"This is the story of the greatest of all wars ever fought. It raged for an eternity across all of time and space. This was the war that made the higher species weep with sorrow and terror, the war that made the mighty Eternals flee for their lives, the war that brought creation itself to its knees and threatened to consume everything.
... Most of the Last Great Time War has been a mystery... until now."
—The prologue
Told in three parts on Wattpad, this is the story of the Time War, the Great Offscreen War from Doctor Who. It starts with the Eighth Doctor after the end of the Big Finish Audio plays, and ends just before the New Series. It succeeded in being the first fanfic to cover the entire time war from beginning to end.
In Part I, the Eighth Doctor trying to help as many people as he can escape from the War while trying to stay out of it himself. President Romana tries to fight the growing corruption and decaying morality of the Time Lords as the War escalates out of control.
In Part II, the War Doctor fights for the Time Lords, trying to defeat the Daleks and secretly looking for a way to depose the morally bankrupt President Rassilon and save the Time Lords from themselves. The War continues to grow throughout the multiverse and the paradoxes begin to spawn terrifying cosmic horrors.
In part III, the War Doctor builds and leads a faction of his own to defeat the Daleks and the horrors spawned by the War, and to take Gallifrey by force and establish a democracy there. The War threatens to consume and unravel all reality, and the armies of eldritch abominations are at least as dangerous as the Daleks and possibly the Time Lords.
It was started in November of 2014, and completed in October 2015. It was written by the Wattpad user King Sam of Awesomeness.
Here are the links to all three parts:
The Last Great Time War contains examples of:
- A Fate Worse Than Death: There are myriad ways for this to happen in the Time War, including being Ret-Gone, having one's timeline warped and becoming part of a Travesty, and becoming trapped in time loops, fighting and dying forever with no hope of escape.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: A positive example. In a flashback chapter, Rassilon built the Moment to destroy all other potential threats. He ends up imprisoned in his own private fortress in a semi-dead state, unable to return to life for one million years.
- Alternate Universe Fic: While much of the material does draw from hints dropped through New Who, the big divergence is that the writer chooses to ignore the events of Doctor Who 50th AS "The Day of the Doctor" near the end of the fic.
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Anvilicious: Lampshaded at the beginning of Part III. "I think we've dropped enough sappy anvils for today."
- Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: The Time Lords plot to do this while they create a paradox so severe that it will destroy the rest of reality to ensure that no enemies can follow them.
- Apocalypse How: Above X3, multiple galaxies are destroyed. Considering that the war is multiversal, the destruction is likely X4 or higher in total. Threatens to reach class Z. The Time Lords plan to cause a class Z apocalypse to win the War.
- Apocalypse Wow: Happens multiple times in various places, but most notably at the end when the War Doctor uses the Moment to obliterate all combatants and civilizations fighting in the Time War.
- Alien Geometries: The home base of the Could've Been King is an entire city made from these. The bodies of many of the Eldritch Abominations also qualify.
- A Million Is a Statistic: The Time Lords quickly gain this attitude, not caring if planets or even galaxies are destroyed unless they are of significant strategic importance.
- And I Must Scream: People who are forced to fight forever, or worse, consumed by the Horde of Travesties.
- Author Tract: Not in the fic itself, but the author before the story mentions that he felt that what Steven Moffatt didn't do justice to the time war compared to what Russel T. Davis had envisioned with it being "hell" from The End of Time. Further, he says that he doesn't think the war would end with Galifrey disappearing as was portrayed in the 50th anniversary, so he does away with that little inconvenience by destroying everything instead.
- Batman Grabs a Gun: One of the first things the War Doctor does after rejecting the name of "The Doctor" is arm the TARDIS. Unlike his weapon-abhorring other incarnations, he is almost always heavily armed.
- Big Bad Ensemble: Rassilon, the Dalek Emperor, and the Could've Been King.
- Bittersweet Ending: The Time War is finally over, and though the Warrior is severely traumatised, he begins being the Doctor again, and starts gradually recovering.
- Blood Knight: The Master.
- Cosmic Horror Story: One from the perspective of one of the cosmic horrors in question, but it's quite clear anyone not a side in the Time War is completely helpless before everyone who is, and those who are not helpless can't defeat each other, causing more and more paradoxes and disasters to appear.
- Crapsaccharine World: In Part II, the outermost Time Lord colony has seemingly become a peaceful utopia. In reality, it's an illusion created by the Horde of Travesties to lure in victims so they can devour their timelines.
- Crapsack World: Crapsack multiverse, it seems, as the War goes in many universes.
- Decadent Court: The Time Lord High Council before long.
- Derelict Graveyard: The Beaches of Devastation, an area where debris and shipwrecks from the War falls out of the time vortex and into real space. The area around the Citadel after the Fall of Arcadia also qualifies.
- Earth-Shattering Kaboom: Is shown sometimes and is implied to happen all the time.
- Eldritch Abomination: Let's see:
- Skaro Degredations and Horde of Travesties: Daleks and other beings (possibly even Time Lords) respectively, who have their timelines so warped that they become completely new beings; the latter want to eat the timelines of their victims.
- The Could've Been King and his forces: beings who have been Ret-Gone and turned into living ideas, able to change timelines and reality like nothing, and even absorb other beings into them. Bonus for the Could've Been King, who implied to be one even before his erasure by Rassilon.
- Eldritch Location: Regions such as the Thanatos Anomaly, a vast area where time and space have been twisted and mangled by the War. The home base of the Could've Been king also qualifies.
- Final Solution: The Time Lords plan to win the War is to create a Reality-Breaking Paradox to destroy all enemies while they Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence. The War Doctor decides that the only way to end the War for good is to kill everyone fighting it.
