Theory:Timeline - Rassilon

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This page lists appearances of Rassilon in the order in which he experienced them. This timeline is based upon observations of the Doctor Who universe and the events that occur during each of these stories.

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Timeline

Old Time

• COMIC: Monstrous Beauty

Set in the Dark Times. Rassilon is a black woman with short hair. She is in command of a group of Gallifreyans. Time Lord society is yet to exist.

• AUDIO: Omega (flashback)

RAS: It's started! Revolution, Omega! The Inquisitors have started rounding everyone up, all the naysayers, doom-mongers and all I round moaning-minnies. All the Luddites who don't believe in progress. Our progress... you can have all that up there, my friend, after we've got control of everything down here.

• PROSE: The Legacy of Gallifrey

"[Rassilon and Omega] worked on their project for three years, and came to the conclusion that if they detonated a black hole in space and transferred the power back to Gallifrey and contained it, they would have the answer to time travel."

• PROSE: Remembrance of the Daleks (flashback)

"Omega turned away from the gallery window. He was a huge man with wide shoulders and muscular arms, a definite drift from the regenerative norm. Some Gallifreyans, however, said his present incarnation was a throwback, a genetic memory from the dark time. He opened his arms like some barbarian king and grinned at Rassilon."

• TV: The Timeless Children

Rassilon stands with his fellow Founding Fathers of Gallifrey, Omega and the Second Tecteun.

• COMIC: Star Death

Rassilon has bushy eyebrows and wears a hood.

Rassilon and the Time Lords harness the power of a black hole for the first time, allowing for future developments in the way of directional time travel, setting this before The Multi-Faceted War. Omega is lost and presumed dead.

• PROSE: Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible (flashback)

Rassilon overthrows the Pythia.

• PROSE: The Legacy of Gallifrey

"Rassilon's body changed, the face growing younger, the brown hair turning fair, and the body altering its shape. For the first time ever, a regeneration took place. Rassilon became the First of the Time Lords."

After Omega's death.

• PROSE: Lungbarrow (flashback)

"The great mother was gone. The Pythia was dead, overthrown by her children."

"Omega, despite his sacrifice, still had a hand in their affairs ... Rassilon had wept again. Everything the man did was done for love. But sometimes love was remarkably shortsighted."

• COMIC: The Final Chapter (flashback)

Rassilon has a bushy, white beard and wears a coronet.

The Rassilon Era begins with Year Zero.

• COMIC: Wormwood (flashback)

Rassilon has a bushy, white beard and wears a coronet.

• PROSE: Snow White and the Seven Keys to Doomsday

Set soon after Rassilon became president and set up the Matrix.

• PROSE: Jorus and the Voganauts

Rassilon is president and at war with the Vampires. Time travel has not been fully mastered yet.

• PROSE: The Multi-Faceted War

"The Time Lord President was a man reborn – quite literally, as he had recently regenerated. In this form, he was strong and athletic, if older and with a full beard."

Rassilon has recently regenerated, and ends the war by wiping out the Great Vampires. Rassilon has already planned a suite of time travel machines.

• AUDIO: Zagreus: Heartland

According to the "storybook", the Great One has been defeated by Rassilon, setting this after The Multi-Faceted War. Omega is also dead, setting this after Star Death. In a projection created by the Doctor's TARDIS, Rassilon faces a descendent of the Great Old One, Tepesh. According to this account, Rassilon has been systematically adjusting the DNA of the great houses as part of his experiments with regeneration.

• PROSE: The Scrolls of Rassilon

Rassilon has a strong jaw with a short beard; he wears a Time Lord collar and armour.

• COMIC: Terrorformer

In an incarnation similar to the one fromn The End of Time, Rassilon forms the Alliance of Races to oppose the Hyperions.

• COMIC: The Hyperion Empire

• COMIC: Gangland

In an incarnation similar to the one fromn The End of Time, Rassilon tricks the Count D'if into erasing himself from time in a game of Rassilon Roulette.

• COMIC: The Lost Dimension

Rassilon has a lined face with short, swept-back grey hair. Rassilon meets the Eleventh Doctor and he becomes a pilot for a Type 1 TARDIS.

• PROSE: Pandoric's Box

"[Rassilon] had recently lost the full beard and looked younger now, handsome even with a jocularity to his face that did not sit well with his office."

"Roppen had applied the effect of retrogressive solicitation used in early TARDISes to these forces and created a device both astounding and terrible." Sets this story after The Lost Dimension.

Final incarnation

• PROSE: The Legacy of Gallifrey

"Rassilon was also nearing the end of his twelfth regeneration and was preparing to metamorphose once again."

"However, Rassilon couldn't predict his next brush with death, and when it occured he found he was unable to bring about another regeneration ... Azmeal then arranged, as Rassilon had requested, for the body of the first and greatest Time Lord to be taken to the Dark Tower in The Death Zone, where it lay in a massive tomb. Rassilon was no more."

• PROSE: Pandoric's Box

In what is claimed to be his thirteenth and final incarnation, Rassilon prepares his tomb in the Death Zone. He has muttonchops, a bushy moustache and wears a coronet.

Consciousness in the Matrix

• COMIC: The Tides of Time

Rassilon has a bushy, white beard and wears a hood.

• COMIC: The Stockbridge Horror

Rassilon has a bushy, white beard and wears a hood.

