Last Great Time War

The Daleks bombarding Gallifrey

The first thirteen incarnations of the Doctor ally together, putting an end to the War and saving Gallifrey at long last

The **Last Great Time War** — originally known as the **Great Time War**, declared as the ***Pa-Jass Vortan*** in Dalek, and remembered with the epithet of "**The War to End All Wars**" — was the temporal war fought between the Time Lords and the Daleks "for the sake of all creation". In a linear sense, it lasted for at least 400 years. Fought throughout countless time periods, alternate timelines, and even alternate realities, however, it more accurately lasted an eternity as both sides fought across space and time, opening up new fronts as the Daleks seeded themselves in different epochs.

At the heart of the War, millions were killed and brought back to life every second, on account of both sides' manipulations. The colossal death toll made the Doctor's TARDIS remember the Time War as "**a war against Death**". In the final battle alone, the Daleks numbered in the quintillions and fielded a fleet of ten million flying saucers. The Time Lords used over a million Battle TARDISes and other ships Time Scooped from their past, throwing their own people into the suffering as disposable soldiers and pilots who would be resurrected from death to be sent back into the fray.

By the end of the War, the Daleks had pushed the Time Lords back to their homeworld of Gallifrey and launched a full-scale assault on the planet. Ultimately, the Time War resulted in the apparent destruction of Gallifrey and ruination of Skaro, seemingly leaving only three Time Lords and a small number of Daleks as survivors.

## Beginning of the Time War

### Fighting breaks out

#### Declaration of the War

> Following the Daleks’ unprovoked attack on the Warpwrights of Phaidon, it has been agreed by the Joint Council that we will begin military action against the Dalek Empire. An official state of war now exists between our two great civilisations. It is a war with only one acceptable outcome - the Daleks’ ultimate defeat.
>
> President Livia officially declares the Time War

The rivalry between the Time Lords and the Daleks, regarded as the two most powerful species in N-Space, eventually hit a boiling point, with the Daleks, believing themselves to be the rightful supreme power of the universe, having grown eager to overthrow Gallifrey to become the new Lords of Time and finally have revenge on the Gallifreyans for their attack on their origins. According to some historians, before properly beginning the conflict, the Dalek Emperor led the Dalek Empire out of space and time, going into the Time Vortex to prepare for the War, but another account held that the Daleks only deployed their "awesome fleet" into the Time Vortex when the War finally began. No matter the true circumstances, from the perspective of humanity, the Daleks suddenly disappeared "thousands of years" prior to the Battle of the Game Station in 200,100.

As recalled by Jack Harkness, a former Time Agent from the 51st century, the Daleks vanished from time and space, even though they were the "greatest threat in the universe", thus ending the Tenth Dalek Occupation. The Doctor would later state that the Daleks had "gone off to fight a bigger war", that being the Time War. When the Daleks emerged to begin the fighting, their forces were at a scale never before seen, making it clear that they were on a war footing. According to the War Doctor, combatants of the War came to forget how it had actually started. In effect, the start of the conflict became "ancient history," even as the fighting continued to rage throughout space and eternity.

While Dalek historians would claim that "no one is certain" if it was the Time Lords or Daleks who committed the act of aggression that made their tensions reach a boiling point, one account held that the breaking point was hit after the extermination or near-extermination of such allied Temporal Powers as the Monans, the Sunari and the Nekkistani. When a temporal crisis allowed him to get knowledge from his future incarnations, the Fourth Doctor told Leela that "in the early days of the Time War, the Daleks sought to isolate Gallifrey — they wiped out whole planets, just so they wouldn't be allies of the Time Lords".

One of their targets during this phase were the Minyans who, after reaching Minyos II and rebuilding their civilisation using the race bank, were predicted to align themselves with the Time Lords in recognition of the Fourth Doctor's role in saving them. A small party of Daleks went back in time to board the Minyan ship on its way to Minyos II, claiming they only wanted to borrow the race bank for "study". They actually intended to alter the genetic codes so that the new Minyans would become a slave-race instinctively loyal to the Daleks. However, the Doctor and Leela foiled this attempt at interference.

After the Daleks committed these massacres, the Time Lords prepared to formalise hostilities against the Dalek Empire. Following the fall of Phaidon, President Livia decided the time had come. On the eve of war, a dispute broke out the between the Celestial Intervention Agency and the War Council on whether to allow the surviving Warpsmiths to be granted asylum on Gallifrey, as the Council demanded their full secrecy in return for the asylum policy.

Frustrated, Coordinator Romana, who was still in her second incarnation thanks to Irving Braxiatel's alterations to the timeline, sent agent Leela to investigate the Death Zone facility and discovered Project Revenant. Housed within a pocket universe, the project was designed to restore the greatest minds of Gallifreyan history from the Matrix to help defeat the Dalek Empire, with Rassilon secretly amongst those to be restored. Livia shutdown the dispute between the CIA and War Council. It was also around this time that Livia assigned Councillor Arkhot to the Threllip Empire to begin construction of the Janus Sphere as part of the Janus Protocol. That evening, she issued the formal declaration of war on the Daleks. The Daleks then made their own formal declaration of hostilities. Upon the official outbreak of the War, the Daleks contacted Davros on Alacracis IV, asking for his help in the conflict. Filled with pride at his children, he accepted.

