Wilderness Years

The "temporal Wilderness Years" were a period in the history of the Third Universe. The Auction, (PROSE: Resurrection of the Author) an event in the War in Heaven, (PROSE: Going Once, Going Twice) occurred during this period. According to the Retconning Crocodiles, it was characterised by "endless time-warmongering", creating a lot of "flotsam and jetsam of history" and involving much warfare and retconning. (PROSE: Resurrection of the Author)

Behind the scenes
The suggestion in Resurrection of the Author is that the term of "Wilderness Years" covers the span of meta-time including the War in Heaven and Last Great Time War. This is a metafictional joke, as, in the real world, "the Wilderness Years" is a term often used to refer to the period between the cancellation of the "classic" series of televised Doctor Who and its revival by Russell T Davies; the War in Heaven was a product of the real-world Wilderness Years and the Time War was created to "slot" in the narrative in-between the last televised appearance of the Doctor on television in the classic series — in the form of the newly-regenerated Eighth Doctor — and the introduction of the Ninth Doctor.