The Moment The Moment , previously called the Eye of Discord , was the most powerful and most dangerous weapon in all of creation , described as the Galaxy Eater , which the Doctor intended to use to end the Last Great Time War . Abilities . The Moment was capable of destroying Gallifrey , the Dalek s , and whole galaxies within a single moment , hence its given name . ( TV : " The Day of the Doctor " ) Not only could it destroy all traces of an enemy , it would destroy all traces that the enemy had existed as well as everyone who had ever even heard of them . When it was working as intended , it was capable of destroying all living things in the universe . ( PROSE : " The Eyeless " ) Additionally , the Moment was able to create tears in the fabric of creation called time fissure s that would allow people and objects to pass from one time period to another , possessing a trans - dimension al awareness of the past and future . It also had a sentient interface with telepathic abilities , enabling it to read the thoughts and memories of those who intended to use it . The interface also had the capacity to take the forms of others , such as Rose Tyler , as a holograph ic projection . As it was a Time Lord construct , it was not limited to a linear grasp of time and space — it could select the forms of people from an individual ' s future they had yet to meet . However , when trying to tell the past and future apart , the Moment tended to get the two mixed up . The Moment could also change appearance from a box full of gears to a box looking station with a big blood red ruby button on a stalk , with a base similar to the shape of a rose petal . ( TV : " The Day of the Doctor " ) Inside the Fortress , the weapon resembled a humming cylinder of burnished metal , one metre long and ten centimetres wide , with no controls or inscriptions . However , more interesting things were going on in higher , lower , and sideways dimension s ; when she held it in her bag , Alsa could feel something beneath , inside , and around the metal , as if it was eating away at her . In this form , the weapon was activated by touch . ( PROSE : " The Eyeless " ) History . The device was once known as the Eye of Discord and was created by Time Lord scientist , Roppen . Rassilon later employed Roppen to redesign the device to be deployed against the Nestene s . The device gave Rassilon a brief encounter with his future selves before Rassilon activated it and destroyed all the Nestenes in the Illia galaxy . He then placed the device in the Omega Arsenal for safe keeping . ( PROSE : " Pandoric ' s Box " ) According to the General , the Moment was the final creation of the Ancients of Gallifrey . It had an operating system so sophisticated , so advanced that it had become sentient and developed a conscience ( hence why it was never used , as the Time Lords feared its moral judgement ) . When attempting to initialise it , the War Doctor expressed unfamiliarity with the Moment ' s controls and operating system . ( TV : " The Day of the Doctor " ) The Tenth Doctor said that the Time Lords built it as a weapon of last resort , to be used " only when all was lost " , since it would destroy not only its enemy but also its user . It ran on quantum physics , the observer effect , the superforce , vunktotechnology , and vundatechnology . ( PROSE : " The Eyeless " ) According to one account , the Eighth Doctor created the Moment from a modified Key of Rassilon and De - mat Gun during the Time War . ( COMIC : " The Forgotten " , " Don ' t Step on the Grass " ) Until the Doctor stole it , the Moment had been locked away along with other forbidden weapons — collectively known as the Omega Arsenal — in the Time Vaults . While all the other weapons were used against the Daleks during the course of the war , the Time Lords refused to use the Moment for fear that it would punish anyone who did so . When conversing with the War Doctor , the Moment warned him there would be consequences for him if he followed through with his plan . The War Doctor replied he didn ' t care as he had no intention of living past the war ' s end . The Moment responded by telling the Doctor his punishment would be to live , burdened with the knowledge and guilt of his actions . ( TV : " The Day of the Doctor " ) By using the Moment , the Doctor time - locked the war , making it theoretically impossible to reach via time travel . ( COMIC : " Don ' t Step on the Grass " ) Supposedly , when the Doctor used the Moment , he destroyed Gallifrey , the Dalek s , and the Time Lord s . ( COMIC : " Sky Jacks " ) As the Ninth Doctor later stated , all the combatants of the Time War had burned and were " wiped out in one second " . ( TV : " Dalek " ) The Partisan informed the High Council that the Doctor " possess [ ed ] the Moment , and [ would ] use it to destroy Time Lords and Daleks alike , " while the Chancellor explained that the Visionary predicted that the Time Lords would die on the last day of the Time War . ( TV : " The End of Time " ) However , the Doctor later learned that his memory was not entirely accurate . When the War Doctor had attempted to activate the Moment , its interface had appeared to him in the form of a face from his future . It gave him an opportunity to change the outcome of the Time War , by involving two of his future selves , the Tenth Doctor and the Eleventh Doctor , allowing him to see the future and later providing an opportunity for the future Doctors to join him as he prepared to trigger the Moment . When the advice of Clara Oswald prompted the Eleventh Doctor to remember his vow as the Doctor , he deactivated the Moment , informing his past selves that the three of them could find another way . Together , with help from their previous incarnations and the Twelfth Doctor , the Doctors were able to devise a way to freeze Gallifrey in time , while allowing the Daleks to destroy themselves in the crossfire . Thus , Gallifrey and the Daleks still vanished , and history was preserved , but the Doctor was ultimately able to prevent the genocide of his own people . The War Doctor and his future incarnations were unable to retain the correct memories until the timeline caught up with the Eleventh Doctor . ( TV : " The Day of the Doctor " ) The Tenth Doctor believed that it needed to be destroyed to stop it from being used again , and he was only person left in the universe who could destroy the weapon , so he travelled to Arcopolis to deactivate it where it sat in the Fortress , where it had been left after it was used to destroy the Time Lords and Daleks alike in the Last Battle of the Seventh Galaxy . As he endeavoured into the Fortress , he was attacked by ghost s , which could pull anything they touched out of reality , and the Eyeless , who had come to scavenge the weapon . The Eyeless activated the weapon , but it backfired , destroying them and leaving the Doctor alive . This led the Doctor to realise that the weapon had been malfunctioning : the ghosts were complex blast shadow s left behind when the weapon annihilated them during the Last Battle ; this also explained why the weapon hadn ' t destroyed the universe during the Last Battle , which the Doctor had previously speculated was due to a protective field around the weapon . The Doctor and Alsa ultimately destroyed the weapon by dropping it into a plasma vent on an asteroid . There , it opened and something came out that the Doctor and Alsa couldn ' t look at ; the thing couldn ' t survive in the universe , and with it , the weapon was destroyed . ( PROSE : " The Eyeless " ) References . Travelling through the caves of the Death Zone to save Borusa from the Dark Tower , the War Doctor and Cinder found various cave paintings . One of the paintings depicted the Doctor standing beside a blonde woman wearing rags , with " a tall red flower " standing between the two . ( PROSE : " Engines of War " )