Time Lord
The Time Lords (sometimes called "Lords of Time" or, rarely, 'Chronarchs') were the oligarchic rulers of the planet Gallifrey. They possessed the power and technology to travel through both time and space in their TARDISes. Time Lords may also be referred to as Gallifreyans, though it is not certain if all Gallifreyans were Time Lords, or the Time Lords were only an elite echelon of Gallifreyan society.
History
Age
One of the oldest and most powerful civilisations in the Universe, the Time Lords possessed absolute power for some ten million years, tracing back to the days of Rassilon and Omega (DW: The Mysterious Planet).
One Time Lord stated that the Gallifreyans were an ancient and advanced world, having perfected the transmat beam when the Universe was less than half its present size (DW: Genesis of the Daleks), as well as developing tachyonics before abandoning that field in favour of warp matrix engineering (DW: The Leisure Hive). Time Lords also experimented with hyperspace, but finally abandoned it as a theoretical absurdity two thousand years before the Doctor's time (DW: The Stones of Blood)
- This information about hyperspace conflicts with several known examples of other species successfully using hyperspace technology (e.g. Humans (DW: Frontier In Space)), suggesting either that there is more than one meaning of the term "hyperspace", or that the Time Lords were less knowledgeable in this field than they thought they were.
The creation of the Time Lords
Gallifrey was once the center of a vast intergalactic empire. Gallifrey in time came under the rule of the Pythias, a matriarchal order of seers under whom the Gallifreyans fell under the sway of superstition and mysticism. It was under the reign of the last Pythia that the Time Scathe, a TARDIS prototype, was developed. (DW: Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible) The last Pythia was overthrown by the triumvirate of Rassilon, Omega, and the Other, cursing Gallifrey in her last breath with sterility. Rasslion instituted the creation of genetic looms to enable the Gallifreyan race to reproduce. The surviving members of the Pythian order fled to Karn, where they evolved into the Sisterhood.
Following the overthrowal of Pythia, Omega use an arefact named after him, the Hand of Omega to detonate a star (DW: Remembrance of the Daleks) known as Qqaba and created a black hole from which the Time Lords drew the enormous power they needed for time travel. Omega was himself cast through the black hole into an anti-matter universe and was presumed dead. (DW: The Three Doctors, DWM: Star Death)
The Reign of Rassilon
Rassilon later retrieved the Eye of Harmony and stored it in a vault beneath the Time Lord capitol as a source of power.
- The Eye of Harmony is a different black hole than the one created by Omega.
Rassilon's reign saw the war with the Great Vampires (DW: State of Decay and at end of the games in the Death Zone, blood sports where combatants from time and space fought for the amusement of onlookers. (DW:
One legend says that apart from his great achievements the Time Lords, with good reason, rebelled against Rassilon and imprisoned him in the Dark Tower in the Death Zone. (DW: The Five Doctors)
Non-interference Policy
The Time Lords toyed with other sentient species, notably the Minyans, distorting their culture and history. (DW: Underworld, PDA: The Quantum Archangel)
As a reaction to the Minyans destroying themselves by nuclear war, (DW: Underworld) the Time Lords enacted a strict non-interference policy, charging themselves to observe and to study but never to act.
Any infringement of the policy would meet with the strictest possible penalties. (DW: The War Games)
In practice, the Time Lords would often break this rule, unofficially, especially under the auspices of the Celestial Intervention Agency.
Later history
By the Doctor's time, Time Lord society was governed by the High Council, consisting of cardinals representing several electoral colleges, with an Inner Council comprising of the Castellan, Chancellor, and the Lord President. The President had near absolute authority, and used a link to the Matrix, a vast computer network containing the knowledge and experiences of all past generations of Time Lords, to set Time Lord policy and remain alert to potential threats from lesser civilisations. The Castellan was in charge of security, while the Chancellor in turn oversaw the Castellan's actions and acted as the President's second. Security and law were enforced by the Chancellery Guard.
During the Doctor's lifetime several crises occurred which brought to light the vulnerabilities of the once omnipotent Time Lords. Testimony at the the Doctor's malfeasance tribunal revealed the many marauding races which had emerged in the Universe after the Time Lords adopted their isolationist policy. (DW: The War Games)
The Time Lords were easily rendered helpless when Omega began draining energy from Gallifrey, and were only saved by the intervention of the Doctor's first three incarnations. (DW: The Three Doctors) The ease with which the Master was able to alter records contained within the Archives and manipulate the Matrix was due largely to the fact that the technology behind the Matrix's Amplified Panotropic Net had been surpassed on other worlds, such that on those worlds the technology would, according to the Doctor, be considered "prehistoric junk." (DW: The Deadly Assassin)
The Vardan invasion, itself a front for an invasion by the Sontarans, exposed chinks in Gallifrey's defences. (DW: The Invasion of Time) The Ravolox affair showed a level of corruption within the High Council that exceeded even the misdeeds of individual council members such as Chancellor Goth, Lord Hedin, and even President Borusa. (DW: The Mysterious Planet) Centuries of isolation, combined with the Eye of Harmony's effect of causing things on Gallifrey to "neither flux, nor whither, nor change their state in any measure" had induced a complacency among Time Lords which caused their technology and power to stagnate even as other races became more powerful and dangerous.
