"Times change, and so must I" - Dawn of a new era

Russell T Davies was a life time fan of Doctor Who and after it came off the air in 1989, he had always wanted to see it return but thought it had had its time. Despite that, after mentioning to the heads of the BBC about him being interested in bringing back the show, they eventually contacted Davies to start production. Production started in 2003 and by 2005 the show was back on the air, but not all was the same. A big piece of Doctor Who history had been added into the mix. The Timelords, the Doctor’s species were dead and Gallifrey was gone. The last time we had seen the Doctor there was no mention of a war or the Timelords being all dead. Within the sixteen years Doctor Who had been off the air this unarguably huge event had occurred and we hadn’t even seen it. This was accepted by the fans as ‘canon’ and no one argued against it as this was the first time the show had been on screens. The time scale of the show being off the air for so long allowed fans to accept this large change to the universe of Doctor Who and this event was carried on throughout the entire Russell T Davies era as show runner. Below is a video I edited together showing how the information about the Time War stay consistent throughout the Davies era.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFUd2neIpwU

As you can see throughout the five years that Russell T Davies ran the show, the canon of the Time War stayed consistent. Davies created the concept of the war and it came out of his imagination. When other writers mentioned it within episodes they wrote, they were, as we discussed earlier, textual poaching from Davies. However, from Rose (2005) all the way to The End of Time Part 2 (2010) the facts didn’t change, and the canon smoothly ran along with no issues or arguments, even when other writers talked about the Time War.

While the Time War didn’t contradict with past events in Doctor Who canon, other episodes did. Paul Cornell discusses one issue being the destruction of Earth. Both in The Ark (1966) and The End of the World (2005) the Earth’s destruction is shown but for completely different reasons.

However, as Cornell points out “the War puts all historical events up for grabs. Nothing necessarily happened like we think it did.” (Cornell 2007). What Cornell is saying, as a writer of the show, is that the Time War was so destructive that events no longer happened the way we originally thought, including the destruction of Earth. It happened both ways. One happened first, and then time was changed so this version happened. This is a believable solution to the issue of the canon. It ties up the loose ends and it is explained multiple times in episodes during the Davies era that with the Timelords being gone a lot of things have changed. For example, during the episode Father’s Day (2005), Rose goes back in time and saves her father, Pete, from dying.

Rose with her father Pete

The Doctor states that originally Timelords would have prevented this paradox from occurring but since they are gone, due to the War, time is slowly collapsing. Another example is the fact we hadn’t seen Torchwood in the world of Doctor Who until 2006. Cornell explains that it didn’t happen until the Doctor met Queen Victoria, once he met her the future changed. This was due to the cataclysmic events of the Time War. However, what happens if a large part of the Time War which is the ending, is changed?

Now I shall look at the Steven Moffat era and what happened during the events of the 50th Anniversary.