Everything about Gallifrey totally explained
Gallifrey is a
fictional planet in the long-running
British science fiction television series
Doctor Who and is the homeworld of the
the Doctor and the
Time Lords. It is supposed to be located in the constellation of Kasterborous, at "galactic coordinates ten-zero-eleven-zero-zero by zero-two from galactic zero centre" (
Pyramids of Mars, 1975), some 250 million
light years away from
Earth (as stated in the
1996 Doctor Who television movie; this would put it outside our
Milky Way galaxy, which is only 80-100 thousand light years in diameter). During the first decade of the television series, the name of the Doctor's home planet wasn't revealed, although it was actually shown for the first time in
The War Games (1969) during the Doctor's trial.
It was finally identified by name for the first time in
The Time Warrior (1973) whilst the Doctor was being interrogated by the
Sontaran Commander Linx. The
Third Doctor, at gun-point, informed Linx that he was aware of the Sontaran species. Linx, realising that if the Doctor were human would have no knowledge of his species, asks, "What is your native planet?" The Doctor replies, "Gallifrey. I'm a Time Lord."
It is never definitively stated
"when" the appearances of Gallifrey in the television series take place. As the planet is often reached by means of time travel, its relative present could conceivably exist anywhere in the Earth's past or future.
Gallifrey's position in the revived series (2005 onwards) was filled in slowly over the first three years of the series' run. In Series 1, it had been established that it was destroyed, along with the
Dalek Empire, by The Doctor during the
Time War.The planet wasn't referred to by name until the third series and wasn't shown on screen until
The Sound of Drums.
Geography
From space, Gallifrey is seen as a yellow-orange planet and is close enough to central space lanes for spacecraft to require clearance from Gallifreyan Space Traffic Control as they pass through its system. The planet is surrounded by a quantum force field as well as an impenetrable force field called the transduction barrier. This prevents all outsiders (with hostile intent, or otherwise) from approaching the planet and allows the Time Lords to maintain their status of absolute neutrality. It also lets them observe the actions of the rest of the Universe without actually taking part in its affairs. The barrier was breached on one occasion by the
Sontarans, when it was sabotaged from within (
The Invasion of Time, 1978).
The Doctor's granddaughter
Susan described her home world (presumably Gallifrey, but not named as such) as having bright, silver-leafed trees and a burnt orange sky at night (
The Sensorites, 1964), features that the
Tenth Doctor reiterates in the episode "
Gridlock" (2007). This casts an amber tint on anything outside the city, as seen in
The Invasion of Time. Gallifrey's sky appeared blue and
Earth-like in
The Five Doctors (1983) within the isolated Death Zone, but this is likely a production oversight.
In "Gridlock", the Doctor also mentions vast mountain ranges situated on Gallifrey, "with fields of deep red grass, capped with snow". He goes on to describe how Gallifrey's second sun would "rise in the south and the mountains would shine", with the silver-leafed trees looking like "a forest on fire" in the mornings. In "The Sound of Drums", the Doctor says that Gallifrey was called the Shining World of the Seven Systems.
The Citadel of the Time Lords stands on the
continent of Wild Endeavour, in the Mountains of Solace and Solitude ("The Sound of Drums"), where the Capitol is also located. Within the Capitol is the
Panopticon, under which the
Eye of Harmony, the
nucleus of a
black hole, is kept. The Eye provides the power required for
time travel (
The Three Doctors, 1973;
The Deadly Assassin, 1976), and all Time Lord
TARDIS time machines draw their power from it (
the 1996 television movie). Also situated in the Capitol is the
Matrix, the vast extradimensional computer network which acts as the repository of all Time Lord knowledge as well as containing the memories of dead Time Lords (
The Deadly Assassin).
Outside the city lie wastelands where "Outsiders", Gallifreyans who have dropped out of Time Lord society, live in less technological tribal communities. The wastes of Gallifrey include the Death Zone, an area that was used as a
gladiatorial arena by the first Time Lords, pitting various species kidnapped from their respective time zones against each other (although
Daleks and
Cybermen were considered too dangerous to use). Inside the Death Zone stands the Tomb of
Rassilon, the founder of Time Lord society (
The Five Doctors).
Somewhere on Gallifrey is also a portal known as the Untempered Schism, a gap in the fabric of reality. Eight-year-old Gallifreyans are brought before the Schism and made to look into the
Time Vortex as part of an initiation ceremony into the Time Lord Academy. According to the Doctor, some are inspired, some run away, and some are driven mad. ("The Sound of Drums").
