Fall of Gallifrey

The Fall of Gallifrey, (GAME: City of the Daleks) also known as the 'Falls No More' Incident, (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual) was the final battle of the Last Great Time War between the Dalek Empire and the Time Lords of Gallifrey. 
Through the prophecies of the Visionary, 's High Council were aware that they were within the Last Day of the Time War, also known as the Final Day. (TV: ) Indeed, the Eleventh Doctor would remember this day as such, (TV: ) though he admitted to himself that millions of days along his timeline were the last day of the Time War. (PROSE: ) Infact, numerous events following Gallifrey's fall were counted as part of the Time War including the 2005 Nestene invasion of Earth, (PROSE: ) the Battle of Geocomtex, (TV: ) the Battle of the Game Station, (TV: ) and the Siege of Trenzalore. (PROSE: The Secret Lives of Monsters)
On the Final Day, after the Daleks attacked Arcadia and the city fell, the Daleks focused their attention on bombarding the planet from orbit, whilst the War Doctor stole the Moment, intending to destroy other sides to finally end the War. However with help from his other incarnations, he found a way to save Gallifrey whilst destroying all the Daleks in orbit. (TV: ) 
Other accounts suggested the War had ended in different ways. One different account of the fall claimed the Eighth Doctor detonated the Moment on a backwater, destroying both the Daleks and his own people. (PROSE: Doctor Who and the Time War) Another account suggested the final battle had been the Last Battle of the Seventh Galaxy. (PROSE: The Eyeless) 
== History ==
=== A day to come ===
Shortly after Rassilon's resurrection and elevation to Lord President Eternal, a future version of General Trave arrived on Gallifrey. After visiting his younger self, Trave was killed by guards trying to deliver a message to the Celestial Intervention Agency's Deputy Coordinator, Narvin. Narvin discovered the holographic message was from his own future self standing in the Capitol under siege, warning that Rassilon's regime would lead to Gallifrey's fall. (AUDIO: Havoc)
Speaking with the Eighth Doctor after it had travelled through the multiverse, the Dalek Time Strategist claimed to him that the Time War would end with the destruction of Gallifrey. In an attempt to enlist the Doctor to ensure the destruction, it offered him a counterpart of his dead great-grandson, Alex Campbell. (AUDIO: Restoration of the Daleks)
Through the extrapolations of the Matrix, the Time War-era Time Lords foresaw this event from their theoretical future, which was recorded in the Dalek Combat Training Manual. Due to the sensitive nature of the information relating to the outcome of the Time War, tactical analysis for this event was suspended. Nevertheless, the manual noted that the Daleks would use dedicated attack ships during the assault on Gallifrey to blanket bomb the planet's major populated areas. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual)
Although the Dalek Empire had long since created a hypnoscape simulation of Gallifrey's second city, Arcadia, (AUDIO: The Shoreditch Intervention) ensuring they were ready to invade, (TV: The Last Day, et al.) Gallifrey remained at the furthest edge of the conflict for most of the War. (PROSE: A Brief History of Time Lords) By the end of the conflict, however, the Daleks had pushed the Time Lords back to their home planet, setting the stage for an invasion. (PROSE: )
Under the command of the Dalek Time Fleet Commander, a massive Dalek Time Fleet was launched in a planned final attack on Gallifrey. However, the force was destroyed by the War Doctor using a Time Destructor. (AUDIO: The Innocent) After taking the Cruciform, in a change to the timeline which had inadvertently caused by using the Heavenly Paradigm, (AUDIO: The Heavenly Paradigm) the Daleks brought the Time War directly to Gallifrey. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual) Planning his escape to the Silver Devastation of the far future, the Master considered that the Time Lords and the Daleks could destroy each other. (PROSE: The Secret Diary of the Master)
In the later stages of the War, the War Doctor asked the Enigma to wipe out both Daleks and Time Lords to bring an end to the fighting. The Enigma denied his request. (AUDIO: The Enigma Dimension)
=== The siege begins ===
Even though their conflict was bringing about the utter destruction of time and space — with the War Doctor saying that "every moment in time and space [was] burning" because of the War (TV: ) — and despite the years that had passed, the mighty armies of the Daleks and Time Lords still continued their clash, (PROSE: ) but the Daleks found their campaign going exceptionally well. (PROSE: ) A fragmented Dalek transmission from the Time War, one of several salvaged and recorded in The Dalek Conquests having been found echoing through the Void or squeezed through temporal anomalies and black holes, spoke of an attack formation, the extermination of the Time Lords and an impending Dalek victory. (AUDIO: )
