MOVED TO WATTPAD IN THREE PARTS, HERE IS THE LINK TO PART ONE

story/26964162-the-last-great-time-war-part-i

Author's note:

(This part is not essential to the story, but I had to put it somewhere. Go ahead and skip it if you want.)
I am writing this for several reasons. First, I have always been curious about what happened during the time war, and the meaning of the mysterious elements mentioned about it, such as the gates of elysium, the cruciform, (not to be confused with the crucible from journey's end), the skaro degredations, the horde of travesties, the nightmare child, the could've been king with his army of meanwhiles and neverweres, as well as the huge battles, superweapons, and its ravaging effects on and across time and space. It must have been an epic conflict indeed.

Sadly, depictions of the war in Moffat's era have fallen short of or contradicted what Russell T Davies established about it and intended it to be. RTD stated that the war was not only fought across history, but inside the time vortex itself, as well as other higher realms. This goes with the Gelth's statement in "The Unquiet Dead" that the war was "invisible to smaller species but devastating to higher forms." Remember that this was the war between the two most powerful civilizations in the universe, both with time travel, the ability to destroy star systems with ease, erase people or planets from history, create time loops, freeze objects in time, harness black holes, build ships that are bigger on the inside, and other equally astounding technological feats. This was the war fought for the sake of all creation, where both sides would have thrown everything at each other and used every trick they had up their sleeves.

Considering this, the war should have looked like the most violent, mind shattering temporal hell you can imagine, and not the Star Wars-esque laser shootouts seen in "The Day of the Doctor," and the somewhat better but still disappointing sequences from "Engines of War."

The excuses I see for this all over the internet all go something like this:
"It was the end of the war, everything had petered out, all of the mind shattering stuff was over because both sides had used up all of their best weapons and were making their last desperate push with what little they had left, they only had lower level tech left by then, the horrors and abominations were all gone by that point... And so on.
Essentially, the excuse everyone makes is that it since it was the end of the war, everything had wound down significantly and wasn't nearly as bad.

Not so. The statements made about the war before TDOTD clearly indicate that the final days of the war were the very worst. The war was not burning itself out, but growing and accelerating towards consuming the entire universe (if not the multiverse) and to the total destruction of everything. Here are a couple quotes from "The End of Time" to show what I mean.
The Master: "But this is fantastic, isn't it? The Time Lords restored!"
The Doctor: "You weren't there, in the final days of the war. You never saw what was born. But if the time lock's broken the everything's coming through. Not just the Daleks but the Skaro Degredations! the Horde of Travesties! the Nightmare Child! the Could've-been King with his army of Meanwhiles and Neverweres, the war turned into hell! And that's what you've opened, right above the Earth! Hell is descending!"
The Master: "My kind of world."
The Doctor: "Listen! Because not even the Time Lords can survive that!"

Time Lord council woman: "This[Gallifrey] is only the furthest edge of the Time War. But at its heart, millions die every second, lost in bloodlust and insanity, with time itself resurrecting them, to find new ways of dying, over and over again, a travesty of life. Wouldn't it be better to end it, at last?"

I do like "The Night of the Doctor," and the idea of the warrior incarnation of the doctor who was willing to use weapons and set aside his normal standards in order to protect the greater good.("In the name of peace and sanity") The novel "Engines of War" was a great story, but it fails to set him aside as being different from the Doctor. He was portrayed as just another incarnation of the Doctor, not the one who was created by sisterhood of karn specifically to be a warrior, whose very nature was different from that of the Doctor. I think a big part of the problem is that people call him the "War Doctor," since that is still calling him the Doctor.

The depiction of the Time Lords was also disappointing. In the book, they planned to deploy a weapon that would stop a Dalek plot to erase Gallifrey from history, but would destroy 12 or 13 human colony worlds in the process. This is stated to be a big step, and crossing a line they can never come back from. While wiping out a dozen worlds is pretty bad, (although after so many years of Dalek occupation their population would be mostly gone anyway), from what I saw in "The Night of the Doctor" and "The End of Time," it should have been a line they had already crossed long before.

I imagined the Time Lords destroying uninvolved worlds just to try to shift the timelines in their favor, or even imploding entire galaxies with thousands of worlds just to get rid of the Daleks massing there, and I imagined that the "War Doctor" (in my story he will simply be called the Warrior), would have fought against both sides of the war long before the end.

