Laws of Time

The Laws of Time, (TV: The Three Doctors) also called the Protocols of the Great Houses, (PROSE: The Book of the War) regulated Time Lords' use of their power to travel in time. (TV: The Three Doctors, et. al.)

These laws were hard-wired into the structure of the Spiral Politic. Since most were simply synonymous with the laws of physics, (PROSE: The Book of the War) the ones usually mentioned were the ones with a moral basis. (PROSE: Love and War, The Book of the War) Unlike most species, who believed the highest moral imperative was the preservation of life, the Great Houses believed that preservation of history was a far bigger priority. (PROSE: The Book of the War)

First Law of Time

The First Law of Time, (TV: The Three Doctors) also called Linearity, was the most important and widely-discussed of the Protocols. (PROSE: The Book of the War) It forbade Gallifrey's present from interacting with its own subjective past or future. (PROSE: Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible, Lungbarrow, Alien Bodies, The Book of the War)

One consequence was that Time Lords could not meet each other out of temporal sequence (PROSE: Goth Opera) or meet their former selves. (TV: The Three Doctors) That restriction could even apply to non-Time-Lords: the Fourth Doctor refused to return Eldrad to her native time because that would have been a "distortion of history" that "contravened the First Law of Time". (TV: The Hand of Fear) The Ninth Doctor once told Rose Tyler that there "used to be" laws banning interference with one's own past. (TV: Father's Day) Likewise, the Fifth Doctor described the Brigadier's encounter with his past self as being bad. (TV: Mawdryn Undead) The Eleventh Doctor said that a time traveller's own grave was the one place they could never go. (TV: The Name of the Doctor)

Another consequence of the Protocols of Linearity was that if a Homeworlder were to leave the Homeworld for five years, though they could theoretically return moments after they left, upon their return they would inevitably find that five years had passed there as well. In effect, whenever an agent entered an area of time outside the Homeworld, their relative histories would be temporarily linked so that their "present"s would be indistinguishable, despite being aeons apart. This rule applied to other time-active powers as well, including Faction Paradox and the enemy, which many speculated could be due to the Houses' inability to revoke the Protcols, an agreement between the parties, or mutual fear of the consequences of non-linearity. (PROSE: The Book of the War)

The Seventh Doctor stated that interfering in Gallifrey's past time travel experiments was against the First Law; (PROSE: Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible) by several accounts, he was present during those experiments. (PROSE: Remembrance of the Daleks, Lungbarrow)

Violations

This law could be bent without breaking: on several occasions, objects from the Homeworld's past were "hooked" and dragged into the present. (PROSE: The Book of the War) For instance, the Doctor's incarnations were pulled together several times through Time Lord sanction (TV: The Three Doctors, The Five Doctors, The Two Doctors, PROSE: World Game) or by accident. (TV: Time Crash, Twice Upon a Time)

The Eighth Doctor chastised Sebastian Grayle for breaking the First Law of Time after Grayle told him they would meet in the future. (AUDIO: Seasons of Fear) The Eighth Doctor's companion Charlotte Pollard similarly broke the First Law by later travelling with his sixth incarnation, thus exposing the Doctor to his own future. (AUDIO: Brotherhood of the Daleks)

In the years before the War in Heaven, the Great Houses encountered their future counterparts several times. For instance, Thessalia interacted with War-era agents of Faction Paradox during a Violent Unknown Event on Zo la Domini (PROSE: The Book of the War) The Eighth Doctor encountered the War several times while it was in his future, (PROSE: Alien Bodies, Unnatural History, The Taking of Planet 5) saying that he was "breaking one of the major Laws of Time... It could be the third." (PROSE: Alien Bodies)

After Faction Paradox signed the Gregorian Compact with George II in 1752, agents of the Faction and the Great Houses alike found it difficult to penetrate Earth's causality for the next seventy years: observing this period would be too much like looking into their own future. However, Cousin Belial slipped through the lock on the late 1700s by being reborn in 1782. (PROSE: The Book of the War)

Robert Scarratt was known to test the limits of linearity by using timeships to go AWOL for periods totaling at least a year of subjective time. (PROSE: The Book of the War)

When the Remote left Faction Paradox, they became divorced from linearity. As a result, Compassion could be born during the War but go on to travel with an old-fashioned timeship in the pre-War era. (PROSE: Interference, The Book of the War)

