journey regarding his Time War guilt. Donna Noble - a woman who he grows to love and admire and regard as his guiding light - made the same choice (yes on a much smaller scale, but functionally the same choice) he did when he destroyed Gallifrey. He will never ever forgive himself (at least during his time as Ten), but maybe when he realizes that he doesn't blame her and doesn't want her to feel guilty for what she did in Pompeii he starts to be a little kinder to himself. For Donna's sake.

I really believe that during season 4 both Donna and the Doctor are on a healing journey. They make each other better, they begin to heal the wounds of the other person. Donna's self-esteem grows and the Doctor's guilt complex gets a little less heavy. Just a little. Baby steps. But they are walking them together.

And then Journey's End happens, and their healing process gets interrupted and without Donna nothing makes sense and he almost turns into Time Lord Victorious (this arc is so insane)

Because why should he stick to the rules of a universe that took Donna from him?

But he gets stopped. Adelaide stops him and later he himself recognizes that he's lived too long.

And he turns from the man who regrets into the man who forgets.

And then day of the doctor happens. And Gallifrey falls no more. And yet, he still has to live with the memories of 4 incarnations (war, nine, ten, eleven) and hundreds of years during which he believed he killed his own people. But now he has an excuse not to face that.

Anyway, thesis statement: Donna helped the Doctor confront his Time War guilt complex in a way no companion before or after her did. (shoutout to Martha though for making him open up about Gallifrey!!!)

And neither the character of the Doctor in the show or the show itself narratively ever continued to truly confront the trauma of the Time War guilt or continued the healing process Donna started.

Until now.

[simp-ly-writes]

DOCTOR WHO MASTERLIST

─────── · · SERIES:

SPACE CAT: You are a cat hybrid. How? You have no idea- just like you have no idea how you ended up in what is defiantly not a police station. Travel alongside the Doctor and Donna to various planets and universes but when they discover your true form, what will happen then? (10th Doctor & Reader)

(pt.1) (pt.2) (pt.3) (pt.4) (pt.5) ... (pt.6) (continued on ao3) word count: in counting...

FOR ALL TIME: THE SERIES: You thought yourself to be the last remaining Time Lord but that all changes when a certain Rose Tyler catches you breaking into your own apartment and is dead set on introducing you to the Doctor, your husband back on Gallifrey. (10th Doctor x F!Reader)

(pt.1) (pt.2) (pt.3) (pt.4) (pt.5) (pt.6) (pt.7) (on-going) word count: in counting...

─────── · · STANDALONES:

For All Time: Many, Many worlds ago you were married to the Doctor. That was until a war tore your home planet and species apart and you were part of the lucky handful that managed to make your way out into the universe- alive. As you go through many regenerations of yourself, you run into the Master, an old friend of yours that you faintly remember. He tells you of the Doctor, warns you of your spouse and from then on, you are on a mission to never interact with him. Should be easy... right? (10th Doctor x F!Reader)

Promises of Forever: On the run from the Doctor, your old spouse. You find yourself running into the arms of another yet what you both have yet to discover it that the plays of your heart and mind are from another. What will make of you all then? (10th Doctor x F!Reader)

A Chance Encounter: One day you walk right into an invisible wall and out comes a stumbling tall alien that you pass out on top of. When you reawaken, said alien you now know to be the Doctor is determined to get you home safely (if you'll let him, of course) and now that you think about it... he's good looking for an alien... (11th Doctor x F!Reader)

─────── · · MISCALLANEOUS:

For All Time Teaser

[thethirdromana]

I'm watching the edited version of the War Games (it's on BBC4 right now and my parents wanted to see it), so, have some thoughts.

I'm normally a bit iffy on colourisation but this is genuinely very well done. The titles are gorgeous.

Squishing it into 90 mins makes the opening very zippy. The pace feels a shade too quick if anything.

It also gets a bit weird when the cliffhanger is turned into continuous action.

This is despite the fact that they only cut about 10 mins of episode one.

They drink a lot of tea in the War Games but it comes across as even more when you cut out of the non-tea-drinking bits.

