Thursday 8 October 2015

FIXING CONTINUITY GLITCHES:

WHY WAS THERE A TIME WAR?

by Adam Gobeski

If you've been following my essays closely, you'll have noticed my last post mentioned a theory Adam Gobeski had about the Valeyard's role in the Time Wars. Adam, wonderful guest contributor that he is, tossed me an essay he wrote that talks about the issue more extensively....

Special Note: This essay was originally composed before the 50th anniversary special. A few of the references it makes will be slightly dated because of this. 

As far as the Doctor's concerned, at some point between the TV Movie and Rose, a great Time War occurred between the Time Lords and the Daleks - wiping out both races (sort of: see, among others, Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways, Army of Ghosts/Doomsday and Utopia/The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords for why this isn't exactly true). While bits and pieces of the events of the War have been revealed over the course of the BBC Wales series, the trigger of the conflict remains unknown. But perhaps more importantly, the question remains: why was there a war at all?
Initially, it seems odd because the Time Lords are often portrayed in the series as observing the timelines and intervening when they deem it necessary (such as Colony in Space, or The Two Doctors). If they have this power, then surely they should have seen the Daleks coming? Shouldn’t they have prepared themselves?
Well, maybe they tried. In Genesis of the Daleks, the Time Lords send the Doctor on a mission to either prevent the Daleks from being created, make them less aggressive as a race, or find a weakness in their origin. The reasoning being that the Time Lords foresee a time when the Daleks will become the supreme power in the universe. Presumably this would mean that the Time Lords were threatened as well as other races. Despite the fact that the Doctor doesn’t outright destroy the Daleks at their inception, the Time Lords aren’t seen to attempt to interfere in Dalek history after this.  So it would seem that they’re reasonably satisfied with the results and must not feel the Daleks would become a threat to them. Which means that we’re back to wondering why there was a war in the first place.
Perhaps, in order to better understand the question, we should first ask how the Time Lords monitor the timelines at all. We can probably safely assume that the Time Lords' monitoring device is the Matrix - the repository of Time Lord knowledge. The Deadly Assassin mentions that the Matrix can predict future events, such as the assassination of the President of the Time Lords in that story. Presumably if the Matrix has this capability, then it would be the main tool which the Time Lords use to monitor the timelines. They examine the future with the Matrix and see what results from certain events. But The Deadly Assassin also shows that these predictions can be intercepted and redirected, Although, as Coordinator Engin points out, you would need a living mind to do it. So someone who actively wished ill upon the Time Lords may have re-directed these predictions about the Time War so that the Time Lords never saw it coming. Who would such a person be?
Going by Occam's razor, let's assume that it has to be a fellow Time Lord. We can eliminate most of the likely candidates right away. The Monk's more mischievous than evil, and the Rani's far too scientifically-minded to get caught up in that sort of thing - it's not clear what she would gain from such an action. The Master's more likely. But The Sound of Drums seems to scotch that notion (unless you think the Time Lords would seriously resurrect the betrayer of their people to fight on their side). And no other Time Lords that we've seen would be interested/capable of diverting the Matrix in such a manner.
No, hang on. There is one possibility. At the risk of being unbearably fannish, it could be the Valeyard from the Doctor’s trial. After all, at the end of The Ultimate Foe it was revealed that he had taken over the body of the Keeper of the Matrix - the guardian of the sum of Time Lord knowledge. He would have control over the predictive powers of the Matrix as well, which would mean he could very well link into the Matrix (supplying it with the "living mind" required) and divert any predictions about the impending Time War. As for his motivation for doing this, it’s possible that the Valeyard would be attempting to withhold vital information from the Time Lords to use as bargaining chips in exchange for a full Time Lord lifespan. Similar to what he was promised in The Ultimate Foe. Or he could just be doing it out of spite.
(If that doesn't work for you, there is an alternative. In the wake of The Ultimate Foe, the Time Lords could now be simply mistrustful of what the Matrix predicts. After all, it’s been shown that it can be tampered with - something that the Time Lords haven’t considered as a possibility before - and they might therefore dismiss a prediction of the Time War as either an artifact of the tampering or simply inaccurate. Or they may be simply unwilling to believe that a force could actually threaten them in the face of the facts. Quite simply, they are in denial. Maybe that was the part of the Matrix that the Valeyard blew up.)