- Forever War: Since the War is fought across all of time and space and looped in on itself in many places, it has been raging literally forever in linear time. From the points of view of the main combatants, it has been many hundreds of years.
- Foregone Conclusion: Written specifically to fix The Day of the Doctor, so the War Doctor inevitably destroys Gallifrey and all the combatants of the Time War.
- Godzilla Threshold: The War Doctor decides that the only way for the War to end forever is to destroy every combatant. The first time, however, is when Could've Been King and his army of Meanwhiles and Neverweres come to reality. The chapter's title lampshades this, "Beginning of the End''.
- Go Mad from the Revelation: The Nightmare Child is made from all of the worst fears of every sentient being in reality blended together into something even worse. The only way to understand is to see it, and seeing it usually causes this trope.
- Götterdämmerung: One of the major themes of the story. The Eternals fled reality late in part II, and all the forces of the Time War were obliterated at the end of part III.
- The Greatest Story Never Told: As the page quote says, the whole story was one until now, both in universe (only the Doctor knows the full extent of what happened, the rest is mostly myths and legends) and in real life (first story to cover the Time War from beginning to end).
- Great Offscreen War: The First Great Time War from the Time Lord's early history. The Second War in Heaven from the Doctor Who Expanded Universe novels also qualifies here.
- Hopeless War: Eventually becomes this, as every event could be undone by all sides.
- Heel–Face Turn: The 42nd Cyber Legion, who are forced to help the New Temporal Alliance but then regain their emotions and humanity out of their own free will.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: When Rassilon is about to use The Moment to end the First Great Time War by destroying all other potential time travelers, the weapon itself stops him from using it, questions his ethics, judges him unworthy of using it and imprisions him for the next million years.
- Heroic Vow: The Promise of the Doctor, that he would be "the man who makes people better." The War Doctor promises to end the Time War no matter what it takes.
- I Am the Noun: In part II the Eternals tell the War Doctor that he does not know "the full extent of the oncoming storm." He replies with "I AM the oncoming storm."
- I Did What I Had to Do: One of the War Doctor's defining characteristics. "What I did, I did without choice. In the name of peace and sanity."
- Moral Event Horizon: In-Universe: The War Doctor decides that the Time Lords have crossed it when they celebrate the impending Final Sanction.
- New Era Speech: Rassilon gives one after his resurrection and another before the Final Sanction.
- Noodle Incident: Several major battles are mentioned that are never shown or explained.
- No Place for Me There: In the penultimate chapter, the War Doctor believes that this is the case for him in the Post-War universe. Fortunately, the Moment knows better and spares him.
- Red Baron: The War Doctor becomes this, acquiring names like "The Oncoming Storm," the "Evil Renegade" and "The Great Exterminator."
- Reluctant Warrior: The Eighth Doctor decides to become a warrior when he realizes he has to to stop the War.
- Ret-Gone: There are weapons and creatures that can cause this. The Could Have Been King and his armies of Meanwhiles and Neverweres are an excellent example why you shouldn't do that.
- Save Scumming: Used by both the Daleks and the Time Lords. Whenever one side loses a battle, they simply go back and re-fight it. This results in problems.
- San Dimas Time: In this story and in the Whoniverse as a whole, there is a second dimension of time called "meta time." This the axis of time along which changes in history occur.
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: The War Doctor becomes this more and more as the story goes on, and the Ninth Doctor embodies this at the end.
- Shoot the Dog:
- The War Doctor cyberconverted prisoner Time Lords. He's not very happy about that.
- Later on, the War Doctor destroys every civilization fighting in the Time War to end it for good.
- Shout-Out:
- Star Killing: One of the standard weapons used by the Daleks and Time Lords is the "stellar destructor", a device that blows up a star and leaves no neutron star or black hole behind.
- Summon Bigger Fish: How the Warrior stopped the War. He used the Moment, empathetic sentient weapon / Eldritch Abomination, who allowed him to do that and gave him a chance to redeem himself.
- The End of the World as We Know It: In this case is a Class Z Apocalypse.
- Time Crash: Excessive temporal warfare causes this on a local scale in many times and places. The Time Lords plan to cause a full scale one to win the War.
- Title Drop: Almost at the end of Part III, the War Doctor decides that the War will be called "the Last Great Time War," because it must not ever be repeated.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: The War Doctor gives one to Rassilon at the end of part II.
- The Corruption: The Thanatos anomaly and other areas of chaos and paradox caused by the War.
- War Is Hell: Very much so. Time loops, armies of Eldritch Abominations, meaningless victories, destruction of the whole galaxies if not universes, and so on.
- Watching Troy Burn: In Part I the Daleks destroy the star system that the Eighth Doctor set up for refugees from the War to relocate to. In Part III the War Doctor is forced to watch the destruction of the New Temporal Alliance.
- Wave-Motion Gun: The War Doctor jury-rigs the TARDIS into having one that works by blasting energy from the time vortex up through the TARDIS central column and out the lamp on the top. It can take out whole squadrons of enemy ships at once. Many standard battleships also have weapons that qualify as this.
- Weapon of Mass Destruction: Full of these. Planet and star destroying weapons are standard armaments. The Omega Arsenal is full of doomsday devices of every kind. The Cruciform can destroy whole galaxies, and finally, the Moment has nearly unlimited destructive power.
- Wham Episode: "The Final Sanction," one of the last chapters of Part III. The Time Lords realize that the War is unwinnable, and decide to end all reality except themselves. The War Doctor realizes that the Time Lords are beyond saving, and decides to end the War forever by destroying all participants.
- Wham Line: "The War could only end if there was no one left alive who could fight it." The War Doctor goes from trying to save the Time Lords from themselves to deciding to Leave No Survivors.
- Where I Was Born and Razed: The War Doctor destroys Gallifrey at the end of Part III.
