The Doctor claims in Ghost Light that Light is “an evil older than time itself”. From the context, this appears to mean that Light arrived on Earth before human history started, not that he existed before the universe’s creation, but he might also be a Great Old One.
The Great Old Ones in the audio story The Roof of the World, and the “Old Ones” mentioned in Tomb of Valdemar and Beyond the Ultimate Adventure don’t seem to be connected to this grouping.
[32] The Magic Mousetrap
[33] The Nightmare Fair. The Doctor says the Toymaker has lived for “millions” of years, but it’s somewhat presented as his speculation about the Toymaker’s origins. The Quantum Archangel and Divided Loyalties establish that the Toymaker is both one of the Great Old Ones and one of the Guardians, meaning he’s actually much older than that.
[34] SJA: Secrets of the Stars
[35] The White and Black Guardians are first referred to in The Ribos Operation. Divided Loyalties says there are six Guardians, adding Justice, Crystal and unnamed twins to the two from the television series. The same book establishes that they are members of the Great Old Ones, and also states that the Guardian of Dreams is the Celestial Toymaker. The Quantum Archangel assigns them their colours and adds the Gold Guardian (counting the twin Azure Guardians as one entity).
[36] Divided Loyalties, The Chaos Pool.
[37] The Coming of the Terraphiles
[38] Synthespians™
[39] Chronovores first appear in The Time Monster; The Quantum Archangel and No Future clarifies their role.
[40] The Masque of the Mandragora, Enlightenment, Falls the Shadow.
[41] “The Mark of Mandragora”
[42] Beautiful Chaos (p210). The Doctor also cites the Helix as being from “the Dawn of Time”.
[43] The Time Lords’ gods were mentioned or seen in a number of New Adventures such as No Future, Set Piece and Human Nature. The seventh Doctor was often referred to as “Time’s Champion”. Mortimus (the Meddling Monk) is “Death’s Champion” in No Future, and the Master is hinted as the same in the audio Master. Vampire Science has the eighth Doctor as “Life’s Champion”, and in The Dying Days he declares himself to be “the Champion of Life and Time”. Happy Endings establishes Life’s parentage (see that story). In Seeing I, Life appears as a cat.
[44] The Gemini Contagion
[45] The prologue to Timewyrm: Apocalypse is a brief history of the formation of the universe, and it follows the modern scientific consensus.
[46] The Wedding of River Song
[47] Dating The Pandorica Opens (X5.12) - No date given. The Doctor and Amy’s reading of the message could happen at any point after the words are carved. This may be the same Planet One that Sebastiane lived on in The Doctor Trap.
[48] “Warrior’s Story”. It’s unclear if this means it’s home to the first known civilisation or physically the oldest planet. As Planet One (seen in The Pandorica Opens) is the oldest planet in the universe, not just the galaxy, it’s older than Xaos.
[49] Dating “The Life Bringer” (DWM #49-50) - The Doctor puts it best: “As I still don’t know whereabout in time we are, I suppose I’ll never be able to puzzle it out... if that was Earth I found him on... or if that’s Earth he’s heading toward.” The story is set either in the distant past before life as we know it began, or the distant future after it died out. A character called Prometheus appeared in The Quantum Archangel - he was a Chronovore, a race first seen in The Time Monster, so it would seem to be a different individual.
[50] Primordial soup appears in City of Death and Ghost Light; the quotation comes from the latter story.
[51] The One Doctor
[52] Falls the Shadow
[53] The Chaos Pool
[54] Dating ”Voyage to the Edge of the Universe” (DWM #49) - The story occurs before the Daemons become extinct, seemingly at the height of their empire. The rocket is nuclear-powered, which doesn’t sound terribly advanced, although it does get them to the end of the universe. This can’t be the same Commander Azal as in The Daemons, for obvious reasons.
[55] Tomb of Valdemar. The Doctor repeatedly asserts this was “a million years” ago, but others call it “aeons”.
[56] The Daemons. Light appears in Ghost Light.