(No? One additional possibility then. This is the least workable theory, but we include it in the interest of full disclosure. The Time Lords do know that something big is approaching, but they're too powerless/scared to do anything about it. This would be the reason why Time Lords aren't supposed to travel to the very far future (Frontios) - it's not actually because (say) interfering with the colony on Frontios is forbidden, But because a Time Lord might learn something about the Time War. This theory has major drawbacks though, not least of which is that it requires Gallifrey to adopt an unusually lax and defeatist attitude toward their own future. For one thing, it plays all sorts of havoc with the idea of Gallifreyan Mean Time (the rough idea of which says that (a) Time Lords and Gallifrey travel in time at the same rate - so when a year passes for the Doctor, it also passes on Gallifrey - and (b) the timeline of Gallifrey isn't necessarily at a one-to-one correspondence with the rest of the Universe), some version of which is required if you want to make any sense of the Gallifrey-based stories. After all, if Gallifrey's not linked up to the rest of the Universe, why should it matter if the Doctor travels to Frontios?)
So we now have a workable theory as to why the Time Lords wouldn’t have seen the Time War coming. But why would the Daleks attempt to specifically destroy the Time Lords (as opposed to just incorporating them into their general plans for universal conquest)? Russell T Davies has suggested that the events in Genesis of the Daleks were the catalyst for the Time War, but this doesn’t really make sense, as it would then follow that all of the Daleks’ actions have been with the ultimate goal of wiping out the Time Lords, That's a nice idea thematically - implicating that the Time Lords are ultimately responsible for the Daleks’ thirst for conquest - but rather at odds with most of what the series (including Genesis of the Daleks itself) tells us about the Daleks.
There is, however, a logical alternative. What if the Daleks’ antipathy toward Gallifrey didn’t stem from the actions of Genesis of the Daleks, but rather Remembrance of the Daleks? In that story, the Doctor, a Time Lord, not only destroys Skaro’s sun, but he does so with a Time Lord device - namely the Hand of Omega. Presumably there are Daleks who weren’t in the vicinity of Skaro when its sun went supernova (despite what the Doctor might claim to the Black Dalek) and they could easily discover what had happened to Skaro and who was responsible. Particularly if Davros survived at the end (as it appears he did) and told the other Daleks. (We could go into the War of the Daleks version of events here with its two Skaros, but as nothing there seems to contradict this theory, we won't bother.) So this then could very well be the catalyst that leads to the Daleks taking up arms against the Time Lords. This has the added bonus of fitting in well with the Doctor’s personal timeline, explaining why he wasn’t fighting the Time War back as the Third Doctor.
Two additional points we feel we should mention: First, the Daleks’ plan to assassinate the High Council in Resurrection of the Daleks. Ignoring the fact that the Daleks have set a trap for specifically the Doctor, (the one being in the universe who has defeated the Daleks time and time again and would therefore probably be the least likely person they would want to involve themselves with) even if all they want to do is duplicate him and use him as their agent...this still doesn’t really feel like it’s part of a large war effort. The whole tone of the piece seems less focused and centralized than what you’d expect from a Dalek war. Particularly one that will eventually end in the destruction of the Time Lords and the Daleks. It's possible that this is an initial skirmish by the Daleks before they make their intent plain. Buried amidst numerous plots and counterplots, the assassination plan hardly seems like the coordinated effort the Daleks must surely know they would need to make against Gallifrey. There's also the matter of how the increasingly divided Dalek forces on display in the '80s Who stories could possibly become the major threat of the Time War - especially since we now know that Davros was alive and active during the War (Stolen Earth/Journey's End) - but never mind about that now.
Second, the throwaway line from the beginning of the TV Movie which shows the Daleks exterminating the Master for his crimes, but then allowing the Doctor to take his remains back to Gallifrey, is a bit of a puzzle. Especially if we assume that the Daleks bear this intense animosity toward the Time Lords (actually, given what we know of the Daleks, this is a puzzle - to put it mildly - in any event.) But if we can turn to secondary material for a moment, we could note that the end of Lungbarrow includes a discussion about the difficulty of retrieving the Master’s remains from Skaro. Which means that we don’t need to entertain any possibilities about there being temporary peace between the Daleks and the Time Lords during which the Daleks' greatest enemy can pop in and collect the Master.
So, to sum up. Given what we know, it seems that the Time War was probably sparked by the Doctor’s actions in Remembrance of the Daleks. Which led to the Daleks waging a full-blown war against the Time Lords. The Time Lords were insufficiently prepared for this, most likely stemming from the events of The Trial of a Time Lord and probably involving the Valeyard, and so weren’t able to initiate any action (like a preemptive strike) to prevent the Time War from occurring. The events of the TV Movie and the lack of any ongoing Time War there suggests that the majority of the War almost certainly happens during the Eighth Doctor’s lifespan. Which, if you accept the BBC books as canon (and fair enough if you don't), means he’s seen Gallifrey and the Time Lords destroyed twice in as many regenerations.