OK, there's some very fun editing around the redcoat and Buckingham remembering the mist coming down. (Dare I say possibly an improvement on the original?)

But then it goes back to feeling too zippy, but least because episode 3 is brutally cut. Very little of it left.

Gah, I'm trying to like this, because it's clearly been lovingly made and the colourisation is genuinely superb, but the grinding relentlessness of the War Games has been replaced by rattling through the plot at a frenzied pace and it's not really working for me.

Ooh, Murray Gold's Master theme has been added over the War Chief's appearance. Not sure how I feel about that, but it's certainly an interesting choice.

They've dealt with the cliffhanger issue at the end of episode 4 by taking it out entirely.

The little added CGI bits are not hugely successful - they look oddly plasticky. Which is a bit disappointing, because have I mentioned how good the colourisation is?

It's taken my dad until the episode six cliffhanger to note the place where the original cliffhanger was.

(My mum has given up because she doesn't like how much fighting there is. Not sure if the original edit would have been any better on that score.)

Episodes 6 and 7 are so thoroughly chopped up that it's tricky to trace the original storyline. It's neatly done but it's not really the War Games any more.

More of the Master's theme when the War Chief admits to knowing the Doctor.

My dad comments that this bit seems like it was inspired by the Prisoner (which he also watched when it first aired).

It feels a bit weird when it switches from Murray Gold to 1960s incidental music.

This really centres the War Chief et al over the rest of the storyline.

"Complete loyalty and devotion" - oh, Jamie. This loses a lot of character beats in favour of the Time Lord-centric storyline, but not all of them.

Oof, their last desperate attempt to escape is still just as grim and desperate in the edit. Like there's still part of me wondering if they might somehow get away this time.

There are new Who-style images of Gallifrey on the view screen.

"Is the next episode The Trial of a Time Lord?" asks my dad, who has seen all of Doctor Who, but mostly not very recently.

The middle bit of episode 10 is cut, which means that I can watch the ending without crying for once.

Lots of establishing shots of Gallifrey.

The too old/too young/too thin shows a series of New Who Doctors. Not entirely sure how I feel about that choice either.

And it ends with the Doctor regenerating in the TARDIS - again, New Who style - before the date ticks back and forth erratically between 1970 and 1980, a joke that will appeal to a small number of people that includes me, and finally the very opening scene of Spearhead from Space.

I think if you accept the premise that a 90-min version of the War Games could be done, it's about as good as it could be. A few of the choices make it pretty clear that this is primarily for a New Who audience - particularly that it becomes a very Time Lord-centric story - not really for existing fans of the War Games.

Still, I wasn't expecting to love the colourisation as much as I did, and it made me wish I could watch a colourised version of all 10 episodes.

[gallifreyrelisten]

Curious, so I'm going to do a little research here. I want to know how many new listeners we have in this listen

[gallifreyanhotfive]

Random Doctor Who Facts You Might Not Know, Part 3

The Master's father, Marnal, wrote an episode for Star Trek but took his name off it after they changed it too much.

The Fifth Doctor took Tegan back and time to kill that same would-be-dictator as a baby but was also unable to go through with it.

Nyssa once turned the Fifth Doctor into a vampire.

The Time Lords created the Were Lords, a species of lycanthropic soldiers who could regenerate, to fight for them in the Vampire Wars.

The Tenth and Fourteenth Doctors have different enough blood that the Fourteenth Doctor was able to resist blood control that used the Tenth Doctor's blood.

The Garvond is a monstrous entity in the APC Net of the Matrix composed of all the demented, evil sides of the Time Lords.

The First Great Time War was between the Time Lords and the Order of the Black Sun.

The Veil was fond of the Twelfth Doctor and considered them to be companions. The Veil hoped that the Twelfth Doctor would take them with him when he escaped from the confession dial.

Jack Harkness described the Midnight entity as someone who could eat its way into a person's brain and steal their voice. Given that it is unknown where he got this information, this suggests that Jack might have had an encounter at some point.

Both the Doctor and the Master have used the name "Merlin" before.

