The Great Time War

Question

For those not familiar with the TV Show Dr Who, the main protagonist is an alien from the planet Gallifrey. They built your typical highly evolved society which mastered the secrets of the time and in particular of time travel: they are finally known as the Time Lords.

Unfortunately for them, the Daleks, a martial alien society also achieved a control of the time. The Daleks are pretty vindictive. They essentially want to exterminate all life. This build-up to to a war known as the Last Great Time War.

Now I very much like this idea to push on the limit of science fiction into one of the most complex branch: time travel. But then I am not really satisfied by the answer provided by the show runners about the outcome of that war. And I think it could be interesting to take up on that idea for a fiction (or RPG).

Now, as in-universe, the time travel can be accomplished with special ships which require a very specific core. The show isn't very specific on it, but essentially the ships travels a certain vortex which lead the ship to the desired time and place. Small changes can be done: like it's OK to save the life of one of the victim of a tsunami. Larger changes are prohibited: the typical killing your grandfather, or stopping the tsunami as a whole. If said restriction are overlooked, the reality may break, ending all existence. Some say it might open to parallel worlds. In any case, we usually refrain from experimenting with it. The importance of the events is known to the time travellers (as part of their trainings) so they don't erase reality by mistake.

Each of the two species have their technology, but we might consider them equivalent. Weapons are mostly near-futuristic.

Problem is which tactics can be used effectively?

Typically someone who knows the future is used in battles to rewind time again and again. But if both opponents can do the same, what do you do?

How can such a war end on a victory for one side?

Answer 1

Dr Who rules were always.. well vague doesn't do it justice. They were whatever the plot needed that episode.

So lets go with the simple version "you can't change things in your subjective past".

Under these rules time travel is still insanely powerful.

Want to win a battle but can't change events in the battle before the point from which you travel back?

No problem. Go back a million years(you can have all the time in the world to prepare), strap boosters and time machines to big rocks and accelerate them up to 99.99% of light speed such that they would have passed through the system hours before the battle. They then hop forward in time to all arrive the second you left targeting where you know the enemy ships will be at that moment. Apocalypse, no warning.

In a similar vein even if you can't change events that you've already seen you can still bury superweapons at the hearts of your enemies planets millions of years before your battles start. You can then set them to detonate at the moment you left.

Basically the side who strikes first has a pretty good chance of winning totally since they can strike their enemy everywhere in a single second and their enemy can't undo past events.

Hell why even stop there, why not drop by your enemies home planet during their stone age and spread high-tech highly contagious but harmless viruses genetically programmed to activate at a given time in the future after you left so that even the survivors of your planet busters start dying wherever they happen to be.

Answer 2

Cutting off access to the Vortex, for one thing.

Part of the Daleks' strategic advantage was their contempt for any kind of life; tey are perfectly happy with collateral damage, whereas the Time Lords were not. This would be a massive factor, as the Daleks would have no qualms in using a weapon that blows up suns whereas the Tine Lords? Not so much. Like a nuke vs. cruise missile scenario.

Additionally, I doubt strategy and tactics are a thing; TLGTW was described to have more or less all the spacefaring empires involved (Minus the Sontarans) from the beginning of time until the end. In this scenario, the Daleks would be perfectly happy to go around blowing up galaxies as they see fit, (I'm pretty sure there's been at least one occurrence of technology in DW that could repair time and allow massive changes to the past without creating a paradox. This tech would be heavily active in the war) and the Time Lords would have to do the same or get utterly defeated, a thing which was evident in that special- the Lords were pretty much defeated.

The winner (The Time Lords/ Doctor) would have to then go around 'healing' time to stop the collapse of reality.

Answer 3

I suppose the main question is, what is the goal of each of the belligerents? e.g. the Daleks want to "exterminate all life", including themselves?

It's confusing, to say the least. So you can save the life of one person but not millions, this presumably is to stop it from becoming a race to go back furthest and just wiping out the enemy before they even know there's a war... Why would the Daleks not simply go back in time to before the Time Lords race even evolves and irradiate the planet while they are still just bacteria in a primordial soup? OK they'll cause the end of reality by it being a large change and violating the restriction you speak of, but I can't imagine them having a problem with that since it's their objective anyway!

But for the Time Lords to try to do the same would break reality and so still put them on the losing side. Even if the Time Lords have their planet well-guarded from the beginning of time, the Daleks really only need to make any significant change anywhere in the universe to cause the erasure of existence.