The Time War

[chineserapper05]

^ i agree. this is something that would be better off referenced but not seen.

like admiral cain and the pegasus actions in battlestar galactica.

 

[starsuperion]

Wait a minute! so let me get this straight.. the entire time war happened in the vortex?? What?

That is just about the stupidest thing I have ever heard of! What kind of bolluxed shite is that!

There is a reason I take RTD with a grain of salt..

 

[Starkers]

Better to avoid seeing the whole last great time war on screen, no matter what they do they could never do it justice and it would dissapoiint. Better to leave it to the imagination.

This, the Nightmare Child could never ever be as cool as it actually sounds!

 

[starsuperion]

I think if they planned ahead, and worked out a brilliant script.. maybe 5 years from now, they could certainly show the time war..two 2 hour movie specials..Mcgann, and Eccleston, with a retrospective from the current doctor..Or they could, if done correctly, tie-in Smith on a side adventure which deals with small after-math problems concerning the war, and a flashback of the war from both the 8th and 9th doctor's perspectives..

there is allot of good CGI and set work that BBC has been doing lately..It could work, but would take a good 5 years of the correct planning and most certaintly merchandise planning, advertisement planning, and spin..and a good script with all the bells and whistles..lastly the funding..but that could be offset by projected merchandise sales, and they could speculate that on worldwide distribution..

It's bloody possible..

 

[Admiral_Young]

I personally think the Time War is too epic of an event to be depicted properly on television or a film. The best medium for it is a book trilogy.

 

[DWF]

Wait a minute! so let me get this straight.. the entire time war happened in the vortex?? What?

That is just about the stupidest thing I have ever heard of! What kind of bolluxed shite is that!

There is a reason I take RTD with a grain of salt..

Seeing as how whole races were wiped out and Gallifrey was litered with Dalek saucers at the end of the war, I'd say no the entire war wasn't fought in the time wortex.

 

[Iamnotspock]

Now what about classic who? I watched The Three Doctors the other day. Any suggestions on which I should watch next? I can't seem to find them on netflix by season, or I'd just start at the very beginning.

You probably wouldn't find them season-by-season, no. They're generally thought of in terms of serials, so perhaps look for the first story by title - An Unearthly Child - to start from the very beginning. What are your interests? Perhaps look to tie into the "new" series with stories such as The Time Warrior (Season 11, 1974), which introduced Sarah-Jane, or Spearhead From Space (Season 7, 1970), which introduced the Autons (as well as re-introduced UNIT as a regular feature), or its sequel Terror of the Autons (Season 8, 1971), which introduced the Master. There's Genesis of the Daleks (Season 12, 1975 - retroactively pointed to by RTD as being the first strike in the Time War), The Hand of Fear (Season 14, 1976 - Sarah-Jane's final regular appearance), the following story The Deadly Assassin, set on Gallifrey, and which introduced much of the Time Lord mythology. Then there's the 20th Anniversary story The Five Doctors (1983), and simple classics like The Tomb of the Cybermen (Season 5, 1967), Pyramids of Mars (Season 13, 1975), The Talons of Weng-Chiang (Season 14, 1977), The Caves of Androzani (Season 21, 1984 - Peter Davison's final story), Remembrance of the Daleks (Season 25, 1988 - 25th Anniversary story which ties back into the very first serial and foreshadows things to come), The Curse of Fenric (Season 26, 1989).

Is McGann still doing the Audio series? If so, couldn't they try and lead into the Time War from that route?

Yes he is, but there are rights issues connected with the Time War. Although within the fiction it's all the same show, as far as documentation and licencing are concerned, Doctor Who 1963-89 and Doctor Who 2005- are treated as two separate entities. So, Big Finish would have to apply for a separate licence from the BBC to cover the newer elements. They're currently not allowed to refer to anything post-2005.

 

[G2309]

Here's the talked about essay.

"Meet The Doctor" © Russell T Davies

When the Doctor came to Earth – to track down the Nestene Consciousness and its plastic servants, the Autons – he had no intention of finding a human companion. He’d had fellow travellers alongside him before, of course, and most of them human. His favourite species! But that was in the old days, when the universe seemed young and fresh and more inclined to friendly gestures.

