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for my edification PLEASE elaborate on the time war book thing

I had a whole copy paste about this, AAGH I WISH I GOT THIS SOONER!

Okay, so Lawrence Miles wrote a Doctor Who book called Alien Bodies in the 90s where there was this big future war where The Doctor died against an unknown Enemy and people were bidding over his corpse. The Doctor was also invited. One of the players were the paradox-loving Faction Paradox. Other writers asked for elements to be put in their earlier books. And the nacent EDAs, having had little unique vision for the show unlike the former VNAs, by Virgin, latched onto the Faction Paradox and the War. Dalek licence was scuppered due to poorly received retcon books about fan minutia too, so... Faction Time. Maybe find out how The Doctor dies... It was described as a War In Heaven among the lesser worlds so that's what it became known as. To be clear, Russell T Davies himself said that this was "The Best Doctor Who Book He Had Ever Read." Remember this, it will be important. Later and earlier books used the Faction and the War in Heaven. Unnatural History has Faction agents show up and the companion is replaced with an alternate strand of biodata (an unelaborated show thing, here defined to be a complete summation of a person's existence and timeline) This is important. The next Lawrence book to include them is Interference, a two-part book. The Third Doctor dies in that one. He was proving a point about the PDAs being too sacrosanct with the show. Anyway, RTD says the thing about Alien Bodies around now. And some other stuff but we'll get there. He tells Lawrence. He is insulted; likes to think he gets better at writing with each book. All of Who talent is in a single booth of a single pub, something which carried over to the New Series, if you were at that booth as a regular, you are currently a New Series Writer, basically. Ian Levine also used fan-cred there apparently. RTD got in from his VNA. Lawrence was not accepted, so I hear. Anyway, back to the 90s. Lawrence was now the Doctor Who Messiah, for a brief while after his first few books. He was top bet to be showrunner for a few months. Still is for some people. Anyway, he suggests an arc and the Head of The Range, Justin Richards likes it. However, things apparently fall apart internally once the "TARDIS gets destroyed" book is given to Paul Cornell (Lawence's version at least) A human TARDIS companion, Compassion, is also a Lawrence thing, altered by a Faction Paradox biodata virus, (as was The Doctor when he died by the way, the whole thing was a pre-emptive strike in the War in Heaven in Interference. Faction are not The Enemy, Enemy is unknown) The Enemy wasn't supposed to have been revealed but during Interference, he figured out who it was, forgot and then was told to make it vague anyway. Interference was supposed to be his last Who book. Then things all messed up. Justin Richards himself stepped in to "finish the War arc and move on" It was never meant to be an arc, just always in the future. But the books had sort of hinged on it for about 80 books, I'm not sure. He didn't really listen there.

THE ANCESTOR CELL came out and it revealed that The Doctor was the leader of the Faction, Grandfather Paradox (from Lawrence's VNA, Christmas on a Rational Planet. He also did a few Bernice New Adventures, such as Dead Romance. Remember that name.), who he killed. Tying it all up and also causing a big paradox. After this, The Doctor had no memory, no TARDIS, a note saying to "Meet me in 200 years" and a catchy tune stuck in his head. He had a less human outlook like he used to and was no longer a focal character. Sometimes he was a background character until important. This meant he could do a lot. More morally dubious all that. This was the Earth Arc. After some time, he had a daughter all that, he got the TARDIS back, the regular show TARDIS. Also, Lawrence was annoyed at Ancestor Cell, broke an unmentioned writer's code by critiquing another writer's work and was sort of making a new series, a Faction Paradox series. All about The War in Heaven. The first book in the range is called The Book of The War. He reprinted Dead Romance too. And got as many Who writers as possible to contribute to the Book of The War. Time Lords are Great Houses and Gallifrey is The Homeworld, it's fun. Also has sex and hookers and I mean that literally when the other writers come into the range and it isn't completely Lawrence. (Sidenote, a spinoff of the VNAs about Chris Cwej is a sequel to Faction Paradox due to this. Both are ongoing to this day. Not the VNAs but the spinoffs.) Speaking of Doctor Who with Sex and Hookers and gambling, Lawrence comes back, out of money. Start of the Earth Arc also, seemingly less IDEAs range again, and this is important now, No Gallifrey. So The Doctor, in The Adventuress of Henrietta Street, NO LONGER BELONGED IN REALITY. This one is written as a history book because he couldn't find a way back to EDA house style after dosing himself in history for Faction Paradox. No Time Lords and no Gallifrey messes up the universe, because Gallifrey forces logic and reason onto all time-space through the Anchoring of The Thread, where they lashed Time into a straight line of human normal and scientific logic, to which Time Lord society is slavishly devoted. Faction split off from that, as you can tell by the skull masks made of alternate timeline Great Vampire-bitten Time Lords and the voodoo and the paradox worshipping. So magic is now free to roam free! (Sound familiar?) The Doctor is now one of the Four Surviving Elementals and Gallifrey is useless. Instead humanity is the time travel power. The Doctor is out of place and adrift. He needs to exist in this reality. So he marries a witch. Sorry, I should elaborate further.

