A few rough notes that all time travelers in the universe of Doctor Who and its spin-offs, like Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Chronicles, would know about – including big public events during “new Who” (2005 forward) that normal humans on planet Earth have witnessed. Most of this is “BBC canon” from aired episodes, but the “Leela is the human mother of The Doctor” is my fan speculation based on mix of canon and extended/non-canon sources.
Things unrelated to Earth or Gallifrey history (like all planets and people saved by The Doctor at various other times) are mostly omitted. Also, all events are assumed to occur in the dimension/timeline of N-Space (“normal space”), as opposed to E-Space (“exo-space”), 0-Space (“null space” between N and E), P-Space (Peter Tyler’s Cybus Industries dimension), Z-Space (the antimatter “underverse” where Omega is trapped), U-Space (the “unbound” dimension of David Warner’s Big Finish series), or the Void between such universes.
(Crossover Idea: S-Space as the universe of “old Star Trek” TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY; T-Space as “new Star Trek” ENT, DIS, SNW, Picard; K-Space as Kelvin timeline “J.J. Abrams Star Trek”?)
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IN THE BEGINNING…
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* YEAR 0: The time-ship Terminus, traveling backward through time with dangerously unstable engines, explodes at the beginning of the universe. The blast becomes “Event One,” the Big Bang that creates the universe. Later, a second engine instability threatens to trigger a second explosion, but The Fifth Doctor helps prevent it. (“Terminus”)
* YEAR 0 PLUS A BIT: The Eleventh Doctor uses the Pandorica’s restoration field and the exploding TARDIS at the heart of the time vortex to trigger a second Big Bang. The Pandorica carries the preserved pattern of the old universe into the new one, allowing reality to reboot. The move restores stars, planets, history, and people that had been erased when the TARDIS exploded in every moment of time at onc, creating cracks in the universe that fed on history. (“The Pandorica Opens” / “The Big Bang”)
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ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE
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* ANCIENT TIMES, VERY LONG AGO: On the planet Gallifrey, 250 million light years from Earth in the constellation of Kasterborous, the Shobogans are the original indigenous people. One of their scientist/explorers, a woman named Tecteun, finds an abandoned child capable of regenerating after death. Such a trait is genetically engineered into future generations of Gallifreyans, giving them each multiple lifetimes and creating the “new” species later called the Time Lords. (“The Timeless Children”) Some Gallifreyans who reject Time Lord society continue to live at the fringe of civilization continue and still call themselves Shobogans (“Shabooj’m”). (“The Deadly Assassin”)
* ANCIENT TIMES, LONG AGO: Early Gallifreyan figures including Rassilon, Omega, and (in later/expanded accounts) the mysterious figure called The Other help transform Gallifreyan society into the civilization of the Time Lords. Omega’s stellar engineering makes Time Lord time travel possible but leaves him trapped in an antimatter universe (“underverse”), where isolation eventually turns him into a vengeful godlike exile. Rassilon becomes the dominant founder of Time Lord society, associated with the Eye of Harmony, the Matrix, the High Council, and the laws and symbols of Time Lord power. (“The Three Doctors,” “The Five Doctors,” “The Deadly Assassin,” “The Timeless Children”)
* A LONG TIME AGO: The Sisterhood of the Sacred Flame, an ancient mystical order of immortal women associated with Gallifrey and the Time Lords, settles on the neighboring planet Karn within the same solar system. There the Sisters use their psionic powers to guard the Sacred Flame and the Elixir of Life, a unique substance that can heal injuries and assist Time Lords with troubled regenerations. The renegade Time Lord criminal Morbius is believed to have been executed there years ago, but his surviving brain was secretly kept on Karn by the human surgeon Mehendri Solon, who was building the tyrant a new body from scraps salvaged from crashed starship crews. (“The Brain of Morbius”)
* A LONG TIME AGO: Division, a secret Time Lord agency, uses agents to manipulate civilizations, remove temporal threats, and shape history from the shadows. After its secrets start to become known, Division’s leader Tecteun unleashes the Flux to destroy the universe and flee into another one. Half of N-Space is erased before the Flux is stopped by Thirteenth Doctor. (“Fugitive of the Judoon,” “The Timeless Children,” “Once, Upon Time,” “Survivors of the Flux,” “The Vanquishers”)
* A LONG TIME AGO: Mathematicians on the planet Logopolis begin reciting their Block Transfer Computations to open Charged Vacuum Emboitments (CVEs) that funnel excess entropy away from the universe, delaying its eventual heat death. (“Logopolis”)