Around this time, the Dalek drone that would later be dubbed "the Metaltron" was created in a Dalek nursery to be one of the countless drones thrown into the War to die for the Dalek cause. After excess limbs were removed from the mutant, with those parts then being placed back into the incubation vats to create new troops, the Dalek was assigned a training squad, later being told it would die in the most significant war its species had ever fought. (PROSE: ) Despite the Dalek advances, the day before the end of the Time War, the War Doctor went to Skaro and destroyed most of the Dalek Emperor's fleet. Using a stolen gunship, he burned the message "no more" into the Dalek City. (PROSE: ) By the end of the War, (TV: ) the conflict's devastation brought about the destruction of Skaro, (PROSE: ) leaving only ruins behind. (PROSE: ) The Doctor remembered seeing the capital of capital of Kaalann left in ruins after the Daleks fled Skaro, leaving destroyed casings behind in the wrecked halls. (GAME: )
Shortly before the attack on Gallifrey, the Daleks launched a successful incursion into the Kasterborous constellation. This victory came a mere day after the Metaltron was assigned its Commander, which was killed in the assault. The drone was certain its officer had fought bravely to help the empire secure a victory and was assigned a new Commander. (PROSE: )
After centuries of conflict between the Daleks and Time Lords, an invasion fleet made up of millions of Dalek flying saucers laid siege to Gallifrey. (PROSE: ) Despite the 400 sky trenches defending Arcadia, the Daleks broke through and invaded the second city. (TV: ) The Metaltron’s squad were deployed to Arcadia and expected to be amongst the first casualties, though the drone survived. (PROSE: )
Whilst rumours spread of the fall of Arcadia and a new front opened at the Last Hour, the Time Lords were alerted that the First Doctor’s timeline was under attack by the Daleks. (AUDIO: ) The Player was recruited to meet the Doctor and convince him to go the South Pole to keep his timeline on track. (AUDIO: )
Arcadia fell to the Daleks, with the Doctor fighting on the frontlines. (TV: ) The Metaltron sighted him briefly in Arcadia and was so overcome by fear it opened fire aimlessly, missing him entirely. (PROSE: ) On the battlefield one soldier encountered the Doctor. The Doctor borrowed his fusion blaster and left a message for the Time Lords carved into a wall: NO MORE. Returning to his TARDIS, which he flew through a squadron of Daleks that had detected him, the Doctor then proceeded to the Time Vaults and stole the last weapon in the Omega Arsenal - the Moment. (TV: ) He disappeared from the Time Lords’ observation, however they inferred that his intent was to destroy Daleks and Time Lords alike. (TV: ) 
As the Daleks approached the Capitol, hundreds of Time Lords recorded their cherished memories into memory lanterns and set them adrift in the Time Vortex. (AUDIO: , COMIC: ) Leela, serving as a commander, watched the Daleks’ attack on the Capitol from a nearby cliff and believed the Time War lost. A soldier, Axton, delivered her a wayfinder sent from the Doctor which she could use to escape Gallifrey. A group of Daleks discovered them and exterminated Axton, surrounding Leela. Before they could kill her, Leela activated the wayfinder, transporting herself to the safety of the Fourth Doctor’s TARDIS. (WC: )
During the final battle, the Daleks created a time capsule launched with a single Dalek with the plan to spread the Dalek Factor on Earth to use humanity's life force and raw materials to build more Daleks for back-up in the war. The capsule's engines failed in the journey and the Dalek within ejected, falling to Earth in 70 AD. The Dalek died but released a small amount of Dalek Factor that remained dormant in the genetic structure of humanity. (PROSE: )
Unable to breach the Capitol’s sky trenches, the Daleks surrounded Gallifrey and began bombarding the planet from orbit with all their remaining ships. (TV: )
=== The Ultimate Sanction ===
With the planet utterly surrounded and on the verge of destruction, the President of the High Council, Rassilon, grew more desperate and refused to admit defeat. (PROSE: The Whoniverse) After the Visionary revealed two Time Lords would survive the coming fall, the Doctor and , Rassilon devised the Ultimate Sanction. A link was forged with the future Master on Earth in approximately the 2000s by implanting a signal, a rythmn of four beats, in his mind as a child via the Untempered Schism. Rassilon then sent a White-Point Star to the Master to make the link physical, bypassing the time lock. With the signal inside him and six billion humans converted by the Immortality Gate into the Master Race to triangulate it, the Master made a connection with the Time Lords' signal. Rassilon planned to use this link to break Gallifrey out of the time lock, beginning a chain reaction which would tear the Time Vortex apart and destroy the universe entirely which would enable the Time Lords to ascend to beings of pure consciousness. 
