The General The General was the Time Lord military commander during and after the Last Great Time War . Biography . Early days . The General was originally born female and remained so in her first ten incarnations . ( TV : " Hell Bent " ) Like all Time Lord s , the General was taken from her family at the age of eight for the selection process in the Drylands . Staring into the Untempered Schism as part of a Time Lord initiation rite , the General was inspired by what she saw in the Schism . ( PROSE : " A Brief History of Time Lords " ) The General once found the Master in the Siege of the Chronotide , screaming for mercy as the Multiform closed in . ( PROSE : " Lords and Masters " ) Eleventh General . Under unknown circumstances , the General ' s tenth regeneration resulted in a male incarnation . The General ' s eleventh incarnation appeared as a middle - aged light - skinned male with no hair . He described himself as the Time Lords ' military commander . ( TV : " Hell Bent " ) The General led the War Council and its efforts to defend Gallifrey from the Dalek onslaught in the final days of the Last Great Time War . In the aftermath of the Fall of Arcadia , he was informed of the War Doctor ' s appearance there . He was then alerted to a security breach in the Time Vaults , discovering the Doctor had taken the Moment , and intended to use it . He was later contacted , much to his displeasure , by three incarnations of the Doctor , the War Doctor , the Tenth and Eleventh Doctor . They revealed to him their plan to save Gallifrey by freezing it before its destruction and shifting it to a pocket universe . The General was sceptical , shocked by the thought of being lost and forgotten in another universe and stated that the calculations would take centuries . The Doctors informed him that they have recruited all their incarnations to help and that while the Time Lords would be lost , they ' d at least have hope which they didn ' t have at that point . The Doctors also told the General that the alternative was burning and no one wanted that . As the General continued to hesitate , the Dalek fleet realised something was wrong and increased their firepower . Realising he was out of options , the General ordered the Doctor to " just do it . " The thirteen Doctors then succeeded in freezing Gallifrey and shifting it to a pocket universe , causing the Dalek fleet to destroy themselves while the Time Lords were saved . ( TV : " The Day of the Doctor " ) When the Twelfth Doctor returned to Gallifrey , the General discussed the event with Rassilon and the High Council . He told Rassilon that the Doctor had the respect of his men as he was the one who won the Time War and had served with many of them . When Rassilon ordered the firing squad to kill the Doctor , the General protested , but made no move to stop them . The squad purposefully missed and sided with the Doctor . When military ships arrived , Rassilon assumed the General had summoned them . However , the Doctor told Rassilon he ' d called the ships not the General and the ships chose to provide the Doctor with backup . As Rassilon prepared to kill the Doctor with his gauntlet , the General stopped him , telling Rassilon , " Lord President , with respect , get off his planet . " The General then dropped his gun and stood at the Doctor ' s side against Rassilon . Rassilon was exiled from Gallifrey and the General informed the Doctor that Gallifrey was at " the end of the universe , give or take a star system " , and as such , Rassilon may have nowhere to go . When the General continued to call Rassilon the President , the Doctor corrected him that he was the President now . The Doctor agreed to assist the High Council in learning the true identity of the Hybrid . To do this , he claimed that Clara Oswald had vital information and insisted she be extracted from the point of her death and brought to him on Gallifrey . The General facilitated this , but quickly discovered that the Doctor had merely lied in an extraordinary attempt to save Clara . The General insisted that any attempt to prevent Clara ' s death as an established historical event would have grave consequences for the timeline . Attempting to prevent the Doctor from escaping with Clara , the General was threatened by the Doctor who stole his gun . The General and Clara attempted to talk sense into the Doctor with the General reminding the Doctor that the gun had no stun setting . Finally , the Doctor asked which regeneration the General was on . The General realised what the Doctor intended and stated that he was on his tenth regeneration and thus his eleventh incarnation . After the Doctor and the General wished each other luck , the Doctor shot the General which caused him to immediately regenerate , giving the Doctor time to flee with Clara . ( TV : " Hell Bent " ) Twelfth General . The General quickly recovered after regenerating , this time having the form of a dark skinned woman with a shaven head . She observed that she was " back to normal " and rhetorically asked how men continually dealt with " all that ego " . With assistance from Ohila , the General continued to pursue the Doctor into the Cloisters . She exchanged words with Clara and seemed to respect the human ' s opinion . Unfortunately for the General , Clara had been buying enough time for the Doctor to escape and steal another TARDIS , and the pair fled from Gallifrey . ( TV : " Hell Bent " ) After the Cyberman invaded Gallifrey , the General , planning to fight back against the invaders , rescued the Twelfth Doctor from Rassilon with her soldiers , teleporting him in the Tomb of Rassilon . When Rassilon found them , the Doctor opened the door to face him . The Lord President took them to the cyber - converted Eye of Harmony , and put the General inside one of the looms to power it , in order to store regenerative energy to create a new universe . The General was freed after the Doctor and Rassilon joined forces to regenerate the universe back to its former state . ( COMIC : " Supremacy of the Cybermen " ) Personality . Eleventh General . During the Last Great Time War , the General was devoted to defeating the Dalek s and saving his species . He was shown to be a greatly respected military leader who didn ' t seem impressed with Rassilon and the High Council ' s plans to save their species . He was also shown to not think highly of the Doctor , calling him " the mad fool " and saying that three Doctors arriving was " all my worst nightmares at once " and that twelve of them turning up was even worse . He was also stunned by the idea that Gallifrey and the Time Lords ' only option was to be frozen in a pocket universe and was knowledgeable about the fact that it would take a very long time to make such calculations . However , he is shown to be able to make quick decisions when the need arises as seen when the Dalek Fleet increased their firepower on Gallifrey and he ordered the Doctor to " just do it " rather than continuing to hesitate over his decision . ( TV : " The Day of the Doctor " ) Following the end of the Last Great Time War , the General gained a great respect for the Twelfth Doctor . When Rassilon questioned who the Doctor thought he was ignoring the military , the General called his war incarnation " the man who won the Time War " with a respectful tone . When Rassilon ordered the Doctor ' s execution , the General protested , but chose not to disobey orders like his men . However , he also did nothing to stop his men as they sided with the Doctor . When the General defected to the Doctor ' s side , he ordered Rassilon off Gallifrey in a way that showed he was disgusted with the former Lord President . He did , however , question the Doctor ' s decision to banish Rassilon , as there may be nowhere for him to go and Rassilon was once a good man . He accepted the decision regardless though . When he realised the Doctor had manipulated the situation to save Clara Oswald , the General showed no fear as he stood his ground against an armed Doctor , merely trying to talk some sense into him and get him to stand down . When the Doctor asked which regeneration the General was in , the General seemed to understand what he meant but again showed no fear . When the Doctor wished him good luck before shooting him , the General did the same , remaining magnanimous towards him to the end despite the fact that the Doctor was about to shoot him . ( TV : " Hell Bent " ) Twelfth General . As a woman , the General showed a distaste for the egos of men and was at least partly relieved to be a woman again . While trying to stop the Doctor , she allowed Clara to say some final words to him before she was sent back to die , showing some compassion and listened stoically as Clara called the Time Lords monsters . However , she was shocked by the Doctor ' s escape with Clara ' s help and somewhat panicked by it . ( TV : " Hell Bent " )