Howling:The Visionary

Why did the Time Lords in the End of Time use the Visionary to predict the future? They have never done so before and they can use the Matrix to predict the future.--TemporalSpleen 13:07, January 2, 2010 (UTC)

Out-of-universe, because RTD thinks prophecies are cool, and because it made a great parallel with Dalek Caan.

In-universe... Well, when they resurrected Rassilon and put him in charge in place of Romana, maybe he insisted on doing a lot of things the "old way"--he created the Matrix, but he never used it, so he didn't want to use it now.

It's also possible that resurrecting him from the Matrix ruined it in some way.

Or maybe they resurrected _everyone_ uploaded into the Matrix to become Rassilon's war council, so they don't have the Matrix anymore. Many of them didn't come back quite intact, and one of them in particular is sort of unstuck in time and a little crazy but very useful as a prophet, and that's who The Visionary is. (I suspect that, if RTD were forced to answer, he'd come up with something like this.)

If you go by the novels, the Matrix was destroyed in The Ancestor Cell. According to The Gallifrey Chronicles, there's a non-live backup in The Doctor's head, but that's not the same as a running copy. (Not to mention that they don't have access to The Doctor's brain.) Although that leaves open the question of where they got Rassilon from in the first place.

If you go by the Big Finish audios, Romana destroyed the Matrix to stop Pandora. Which also leaves open the question of where Rassilon came from. --99.157.75.211 02:01, January 3, 2010 (UTC)