* MILLIONS OF YEARS AGO: Before humanity evolves on Earth, the planet is ruled by advanced reptilian civilizations later called Silurians and Sea Devils. They predict that a wandering planetary body will devastate Earth, so many of their cities enter underground or undersea hibernation. The catastrophe does not happen as expected – the object becomes Earth’s Moon – and faulty hibernation systems leave many colonies asleep for millions of years. Later awakenings create repeated conflicts with humanity, because the Silurians and Sea Devils regard themselves as Earth’s original inhabitants. (“Doctor Who and the Silurians,” “The Sea Devils,” “Warriors of the Deep,” “The Hungry Earth”/”Cold Blood”)
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MEANWHILE ON GALLIFREY
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* CENTURIES AGO: The future Doctor and the Master are childhood friends and students at the Time Lord Academy. As part of a Time Lord initiation rite, the 8-year-old Master is taken before the Untempered Schism, a gap in reality through which the Time Vortex can be seen. The experience traumatizes him, and from that moment he hears a relentless four-beat drumbeat in his mind. The Doctor later says some Time Lords are inspired by the Schism, some run away, and some go mad. Much later, it is revealed that Rassilon and the High Council implanted the drumbeat as a signal to help Gallifrey escape the Time War. (“The Sound of Drums,” “The End of Time”)
* YEARS AGO: One of Division’s former agents, a forgotten incarnation of the Doctor later known as the Fugitive Doctor, rebels against Division and hides on Earth as a human named Ruth Clayton, using a Chameleon Arch to rewrite her biology and memories. Division sends the Judoon to recover her, revealing a buried part of a life before the First Doctor. (“Fugitive of the Judoon,” “The Timeless Children,” “Once, Upon Time,” “Survivors of the Flux”)
* YEARS AGO: The Fugitive Doctor is captured after hiding on Earth in 2020 and taken back to Gallifrey. Division erases her memories, sealing them inside a Gallifreyan fob watch. When this person’s life end, she lives through nine more regenerations as men, leading eventually to the cantankerous “old grandfather” incarnation that steals an obsolete Type 40 TARDIS and flees Gallifrey with Susan, a young Time Lord he calls his granddaughter. (“The Brain of Morbius,” “An Unearthly Child,” “The Name of the Doctor”)
(Note: It is unclear in the series if these nine lives were are agents of Division, nor is it clear these lives were actually after the Fugitive. Eight faces of men dressed in Renaissance-to-Edwardian costumes are shown as lives before William Hartnell’s Doctor, but if memories of The Fugitive Doctor had been repressed, its possible The Fourth Doctor’s mind could have “skipped” showing her in the sequence.)
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MEANWHILE ON PLANET EARTH
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* 1851: Cybermen secretly operate in Victorian London, using kidnapped children and workhouse labor to build a giant CyberKing war machine beneath the city. The CyberKing rises and walks openly through London before the Tenth Doctor defeats it by sending it into the Time Vortex. (“The Next Doctor”)
* 1879: After encountering the Tenth Doctor, Rose Tyler, and a werewolf-like alien at Torchwood House, Queen Victoria founds the Torchwood Institute. Its purpose is to investigate and fight alien threats, protect the British Empire from extraterrestrial danger, and monitor the Doctor should he ever return. (“Tooth and Claw”)
* 1965: An alien species known as the 456 secretly visits Earth and gets the British government to hand over 12 human children in exchange for a cure for a deadly new flu virus. The government apparently thought the children would be studied or used as specimens, but later learned the 456 used children as a kind of living narcotic. The exchange is covered up from public knowledge. (“Torchwood: Children of Earth”)
* 1968: The newly formed United Nations Intelligence Taskforce (UNIT), led by Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, helps The Second Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe stop Tobias Vaughn’s alliance with the Cybermen during their attempted invasion of Earth. (“The Invasion”)
* 1969: The Second Doctor reveals his location to the Time Lords on Gallifrey and asks them to return kidnapped Earth soldiers back to their native times. The Time Lords agree to help, but then put the renegade Doctor on trial for stealing a TARDIS and interfering with other civilizations. As punishment, The Doctor is forced to regenerate and become exiled on 20th century Earth with his TARDIS disabled. (“The War Games”)
