Doctor Who: Every Time Gallifrey Has Been Destroyed & Retconned
Looking at the decades that Doctor Who has been on the air, here are all the times that Gallifrey has been destroyed and retconned. In a show about travelling around time and space that has lasted for as long as it has with multiple showrunners and leads, Doctor Who was bound to have continuity errors. One of the most key elements that has been constantly played with in the Doctor Who lore is the Doctor's home planet, Gallifrey.
Gallifrey is home of the Time Lords, the species that the Doctor is apart of. However, even this is now up for debate with the introduction of the Doctor as the Timeless Child in season 12 and the Doctor Who: Flux Timeless Child further retcon. That aside, Gallifrey is both an integral and background part of the series. The planet in the show shapes the Doctor and her friend/nemesis, the Master, and the role they both play in its history. In 2013's 50th Anniversary Special "The Day Of The Doctor," a Gallifrey-saving mission was even used as a fun way to hint at the Peter Capaldi era. Gallifrey has been referenced in multiple episodes on the show over the past 61 years, and with a continued presence in television spanning over half a century, it's easy to consider Gallifrey to be one of the most iconic planets in science fiction.
However, Gallifrey's continued destruction-retcon narrative makes its presence shaky in the show. Whether that serves Doctor Who for the better in the long run is up for debate, considering that some revival moments have given more development to the Time Lords and Daleks. Regardless, Gallifrey's multiple destructions made way for significant retcons. It's during the modern-day Doctor Who era that all of Gallifrey's destructions happen, with Gallifrey only receiving occasional mentions during the original series. Therefore, the seasons mentioned in this compilation are referring to the current iteration of Doctor Who running from 2005 to present day. Here are all of the moments when Doctor Who's Gallifrey was destroyed and retconned on television.
After a party held to witness Earth's destruction five billion years in the future, the Ninth Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) informs his companion Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) that his home world has been destroyed, making him the only Time Lord left. The Ninth Doctor's connection to Doctor Who's Daleks gives him an interesting relationship to the creation of the genocidal Time War that remains key throughout the series. Doctor Who's 2005 revival stating the destruction of the Doctor's home planet so early in the beginning establishes a lot about the Doctor's place in the Universe and how his character developed since his last iteration.
The two-part special "The End of Time" serves as both a great sendoff for David Tennant's beloved Tenth Doctor and a twist to what really happened to Gallifrey. The first part of "The End of Time" introduced the Lord President Rassilon (Timothy Dalton) and the Time Lord Senate in an unknown part of the universe. In the second part, the Doctor's tense relationship with the Time Lords fleshes out further, which strengthens the future possibility of Doctor Who's Time Lords being the ultimate villains in future seasons.
It's revealed, however, that Gallifrey was not actually destroyed but rather put in a "time lock." Part two centers around the Doctor's interactions with the Time Lord Senate and the Master (John Simm) in his attempts to prevent Gallifrey from leaving the time lock, which would result in disastrous consequences for the universe. While it's a gripping two-part finale, it retcons Gallifrey's destruction by proving that it was simply blocked from the Time Vortex.
While this episode is a huge fan-favorite with the return of all previous doctors (with a flash of Capaldi's eyes hinting him as the Twelfth Doctor), "The Day of the Doctor" special saved Gallifrey entirely from destruction. Broken by Doctor Who's Time War, John Hurt's War Doctor is initially responsible for Gallifrey's destruction by activating The Moment, the most powerful weapon ever made, when he decided that it was the only way to stop the war at that point. However, as the episode continues, Gallifrey's destruction from the Moment is reversed after Clara convinces the Tenth, Eleventh, and War Doctors to save everyone and find a different solution to ending the war. They decide that in order to save Gallifrey and destroy the Daleks, thus ending the Time War, they must round up all their previous reincarnations and freeze Gallifrey into a pocket universe using stasis technology. While this Twelfth Doctor Doctor Who theory regarding Gallifrey's destruction after this episode may be true, their actions are successful in saving Gallifrey, making the planet disappear.
"Hell Bent" retcons previously given information from season 8, episode 12 "Death in Heaven" which showed Missy (Michelle Gomez) giving the Twelfth Doctor coordinates to Gallifrey that ended up being false. After being trapped in a "confession dial" time loop for over four billion years in the previous episode "Heaven Sent," the Doctor is back on Gallifrey and learns that Missy, in fact, wasn't lying. There is a missing detail: Gallifrey is positioned at the end of time for its own protection. While Gallifrey was never implied to be destroyed during this time, its existence in the universe was put into question. Making Missy's information false on a technicality cheapens the writing and the otherwise interesting dichotomy between her and the Doctor.
It's revealed that the Master destroyed Gallifrey in Doctor Who during the second part of its two-part season 12 premiere, "Spyfall." The Master (Sacha Dhawan) reveals in a holographic message to the Thirteenth Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) that he is responsible for the planet being in ruins after he discovered about "the Timeless Child." While the Timeless Child later becomes what is probably Doctor Who's most infamous retcon ever, this episode at least gives the Master a reaction to the news that's kind of in line with his character - if a little irrational. Later, it's revealed that the Timeless Child is the cause of the Time Lords' regeneration powers, and that the Doctor herself is the Timeless Child. It's perhaps a big mistake to add such a monumental twist as the Timeless Child to Doctor Who's Whitaker era, among the many mistakes this information creates. That said, considering that the Master has been at odds with the Doctor throughout the series, for her to secretly play such a pivotal role in Time Lord history would probably cause an understandable lash-out. Why on the entire planet of Gallifrey is another matter.
Doctor Who has created a long history for Gallifrey, especially in its modern era. Some retcons made way for rather interesting takes on the Time Lord history, even if they felt clunky in its delivery. Meanwhile, Gallifrey's multiple desolations give more weighted moments to develop the Doctor, the Master, and the Time Lord race. With that said, Doctor Who has destroyed and retconned Gallifrey, to the point that it's become a running plot point in the show.