The Black Scrolls of Sam

Some Time War story notes

Author's note: Here is where I explain my thought processes behind some of my decisions about my story, and explain some things about it.

One problem that people discuss in the show is that of the Doctor's age. The First Doctor was supposed to be centuries old already, while the Fourth was 750, and the Sixth was 957 or something. Then, when the new series came and the Ninth Doctor said he was only 900 when he should have been much older, people had all sorts of ideas to explain it.
Some say he actually lost some of his age because his timeline was altered by timey-wimey disruptions during the Time War, which were inescapable (especially for someone on the front line) and altered everything. The for-charity fanfic for the War Doctor (written by professional authors) Seasons of War (which has some good stories, even though it doesn't actually show that much of the Time War) uses something very similar, stating that the War Doctor had most of the years of his life removed as a payment to a group of temporal engineers in exchange for keeping Earth safe during the War. I don't really like that explanation because it's kind of convoluted. That isn't always a bad thing, especially on Doctor Who, I just think that the explanation for this simple problem should also be simple and something easy to explain.

The best theory out there, and the one I'm using as canon, is that the Doctor eventually lost track of his age, so he started counting over again when he regenerated into the War Doctor. Thus, he fought in the Time War for nearly or about 900 years before regenerating.

A recent chapter in my story states that the War Doctor is now about 650 years old. I put that in there to show how close to the end my story is, and I explained the Doctor's age just now so that it'll actually mean something. It's getting there, we're now getting into the final days of the War and the War Doctor is getting old, but with still a ways to go before the end. There are several things in the story that have to happen before I can end it, and I don't want to rush them. I estimate I have about ten to twenty more chapters left.

One goal of my story is to show how the Time War would actually have played out in the Doctor Who universe, and not just the things I covered in my author's note at the beginning of Part I.
I haven't (yet) gotten the chance to listen to the Big Finish audio plays that deal with the relevant information, but I have watched some of the classic series (I wouldn't say a lot, but probably more than most fans of the new series) and done a lot of research online.

One thing that I put in that makes sense that a lot of people wouldn't know about is the presence of other time-active factions in the War. This was supposed be be the ultimate showdown "for the sake of all creation," after all, so it would actually make less sense for them not to be there. I didn't actually realize this until after I wrote the beginning of the War, so I had to come up with an in-universe explanation for their absence. I decided that Rassilon had sent armies back to stop their involvement and forced them to hide for their own survival, so I continued on with this idea. It does make sense, given what we know about Rassilon's xenophobic nature.

It also makes sense that the War Doctor would turn to them for help when he turned against the Time Lords. One problem I have is with Engines of War is that he continues to fight for the Time Lords until nearly the very end of the War, tolerating their corruption all that time and somehow not noticing how bad it is until they've completely gone off the deep end.
The picture implied by Engines of War in conjunction with The Day of the Doctor is that the War Doctor could not do much of anything to actually fight and reclaim the Time Lords since he was on his own, so he resorted to the Moment in desperation.

This doesn't fit well with the Tenth Doctor's statement that he'd "tried everything" to end the War without destroying his homeworld. The War Doctor's thought process wasn't "I don't have time to think of a better solution, so I'll just get a big bomb and blow everything up," it was more like; "I've tried every other possible option, I've thought about about it long and hard, there is no other way."

I feel it makes a lot of sense that the War Doctor would assemble an army to reclaim Gallifrey and help him fight his enemies during the Time War. After all, Eleven did something similar in "A Good Man Goes To War," and the War Doctor is supposed to have fewer inhibitions when it comes to that sort of thing.

Another thing I'd like to talk about is Preda. We meet her very briefly in Engines of War, but we don't really get to know her before she gets killed. However, we do know that the War Doctor worked with her and knew her to some extent, and that she was important enough for Rassilon to feign sympathy and grief when the War Doctor mentioned her death.

From this I decided that she was someone who had a moderately important role and that her character deserved fleshing out. She may have been someone that the War Doctor cared about, and the reason he isn't seen grieving for her in Engines of War is that he's suppressing it and/or all the stuff that's going on. He did tell Cinder that he'd already lost too many friends, presumably some of them from the War. To me that implies that he was upset about it to an extent, even if he didn't show it much. I like to think that when he is grieving Cinder at the end of Engines of War, he was grieving Preda too. To lose two friends in rapid succession like that is especially sad.

I actually miss writing her, and I may write another story from her point of view after my main one is finished. If I don't, then I hope somebody does.

One more thing for this chapter. I recently named a councilman "Darkel II" after a Big Finish villain who was mentioned on the Doctor Who wiki. I knew that Darkel was Romana's main enemy in the civil war on Gallifrey, but only more recently did I actually click on the article and find out that Darkel was a woman! Oops! Oh well, I guess since English has gender-neutral names, so does Gallifreyan.

If you have any interesting thoughts or insights about all this, please let me know in the comments! Also let me know if there's any other elements of my story or of the Time War that you'd like to discuss!