Rutan-Sontaran War

The Rutan-Sontaran War was fought between the Rutan Host and the Sontarans. It lasted for thousands, perhaps millions, of years, and was waged across the universe.

The Doctor had considered the war a pointless waste of time, as the Sontarans never fight for anything other than the joy of battle. (TV: The Poison Sky)

The Sontarans, not yet a species of clones, were already, in the Seventh Doctor's words, a "fierce, martial race". They began to sweep over Mutter's Spiral. Only the Rutans opposed them. Reacting to this, the Sontarans stopped reproducing naturally and turned themselves into a clone species in order to constantly supply their frontlines with fresh soldiers. (COMIC: Pureblood) One account implied that the Rutans began the war with the Sontarans out of boredom, and because it gave them a sense of superiority. (PROSE: The Taking of Chelsea 426)

A definitive date of the start of the war remains unknown. The Tenth Doctor seperately described it as having begun fifty thousand years before 2009 AD and the early 26th century respectively, clearly a rough estimate. (TV: The Poison Sky, PROSE: The Taking of Chelsea 426) Field Major Kaarsh gave the same figure in 1605. However, the Rutan known as Lady Winters gave the contradictory figure of ten thousand years, which would mean that the war would have begun circa 8395 BC. (GAME: The Gunpowder Plot)

The Seventh Doctor described this event as "ten centuries" before the 25th or 26th century, meaning that the conflict would have begun in the 15th or 16th centuries. (COMIC: Pureblood) This contradicted evidence given elsewhere, such as a Sontaran speaking of war with the Rutans in the 12th century (TV: The Time Warrior) and the Rutan plan to destroy the Sontarans in the 13th century. (GAME: The Gunpowder Plot) Kygon Brox described the Earth as a "primitive world" during the Fifty-first Star Fall Campaign. (COMIC: The Instruments of War)