The
Time Lords are a fictional extraterrestrial
race and civilization in the British
science fiction television series
Doctor Who, of which the series'
main character, the Doctor, is a
member. Time Lords are so called because they are able to
travel in and manipulate time through
technology to a far greater degree than any other
civilization.
The Time Lords' home planet is
Gallifrey.
In the present series,
Gallifrey has been
destroyed and the Time Lords are
functionally extinct, with only two
known surviving members:
the
Doctor and his cloned daughter
Jenny. A third,
the Master, apparently died in the
episode "
Last of the Time
Lords", although he will reappear in the upcoming
2009 Christmas specials.
The fate of a fourth member of the race, Time Lady
Romanadvoratrelundar (
Romana) - a one-time
companion of the Doctor - is unknown, as the series canon has not
established her ultimate place in the universe, so she may still be
alive. There were two other Time Lords who were only briefly shown
in Journey's End. One of them was
Donna
Noble, but the Doctor removed her partial Time Lord nature
because she could not control its power. The other was a clone of
the Doctor himself, but without the regenerating power. He went to
live with
Rose Tyler in a parallel
universe.
Overview
Although the Doctor was identified as an alien, his home planet and
race were not identified at the start of the series. Only after six
years, in
The War Games,
other aliens from his world appeared and were named as the Time
Lords. The nature and history of the Time Lords were gradually
revealed as the television series progressed. Each story to feature
them and their home planet added additional layers of complexity
and intrigue, stemming from the dissatisfaction of various
scriptwriters wrestling with the question of why the Doctor is in
exile in the first place. Among other things, Time Lords are
increasingly revealed as being corrupted by their inaction and Time
Lord society as stagnant. Over the course of the show's initial
26-year run, it was never made entirely clear what purpose or
mission the Time Lords served, or what exactly they did with their
mastery over time.
Nor, ultimately, was it ever explicitly made clear what had caused
the Doctor to leave his people, although it is suggested in some
stories that he was an involuntary
exile and
in others that he had simply grown tired of the restrictions of
Time Lord society and left.
The Time Lords are normally considered one of the oldest and most
technologically powerful races in the
Doctor Who universe.
The small number of beings that are more powerful than the Time
Lords includes the (now extinct)
Osirans and higher powers of the universe
such as the
Black and
White Guardians and possibly the
Eternals. Additionally, from the
spin-off novels which are of
uncertain
canonicity,
The People, had a
non-aggression treaty with the Time
Lords. In some spinoff media, the Time Lords are also allied with
less developed 'Temporal Powers.' The power of the Time Lords
appears limited by their policy of non-interference with the
universe and sometimes by intense internecine division.
However, the view that they are, to a degree, custodians of time
developed in the
spin-off
media. This is also suggested in the television series; in
The
War Games the Time Lords return time-displaced humans abducted
by the War Lord to their proper time zones on Earth. The name of
the Time Lords' central hall, the
Panopticon, suggests that they are perpetual
observers of all existence.
In "
Father's Day" the
Ninth Doctor remarks that prior to
their destruction, the Time Lords would have prevented or repaired
paradoxes such as that which attracted the
Reapers to
1987 Earth. In "
Rise of the
Cybermen", the
Tenth Doctor
mentions that while the Time Lords were around, travel between
alternative realities
was easier, but with their demise, the paths between worlds were
closed. In "
The Satan Pit", the
Tenth Doctor states that his people
"practically invented black holes. Well, in fact they did."
Physical characteristics
Time Lords appear human, but differ from them in many respects. It
is a common misconception that all Time Lords in the classic
television series were portrayed by
white adults. A black Time Lord appears as an
extra in The Deadly Assassin and can clearly be seen in a photo on
the back of the DVD box. In
Planet of the Spiders some white
actors used
yellowface to appear
Tibetan. A
black Time Lord appears in the 2007 episode
"
The Sound of Drums" and others
in the spin-off novel
The
Shadows of Avalon and the comic strip
Blood
Invocation,both by
Paul Cornell.
In addition, Time Lord founder
Rassilon was
portrayed in several audio plays by black actor
Don Warrington. An 8-year-old Gallifreyan
child (implied to be the renegade Time Lord known as the
Master) was depicted in "The Sound of
Drums" and appeared identical to a human child of the same
age.
