Subject: Another key point.
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Posted on: 2014-02-21 11:56:00 UTC

This is Ten in his 'off the rails' phase. At the end of The Waters of Mars, he basically decided to abandon historical continuity and just muck about with time as much as he liked. The opening shots of The End of Time establish this very firmly - as well as his 'relationship' with Liz One, incidentally.

The Daleks... Ten was very much about giving everyone a chance, however stupid that was at the time (and really, did anyone ever take it? The worst instance of this is when he goes up to the Sontaran ship in The Poison Sky, thinking he's going to die, in order to ask the Sontarans to surrender. Uh, yeah, no). The Daleks and Cybermen seem to be a general exception to this - but any which seem different get The Chance. He didn't give the Cult of Skaro a chance in Doomsday, but when he met them in Manhatten, both Sec and Caan were hit with The Chance. Davros got one, but the Emperor didn't, in Journey's End.

In the Time War, there was no 'leader' - Davros died in the first year of the war, and we never see the Emperor (the one from Parting of the Ways). There was no-one to offer it to, and the Doctor has never had qualms about destroying Daleks in large numbers. Just small ones.

Rassilon, though... the problem there is that The End of Time hadn't yet happened for Ten. He still believes Rassilon is out to Ascend - he doesn't know the Master is even involved (he thinks he's dead). So is he working on the theory that removing Gallifrey from the Time War will stop Rassilon continuing his plan, because the threat is removed?

Or, possibly, is he worried that Rassilon could break out - it's not long ago that Caan pulled Davros out of the Time War, after all - and thinks that shoving the whole planet into temporal stasis is a good way to buy some time to plan? Then, when he forgets... whatever he forgets, he's still worried that Rassilon could break out.

Or else, it's all timelines: the War Doctor knew that Rassilon had failed by the end of the Time War (because the universe wasn't dead) - since it ought to have succeeded, that means something had stopped him, and the Doctor knows that pretty much only killing him would do that; therefore Ten knew that the end of the War was a safe place to save the planet, even though he doesn't know the specific detail that it's the Master who stopped the plan. If Rassilon was able to break out earlier, when his plan was still viable, that would be a different matter - though, as a neat closed loop, it was that breakout which introduced the factor which caused the ultimate failure.

hS

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