I have yet to see a fanfic that covers the entire war from beginning to end. This is my attempt to do that, and to do the war justice. It will have elements from the 50th, but it will be different, and a story that lives up to RTD's statements.
Ok, rant over.

It will start right before the Time War breaks out and end when the Doctor meets Rose. Follows the 8th, War, and 9th Doctors, and features various other characters.

RESPONSE TO SOME REVIEWS:

Thank you for checking my story. First thing is, I've moved it to Wattpad because I rarely have access to a computer that can handle this site and the method of updating here is somewhat cumbersome. The story is a lot farther along there. (and split into three parts, if you want to find it.) I promise the writing gets a lot better as it goes on. On Wattpad I've already started to go back and improve the writing in the earlier parts, but once I finish it, (probably within the next few months) I'll go back and overhaul it so it's a lot better. Already it's a lot more worth checking out there than it is here. I really hope you enjoy it.

I don't actually think Engines of War is that bad, I actually really enjoyed it. I just don't think it lived up to its full potential with the Time War stuff. Also, I didn't know who Oliver Hardy was until you posted that and I looked it up. If I quoted him in my story, it was unintentional.

About Romana's plan for the peace treaty, I know it was doomed to failure and a stupid plan, but I had a couple of reasons for putting it in there. One is to show that Romana is an optimist. The reason she didn't know it was completely stupid is because earlier in my canon she did one that was, or rather appeared to be for a time, successful. It was called the "Act of Master Restitution," from a thing from Doctor Who Annual 2006 about the Time War written by RTD. I don't know if it's the same thing as the one you mentioned.

The other reason is that the Time Lords were desperate to avoid a war. The Daleks had finally grown powerful enough to challenge the Time Lords on equal ground and were massing for an attack. The Time Lords knew that trying to make a peace treaty was a long shot, but they didn't know what else they could do that wouldn't start a war for sure. Since Davros was still alive and he had chosen hate instead of being programmed for it, they thought there might be a chance he could see the error of his ways and change the Daleks. Once again, the only choices they saw were this and going to war. Anything else that they did to stop the Daleks would automatically cause a war.

About the Time Lords using up all their good weapons and running out of options, I actually DID know that. The thing to remember is that this wasn't a linear war, so even if they had used up all their superweapons all that earlier stuff was still there. The nasty stuff and all the huge battles weren't over, they were just elsewhere in space and time, but still happening. The End of Time stated that Gallifrey in the final days was only at the edge of the war, but implied that the whole war was about to converge upon it. Even if they ran out of weapons, the gigantic temporal mess was still there, and the final days of the war were still the worst. I think they could've shown us a few things in TDOTD to demonstrate that. For instance, shown vehicles and soldiers on both sides stuck in loops like the car in Father's Day, things changing or flickering in and out of existence, or other instances of time behaving abnormally. More important than that would be implying and stating the presence of mind-shattering temporal horror but not seeing the true extent of it. For instance, having the War Doctor elaborate on "every moment in time and space is burning" and giving us some EOT style descriptions of what's happening that we don't see. Another thing they could've done was show some really horrible monster, or maybe just show people running from it and reacting to it and/or just hear it and see its silhouette and/or its shadow or something, then state that its one of the LESSER horrors of the Time War. That way, they could demonstrate that it was far more then just a Star Wars style laser battle without ruining things that are better left to the imagination.

Prologue

A long time ago, there was a planet called Gallifrey. The Gallifreyans were great space travelers and engineers. In the early days of civilization in the universe, they sought to establish science, thinking, and rationality. They helped save the universe from brutal conquerors such as the Racnoss, and brought peace. The Gallifreyans set their sights on a new goal: Time travel. One of their greatest engineers, Omega, created a stellar manipulator and used it to cause a supernova, to harness the energy to build time machines. Unfortunately, he was lost in the supernova.

His friend, Rassilon, continued his experiments. He created the Eye of Harmony, a black hole held in containment that would power all of Gallifrey's time machines. He created Tardises, sentient timeships that were bigger on the inside and could go anywhere and anywhen. Thus, the Gallifreyans became the Time Lords. Under Rassilon, the Time Lords became the most powerful civilization in the universe. Rassilon led them in a war against the Great Vampires, beings of terrible power that drained the life out of entire worlds. Gallifrey had saved the worlds of the universe once again.