Doctor Who marries a prostitute who is also part of a coven of witches and The legally distinct Master is at the wedding. There is sex and hookers and gambling. In the official BBC Books range. The BBC published all of this. Except the Anchoring of the Thread, that was a VNA thing. Also, there's a mini war with Big Finish that ends with the Company of Friends boxset, not important. There's this British spy called Sabbath who knows about Gallifrey. He's the human head of time now, and his purpose is to help people throughout time, like The Doctor, but less devoted to "how Time should be" To aid him in this, he rips the Doctor's second heart out, which was causing him pain because it's linked to Gallifrey and The Web of Time. (he gets it back don't worry) Anyway, Sabbath has The Doctor's heart, Lawrence gets a bit annoyed that the EDA writers don't get his multiple page pitch for Sabbath and how his character functions (presumably Justin didn't forward it on, or nobody asked for a follow-up email "how do we portray Sabbath as a character" directly to another person, something like that, the pitch is on Lawrence Miles' blog to this day.) This book is loved and Lawrence goes onto do Faction Paradox audios, a comic, more Sabbath, all that. Fast forward. It's 2005. The revival is here. The last EDA, The Gallifrey Chronicles, is postponed in case people think it's a prerequisite for the New Series. The EDA range is never picked up again for New Series books like Only Human; its companions lost to history. RTD does Big Finish, the Eighth Doctor Adventures the fix for Who for Eight fans. Also, Big Finish and the books were going on at the same time, both official continuations of the show, and there was Doctor Who Magazine, another official continuation of the show. They did not have many staff on either BBC-armed side. Big Finish had the most people from what I've read.

Gallifrey Chronicles says that Gallifrey has been inside The Doctor's head, including all the people, their bodies, the total summation of The Matrix was all in his head and that's why he can't remember anything. Series ends on a cliffhanger with The Doctor able to bring back Gallifrey using his mind if he wants to, afraid of him being who he was before, because The Doctor sounds like a scary guy. NOTHING EVER RESOLVES THIS. But Gallifrey returns off-screen and all is well. CHAPTER 2

Didn't think of this until just now. RTD, who loves Lawrence's writing, introduces a Time War with an unknown Enemy, slowly revealed to be The Daleks. People who read the books all think this is the same war, because The Doctor looks different and he's done "something to end the War" and it's a Time War. Also, NO GALLIFREY, WOAH THE BOOKS DID THAT TOO!

He then goes on to have bone masked people who use blood magic to do space travel and a bunch of other stuff from the EU in the parts he's read or heard from Big Finish or even from the other books. Also, The Unquiet Dead! This is a fun one. There's this great essay Lawrence did on his blog about it. He did it drunk and mad about the message, which tells people through the Gelth that "refugees might look scary but they are and they're evil too" during the Iraq War, something the writer should have thought about but didn't. (Oh wow look at the time guess who wrote that, Mark Gatiss, one of the Pub Gang from the Wilderness Years.) The controversy wasn't completely from the people who were part of the new fan-cult surrounding the revival (has that gone away) and was mostly from the fans of Neil Gaiman. Lawrence unfavourably brought him up saying stuff we know is true now, like the rapist stuff and all that, but this was when Sandman was in vogue and Gaiman had his own fan-cult. More on the blog there, and on his Twitter page, actually. I could link a screenshot of what he said on Twitter exactly if you're interested.

Anyway, another case of unspoken writer code here with Unquiet Dead, cause people harassed Lawrence and there was a whole thing and he was basically blacklisted from the revival for all that, combined with the Alien Bodies fiasco. Spent a while hating Moffat's era, cause Smith. He still refuses to watch it. His essays are the backbone of revival critique in some circles. He was cited in TARDIS Eruditorum.

Lawrence Miles also liked Series 41 of Who with Ncuti Gatwa, because he's finally in the target demographic for the revival, instead of it being a Buffy attempt, it's now a... well you probably have opinions on the first Disney+ exclusive series yourself. I don't think past Lawrence would like it much, that's all I'll say. And the revival is still RTD-ran to this day, so Lawrence may never come back anyway, similar criteria to Christopher Eccleston's famous quote on sacking people before he comes back, I assume. Might've mellowed with age, who knows. Ian Levine hasn't. Lawrence Miles was reviewing the Muppets on Twitter but has since moved to Mastodon and he is starting a new fiction project thing too, I hear. Also, he did a single Big Finish, a Bernice Summerfield one, the last Doctor Who he's done that wasn't his, bringing his Doctor Who career arguably full circle, if not for the big spike that is Faction Paradox into all discussions surrounding everything ever.

Also, thank you for the ask. I spent so long writing that and forgot to thank you for the ask.