‘Greetings, Time Lord,’ the mouth – the Rutan – said in a woman’s voice. ‘The humanoid larynx is not capable of recreating the sound, nor is the humanoid mind of sufficient sophistication to appreciate the complexity of the vocabulary, grammar nor syntax, nor is the humanoid nervous system adequate to fully experience the language of the Rutan. For convenience, we have reluctantly adopted your primitive method of communication.’
‘That is most considerate,’ the Doctor replied in Rutan.
The Infinity Doctor, Gallifrey, and the start of the War
So a few months ago, I received the following ask:
@sailorofthesoul In your WiH = LGTW view, how does it play out from 8’s PoV?
Which I had to read like three times before I understood what it was asking, but that's a decent question once I understand it. But I let it sit for a bit because... to be honest, I wasn't sure. I'd just read Alien Bodies when you sent that, and Alien Bodies broke my understanding pretty significantly, so I needed to mull over this for a while.
And that mulling went places! What started as an explanation for the Doctor's timeline turned into a nifty bit of analysis of the history of Gallifrey in the leadup to the War, complete with placing a book I had previously thought unplaceable.
You ready to have some fun?
Some Context
Something I should establish up front the Eighth Doctor's chronologically latest pre-War companion was Josie Day from the titan comics (as she's the only companion Eight has while wearing his third, War-era outfit but from before the War) (okay the upcoming Big Finish thing is also set during that era but shhhhhhh its not out yet). Since Josie has no departure story and given the state of Titan is unlikley to get one, I assume that Josie was his companion when the Time War started, and was the companion who was erased from history during The Starship of Theseus. You know, Sheena/Emma/Louise. Her. She's Josie Day.
The Original Option
So the normal option basically is that the Doctor was travelling with Josie when the Time War hit, and The Starship of Theseus is right when the War starts for him. Then, later on in his timeline after travelling with Bliss and Cas and Alex he goes back to Dronid right as the War starts and tries to avert it, although he is ultimately unsuccessful. He then fakes his death creating the relic and runs around in the Time War for a bit before Night of the Doctor happens.
Pretty simple and straightforward. However, it has two problems.
Alien Bodies basically states that a) The Doctor regenerated at least once between his eighth life and the War in Heaven and b) while he didn't necessarily die on Dronid he did die - the Relic is very much not a fake. Neither of those facts is being taken into account in this option, which is what I thought prior to reading Alien Bodies. So. After sitting on this for a bit, here's what I really think.
The Better Option
Okay. So we know from Gallifrey: Time War that the Time Lords were resurrecting their own en masse, but the exact way this was being done isn't made entirely explicit. We know how Rassilon was resurrected, but his appears to be a special case. We also know the War was fought in many ways primarily through timeline alterations instead of direct battles - this is discussed at length in The Book of the War, and we see specific interventions in stories like The Last Days of Freme.
So. The Time Lords have the power and the capability to resurrect the Doctor. Let's roll with that idea for a bit.
So the Eighth Doctor was travelling with Josie Day, and then something causes him to regenerate. No idea what and for this conversation it doesn't really matter. Let's call the result the Infinity Doctor. This does tip my hand where I'm going with this, but I already did that in the title so whatever. In any case, it's unclear if Josie left before or after the regeneration - I'm gonna assume after, but I have zero evidence of that.
That being said we actually do have some idea of what the Infinity Doctor did after parting ways with Josie - he went back to Gallifrey.
If you haven't read The Infinity Doctors, it's incredibly ambiguous as to when it takes place. It features an ambiguous incarnation of the Doctor living on Gallifrey, teaching at the Acadamy and serving on the Supreme Council. One of the best clues to placing The Infinity Doctors is that it also features a character called The Magistrate, who is implied to be the Master and the War King, which, based on the Magistrate's position and characterization, would place this during the timeframe when the Master was working under President Umbaste. Since Big Finish's account of Gallifrey jumped straight from Enemy Lines to the Time War, this gives us pretty free reign to do what we want during that time, and I certainly have taken advantage of this.
The Book of the War and Crimes Against History state that in the leadup to the War, there was a Head of the Presidency who followed (directly or otherwise) Romana. When the Master brought news of the existence of the Enemy to Gallifrey, the Head of the Presidency attempted to travel to the supposed Enemy homeworld and create a colony there, mostly just to prove the Enemy didn't exist. Said president's severed head was returned to the Gallifreyan High Council with a note saying "We are not amused." A Time Lord named Umbaste was installed as President, with the Master becoming Umbaste's proverbial right hand. Umbaste kills himself a few years before the War kicks off, and the Master becomes War King, ruler of Gallifrey in time for the War.
If you've not seen me say elsewhere, I think Livia Caralis was the Head of the Presidency, and after she was decapitated, she was reconstituted in secret by Project Revenant during Umbaste's presidency. After Umbaste killed himself, Livia returned to the Presidency, with the Master becoming the War King of the War Council, instead of taking the Presidency (note how in Time War how Romana is head of the CIA, neither Trave nor anyone else is said to head the War Council). Livia has the Master/War King act as the public leader of Gallifrey from the perspective of "lesser species" - of which The Book of the War (which, as an in-universe document, is not guaranteed to be accurate) is targeted at. Livia claims she was assassinated and needed time to recover, since her mission to the Enemy homeworld was only known to the High council. So with that all stated, the Infinity Doctors would take place during Umbaste's presidency, while Livia was still being reconstituted.