* 1972/1973: Three incarnations of the Doctor (the First, Second, and Third) are brought together by the Time Lords to stop Omega, the legendary Time Lord founder trapped in an antimatter universe, from draining Gallifrey’s power and escaping into normal N-Space. The Doctors defeat Omega, and as a reward the Time Lords end the Third Doctor’s exile on Earth, restore his knowledge of dematerialization codes, and enable his TARDIS to again travel in time and space. (“The Three Doctors”)
* 1973 to 1986: The First through Sixth Doctors return to Gallifrey a few times and become entangled in Time Lord cosmic crises with the Matrix, Rassilon’s legacy, and Gallifrey’s political corruptions. Although Rassilon is technically “dead,” his consciousness lingers in his tomb. Later, a living version of Rassilon reappears to command during the Time War, either from the past or regenerated into a new body. (“The Deadly Assassin,” “The Five Doctors,” “The Trial of a Time Lord”)
* 1981: The Master interferes with the planet Logopolis, killing mathematicians and disrupting their block-transfer computations. This breaks the Logopolitans’ hidden system for holding back universal entropy, causing a vast portion of the universe to be destroyed. The Fourth Doctor and the Master temporarily cooperate to stop the entropy wave by using Earth’s Pharos Project radio telescope, but the Master betrays him, leading to the Fourth Doctor’s fatal fall and regeneration. (“Logopolis”)
* 1996: The Eighth Doctor tells an Earth woman that “I’m half-human, on my mother’s side” (likely a reference to knowing about his birth mother, Leela). (“Doctor Who” TV movie on Fox)
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EVENTS ON MODERN EARTH (21st Century)
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* 2005: Auton shop-window mannequins come to life and attack shoppers and pedestrians in London after the Nestene Consciousness uses the London Eye as a transmitter to control plastic. The Ninth Doctor and Rose Tyler destroy the Nestene’s transmitter, stopping the Auton attack. (“Rose”)
* 2005: The Slitheen fake an alien emergency by crashing a spacecraft into Big Ben and the Thames, turning first contact into a televised global event. Disguised as senior British officials, they exploit the crisis to seize control of the government and nearly trigger a nuclear war so they can sell the radioactive remains of Earth as fuel. The Ninth Doctor, Rose Tyler, Mickey Smith, and Harriet Jones stop them. (“Aliens of London” / “World War Three”)
* 2005: Rose Tyler opens the heart of the TARDIS and absorbs the time vortex, becoming the “Bad Wolf.” She destroys the Dalek fleet attacking Satellite Five/the Game Station, scatters the words “Bad Wolf” across time and space to lead herself there, and resurrects Captain Jack Harkness after he is killed by the Daleks. Because she brings Jack back too strongly, he becomes functionally immortal. The Ninth Doctor absorbs the vortex energy from Rose to save her, triggering his regeneration. (“The Parting of the Ways”)
* 2005: A Sycorax ship appears over London on Christmas Day after the Sycorax detect blood-control technology in the Guinevere One probe. They use that blood sample to hypnotize the A-positive blood type population, roughly about one-third of humanity, into standing on rooftops and other high places as hostages. The newly regenerated Tenth Doctor defeats the Sycorax leader in single combat, and Prime Minister Harriet Jones orders Torchwood to destroy the retreating ship. (“The Christmas Invasion”)
* 2006: Torchwood recovers an alien “ghost machine” that lets users psychically experience emotionally charged moments from the past and future. The artifact’s effects are limited to the people who touch it, but it causes trauma, obsession, and real-world violence when past crimes are revealed and future deaths are glimpsed. (Torchwood, “Ghost Machine”)
* 2006: Battle of Canary Wharf: Torchwood One’s experiments with a dimensional breach allow Cybermen from a parallel Earth to cross into our world. At the same time, the Cult of Skaro emerges from the Void with the Genesis Ark, a Time Lord prison vessel containing millions of Daleks captured in the Time War. The Daleks and Cybermen wage open war across London. The Tenth Doctor opens the breach and uses the “void stuff” clinging to both armies to pull them back into the Void, but Rose Tyler is pulled into the parallel world by Pete Tyler and becomes trapped there when the breach closes. (“Army of Ghosts” / “Doomsday”) Later, Lisa Hallett, a Torchwood employee partially converted during the Battle of Canary Wharf, is secretly kept alive by Ianto Jones and eventually attacks the Torchwood Hub in Cardiff. (Torchwood, “Cyberwoman”)
* 2006: A small aircraft from 1953 passes through the Cardiff Rift and lands in the present day, bringing its three passengers with it. The incident is small-scale and not widely public, but it exposes several civilians to time displacement and Rift phenomena. Torchwood helps the displaced passengers adapt, though not all of them survive the experience. (Torchwood, “Out of Time”)
