#heartshaven wrote an essay

[daughterofheartshaven]

Using the Doctor Who EU to show how Gallifrey survived the Chibnall era

So. I'm actually a big fan of the Chibnall era of Doctor Who. That being said, I still don't like some of it's plot points, and so, consequentially, I have a handful of headcanons that use the Doctor Who expanded universe to address those, and I feel like they are worth sharing. We're gonna start with Gallifrey's destruction at the hands of the Spy Master. I don't like it for a number of reasons, but I think the biggest one is, like, how did the Master even do that? How did he destroy Gallifrey so completely while also leaving enough bodies behind to make the CyberMasters?

Well, let's find out. Buckle up, because this is gonna get complicated.

Okay, ground rules first. Anything seen on tv, happened. I can recontextualize as much as I want (and I'm gonna do that, believe me) but it still has to fit with everything we see onscreen. I also have to use all of an EU source if I use it. No picking and choosing bits.

With that out of the way, let's meet the stories that are our players:

Ascension of the Cybermen / The Timeless Children: the tv episodes that gave us the most details about the Master destroying Gallifrey. I'm gonna assume if you're reading this, you're familiar with.

Hell Bent: the other big Gallifrey episode of the new series. I'm assuming familiarity with it, too.

The Time of the Doctor: The only other tv episode I'm going to reference, again for Gallifrey reasons.

Down the Middle: a prose short story collection first released in 2020, and the crux of all the arguments I will be making here. While not licensed by the BBC, it does feature licensed use of prose companion Chris Cwej (among many other things) making it a valid part of the expanded universe. The first installment of the Cwej series. I will be talking about pretty heavy spoilers for Down the Middle here, so go away if you don't wanna see that.

The Dark Path: a book featuring the Second Doctor and, notably, the Master, released in 1997.

Alien Bodies: a book featuring the Eighth Doctor, released in 1997.

The Taking of Planet 5: a book featuring the Eighth Doctor, released in 1999.

The Book of the War: a... book (it's hard to define) that is styled as an in-universe guide to the world of Faction Paradox. If you're not familiar with, Faction Paradox is a sci-fi series that spun out of elements of Doctor Who books. It contains nothing owned by the BBC, but does contain elements and characters from Doctor Who books (specifically the Eighth Doctor Adventures book series), making it also a part of the expanded universe.

The Clockwise War: a comic serialized in Doctor Who magazine, and later released in a collection of the same name. Features the Twelfth Doctor and Bill Potts.

And Today, You: an installment of the Cwej series released in 2023. Set some time after Down the Middle from the perspective of Chris Cwej and the Time Lords.

Okay. Let's get started. Because of copyright restrictions, different parts of the expanded universe use different terms for concepts, events, and characters that are or could be interpreted to be the same. I'm going to go through some of the books I just mentioned and define how they approach these terms and the lore/worldbuilding they establish, so when I actually start making arguments, I can refer to these concepts in a consistent manner.

The only thing The Dark Path brings into this is that it established that Koschei was a name the Master used before calling himself the Master. That book does a lot of other great stuff, but that's the only thing relevant to this discussion.

Alien Bodies was the first book to introduce an arc about a future War (called the War in Heaven) across time between the Time Lords and some unnamed Enemy. While the Gallifrey of the Doctor's present was not yet a part of the War, they were aware of the war and trying to prepare themselves for it. This thread gets continued throughout the series of the Eighth Doctor Adventures book series, with Gallifrey becoming more militant and dangerous in preparation for the War.

So, uh... this sound familiar to anybody?

Legally speaking from the perspective of copyright, the War in Heaven as introduced in Alien Bodies and the Last Great Time War of Doctor Who's new series cannot be confirmed to be the same conflict. That being said, I totally think they're the same thing. Mostly just because "a massive war in space and time that was after the start of the Eighth Doctor but before the Ninth Doctor in which Gallifrey and the Time Lords went from a passive people to warmongering maniacs and the universe was nearly destroyed in the process" is a description that fits both the War in Heaven and the Last Great Time War and, like, the fact that the show and the expanded universe never references there being two conflicts like that. Not everything works perfectly together, but that seems reasonable in a War that heavily involves changing time and history. I'll hopefully do another big post like this weaving all of the War in Heaven stuff with Last Great Time War stuff together a bit more seamlessly, but for now, I'm going to take it as stated that the conflicts are the same.