The final incarnation of the Master was a highly destructive entropy wave in one timeline.

The Eleventh Doctor once returned to the Library with Amy Pond, but he never mentioned River Song. They encountered Book Monsters.

The Doctor's first TARDIS was a Type 50, but they were left behind when the Doctor ran away from Gallifrey. This left them angry and hurt that the Doctor had replaced them, so they ran off from Gallifrey to find him.

According to the Seventh Doctor, the Rani and her giant rodent came to his graduation party.

There exists a canned drink called Sontaran Up that a Sontaran was seen drinking.

The Sixth Doctor's method for fighting the Weeping Angels included winking one eye at a time, so the Angels were always being observed. Given that he was almost immediately sent back in time where he encountered the Tenth Doctor, this isn't a very good method.

Due to similarities between the life stories of the Doctor and the Devil, there are many races who believe they are the same being.

The Thirteenth Doctor, Yaz, and Dan once watched a production of Cinderella. While trying to make it more exciting, the Doctor accidentally replaced all the characters and props with the real versions, who began to attack each other and the audience.

The Doctor had thirteen children before running away on Gallifrey who were all killed (or perhaps a better word would be 'culled') by the Watch after Susan's birth.

The Doctor has had other children over the years (although they did not recognize all of them as such) including but not limited to Miranda Dawkins, Edward Grove, the Sound Creature, Daqar Keep, Jenny, and the Sapling.

Gostak was one of the First Doctor's tutors who he admired very much, but similar to Borusa, he went mad and had to be stopped by several incarnations of the Doctor.

Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28

[oututopia]

HIV-AIDS metaphor in series 1-4 of Doctor Who (2005)

Fair warning that you have to accept that there is at least homoerotic tension between the Doctor and the Master to understand this post.

The Time War was first and foremost a narrative device used by RTD to answer a plot hole he had created himself in his pitch to the BBC to revive Doctor Who. Indeed, he suggested “no baggage” which meant no Time Lords & no Gallifrey. (T is for Television by Mark Aldridge and Andy Murray)

That doesn’t mean we can’t question what it symbolises in the show and in its time.

(Two important caveats:

The AIDS epidemic is still very much happening.

Any depiction of the AIDS crisis / any metaphor will be fragmented and very much subjective because a writer and a reader / viewer watches from a specific point of view)

I’ve considered a few key episodes but truthfully you can consider all of series 1 to 4 as part of this idea. Of course, the series 3 finale trilogy has a key place in this.

The End of the World

Dalek

Father’s Day

New Earth

School Reunion

Gridlock

Utopia

The Sound of Drums

Last of the Time Lords

End of Time part 1

The Doctor finds himself the only surviving member of his planet. “I lived. Everyone else died. - What do you mean? –  Everyone died Sarah.” (School Reunion, Doctor Who, Series 2) And he’s left fending for himself in the world. Then there’s guilt, RTD didn’t bother to make it subtle. Survivor’s guilt and are recurring theme of first 3 series of Doctor Who. It starts to make sense with Dalek and it’s an ongoing theme from then on.

Many queer people found themselves the only surviving person of their group of friends. If they were HIV-positive a lot of them wondered how they managed to survive it, if they were HIV-negative they sometimes wondered how they didn’t get it. Trauma in long term survivor of AIDS has been studied both through psychological and sociological lenses, enormous loss and guilt always come up. And it’s something that you can find in memoirs and autobiographies.

Outside of the Utopia - The Sound of the Drums - Last of the Time Lords there is one scene I want to discuss in depth:

Gridlock is an interesting episode. The conversation between the Face of Boe and the Doctor mirrors the one he will have with the Master later in the series (and we will talk about it). But more than that the conversation between Martha and the Doctor at the very end of the episode is fascinating.

