Talk:Time Lord

Time Lords a race?

Are the Time Lords a race, because some sources e.g. REF: Doctor Who: The Encyclopedia says that they are but various sources mentioning before the Time War e.g. DW: The Invasion of Time seem to suggest that they are more of a society? Which of it is it to be? Or is it not certain?

Also is under the Infobox Race category is a Female Time Lord called a Time Lady because humans are sometimes called Man and a male human is also called a man but women is not a species name so is Time Lady? --Skittles the hog 19:37, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Ugh, not this again. Seems like this is EVERYWHERE on the net. Here are my remarks from the talk page on the main Wikipedia article about Time Lords:

I have never understood this claim. What is it about The Deadly Assassin and The Invasion of Time that makes people think that all Gallifreyans aren't Time Lords? I think the article would benefit of some very specific quotations from the script and critical sources to clear this up. The most I've ever come away with from these two Fourth Doctor serials is that the chapters represent socio-political strata in Time Lord society, not that you have to be part of one of these houses to be a Time Lord. Indeed the group living outside the Citadel in Invasion are specifically said to be TIme Lords, not mere Gallifreyans. This rather firmly attests that Time Lords are not just "the ones in the high collars", nor do they all belong to one of the "Chapters". It's rather like Harry Potter. You can be a witch and not a student at Hogwarts. LIkewise you can be a Time Lord and not a member of a Chapter. In both these serials we're simply seeing the Time Lords in the middle of political crises, so you get a disproportionate view of the electoral college, as it were.

Given that there are specific mentions of "Time Lord physiology" throughout the series, Time Lords are at least a race (in the sense of species). But the new series has been extremely helpful in positively asserting that the Time Lords are indeed a race. Mr. Finch positively identifies the Doctor as "a Time Lord" (not Gallifreyan) and says in School Reunion, "And what of the Time Lords? I always thought of you as such a pompous race." Likewise, Jabe in "The End of the World" is clearly looking for identification of the Doctor's species when her little "Blackberry" tells her the Doctor is a Time Lord. There really can be no doubt that the Time Lords are a race, and this article needs to reflect that.

As for the possibility that there are multiple species on Gallifrey, well, I think the article needs to give us a lot more than just "it is heavily implied". Where in Invasion or Assassin or Trial is it implied? How is it implied? Does it just come down to the fact that some of the Time Lord characters in Assassin die without regenerating? Cause if so, the threat of a non-regenerative death has been cited as a possibility at least as far back as Castrovalva, confirmed as possible in The Caves of Androzani, and was definitively shown as an option in "Last of the Time Lords". The Master clearly had the knowledge to suspend the Doctor's regenerative process in "Last", and so logically could have employed it in Assassin. Thus, the fact that "Gallifreyans" actually died in Assassin doesn't mean they weren't Time Lords. In fact, if you think about it, Time Lord police couldn't have just ordinary guns. They would have to have weapons which suspended regeneration; otherwise, shooting someone wouldn't be an effective deterrent. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 03:18, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

My understanding has been that all Time Lords are a Gallifreyan and the only race native to that planet. Not all Gallifreyans/natives are Time Lords. The Time Lords are a "group" of Gallifreyans who are in many ways superior. I've seen references to there only being about 1,000 Time Lords around at any given time.

Further, I've heard the terms Time Lord, Lord of Time, Time Lady, and Time Tot all used to describe members of this group. I suspect their species name would be a bit more exact if it went from person to person - titles are more colloquial and are subject to differences from the gender and maturity of the subject.

In The Doctor's Daughter the Doctor refers to the Time Lords as more than a race. He says they are "a shared history, a shared creed, a shared suffering" or something very similar to that. Hardly definitive, but it hints.

Sorry for any misspellings, I'm very tired and headed for bed. These are just my two cents. Hope it helps. --TheOmnius 07:54, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

My understanding is that the Time Lords are the race and that the so called "Gallifreyans" are just Time Lords who don't want to be called Time Lords because they don't like being considered the same as the Time Lords in the Capitol, whose desisions they disagree with. Gallifreyan is also just another one of many names atributed to the nomadic Time Lords who are also called Outsiders and Renegades. I'm A Hydroponic Tomato! Bigredrabbit 01:15, November 29, 2009 (UTC)

One of the Big Finidh Audios, Omega, says that Time Lords are Gallifreyans who own a TARDIS.TemporalSpleen 20:40, May 18, 2010 (UTC)

Topics for separate articles

this could use splitting up, due to the volume of information.

• Time Lord history
  • Dark Times/time of Rassilon
  • the Doctor's time
  • Time War (already have this article)

• Time Lord government/politics
• Time Lord physiology
• Time Lord culture
• Time Lord appearances in various media

--***Stardizzy*** 18:43, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

So much for the race the writers wanted to make so mysterious... anyway, I agree, but culture, government/politics and physiology could all be merged with Gallifreyan, which is currently lacking, although it is not always clear which parts of them apply to all Gallifreyans and which just to the elites. ~ Ghelæ -talk-contribs 18:46, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Template

i've added a species template into the article, but i have left blank some parts that need filling in (as i dno't know the answeres) --Si 11:47, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Actually, Time Lords aren't the species - that's the Gallifreyans - instead, they're more of a rank like a king or a politician. ~ Ghelæ -talk-contribs 12:11, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Time Lords as a God analogy?