* 2006: Weevils are abducted from Cardiff’s streets and forced into underground fight clubs by a criminal ring. The events are not public knowledge, but they show that parts of Cardiff’s criminal underworld know alien creatures exist and are willing to exploit them. Torchwood shuts down the operation. (Torchwood, “Combat”)
* 2006: The Racnoss Webstar appears over London on Christmas Eve as the Empress of the Racnoss tries to awaken her children buried at the center of the Earth. The Tenth Doctor and Donna Noble confront her beneath the Thames Barrier, where the underground base is flooded. The Webstar is destroyed by British military fire, making the incident a large public alien event. (“The Runaway Bride”)
* 2007: Royal Hope Hospital in London is transported to the Moon by the Judoon, who are searching for a disguised Plasmavore hiding inside. The hospital’s patients and staff see the Judoon openly, and the incident becomes a major but contained alien-contact event before the hospital is returned to Earth. (The Judoon move the hospital to the Moon because they have no legal jurisdiction on Earth to scan everyone inside under their own authority.) (“Smith and Jones”)
* 2007: The Cardiff Rift fractures after Torchwood opens it, causing people and objects from different time periods to appear across the city. The act releases Abaddon, a giant demon-like being imprisoned beneath the Rift. Abaddon manifests over Cardiff and kills people with its shadow before Captain Jack Harkness overloads it by letting it drain his endless immortal life force. (Torchwood, “End of Days”)
* 2007: Harold Saxon wins the British premiership, then is exposed as an alien-associated mass murderer after killing the U.S. President during the Toclafane crisis. (Unknown to the surviving public, the “Year That Never Was” is erased after a paradox event is reversed.)(“The Sound of Drums” / “Last of the Time Lords”)
* 2007: The alien starliner Titanic, modeled after the famous Earth ocean liner, nearly crashes into Buckingham Palace after being sabotaged. The Tenth Doctor prevents the impact, saving Earth from a disaster that would have devastated London. (“Voyage of the Damned”)
* 2008: Alien sleeper agents from Cell 114 activate in Cardiff and carry out coordinated terrorist-style attacks, including bombings and attempts to destroy major infrastructure such as the city’s nuclear power station. Torchwood discovers that the agents are embedded aliens disguised as humans, preparing Earth for a larger invasion. Torchwood stops the attacks, though the sleeper Beth dies helping them. (Torchwood, “Sleeper”)
* 2008: Torchwood discovers that a private meat-supply operation is butchering a huge wounded alien “space whale” that fell through the Rift into Cardiff. The creature is kept alive and repeatedly harvested for meat, which is being sold through the local food chain. Torchwood shuts down the operation, but agent Owen Harper euthanizes the creature to end its suffering. (Torchwood, “Meat”)
* 2008: Adipose Industries secretly sells weight-loss pills that convert human body fat into living Adipose babies. Millions of baby Adipose emerge from people across Britain and float up to a waiting nursery ship. The Tenth Doctor and Donna Noble stop the process before it becomes fatal, and the Adipose depart Earth. (“Partners in Crime”)
* 2008: The Sontarans secretly install ATMOS devices (a “harmless emissions-reduction system”) in cars worldwide, then activate them to release poison gas into Earth’s atmosphere. The devices are part of a plan to convert Earth into a Sontaran clone-breeding world. The Tenth Doctor uses the TARDIS to ignite the gas safely in the upper atmosphere, clearing the sky and stopping the invasion. (“The Sontaran Stratagem” / “The Poison Sky”)
* 2008: Captain John Hart and Gray, Jack Harkness’s long-lost brother, launch a coordinated revenge attack on Cardiff. Bombs detonate across the city, Weevils are released into the streets, and the Hub’s systems are sabotaged, creating the threat of a nuclear meltdown. Torchwood stops the crisis, but agents Owen Harper and Toshiko Sato are killed. (Torchwood, “Exit Wounds”)
* 2008: Earth is stolen across space by Davros and the Daleks using a magnetron, joining 26 other stolen worlds in the Medusa Cascade. Daleks invade openly, other planets appear in Earth’s sky, and the Daleks prepare to use the Reality Bomb to destroy all matter in every universe. The Tenth Doctor and several of his companions defeat them. Earth is returned to its proper place. (“The Stolen Earth” / “Journey’s End”)
* 2009: A London double-decker bus passes through a wormhole and vanishes from Earth, reappearing on the desert planet San Helios. The Tenth Doctor and Lady Christina de Souza help the passengers survive and return the bus through the wormhole before a swarm of metal-devouring alien creatures can reach Earth. (“Planet of the Dead”)