“I lied to you, because I liked it. I could pretend. Just for a bit, I could imagine they were still alive, underneath a burnt orange sky. I'm not just a Time Lord. I'm the last of the Time Lords. The Face of Boe was wrong. There's no one else. – What happened? – There was a war. A Time War. The last Great Time War. My people fought a race called the Daleks, for the sake of all creation. And they lost. They lost. Everyone lost. They're all gone now. My family, my friends, even that sky. Oh, you should have seen it, that old planet. The second sun would rise in the south, and the mountains would shine. The leaves on the trees were silver, and when they caught the light every morning, it looked like a forest on fire. When the autumn came, the breeze would blow through the branches like a song.” (Gridlock, Doctor Who, Series 3)

The Doctor and Martha’s relationship has been analysed in many ways and I won’t try to argue with them here. However, I think at that very moment we can see the Doctor as an old(er) gay man talking about the loss not only of his friends but of the places he had come to call home.

All this in an episode where we’ve seen a city devastated by an epidemic.

Now about the finale three episodes of series 3:

I won’t go too much into the Doctor/Master relationship because the relationship between Ten and Simm has been analysed thoroughly before. However, in Utopia the Doctor tells him two things, that they are both alone and he is sorry.

One of the last scenes of Last of the Time Lords features the Master dying in the Doctor’s arms while the Doctor begs for him to stay alive “You've got to. Come on. It can't end like this. You and me, all the things we've done. (…) We're the only two left. There's no one else. Regenerate!” (Last of the Time Lords, Doctor Who, Series 3).

Someone is begging his friend to stay alive. He is asking him to use a treatment available to him, a treatment that has been shown to be painful and traumatic but it’s the only way to stay alive. It’s also the only way his friend won’t be alone again. Real life translation – HIV first effective treatments did work but people were sometimes burnt out.

I have wanted to make a post for a little while but hearing RTD talk about Queer as Folk and It’s a sin made me want to write about this.

I hope you found something interesting here.

(finally wrote this @roxannepolice )

[presidentdisastraofgallifrey]

Companions Ranked by how Much the Rest of their Life was Ruined

Not included: companions who only went on one or two adventures or popped in and out of the story on their own

Also not included: Dan and Ruby (not enough info on the aftermath)

Also also not included: Mel (not to the end of her run yet) and Ace (not to her at all yet)

1. Bill: had a good time traveling but then was kept prisoner in a creepy hospital for 10 years and then turned into a cyberman so she still wins

2. Adric: blew himself up at like 15 trying to impress the Doctor, who had been a decent parental figure but then changed and was never around when he was needed and not at all supportive. Also he got tortured a lot

3. Romana: held prisoner and tortured for 20 years and then had to lead Gallifrey through some of their most chaotic episodes with no trauma support at all. To be fair that wasn’t really the Doctor’s fault, but he also didn’t offer the support she needed

4. Peri: had a terrible time traveling where he insulted her constantly and never took her discomfort seriously. Then was not just left behind she was straight up abandoned mid-adventure when she was about to be killed for science. And then she didn’t get an explanation and he didn’t come back and she had no way to get back to her own planet or time so really her only practical option was to hitch a ride from the sleazy blood thirsty warlord who wanted to marry her. And this was only supposed to be a fun 3-month trip, not even a way of life for her

5. Stephen: this isn’t really the Doctor’s fault, but the eu is awfully hard on him. He was a king and had a family only to lose a child, see the others tear the family and kingdom apart, and become a depressed hermit

6. Dodo: the eu is just as hard on her. Apparently she ends up institutionalized, interrogated by the Master, homeless, and then assassinated

7. Martha: gets points for having been completely alone in a hellscape that never happened for a year, and for having to recover from that with her family, but the rest of her life was pretty alright actually

8. Zoe: she was smart enough to realize she’d aged two years and pretty much destroyed her own life and ended up at the center of an experiment conspiracy because she was so desperate to remember

9. Clara: honestly she’s only this high because of the making the Doctor forget her bit. Being stuck dead is awful, but also she has a companion and a tardis and full run of the universe first and that’s really the only way her story could end without her actually staying dead

10. Nyssa: her life was hard but in a way she chose and she got to help people

11. Amy and Rory: It sucked being thrown back in time but they got to stay together and live out full lives

12. Sarah: she’s the type of person where regular life could never bring her joy again after everything she’d seen. Also she did pretty regularly get stalked, kidnapped, and shot, but she brought most of that on herself