That tangent aside, one of the books that was seeding Alien Bodies' upcoming War in Heaven was The Taking of Planet 5, which notably introduced the idea of the Nine Gallifreys. More specifically, the idea was that the Time Lords had made at least nine identical copies of Gallifrey to be used as decoys in the war - and that it was possible that multiple Gallifreys thought they were the original.

If you're thinking "oh, so the Master destroyed a copy of Gallifrey, not the original," then, well, yeah. So did the guy who came up with the idea of the Nine Gallifreys in the first place. And that is where this is going. But that actually doesn't answer how the Master was able to raze a Gallifrey. We've still got a lot more digging to do.

The Book of the War was the first release of the Faction Paradox series, and it took the War in Heaven idea and divorced it from Doctor Who. It still had the same players and was explicitly set in the same continuity as the Eighth Doctor Adventures books it had launched from - just with some things renamed to avoid having to get license from the BBC. The Time Lords became the Great Houses, Gallifrey became the Homeworld, and so on and so forth. But this is still the same War in Heaven, and so I consider it still an account of the Last Great Time War.

One thing The Book of the War introduced was the Cwejen. To make a long story very short, the Time Lords spliced the timeline of one of their agents, Chris Cwej (former companion of the Seventh Doctor, although that's not actually relevant to anything happening here). By doing so, they were able to start manufacturing time-clones (look. I'm doing a lot of simplifying here) which were then considered a new species called the Cwejen. The Cwejen were used as agents and as foot solders during the War. (This is basically Doctor Who's equivalent to Star Wars's Clone Troopers.)

Okay, now we're ready for Down the Middle. This is where things get really fun.

Down the Middle is set after the conclusion to the War in Heaven, which I am claiming was the Last Great Time War. Thus, from Gallifrey's perspective, it is set after Gallifrey returns to the universe, as shown in Hell Bent. It features the Time Lords, or, well, the Superiors. Much like Faction Paradox, the Cwej series can't explicitly say things like "Time Lords" or "Gallifrey" without getting copyright struck by the BBC, so they say "The Superiors" and "The Base of Operations." I'm gonna stick with the BBC terms for sake of consistency though.

Down the Middle follows Chris Cwej, still as an agent of the Time Lords, as he does missions for them. It also spends a lot of time looking into the Cwejen and what their life was like after the end of the War. The first like 80% of the book is very good but also not relevant to what I'm doing here, but towards the end of the book, the High Council of the Time Lords decides to execute Chris for... reasons (look I'm trying to not spoil stuff). However, Chris proves harder to kill then expected, and he guns down the Time Lord President before escaping. This would be bad already, but the Time Lords decided to broadcast Chris's execution to all the Cwejen to make an example of him or something.

This backfires. Badly.

The Cwejen, outraged and inspired, rise up against the Time Lords. The Time Lords are completely blindsided by this, and by the time they get their act together the rebellion is too big to be stopped. Chris Cwej, exhausted from the events of... previous stories in the book... and not wanting to be in a second war following his survival of the War in Heaven, takes a stasis pod to an empty planet and puts himself into stasis without any real intention of ever coming out of it. In Chris's absence, a Cwej named Thomas Mackeray becomes the leader of the Cwejen Uprising.

This brings us to the last story in Down the Middle, Rebel Rebel.

The plot of Rebel Rebel is as follows: The Cwejen uprising has been raging for fifty years. A Cwejen named Tina visits the ruins of Gallifrey's Capitol and finds the head of a cyborg - in the first edition, it was a Cyberon and in the second edition it was a Cryptopyre (I'm gonna circle back around to this) - and uses it to access the data from the cyborg's hive mind. This data contains the resting place of Chris Cwej. Tina and her girlfriend Frey use this information to travel to Chris Cwej's resting place, where they dig him up and revive him. Tina and Frey want to escape the warzone raging between the Time Lords and Cwejen, so they take Chris Cwej to Thomas Mackeray, hoping Mackeray will grant them safe passage from the war in return for Chris giving official support to Mackeray's rebellion.

