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  On many worlds, sugars, proteins and amino acids combined to become primordial soup, “the most precious substance in the Universe, from which all life springs”. [50] Hundreds of millions of years later, the first civilisations began to rise and fall.

  Jelloids from the binary quasars of Bendalos were the longest-lived race in the universe, and many think they were the first living creatures. [51]

  Thirty thousand million light years from our solar system, the first civilisation came into being. The beings were humanoid, and developed for ten thousand years before wiping themselves out in a bacteriological war. The grey man and his race saw all this, and he constructed the Cathedral, a machine “designed to alter the structure of reality”. The grey man’s race had been extremely dualistic, but Cathedral formed ambiguities and chaotic forces that ran throughout the universe, breaking down certainty. Its interface with physical reality was the Metahedron, a device that moved from world to world every eighty thousand years, remaining hidden. [52]

  The slug-like Teuthoidians originated from near the beginning of time, and were among the universe’s first space-faring races. Owing to a fold in hyperspace, some of their number interacted with the universe’s final moments on the planet Chaos. [53]

  ? - “Voyage to the Edge of the Universe” [54]

  Commander Azal launched a mission from Damos that reached the edge of the universe. There he merged with a version of himself from another universe, gaining infinite power... but couldn’t decide which universe was his to return to. Nearby, beings faced the same dilemma... one had waited for ten thousand years, another for twenty-five thousand years, another seventy-three thousand years.

  Legend held that Valdemar was the Dark God captured and destroyed by the advanced and philanthropic Old Ones, after centuries of the biggest war in mythology. Following this, the Old Ones vanished. The Time Lords ranked this as the sixth greatest mystery in the universe. The fourth Doctor and Romana later learned that the Old Ones had punched a hole into the higher dimensions in an attempt to study them, and unleashed a hole that grew and grew, warping reality. Valdemar was the last of the Old Ones, and had entombed himself as a way of containing this reality-warping. [55]

  What remains of the ancient races suggests awesome power - many had great psychic ability and matter-transmutation powers that were almost indistinguishable from magic. All considered it their right to intervene in the development of whole planets, and to destroy such worlds if they failed to match up to their expectations. Comparatively primitive races worshipped immortal beings such as Light and the Daemons of Damos as gods. The legends and race memories of many planets contain traces of these ancient civilisations. Horns have been a symbol of power on Earth since man began, and beings of light have been worshipped.

  Nothing lasts forever, though, and these great races gradually disappeared from the universe. [56]

  New societies sprang up to replace them, and soon the universe was teeming with life. In the late twentieth century, the Institute of Space Studies at Baltimore estimated that there were over five hundred planets capable of supporting life in Earth’s section of the galaxy alone. [57]

  The Dark Times and the First of the Time Lords

  “There was a time when the universe was so much smaller than it is now. Darker, older time of chaos. Creatures like the Racnoss, the Nestenes and the Great Vampires rampaged through the void.”

  The Infinite, a spaceship that could grant your heart’s desire, came from this time. It was later lost to legend, and used to be inhabited by one of the Great Old Ones. [58] Many races evolved before the Time Lords. [59]

  The first humanoid civilisation in the universe evolved on the planet Gallifrey, and mastered the principles of transmat technology while the universe was half its present size. They became the first race to master Time. Some legends said the Time Lords existed far in the past; there was some evidence that they lived in the present, and some say they come from the future. [60] Gallifrey was born before the Dark Times. [61]

  See the section on Gallifreyan History for more detail.