In several
spin-off novels, which are of uncertain
canonicity, Gallifrey is said to have a copper moon, Pazithi Gallifreya (first named in ). The novel
Lungbarrow also places Karn (setting of
The Brain of Morbius, 1976) in Gallifrey's solar system, along with a frozen gas giant named Polarfrey and an "astrological figure" of "Kasterborous the Fibster".
History
» For general Time Lord history, see History of the Time Lords.
On screen
Few details on the history of the planet itself emerge from the original series run from 1963–1989. In "
The End of the World" (2005), the
Ninth Doctor states that his home planet has been destroyed in a war and that he's the last of the Time Lords. The episode also indicates that the Time Lords are remembered in the far future.
Subsequently, in "
Dalek" (2005), it's revealed that the last great
Time War was fought between the Time Lords and the
Daleks, ending in the obliteration of both sides and with only two apparent survivors; the Doctor and a lone Dalek that had somehow fallen through time and crashed on
Earth. At the conclusion of that episode, that surviving Dalek self-destructs, leaving the Doctor believing that he was the sole survivor of the Time War. However, the Daleks return in "
Bad Wolf"/"
The Parting of the Ways" (2005), and subsequently in "
Army of Ghosts"/"
Doomsday" (2006) and "
Daleks in Manhattan"/"
Evolution of the Daleks" (2007).
It is suggested that other Time Lords might have survived the war when the
Face of Boe utters its final words to the Doctor: "Know this, Time Lord, you're not alone" ("Gridlock"). These suspicions are later borne out in "
Utopia" (2007) when the Tenth Doctor discovers that the renegade Time Lord
the Master has survived the Time War and has been living in human form in the year 100 trillion, at the end of the material universe, a point so far forward in time that it's believed that no Time Lord has ever travelled there.
The Doctor's reference to Gallifrey in "The Runaway Bride" marks the first time the name of his homeworld has been uttered on screen since the new series began. The Doctor's revelation that he's from Gallifrey elicits terror from the
Empress of the Racnoss. John Smith (the Doctor in human form) also mentions Gallifrey in "Human Nature".
The planet makes its first appearance in the revived series in "The Sound of Drums", where the Citadel, enclosed in a transparent globe, is seen in flashback as the Doctor describes it. Also seen is a ceremony initiating 8-year-old Gallifreyans — in particular the Master — into the Time Lord Academy.
It is speculated that Gallifrey will return. When isn't yet known.
Novels
Various spin-off novels have expanded on the history and nature of Gallifrey, although not all fans consider the information in them to be
canonical.
In the
Eighth Doctor Adventures novel
The Ancestor Cell by
Peter Anghelides and
Stephen Cole, Gallifrey is destroyed as a result of the
Eighth Doctor's desire to prevent the voodoo cult
Faction Paradox from starting a war between the Time Lords and an unnamed Enemy. This also apparently (and retroactively) wipes the Time Lords from history. It is unclear what the attitude of the new
Doctor Who television series is toward the information in the novels and audio plays, the latter produced by
Big Finish Productions. However, a number of writers of the novels and audio plays are also writing for the new television series, and Russell Davies refers to the comic strips, audio plays and novels in an essay describing the Time War, written for the
Doctor Who Annual 2006.
In the last regular Eighth Doctor novel,
The Gallifrey Chronicles by
Lance Parkin, it's revealed that while Gallifrey was destroyed, the Time Lords were not erased from history. However, the cataclysm sets up an
event horizon in time that prevents anyone from entering Gallifrey's relative past or travelling from it to the present or future. The Time Lords also survive within the Matrix, which has been downloaded into the Eighth Doctor's mind, but their reconstruction requires a sufficiently advanced computer. At the novel's end, the question of whether or not the Time Lords will be restored remains unanswered, although if the events of the novel are to tie in with later events in the TV series it must be assumed that Gallifrey was at some point restored, only to be destroyed again during the events of the Time War.
Television series executive producer
Russell T. Davies wrote in
Doctor Who Magazine #356 that there's no connection between the War of the books and the Time War of the television series. Presumably, if the novels and the television series events are to be reconciled, at some point Gallifrey is restored, only to be destroyed again in the Time War. In the same
Doctor Who Magazine column, Davies compared Gallifrey being destroyed twice with Earth's two World Wars. He also said that he was "usually happy for old and new fans to invent the Complete History of the Doctor in their heads, completely free of the production team's hot and heavy hands".
Further Information
Get more info on 'Gallifrey'.
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