or_timelords | The Backstory

Gallifrey

The Doctor grew up as the son of a Gallifreyan politician. He had one older brother, whom he never knew well, since his brother was already living at the Academy when the Doctor was born. He never knew his mother, either; nobody in his family ever talked about her. By the age of eight, he was sent to the Prydonian Academy, where he spent the first century of his life in the company of his peers. This is where he met Koschei and Ushas, and most of the future Time Lords of his generation. He was never a brilliant student, although his mediocre grades were not so much caused by lack of intelligence as they were caused by unwillingness to comply with rules and regulations.

During his later years at the Academy and in the following decades, the Doctor was part of a political underground party led by Koschei, or later the Master. Among other issues, they opposed the Gallifreyan system of government and the absolutist power of the High Council as well as the strict and questionable criteria that determined eligibility to enrol at one of the Time Lord academies. The Doctor was the Master's right hand man, and second in leadership of the party. When the group got bigger and gained political influence, his strong involvement caused him and his family--he had married a fellow party member and had two children with her--to be persecuted and harassed.

When he had a falling out with the Master caused by differences of opinion on the party's goals and methods, the Doctor lost the support of the party, and was soon left with the choice of either facing a political trial for treason or leaving his home planet. The Doctor, aged 264 years at the time, chose to leave, leaving behind his friends and family, and went to live on Earth. In his second regeneration, his exile was made official when he was put on trial for violating the policy of non-interference. He returned to Gallifrey quite a few times in his later life, but he never stayed.

The War

The Time War began when the High Council of Gallifrey decided to break their cardinal rule of non-interference and declared war against the Daleks, with the goal of eliminating them as a threat to the universe. The Time Lords were superior in technology, but the Daleks were stronger in number, and after a period of peace that had begun millennia ago with the Age of Rassilon, Gallifrey wasn't prepared for a long war. Their resources were used up long before the Daleks showed any signs of defeat, and the High Council began to cancel Gallifreyan colonies out of existence--creating paradox after paradox in order to provide the home planet with more resources. The plan was to defeat the Daleks and then to resolve the paradoxes, reinstating the colonies and imprisoning the entirety of the Dalek race in a single paradox to be maintained and guarded by the High Council of Gallifrey.

The Doctor's involvement in the War consisted mainly of spy and recon missions. He fought the entirety of the War in his eighth regeneration. The nature of his missions required long periods of absence and radio silence, which left him mostly out of the loop regarding the actions of the High Council. In the last phase of the War, he was recruited as a sort of emergency service--the many paradoxes were destabilizing the Vortex, and the Doctor was sent to patch up the worst temporal disturbances. By then, he knew what the High Council had done, but it was too late to take any action against it.

Shortly before the end of the War, a civil rebellion broke out on Gallifrey. The people were violently protesting against the ruthless actions of the High Council. The rebellious movement was led by the new leaders of the party the Master and the Doctor had founded in their late years at the Academy. The civil war brought chaos and destruction to the heart of the Time Lord empire, and along with a stable, central leadership, Gallifrey lost their last chance to win the war against the Daleks. The Doctor was the only Time Lord in the field who had not followed the call to retreat to the home planet. The Vortex was destabilizing, even faster now with the control of the Time Lords gone, and the only way to prevent the collapse of time itself was to destroy the center of the multiple and multi-layered paradoxes. Gallifrey burned and the Vortex realigned itself, sending a temporal shockwave through all of time and space that left very few Dalek motherships and no Time Lords except the Doctor as survivors. The Doctor time-locked the entire War against any more interference and began his life as the last remaining Time Lord in his universe.

He spent quite a few years on his own, working through the trauma of the war, until he forced regeneration to his ninth incarnation and returned to Earth, where he soon met Rose Tyler. The regeneration to his Tenth happened when he absorbed the Vortex to save Rose.