Before proceeding, Rassilon put the Sanction to the vote of the High Council. Only two opposed; the woman (TV: ) and the Patriarch of Stillhaven. (PROSE: Lords and Masters) Rassilon led a delegation to Earth, flanked by four Time Lords including the two opponents, who he had kneel in shame, where he confronted the Master and the Tenth Doctor. With the time lock broken, Gallifrey itself began to manifest above Earth which the Doctor warned was just the beginning; all the terrors of the war were descending. Rassilon revealed the full extent of the plan, to even the Master’s horror. The Doctor broke the connection by shooting the White-Point Star, sending the Time Lords and Gallifrey back to the Time War. The Master decided to take revenge on Rassilon for making him a monster and attacked him, being brought back into the War with him. (TV: ) Rassilon's battle with the Master caused him to regenerate, (PROSE: Pandoric's Box) reportedly because the Master "shoved White Point Stars down his throat". (PROSE: Lords and Masters)
=== Relocation of Gallifrey ===
The Doctor took the Moment to a barn in Gallifrey's drylands, (PROSE: ) intending to activate it far from the sight of his TARDIS. The Moment arranged for a meeting with two future incarnations, the Tenth Doctor and Eleventh Doctor. After an adventure on which they negotiated peace between UNIT and the Zygons, the three prepared to detonate Gallifrey together, making sure the War Doctor did not need to bear the responsibility alone. However after the Eleventh Doctor's companion, Clara Oswald, objected they reconsidered and ultimately decided against it. Inspired by the stasis cubes that the Zygons had been using a suspended animation, the Eleventh Doctor realised they had long since thought up an alternative, to the joy of his other selves.
Androgar once stated that "all thirteen" incarnations of the Doctor then teamed up to save Gallifrey, (TV: ) only for the Twelfth Doctor to admit that he was unsure how many versions of himself used their TARDISes to place Gallifrey in a pocket universe, (PROSE: ) with the Time Lords claiming that every incarnation of the Doctor was present. Through the Matrix's projections of post-war history, the Time Lords were aware that the Twelfth Doctor, the last of the thirteen incarnations pointed out by Androgar, would be followed by the Thirteenth Doctor. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual)
The Doctors contacted the War Council beforehand and received the General's reluctant approval for the plan. The Dalek fleet, which was still surrounding the planet and firing on it at a constant rate, intensified the bombardment in response to the Doctors' activity. It was left suddenly firing on itself when Gallifrey disappeared, nearly destroying the entire Dalek race. (TV: ) The result was, in the Emperor's words, an "inferno". (TV: )
Though the effect had been instantaneous on the Daleks, Gallifrey’s relocation took almost a day to complete, longer than the Doctor had predicted, causing the planet to burn and rage. A town on the shore of Lake Calasper was ripped apart by an earthquake. The Doctor, in all their incarnations up to the Ninth (minus the War Doctor), helped to get civilians trapped in dangerous situations to safety. Meanwhile in the War Room, the Twelfth Doctor entered and helped coordinate disaster relief with the General. (PROSE: ) 
Afterwards the Doctors were left unsure if they'd succeeded or not, but concluded it was better to have failed doing the right thing than succeeding at the wrong. Due to the timelines being out of sync, the first eleven incarnations involved would forget this act. This caused the Doctor to reject his war incarnation until the memories of saving Gallifrey caught up with the Eleventh Doctor. (TV: ) Until then, he remembered Gallifrey's fall as a legitimate destruction, which he likened to Earth Death. (TV: , PROSE: The Eyeless) The Tenth Doctor recalled that the Cruciform fell at the same time that Gallifrey was "burned". (COMIC: The Forgotten)
==Aftermath==
=== Time lock ===
Following the fall of Gallifrey, the events of the Last Great Time War between the Daleks and the Time Lords were contained by a time lock, thus isolating the conflict in its own specific timeline", (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe) which was mostly separate from the normal universe. (PROSE: Revenge of the Nestene)
According to conflicting accounts, the time lock was placed by either the surviving higher species (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe) or the Doctor. (COMIC: Don't Step on the Grass) This time lock was intended to ensure that no entity or faction could use time travel technology to revisit the war to alter or otherwise engage with any of the events that had occurred. Such interference was deemed too dangerous, likely to place the integrity of the Time Vortex itself at risk. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe)