During his ninth and tenth incarnations, the Doctor willingly caused tiny loops in his own timeline. (TV: Father's Day, Smith and Jones) In contrast, the Eleventh Doctor later told Carter that he'd "best not" cross his own timestream; (TV: The Wedding of River Song) the TARDIS later tried to stop him from visiting his grave on Trenzalore. He believed this visit had made his fate unchangeable, (TV: The Name of the Doctor) though with the Time Lords' help he was able to change the future. (TV: The Time of the Doctor)

The Eleventh Doctor was content to bring a young Kazran Sardick into his own future in an attempt to change his past. (TV A Christmas Carol)

Due to the actions of the Moment, the Doctor crossed his own timestream in a big way when he met the War Doctor and the Tenth Doctor and they shared an adventure together. They later broke the law in an even bigger way by calling forth every incarnation of themselves to help with their plan. (TV: The Day of the Doctor)

The Twelfth Doctor refused to help Clara Oswald save Danny Pink as it meant crossing her own timeline which was a bad idea. (TV: Dark Water) Unknown to the Doctor, he had earlier accidentally crossed his own timeline when Clara piloted the TARDIS from the end of the universe and they landed in a barn where the young First Doctor was crying. However, Clara kept the Doctor from knowing the truth and convinced him never to return to find out when and where they had travelled to. (TV: Listen)

Other laws of time

One of the Laws of Time stated that an object from a non-existent timeline cannot be present in the current timeline. Cousin Justine of the Faction Paradox, a time-aware faction opposed to the Time Lords had a mask from another timeline.

The Seventh Doctor once joked that the first law of space-time travel was "avoid voids". (PROSE: The Highest Science)

The Tenth Doctor told Martha Jones that "crossing into established events is strictly forbidden, except for cheap tricks". (TV: Smith and Jones)

Lesser Protocols of the Great Houses included bans on breed-mixing with the lesser species, but those were lifted to create regen-inf soldiery. (PROSE: The Book of the War)

Other information

Before the Laws were actually enforced, a Time Lord librarian visited the histories of planets. (PROSE: Love and War)

The Fifth Doctor stated that Time Lords served time rather than the other way around. (AUDIO: The Axis of Insanity) They were pledged to uphold the Laws of Time and to prevent alien aggression, as the Fourth Doctor specified: "only when such aggression is deemed to threaten the indigenous population. I think that's how it goes." (TV: The Hand of Fear) Although criticised for interfering in history so often, the Doctor defended himself by stating he could only prevent "outside interference." (COMIC: Dead Man's Hand)

The Sixth Doctor told the Sontarans that allowing them time travel to correct past defeats would be against the Laws. (AUDIO: The First Sontarans)

The Doctor stated that he was "...Defender of the Laws of Time" in his seventh and eighth incarnations. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks, PROSE: Vampire Science)

After the destruction of the Time Lords in the Last Great Time War, the Tenth Doctor said he was in control of the Laws of Time, claiming they were his and that they would obey him. However, he quickly regretted his interference with established history. (TV: The Waters of Mars)

The Eleventh Doctor said that the Laws of Time were too powerful for anyone to totally control, and that repeatedly acting in disregard of them would make time "fold in on itself", threatening to destroy all of existence. (GAME: City of the Daleks)

After the destruction of time caused by the explosion of the Doctor's TARDIS, the Eleventh Doctor implied that the laws of time no longer applied. He met himself to buy more time. (TV: The Big Bang)

By using an extraction chamber, the Twelfth Doctor was able to remove Clara Oswald from the moment before a Quantum Shade killed her, but in doing so, the Laws of Time were bent to keep her in a time loop that would allow her to continue experiencing life. However, this meant her existence was now contained to a small window of time between her penultimate and final heartbeats before being slain, while the Time Lords' technology allowed them to manipulate other elements of time so she would still be able to remain fully conscious and interact with others. This effectively placed her on borrowed time. She now existed as an anomaly who was still able to move around, but because her physical state itself was caught in a loop, things she needed to do while under normal effects of time or would experience under the normal effects of time were no longer in effect, such as breathing, heartbeat and ageing. In the case of breathing, it was reduced to a peripheral habit- Clara didn't need to draw breath anymore because she was perpetually stuck on one breath. (TV: Hell Bent)