The universe, since then, had changed. At least for the Doctor.

There had been a War, the Great Time War between the Daleks and the Time Lords. There had been two Time Wars before this – the skirmish between the Halldons and the Eternals, and then the brutal slaughter of the Omnicraven Uprising – and on both occasions, the Doctor’s people had stepped in to settle the matter. The Time Lords had a policy of non-interference in the affairs of the universe, but on a higher level, in affairs of the Time Vortex, they assumed discreetly the role of protectors. They were the self-appointed keepers of the peace. Until forced to fight.

Now, the story of the Great (and final) Time War is hard to piece together, because so little survived. Certainly, both had been testing each others strength for many, many years. The Daleks had threatened the Time Lord High Council before, by trying to replace its members with Dalek duplicates. And one of the Dalek Puppet Emperors had openly declared his hostility. Though perhaps the Daleks’ wrath was justifiable – they had been provoked! At one point in their history, the Time Lords had actually sent the Doctor back in time, to prevent the creation of the Daleks. An act of genocide! The Time Lords fired the first shot – though in their defence, they took this course of action because they had foreseen a time when the Daleks would overrun all civilized life and become the dominant life-form in the universe.

Some tried to find a peaceful solution. While it’s hard to find precise records of these events, it’s said that under the Act of Master Restitution, President Romana opened a peace treaty with the Daleks. Others claim that the Etra Prime Incident began the escalation of events. But whatever the cause – and its almost certain that the full story has yet to be uncovered – the terrible War began. The Time Lords reached back into their own history, to assemble a fleet of Bowships, Black Hole Carriers and N-Forms; the Daleks unleashed the full might of the Deathsmiths of Goth, and launched an awesome fleet into the Vortex, led by the Emperor himself.

The War raged, but for most species in the universe, life continued as normal. The War was fought in the Vortex, and beyond that, in the Ultimate Void, beyond the eyes and ears of ordinary creatures. The Lesser Species lived in ignorance. If a planet found its history subtle changing – perhaps distorting and rewriting itself under the pressures of the rupturing Vortex – then its people were part of that change, and perceived nothing to be wrong. Only the Higher Species – those further up the evolutionary ladder – saw what was happening. The Forest of Cheem gazed upon the bloodshed, and wept. The Nestene Consciousness lost all of its planets, and found itself mutating under temporal stress. The Greater Animus perished and its Carsenome Walls fell into dust. And it is said that the Eternals themselves watched, and despaired of this reality, and fled their hallowed halls, never to be seen again…

Years passed, as the mighty armies clashed. And then, silence. No one knows exactly what happened in the final battle. And no one knows how it came to end. All that is known is that one man strode from the wreckage, one man walked free from the ruins of Gallifrey and Skaro. The Time Lord called the Doctor. And his hearts were heavy as he boarded his ship once more, and took to the skies, to escape everything he had just seen; everything he had just done…

He is alone and thinks, somehow, that he deserves this. And as he wanders on, he decides that no one should stand beside him. He’s got no room, on board his TARDIS. He is a traveler, and needs no other.

But then he finds himself in the cellar of a London shop at closing time, and he grabs the hand of an Earthling called Rose Tyler, and looks into her eyes, and all those resolutions go out of the window! The journey goes on, with a human at his side, and who knows where it will end…

And far away, across the universe, on the planet Crafe Tec Heydra, one side of a mountain carries carvings and hieroglyphs, crude representations of an invisible War. The artwork shows two races clashing, one metal, one flesh; a fearsome explosion; and a solitary survivor walking from the wreckage. Solitary? Perhaps not. Under this figure, a phrase has been scratched in the stone, which translates as: you are not alone…

Thanks for posting i hadn't seen this very interesting.

 

[The Wormhole]

Now what about classic who? I watched The Three Doctors the other day. Any suggestions on which I should watch next? I can't seem to find them on netflix by season, or I'd just start at the very beginning.

With the exceptions of Tom Baker's The Key to Time and Colin Baker's The Trial of a Time Lord, classic Who was not released on DVD by season. Starting at the very beginning can be problematic given how much of William Harnell and Patrick Troughton's eras are missing.