[57] Spearhead from Space
[58] The Infinite Quest
[59] The Forbidden Time
[60] “When the Universe Was Half Its Present Size”
The phrase, uttered by a Time Lord in Genesis of the Daleks, has no clear scientific meaning and should probably be considered a figure of speech, the Time Lord equivalent of “as old as the hills”. Then again, the universe at various points is referred to as having edges, a centre and corners, which suggests a discernible “size”.
[61] “Agent Provocateur”
[62] Lucifer Rising
[63] Zagreus
[64] The Beast Below
[65] The Quantum Archangel
[66] The robot is seen in The Five Doctors, World Game and Beyond the Ultimate Adventure. The Eight Doctors says that it comes from a time when “the Time Lords were young”. Alien Bodies mentions a Raston cybernetic lap-dancer, and Qixotl claims that the ancient legend is just the manufacturer’s marketing ploy.
[67] The Ring of Steel, which describes the Caskelliaks’ creators as “an ancient race”.
[68] The Pit, and further explored in FP: The Book of the War.
[69] According to a highly suspect account from the vampire Tepesh, part of a historical simulation in Zagreus.
[70] State of Decay. Vampires appear in that story, Blood Harvest, "Blood Invocation", Death Comes to Time, The Eight Doctors, Goth Opera, Jago & Litefoot Series 2, Managra, Project: Lazarus, Project: Twilight, “Tooth and Claw” (DWM), UNIT: Snake Head, Vampire Science, World Game, Benny: The Vampire Curse and Gallifrey: Annihilation. The Vampires of Venice featured “vampires” that were disguised fish people. Vampires also appear as a part of the holographic record in Zagreus.
[71] Project: Twilight
[72] State of Decay
[73] Cat’s Cradle: Time’s Crucible
[74] Gallifrey: Weapon of Choice
[75] The Shakespeare Code. Eternals were seen in Enlightenment.
[76] Forever Autumn
[77] “The Tides of Time”
[78] So Vile a Sin
The Eternal War
On screen, we learn that the Time Lords fought campaigns against the Great Vampires (State of Decay), that they time-looped the homeworld of the Fendahl (Image of Fendahl), that they protected other races from invaders (The Hand of Fear), that they maintained a prison planet that contained alien species (Shada) and that they destroyed huon particles and the Racnoss (The Runaway Bride). In the New Adventures, particularly Cat’s Cradle: Time’s Crucible, The Pit and Christmas on a Rational Planet, this was the Eternal War in which the forces of rationality and science defeated the forces of superstition and magic.
[79] The Pit
[80] Sky Pirates!, The Infinity Doctors.
The Three Time Wars
This is not the Last Great Time War between the Time Lords and the Daleks that’s the backdrop to the 2005 television series. In the Doctor Who Annual 2006, Russell T Davies states, “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.” Although they don’t mention those specific incidents, the books concur that there were indeed two previous Time Wars - one in the ancient past (which, to avoid confusion, we might term the Ancient Time War, although it’s not a term used in the stories themselves) and the War against the Enemy in the eighth Doctor’s future (which has become known in Faction Paradox circles as the “War in Heaven”).
[81] Sky Pirates!
[82] Heart of TARDIS
[83] Sky Pirates!, The Infinity Doctors, Heart of TARDIS.
[84] The Gallifrey Chro
nicles
[85] The Crystal Bucephalus
[86] In The Game of Death, the TARDIS data bank says that the galaxies collided “over a hundred billion years ago” - that number was presumably derived from the year in which Utopia takes place, but if so, the Devastation must be somewhat younger than that. (If the two numbers were equal, it would mean that the galaxies collided at the universe’s very start, before galaxies had formed.) The Face of Boe is said to hail from the Silver Devastation, and the Master/Professor Yana was found there as a small child (Utopia). Why dead suns and dark matter look silver is not explained.
[87] “Mortal Beloved”
[88] The Forgotten Army
[89] Castle of Fear
[90] The Time Warrior, Horror of Fang Rock.
[91] The Progress of the Sontaran-Rutan War
The length of time we’re told the Sontarans and Rutans have been fighting is wildly inconsistent. It’s “ten centuries” before “Pureblood”; been raging since before the Time Lords had a civilisation in The Infinity Doctors; “six million years” according to FP: The Eleven-Day Empire, “thirteen million years” according to FP: The Shadow Play; “fifty thousand years” according to The Poison Sky and The Taking of Chelsea 426.