* 2009: The alien species known as the 456 return and contacts Earth by taking control of every child on the planet, forcing them to chant “We are coming.” The British government negotiates with a 456 ambassador and learns that the aliens are demanding a percentage of all of Earth’s children. The children will be grafted to the aliens’ bodies and used as a living narcotic. As governments prepare to comply and secretly select which children to sacrifice, Torchwood exposes and stops the plan with a telepathic counterattack, but at the price of Jack Harkness killing his own grandson to send the signal. (“Torchwood: Children of Earth”)
* 2009: The Master uses the Immortality Gate to transform nearly every human on Earth into copies of himself. Rassilon and the High Council use the Master’s drumbeat and a White-Point Star diamond to pull Gallifrey out of the Time War, causing it to appear above Earth. The Doctor destroys the link, sending Gallifrey back into the timelocked Time War, while the Master attacks Rassilon and is pulled back with the Time Lords. Humanity reverts to normal. (“The End of Time”)
* 2010: The Atraxi project a giant eye in the sky over Earth and broadcast a global warning: “Prisoner Zero will vacate the human residence, or the human residence will be incinerated.” The Eleventh Doctor identifies Prisoner Zero, forces it to reveal itself, and then warns the Atraxi never to threaten Earth again. (“The Eleventh Hour”)
* 2010: On June 26, 2010, a plan by the Silence backfires when they cause the TARDIS to explode in every moment of time at once. The explosion creates cracks in the universe that feed on history: anything touched by the cracks can be erased from existence, as if it had never been. People also forget what the cracks erase, including Amy Pond forgetting her parents and later Rory Williams. As the damage spreads backward and forward through time, stars vanish, events are rewritten, and the universe collapses until only Earth remains. The Eleventh Doctor fixes the damage by using the Pandorica’s restoration field and the exploding TARDIS as the seed of a second Big Bang. The Pandorica carries the preserved pattern of the old universe into the new one, rebooting reality and restoring the erased stars, planets, people, and history. On the day of her wedding to Rory (June 26), Amy’s memories help bring back the Doctor himself after he is temporarily written out of the restored universe. (“The Pandorica Opens” / “The Big Bang”)
* 2010/THE FAR FUTURE: Amy and Rory spend their honeymoon aboard the TARDIS and complain to The Eleventh Doctor about only having bunk beds. During this time, Amy becomes pregnant with her child, the future Melody Pond (River Song). (“The Doctor’s Wife”)
* 2011/THE FAR FUTURE: The Silence, a religious order created to prevent the Doctor from reaching Trenzalore and speaking his name, wage a long war against him across time. Their agents secretly capture Amy Pond and replace her with a Flesh duplicate while the real Amy is held at Demon’s Run, where her child is taken because the baby was conceived in the TARDIS and has been altered by exposure to the Time Vortex. The child, Melody Pond, is raised and conditioned by the Silence to become an assassin who can kill the Doctor. Melody later grows up into River Song and is used in multiple attempts on the Doctor’s life, including the fixed-point shooting at Lake Silencio. The Doctor survives by hiding inside the Teselecta, allowing history to record his apparent death while he continues operating in secret. (“The Impossible Astronaut”/”Day of the Moon,” “A Good Man Goes to War,” “Let’s Kill Hitler,” “The Wedding of River Song,” “The Time of the Doctor”)
* 2011: For several months, every human on Earth stops dying after the Three Families use Jack Harkness’s blood to manipulate the Blessing, a mysterious phenomenon running through the Earth. The “Miracle” causes worldwide medical, political, religious, economic, and social collapse as the injured and terminally ill remain alive but cannot recover or die. The event ends when Jack Harkness and CIA agent Rex Matheson introduce Jack’s blood into both ends of the Blessing, restoring death to humanity. (“Torchwood: Miracle Day”)
* 2011–2012: Millions of mysterious black cubes appear all over Earth and become a global media phenomenon. After nearly a year of doing nothing, the cubes activate at once and induce cardiac arrest in nearby humans as part of a Shakri attempt to wipe out humanity before it spreads into space. The Eleventh Doctor reverses the effect, reviving the victims, and the cubes become inert. (“The Power of Three”)
* 2012: The Ninth Doctor discovers a Dalek survivor of the Time War in Henry van Statten’s underground vault in Utah. The Dalek absorbs DNA from Rose Tyler to revive itself, break free to rampage through the bunker, but then destroys itself for being “contaminated” by a human. (“Dalek”)
* 2017: The Monks place a giant pyramid on Earth and then rule the planet, though later events muddy public memory. (“The Pyramid at the End of the World”)
* 2019: A revived Dalek reconnaissance scout rebuilds itself and rampages through modern Britain, including attacks on civilians, police, and a military unit sent to stop it. The Thirteenth Doctor defeats it by forcing the mutant out of its casing, but it briefly possesses a companion’s father before being cast into a supernova. (“Resolution”)