No explanation is given in the series as to why humans look like
Time Lords, nor why the universe seems filled with predominantly
humanoid species that resemble Time Lords. However after the
Tenth Doctor takes offense when
Lady Christina de Souza
remarks on how human he looks for an alien, he counters by telling
her she looks like a Time Lord. As the "oldest most mighty race" in
the universe they pre-date any human civilization. The
Virgin New Adventures novel
Lucifer Rising
by
Andy Lane and
Jim Mortimore suggests that the Time Lords
were the first
sentient life-form. As
such, their evolutionary pattern created a
morphic field that resonated across the
universe, making the development of humanoids far more likely. The
Big Finish Productions audio
play
Zagreusoffers a more
sinister explanation, that the xenophobic Rassilon seeded the
universe with biogenic molecules so that (save for worlds where
humanoids could never evolve) only intelligent species that
approximated the Gallifreyan humanoid norm would develop. However,
in the Cushing movie
Dr. Who and the Daleks (though not
necessarily thought to be canon), the Thal Alydon states that the
'humanoid' form (..."two hands, two eyes"...) has been proven to be
ideal for survival, hence many species in the universe are
humanoid. The
canonicity
of these accounts, as with all spin-off media, is unclear.
Time Lords are extremely long-lived, routinely counting their ages
in terms of centuries. It is not known how long a Time Lord can
live, although the Doctor claimed in
The War Games that Time Lords could live
"practically forever, barring accidents." In
The Daleks' Master Plan the
First Doctor is able to resist the
effects of the Time Destructor better than his companions, who are
visibly aged by it; one of them,
Sara
Kingdom, ages to dust before the Destructor device can be
reversed, although the
Fourth Doctor
is briefly aged 500 years in
The
Leisure Hive, which leaves him an old man but still
somewhat active. A similar situation occurred in "
The Sound of Drums", where the Master
uses specially made technology to age the
Tenth Doctor by a century, leaving him in a
frail and helpless state. A further application of this in
"
Last of the Time Lords" ages
the Doctor another 900 years and turns him into a shrunken,
wrinkled humanoid. It is unclear if this effect is the result of
later regenerations not being as long lived or the artificial
manner of aging, given the first incarnation of the Doctor was
still quite active at 450 when he regenerated.
The Doctor is quoted as saying 'I don't age' in the episode
("
School Reunion") when
talking to his companion, Rose, although in this he may have been
referring to the results of regeneration rather than immunity to
the aging process. His statement is otherwise contradicted by the
First Doctor's claims to be "wearing a bit thin" and encounters
between different regenerations where the previous actors have
necessarily aged noticeably (
The Two
Doctors, "
Time Crash").
The series has occasionally suggested that Time Lords have a
different concept of aging than humans. In
Pyramids of Mars, the Doctor considers
an age of 750 years to be "middle-aged". In "
The Stolen Earth", he refers to being a
"kid" at 90 years old.
It is implied (in
The Invasion of Time and
The Deadly
Assassin) that the terms "Gallifreyan" and "Time Lord" may not
be synonymous, and that Time Lords are simply that subset of
Gallifreyans who have achieved the status of Time Lord via
achievement in the Gallifreyan
collegiate
system; in the episode "
The Sound of
Drums" The Doctor talks of 'children of Gallifrey' which
implies that children are Gallifreyan before they are Time Lords.
Romana and the Doctor have also referred to
"Time Tots", or infant Time Lords, and (in "
Smith and Jones") the Doctor
refers his compatriots and he playing "with
Röntgen bricks in the
nursery". In "The Sound of Drums", the Master is seen as a child,
apparently at the age of 8.
Other physiological differences from humans include two
hearts which normally beat at 170 beats a minute , an
internal body temperature of 15 degrees
Celsius and a "respiratory bypass system" that
allows them to survive strangulation. Time Lords can also survive
full exposure to the vacuum of space with no ill effects, though in
such cases, even with their respiratory bypass boosting the length
of time they can go without air, when in vacuum for an extended
period a Time Lord must take a supply of air along, or else
suffocate. A commonly held piece of
fan
continuity is that Time Lords only grow their second heart
during their first regeneration, though in "The Shakespeare Code"
one of the Tenth Doctor's hearts is stopped and he wonders aloud
how humans can cope, and in "
The
Doctor's Daughter", Jenny is shown to have two hearts. It would
be safe to assume that Gallifreyans are all born with two hearts.
