So who actually started the great Time War?

[Reverend]

The idea that it was the Timelords and the first shot fired was what we saw in 'Genesis of the Daleks' makes the most sense to me.

Sure, it wasn't unprovoked as the Timelords saw a time when the Daleks would dominate the universe, but their's was the first use of time travel as a weapon against the other. When it failed, it set the Daleks on a path that would eventually lead them to seek out offensive time travel technology of their own (encouraged along the way by somewhat out of order encounters with The Doctor.)

They didn't mean to start a war, they meant to shoot "the devil" in the back...and missed. What happens after you do that is never going to be good.

So yeah, the Daleks started a war by the very fact of their existence, but the Timelords escalated it to a *time* war(s).

 

[Redfern]

Nyssa is a Furry.

So is Romana...and has K-9 record it!

Sincerely,

Bill

 

[Guy Gardener]

According to the 2nd Dalek Story, the first Dalek story was millions of years in the future.

IAN: Doctor, I don't understand this at all. We saw the Daleks destroyed on Skaro. We were there.
DOCTOR: My dear boy, what in Skaro was a million years ahead of us in the future. What we're seeing now is about the middle history of the Daleks.
IAN: I see. They certainly look different, don't they.

But in the first Dalek story, a million years in the future, the Doctor (and Susan) had never heard of the Daleks and the Daleks had never heard of the Doctor.

So.

Had the Doctors memories "changed" or had the old man been lying to everyone about not knowing Dalek history and the Dalek's impact on history?

 

[Reverend]

According to the 2nd Dalek Story, the first Dalek story was millions of years in the future.

IAN: Doctor, I don't understand this at all. We saw the Daleks destroyed on Skaro. We were there.
DOCTOR: My dear boy, what in Skaro was a million years ahead of us in the future. What we're seeing now is about the middle history of the Daleks.
IAN: I see. They certainly look different, don't they.

But in the first Dalek story, a million years in the future, the Doctor (and Susan) had never heard of the Daleks and the Daleks had never heard of the Doctor.

So.

Had the Doctors memories "changed" or had the old man been lying to everyone about not knowing Dalek history and the Dalek's impact on history?

I haven't seen that episode (I find early Who a bit difficult to sit through) but is it not possible the Doctor simply deduced this by dint of knowing *when* he was then in relation to *when* he was the first time they visited Skarro. Even without the TARDIS knowing when it is at all times, aren't Timelords supposed to have an innate sense of when they are at any given time?

He could have been lying of course (it's hardly unprecedented) but is there a reason why he must be?

 

[Guy Gardener]

Or it's also possible that in the months between these two stories that he read a book about Daleks.



In the first story, the Daleks never left Skaro. It's a million years out and they're just picking on the few Thals left who are so ####ed over by Dalek superiorirty, that they live in trees.

It's weird by Barbara "fell in love' with a Thal bloke and almost stayed behind to live in a tree with him, on an alien planet a million years in the future. Love is not just blind, it's a ####ing moron.

Point being is that before they met the Doctor, they didn't know that spce travel or time travel was possible. Is it possible that All early Dalek history set off Skaro was comitted by million year old future Daleks and their decendants?

Compare that to Genesis where Davros goes from to totally forgotten to ubernotious. In Genesis, The kaleds did not know about other life in the universe or time travel, and Doctor educated these xenophobic assholes that both existed. Without Four running his mouth off, the Daleks would have stayed on that planet surounded by 12 dead galaxies, and that's probably more challenging to their history than blowing up their nursery ever would have been. Without Four poking his nose in, the Daleks would have been a nonentity.

 

[Reverend]

Well, "future" is a relative concept. I don't think it's ever been established *when* the Doctor is originally from, even assuming time on Gallifrey has a direct correlation to time in the rest of the universe.

That said, I may be misremembering but there might have been a mention of their first visit to Skarro being thousands or years in the past compared to Ian & Barbara's time of origin. Which would roughly jibes with the later Dalek appearances, specifically their encounters with humanity taking place from the 20th century onwards. Also accounts for how much more advanced they became over time.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Nyssa is a Furry.

So is Romana...and has K-9 record it!

Sincerely,

Bill

I'm sure Romana 1 was very furry "snickers"

 

[Doctorwhovian]

Before Genesis, the Daleks didn't really care about the Time Lords (and vice versa). Although when Genesis came out, the Doctor's nature as a time lord was still fairly new.They really just didn't like the Doctor (and allied with the Master) before then, and seemed to largely want to conquer Earth a lot.

Genesis, Ressurection and Rememberance do seem them taking an interest in the Time Lords though, although Genesis and Revelation pretty much ignored that-Destiny was pretty much them retrieving Davros, and Revelation was mostly part of the "Dalek civil war" arc that ran through Ressurection/Revelation/Rememberance.

I suppose you could kind of count Five Doctors, which was the first time we saw a Dalek on Gallifrey (although it wasn't really there by choice).