* 2020: Judoon troopers working for the High Council of Gallifrey locate and capture The Fugitive Doctor hiding on Earth (in modern Gloucester). She is forced to return to Gallifrey in the past. (“Fugitive of the Judoon,” “Once, Upon Time”)
* 2021: The British government publicly deploys “defence drone” Daleks, built from salvaged Dalek technology and presented as security/policing machines. A Dalek mutant secretly takes control of the project, creating a new Dalek force on Earth. The Doctor summons a Dalek death squad to destroy the impure cloned Daleks, then tricks the death squad into a spare TARDIS and sends it into the Void. (“Revolution of the Daleks”)
* 2021: Division, the secret Time Lord agency tied to the Doctor’s forgotten past, unleashes the Flux, an antimatter-like destructive wave designed to erase the universe and let Division move on to another one. The Flux destroys vast regions of space and life, with later summaries describing half the universe as lost by the end of the event. The Thirteenth Doctor and her allies stop the final wave by weakening the Flux, using it to destroy Dalek, Cyberman, and Sontaran fleets, and then trapping what remains inside a Passenger form. The universe survives, but the damage is not fully undone. (“The Halloween Apocalypse” through “The Vanquishers”; later referenced in “Wild Blue Yonder”)
* 2022: The Master allies with the Daleks and Cybermen in a complex revenge plot against the Doctor. Daleks trigger a global volcano crisis by attempting to detonate every volcano on Earth at once, while Cybermen attack UNIT and the Master uses stolen Time Lord/Cyber technology to force the Doctor into regenerating into him. The Thirteenth Doctor, her companions, UNIT, and several former Doctors and companions stop the plan. (“The Power of the Doctor”)
* 2023: The Toymaker’s subliminal “giggle,” embedded in the first television broadcast and carried through screens worldwide, causes mass public irrationality, rage, and paranoia. As society breaks down, UNIT responds openly from its London tower, working with the Fourteenth Doctor, Donna Noble, Mel Bush, Kate Stewart, and others. The Toymaker manifests physically and is defeated after a game against the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Doctors. (“The Giggle”)
* 2024: Sutekh, the god of death, reveals that he has been clinging unseen to the TARDIS and spreading Susan Triad “harbinger” copies everywhere the Doctor has landed. When activated, they release Sutekh’s death-wave, turning people and life across Earth – and then across the universe – into dust. The Fifteenth Doctor defeats Sutekh by dragging him through the time vortex on a remembered TARDIS, causing the death-wave to reverse and restoring life. (“The Legend of Ruby Sunday” / “Empire of Death”)
* 2025: The renegade Time Lord known as The Rani uses the captured infant god Desiderium to trap Earth in a wish-made false reality and attempt to resurrect Omega, the ancient Time Lord founder. She seeks to use Omega as the genetic basis for a recreated Gallifrey under her control. The Fifteenth Doctor, Belinda Chandra, Ruby Sunday, UNIT, and allies restore the true reality and stop the Rani’s plan. After saving Poppy, the child created within the altered reality, the Fifteenth Doctor regenerates into a new incarnation resembling Rose Tyler. (“Wish World” / “The Reality War”)
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THE TIME WAR AND ITS AFTERMATH
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* SOME POINT IN TIME: The Time Lord High Council foresees temporal conflicts with the Daleks, a mutant race about to be created amid the Kaled-Thal war on Skaro by the scientist Davros. The Fourth Doctor is sent to alter history and prevent Daleks from ever existing, but the mission not enough of a success. This event becomes the start of the Time War. (“Genesis of the Daleks”)
* THE FAR FUTURE: Leela, Warrior of the Sevateem, leaves a tribal society descended from stranded spacefarers to travel on adventures with The Fourth Doctor. She eventually settles on Gallifrey to become lovers with Andred, a Gallifreyan Chancellery Guard commander. Together they have a half-human/half-Gallifreyan child. (It is possible their baby is taken into the ancient past to escape the Time War, becoming the abandoned child found by Tecteun and later growing up to be The Doctor and possibly The Other.) After an extended human lifetime, Leela eventually becomes a Guard commander herself in the Gallifrey defense forces and fights on the ground during the Time War. She escapes the Daleks by using a time-travel wayfinder linked back to The Fourth Doctor’s TARDIS. (“The Face of Evil,” “The Invasion of Time,” Virgin New Adventures novel Lungbarrow by Marc Platt, “Leela vs the Time War”)