But it was not to last. Rassilon grew proud and jealous. He led the Time Lords in another war, this one against all the other civilizations that had developed time travel, regardless of their intentions. The Time Lords decided Rassilon had become a tyrant, and he was locked away in his tomb in the wastelands. After that, the Time Lords decided that their great powers caused too much harm, and chose to no longer interfere in the affairs of others. Many species forgot the Time Lords, or believed that they were just legends or no longer existed. The Time Lords were still extremely powerful, and did their best to repair paradoxes. However, they grew stagnant and stale, obsessed with rules, rituals, and ceremonies, not advancing or changing while millennia passed.

One day, a young (by Time Lord standards) Time Lord decided he'd had enough, stole a TARDIS, and ran away with his to see the universe and fight evil. He called himself the Doctor. At first the name meant nothing but when he befriended humans for the first time, the name came to mean something much more. It meant he would not be a man of violence but a healer, the man who makes people better. He still fought evil, though, and he had no greater enemy than the Daleks.

Long ago, but long after the early days of the Time Lords, there was a planet called Skaro. On Skaro there were two advanced civilizations: the Kaleds and the Thals. For reasons lost to history, they went to war. A terrible bloody war that raged for centuries and ruined their once beautiful world. Both sides were lusted for victory and were obsessed with racial purity.

Those who had birth defects from the chemicals and radiation were exiled to the wastelands. Davros, the head of the Kaled scientists, realized that the tide of mutations was irreversible. He performed experiments on Kaled embryos to determine the final form that his people would evolve into. The result was a one eyed tentacled blob, incapable of surviving on its own. Davros created armored travel machines to house these mutants.

That was not enough for him, though. He wished to become a god. From his own experiences with the war, Davros believed that interspecies cooperation and democracy were futile. He programmed the minds of his creatures to believe that they were the supreme beings, and removed all love, pity, mercy and compassion. These creatures would have an instinct to exterminate all other forms of life. He named these creatures Daleks.
The Daleks turned on their creator and exterminated him. (although they brought him back when they needed him) Their technology advanced, and they built an empire that expanded throughout space and time.

The Time Lords rarely interfered in the affairs of others. But when they foresaw a time when the Daleks would destroy all other forms of life, they made an exception. They sent the Doctor, in his 4th incarnation to Skaro to destroy the Daleks at their creation. Unfortunately, he did not succeed. He believed he did not have the right to commit genocide. The Daleks later found out that the Time Lords had tried to destroy them, and thus began the Last Great Time War.

It was not a full on war for a while, though hostilities were exchanged. The Daleks forged duplicates of the 5th Doctor, to send to Gallifrey to assassinate the members of the high council of Time Lords. In the Doctor's 6th incarnation, they executed an elaborate plan in which they invaded Gallifrey and used a mysterious ancient element to wipe the life out of an entire galaxy. They were forced to work together with the Time Lords to stop the entire universe from being destroyed along with that galaxy, and war did not break out.

However, the Daleks could now make a base from an entire galaxy, and their hatred of the Time Lords never wavered. During a Dalek civil war, Davros and the faction of Daleks loyal to him stole the Hand of Omega, the very device that Omega had created to engineer stars. Davros declared that with it, Skaro's sun would be transformed into a source of unimaginable power, and with that power the Daleks would sweep away Gallifrey and become the new Lords of Time. Unfortunately for Davros, the 7th Doctor had tricked him. When Davros activated the Hand of Omega, Skaro's sun went supernova, turning the Dalek home world into a burnt out cinder. Or so it seemed. Somehow, Skaro had survived, and the two Dalek factions later reunified, more dangerous than ever.

One of the Doctor's traveling companions, a Time Lady called Romana, later became President of Gallifrey. She did her best to cure the Time Lords of their decadent and stale ways, and saw the threat the Daleks posed. After the incident with the Hand of Omega, she forged a peace treaty with the Daleks known as the Act of Master Restitution. Sadly, it was not to last. During the Doctor's 8th incarnation, war erupted between the Daleks and the Time Lords. It was the largest and the worst war ever fought, spanning all of time and space, fought with some of the most devastating weapons imaginable. The universe cracked and strained as the mighty armies deployed everything they could to achieve victory.

Finally, with the universe on the brink of destruction, the war suddenly ended. The Daleks and the Time Lords vanished from time and space. Except for one sole survivor. To those like us who can only perceive one axis of time, they had never even existed. The Time Lords once again became the stuff of myth and legend. Even those who could remember them, most of the Last Great Time War has been a mystery, because so little has survived. Almost no one know the full story. Until now.