  As the Gallifreyans were the first sentient race to evolve, they established a morphic field for humanoids, making it more probable that races evolving later would also be bipedal and binocular. Non-humanoid races only evolved in environments that would be hostile to humanoids. [62] Rassilon ensured that only humanoid lifeforms survived on many planets, primarily to prevent the Divergents from existing. He used biogenic molecules to restructure the dominant species of sixty-nine thousand worlds. [63]

  Time Lords were around before humanity evolved. [64] Evolution on Gallifrey, as on many other worlds, had been accelerated by the mysterious Constructors of Destiny. [65]

  A civilisation devoted entirely to war developed the Raston Warrior Robot, then vanished without trace. [66] The Caskelliak were created as weapons of war, and were tasked with polluting and destroying entire worlds. Their creators perished in a war that they had initiated. [67]

  The Time Lords explored space and time, making contact with many worlds and becoming legends on many others. Rassilon’s experiments created holes in the fabric of space and time, which unleashed monsters from another universe, including the Yssgaroth. [68]

  The Time Lords unwittingly loosed the vampires on the universe. Until the Time Lords hunted them, vampires fed off mindless animals to service their needs. They later resorted to feeding off other beings. [69] Seventeen known worlds, including Earth, have stories of vampires. [70]

  The vampires enslaved whole worlds until the Time Lords defeated them. [71] The vampires were immune to energy weapons, but Rassilon constructed fleets of bowships that fired mighty bolts of steel and staked the beings through the heart. The Vampire Army was defeated, and only its leader, the Great Vampire, survived by escaping through a CVE into the pocket universe of E-Space. [72]

  The origins of the Time Lords are obscure, but in the distant past they fought the Eternal War against the Great Old Ones and other invaders from outside our universe, beating them back and imposing Order. Science and Order supplanted Magic and Chaos as the Time Lords mapped, and so defined, the universe. [73] The Time Lords were the first to map “the web of time”. [74]

  The Carrionites lived at the “dawn of the universe”, and discovered a means of manipulating reality - using words as science - that resembled magic. The Eternals found the right word to banish the Carrionites “into deep darkness”, and nobody thereafter knew if they were real or imagined. [75] The Hervoken, a race with the ability to shape matter and time, fought a war with the Carrionites millions of years ago. They were eventually banished from the universe by the Eternals. [76]

  The vast biomechanical complex known as the Event Synthesizer began operating.

  “Since the dawn of time, the synthesizer has produced the ordered vibrations of the cosmos... creating events in a logical, harmonious sequence to flow into the main time-stream.”

  It was built by the people of Althrace, who were known to Rassilon, to simulate the effects of a white hole. [77] The last form of magic to survive was psionics. [78]

  During this war, the great Gallifreyan general Kopyion Liall a Mahajetsu was believed to have died. He actually survived, and vigilantly watched in secret for signs of the Yssgaroth’s return. He would deal with the threat of such an incursion in 2400. [79]

  This war may or may not be the same conflict as the Time War, in which Time Lords from a generation after Rassilon fought against other races developing time travel. The conflict lasted thirty thousand years. The Time Lords wiped out many races during this time. [80]

  One such race was the Charon, who were capable of warping space, and whom the Time Lords destroyed before they ever existed. One Charon survived this and created its own clockwork mini-universe. Another unnamed race used Reality Bombs to disrupt the control systems of time machines. A few of these weapons survived hidden for billions of years. [81]

  The Doctor witnessed the horrors of the Time War. At one point,
the Time Lords were attacked by an unnamed race in retaliation for something they hadn’t yet done. [82]

  The Time War ended with all threats to Gallifrey contained, or so completely destroyed that no evidence remained to suggest they even existed. Time Lords were encoded with genetic memories of their ancient enemies and were compelled to destroy any survivors. The Time Lords were ashamed of the Time War, to the point that they deny it ever happened. [83]

  Mr Saldaamir, who would become a friend of the Doctor’s father, was the last survivor of the Time War. [84] There was a Celestial War in which the Ooolatrii captured at least one primitive TARDIS. [85]

  Two galaxies collided in deep space, triggering a stellar collapse that created the Silver Devastation: a vast sector with nothing but dead suns and dark matter, and looked like a huge silver sea in space. Myths about the Silver Devastation suggested that it was populated by the mutant survivors of the two galaxies, or refugees from the Old Time, or monsters from another universe, or that it was just a bottomless chasm in time and space. [86]