* 22nd CENTURY: The Daleks invade and occupy Earth, devastating human civilization and enslaving survivors as Robomen. This act is either a move at the end of the Kaled-Thal War or a strategic move early in the Time War. The Daleks’ plan is to hollow out Earth’s core and convert the planet into a mobile world-ship. The First Doctor, Susan, Ian, Barbara, and the human resistance defeat the Daleks, ending the occupation. Susan remains behind with resistance fighter David Campbell. (“The Dalek Invasion of Earth”)
* THE TIME WAR BEGINS: The Time Lords and Daleks wage a universe-threatening temporal war, with other civilizations caught in the crossfire and countless worlds destroyed, rewritten, or erased. The Eighth Doctor tries to avoid taking part, but after dying in a starship crash on Karn while attempting to rescue pilot Cass, he is revived by the Sisterhood of Karn. Realizing that the universe no longer needs “a doctor” but a warrior, he uses one of the Sisterhood’s regeneration elixirs to become the War Doctor. (“The Night of the Doctor,” “The Day of the Doctor”)
* THE TIME WAR RAGES ON: As The Tenth Doctor recalls, horrors include “the Skaro Degradations, the Horde of Travesties, the Nightmare Child, the Could-have-been King with his army of Meanwhiles and Never-weres…” Arcadia, the second largest city on Gallifrey, is destroyed by Dalek bombardments. (“The End of Time, Part Two,” “Day of the Doctor”)
* THE TIME WAR ENDS: After centuries of battle, the War Doctor steals the Moment, a forbidden Time Lord superweapon, intending to destroy Gallifrey and the Dalek forces surrounding it. Instead, after encountering the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors, he chooses another solution. Thirteen Doctors use their TARDISes to remove Gallifrey from the battlefield and seal it in a protected pocket universe. The Dalek fleets, firing on Gallifrey, shoot through the space where the planet had been and destroy one another in the crossfire. Because the War Doctor and Tenth Doctor cannot retain the altered memory, they go on believing that the Doctor ended the Time War by destroying both Gallifrey and the Daleks. The Eleventh Doctor remembers that Gallifrey was saved. (“Dalek,” “The Parting of the Ways,” “The End of Time,” “The Day of the Doctor”)
* GALLIFREY’S CALL TO RETURN/THE QUESTION: After Gallifrey is saved in a pocket universe, the Time Lords attempt to determine whether it is safe to return to the main universe. Speaking through the cracks in space and time, they broadcast the oldest question in the universe – “Doctor who?” – from the town of Christmas on Trenzalore. If the Doctor answers by speaking his true name, the Time Lords will know they have found the right universe and can return.
The signal is detected by the Church of the Papal Mainframe, led by Mother Superious Tasha Lem, which surrounds Trenzalore and prevents either the Doctor’s enemies or the Doctor himself from reaching the crack. The Church’s purpose is to preserve the silence of the Doctor: if he speaks his name, Gallifrey returns and the Time War may begin again.
Over time, a breakaway faction of the Church becomes the Silence, travelling back along the Doctor’s timeline to prevent him from ever reaching Trenzalore. Led by Madame Kovarian, their schemes include blowing up the TARDIS, creating the cracks in time, engineering River Song as an assassin, and manipulating Earth history from the shadows.
Despite this, the Eleventh Doctor reaches Trenzalore, refuses to answer the question, and spends centuries defending Christmas from attacks by Daleks, Cybermen, and many of The Doctor’s other enemies. After the Eleventh Doctor reaches the end of his regeneration cycle, Clara Oswald pleads through the crack, and the Time Lords grant him a new cycle of regenerations, allowing him to defeat attacking Daleks and regenerate into the Twelfth Doctor. (Due to the revelation of “The Timeless Children,” this “gift” was another Time Lord ruse since The Doctor did not actually have a 12-regeneration limit.)
(Note: “The Name of the Doctor” presents Trenzalore as the place where the Doctor eventually dies and his TARDIS becomes his tomb. “The Time of the Doctor” changes or averts that fate when the Time Lords grant him more regenerations.)
(“The Pandorica Opens,” “The Big Bang,” “A Good Man Goes to War,” “The Wedding of River Song,” “The Name of the Doctor,” “The Time of the Doctor”)
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THE FAR FUTURE
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* YEAR 3020: Approximate date when a Silurian city beneath Wales is expected to again emerge from hibernation and reopen negotiations for peace with humanity. (“The Hungry Earth” / “Cold Blood”)
* YEARS INTO THE FUTURE AND THE PAST: At multiple points in the space-time continuum, Cybermen arise as emotionless cyborgs aiming to conquer and unify the universe. This event is unusual as it appears to be both flux and fixed: it can be stopped but will happen again in another time, place, or alternate dimension. (“The Tenth Planet,” “Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel,” “World Enough and Time/The Doctor Falls.”)