It's obvious that at least some of the time they do the Time Lords up as gods of the universe, but is it the overall intention? The excuse used for Near-Humans (Namely: Time Lords evolved early, and other races evolved to be similar) is very much a "Created in His Image" type thing, and the "Protector of the Universe" combined with Destroyer of Races puts the Doctor, as the last time lord, in a sort of godlike mediator position. However, The Satan Pit seems to suggest that there are greater powers in Heaven and Earth than are dreamed of in even his philosophy. In short, my question is this: Is The Doctor, and by extension, are the Time Lords, intended to be seen as god, gods, or the closest thing we're going to get to gods? Or are they just another race, but really really smart? 24.205.50.170 03:49, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Time Lords as an Israel analogy?

Has anyone ever noticed that the Time Lords do have some parallels to the nation of Israel and Judaism? The Time Lords have a smug superior image of themselves as the Lords of Time similar to the idea of the jews as the chosen people. They are also similar because they both seem to have strict rules and ideas relating to those who are different than themselves and in a way similar to the judges of ancient Israel are ruled by a very ceremony bound hierarchy. The Time Lords' destruction at the end of the time war and the burning of Gallifrey can also be seen to be similar to the burning of the Temple and Jerusalem after the great Jewish revolt. And finally in End of Time they return, (paralleling the creation of the state of Israel in 1948) after a dramatic event in the history of the universe (similar to the aftermath world war two and the rise modern zionism).

White Point Star

I watched The End Of Time part two with subtitles on: the subtitles showed it as 'Whitepoint' Star. 80.225.142.0 18:21, January 2, 2010 (UTC)

Time Lords are a race!

Again in DW: The End of Time The Doctor calls the Time Lords a race, I quote, "There not just bringing back THE SPECIES. It's Gallifrey!" in DW: The Sound of Drums the Doctor calls them the most mighty race in the Universe. Note the word RACE. Surely the TV Series is more Cannon than the books and other spinoff media? Especially the more recent episodes.--Gallifreyispowerful 11:53, January 5, 2010 (UTC)

All things are generally equal. (See Tardis:Canon policy for more info)

A race and a species are two different things, a race is a large group of people distinguished from others based on a common heritage (wikitionary), whilst a species is even wider and is a group of plants or animals that have a similar appearance (again wikitionary). Of course you can get more specific about species.

If you want to look at just TV media in DW: The Invasion of Time there was a distinction made between Gallifreyans and Time Lords, when Leela asks one of the Outlers if they're Time Lords he replies "We were." Which along with novels and audios backs up that it's a cultural fraternity of people. --Tangerineduel 15:57, January 5, 2010 (UTC)

Hmmm. If "all things are equal", why does this article's lead still unequivocally state that the species is Gallifreyan? At the very least this article should express some doubt as to what a Time Lord is. RTD has been absolutely consistent, from his second episode to his last, in portraying the Time Lords as a race. And by this, he's not using some trumped up wiktionary definition, but an actual definition I can find in the OED:

(in nontechnical use) each of the major divisions of living creatures: a member of the human race | the race of birds

There has never been an instance, not one, in the history of the BBC Wales version of DW in which this definition couldn't be applied to the words Time Lord. I appreciate that there are other definitions out there, including that of "subspecies" which would fit in nicely with what's been said above, but that's not what RTD has been using. An ordinary viewer encountering Doctor Who solely through the BBC Wales version will think, Time Lords:Gallifrey::Humans:Earth. Period. It's very simple. To the ordinary viewer's mind, there's no ambiguity there whatsoever. Since 2005, we've heard Daleks, Sontarans, Racnoss, Krillitanes, and various others described as races and species alike. We know, in this science fictional setting, that's what race usually means. RTD isn't applying some super technical, biological definition, just a commonly-understood one. In the same way that we might be called "Earthlings", Time Lords might be called "Gallifreyans", but that doesn't change the fact that we are biolgically human and the Doctor is biologically a Time Lord. RTD has never backed away from that; in fact that's the explicit point of The Doctor's Daughter.

Come to that, I can't readily think of a time in the BBC Wales version when the word Gallifreyan has ever actually been used . . . at all. Maybe it's been used to describe a writing system or a bit of tech. But I don't think so. I'm pretty sure RTD has been so consistent about the use of Time Lord that he's never actually let the adjective Gallifreyan come anywhere close to a script.

So for this article to arrogantly continue advancing its interpretation of the word based upon one line from The Invasion of Time — and the books and CDs that have trickled therefrom — is a bit churlish, and, actually, old-fashioned. Personally, I don't think that all stories are equal when it comes to this particular topic. I think that the article should be rewritten to emphasize the dominant opinion given by televised DW, with a section given to "other interpretations". Because you're talking about one line in one story of the 1970s, and a few things written in other media. And RTD's interpretation of the words Time Lord is foundational to modern Doctor Who.

The fact that the Doctor is the last of his species is the dominant character trait of the Ninth and Tenth Doctors. This concept doesn't mean so much if the Doctor is merely the last of his "community" or "cultural group", as is suggested by the previous poster. I mean, "I'm the last of the Flemish" is quite a different thing from "I'm the last of the Humans". CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 05:28, January 30, 2010 (UTC)