Coal Hill School

On a London street outside Coal Hill School a policeman walks past a sign advertising a scrap merchant named I. M. Foreman. Inside the school Clara Oswald, who is in the middle of giving a lesson, receives a message from the Eleventh Doctor. Using a motorbike she returns to the TARDIS just before it is airlifted, by a helicopter, to Trafalgar Square.

There The Doctor and Clara are met by Kate Stewart, the head of UNIT. She takes them into the National Gallery where they discover the preserved instructions from Queen Elizabeth I of England (revealed to have been married to The Doctor). The Doctor reads the instructions which appoint him as the Curator of the Under-Gallery, where items that are considered to be a danger to England are locked away, and request that he be summoned should a disturbance occur within its walls.

The Doctor and Clara are also shown a 3D painting as proof that the Queen's instructions are genuine. The Doctor recognises the painting which depicts the fall of Arcadia on the last day of the Time War. It is a slice of frozen time, a form of Time Lord art. Kate Stewart tells The Doctor that there is some controversy over the work's name. It is either named ‘No More’ or ‘Gallifrey Falls’. The Doctor though is visibly disturbed by the painting. As his old memories awaken, he shares with Clara his darkest secret: the life he has tried to bury for years. There was a past incarnation of The Doctor - who bridges the gap between the Eighth Doctor and the Ninth Doctor - that fought in the Time War, and made the ultimate decision to eliminate the Daleks. And the Time Lords.

Clara and The Doctor

In the midst of the Time War the War Doctor, on witnessing Gallifrey falling to a Dalek invasion, decides to trigger a weapon of mass destruction called 'The Moment', which is described as a 'Galaxy Eater'. If used it would destroy both races completely. The weapon is sentient - it appears in the form of future assistant Rose Tyler (companion of the Ninth Doctor and the Tenth Doctors). He explains to her that the suffering of the universe is too great and that he must end it. However, she challenges his words and actions, guiding him towards his future as by destroying the Daleks he will also murder his own people. As to how many children on Gallifrey will die, he has no idea. She then opens a window in time, to show him the man he will become.

Meanwhile in Elizabethan England, in the year 1562, the Tenth Doctor and a young Elizabeth I find themselves under threat from the Zygons. While sharing a picnic on a hill the Tenth Doctor, after he proposes marriage which she joyfully accepts, accuses her of being a shape shifting Zygon. However, it turns out that the Zygon has not disguised itself as the Queen but her horse. As they run for their lives they become separated in the woods. It is there that Elizabeth I is accosted by the Zygon. The Tenth Doctor is eventually reunited with Elizabeth I but a doppelganger of her appears, and he is unable to tell who is who. Suddenly a time fissure appears, and a fez falls through, shocking the Tenth Doctor.

The Painting

Back on Earth Kate Stewart takes the Eleventh Doctor and Clara to the Under-Gallery. The Doctor notices that the floor is covered in stone dust, and asks Osgood to analyze it. As they walk through the gallery The Doctor spots a fez and immediately dons it, much to the bemusement of Clara. Kate Stewart then shows them more 3D paintings, all landscapes, with the glass covering the floor. The Doctor notes that the glass has been shattered from the inside. Kate Stewart also reveals that they all contained figures, which are now missing. Suddenly, a time fissure opens. The Doctor suddenly recalls seeing the fissure before and that he also witnessed a fez falling through it The fez he was now wearing. Recalling this event while in his previous incarnation he throws the fez into the fissure before following after it.

The Eleventh Doctor finds himself in the wood with the Tenth Doctor. The time fissure starts to increase in intensity and after ordering the two Queens to run away the Eleventh shouts through the time fissure to Clara in 2013 - Hypothesizing that the fissure can go both ways, he tosses his fez in. But instead of arriving in 2013 the time fissure takes the fez to the War Doctor who picks up the fez and steps into the fissure.

