For a number of reasons I won’t get into here I haven’t kept up on the 11th Doctor, and apparently I’ve missed more revolutionary update to the series canon than in all the previous Doctors combined. From what I gather most of the apocalyptic events of previous series have been erased from history, the universe ended and was restored a couple of times, the Doctor died for good only it turned out to be an imposter, he got married, two of his companions and their child had timelines as tangled as a skein of yarn, the Doctor is fated to destroy the universe when his name is revealed, there was an “8 1/2” incarnation called the War Doctor during the Time War, and it turned out that retroactively Gallifrey was saved after all. Can someone give me the Reader’s Digest Condensed version?
…I don’t actually think anyone can until after the Christmas special, that appears to revisit the silence, which may well reconceptualize the whole run of the eleventh. Assuming your question is serious then the wiki is the best bet to get your answers:
90% of what you listed just happened yesterday in the 50th anniversary special. The biggest upshot is that it turns out Gallifrey may not have been destroyed after all, but was rather locked away in a pocket universe. This is apparently going to be the new McGuffin going forward - the Doctor searching for Gallifrey.
There was, indeed, an incarnation between McGann and Eccleston, played by John Hurt, who fought in the Time War. The later Doctors refused to remember him because of his actions in that war, but that was all kissed and made better last night.
As for the companions, you’re talking about Amy and Rory, but their story doesn’t really have any larger ramifications - they just had a crazy life as companions.
Other than that, the only real larger change is that the Doctor decided he had become too famous, and so erased all knowledge of his existence from all databases in time and space, so now it’s back to no one knowing who he is (except for all the people who know who he is).
Including his wife (Amy and Rory’s kid).
I’m having trouble parsing a sentence with both “Doctor Who” and “continuity” in it.
All 13 Doctors (including 8 1/2 and the guy coming in after Smith) trapped Gallifrey in a moment in time so they wouldn’t have to genocide all the kids on the planet (never mind the innocent adults, someone think of the children!!!) The Daleks then blew themselves up like a polish firing squad in the old joke someone will probably complain about my referencing here, but if there’s a better analogy it escapes me, and everyone else just assumed it was mutually assured destruction. Then because of the timeywimey, 8 1/2 and 10 forget all this so they will still be motivated by their horrible acts (that never actually happened) to save the universe many times over.
I’m at work so I have’t seen the special yet but I thought we knew that Gallifrey wasn’t destroyed no later than the 10th Doctor’s series.
There were references to all the Time Lords being ‘timelocked’ which I understood as being not-dead but not able to affect the rest of the universe. And of course they almost escaped during the Tennant/Smith death/regeneration episode.
No, timelocked meant (supposedly) that those events were unchangeable and couldn’t be retroactively altered, even by time travel. Over the course of the series the Doctor has explained this on a couple of occasions.
As Lumpy says, they were definitely destroyed (OR SO WE THOUGHT!, he says dramatically), it’s just that the time lock meant you couldn’t go back in time to revisit it, or come forward out of it into the universe as it existed afterwards. Afterwards and backwards all being relative, and oh look, monsters!
The High Council did try to get past the time lock, on the last day of the Time War, by using a connection between the past Master and the present Master who had escaped the war, and the whole planet briefly started to come through, until the Doctor undid it and they were sent back into the Time War to meet their destruction later that day (OR SO WE THOUGHT! he says dramatically).
There’s a reference to this in the episode, where one of the generals says something about the High Council being off with their own plans, and the other guy saying that they’ve failed and Gallifrey is still in the firing line.
All of which means of course that if Gallifrey ever does come back, the Master is going to come back with it. Hooray!
And his other two wives. Apparently Gallifrey never had a law against polygamy.
It’s Bigamy on the inside 
I never do this, but:
LOL
Well played 
You win the thread