The problem is that Mackeray is a bloodthirsty tyrant who has become no better then the Time Lords. He's currently held up on a former Time Lord structure called simply the Tower. The Tower has the power to change history, and Mackeray wants to use it to destroy Gallifrey from before its natives became the Time Lords to wipe the Time Lords from history (It's implied that some Time Lords are still around, although they are fighting a loosing battle against the Uprising). Mackeray can't use the tower himself, but Tina and Chris both could. When Chris refuses to give Mackeray support, Mackeray throws Chris down to the bottom of the Tower. Frey is able to save him from falling to his death, but in doing so, she uses up much of her life energy and is left near death and also at the bottom of the tower. Chris and a dying Frey explore the bottom of the tower, and they find there is actually a Time Lord down there. He seems to be imprisoned. He claims Mackeray has no idea he's down there. And he's only identified as Koschei.

Oh and btw the copyright page of Down the Middle says that the character of Koschei is copyright to the person who wrote The Dark Path (David A. McIntee). Chris and Frey just discovered the Master.

The Master tells Chris that he can save Frey's life and give both Chris and Frey safe passage to the top of the tower if Chris promises to listen to the Master's words at a time of the Master's choosing. Chris is aware that it's a trap, but it's Frey's only hope, so he agrees. The Master heals Frey, then hypnotizes Chris. Chris blacks out. When he wakes, the Master is gone, but he is able to get back to the top of the tower.

It's not specified which incarnation of the Master this is, but the dialogue fluctuates rapidly from polite conversation to unhinged mania in a way that feels very Spy Master. He goes on a rant about how he wants to painfully murder all the Time Lords, then tries to pass it off as a joke. He also claims to have been locked in the Tower after trying revolt against the Time Lords, but also claims he would rather them in power over Mackeray. Visually, he is described as being blurry and painful to look at, which is explicitly a result of being in the core of the Tower with all the intense time energy being thrown around. I don't have conclusive proof that this is the Spy Master, but I think it fits.

In any case, Chris and Frey return to the top of the Tower, where Chris confronts and defeats Mackeray and accidentally begins the Tower's destruction. He then tries to use the the Tower to change history to remove the Cwejen Uprising and the bloodshed it has caused from history, but the Master takes telepathic control of Frey and uses her to stop him from doing the job properly - and the Tower fully destructs before he can get another chance. The universe is left as a combination of how it was before the Cwejen Uprising and how it was after that.

Before I proceed, I need to circle back around to a few things. I totally believe that the Master was imprisoned by the Time Lords after a failed revolt - a revolt he started after stumbling across the secret of the Timeless Child in the Matrix. I think he's trying to play the Cwejen and the Time Lords against each other, and his telepathic gambit at the end was an attempt to leave both destroyed or subdued. Also, I promised I'd circle back to the Cyberon and the Cryptopyre. The Cyberon are an imitation Cyberman owned by BBV. When Down the Middle was first published, BBV and Arcbeatle Press (Down the Middle's publisher) were working together and sharing IPs. Since then, BBV has come under controversy for shady behavior, and Arcbeatle has cut ties with BBV - hence changing the Cyberons to the Cryptopyres. Arcbeatle plans to publish more stories with the Cryptopyres in the future, but with the information we currently have, I am going to consider the Cryptopyres to be a subset/offshoot of the Cybermen, much like the Cyberons are implied to be related to the Cybermen (or as strongly implied as BBV can get away with without being sued).

So, how did the Master destroy Gallifrey? The Cwejen uprising destroyed the place (while leaving enough bodies for the Master to use later), possibly with the Master's help. Then he used Chris Cwej to wipe the Cwejen Uprising from history, ensuring that the army that had ransacked Gallifrey couldn't turn against him without rewriting the destruction of Gallifrey itself, He would later bring the Cybermen to Gallifrey's ruins, leading to there being broken Cybermen on Gallifrey (after the events of The Timeless Children), and Tina would later find a Cyber-head on Gallifrey to lead her to Chris.

There's one small problem with this though. I still haven't recapped the final scene of Rebel Rebel (oh and btw I have actually managed to avoid spoiling some of it so if this sounds good please please check out Down the Middle I love it so much). After this whole mess, Chris is contacted by the Time Lords. They survived after all. The Time Lord who contacts Chris (who is strongly implied to be Romana, by the way) tells him that Gallifrey exists again and is really angry at him, but also can't do anything about it because they don't want to kick-start the Uprising all over again. Romana and Chris come to a basic agreement that Chris will work to help repair the residual damage left by the Uprising, and Romana agrees that Chris will no longer work for the Time Lords directly.

