The Doctor’s home planet hasn’t had the easiest life! Let’s look back at all the times Gallifrey has been erased from the Whoniverse…
1) The Ancestor Cell (2000)
Prior to Doctor Who‘s return in 2005, the BBC was in the process of wrapping up the Eighth Doctor novel series to pave the way for the new show. The final book in this series (although not the last published) was ‘The Gallifrey Chronicles,’ and this is how it was presented in its blurb…
“The Doctor’s home planet of Gallifrey has been destroyed. The Time Lords are dead, their TARDISes annihilated. The man responsible has been tracked down and lured to Earth in the year 2005, where there will be no escape. But Earth has other problems — a mysterious signal is being received, a second moon appears in the sky, and a primordial alien menace waits to be unleashed…”
And if you watched the Ninth Doctor series after reading this novel, you could be forgiven for thinking that there was some connection; the Doctor claimed in the 2005 episode ‘The End of the World’ that his home planet was “gone” and was “just rocks and dust,” indicating a continuity link to ‘The Gallifrey Chronicles.’
But they are in fact completely separate strands. In the novel, the “man responsible” is in fact the Doctor, who destroyed Gallifrey in an earlier book called ‘The Ancestor Cell’ in order to prevent it from being erased from history. But he has no memory of this event, and much of ‘The Gallifrey Chronicles’ revolves around the Doctor trying to figure out what happened and how his home planet, and his memories, can possibly be restored.
Believe it or not, the events of ‘The Ancestor Cell’ and ‘The Gallifrey Chronicles’ can be made to fit into the continuity of the TV show, including the destruction of Gallifrey in the Ninth Doctor’s era. The Eight Doctor book range certainly leaves this possibility open when it concludes, without providing a definitive answer.
2) The End of the World (2005)
As mentioned previously, the Ninth Doctor stated in ‘The End of the World’ that his home planet was gone, and that it was just rocks and dust. He goes on to say that “there was a war, and we lost.”
As it turns out, these events are separate from the ones described in ‘The Ancestor Cell’ and ‘The Gallifrey Chronicles,’ but without giving spoilers, it is possible for both destructions of Gallifrey to co-exist in the same timeline. In the 2005 series, Gallifrey found itself embroiled in the Time War with the Daleks, which soon encompassed most of the universe.
The result of this was (seemingly) the complete destruction of both Gallifrey and the entire Dalek race. And, once again, the Doctor was responsible; he claims he was the only one who could end the Time War, and he did so using a piece of Time Lord technology known as the Moment, wiping out both the Time Lords and Daleks in one fell swoop, leaving him the sole survivor.
And look away now if you don’t want spoilers, because it later transpires that Gallifrey survived the Time War. In ‘The Day of the Doctor,’ it’s revealed that, whilst the Doctor did indeed steal the Moment, he didn’t use it to destroy Gallifrey but seal it inside a parallel pocket universe, meaning that it wasn’t gone but lost. And the subsequent series (from 2013-2015) focus on the Doctor trying to find his home planet again.
Ultimately he does, and he pays a visit in 2015’s ‘Hell Bent.’ It’s not a warm reception, though, as the Time Lords bring him back as their prisoner. However, at the end of ‘Hell Bent,’ Gallifrey still stands, albeit still inside its pocket universe.
3) Spyfall, part two (2020)
Alas, Gallifrey doesn’t last very long, and by the time we reach 2020’s ‘Spyfall’ we discover that it has been wiped from existence once more. This time, it has been destroyed by the Doctor’s old enemy the Master. This is what he says when he confronts the Doctor…
“I took a trip home, to Gallifrey, hiding in its little bubble universe. Not sure how to describe what I found. Pulverised? Burned? Nuked? All of the above. Someone destroyed it. Our home, razed to the ground. Everyone killed.”
Initially, the Doctor doesn’t believe him, but at the end of the episode she travels there in the TARDIS and sees the ruined citadel, triggering a holographic message from her arch enemy…
“If you’re seeing this, you’ve been to Gallifrey,” he says. “When I said someone did that, obviously I meant I did. I had to make them pay for what I discovered. They lied to us, the founding fathers of Gallifrey. Everything we were told was a lie. We are not who we think, you or I. The whole existence of our species built on the lie of the Timeless Child.”
And it was quite some lie. In a later episode, it transpired that the Timeless Child was in fact the Doctor. She had been kidnapped as a young girl and experimented on, leading to the birth of the Time Lord race. They acquired their ability to regenerate from the Doctor, and they buried this truth deep within Gallifrey’s data store known as the Matrix. The Master learnt this truth and, apparently, he destroyed the planet in his anger.
The fan reception to this plot twist wasn’t stellar, to put it mildly, but there are a couple of caveats. Firstly, this is the Master we’re talking about; he is not known for his truthfulness, and indeed it was he himself who said that “for a lie to work it must be shrouded in truth” in 1986’s ‘Trial of a Time Lord.’ And then there is the Celestial Toymaker, who told the Doctor that he “made a jigsaw” out of his history, suggesting that he may have fabricated the entire Timeless Child saga.
In any case, there’s no denying Gallifrey’s destruction. As things currently stand, the planet still lies in ruins, and no comments have been made about its future – if indeed it has one.
So what do you think? Will Gallifrey ever return to the Whoniverse? Let us know in the comments below.
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