User:Jellyman/TimeWar

Doctor Who originally ran on BBC television between 1963 and 1989, portraying the adventures of "The Doctor", a mysterious alien who – in numerous different incarnations – travels through time and space. Initially, little of the Doctor's origin and backstory was presented to the audience, but various elements were gradually introduced as the show's fictional universe was developed over the years. The War Games (1969) introduces the Doctor's people as the Time Lords, an ancient civilisation with a powerful command of time travel technology. Their home planet, Gallifrey, is first named in The Time Warrior (1973–74). The Time Lords and Gallifrey would make recurring appearances throughout the rest of the programme's original run.

The Doctor regularly battles various enemies, including the Daleks, a race of evil mutants from the planet Skaro. First introduced in The Daleks (1963–64), they became established as Doctor Who's most iconic villains, frequently returning to the programme. Serials that made significant additions to the Dalek mythos include Genesis of the Daleks (1975) – which introduced their creator, Davros – and Remembrance of the Daleks (1988).

The programme was cancelled by the BBC in 1989, and although the Doctor Who television movie (1996) failed to lead to a new series, it would eventually be revived under the leadership of Russell T Davies. His 2005 version of Doctor Who continues the narrative of the original programme, but introduces the concept of "the Last Great Time War", an off-screen conflict between the Time Lords and the Daleks that had apparently led to the destruction of both. Within the fictional narrative, this was supposed to have taken place some time between the events of the 1996 movie and the beginning of the revived series, with the Doctor as the only survivor - "The Last of the Time Lords".

Concept of the Time War
When planning the new Doctor Who, Davies chose to place it within the same continuity as the classic series rather than reboot the programme. Given the series' long absence, however, he felt it was important not to confuse new viewers with previous continuity, which was a mistake he felt the TV movie had made.

Russell T Davies era (2005–2010)
Series 1 of the new Doctor Who was broadcast in 2005, starring Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor and Billie Piper as his companion Rose Tyler. As a result, the new Doctor is introduced without any explanation for the change of actor, although dialogue in the first episode "Rose" implies the Doctor may have recently regenerated. That episode contains the first mention of the Time War, although it is in the second episode, "The End of the World", that The Doctor first explains to Rose that his planet burned in a war and that he is the last Time Lord in existence.

Subsequent stories contain references to the Time War and its effects, but it is not more fully explored until the sixth episode, "Dalek". In this story, the Doctor discovers to his horror that he is not the only survivor of the war – a lone Dalek has somehow fallen through time and ended up being held prisoner in a space museum on Earth.