The TARDIS

As part of becoming a Time Lord, every student of the Academy underwent bonding with a TARDIS. The Doctor bonded with the Type-40 that would accompany him for the rest of his life when he was 85 years old. When he left Gallifrey, he took the TARDIS with him, despite the fact that bringing advanced technology into contact with a pre-contact civilization was technically a breach of the policy of non-interference. The Time Lords tried again to take his TARDIS away from him when he was tried in his second regeneration, but failed to do so. Having been bonded with her for over 900 years, separation from his TARDIS now would cause the Doctor severe psychic trauma. The TARDIS would not survive a separation from her Time Lord.

The Master

The Master has always been an important figure in the Doctor's life. He is one of the few people who knew the Doctor before and after he left Gallifrey. As young students, they were inseparable, and later their shared political conviction kept them close. Their falling out happened when the Doctor discovered that the Master's intentions for their party's goal were even less democratic than the High Council's policies. When he left Gallifrey and his family, the Doctor also turned a century-old friendship into enmity and rivalry. The Doctor has always harboured the hope of being able to convince the Master of his own principles, but the Master perceived the Doctor's leaving as nothing short of treason, and despite years of trying, the Doctor was never able to contrive reconciliation--especially when the Master, now exiled from Gallifrey as well, began to conquer and usurp planets with complete disregard of the lives of the inhabitants.

After the War, when the Doctor discovered that the Master had survived as well, his need to reconcile was stronger than ever. The Master, however, who had lost the last of his sanity during the War, preferred death over reconciliation. (Or did he?) As far as the Doctor knows, the Master is dead.

Read about the Doctor's reaction to the Master dying.

Romance

The Doctor, in his tenth regeneration, is over 900 years old (maybe even over 1000; he lost count at some point), and there have been quite a few romantic interests in his life. The Time Lords were not a monogamous people, and the Doctor is not of a monogamous mind-set. His first serious relationships were with Koschei and his wife, Lanla, during his early life on Gallifrey. Lanla had not attended a Time Lord academy, which made the Doctor marrying her a breach of etiquette. The Doctor's leaving Gallifrey was to a part fuelled by the desire to end his relationship with the Master. Lanla never forgave him for leaving, and he never saw her or his children again afterwards.

In his early time on Earth, he mostly kept to himself, avoiding close personal relationships turning romantic. There were close friendships that may have carried some physical undertones (in his second and third regeneration, the Doctor was extraordinarily fond of Brigadier Sir Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart). His leaving Gallifrey, while effectively ending his marriage, didn't quite as effectively end his relationship with the Master, whom he met again for quite a few times especially in his Forth. However, his next serious relationship didn't happen until Romana came into his life when he was in his fifth incarnation. They travelled together for a while, until Romana decided to leave the Doctor to live in E-Space. That's the last the Doctor ever saw of her.

In his Sixth, the Doctor's relationship with the Master flared up again, as it had always had a tendency to, but soon, regeneration put an end to this renewed closeness. The Doctor mostly avoided any romantic involvement with humans, or, in fact, even any sexual involvement, keeping his friendships with people from Earth entirely platonic. He kept with this policy up until the War. When Nine returned to Earth, he'd been on his own for quite a while. Rose Tyler was the first person to get close to him in a long time, but he didn't get romantically involved with her until he regenerated into the tenth Doctor.

Rose was the first human the Doctor ever tried to have a long-term relationship with, but when they got separated, the Doctor realized his mistake. After losing Gallifrey, the Doctor was looking for a new home, and was trying to integrate into human society as best as he could. As a Time Lord, though, he's too different to ever be a fully integrated member of humanity, and especially to ever have a close, long-term relationship with a human.

Ever since, he's kept his romantic interactions with humans casual. He quite enjoyed Shakespeare's company, and of course, there was Joan, whom John Smith was fully prepared to dedicate his human life to. The Doctor would probably have abstained from a physical relationship, not wanting to make the same mistake twice, but Joan understood that he was too different, and declined his offer to travel with him. He never had a romantic encounter with Martha, since it was pretty clear that her intentions were more than casual. He did have a physical relationship with Donna, but it was more about friendship than anything else.

Generally, the Doctor values his independence higher than anything, which is why it is highly unlikely that he will ever pursue a long-term relationship with anybody, be it Time Lord or human, again.

Read about Lanla and the Doctor's early relationship with the Master.