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Biodata — short for biographic data, (PROSE: Alien Bodies) also spelt Biog Data (PROSE: A Brief History of Time Lords) or called life-gifts (PROSE: Newtons Sleep) or aatma (PROSE: Dharmayuddha) — contained information on a person's history and timeline, analogous to temporal DNA. (PROSE: Alien Bodies) The First Doctor described a person's biodata as their space-time event. (AUDIO: The Vardan Invasion of Mirth) If an individual's biodata could be manipulated, their entire time stream could be altered. (PROSE: Alien Bodies) A biodata signature was also referred to as an "artron imprint." (AUDIO: The Inquiry)
The Matrix also kept a Time Lord's bio-scan. (TV: Arc of Infinity [+]Loading...["Arc of Infinity (TV story)"])
The term was coined by R. B. Nevitz in the 1958 book The Tree of Time. In the 20th century on Earth, the standard way of thinking about quantum mechanics held that things did not definitively exist in the universe, there were simply probabilities of things that may or may not be the case, and may or may not be measurable. Only the presence of a conscious observer, it was held, could collapse the possibilities until one of them is perceived to be the case. Nevitz went further, suggesting that the primacy of observers entailed that it was meaning that was fundamental in the universe rather than matter. Thus, as an individual moves throughout space-time, they leave behind a trail connecting all instances of meaning that the individual has imbued throughout their life. Nevitz went on to suggest that the individual is themselves identical with the trail they leave in their life. These ideas were widely neglected at the time, however. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
A biodata extract could be used to give a biodata projection. Once seen, that future became a fixed point in that individual's personal timeline. (AUDIO: The Vardan Invasion of Mirth)
On Gallifrey, extracts of every Time Lord's biodata were stored in 'biogs' (short for biodata log). Excitonics was the technology underlying its circuitry. The Decayed Master was able to gain access to the Fourth Doctor's biodata extract to summon him to Gallifrey. (TV: The Deadly Assassin) Certain artefacts could also alter biodata, such as the Sash of Rassilon and other Presidential artefacts changing the biodata of Time Lord presidents to allow them to access certain secrets that only the President was authorised to use (PROSE: Alien Bodies)
Members of the Great Houses had their biodata linked to their Homeworld, while the biodata from their entire history was sewn into the structure of the Spiral Politic itself. (PROSE: The Book of the War) A Time Lord's biodata link to Gallifrey was represented by a second heart (PROSE: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street, Camera Obscura), which some Oldblood Time Lords grew after their first regeneration (PROSE: The Man in the Velvet Mask) while Newblood Time Lords were loomed with them. (PROSE: Christmas on a Rational Planet)
Omega used the biodata of the Fifth Doctor in an attempt to escape the anti-matter universe. (TV: Arc of Infinity)
Faction Paradox used biodata in their rituals. They used a biodata extractor to take biodata from a subject, though blood would work, since it contained biodata. (PROSE: Alien Bodies)
Griffin was able to alter the Eighth Doctor's biodata to remove his ability to perceive the colour violet. Griffin also prepared a pair of formulas that would alter the complex biodata histories of the Doctor and Samantha Jones into a single more predictable timeline, but the Doctor and Sam destroyed these samples before they were forced to drink them. The Doctor later claimed to have fixed Griffin's 'tweak' regarding his ability to see violet, (PROSE: Unnatural History) though much later in his life, while suffering from amnesia with no memory of these events, he again professed his blindness to this shade. (PROSE: To the Slaughter)
Compassion evolved into a type 102 TARDIS after the Doctor added a filter to the receiver she had been given by the Remote. (PROSE: The Blue Angel) The filter was intended to prevent Compassion becoming susceptible to any random signals she would pick up in her travels with the Doctor, but the filter resulted in Compassion's biodata becoming warped as the filter's link to the TARDIS resulted in Compassion's receiver processing signals from the TARDIS as Block Transfer Computations, altering her physiology. (PROSE: The Shadows of Avalon)
The Faction had developed biodata viruses that could infect potential Faction members to convert them to share the Faction's beliefs and abilities. Normally these viruses were too weak to infect Time Lords, but the virus was able to infect the Third Doctor when his history was changed and he was killed on Dust, resulting in him regenerating ahead of schedule and the virus infecting him while his immune system was in chaos during the change. (PROSE: Interference - Book Two) The Doctor believed that he could cure himself of the virus with access to samples of his uncontaminated biodata, but he never had a chance to test this theory, and was only able to save himself by averting the timeline where he was infected in the first place. (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell)
Biodata was used for some methods of time-travel, with certain types of machines rewriting the traveller's biodata to simply move from one location in space time to another. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
Thalia was an expert in the field of biodata. (PROSE: Arc of Infinity)
Braxiatel stole the Biodata Archive, which contained the biodata of every Time Lord in every regeneration, so that Gallifrey could be rebuilt should it fall due to the Dogma Virus. (AUDIO: Panacea)
The Eleven used a biodata disseminator to kill Dita, Landa or Shimona. (AUDIO: The Eleven)
The Devolver reverted species to a single-celled form via a sample of their biodata. (AUDIO: The Enemy of My Enemy)