So... how did that happen? Well, do you remember what I said about the Nine Gallifreys Project? An earlier story in Down the Middle sates that even after the War, the Time Lords still have the technology to create Gallifreyan cloneworlds. So I believe that when the universe was setting itself into the new timeline that Chris was trying to create (and that the Master hijacked), the Time Lords were able use that technology to mean that in the resultant timeline of the universe, there were Gallifreys at the same time. One where it was destroyed by the Cwejen, and one where the Cwejen Uprising never happened, with the latter hidden somewhere and the former where you would expect Gallifrey to be. The Master was completely ignorant of this, discovered the destroyed Gallifrey, and concluded his plan had worked.

I have a couple pieces of outside evidence to support this. In Hell Bent, Ashildr/Me is seen in the ruins of Gallifrey right before the end of time with the implication that she had been brought to Gallifrey by the Time Lords; if the Time Lords had been wiped out by the Cwejen (or the Master, or whatever) then it wouldn't make sense for her to have survived. To paraphrase the Doctor, she's immortal. Not indestructible. Similarly, in And Today, You (set after the events of Down the Middle), Chris is aware of the appearance of the Fourteenth Doctor and the events of the Flux. It's possible that the Time Lords could have looked into the Doctor's future, but the general expanded universe consensus is they don't do things like that, so I take this as more evidence that Gallifrey and Chris survived through the Thirteenth Doctor's era.

Okay the last thing I want to do is talk about why the Time Lords handled this situation in the way they did. Why let the Master think Gallifrey was dead? Why let the Doctor? If the Time Lords know about the Fourteenth Doctor, then they would also presumably know that the Doctor thought Gallifrey dead. It does come up a lot in the back half of the Thirteenth Doctor's era.

I think the answer comes in Hell Bent. The Doctor shows up on Gallifrey, and then immediately leads a military coup that exiles the Time Lord government. Shortly afterwards, he shoots down General Kenossium, one of his biggest supporters, because Kenossium was trying to prevent the Doctor from breaking the laws of time. The Doctor is a hero to Gallifrey, sure. But he's also incredibly dangerous to it. Whatever government put itself together in the aftermath of Hell Bent has an excellent reason to fear the Doctor returning, because he could tear anything they do to shreds. And they know he would, because he has. Not too long after that, in The Clockwise War, Gallifrey is nearly brought to its knees by an entity known as the Absence. At the start of Down the Middle, an off-worlder manages to assassinate the Time Lord president. It was stated in The Time of the Doctor and Hell Bent that Gallifrey needed to hide from its many enemies, and it was clearly doing a pretty bad job of it.

At the same time, the Cwej series shows that the Time Lords are actively trying to rebuild their powerbase after the War. They don't want to just run and hide, they want to hide while climbing back up to their former glory. And the best way to keep Gallifrey safe was to fake its death. Now the whole universe thinks Gallifrey is dead and gone - including its two most dangerous renegades. So long as the Doctor thinks Gallifrey is dead, he can't confront Gallifrey's underhanded power grabs. So long as the Master thinks Gallifrey is dead, he can't ever threaten it again. So long as the universe thinks Gallifrey is dead, they won't try to destroy it. Gallifrey is safe to rebuild its powerbase.

If you have any thoughts on my theory, please do let me know! And I'm hoping to be posting more in-depth headcanons like this tagged under "heartshaven's headcanons" so keep an eye out for that if you enjoyed this. I really enjoyed typing all this out, so thank you for reading!

[daughterofheartshaven]

So yes everything from Worms applies to me too but also Doctor Who had a massive effect on my personality because as an ace/aro autistic teenager who hated herself but also really wanted to be a good person...

well, it was a big deal to see someone who felt different in the same way I do who got confused by the same things I do who struggled with doing the right thing but still was a hero. Someone who sometimes hated themself but was undoubtedly a good person, in ways they can't wrap their head around.

So I unconsciously decided that was what I was gonna be.

Like, I can't emphasize enough how much I look back and realize that I as a teenager had the Doctor as my biggest role model and how much that has shaped everything about who I am as an adult. That moment in Flux where Yaz looks at her palm and goes "What would the Doctor do?" That's my life.

And frankly, I think I'm both a better and happier person for it. I like who I am, the people around me like who I am, and if a significant chunk of who I am is based on a tv character, then so what?