(oh and the nature of the War King was hidden from those outside the War Council which is why Romana and Narvin don't know that the Council is being run by the Master during Gallifrey: Time War 1-2. They probably knew that the Master was on Gallifrey during his time as the Magistrate, but from their perspective he would have just disappeared around when Livia returned.)
So, in summary. The Eighth Doctor regenerated, left Josie Day somewhere, and returned to Gallifrey and stayed there for some time acting as a teacher and a diplomat. All before the War.
The side stories in Alien Bodies gives us a pretty good idea of what the Doctor was doing in right before the War - specifically with his comforting of the dying shift-to-be and his confrontation with the Celestis. And then the Doctor is stated to die - although the circumstances of his death are unknown - and his body is taken to Dronid. All as seen in Alien Bodies. This all would be roughly contemporaneous with Celestial Intervention - I've said elsewhere that I believe the War was declared as a result of the destruction of Phaidon, and the first battle was then fought on Dronid. The Book of the War makes it clear both sides knew Dronid would be where shots were fired, so the Doctor was presumably on Dronid while Celestial Intervention was happening.
It presumably takes some time for this news to reach Gallifrey - in Time War 1, Romana assumes the Doctor is still alive. But Gallifrey (more specifically Ollistra) knows how helpful the Doctor could be, so a timeline intervention is approved to resurrect him. But because the Doctor (apparently) died in the colossal fucking temporal mess that Dronid had became, pulling him out and resurrecting him from that point was basically impossible.
So what Ollistra and her cronies do is timescoop him from previously in his timeline. She (or her people) pull the Doctor from out of his Eighth life and dump him in the Time War - and into the story The Starship of Theseus. Josie is almost immediately getting destroyed by the ensuing paradox (since she had a future that now can't happen since she got pulled into the War) and the Doctor is left scrambling to figure out what is going on. From his perspective, he went straight from travelling with Josie to in the middle of the Time War. And so he goes onwards from there and any wartime Eighth Doctor stories take place after that. Its possible the Doctor worked out later that his timeline was altered, but it is also possible he didn't.
For the record, I think Ollistra was behind the Doctor's resurrection simply because she seems the most invested in using the Doctor in the War, and because there's nothing we've seen from her that would prevent her from doing so. Like, the Master would have also been in a position to do that, but if the Master had resurrected the Doctor, there's no way they wouldn't have brought that up during any of the two's NuWho confrontations. I suppose it's possible that Mantus or Livia or someone along those lines could have authorized the resurrection instead, but Ollistra feels like the most logical choice.
I've spent this whole time breaking down the start of the War, even though the question asked about the whole War. However, given how the War In Heaven timeline has the Doctor die at Dronid (more or less), the Doctor doesn't really have any appearances afterwards in the War in Heaven works. So once the Eighth Doctor is up and running again in the War, from then on it just proceeds basically as stated by Big Finish and other producers of Doctor Who / Last Great Time War stories.
As always, if anyone has any questions or thoughts, I would love to hear them! Thank you for reading this.
Hey, so remember my discussion of the "blue/red past/future" Doppler effect thing that we see in the RTD era (and arguably early Moffat era) time vortex and how a similar reference appears in Lungbarrow of all places (and how it can potentially link the Gate of the Past/Future to the Untempered Schism)?
Today I learned that an even more explicit example appears in The Infinity Doctors:
The Magistrate hesitated, perhaps because he realised that he could see the Station in which he was standing on the display, a tiny mote surrounded by raging energies. The history of the universe was represented by a long, spiralling line running up the screen. The past was marked in blue, the present and known future in green, the unknown in red. At this scale, the blue could hardly be seen, the green didn’t even register, and the red line accounted for over ninety‐nine percent of the total length.
‘Time moves in circles,’ the President noted. It was an old Gallifreyan proverb, one that was literally and metaphorically true. The display showed the time spiral, the map of time.
Usually, the Time Lords only concerned themselves with the first few hundred coils of the helix.
Granted, this may just be a scientific display, but the implications are pretty wild. We've known for some time that Gallifrey's lording over time typically only extends so far (see noospheres, Utopia etc.), so the idea of an "unknown" future isn't that surprising.
But it's pretty notable that in seeing the time vortex in the new series, while we do see bits of green in the mix of red, it's less a single length of the vortex fully understood by the Time Lords and more just scattered remnants among the unknown.
Really just further sells the idea that the Time Lords' control of history / the Web of Time was completely shattered across the War in Heaven and Time War, the green being all that was left unaltered, which much more of the universe's future history now being up in the air and open to change.
ooooh gallifrey lore enjoyers you wanna read the infinity doctors so bad. pss pss pss look gallifrey lore enjoyers it's the official 35th anniversary story and it's got lots and lots of delicious lore in it. [waggles it at you]
This is fucking me up. Time Lords have no such primitive thing as "religion" but when the rains come more than usual it's God Rassilon warning against their actions
It's the end of our coverage of 1998's BBC Books line-up, and the return of Lance Parkin for a thirty-fifth anniversary special that's positively dripping with all things Gallifreyan.
Folks, I give you The Infinity Doctors.
The date is September 12, 1994. Whigfield is at number one with “Saturday Night,” having finally unseated Wet Wet Wet’s “Love Is All Around”
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The fire was dying down, the teapot had grown cold, the night was nearly over and the Doctor hadn’t slept. Wycliff wasn’t having any such problem, and was still fast asleep on his rug.
Something was wrong.
Gallifreyan:
Kalaam stryot, agrysmavabam tuhyewoton, larasam ika toclaron el Doctoram timontot. Wycliff tixyot sdi set feeluhya, el raz enchendmont sayfasa kita.