13. Donna: gets some points for the initial impact of her ending where she lost all the confidence and experience she had gotten and went back to an aimless and unsatisfied life. But she did find love and have a kid and eventually get her memories back so she ended up alright

14. Susan: she’s in the middle because she did live a decently full life but she also lost her husband and son in horribly violent ways and then got drafted into a universe-wide war where a lot of people saw her as untrustworthy because her grandfather was a draft dodger

15. Rose: got trapped in an alternate dimension but like, with her mom and dead dad and eventually fake version of the guy she loved. Overall it wasn’t that bad for her

16. Jamie: he lived a fairly normal life but apparently as an old man ended up the weird guy on the edge of town that everyone thought the war had driven mad because he’d remembered the Doctor

17. Vicki: she was sort of fine, but also living that far in the ancient past had to be pretty hard on a daily basis

18. Harry: I don’t think the Doctor had really any effect on his life. He’s only this high because he did vanish fairly young

19. Tegan: by all accounts the rest of her life was completely uneventful and she hated every moment of it

20. Yaz: it was sad but in the way you know she’ll be ok and find happiness

21. Polly and Ben: their lives were kind of rough but in very normal human ways so it’s fine

22. Turlough: literally nothing ever happened to him again. I think the eu forgot he existed

23. Victoria: lived a pretty quiet and normal life

24. Jo: there are differing canons on whether or not she got divorced and how many kids she had, but she was alright

25. Graham and Ryan: they were good. They got to be each other’s family and the world’s heroes

26. Ian and Barbara: they were fine actually. I don’t even think their careers suffered

27. Liz: I think she actually ended up better off because of her association with the Doctor

[sadcoms]

AU where Rose stayed with the Time Lord Doctor after Journey’s End and they start to argue more like they did in S1 because the Doctor is doing his “I never would” thing and Rose is now saying “but sometimes you HAVE to” which causes him to start down another Davros-inspired spiral about how he’s “turned her into a weapon” and she’s like...actually travelling across dimensions trying to fight eternal darkness brought about by a ton of genocidal aliens will do that to you regardless!

Because Rose was never for pacifism-above-all-else. The episode before Dalek Harriet Jones straight up says she’s a very violent young woman because Rose (not unreasonably) wants the Slitheen to be blown up after they murdered countless people. Same with the Nestene Consciousness - but the Doctor says he has to give it a chance, and that is what she mirrors back at him in Dalek. This is usually why the pair works, because if one doesn’t have mercy on or compassion for someone the other one usually will (eg Cassandra). That’s why Ten is even willing to give Davros a chance, though it’s exacerbated by a lot of guilt around the Time War, especially when it kicked off in-part because of what he did, and failed to do, in Genesis of the Daleks.

And that is what Davros never got - that Rose had already seen the Doctor’s soul and loved him anyway; that part of their souls are the same because they helped each other grow. And it’s the same for all of the companions this era, whether it’s Jack saying he never doubted the Doctor would kill him, or Donna seeing him murder the Racnoss and still regretting not travelling with him, or Martha (somehow) forgiving the Doctor for the year that never was and for everything he burdened her with.

Because I think what Davros and the Doctor came to see as him turning people into weapons was actually just people willingly taking on the burden he carried. Again, a lot of people sort of write Tentoo and Rose off as the dalek genocide couple, but what exactly was the alternative? Let them destroy the universe? The Doctor is a coward, any day, and that makes complete sense as a reaction to already bearing two genocides on his shoulders, but it’s also that cowardice that makes other people step up and be brave, which usually means sacrificing themselves, and the Doctor carries that too. That is why Martha gets the direct parallel to the Doctor with the Osterhagen key - both are willing to burn their planets to save the rest of the universe, and Martha already spent S3 being more like the Doctor than he was because he was so broken by grief. By Season 4, the Doctor is already so self-destructive and so self-loathing that only he, the "true" Time Lord, can be the arbiter of genocides and who can’t be. Even when it comes to Martha, or to another exact replica of himself.

