The Time War was indeed not a filmed event. It didn't even occur in any of the licensed novels (which are considered non-canon). Some of the details are gradually revealed through the series.<br /><br />I believe the writers' intent was to bring the viewers, even the ones who've faithfully watched since 1963, to a point where they did not know who the Doctor really was anymore. Remember, in the beginning he was an exile, an alien wandering time and space without a home. In the years since then, he's visited Gallifrey repeatedly and even been named President of the High Council twice. His exile had become increasingly self-imposed and less significant; even the Time Lords themselves seemed to accept the arrangement after a while. The Time War fixes that; he's again a man without a home, forced to wander because there's no place for him to call home. I think that was the essential idea behind it.<br /><br />Now, as to whether or not the Time War is a future event......yes and no. It's a Time War, not an ordinary war. In Season One's third episode, we met the Gelth, an alien race whose home was apparently collateral damage in the Time War. They wound up on Earth in the 19th Century. It's possible they were catapulted through time to the 19th Century, but there's no reason to assume that to be the case. It's quite possible that their planet was destroyed in the 19th Century.<br /><br />And then in the episode Father's Day, we are told that the Time Lords are unable to intervene to save the day because they are gone, yet that's the 1980s. Clearly, the Time War didn't just destroy Gallifrey in the future. It destroyed it in the past too. But there are still traces. The Doctor survived, and the TARDIS. The Gelth certainly remember the Time War. A strange and probably undesirable thing has happened to causality -- the sort of thing the Time Lords would've tried to fix, but since they're gone, they can't. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em> -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>
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