Time Lords also seem to have an increased resilience to higher
frequencies, as seen in "
The
Christmas Invasion". and "
Partners in Crime". If
severely injured, Time Lords can go into a healing
coma which lowers their body temperature to below
freezing. In the serial
Destiny of the Daleks,
Romana was able to voluntarily stop both of her
hearts beating, to fool the Daleks into believing that she was
dead. In "
World War
Three", the Doctor is able to shake off an
electrocution attempt which is fatal to a
number of humans, and appears unaffected by the energy whip wielded
by the
Sycorax in
"
The Christmas Invasion". In
cases of non-fatal injury, Time Lords who have recently regenerated
can use left over cellular energy to heal and even regrow severed
limbs, as seen in
The Christmas
Invasion where the Tenth Doctor regrows a hand and in
The Doctor's Daughter where Jenny
heals from a gun shot wound (although in her case she was recently
"born" and the shock of the wound did throw her into a near coma
from which she only revived later, possibly due to the terraforming
process on that planet, as evidenced by the green smoke coming out
of her mouth. Also seen in
Journey's End, is the apparent
ability to siphon off regeneration energy in order to cancel the
effect of changing appearance; which requires them to have a
"bio-matching receptacle" (in this case the Doctor's severed hand),
which is usually impractical. It remains to be seen whether this
technique counts as regenerating fully, and thus losing one of the
Time Lord's inherent twelve regeneration allotment.
Time Lords, or at least the Doctor, can read extremely quickly.
They appear to have greater physical stamina than humans and need
considerably less sleep. In "Smith and Jones" the Tenth Doctor says
that
X-rays poses no real threat to Time
Lords, and proceeds to absorb an amount that would be lethal to a
human, which he subsequently expels through his foot. The Doctor
also shows a greater tolerance to cold compared to humans in
Planet of the Ood and
even Romana in
The Ribos
Operation
The Doctor states in
The Mind of
Evil that a pill, apparently an
aspirin, could kill him. It is uncertain whether
this is a susceptibility shared by all Time Lords, an
allergy unique to the Doctor, or if he was lying for
comic effect.
The bio-data of a Time Lord, the biological imprint and personal
history, is kept in the
Matrix,
a computer network that contains the sum total of all Time Lord
knowledge. The unauthorised extraction of a Time Lord's bio-data is
tantamount to treason.
It is stated that the Time Lords are biologically suited for time
travel. Also in
The Two Doctors, the Doctor states that
the "Rassilon Imprimatur" allows Time Lords to safely travel
through time, becoming
symbionts with
their TARDISes, and that the reason other species are incapable of
developing time travel are that they lack the imprimatur. However,
he implies later that he was lying about at least some of this
information to mislead the
Sontarans. At
the beginning of
The Trial
of a Time Lord, the Doctor suggests that a number of elder
Time Lords were able to use their combined mental energy to summon
his TARDIS against his will.
It is stated and seen in the
Fourth
Doctor serial
The Robots of
Death that Time Lords are immune to the voice-changing
effects of
helium. However, the Doctor
alludes to this being a learnt ability rather than a basic
biological immunity.
In "
The Unicorn and the
Wasp", the
Tenth Doctor is able to
overcome the effects of
cyanide by
"stimulating the inhibited enzymes into reversal". This is done by
consuming ginger beer, protein, and salt. A shock triggers the
'detox' effect.
Mental powers
Time Lords can also communicate by
telepathy. The Doctor's granddaughter,
Susan Foreman, displays psychic abilities in
The Sensorites and in
The Invasion of Time
it is revealed the Doctor's old tutor Borusa also taught him
telepathy. In both the final episode of
Frontier in Space and the first of
Planet of the Daleks,
the Doctor communicates with the Time Lords via telepathic circuits
in the
TARDIS, and in
Castrovalva, the Doctor activates the
TARDIS' Zero Room mentally. In
The Deadly Assassin, the Doctor
mentions that Time Lords are telepathic. Additionally, in
The Three
Doctors, the Doctor's first three incarnations communicate
with each other telepathically. This ability is exhibited by the
Doctors during other occasions where multiple incarnations are
present in one location and used primarily as a means of updating
the other selves to the current situation. In
Logopolis, the Doctor hints at a kind of
shared consciousness among Time Lords when he comments of the
Master: "He's a Time Lord. In many ways, we have the same mind."