(Never mind that he makes essentially the same decision the Metacrisis Doctor and Martha did again in End of Time when he sends Gallifrey back into hell, but hey, he got there in the end.)

And it’s one of the reasons why the Doctor’s so reliant on the Master. I’m not sure he would have gone to get his ‘reward’ had some of that weight of destroying Gallifrey again not been shared with another Time Lord. Ten does, ultimately, put humans on a pedestal and does his best to protect them even when they are willing to share his burden (note that Tentoo destroying the Daleks means Donna doesn't have to take on any of the burdens Rose or Martha did, so she stays the least militarised companion). He simultaneously wants that other Time Lord judgement while needing humans as another perspective.

All of this to say that, I think most people understand that Ten being with someone but especially with Rose would have stopped him going Time Lord Victorious, but they don't necessarily understand why. TLV comes from his desire to save everyone, because all the loss he's seen and has caused is too much. Not only does having Rose help soothe that, but she also specifically could have helped ground the Doctor back to where he was morally in the first two series, which is quite different from where he is by S4.

(Also The Next Doctor would have been an absolutely wild story for Rose and the Doctor to have gone on next. They arrive thinking they might have a fun Christmas and then they have to confront the fact that the Battle of Canary Wharf is still following them and how when they lost each other they lost everything. And how the villain in that is defeated by the Doctor showing her herself, which is what Davros tried to do the Doctor.)

[pl9090]

The Nine Gallifreys, My Interpretation. As always constructive criticism is welcome. Thanks go to both Marnal Gate and the Canonwelding section of the Dr Who Discord for: inspiring, helping me develop, and stress test this.

The Nine Gallifrey's concept is one of the most interesting and confusing ideas that emerged during the Wilderness Years. This is not intended to be the definitive answer rather a canonwelding enabling one that fits all of the available information. A, (crude) visual version of this information will be posted later which will hopefully make this easier to understand, (I'sd like to get this drawn up as a proper infographic series eventually but it;s beyond my ability).

Dating convention: War relative time is used in .B.T.W./.D.T.W. format instead of -.W.R.T./.W.R.T. for ease of understanding. Ardethe is not currently counted as it's a ghost world that used to be/resembles? Gallifrey. Clarity on this would be most welcome. Add Flaxian 14th note here once found wiki article.

Gallifreys 1 War King 2 Romana II 3 Flexian III 4 ? 5 ? 6 Ruling Council. 7 Faction Elysian. Starts at some point between 48,000.B.C. and 0.A.D.. 8 ? 9 Celestial Preservation Authority. 10 ? 11 ? 12 ? BF Big Finish.

Timeline 150.B.T.W. to 95.B.T.W. The Primary cloneworlds are completed and unveiled, (.F.P. The Book of the War). The Primary cloneworlds created their own eight secondary cloneworlds, (.E.D.A. Ancestor Cell and .F.P. The Book of the War). 1 secretly swaps it's physical location with 2, (.F.P. Book of the War/Crimes against History and Speculation). 9 establishes itself as a museum and technology/cache, (.E.D.A. The Taking of Planet 5 and .B.F. Omega). BF somehow coexists in the same time and place as 2, (.B.F. Neverland onwards).

.O.B.T.W./Eve of the War/After Last Contact 4 and it's secondary cloneworlds are destroyed by 1 or 2 to prevent Varnax controlling them, (.E.D.A. The Gallifrey Chronicles). 10 is created by 1 to compensate for the loss of 4, (Speculation). 5 ruined by the Cybermen, (Web/.B.F. Real Time). 2's secondary cloneworlds are unwritten by Mother Mathara's/Alt 8th Doctor's Faction Paradox cell, (.E.D.A. Ancestor Cell). 2 is destroyed by the 8th Doctor, (.E.D.A. The Ancestor Cell). 1 defeats an all out Enemy attack but high end technology is erased from it’s noosphere, (.F.P. The Book of the War). BF somehow remains out of the war despite being in Kasterborous, (.B.F. audios).