=== Post-Gallifrey ===
The "chronological complications" brought about by the War and Gallifrey's apparent destruction resulted in Gallifrey and other artefacts native to its home universe landing within the universe of New Eden for a brief time. Inhabitants of New Eden's universe followed these artifacts on a path that brought them into conflict with Daleks, who had also arrived within New Eden. (GAME: The Interstellar Convergence)
The Beast, who claimed to have lived before the universe, knew the Tenth Doctor as "the killer of his own kind". (TV: The Satan Pit) In 2007, Brother Lassar of the Krillitanes was aware of the Time Lords and their apparent fate. He suggested to the Doctor that he could use the Skasis Paradigm to prevent the war altogether, but the Doctor refused to allow the Krillitanes to unlock it. (TV: ) The time travelling Family of Blood believed the Doctor to be the last of the Time Lords, who they knew as an "wise and ancient race". (TV: /) Lucius Petrus Dextrus, a human augur who followed the Pyroviles, knew that the Doctor came from Gallifrey and that his home was "lost in fire". (TV: ) In the 2000s, the Shadow Architect of the Shadow Proclamation believed the Time Lords to be the "stuff of legend" which belonged in the "myths and whispers of the higher species". As such, she was sceptical of the Doctor's very existence. (TV: )
Having lived through the Time War, Nyssa of Traken became aware of the loss of Gallifrey, which she likened to the destruction of her own homeworld, and offered the Tenth Doctor her condolences. (AUDIO: The Stuntman)
Rosanna Calvierri, one of the last surviving Saturnyn, remarked that the Eleventh Doctor should be either in a museum or a mausoleum when he revealed that he was from Gallifrey. (TV: ) In 2010, the Shansheeth knew the Doctor to be the last Time Lord. (TV: Death of the Doctor)
Confronting the Twelfth Doctor in 1980, the Fisher King remembered the Time Lords as "cowardly, vain curators who suddenly remembered they had teeth and became the most warlike race in the galaxy. (TV: )
=== Dalek survivors ===
To the rest of N-Space, it looked as if the Time Lords had been destroyed as well, making it seem that the War had ended with the destruction of both factions. (TV: ) However, some Daleks survived the destruction. One Dalek fell through time and crashed on Earth in the 20th century. (TV: ) The Emperor’s flagship ended up in the distant future, crippled but with the Emperor himself still alive. Over the centuries he manipulated the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire and rebuilt the fleet. It was exposed by the Ninth Doctor in 200,100, resulting in the Battle of the Game Station. (TV: )
The Cult of Skaro, who survived the Time War by hiding in a ship within the Void, were aware of the fall of Gallifrey. Emerging on Earth in 2007, they brought with them the Genesis Ark, a dimensionally transcendental prison ship which Dalek Sec believed to be all that survived of the Time Lords' homeworld. Coming into conflict with the Tenth Doctor, (TV: ) the Cult escaped via emergency temporal shift to 1930 where they faced the Doctor again, with the resulting confrontation ending in the deaths of all the Cult bar Dalek Caan, who the Doctor believed to be the last surviving Dalek in the universe. In light of the deaths that he had witnessed, both Dalek and human, the Doctor offered Caan his help only to be rejected as the Dalek initiated another temporal shift. (TV: )
Breaking the time lock, the temporal shift took Caan into the Time War where he rescued Davros from the Nightmare Child. Emerging in the post-war universe, Davros created a New Dalek Empire which invaded Earth. (TV: ) Having saw time, Caan was believed to have gone insane; infact, he had come to believe that the Daleks must be destroyed, setting in motion a chain of events which led to the destruction of the empire. (TV: ) Nevertheless, a one ship survived and, having found the last of the Progenitor devices, created a New Dalek Paradigm. (TV: )
=== The Master ===
, who had fought in the Time War, was overcome by fear after witnessing the Dalek Emperor seize the Cruciform and so fled the conflict, making himself human so that he would not be found. (TV: ) He was ultimately discovered by the Tenth Doctor, who believed that the two of them were the last surviving Time Lords. Regenerating, was shocked to learn of the apparent destruction of Gallifrey at the Doctor's hand. (TV: )
The ensuing confrontation ended with the Master mortally wounded and choosing to die rather than regenerate and be captured by the Doctor, (TV: ) instead relying on other arrangements to return. With the Ultimate Sanction, Rassilon and the Time Lords from the final day of the War attempted to break through to Earth, but their efforts were stopped by the Doctor and the Master, who was thrown back into the War with Rassilon. (TV: ) After Gallifrey's salvation, the Master, cured of his "little condition," left Gallifrey in a "mutual me kicking out." (TV: /)
