Skip to main content

Why can't The Doctor save his own planet from destruction?


Once The Doctor told Rose that his planet was destroyed before its time. They were at war. He was emotional too just to show how much he missed his planet.


The Doctor is a Time Lord but he didn't talk like a Time Lord. Why can't he save his planet from destruction before time?



Answer



Because he can't travel to that part of history anymore.


The events which caused the destruction of Gallifrey are known as the Last Great Time War. We don't know many of the details of the War (it happened off-screen between the first adventure of the Eighth Doctor and the revival of the series with the Ninth Doctor), but it was a time-travel battle between Time Lords and Daleks, with many other participants.


The LGTW featured efforts of both races to preemptively destroy each other (including at least one semi-successful attempt by the Fourth Doctor). Messing about with time on such a grand scale created paradoxes and monstrosities and was set to rip apart all of history. To end it, the Doctor used something called the Moment. This ended the conflict, but also time-locked the War. It is speculated that everything which was part of the Time War (including Gallifrey, the Daleks, and many other places/creatures) was not physically destroyed, just sealed off from the rest of space and time, effectively sealing the War in a pocket universe.


Because the Last Great Time War is time-locked, this means its events cannot be revisited, even through use of the TARDIS. A handful of creatures/objects have passed through the time lock, but it has dire consequences when it works at all. Dalek Caan managed, at the cost of his sanity and by we know not what means, to enter the time lock and then exit it with Davros. The entire might of the Time Lord empire within the time-lock was sufficient to pass a sound and a small object out into the post-war future, and they could then use this as a link to pull their planet out of the time-lock entirely--but only with significant help from outside, including an entire planet of identical and insane Time Lords on the outside lending their aid.


So the Doctor can't travel through time to save his planet because he purged it from the timeline in order to save the history of the entire universe.


EDIT: The events of The Day of the Doctor have done nothing to substantially change this answer. We're more confident that The Moment was probably responsible for the locking of the LGTW, but we still don't know any of its particulars. The speculation that Gallifrey is locked in a pocket universe is confirmed, but the rest of the War's participants/time periods/locations must have had something similar done to them (probably by The Moment of its own accord, because the Warth Doctor didn't press the Big Red Button) or the Cult of Skaaro --among others-- wouldn't have found traveling to and from those events so difficult.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

futurama - How much time is lost in 'Time Keeps on Slippin''

In time Keeps on Slippin' , Farnsworth creates a basketball team which he matures by abusing Chronitons. This leads to time skipping forward by random, but ever increasing amounts. How much time was skipped in this way? Answer Unfortunately, I don't think a good estimate can be made for this, for two reasons: Many of the time skips move forward by an indeterminate amount of time. At one point, the Professor mentions localized regions of space skipping forward much more than others. We then see two young boys on the street below complaining about having to pay social security, only to suddenly become senior citizens and start complaining about wanting their money. Thus, each individual could have experienced a different amount of time skippage.
Post a Comment
Read more

aliens - Interstellar Zoo story

I vaguely remember this story from my childhood: it was about an interstellar zoo that came to Earth with lots of bizarre and unusual species, and humans would file through and gape at all the crazy looking creatures from other planets. The twist came at the end when the perspective shifted to the other side of the bars and we discovered that the "creatures" were traveling through space on a kind of safari. They thought they were the visitors and we were the animals. Neither side knew that the other side thought they were the zoo creatures. Answer Got it. Zoo, by Edward D. Hoch. Published in 1958. Link to Publication History Link to PDF
Post a Comment
Read more

Which Doctor Who works are canon?

I have been watching a Doctor Who documentary and they mentioned that Paul McGann did audio stories so he wasn't just a one-hit Doctor (and that there are novels featuring his Doctor as well). My question is: is Doctor Who canon just the show, or is it like Star Wars where some books and audios are canon and some are not? The documentary also shows that before 2005 they did audio stories where the Doctor is female and obviously that cannot be — not the female part, but the show doesn't count any female Doctors in episodes like The Day of the Doctor . Answer Nothing, and also everything The definitive piece of writing on Doctor Who canon is this blog post by writer Paul Cornell . I'm essentially going to be summarizing his post here, much less eloquently, but one section I want to quote directly is this: Nobody at the BBC has ever uttered a pronouncement about what is and isn't canonical. (As I'm sure they'd put it, being such enthusiasts for good grammar.) Be...
Post a Comment
Read more

harry potter - Did Dolores Umbridge Have Any Association with Voldemort (or Death Eaters) before His Return?

I noticed that Dolores Umbridge was born during the first Wizarding War, so it's very likely she wasn't a Death Eater then (but she is pretty evil -- who knows?). After that Voldemort was not around in a way that could affect many people, and most wouldn't know he was planning to rise again. During that time, and up through Voldemort's return (in Goblet of Fire ), did Umbridge have any connection with the Death Eaters or with Voldemort? Was she doing what she did on her own, or was it because of an association with Voldemort or his allies? Answer Dolores Umbridge was definitely not a good person. However, as Sirius points out, "the world isn't split into good people and Death Eaters". Remember that he also says that he doesn't believe Umbridge to be a Death Eater, but that she's evil enough (or something like that). I think there are two strong reasons to believe that: Umbridge was proud to do everything according to the law, except when she trie...
Post a Comment
Read more