#### The conflict begins

The War even spread into alternate realities, which only made uncovering its proper chronology harder, and the Twelfth Doctor later reflected that the War shattered entire dimensions. Indeed, thanks in part to the Janus Protocol which allow the use of transdimensional portals to open portals to parallel universes allowed the inhabitants of said universes to either participate or become embroiled in the war itself.

Having taken them from their own history, the Time Lords were now equipped with a fleet of N-Forms, bowships, and Black Hole Carriers.

#### Early escalation

It was also around this time that the Threllips, under the supervision of Councillor Arkhot, began their construction of the Janus Sphere around a star in the Helical Galaxy.

### Fourth Doctor in the Time War

Unbeknownst to him, the Fourth Doctor became involved in the mechanisms of the Time War. While preparing for an evening out in Spithead, the Fourth Doctor and and Romana discover a rift in the multiverse and materialize on a Kroton ship, and the Doctor is immediately puzzled at the Krotons' relative level of power compared to his past experience with them. His confusion increases when the Krotons are attacked by Quarks, whom are also much more powerful than they should be. After the Krotons slay the boarders, they reveal that they come from a parallel universe, one where they reign supreme, a breach opened by the white holes and now intend to conquer this universe. As the Time Lord duo comments on the impossibility of inter-dimensional travel, the Ogron Confederation of Planets arrives. As the three fleets come to blows, the Doctor explains to Romana that the Ogrons native to their universe are thugs, usually hired help for greater evils like the Master or the Daleks.

As realisation strikes him, the Doctor and Romana scamper back to the TARDIS, using Romana's parasol to bluff their way past the Krotons. Out in space, the Doctor immobilizes the three flagships and broadcasts a message to all three fleets, confirming that they originate from alternate universes. The Doctor theorizes that all three parties originate from worlds where the Daleks do not exist given that the Daleks would have targeted such powerful entities long ago. The intruders are unconvinced, asking why the Daleks do not rule the universe if they are so powerful. Romana attributes that to the Doctor himself, always defeating the Daleks when they are on the verge of total victory before adding that there are more Time Lords in this universe and that the Doctor is rather unremarkable by their standards. After receiving an information packet on the Time Lords, the fleets retreat back into the rift, with the Doctor taking the TARDIS in after them to find out what caused the rift in the first place.

## The Doctor joins the Time War

### The War Doctor begins

> I don't suppose there's any need for a doctor anymore.
>
> The Eighth Doctor becomes a warrior

During the Fifth Segment of the War, which was several months before the end of the War's first year, the Doctor tried to save gun-ship pilot Cass Fermazzi at the heart of the Time War, as her spaceship was on a collision course with the planet Karn. Cass and the rest of the crew had just defended the Vantross's feeding hives from a Dalek fleet, only for a Time Lord battle cruiser to shoot them down in order to get a better view of the escaping Dalek ships. Being the only crew-member who was not in panic, Cass teleported her allies to safety, leaving her with no one to do the same for her.

The Eleventh Doctor later thought that this was one of the millions of last days of the Time War. Unknown to the Eighth Doctor, the elixir the sisterhood had offered him was really just lemonade and dry ice, combined with Ohila putting on, what she later called, a "moment of theatre". She reasoned that darkness had always existed within him, a truth that the Doctor himself knew, but allowing him to pretend it came from elsewhere was, to her, a form of mercy. Now that the former Doctor had so much burden to bear, she did not want to add self-loathing, later stating his potential self-loathing "could take all day", but now he needed to act.

### The War Doctor meets Death's Head

The young War Doctor took in Death's Head.

## Fighting intensifies

### The Siege of the Janus Sphere

As soon as the war began to favor the Daleks, as planned Councillor Arkhot began to deploy the Janus Protocol with the help of the Threllip Empire to open transdimensional portals to parallel universes in the hopes that a dominant power from one of these alternate realities would be useful for the Time Lords to use against the Daleks. However, through a series of miscalculations, the portals were open at the wrong place and time - to the time of the Fourth Doctor. When the calculations were corrected, a concentric rings of Dalek warships appeared and surrounded the station Arkhot and the Threllips were on. Just when the Dalek warships were ready to attack, a squadron of spherical warships came through the portal and began to fire on the Dalek fleet. Amidst the confusion, Arkhot and his fellow Threllip cohorts managed to escape the station in a ship and head straight for the portal in the hopes of bringing back forces for the Time Lords to use to defeat the Daleks and win the war.

Upon having arrived in the universe where the squadron of spherical warships came from, Arkhot and Threllip cohorts soon found themselves in the central planet of the Mechanoid Imperium - Mechanus - where they were greeted by an entourage of these spherical warships.

## Participants

### Gallifrey

#### Time Lord forces

Prior to her declaration of war, Lady President Livia made an agreement with the Threllip Empire for them to open transdimensional portals to parallel universes in the hopes of finding allies to help them fight the Daleks as part of a contingency plan.

### Mechanus

#### Mechanoid forces

After their universe had been breached by the war, the entirety of the Mechanoid Imperium became embroiled in the Last Great Time War, with the entire Mechanoid race taking part in the conflict. In the war alone, the Mechanoids also numbered in the quintillions and fielded many fleets of interceptors as well as units of K9s that numbered in the millions enough to make them almost on equal footing with both Time Lords and Daleks alike.