So, yeah. Without Doctor Who, I would be a very different person. Possibly less kind, and definitely less happy. And I will always be grateful for that.

[daughterofheartshaven]

You asked for an essay in your tags.

...

Oh all, right. Just a small one. Also bear in mind I haven't read Lungbarrow in a bit and am also tired so this is gonna be a ramble.

So.

To call Lungbarrow is a good book is accurate, but it is more specific to say that it is a good Doctor Who book specifically - I wouldn't hand it to someone unfamiliar with the show. If you ARE familiar with the EU, then it's a must read if you can track down a pdf or somehow get a physical version for a sane price.

The book gets mocked a lot for being the crucial reimagining of how Time Lord society works, but I think it does so brilliantly. The concept of Time Lord houses being... well, literal Houses is such a fun concept, especially since it plays off the very human idea of childhood in such an alien way. Having the outsiders of Ace, Leela, and Chris give such a human perspective on it, and it helps portray the society of Gallifrey as truly alien while still giving us a nonhuman society. The concept of Looms themselves is also brilliant - they're basically just cloning vats, but the Lords of Time wouldn't come from something so banal as a cloning vat, so let's call it a Loom. Relatedly, the Time Lords having a quota per House makes sense as to how a species that can practically "live forever, barring accidents" is a really neat bit of worldbuilding. And we get to see the logistics of how all this works.

Lungbarrow is also the end of Chris Cwej's arc - an arc that had been built up over many books, and is of surprising relevance today. Basically a young space cop who is also a furry discovers that ACAB, and runs away with his mentor/best friend and the Doctor. He gets put through hell and back fighting a psychic reality-bending enemy. Said friend dies a pointless death. He's seen the Doctor a hair away from death himself. He still doesn't know what he's doing with his life. And this book is where he works out that's okay. He sets out from the Doctor, ready to work out a new life. (Wonderful plans dashed by a War in Heaven, but that's another story)

We also get to see Romana, Ace, and Leela come together. They're a brilliant trio, and Ace gets the best of it here - this is her victory lap from all the character development she went through in the New Adventures. She's older, wiser, and smarter. There's an amazing scene towards the start of the book where she faces off against a pre-character-development her, and wins soundly. It's a victory in the moment, but also a victory for her growth as a person. Not that Romana or Leela are slacking - the book shows a friendship that Big Finish happily followed up on to a much greater depth.

The actual main plot set in the House of Lungbarrow is brilliantly executed. The Doctor's Cousins are a well-characterized bunch; all effected deeply and irreparably by his leaving of Gallifrey and the events that happened shortly thereafter. Glospin, Innocet, Jobiska, Owis, Quences. These characters stuck with me. The Doctor's first rival, the closest thing he had to a mother, a senile old lady, an adult child, a father who wanted to plan his son's future. They're so very Gallifreyan, but they're so very human. I don't want to spoil the twists that haven't already been plastered all over the internet, so I will let it rest: even if you know about the Other and all that, Lungbarrow has some amazing twists left for you still.

And to take a moment to discuss the Big Thing about Lungbarrow: the concept of the Other. Andrew Cartmel said his masterplan was never to explain a new past for the Doctor - it was simply to add a new level of mystery to the character. This might be controversial, but Lungbarrow succeeds. Who is the Other? Is he the Doctor? Is he Leela and Andred's child, the firstborn of Gallifrey in ten million years? Is he, say, an explorer and tyrant named Tecteun? Lungbarrow could support it all? (Seriously, I have a great theory tying Lungbarrow and Ascension of the Cybermen / The Timeless Children together, but that's another essay for another day.)

For me, the emotional core of the book is where Leela, Ace, and Chris discover that by his calendar and culture, it's the Doctor's birthday (well, Name Day). And so they sing happy birthday to him. They celebrate him. They love him. He chose his friends, and they chose him. As little as I've talked about him, this is a book about the Doctor. It's a book about the family who rejected him and the better family he found on a blue forgotten planet throughout time and space. As a book, it is certainly not perfect - it has many of the usual flaws of the NAs, and a few things that haven't aged well. But I will still call it a perfect end to the Seventh Doctor of the books and the start to a new, greater era.

I have more I could say, but I'll leave it here for now. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

what you have to understand is that lungbarrow is a good book