After having seen last night's episode, it got me thinking. The closing moments when the Doctor arrived at the rocky wastelands of Outer Gallifrey, it looked bleak and deserted.

IMO, it seemed difficult to tell whether it was Gallifrey before, or after The Time War.

Does anyone know when on Gallifrey the Doctor arrived?

The Next Time trailer didn't seem to give much away, either.

During the 50th the Doctor froze it so that's why it was probably deserted.

The city looked somewhat intact and functional.... no signs of damage or conflict. of course there are probably hundreds of cities like that on Gallifrey but the implication was that 'someone in charge' was there.

So looks like either pre-time war... or.... they have rebuilt in the 'billions' of years it took the Dr to get there....

While the rebuilt city does suggest some time has past since we last saw Gallifrey it's unlikely to be billions of years since the General is still around (and in the same incarnation) so can't really be more than a few hundred years (from their PoV) since Gallifrey was locked away.


I suppose the intact city could suggest it could be Gallifrey from before the time war but I seriously doubt it.

Especially difficult as the Doctor exists in a sort of "perpetual now". Wherever he's been, and however long he's been there for or travelling through time, whenever he comes back, it's always the same amount of time later for everyone else too.

Except when it isn't, of course.

Especially often not true in SM's era.

By that "logic", this is the Gallifrey of billions of years into the future. Or it could be just a few years after the Doctor stashed it away for safekeeping (and then forgot where he put it).

Or it could be Gallifrey from any period.

Or none of the above, especially if the puzzle the Doctor just "solved" was a simulation of some kind.

Wonderful, isn't it?

It would make more sense that it's the suspended Gallifrey that he sent away in the 50th anniversary. They probably have no idea the war has ended, or that the Daleks were destroyed - ah but then again they should know something after 11's last episode. Didn't the Doctor say something like the prophecy came about during the time war, so whoever is hunting the Hybrid probably wants it to help them win the war against the Daleks (that they think is still raging).

Did anyone else spot the golden Type40 TARDIS "tube" thing (in non-chamelon mode) in the next time trailer spinning away from a planet (Gallifrey?)

Also, just before the "regeneration" bit, there's a cool nifty white TARDIS interior, with blue motifs. Wonder which timelord it belongs to, looks da bomb!

The glass dome thing around Gallifrey is complete, wasn't it broken during the Time war, or am I imagining things?

I don't think so - Gallifrey was extracted from the midst of what they knew was the last salvo of the war, so either they're in the midst of the time-locked events (as we saw in The End of Time) in which they're still fighting, or they're not fighting and already know the extraction worked. Since there's no evidence of war, and the Doctor used the specific term "the long way round" which he used previously in Day of the Doctor, he at least expects the second to be true.

My best guess would be that perhaps they already suspect the Doctor to be the Hybrid - maybe they were whispering the Question through the crack at Trenzalore, not to find out his name, but his nature. In a way, this might just have been the first attempt to get the same knowledge - who is he, and is his existence a threat to them? Will his continued presence re-ignite the War? The question of why he left Gallifrey seems key to its future.

I presume it's after the Time War, sealed away in wherever it was sealed.

They probably regenerated the Capitol like a Tardis whilst they were frozen in a single moment in time...

It doesn't just look restored, it looks gleaming and shiny - Like it's brand new. Or maybe they gathered up all the crashed Dalek ships and used the metal to affect repairs, if the Doctors' calculations didn't remove every trace of Dalek from the surface before freezing the planet. I'd imagine that with all the ships gone, the Daleks left on the ground could have eventually been mopped up by the guards.

Based on the idea of how the Timelock worked it would seem to suggest that the Doctor couldn't get to a pre-Time War Gallifrey. Plus it has the General from Day of the Doctor in it.

As for looking bleak and deserted, does anyone who's seen Classic Who know anything about the population density of Gallifrey, they might all be living in the city.

I'm guessing it's Gallifrey as depicted at the end of The Day of the Doctor.