My first sampling of classic Who was Tom Baker's The Deadly Assassin. It's pretty good story for a beginner of the classic era, and it's all about Gallifrey and the Time Lords. Consider that my recommendation.

Better to avoid seeing the whole last great time war on screen, no matter what they do they could never do it justice and it would dissapoiint. Better to leave it to the imagination.

This, the Nightmare Child could never ever be as cool as it actually sounds!

Personally, I'm more fascinated by the Could Have Been King with his Army of Meanwhiles and Never Weres.

 

[JRoss]

That RTD essay was published during the first season, IIRC.

Judging both by the essay and by the events depicted on-screen, I'd say that the war was fought primarily in the Vortex, but caused rifts and holes or things like that which decimated historical events and that at several times the forces of both sides "fell" out of the Vortex or intentionally took the fight to normal space.

Say, how does everyone picture the various weapons/atrocities used in Time War? I picture the Could-Have-Been-King as the personification of all overthrown tyrants in the history of the universe. He is semi-transparent and ghostly with a face that shifts from Hitler to Pol Pot the Tharg of Blagnozoth and everyone else. He is taken directly from the time stream and controls terrible power. I picture the Meanwhiles and Never-Weres in a similar fashion. The Meanwhiles are soldiers drawn from the ranks of the populations of parallel dimensions, and the Never-Weres are the imaginary hordes of the Could-Have-Been-King.

I picture the Skaro Degradations as the Daleks literally pulling the force of Skaro's destruction out of time over and over again, bashing it into other worlds. The Nightmare Child seems like a cross between forms, including crocodile and human. Don't know why.

 

[The Wormhole]

All those weapons are just names and can be whatever we imagine them to be. The only specific thing we know about any of them beyond their names is that the Nightmare Child had jaws which must have been pretty huge, given Davros's command ship flew into them.

 

[starsuperion]

All those weapons are just names and can be whatever we imagine them to be. The only specific thing we know about any of them beyond their names is that the Nightmare Child had jaws which must have been pretty huge, given Davros's command ship flew into them.

or the nightmare child was a space time event, or something akin to a massive explosion or wave of energy and "jaws" is just a figure of speech..

 

[Anachronus]

All those weapons are just names and can be whatever we imagine them to be. The only specific thing we know about any of them beyond their names is that the Nightmare Child had jaws which must have been pretty huge, given Davros's command ship flew into them.

or the nightmare child was a space time event, or something akin to a massive explosion or wave of energy and "jaws" is just a figure of speech..

That was my take on the line as well.

 

[Admiral_Young]

I believe all of the things mentioned in the Time War were meant to be a take on the mythological and epic nature of Doctor Who in general as well as touch on the epic scale of the Time War it's self. Indeed, I'm sure RTD intended the reader's imagination to make up whatever it is that he was talking about.

 

[Starkers]

The nightmare child was a young Macauley Caulkin taken out of his time stream to fight against the Timelords where he caused them constant problems with his every day object based booby traps....

 

[starsuperion]

I believe all of the things mentioned in the Time War were meant to be a take on the mythological and epic nature of Doctor Who in general as well as touch on the epic scale of the Time War it's self. Indeed, I'm sure RTD intended the reader's imagination to make up whatever it is that he was talking about.

I myself have had my share of ideas of how the time war transpired.. and what crazy things were invented to destroy each side..it would be nice to have a guide written that delves deep into the war itself, and puts the descriptions of what happened in print..atleast there would be something to guide us..

 

[Admiral_Young]

^ This is why I will always hold out hope for a novel.

 

[Anachronus]

The nightmare child was a young Macauley Caulkin taken out of his time stream to fight against the Timelords where he caused them constant problems with his every day object based booby traps....

Well yes, obviously.

 

[starsuperion]

the thing that bothers me about the time war is that there is no mention of what races were involved..I wonder of those dogmen that worked with the daleks were present..

 

[starsuperion]

That RTD essay was published during the first season, IIRC.

Judging both by the essay and by the events depicted on-screen, I'd say that the war was fought primarily in the Vortex, but caused rifts and holes or things like that which decimated historical events and that at several times the forces of both sides "fell" out of the Vortex or intentionally took the fight to normal space.

But the normal space must have been cutoff from the rest of the universe because they considered the war "time Locked"