The Time Lords eventually met their end in the last of the Time War, as the Dalek fleet attacked their world. The Doctor succeeded in destroying the Daleks, - or so he believed at the time - but Gallifrey and the Time Lords were caught in the conflagration and were destroyed as well. The guilt and trauma resulting from this haunted the Doctor throughout his ninth incarnation. (DW: The End of the World, Dalek et al)
Unique physiology and abilities
The Time Lord gift of translation
This translation is not perfect, as when the Doctor was unable to understand the Foamasi government agent on Argolis (DW: The Leisure Hive).
Various forms of polari, or dialects which are actually a form of code, do not seem to work with this gift, as when the the Doctor was unable to understand Vorg when the latter attempted to converse with the Doctor in carny polari (DW: Carnival of Monsters).
This gift also evidently only works with organic life-forms, as the Doctor was also unable to understand the aborigine Kurkutji and relied on his Australian companion Tegan Jovanka to translate (unaware at the time that Kurkutji was in fact an android programmed by the Urbankan Monarch with the organic original's memories and personality. (DW: Four to Doomsday)
Though the Doctor could still understand it, the Nestene Consciousness speech was not translated. (DW: Rose)
Regeneration
Time Lords have the ability to regenerate, renewing their bodies in case of mortal illness or injury, advanced old age, or even at will. This process allows them to live for centuries, even millennia.
- See the article on separat article for more information on this process.
They apparently also age at a much slower rate than humans. Because of this, accurately judging the age of a Time Lord is nearly impossible.
Rassilon Imprimature
The cellular structure of Time Lords is marked by symbiotic nuclei, also known as the Rassilon Imprimature, which bonds a Time Lord to his TARDIS and allows him to withstand the molecular stresses of time travel (DW: The Two Doctors).
- It may also be tied in with a Time Lord's ability to regenerate.
Society and Culture
Time Lord society was generally complacent in nature, owing to their policy of non-intervention. This led to a stagnation which may have contributed to the decision by the Doctor and certain other Time Lords to leave Gallifrey. It probably also contributed to the demise of the Time Lords in the last Time War.
Time Lords appreciated music, as indicated by such artifacts as the Harp of Rassilon and the use of nursery rhymes to entertain children (DW: The Five Doctors). They also appreciated art, although painting on Gallifrey was done by computer. (DW: City of Death)
The drinking of tea may have been practiced by Time Lords, perhaps introduced by Time Lord research teams returning from Earth. The question "What's for tea?" was misinterpreted by Borusa as "What is tea?" - to which he supplied a textbook definition of tea as it is normally prepared for drinking on Earth. This implies both knowledge of tea-drinking and an ignorance of the human custom of a light meal called "tea" or "high tea". (DW: The Invasion of Time)
Science and Technology
People
Other Facts
- Several of the Doctor's more powerful foes, such as the Nestene Consciousness, the Great Intelligence, and the Animus, are stated as being survivors of a race of Time Lords which existed in the previous Universe before this one. Shunting themselves into our Universe, they found that its different physical laws afforded them godlike powers.
Appearances
Television
- The War Games
- Terror of the Autons (Time Lord messenger)
- Colony in Space (cameo)
- The Three Doctors
- Genesis of the Daleks (Time Lord messenger)
- The Deadly Assassin
- The Invasion of Time
- Arc of Infinity
- The Five Doctors
- The Mysterious Planet
- Mindwarp
- Terror of the Vervoids
- The Ultimate Foe
References and appearances
- The Doctor and Romana receive a signal from the Time Lords. (DW: Meglos)
- The Doctor reveals the content of the message, ordering him to return Romana to Gallifrey. (DW: Full Circle)
- Appearances by various renegades, starting with the Monk.
- The Time Lords also played active parts behind the scenes in sending the Doctor, often unwillingly on missions. (DW: The Mutants, Planet of the Daleks, The Brain of Morbius, Attack of the Cybermen,The Two Doctors).
Novels
New Adventures novels
BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures
External links