This comment may refer to the existence of a "reflex link" in his
brain that is said to connect his thoughts to a Time Lord
Intelligentsia, a sort of communal shared mind (although he does
state in
The Invisible
Enemy that his own reflex link was disconnected when he
went into exile); however, this may also mean simply that he and
the Master merely think alike (akin to the idea of the Master being
'
Moriarty to the Doctor's
Holmes')
In "
The Girl in the
Fireplace", the
Tenth Doctor reads
the mind of
Madame de
Pompadour--and in the process, to his surprise, she is able to
read his mind as well. In
Paul
Cornell's
Virgin New
Adventures novel
Love
and War, the Doctor uses a similar method to read the mind
of his companion
Bernice
Summerfield. He later displays his telepathic communion powers
in "
Fear Her" and in "
The Shakespeare Code", where by using
his mind melding technique he is partially able to relieve a man of
his mental illness as he traces back through his memories. In
"
Planet of the Ood", he seems able
to temporarily confer some degree of telepathy on his companion
Donna Noble, so that she can hear the telepathic song of the Ood.
When she is unable to bear the song, the Doctor removes the
ability. It is unclear at this point whether the Doctor is actually
able to switch on or off telepathic potential that those beings
already possess or if he just shares his thoughts with them
telepathically.
The Doctor also contacts the Time Lords by going into a trance and
creating an assembling box (suggesting
telekinesis as well) in
The War Games.
In
The Two Doctors, the
Doctor engages in
astral
projection, but warns that if he is disturbed while doing so,
his mind could become severed from his body and he could die. In
"
Last of the Time Lords", the
Doctor telepathically interfaces with a network tapped into the
human population who collectively
chant his name. The focus of psychic energy granted the Doctor the
ability to de-age himself, float through the air, deflect shots
from the Master's laser screwdriver, and telekinetically disarm the
Master while surrounded in a powerful blue glow.
In addition, it is implied that Time Lords may be
clairvoyant, or have additional time-related
senses. In
The Time
Monster and
Invasion of the Dinosaurs the
Third Doctor is able to resist fields
of slow time, being able to move through them even though others
are
paralysed. In
City of Death both the
Fourth Doctor and
Romana
notice distortions and jumps in time that no one else does. In the
2005
series, the
Ninth Doctor claims
that he can sense the movement of the Earth through space as well
as being able to perceive the past and all possible futures. He is
also able to concentrate and time his motions well enough to step
safely through the blades of a rapidly spinning fan and later
claims that if any Time Lords still existed, he would be able to
sense them. As the Tenth Doctor he repeats this assertion, adding
also that he is somehow innately able to sense which events in time
are 'fixed' and which are in 'flux'. In the original series episode
"
Warrior's Gate", Romana is called a
'time-sensitive' by a marauding slaver and, though she seems to
deny this, is able to interface with his spaceship in ways that
only a 'time-sensitive' is supposed to be able to. In "
Utopia" the Doctor states that he finds
it difficult to look at Captain
Jack
Harkness because Jack's existence has become fixed in time and
space. The
Tenth Doctor also mentions
to
Donna Noble, in the episode "
The Fires of Pompeii", that Time Lords
can perceive the past, present, and all possible futures
simultaneously (as the
Ninth Doctor
told
Rose Tyler in "
The Parting of the Ways").
In the
Series 4 episode
"Journey's End", the
Tenth Doctor was shown to use his telepathic abilities to wipe
Donna Noble's mind of certain memories, specifically the memories
of her travels in the TARDIS.
The War
Games showed that other Time Lords are also able to erase
people's memories, as in that story, Jamie and Zoe's travels with
the Doctor were erased from their memory, and the council of Time
Lords also put a memory block on the Doctor so he could not pilot
the TARDIS.
Following the quote above the Doctor goes on to say that this is
what he sees all the time and then he asks the question, "And
doesn't it drive ya' mad?" Therefore stating that the powers of the
Time Lord could possible not only drive some of them mad, but all
of them, it's just that in some cases, like the Doctors, it isn't
dominant in the Time Lords of that possition.