We hear a number of status reports from the battlefront of the Sontaran-Rutan War over the course of the TV series. Both sides have periods of success and failure, but implicitly, the Sontarans visit Earth far earlier and far more often than the Rutans. Earth is some way from the front lines (but close enough to strike the enemy using their most powerful emplaced weapons), with the Sontarans between us and the Rutans. According to “Pureblood”, when Earth becomes a spacefaring power, its territory borders the Sontaran Empire, but it’s in neither human nor Sontaran interests to pick a fight with each other.
It’s also worth noting that in The Time Warrior, Linx states “there is not a galaxy in the Universe which our space fleets have not subjugated”, and Styre talks about invading “Earth’s galaxy” in The Sontaran Experiment. Sontarans and Rutans are both prone to boasting but, even so, a war fought across one galaxy is already incomprehensibly vast, and one suspects the writers - as happens on occasion elsewhere in the TV series - are confusing “solar system” with “galaxy”.
We never hear about either the Sontarans and Rutans coming into conflict with other space powers. From this, we might infer that Skaro, Draconia, Telos and Ice Warrior territory are all located on one side of Earth, the Sontarans and (a little further away) the Rutans lie in the other.
In Ancient Egypt (“The Gods Walk Among Us”), Earth is a suitable place for the Sontarans to “outflank” the Rutans (given both sides’ use of rhetoric, this might suggest that the Rutans are making a major advance).
In the Middle Ages (The Time Warrior), Earth is of no strategic importance, but the Sontarans send a reconnaissance mission there. A pair of Rutans conduct cloning experiments on Earth in 1199 (Castle of Fear). The Sontarans and Rutans both have fighter squadrons. Then in the seventeenth century (“Dragon’s Claw”), the war is being fought close enough to Earth for a Sontaran ship to crash there.
By the early twentieth century, the Rutans are losing the war. They had dominated the Mutter’s Spiral (our galaxy), but now were beaten back to the fringes (curiously, mention of their withdrawal from Mutter’s Spiral happens as early as Castle of Fear). Earth is of strategic importance. In the late twentieth century (The Two Doctors), Earth is “conveniently situated” for the Sontarans’ attack on the Rutan-held Madillon Cluster.
As humans spread into space, they encounter the Sontarans and find themselves caught in the crossfire (“Conflict of Interests”, Lords of the Storm). Humanity and the Sontarans sign a non-aggression pact in 2420.
In Benny’s time, the Rutans made great advances, and even manage to devastate the Sontaran homeworld. Following the Doctor’s intervention, the Sontarans survive to serve as a buffer between humanity and the Rutans (“Pureblood”). In 2602 (Benny: The Bellotron Incident), the Sontaran-Rutan war dangerously approaches Earth’s trade routes.
There is a demilitarised zone between the later Earth Empire and the Sontarans. The Rutans directly attack the Sontaran homeworld (again) circa 3915 (Sontarans: Conduct Unbecoming). The Sontarans lose a war to the Federation in the sixty-third century, and their Empire soon lies in ruins.
Then in the far future (The Sontaran Experiment), a Sontaran invasion fleet is poised to invade Earth (the story says “Earth’s galaxy”, but see above), which is of tactical importance. The Doctor says there’s a “buffer zone” between human and Sontaran territory. At some point after that (Heroes of Sontar), the Sontarans achieve a victory on the planet Samur, but then suffer defeats owing to a flaw in their cloning process, and are forced to consolidate their forces within the Madillon Cluster.
The war ended three hundred thousand years before the end of humanity, resulting in the greatest demobilisation in universal history (The Infinity Doctors). Far, far in the future, the two races apparently merge (Father Time).
[92] FP: The Eleven-Day Empire
[93] The Infinity Doctors. The war has lasted as long as the Time Lord civilisation.
[94] “Pureblood”. The Doctor’s assertion that the Sontaran/Rutan war started “ten centuries” before can’t be right, as it would mean it started in the 1500s - in other words, after The Time Warrior. Other stories place the start of the war far back in Earth’s prehistory.