  The storm raging at the edge of the Proxima system was hundreds of light years across, and was “older than worlds, older than stars”. It was the largest storm in the universe. [87]

  Several million years ago, a race of carnivores ate rotting meat in the swamps of Malmatine 5, and evolved into Space-Boars capable of space travel. A herd of them travelled around the universe for twenty thousand years before excreting the mass that became the Cassetia asteroids. [88]

  Ruta III was an ice world, and the Rutans evolved with no resistance to heat. The Rutans weren’t natural chameleons, but instead were “shameleons” who adopted the ability to shapeshift. [89]

  The Sontarans and Rutans were involved in “eternal war”. [90] The origins of the conflict between them was lost in the mists of time and was the subject of much propaganda. Much later, the Rutans blamed the war on the Sontarans for attacking the Constellation of Zyt, which the Sontarans claimed was retaliation for a Rutan attack on Holfactur, which the Rutans said had been the base for attacks on the Purple Areas of Rutan Space, which in turn was revenge for an attack on Mancastovon. The war escalated, and it would rage, ebb and flow across the entire galaxy for many millions of years. [91] The Sontarans would acquire six million years of experience with warfare. [92]

  Around the time the war started, the Sontarans became a clone race. Their greatest warrior, Sontar, had defeated the Isari. He was the model for all future Sontarans. To increase efficiency, the Sontaran body was simplified. All non-clones soon died. The leader of the Sontarans, always called General Sontar, had the memories of all previous General Sontars. [93] The “pureblood” Sontarans were originally less squat, with long hair and five fingers. [94]

  The Time Lords colonised planets such as Dronid and Trion. Sharing their secrets with lesser races, though, led to disaster. Evolution on Klist was reversed, and the civilisation on Plastrodus 14 went insane. [95] Eventually, the Time Lords recognised the dangers of intervention when their attempts to help the Minyans resulted in the destruction of Minyos. [96]

  The Time Lords interfered on Micen Island, resulting in chemical and biological warfare and the destruction of the entire civilisation. The Time Lords built the Temple of the Fourth on the ruins, and codified the Oath of the Faction. They scattered in repentance for what they had done. [97]

  The Time Lords remained content to observe, but monitored the universe and tried to prevent other, less principled races from discovering the secrets of time travel. [98] They occasionally sent out ambassadors and official observers. [99] They also attempted to enforce bans on dangerous technology. [100]

  For more information on the history of the Doctor’s people, see the Gallifrey section at the end of this book.

  The Ancient Past

  Before life evolved on other planets, the Exxilon civilisation was already old. [101] Other races such as the Raab of Odonoto Ceti, a race on Benelisa and the Cthalctose of 16 Alpha Leonis One evolved. [102] The Vondrax were among the universe’s oldest sentient races. [103]

  (=) The Nowhere Place [104]

  More than fifty billion years ago, a dominant life-form evolved on Earth and would develop space travel in future. However, a mishap occurred during the race’s first attempt to journey out of the solar system. A mis-setting of the spaceship’s coordinates - when paradoxically combined with the energy of a nuclear missile strike in 2197 - resulted in the engines getting caught in their own time warp. The hyper-spatial equivalent of a Möbius Strip was created, and ripped the entire race out of space and time. They were consigned to the realm known as Time’s End: a point at which all cosmic laws were invalidated.

  Other dominant species would evolve on Earth, but the original race - consumed with madness and jealousy, and using the insane logic of Time’s End to its advantage - subverted each race’s bid for space travel. Each new race was erased from history, made to suffer continuously in the matter-crushing forces of Time’s End. Billions of Earth-born species were snared in this fashion.

  The original race tried to capture humanity, but the sixth Doctor ventured into Time’s End and reprogrammed the original race’s spaceship coordinates into a linear fashion. The nuclear strike from 2197 destroyed the vessel rather than creating the Möbius Strip, which obliterated the original species. Time’s End was either nullified or moved. The dominance of humanity and its time-stream was assured.

