Gallifreyan history
Gallifrey, the home planet of the Time Lords had a long and storied history, up until its destruction.
Introduction
Age
The Time Lords of Gallifrey possessed one of the oldest and most powerful civilisations in the Universe and hled absolute power for some ten million years. (DW: The Ultimate Foe).
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)
Before the Time Lords
Gallifrey was once the center of a vast intergalactic empire.
In time, Gallifrey 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. (NA: Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible)
The early days of the Time Lords
The Creation of the Time Lords
Following the overthrowal of Pythia, Omega utilized a stellar manipulator 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 power they would requite for 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, BFA: Omega)
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)
The withdrawal
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 Chancellory 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)
