Full Circle II started a debate just from its opening scene which involved The Doctor and Rose in bed together, and the implication that they had been having sex at some point before. Well, obviously. They are a married couple. They DO that. The point of it was that The Doctor had something very deep on his mind. Something he can’t talk to anyone else about. So the solution is obvious. He goes to SangC’lune and talks to himself.

The Time War is a story that is very much up to the imagination. We have a few clues. The Doctor has obliquely admitted to fighting in the war, to being responsible for the death of Gallifrey, to having watched it burn. Most attempts to explain it assume he regenerated due to injuries sustained as he attempted to fight off the Daleks and SAVE his planet. MOST people guess that the Hand of Omega has some part in it.

This story takes the blame from him, but puts it incidentally, on the twins. He is to launch the Hand of Omega at the Dalek fleet. Instead it is deflected from the shielded Chinese TARDIS and into Gallifrey’s sun, destroying the whole solar system but sending The Doctor’s TARDIS flying away on the wave of energy, so that he survives, just, badly injured and his memories distorted of what happened.

So now Eight, Nine and Ten know what happened and Eight and Ten at least are happy to know the truth and be assured they were not the ones who deliberately caused the genocide of their own people. But Nine, ever the brooding one, worries that it is still his fault because HE taught the twins to fly a TARDIS, gave them the ambition to strive to break barriers and do everything. He needs the calming influences of his other lives to stop him letting that become an obsession..

If the Time War ever gets shown in more detail in the series, of course, these stories will be made redundant. There has recently been talk of TV movies starring Paul McGann that will go into the back story, but all that seems to be pie in the sky. For many fans there is the belief that the story should never be told, but shrouded in mystery. They may have a point, though I felt I wanted to tell it in some way.

Of all the attempts to tell the Time War, the best one I have ever come across is this one written by Prue Thomason of Brisbane, Australia, who, I think, has one of the best ideas of how it happened and why.

http://www.rdwf.org.uk/prue/cftb1.htm