Back in 1562, the two Doctors try to reverse the polarity of the time fissure, but the War Doctor falls through, landing in front of his future selves. Suddenly, they are surrounded by the Queen's soldiers. They are threatened by them, but Clara's voice coming from the fissure, allows The Doctors to convince them that she is 'Wicked Witch of the Well'. The Queen returns to the group and has all three Doctors arrested and looked up in the Tower of London. There the Eleventh Doctor communicates to Clara the code to activate a vortex manipulator, that was previously owned by Captain Jack Harkness and donated to UNIT following one of his deaths, that is located in the UNIT's vaults, so allowing her to travel to the past.

The Message

Seeming unable to escape their prison The Moment encourages the War Doctor to form a plan to create an isolated sonic shift in the door molecules in order to disintegrate it, but the Tenth Doctor rejects the idea, saying it would take centuries to calculate necessary formula. However, they soon realise that if the War Doctor scans the door and implants it as a permanent subroutine in his sonic screwdriver, it will take 400 years to calculate the formula necessary to disintegrate the door, meaning that the Eleventh Doctor's screwdriver, being essentially the same as the ones before it, has the completed calculation ready for them to use.

The Doctor's congratulate themselves on their cleverness just as Clara pushes open the door, which had been unlocked the entire time. A Zygon, disguised as the Queen, then comes in and they are then taken down to the Zygons' lair where they discover that the Zygons intend to invade a future Earth in 2013 in order to establish a new home-world. To escape the primitive time period they are trapped in they are translating themselves into stasis cubes, which are the Time Lord's three-dimensional paintings stored in the Under-Gallery.

After it is revealed that what they thought was the Zygon Commander, disguised as Queen Elizabeth, is in fact the real Queen all three Doctors and Clara use the stasis cubes to arrive back at UNIT in the same way as the Zygons. In the Black Archive the Zygons have revealed themselves having become doppelgangers of members of UNIT. Kate Stewart confronts her doppelganger and activates a nuclear warhead in order to protect the planet. To stop the stalemate this has created the Eleventh Doctor triggers a memory eraser, causing the humans and Zygons to forget which of them is human and which are merely shape-shifting Zygons in a human appearance, so forcing them to discuss peace rather than detonating the nuclear warhead.

Queen Elizabeth I

With the Zygon crisis averted Clara speaks to the War Doctor and discovers that he has not used The Moment yet to stop the Dalek's attack of Gallifrey. She explains to him that her Doctor always talked about the day he wiped out the Time Lords and that he would do anything to take it back. But the War Doctor remains convinced that his actions will save billions of lives in the future if he proceeds with his intention of detonating the Galaxy Eater. The Tenth and Eleventh Doctors appear with the intention of detonating the device alongside him so that he doesn't have to do it alone.

However, Clara convinces the Eleventh Doctor to ‘be a Doctor so allowing a brilliant new idea to dawn on The Doctors. Subsequently, with advice from The Moment, they summon all of The Doctor's incarnations (including a not-yet-shown future incarnation) who, working together, manage to freeze Gallifrey in a moment in time and send it to an unknown location. This just leaves the attacking Daleks to exterminate themselves in their own crossfire so giving the impression that the two races destroyed each other.

Back in the National Gallery the three Doctors muse on the ambiguity of whether their plan succeeded. The mysterious painting however remains an enigma to them as it is another thing lost to time. After the War Doctor expresses his approval of the incarnations he will become both he and the Tenth Doctor depart in their respective TARDISes. However, as the War Doctor pilots his TARDIS away he is seen to regenerate, echoing the First Doctor by saying that his body is ‘wearing a bit thin’. Due to the disruption of time streams, the War Doctor and the Tenth Doctor will not remember the War Doctor saving Gallifrey. Instead both will remember him as destroying it.

The Eleventh Doctor then meets the mysterious curator of the museum and is told that the painting of the Last Day of the Time War is neither called ‘No More’ or ‘Gallifrey Falls’, but the singular ‘Gallifrey Falls No More’ – hinting that Gallifrey was indeed saved. He informs the Eleventh Doctor that he has a mission to find Gallifrey and return it to the universe.