• PROSE: Catalogue of Events

Rassilon has a bushy, white beard and wears a hood.

"The Doctor, you say? I know of this person. He has been useful to our cause in the past ... Even the ideas expressed by one such as the Doctor can have their repercussions. He is best forgotten. That is standard procedure 367. Now, don't bother me again unless it [is] something important."

• TV: The Five Doctors

Rassilon has muttonchops and wears a coronet. He appears as a projection from the Matrix.

• PROSE: Blood Harvest

"This is the Game of Rassilon. To lose is to win, and he who wins shall lose . . ." An enormous yawn rolled around the Tomb. "Come and see me again some day, Doctor. The cosmos would be a duller place without you."

• PROSE: The Eight Doctors

'With your help, Lord Rassilon.' he said, softly. 'I rather think you have guided me every step of the way.'

'As you once said yourself, Doctor, a man is the sum of his memories, and a Time Lord even more so. You needed your other selves, just as they needed you. For a time I needed you - to make one or two small improvements in the patterns of history.'

• COMIC: The Final Chapter

Rassilon once again has a bushy, white beard and wears a hood.

• AUDIO: The Time of the Daleks

• AUDIO: Neverland
  • AUDIO: Seasons of Fear

• AUDIO: Zagreus

In the Divergent Universe

• AUDIO: Caerdroia

• AUDIO: The Next Life

Resurrected in the Time War

• AUDIO: Desperate Measures

Rassilon is resurrected for the Time War in the body of Admiral Valerian. This body regenerates in the process and he becomes a thin older man with white hair.

• AUDIO: Havoc

• AUDIO: Collateral

• AUDIO: Assassins

Following an assassination attempt by Romana and the War Livia Caralis, Rassilon is forced to regenerate into a new incarnation. This is claimed to be his first real regeneration.

• AUDIO: Deception

• AUDIO: Homecoming

Rassilon decides to take a more personal role in the Time War.

• AUDIO: The Last Days of Freme

Set shortly after Homecoming. Rassilon sends Leela to the War Room.

• AUDIO: The Passenger

Rassilon leaves The General, Rasmus and Ollistra in charge of the War Council, while he focuses on other endeavours.

• AUDIO: The First Days of Phaidon

• PROSE: Pandoric's Box

An incarnation of Rassilon with a crewcut hairstyle is time scooped from the Last Great Time War by The Moment. This incarnation is confirmed to be the one that is later killed by the Master following the events of The End of Time.

• PROSE: Decoy

Rassilon allies with the Nestenes so that he can use an Auton duplicate of the War Doctor as his proxy, bringing him into conflict with the Doctor.

• PROSE: Engines of War

Rassilon converted Borusa into a probability engine during the Time War.

• COMIC: Sky Jacks

Priyan tells Engin that Rassilon is initiating the Ultimate Sanction, placing it just before The End of Time.

• TV: The End of Time

Set on the last day of the Time War. Rassilon's attempt to enact the Ultimate Sanction is repelled by the Doctor and the Master. Rassilon is Lord President and has a grey crewcut.

After the events of The End of Time, the Master choked Rassilon to death with White-Point Stars. Rassilon then regenerates into an older and bald incarnation. (PROSE: Lords and Masters, Pandoric's Box)

Post-War

• PROSE: Pandoric's Box

An incarnation known as "Baldy" is united with two of his former incarnations. He is said to have regenerated from the "crewcut" incarnation making this the Rassilon from Hell Bent.

• TV: Hell Bent

Rassilon is in a new, bald incarnation after being attacked by the Master. He is deposed by the Twelfth Doctor and banished from Gallifrey.

• COMIC: Supremacy of the Cybermen

Rassilon is no longer President. He attempts to regain control of Gallifrey but they betray him. He works with the Twelfth Doctor to undo time and prevent him from forming an alliance with the Cybermen.

Apocrypha

• PROSE: Christmas on a Rational Planet

Chris was looking into a vast hall, a throne-room painted in the dull grey of eternity. There was a man seated in the hall, a large, powerful man, his face wreathed by a great white beard and moustache, his head topped by a conical crown. His throne was made out of the crushed bones of things that looked suspiciously like gigantic bats. Two other men sat at his side. One carried the tools of an engineer; the other’s position was less obvious.

Now, See What We Have Created,’ the bearded man said, and his voice was living thunder. ‘We Have Built A World Of Reason Triumphant. And It Is Good.’

Chris let his attention wander across the galaxies, briefly wondering how much of this was supposed to be real and how much of it was just a fairy-tale.

• PROSE: Interference - Book One

[The right-hand throne is unoccupied, but in the left-hand throne sits RASSILON’S ENGINEER – in a funny hat – while in the central seat is RASSILON himself. As played by BRIAN BLESSED.]

MARK: So, this little scenario here is what the Remote media are based on. You’re from Earth, though, so you’re seeing it the way the BBC would do it. Only with better special effects.

[Things flood out of the sphere. Vast, black shapes, their silhouettes barely visible against the dark background. Great leathery wings flap between the Gallifreyan vessels, sinewy limbs wrapping themselves around the prows of the closest ships.]

SAM: This is the Faction’s version of history. They’ve rewritten things to suit their image.

Currently unplaced

• PROSE: Interference - Book Two