Regeneration
The Fourth Doctor regenerates into the
Fifth Doctor (from
Logopolis, 1982).
Time Lords also have the ability to regenerate their bodies when
their current body is mortally wounded. This process results in
their body undergoing a transformation, gaining a new physical
form.
Regenerations can be traumatic events. In
Castrovalva, the Doctor requires the use of
a Zero Room, a chamber shielded from the outside universe that
provides an area of calm for him to recuperate. He comments that
there is an excellent polygonal zero room beneath the junior senate
block on Gallifrey. The Time Lord's personality also sometimes goes
through a period of instability following a regeneration.
It was first stated in
The
Deadly Assassin that a Time Lord can regenerate twelve
times before dying (thirteen incarnations in all). There were
exceptions to this rule, however: when the Master reached the end
of his regenerative cycle, he took possession of the body of
another person to continue living. The Master was also offered a
new cycle of regenerations by the High Council to save the Doctor
from the Death Zone, which may indicate that there are methods to
circumvent the 12 regeneration limit. The Master says in "The Sound
of Drums" that the Time Lords "resurrected" him to fight in the
Time War, which appears to
support this. It was revealed in "
The Brain of Morbius" that the Time
Lords also use the Elixir of Life in extreme cases, where
regeneration is not possible. This may be the reason for additional
regeneration cycles being granted.
Also in
The Deadly Assassin, several Time Lords including
the President are stated to have been "murdered" and are not stated
to have regenerated. Although it is possible that all of the Time
Lords killed were at the end of their regeneration cycles (somewhat
more likely with a retiring President: potentially his reaching the
end of his regeneration cycle was the very reason for his
retirement), it is also possible that regeneration, regardless of
how many regenerations the individual Time Lord has already
undergone, is a conditional and non-inevitable phenomenon. In
The Deadly Assassin at least one of the murders was
carried out with a 'staser', possibly a weapon designed to both
kill and prevent regeneration (stasers are also stated to have
little effect on non-living tissue). Some victims, such as
Runcible, were possibly "just Gallifreyans" and not Time Lords (see
above), and so may not have had the ability to regenerate.
In
Destiny of the
Daleks, Romana showed the ability to rapidly change form
several times in a row during her first regeneration and apparently
had the ability to change into whatever appearance she desired.
When the doctor remarks upon her ability she comments that he
should have stayed in university. It should be noted, however,
that, despite showing several appearances, Romana regenerated only
once on that occasion.
Whether or not Time Lords can recognise each other across
regenerations is not made entirely clear in the original television
series. In
The War Games, the
War Chief recognises the Doctor despite his regeneration and it is
implied that the Doctor knows him when they first meet. In
The
Deadly Assassin an old classmate recognizes the 4th Doctor
despite his changes in appearance. And in a later serial,
The Armageddon
Factor, another alumnus immediately recognises the Doctor,
though the Doctor does not recognise him. In
Planet of the Spiders, the Third
Doctor has trouble recognising his former mentor. In
The Five Doctors, the
Third Doctor is also unable to initially
recognise the Master in his non-Gallifreyan body. Similarly, the
Eighth Doctor is unable to recognise
the Master while he possesses a human body in the
1996 television movie. The Master
recognises the
Seventh Doctor on
sight in
Survival,
although this may simply point to an earlier, unseen
encounter.
The
Tenth Doctor does not recognise the
human form of the Master in "
Utopia", although the Doctor did
recognise him, and name him "Master", as soon as he recovered his
Time Lord physiology and mind. Also in Utopia, the Master, just
before regeneration, claims that he shall regenerate into a younger
body, implying that a Time Lord can even choose the form of their
new body, this is also mentioned in "
Time
Crash" where the tenth Doctor states to the Fifth Doctor that
"he was always trying to be old and grumpy, and then I was you".
This also implies that the Doctor could choose his new form. In
"The Sound of Drums" the Doctor states that Time Lords can "always"
recognise each other, although, while on Earth, the Master used
satellites with a telepathic network to mask his presence from the
Doctor. However, in "
Time Crash," the
Fifth Doctor could not instinctively
recognise that the Tenth Doctor was a Time Lord, nor did he guess
that they were different incarnations of the same Time Lord. Also,
in the 2008 Christmas Special "
The Next
Doctor", the Doctor initially seems unable to detect that
Jackson Lake is not
actually his regenerated future self.