* YEAR 5 BILLION: The Ninth Doctor takes Rose Tyler to Platform One, a space station hosting wealthy alien guests who have gathered to watch the Sun expand and destroy the Earth. Sabotage threatens the station, and the Doctor discovers that the “last human,” Lady Cassandra, is behind the attack for profit. The Doctor stops the sabotage, but Earth is destroyed as scheduled, marking the official end of the planet long after humanity has spread elsewhere. (“The End of the World”)
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AT THE END OF TIME
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* TOWARD THE END OF THE UNIVERSE: The Twelfth Doctor finally reaches Gallifrey, now hidden near the end of the universe after being saved from the Time War. The Time Lords recognize him as the war hero who saved Gallifrey and rally behind him against Rassilon, who had trapped the Doctor in the confession dial to learn what he knew about the Hybrid prophecy. The Doctor forces Rassilon and the High Council into exile, briefly takes control of Gallifrey, and uses Time Lord technology to extract Clara Oswald from the moment of her death. Instead of remaining on Gallifrey, the Doctor and Clara flee in a stolen TARDIS. To prevent the danger of their bond, Clara ultimately leaves with the time traveler Ashildr to explore the universe before returning to her fixed death, while the Doctor’s memories of Clara are partially erased. (“Hell Bent”)
* TOWARD THE END OF THE UNIVERSE: The Master returns in a new incarnation, posing as MI6 agent “O,” and reveals that he has devastated Gallifrey after discovering the hidden truth of the Timeless Child. He tells the Doctor that Time Lord civilization was built on a lie: the foundling known as the Timeless Child possessed natural regeneration, and Tecteun used that child’s genetic code as the basis for Time Lord regeneration. Later, the Master brings the Doctor to the ruins of Gallifrey, forces her to confront buried memories of forgotten pre-Hartnell lives and Division service, and unveils his final revenge: the corpses of dead Time Lords converted into CyberMasters, Cybermen with the ability to regenerate. The Doctor refuses to destroy them herself, but Ko Sharmus detonates the Death Particle on Gallifrey, seemingly destroying the Master, the CyberMasters, and the ruined Capitol. (“Spyfall,” “The Timeless Children”)
* YEAR 100 TRILLION: Very near the end of the universe, the Tenth Doctor, Martha Jones, and Captain Jack Harkness arrive on the planet Malcassairo, where the last remnants of humanity are trying to escape to a promised refuge called Utopia. They meet Professor Yana, a kind scientist helping launch the human survivors, but he is actually the Master hiding as a human through a Chameleon Arch. When Martha notices his fob watch, Yana opens it and regains his Time Lord identity. The Master steals the TARDIS, abandons the Doctor, Martha, and Jack at the end of the universe, and escapes to 21st-century Earth, where he later becomes Harold Saxon. (“Utopia”)
* BEYOND YEAR 100 TRILLION: While stranded on a ship at the edge of the universe, beyond normal reality, the Fourteenth Doctor invokes superstition by casting salt to stop the Not-Things. He later worries that, because he performed a superstitious ritual in such a liminal place, he may have made superstition more real and opened the door for mythic, magical, and godlike forces to become more active in the universe. This helps foreshadow the Pantheon of reality-warping threats. (“Wild Blue Yonder,” followed by “The Giggle”)
Entities of this Pantheon appear retroactively throughout the space-time continuum…
* SUTEKH: God of death, “the One Who Waits.” (“Pyramids of Mars,” “The Legend of Ruby Sunday”/”Empire of Death”)
* THE TOYMAKER: Godlike player of games. (“The Celestial Toymaker”, “The Giggle”)
* MAESTRO: The Toymaker’s child, associated with stealing all music. (“The Devil’s Chord”)
* LUX IMPERATOR: God of light. (“Lux”)
* THE TRICKSTER: Godlike manipulator of traps and bargains. (The Sarah Jane Adventures)
* THE MARA: God of beasts, an ancient psychic serpent. (“Kinda,” “Snakedance,” “The Passenger”, “The Legend of Ruby Sunday”)
* REPROBATE: God of spite, named as a member of the Pantheon. (“The Legend of Ruby Sunday”)
* INCENSOR: God of disaster, named as a member of the Pantheon. (“The Legend of Ruby Sunday”)
* DOUBT AND DREAD: Incensor’s children. (“The Legend of Ruby Sunday”)
* THE THREEFOLD DEITY OF MALICE, MISCHIEF, AND MISERY: Named member or trio of members. (“The Legend of Ruby Sunday”)
* THE GODS OF SKIN, SHAME, AND SECRETS: Named as Pantheon beings. (“The Legend of Ruby Sunday”)
* DESIDERIUM: Infant god of making wishes become reality. (“Wish World”/”The Reality War”)