Doctor Who's Home Planet Gallifrey

Gallifrey is a fictional planet in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who and is the homeworld of the Doctor and the Time Lords. It is located in the constellation of Kasterborous (Pyramids of Mars, Attack of the Cybermen and The Voyage of the Damned), at "galactic coordinates ten-zero-eleven-zero-zero by zero-two from galactic zero centre" (Pyramids of Mars (1975), Full Circle (1980) and partially in The Family of Blood (2007)), which is some 250 million light years away from Earth (as stated in the 1996 Doctor Who television movie; this would put it far outside our Milky Way galaxy, which is only 80-100 thousand light years in diameter.In Terror of the Autons (1971), a Time Lord emissary says that he has travelled "29,000 light years", leading to the original assumption that the Time Lord homeworld was that distance away. However, it is never actually stated in Terror of the Autons where the Time Lord is travelling from, as compared to the explicit statement made in the 1996 television movie.

During the first decade of the television series, the name of the Doctor's home planet was not revealed, although it was actually shown for the first time in The War Games (1969) during the Doctor's trial. It was finally identified by name for the first time in The Time Warrior (1973). It is never definitively stated when the appearances of Gallifrey in the television series take place. As the planet is often reached by means of time travel, its relative present could conceivably exist anywhere in the Earth's past or future.The Three Doctors seemed to set Gallifrey's relative present in the near future (UNIT dating controversy) with its sequel Arc of Infinity setting it in the 1980s, although at least a decade had passed on Gallifrey (The Doctor's age). Alternatively, The Trial of a Time Lord (1986, specifically The Mysterious Planet and The Ultimate Foe) seems to imply that the planet's relative present is in the Earth's far future. This is also the position taken by The Doctor Who Role Playing Game released by FASA, although the information in it is not usually considered canon. Both the Virgin New Adventures and the BBC Books Doctor Who novels seem to take the stance that Gallifrey's relative present is far in the Earth's relative past.

Gallifrey's position in the revived series (2005 onwards) was filled in slowly over the first three years of the series' run. In Series 1, it had been implied that it was destroyed (although now it or at least the Time Lords seem to be in existence), along with the Dalek Empire, by the Doctor during the Time War. The planet was not referred to by name until the 2006 Christmas Special and wasn't shown on screen until "The Sound of Drums".