In "The Last of the Time Lords", when the Master is fatally
wounded, he chooses not to regenerate, essentially committing
suicide rather than regenerate and be kept prisoner by the Doctor
forever. This again implies that regeneration is not inevitable and
can indeed be refused.
In "Turn Left", the
Tenth Doctor is
killed "too quickly for him to regenerate" in an alternate history
where he is killed in his own rampage against the Racnoss without
Donna to stop him and ultimately save his life. This death was
presumably caused by flooding of the building, which the Doctor was
aware of, and would not have happened any more suddenly than the
Sixth Doctor's apparent death by trauma in
Time and the Rani (although spin-off
media have suggested that the assault on the TARDIS was not the
sole reason for the Doctor's death).
Culture and society
The Time Lord homeworld,
Gallifrey, is an
Earth-like planet in the "constellation" of Kasterborous. Its
capital city is referred to as the Citadel, and contains the
Capitol, the seat of Time Lord government. At the centre of the
Capitol is the
Panopticon, beneath which
is the
Eye of Harmony. Outside the
Capitol lie wastelands where the "Outsiders", Time Lords who have
dropped out of Time Lord society, live in less technologically
advanced communities, shunning life in the cities. The Outsiders
have often been equated with the "Shobogans", a group mentioned
briefly in
The Deadly
Assassin as being responsible for acts of vandalism around
the Panopticon, but there is actually nothing on screen that
explicitly connects the two.
In general, the Time Lords are an
aloof
people, with a society full of pomp and ceremony. The Doctor has
observed that his people "enjoy making speeches" and have an
"infinite capacity for pretension". The Time Lord penchant for
ceremony extends to their technology, with various artefacts given
weighty names like the
Hand of Omega,
the Eye of Harmony or the Key of Rassilon.
The Doctor has also characterised the Time Lords as a stagnant and
corrupt society, a state caused by ten million years of absolute
power.
Brother
Lassar, in the episode "
School Reunion", describes the
Time Lords as "a pompous race" of "ancient, dusty senators...
frightened of change and chaos" and "peaceful to the point of
indolence". Their portrayal in the series is reminiscent of
academics living in ivory towers, unconcerned with external
affairs. The Doctor states that the Time Lords were sworn never to
interfere, only to watch ("The Sound of Drums"). It has been
suggested that, since perfecting the science of time travel, they
have withdrawn, bound by the moral complexity of interfering in the
natural flow of history (compare with the
Prime Directive from
Star Trek); in
Earthshock, the Cyberleader, when notified
of the arrival of a TARDIS, is surprised at the presence of a Time
Lord, stating "they are forbidden to interfere." In
The Two Doctors, it is suggested that
Time Lords are responsible for maintaining a general balance of
power between the races of the Universe.
While interference is apparently against Time Lord policy, there
are occasions when they do intervene, albeit indirectly. The Time
Lords occasionally send the Doctor on missions that required
plausible deniability, as in
The Two
Doctors, and sometimes against his will, like in
Colony in Space and
The Monster of
Peladon. He is also sent on a mission in
The Mutants which was intended to help
preserve the existence of a unique race, which was being destroyed
by the excesses of the Earth empire. The Doctor's mission in
Genesis of the Daleks
even involves changing history to avert the creation of the
Daleks, or at least temper their
aggressiveness.
Children of Gallifrey are taken from their families at the age of 8
and admitted into the Academy. Novices are then taken to an
initiation ceremony before the Untempered Schism, a gap in the
fabric of reality that looks into the time vortex. Of those that
stare into it, some are inspired, some run away and others go mad.
The Doctor suggests that the Master went mad, while admitting that
he ran away.
Each Time Lord belongs to one of a number of various colleges or
chapters, such as the Patrexes, Arcalian, and the Prydonian
chapters, which have ceremonial and possibly political
significance. In
The Deadly
Assassin, it is explained that each chapter has its own
colours; the Prydonians wear
scarlet
and
orange, the Arcalians wear
green, and the Patrexeans wear
heliotrope. However, in that same serial,
Cardinal Borusa, described as "the leader of the Prydonian chapter"
wears heliotrope. Other Prydonians wear orange headdresses with
orange-brown (not scarlet) robes. Others chapters mentioned in
spin-off novels include the
Dromeian and Cerulean chapters. The Prydonian chapter has a
reputation for being devious, and tends to produce renegades; the
Doctor, the Master and the
Rani
are all Prydonians. The colleges of the Academy are led by the
Cardinals. Ushers, who provide security and assistance at official
Time Lord functions, may belong to any chapter, and wear
all-
gold uniforms. Also mentioned in the Deadly
Assassin are '
plebeian classes'.
