Cinder " Cinder " was the primary alias of a human who grew up on Moldox during the Last Great Time War and lost her entire family to Dalek invaders . Although " Cinder " was not her given name , she felt that it was the only name she had now that her family had been taken from her . A self - made Dalek hunter , she would later be one of the final casualties in the Time War , and the one that finally convinced the Doctor to end the war . Biography . Early life . Cinder was only seven years old when the Time War reached Moldox in the form of the Dalek occupation . When her homestead was attacked by the Daleks , she survived by hiding whilst her mother , father and her brother Sammy were exterminated . Cinder hid under a bin and stayed there until she was found by Coyne and spent the next several years training as a Dalek - hunter with him and other survivors of the occupation on Moldox . Among these survivors was a girl named Stephanie , with whom Cinder fell in love and shared her first kiss . ( PROSE : " Engines of War " ) Meeting the Doctor . When she was a young woman , after taking part in an ambush with fellow resistance fighter Finch , Cinder encountered the War Doctor , who had crashed on Moldox in his TARDIS . She helped him infiltrate a Dalek base and uncover their plans to create a Temporal Cannon , a De - mat weapon that could wipe Gallifrey from history . The Doctor took Cinder in his TARDIS to Gallifrey to warn the Time Lord s of the Dalek ' s plan . On Gallifrey , Cinder met Rassilon and the High Council of Time Lords , but was told to keep quiet as they spoke . After the meeting was over , Cinder was kidnapped by Karlax and the Castellan and was mind probe d to back up the Doctor ' s claims . After finding out about the mind probe , the Doctor took Cinder from the Capitol and took her to the Death Zone , where the two of them kidnapped Borusa from his imprisonment in the Dark Tower . Cinder was shot by Karlax on board the Doctor ' s TARDIS , sacrificing herself to save the Doctor , shortly before the Doctor defeated the Time Lords and the Daleks . In honour of her death , the Doctor buried her and with the remains of her family at her old homestead , giving them a proper grave with a marker that revealed Cinder ' s true name , and promised he would put an end to the war . ( PROSE : " Engines of War " ) Legacy . When the Ninth Doctor projected his memories of the Time War into the various adversaries battling for access to his mind , seen within them was the War Doctor cradling Cinder ' s body in grief . This memory among others caused the dueling to cease , as the combatants found them too terrible to bear . ( COMIC : " The Bidding War " ) The Twelfth Doctor later saw Cinder , among other companions , when Bernice Summerfield was hit by temporal energy in the Pyramid Eternia . ( PROSE : " Big Bang Generation " ) A manifestation of Cinder also appeared within the Celestial Toyroom talking to other companions of the Doctor . ( COMIC : " Relative Dimensions " ) Appearance . Cinder had long orange hair , from which her name was derived . Her eyes were olive in colour . She was fairly muscular due to all the training and fighting in which she took part but was still thin despite that . ( PROSE : " Engines of War " )