Well, by the time I write this, those of you in England have probably already seen "Parting of the Ways", whereas I haven't yet. Not that I'm saying I've seen the other episodes, living in America as I do, of course -- how could I? ;-) -- but I'll add to the discussion here nonetheless...
First, the Doctor Who "Matrix" episode referred to on here quite a while back was called "The Deadly Assassin". In it, the Doctor has to enter the Matrix in order to find out who is in league with the Master and what their plan is. As far as the sequences "in the Matrix" are concerned, they are equivalent to events within the Matrix in "The Matrix" though of course their special-effects budget was a tiny fraction of what was spent by the Wachowski (sp?) brothers.
As a side note, if anyone here wants me to talk about
The Deadly Assassin in more detail, just ask.
I've skipped through a number of the posts on here, so I don't know if anyone has declared a "spoilers" warning yet for those who haven't seen any or much of this series, so I'm going to do that now before going on...
***** SPOILER WARNING *****
Alright, here's what we know thus far. Aparantly, the Daleks somehow managed to wage a war with the Time Lords of Gallifrey, and it would appear it was essentially fought to some kind of stalemate. From my perspective as a long-time Whovian, this completely conflicts with established canon in that:
- The Time Lords are a considerably older race than the Kaleds, who gave rise through Davros to the Daleks.
- The Time Lords are more advanced, have better resources, and have not been forced to wage war without having a home planet to fight from for a long, long time.
- The Daleks' time travel technology was NEVER all that great. It has ALWAYS been rudimentary.
- The Doctor destroyed Skaro's sun at a point before the Daleks had gone on to become the warring race they turned into during the 7th Doctor episode "Rememberance of the Daleks". They were a dead race!!!
But, obviously, canon was ignored by TPTB, so here's my take...
This war was either so intense or so poorly managed by the Time Lords that somehow they lost. Obviously they must have taken down tremendous numbers of the enemy, and presumably The Doctor was a part of that set of events. Based on his actions thus far, his gloomy countenance, his [lack of] explanations about the war and the implied possibilities from what he
has said, I'd suspect that his whole "goody two-shoes" attitude of the preceeding 8 incarnations got stripped away, and he allowed the darker side of his nature to (finally!) come forth.
I'll bet he was involved in some heavy black-ops sh*t, and wouldn't be surpised if he was involved in multiple genocide activities in the effort to preserve his people. After all, which of us wouldn't do the same thing to collectively protect every human on the Earth? Of course, there's also the added motivation that Gallifrey possesses some seriously freakin' advanced tech which truly shouldn't be allowed to fall into
anyone else's hands at any cost. Like time-travel technology especially, weapons systems, stellar manipulation, the ability to move entire constellations through space, etc. The list just goes on and on.
In theory, as a Time Lord, it should be incumbent upon the Doctor to protect ALL of this stuff at any cost, and I'll bet it's the "at any cost" part that's giving him some trouble. He wouldn't be the first combatant to have psychological trama and difficulties following a war.
For the curious here, here is a picture of Davros from the episode "Genesis Of The Daleks":
But if you have had any luck deciphering it, keep me posted, this whole Bad Wolf thing fascinates me. 