If that is the case, no wonder he regenerates into Christopher Eccleston!

Thanks again, Adam. I definitely like to imagine that nasty Valeyard running around in his Keeper of the Matrix outfit screwing over the Time Lords as the Daleks amass their fleet at Gallifrey's doorstep. There's also a lot of other interesting ideas that you explore, here. 

Like the way Adam expresses himself? Check out his own blog at:
http://anhourofwhoaday.blogspot.com

He also does a really cool podcast:
www.gobeskiwallacereport.com

Remember: you can submit essays too, if you'd like. Leave me a comment, here, if you're interested. Or email me at: robtymec@hotmail.com.  





    
    





     

4 comments:

  1. Some interesting ideas there. I always thought that Genesis may have sparked it, since The Daleks refused to stay buried and would want to go forth and conquer the Universe.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm of the impression that the Daleks eventually found out what the Time Lords tried during their point of creation. As the events of Genesis of the Daleks unfolded, they had no idea that the Doctor was sent to prevent or curtail their existence. But somewhere much further down the road, they put two and two together. Which cheesed them off and got them to want to fight the Time lords all the more. I don't think that, 20 minutes after Doctor Four, Sarah and Harry went spinning off at the end of Genesis, the Daleks went: "Holy Crap! We think the Time Lords did this! Let's exterminate them!" But I wouldn't be surprised if something like this happened several thousand years later when the Daleks discovered who the Time Lords were and got to know the Doctor a little better.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I don't think you need to assume that the Daleks hold an intense animosity towards Time Lords to explain the Time War. If the Daleks goal is ultimately to conquer all of space AND TIME (they are using time travel after all), it stands to reason that the Time Lords stand in their way ; either immediately - because the Time Lords somehow step in to limit the use of time travel - or as an obstacle that the Daleks must ultimately remove in order to achieve Universal mastery.

    If that's the case then the Time War is simply a strategic engagement that the Daleks embark upon. It was always going to happen at some stage, and all that's left is when it starts. It doesn't even necessarily need a specific trigger event, it may simply have begun at a coldly logical point when the Daleks felt they had amassed the strategic capability. But any event in which the Time Lords (via the Doctor or otherwise) demonstrate that they are a threat could have spurred the start. It does however seem necessary that this event occurred at the actual point in linear time when the War started, which makes it hard to see how an event that steps out of linear time, like meddling in the creation of the Daleks in Genesis, could act as a trigger - unless as Rob says the trigger was the Daleks later learning about it.

    (It was probably right around the time that Davros went "waitaminute, is this a sonic screwdriver? The Doctor is a Time Lord? What was he doing back on Skaro anyway? Why I oughta..." *shakes fist at sky*)

    ReplyDelete
  4. I agree with what you say, Iain. The time wars were inevitable. But any good war has some propaganda in it to incite the masses and get the soldiers to fight all the harder. Even a more logical race like the Daleks would employ such a tactic (Cybermen might not - unless, maybe, it's the Cybermen we see from Revenge of the Cybermen to Silver Nemesis. They seem a bit more emotional). So if the Daleks could find events where the Time Lords directly attacked them, they would probably highlight them to help motivate the troops.

    "We not only need to attack the Time Lords because we need to conquer all of time. But look what those bastards did! They tried to avert our creation and then blew up our sun with one of their superweapons! Mercy! Er.... I mean - Exterminate!"

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for the comment! It will be posted shortly...