The Nine Gallifreys or Nine Homeworlds project involved the crypto-forming of eight planets into cloneworlds of Gallifrey during the War in Heaven. (PROSE: The Shadows of Avalon, The Book of the War) However, the count of "nine" was understated, as each secondary Homeworld created its own tertiary Homeworlds; some House Military strategists hoped this would end in every planet in the universe being turned into a Homeworld, (PROSE: The Book of the War) with hundreds of duplicates of Gallifrey being used as sheer ballistic projectiles by the end of the Last Great Time War as the scale of the War increased to unmanageable levels. (PROSE: Revenge of the Nestene)
Creation[]
The Nine Gallifreys project was originally planned by Greyjan the Sane (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell) and was spearheaded by House Mirraflex's Lady Armourer Mantissa and House Lineacrux four-hundred years later. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
Officially, each Homeworld was run by a caretaker House as a potential replacement if the original Homeworld were destroyed. However, many of the backup Homeworlds actually acted as decoys, with each having its own War King or War Queen and thinking it was the original.
There was a supposedly-total ban on contact between Homeworlds, but Mantissa eventually went into exile on one of the duplicates, (PROSE: The Book of the War) and by the time of the fall of Mictlan, travel between Gallifreys was often performed by the Lord President and his agents. However, even then, it was rumoured that not even the President knew which was the original. (PROSE: The Taking of Planet 5)
Some Gallifreys were hidden in pocket universes; (PROSE: The Taking of Planet 5) one Great House (AUDIO: The Eleven Day Empire) notably created a homeworld on Christine Summerfield's Earth in a bottle universe. (PROSE: Dead Romance) One human colony world was cryptoformed by the Great Houses into a Homeworld between 3560 and 3591, and some of its inhabitants like Verrifant were mutated into regen-inf soldiers. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
The Book of the War speculated that the original Homeworld could have been moved from its original location and replaced with a cloneworld. (PROSE: The Book of the War) Six years before the Cataclysm, the War King became leader of a Homeworld which The Book of the War said was "generally perceived to be the original", and he continued in that role for over half a century. When Compassion became the first 102-form timeship two years before the War, (PROSE: The Book of the War) Romana III was War Queen and "Mistress of the Nine Gallifreys" on another Gallifrey. (PROSE: The Shadows of Avalon, The Ancestor Cell)
Sometime after the wiping of the original Gallifrey, Homunculette was taught the basics of escapology by War Cardinals at a training complex on Gallifrey XII. (PROSE: Alien Bodies) Homunculette and the War King once visited Gallifrey Eight, which contained loomstacks and chronoforges to create weapons and soldiers for the Time Lords. D-Mat Guns were stored on Gallifrey Nine. (PROSE: The Taking of Planet 5) In another period, Pyke-Xi Raul was from the Sixth Homeworld. (PROSE: Wringing Off)
A group of Oldblood Great Houses created many "lesser Homeworlds" which fought simplified models of the War in bottle universes and oxbow realities. (PROSE: A Prelude to a Prelude)
Destructions[]
In her lecture "The Cultural Impact of War-Time", Entarodora noted that more Homeworlds had been lost "than might be thought prudent". (PROSE: The Brakespeare Voyage)
The first loss of a Gallifrey occurred in the Battle of Mutter's Cluster. At the time, this brought the "official" total down to nine. (PROSE: The Taking of Planet 5)
Romana III's Gallifrey was invaded by Faction Paradox and destroyed sometime before the Eleven-Day Empire was destroyed (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell) in the War's fiftieth year. (AUDIO: The Shadow Play) At that time, the Faction claimed to have written that version of Gallifrey's backups out of existence. (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles)
Most Time Lords perished in the wiping of the original Gallifrey. (PROSE: Alien Bodies) All of the Gallifreys were destroyed by the end of the War. (PROSE: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street)
Several planets appeared to be the remnants of ruined Homeworlds: the legendary world Ardethe in the constellation Kaster Major was populated only by the Shabooj'm; (PROSE: Deadfall) the lifeless planet New Alexandria had the same coordinates as Gallifrey; (PROSE: The Crystal Bucephalus) and Winkle's Wonderland occupied the ruins of Rassilon's Foundry toward the end of the universe. (AUDIO: Zagreus)
Christine Summerfield visited a ruined and deserted Homeworld after escaping a bottle universe. (PROSE: Dead Romance)
Upon mishearing its name, Fitz Kreiner thought that Gallifraxion Four was a Gallifrey. (PROSE: The Tomorrow Windows) The planet was colonised by the Clock-People, (PROSE: Out of the Box) the remains of Mathara's Faction Paradox fleet (PROSE: The Story So Far...) following the Eighth Doctor's destruction of Romana III's Gallifrey. (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell)
At least one Homeworld was predicted to be destroyed upon the destruction of the Hydra-Centaurus cluster by the Grandfather's Maw around the year 60,000,000,000. (PROSE: The Brakespeare Voyage)
Despite the destructions of so many Homeworlds, Entarodora argued in her lecture that the total number of War-time deaths by Great House members was nonetheless small because the inhabitants of these other Homeworlds were "mere-sheath echoes" of a "core probability". (PROSE: The Brakespeare Voyage)
By one account, when the Eighth Doctor used the Moment to end the Last Great Time War, Gallifrey Original convulsed and burst into flames as it was destroyed. (PROSE: Doctor Who and the Time War) By one account, this was the same event as the destruction of Romana III's Gallifrey. (PROSE: The Eyeless, The Gallifrey Chronicles) However, by another account, it was the Eighth Doctor's successor, the War Doctor, who destroyed the planet, (COMIC: Sky Jacks) and most accounts claimed that the War Doctor's other selves teamed up to save the planet instead. (TV: The Day of the Doctor)
Behind the scenes[]
- Author Simon Bucher-Jones, who had introduced Gallifrey Eight and Gallifrey Nine in The Taking of Planet 5, originated the concept of "lesser Homeworlds" in a blog post written in reaction to The Day of the Doctor;[1] this explanation was later incorporated into The Book of the Peace Dossier. In 2022, Bucher-Jones similarly suggested that the razing of Gallifrey in Doctor Who series 12 occurred on one of the seven surviving duplicates.[2]
Footnotes[]
- ↑ Simon Bucher-Jones (25 November 2013). Faction Paradox Stands. SBJ's pantechnicon extravaganza.
- ↑ Simon Bucher-Jones on Twitter (11 June 2022). Archived from the original on 11 June 2022.