The executive political leadership is split between the Lord
President, who keeps the ceremonial relics of the Time Lords, and
the Chancellor, who appears to be the administrative leader of the
Cardinals and who acts as a check on the power of the Lord
President. The President is an elected position and on Presidential
Resignation Day, the outgoing President usually names his
successor, who is then also usually confirmed in a non-contested
"
election". However, it is still
constitutionally possible for another candidate to put themselves
forward for the post, as the Doctor did in
The Deadly Assassin. In that story,
the Presidency was described as a largely ceremonial role, but in
The Invasion of Time
the orders of the office were to be obeyed without question.
The President and Chancellor also sit on the Time Lord High
Council, akin to a legislative body, composed variously of
Councillors and more senior Cardinals. Also on the High Council is
the Castellan of the Chancellory Guard, in charge of the security
of the Citadel, who the Doctor has referred to as the leader of a
trumped-up palace guard. According to the constitution, if while in
emergency session the other members of the High Council are in
unanimous agreement, even the President's orders can be
overruled.
Technology
Paradoxically, although the Time Lords are a scientifically and
technologically advanced race, the civilization is so old that key
pieces of their technology have become shrouded in legend and myth.
In the spin-off fiction, an edict and general aversion against
exploring
Gallifrey's past
also contributes to this. Accordingly, until the Master rediscovers
it, the Time Lords do not know the location of the Eye beneath
their capital. They also treat such ceremonial symbols as the Key
and Sash of Rassilon as mere historical curiosities, being unaware
of their true function.
TARDISes are characterised not just by their ability to travel in
time, but also their dimensionally transcendent nature. A TARDIS's
interior spaces exist in a different dimension from its exterior,
which is how it's bigger on the inside. The Doctor states that
transdimensional engineering was a key Time Lord discovery in
The Robots of Death. In
the revived series, the TARDIS has an organic look, and the Doctor
states in "
The Impossible
Planet" that TARDISes are grown, not made.
Fitting their generally defensive nature, Time Lord weapons
technology is rarely seen, other than the
staser hand weapons used by the Guard within the
Capitol. Stasers (acronym unknown, but possibly a melding of stun
and laser, since they have been used to stun targets) can be lethal
energy weapons, specifically designed to prevent the unwanted
regeneration of rogue Time Lords; staser beams also shatter the
crystalline structure of non-organic targets.
Standard TARDISes do not generally seem to use any on-board
weaponry, although War or Battle TARDISes (armed with "time
torpedoes" that freeze their target in time) have appeared in the
spin-off media. In the novels, the
Eighth
Doctor's companion
Compassion, a living TARDIS, has
enough firepower to annihilate other TARDISes. In the serial
Castrovalva the Master's TARDIS is
equipped with an energy field that he uses to temporarily disable
or stun several human security guards outside the vessel, although
it is unclear whether this is an original feature of the craft or a
custom feature fitted by the renegade Time Lord.
One exception to the Time Lords' defensive weaponry is the de-mat
gun (or dematerialisation gun). The de-mat gun is a weapon of mass
destruction that removes its target from space-time altogether, as
seen in
The Invasion of
Time. The de-mat gun was created in Rassilon's time and is
a closely guarded secret; the knowledge to create one is kept in
the Matrix and is available only to the President. To make sure
this knowledge is not abused, the only way to arm a de-mat gun is
by means of the Great Key of Rassilon, whose location is only known
to the Chancellor. As a means of extreme sanction, the Time Lords
have also been known to place whole planets into time-loops,
isolating them from the universe in one repeating moment of time as
well as hurling planets from one galaxy to another using a weapon
referred only as a
magnetron in the
episodes
Trial of a Time
Lord and
Journey's
End.
