A Brief History of Time Lords (novel)
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Doctor Who: A Brief History of Time Lords was a book intended to be a Gallifreyan history textbook, written and amended through time by its author.
Publisher's summary
The Time Lords are an immensely civilised, and immensely powerful, race. Yet we know very little about them, save that they can live forever (barring accidents) and possess the secrets of space and time travel. Their history has been shrouded in myth and mystery. Until now.
A Brief History of Time Lords unlocks the secrets of this ancient, legendary alien race - a civilisation that inflicted some of its most notorious renegades and criminals on the universe, but was also the benevolent power that rid the cosmos of its most fearsome enemies. Drawn from the ancient records of Gallifrey, and handed down from generation to generation, this remarkable book reveals the Time Lords in all of their guises: pioneers and power-mad conspirators, time-travellers and tyrants, creators and destroyers.
Be careful who you share it with.
Plot
Preface to the First Edition
In all of its history, there can be only one constant regarding the planet Gallifrey.
Lies.
Or more accurately, the lies of Rassilon and his inner retinue of Time Lords. While a Level 5 planet would say that "history is written by the victors", the Time Lords understand that history is re-written by the future. As a result, even the contents of this record, with its time sensitive pages may not be entirely accurate. All the author can promise is that it is one truth about the Time Lords, one that the old men in funny hats are determined to keep hidden away.
The Shining World of the Seven Systems
Within their protective bubbles, the Time Lords can out-sit eternity. And when they look beyond their cities, they sneer at the Drylands, the ancient trees, the weeds, the sludgy snow, and the looming mountains.
The truth of it is that Gallifrey is a beautiful planet, full of rich colours. Once, the author muses, the early inhabitants of the planet must have marvelled at their world, not just its beautiful wilderness and majestic mountains but also the wildlife, just as colourful as the wilderness that birthed them. Officially, Gallifrey is the only planet in the universe not have its eco-system ravaged by its dominant species, with no extinction occurring as a result of the Time Lords' actions.
Unofficially, that's another lie. The Last Great Time War killed all animals but the flies. And indeed, it was the Time Lords who fought the war. The Gallifreyans, who comprise the overwhelming majority of their world's population, lived outside the cities as simple farmers, whose crops also feed the Time Lords.
At the age of eight, every Gallifreyan child is taken from their family and brought to the Untempered Schism to assess whether or not they will become a Time Lord. As the author notes, the greatest fear of any seven year old was not that they'd fail, but rather succeed. Succeed and be sealed away in a bubble forever, doomed to shut out their previous life forever more.
The Citadels
Gallifrey has two main cities. The Capitol and Arcadia. The structures of both metropoli reaching deep into the bowels of the planet.
The Capitol is divided into eight Sector. Sector 1's main tower houses the Panopticon, a vast hexagonal chamber (with each side possibly honouring one of the six Founders of Gallifrey) in which great events of state were held. Elsewhere in the tower was the Capitol Museum, where the symbols of presidential office were on display, along with examples of every kind of robe of state, from the President and the Gold Usher to the Chapter Cardinals.
Sector 2 is the political heart of the Capitol, housing an enormous assembly room for meetings of the full High Council, a conference room for the Inner Council and other small gatherings, and the President's office.
Sector 3 is entirely dedicated to the Chancellor and the Chancellery Guard while Sector 4 contains the Castellan's office, the courtrooms, and the Security Compound, which itself comprised detention rooms, interrogation cells, and several execution rooms, most of which were officially disused.
Sector 5 comprises hundreds of libraries, records rooms and archive stores and leads directly into Sector 6, which houses the various Chapters of the Time Lord Academy, the largest structure in the Capitol after the Panopticon, and the main force-field control area for the transduction barrier that shielded Gallifrey, was the largest structure in the Capitol after the Panopticon.
Sector 7 is dominated by the Communications Tower, from which Space Traffic Control and Temporal Control monitored and logged every passing vessel in Gallifrey's vicinity. It is also rumoured to be the site of Gallifrey High Command's War Room, together with an extraction chamber — although the existence of such chambers was officially denied.
Finally, Sector 8 was home to the Time Travel Capsule landing bays and an array of repair shops. Below the repair shops was an area known as the TARDIS Graveyards, where TARDISes that reached the end of their lifespans were despatched. Somewhere in the citadel, a set of chambers are said to be allocated to the Celestial Intervention Agency, but no one outside the Agency knew exactly where those chambers are with a conspiracy theory even opining that architectural configuration keeps their command centre moving. Below all that lies the Panopticon Vaults, where the Eye of Harmony was kept. Below those are the Cloisters, the physical location of the Matrix, guarded by the Cloister Wraiths. And beneath all of that, buried near the very core of Gallifrey, lie the Time Vaults, where all the forbidden weapons of the Omega Arsenal were locked away.
Here the author notes, that edifices of glass and metal surround his kind to such an extent that no one can realistically be expected to take it all in. The Communications Tower alone in fifty-three stories tall.
So, the author asks, who exactly is meant to be impressed by all the glamour?
The Dark Times
Galactic Ticket Inspectors
A State of Decay
Novices of the Untempered Schism
Gallifrey Falls...
...No More
Gallifrey Rises
Characters
to be added
References
- A boy wrote A Brief History of Time Lords after seeing the Doctor.
Notes
- The text on the Master claims that there are many rumours about his fate following Doctor Who. Some state that he was saved inside the Vortex by the mythical Esterath, other saying that he remained trapped in the Doctor's TARDIS, his mental resources transferred into an android, acting as the Doctor's companion or pet. Others said that he was, finally, dead.
- The section on Salyavin proposes a theory that, due to temporal instablities, the events of his encounter with Skagra unfolded "on at least four occasions, involving at least two different incarnations of the Doctor". This is a reference to the various retellings of TV: Shada'.
- When listing off the things that the Doctor left Gallifrey with, "the President's daughter" is included alongside Gallifrey's moon. This is a reference towards brief one-off lines included in TV: The Magician's Apprentice and Hell Bent, which reference the Doctor losing "the moon" and stealing the "President's daughter." Alongside this passage is an illustration with all of the other things mentioned to be stolen, and in the place of the President's daughter is an image of Susan Foreman. This would suggest that the President at the time of the Doctor running away from Gallifrey was possibly the Doctor's off-spring. However, the book fails to recognise that the Doctor truly is Susan's grandfather, later going on to mention several stories which suggest that she was not his granddaughter.
- Susan being referred to as a direct descendant of Rassilon or another founding father is a reference to PROSE: Birth of a Renegade and the suggestion that Susan was taken into the Doctor's care, as referred to in PROSE: Lungbarrow.
- When describing Susan settling down on Earth, it is stated that she stayed with a human either named Campbell or Cameron. This is a reference towards an alteration to David Campbell's name in PROSE: Doctor Who and the Zarbi, listing it instead as Cameron.
- When describing possibilities of the Hybrid, there are indirect references to Ashildr, the Bad Wolf, the DoctorDonna, and River Song.
Continuity
to be added
External links
- Official A Brief History of Time Lords page at Penguin Books
