Doctor Who Series 12: 10 Huge Questions After Spyfall Part 2

The history of Gallifrey is incredibly hard to follow. It has become a somewhat confused mess following the Time War. Trapped in a bubble universe to preserve it from destruction by the War Doctor (The Day of the Doctor), it was temporarily freed (The End of Time) and consigned to the time-lock again by the Tenth Doctor. But Missy teased to the Twelfth Doctor that it had returned, providing him with false coordinates (Death in Heaven). It later transpired that it had indeed been released from the bubble, but had been moved to a safe point near the end of the universe (Hell Bent).

That is the last time the Doctor visited, and it didn’t go well for him. He was hell bent on bringing Clara back from the dead, and the Time Lords, the president included, had become his enemies. Why the Doctor should still care about her home is not addressed in Spyfall, and as with other aspects of the Steven Moffat era it is as if they never happened. According to the Master, Gallifrey is still inside the bubble universe, only now it has been destroyed.

The Doctor’s visit appears to confirm the Master’s surprising revelation. Gallifrey lies in ruins, its people gone, every single one of them. Is that it then, are we back to the Doctor and his nemesis being the last of their kind, one of the key notes of the early Russell T Davies years?

Again, it doesn’t sit right with Chibnall’s vision for Doctor Who. Gallifrey may be no more, for now, but the people are surely still alive somewhere, somehow. Rather than retconning the past, Chibnall may be setting up a new home-world for the Doctor’s people, one that has been redesigned from the Gallifreyan plans, complete with a new structure for Time Lord society.