  The planet Tivoli was home to one of the oldest civilisations in the Milky Way; the mole-like inhabitants there endured because they capitulated to all invaders, and became the most invaded planet in the galaxy. Their anthem was Glory to [Insert Name Here]. [105]

  c 7,000,000,000 BC - A Death in the Family [106]

  Billions of years before Earth’s sun was active, a planet existed with Earth-like conditions. It became the home to English-speaking humans aboard the timeship UNS Pelican, who named the planet after their vessel. In the two millennia to follow, their descendants established the Handivale: a living, never-ending tale that was recited by a succession of Storytellers. Remembrances of people who had died were included in the Handivale, and were thereby said to survive in the afterlife.

  Evelyn Rossiter (nêe Smythe) was transported through time to Pelican and lived with the people there. Two years later, she found the wreckage of the original timeship. Five years after that, she had a seat on the ruling Counsel.

  An older version of the seventh Doctor left Hex in Evelyn’s care as part of his ongoing struggle with the Word Lord - a linguistic being from a reality governed by language instead of physics, and who travelled in a Conveyance of Repeating Dialogue in Space-Time (CORDIS). Hex became Evelyn’s ward, and read a fictional account of Ace into the Handivale, creating a linguistic version of her in 2028.

  At least six months after Hex’s arrival, Evelyn suffered a mortal heart attack while lecturing at Pelican University. The seventh Doctor and Ace arrived with the comatose Captain Stillwell of UNIT, who had within him the future version of the Handivale. Convinced that the Word Lord posed a threat to all living matter in the universe, Evelyn consented to have the Handivale transferred into her from Stillwell. She became the last Storyteller, and as she died, the Handivale died, and the Word Lord trapped within the Handivale died also.

  About three hundred and twenty Pelican years after Evelyn’s passing, the older seventh Doctor was given the contemporary Handivale so he could “combat great evil” with it. He became the Handivale’s Storyspeaker, trapped a younger version of the Word Lord within the living story, and then sealed himself inside a Gallifreyan sarcophagus that would came to reside in the archives of the Forge. [107]

  c 6,000,000,000 BC - Eternity Weeps [108]

  Jason Kane used a time ring to reach 16 Alpha Leonis One, the home of the Cthalctose. He met the Astronomer Royal, who had detected a black hole in their solar system and provided force field technology. Jason was placed in a stasis field and watched the Cthalctose civilisation develop for five hundred years. The C
thalctose attempted to contain the black hole, but eventually could no longer power the force fields. Unable to save themselves, they built a device, “the Museum”, that could convert another world to resemble their own. This entailed using a terraforming virus that would generate sulphuric acid, which was present in the seas on their homeworld. The Cthalctose launched the Museum out of their solar system, and the forces of the black hole destroyed 16 Alpha Leonis One. Jason Kane’s stasis field failed and he returned to 2003.

  ? - “Time Witch” [109]

  Before the Earth was formed, Brimo was imprisoned in an eternity capsule for attempting to dominate the planet Nefrin. She watched civilisations rise and fall, and when Nefrin’s sun went nova, the capsule fell into the resulting black hole. Once there, she entered a realm where her thoughts became reality.

  Later, the TARDIS was torn apart and the fourth Doctor and Sharon were pulled into a dimensional rift to Brimo’s domain. The presence of the TARDIS started draining Brimo’s abilities, and the Doctor fought a battle of wits with her, finally trapping her by getting her to imagine the eternity capsule. Restoring the TARDIS aged the Doctor and - more noticeably - Sharon by four years.

  As Earth’s solar system formed from dust, the Tractite named Kitig arrived through time via a time tree. As Kitig intended, this destroyed the time tree at the cost of his own life. [110] The Veil, reptilians who could take command of other beings’ bodies, were conquering worlds “when Earth was little more than a ball of superheated gas”. [111]