In the
Eighth Doctor
Adventures novel
The Ancestor
Cell by
Peter Anghelides
and
Stephen Cole, the Time
Lords are shown to house other weapons of mass destruction in a
stable time eddy known as the Slaughterhouse. In the
Doctor Who
Annual 2006, a section by
Russell
T Davies says that during the
Time War, the Time Lords used Bowships
(used against the Great Vampires in an ancient war), Black Hole
Carriers and N-Forms (war machines first mentioned in the
Virgin New Adventures novel
Damaged Goods, written by
Davies).
History within the show
Details of the Time Lords' history within the show are sketchy and
are, as is usual for
Doctor Who continuity, fraught with
supposition and contradiction. The Time Lords became the masters of
time travel when one of their number, the scientist
Omega created an energy source to power
their experiments in time. To this end, Omega used a stellar
manipulation device, the
Hand of
Omega, to rework a nearby star into a new form to serve that
source. Unfortunately, the star flared, first into a
supernova, and then collapsed into a
black hole. Omega was thought killed in that
explosion but unknown to everyone, had somehow survived in an
antimatter universe beyond the black
hole's
singularity.
Rassilon, the ultimate founder of Time Lord
society, then took a singularity (assumed by fans and the spin-off
media to be the same one as Omega's) and placed it beneath the Time
Lords' citadel on Gallifrey. This perfectly balanced
Eye of Harmony then served as the power
source for their civilisation as well as their time machines. In
"
The Satan Pit", the Doctor states
that his race "practically invented black holes. In fact, we did",
presumably a reference to the singularity created by Omega.
At some point in their history the Time Lords interacted with the
civilisation of the planet Minyos, giving them advanced technology
(including the ability to "regenerate" to a limited degree, by
rejuvenating their bodies when they grow too old). This met with
disastrous results, (which is said by some to be the reason the
Time Lords adopted a philosophy of "non-interference"). The Minyans
destroyed themselves in a series of
nuclear wars (
Underworld).
As of the current series, the Time Lords have, according to
the Doctor, all perished at the
conclusion of a
Time War with
the
Daleks, leaving the Doctor the sole
survivor and the last of his race. It was also revealed by the
Beast that the Doctor was responsible
for the extinction of both races.
However, there may have been survivors other than the Doctor. In
the episode "
Gridlock", the
Face of Boe told the Doctor with his
dying breath that "you are not alone". In the episode "
Utopia" the Doctor learns that the
Master survived. The Doctor had failed to sense him because he had
used a chameleon arch to turn himself into a human (as the Doctor
did in "
Human
Nature"), while hiding at the end of the Universe. While the
Master is commonly presumed to have been the one to whom the Face
of Boe referred (the Master's pseudonym was an acronym of the Face
of Boe's final message), this also opens a possible plot hook for
the similar survival of other Time Lords throughout time and space.
The Master is supposed to have died during the events of
Last of the Time Lords: shortly after
having his plans of universal conquest foiled by the Doctor and his
companion
Martha Jones, the Master was
shot by his human wife
Lucy Saxon. He
chose to repress his ability to regenerate and subsequently died,
leaving the Doctor to mourn him and to burn his body on a pyre.
However, a short scene at the end of the episode shows a female
hand picking the Master's signet ring out of the ashes, while the
Master's voice can be heard laughing in the background. The Master
has been confirmed to return in the 2009 Christmas Specials.
In the episode "
The Doctor's
Daughter", after landing on planet
Messaline the Doctor was forced
to place his hand inside a progenation machine, which used his DNA
to create a new soldier, to fight in the war taking place. The new
female soldier - his daughter,
Jenny, possesses the DNA of a Time Lord.
While the Doctor argues that a Time Lord is more than simply
genetics, he is impressed by the superhuman abilities she displays,
and intelligence on par with his own. By the end of the episode he
becomes more willing to accept her as his daughter and a Time Lord.
Donna Noble also gains the mind of a time lord or at least part of
the Doctor's. After being trapped on the TARDIS as it is about to
be destroyed, she is drawn towards the Doctor's hand, which was
severed in the 2005 Christmas special and loaded with unused energy
from a partial regeneration (see "
Journey's End", 2008). Touching
the hand triggers the remaining regeneration process, and causes a
second Doctor to be created, one who is part human, borrowing
traits from Donna just as she absorbs part of his mind.
Partial list of Time Lords appearing in Doctor
Who
Time Lords from spin-off media
Notes
See also
References
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