Around the Battle of Mutter's Cluster 9 and it’s secondary cloneworlds are destroyed by the Enemy to prevent any of the others from utilising their high technology cache, (Speculation). Afterwards the remaining Gallifreys unite with 1 as the coordinater, (.F.P. The Book of the War). 11 is created by 1 to compensate for the loss of 5 or 9, (Speculation).

After the Battle of Delphon to the conflict's, "end" (Depends on when .E.D.A. The Taking of Planet occurs). All nine Gallifreys and there cloneworlds were destroyed by the end of the War. (.E.D.A. The Adventuress of Henrietta Street) 12 is created by 1 to compensate for the loss of 9, (Speculation). 1 is maybe destroyed soon after to explain why no Primary cloneworld is created to compensate for the later loss of 8, (Speculation). Primaries: 1,3,10,11, and 12 are destroyed. 6 and 7 are ruined, (Speculation) Secondaries: Those of: 3,5,6,7, and 8 are destroyed, (Speculation).

Afterwards/NuWho 7 becomes New Alexandria Colony. 8 becomes Winkle's Wonderland and is destroyed by Grandfather's Maw. BF is ruined repeatedly then goes onto fight The Third & Last Great Time War. The ruined: 5,7, and 8 are all destroyed by the Gradfather's Maw around 60,000,000,0000. Somepoint after BF creates 8 Secondaries one of which is Cyberrazed by the Master, (.T.V. The Timeless Children). (Must have been a cloneworld as the protocols held and all linear domains survived suggested by Mr Bucher Jones: https://archive.ph/wyW8F).

Destruction count Enemy: 7 Primaries destroyed 2 ruined. 48 Secondaries destroyed. Gallifrey 1 or 2: 1 Primary destroyed. 8 Secondaries destroyed. 8th Doctor: 1 Primary destroyed and recreated from a combination of the saved Matrix and his: thoughts/feelings/prejudices. Grandfather's Maw: 3 Primaries destroyed. Faction Paradox: 8 Secondaries destroyed. Cybermen: 1 Primary ruined.

The Big Finish Gallifrey Problem The three main issues are: 1.Both 2 and BF exist and are location overlapped for at least the better part of two centuries. 2.BF is somehow seperated from the conflict. 3.There has to be a Gallifrey to fight The Third & Last Great Time War despite all of the Gallifreys being destroyed by the end of the conflict, (.E.D.A. The Adventuress of Henrietta Street). Possible answer: The Eighth Doctor rebuilt a Gallifrey from scratch using the Matrix data corrupted by his own thoughts and feelings, (eg: Mr Parkin's theory of why it's Romana II not III) which included a new temporary Law of Time that isolated it's casual nexus and disconnected it from the Protocols of Linearity, peresumeably as a defence mechanism. However this combined him placing it in pre War era Kasterborous, (maybe around 3652?) as a result of him still not thinking clearly/fully and the multi continuity mess that is his timeline caused 2 to be gradually oxbowed until it's destruction which was a fixed point in time effectively placing .B.F. from that point on in the post War era and experiencing their own seperate version of the Arckhetryx Incident, (It happened twice in the same spacetime location )

Notes 9 and it's secondary cloneworlds have to be destroyed after the failed attack on 1 otherwise erasing the high level tech knowledge from 1's noosphere is pointless. The Battle of Delphon is placed after The Battle of Muster's Cluster. 10, 11, and 12 existed as military bases: loomstacks, chronoforges, and training academies. As NuWho Doctor seems to think he's from BF rather then 1 maybe the Tardis quietly rewrites his biodata ao that he is from whichever Gallifrey is in Kasterborous at the time. The fact .B.F. is partially shaped by the Eighth Doctor's thoughts and feelings has some disturbing yet interesting connotations. That just leaves their starting temporal locations to figure out, but that will be a another post.

[stopmyhearts]

curious about this so

do tell me in the tags if you feel like it. also I haven't added the short trips because that would have been too complicated but you can say those too if you want

(personally I am at enemy lines)