[95] The Quantum Archangel
[96] Underworld
[97] Death Comes to Time
[98] The War Games
[99] The Two Doctors, The Empire of Glass.
[100] Carnival of Monsters, The Empire of Glass.
[101] Death to the Daleks
[102] Frontier Worlds, The Taint, Eternity Weeps.
[103] TW: Trace Memory
[104] Dating The Nowhere Place (BF #84) - The Doctor dates a tool of the original species - a mysterious door in 2197 - as being “more than fifty billion years old”. This is a scientific absurdity, given that the universe is no more than fifteen billion years old.
[105] The God Complex
[106] Dating A Death in the Family (BF #140) - The Doctor tells Hex that they’ve arrived, “billions of years before your time, billions of years before your sun’s time... the universe is a baby”. Scientific consensus is that Earth’s sun formed about 4.6 billion years ago, so this is some time prior to that.
[107] A Death in the Family. Hex arrives on Pelican in “local year 1871 AC”, and the older Doctor takes the Handivale away in “local year 2192 AC”. Although it isn’t said, “AC” presumably means “After Crash” (of the timeship Pelican).
[108] Dating Eternity Weeps (NA #58) - It is “six billion years ago” (p3).
[109] Dating “Time Witch” (DWW #35-38) - Brimo was imprisoned “at a time before the Earth was formed” according to the opening caption. She says she was imprisoned for “millions of years”, but even that might be an underestimate - the Doctor’s encounter with her could well take place at any time in this timeline. Her situation inside the black hole is very like Omega’s in The Three Doctors (and The Infinity Doctors), although there’s no indication she’s trapped there.
[110] Genocide (p279).
[111] SJA: Prisoner of the Judoon
[112] Inferno
[113] “Billions of years” before The Runaway Bride.
[114] Peacemaker. The Racnoss were an ancient race, around before the Earth formed. Even if the Movellans were not the historic foes of the Clades’ creators, the Doctor seems comfortable implying that the Movellans existed many billions of years ago. A Device of Death and War of the Daleks have different (and also mutually incompatible) accounts of the origins of the Movellans.
[115] Dating The Runaway Bride (X3.0) - The Doctor and Donna witness the Earth’s formation.
[116] TW: Miracle Day. Jack says, “The world’s been turning for over four billion years”, in rough approximation with the age of Earth as given i
n The Runaway Bride.
[117] Love and War
[118] FP: The Judgment of Sutekh
[119] “Tooth and Claw” (DWM). The Curcurbites know of the Time Lords.
[120] TW: Long Time Dead
[121] Logopolis. It’s unclear when this happened, but there have been “aeons of constraint”, and an aeon is a billion years.
[122] “3.9 billion years” (pgs 120, 146) before Heart of Stone. The rock must have impacted the moon long before it started orbiting the Earth (The Silurians).
[123] White Darkness
[124] Dating Venusian Lullaby (MA #3) - The Doctor tells Ian and Barbara that they have travelled back “oh, about three billion years I should think”.
[125] Interference
[126] “Billions of years” before The Day of the Troll.
[127] “A thousand million years” before Spearhead from Space. This date is confirmed in “Plastic Millennium”.
[128] Auton 2: Sentinel
[129] “A billion years” before The Caves of Androzani.
[130] The Impossible Planet
[131] “The Stockbridge Horror”
[132] “4x10(2d8) yrs” ago, according to The Gallifrey Chronicles.
[133] Dating City of Death (17.2) - Scaroth and the Doctor both state that the Jagaroth ship came to Earth “four hundred million years ago”. Contemporary science has a number of estimates of when life on Earth started, but all are far, far earlier than that. The Terrestrial Index takes that as a cue to set this story three and a half billion years ago.
Scaroth of the Jagaroth
In City of Death, we actually see Scarlioni, Tancredi and four other Scaroth splinters: an Egyptian, a Neanderthal (the one some fans think looks like Jesus - the DVD commentary notes that Julian Glover thought the same), a Roman and a Celt (although most reference books, including the earlier versions of this one, describe him as a Crusader), in that order, in the flashback at the start of episode three.
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