=== The Monk ===
Like the Master, the Monk had fled the war in fear of the Daleks, travelling to Earth and turning himself human to escape the conflict. To prevent detection by the Time Lords, the Monk pushed his ship hard before he removed his TARDIS' components, but didn't perform a careful job of removing them, badly damaging the TARDIS in the process. He still kept a connection to the Matrix, to see what was going on. The Monk hid away in an abbey in England during the 16th century. Through his connection to the Matrix he witnessed the disappearance of Gallifrey and its subsequent return to the universe. Trapped on Earth in one time zone, the Monk tried to raise Gallifrey's attention by meddling with time but only caught the attention of , who left him stranded after plundering his TARDIS. Furious, the Monk sought to confront both Missy and the Doctor (AUDIO: Divorced, Beheaded, Regenerated) and ultimately escaped from his predicament. (AUDIO: Treason and Plot)
=== The Eye of Time ===
The Eye of Time, which had been possessed by the Time Lords, was lost during the "Fall" of Gallifrey. After the Daleks restored their race and empire through the New Dalek Paradigm, the Eye later fell into their hands, so they returned to Skaro and restored the capital city of Kaalann. Under the leadership of a new Dalek Emperor, the Daleks declared themselves the new Time Lords and planned to use the power of the eye to totally rewrite time to their designs. However, the Eleventh Doctor and Amy Pond, after learning the Daleks had now exterminated humanity in 1963, travelled back to Skaro and prevented the Paradigm from ever using the Eye of Time, restoring the true timeline. (GAME: City of the Daleks)
Under the leadership of a different emperor, the New Dalek Paradigm obtained a fragment of the Eternity Clock. With this, the Daleks launched an invasion of Earth in 2106 and plotted to remove Gallifrey from time to become the new Time Lords, but the Doctor and his wife, River Song, took the clock fragment from them, undoing the Earth invasion and preventing their further plans. (GAME: The Eternity Clock) After their memory of the Doctor was wiped from the Pathweb for a period of time, the Daleks forgot, amongst other incidents, who had detonated the Moment. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe)
=== Return and fall of Gallifrey ===
Discussing the Gallifrey Falls No More painting with Doctor Henry Black, the Curator told him it would be better described as "Gallifrey Falls No More (Until the Next Time)"; (PROSE: Dr Black) as a future incarnation of the Doctor, (COMIC: The Then and the Now) the Curator knew that strife would return to Gallifrey after the Time War. (PROSE: Dr Black, TV: )
After their major effort to return to the universe attracted the Daleks and many other enemies in the Siege of Trenzalore, during which the Daleks recovered their memories of the Doctor after losing them in the Asylum Incident, (TV: ; PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe) the Time Lords returned Gallifrey quietly to the end of the universe. (TV: ) The Spy Master would raze Gallifrey to the ground after learning about the Timeless Child. (TV: )
== Behind the scenes ==
* The Doctor Who website featured an image, a modification of one depicting the Dalek Fleet over Earth during the Battle of the Game Station, of multiple Dalek saucers engulfed in flames over a burning planet, consistent with one account of the fall of Gallifrey.
* Absence of the Daleks, the draft for before the use of the Daleks had been secured, would have established that mysterious spheres from the future, later revealed to be humans, had attacked the Time Lords among all other sentient species they could find, with the Nestenes and the Daleks among the civilisations decimated. Ultimately, the Time Lords trapped the spheres on Gallifrey, where they sacrificed themselves in an act of mutually assured destruction to eliminate the spheres, leaving only the Ninth Doctor and one known surviving sphere, which became the Metaltron.
== Footnotes ==
Category:Events of the Last Great Time War
Category:Time Lord history
Category:Conflicts involving the Doctor
Category:Multi-Doctor Events
Category:Sieges
Category:Conflicts involving the War Doctor
Category:Conflicts involving the Tenth Doctor
Category:Conflicts involving the Eleventh Doctor
Category:Conflicts involving the First Doctor
Category:Conflicts involving the Twelfth Doctor
Category:Conflicts involving the Ninth Doctor
Category:Conflicts involving the Fourth Doctor
Category:Conflicts involving the Seventh Doctor
Category:Conflicts involving the Eighth Doctor
Category:Conflicts involving the Second Doctor
Category:Conflicts involving the Third Doctor
Category:Conflicts involving the Fifth Doctor
Category:Dalek conflicts