Resurrection of Rassilon

Rassilon the Resurrected. (AUDIO: Havoc ^[+]Loading...["Havoc (audio story)"])

Lord President Rassilon was resurrected to lead the Time Lords of Gallifrey against the Daleks during the Last Great Time War.

By one account, resurrection was very common in the Time War, with millions dying and being resurrected at its heart. (TV: The End of Time ^[+]Loading...["The End of Time (TV story)"])

As the War Doctor recalled, Rassilon, having given up his corporeal form in the ancient times of Gallifrey, had resided for millennia within the Tomb of Rassilon before being was resurrected in the early days of the Time War, when the Time Lords "realised they needed a different sort of leader. (PROSE: Engines of War ^[+]Loading...["Engines of War (novel)"])

To resurrect Rassilon, the High Council used the body of Admiral Valerian of the House of Rassilon and imprinted Rassilon's Matrix projection onto him, killing Valerian in the process. Narvin observed that the resurrection was not a regeneration but "something else. Something forced." (AUDIO: Desperate Measures ^[+]Loading...["Desperate Measures (audio story)"])

Following the Time War, Rassilon refered to himself as "Rassilon the Resurrected" as he protested against the Time Lord-backed coup against him led by the Twelfth Doctor. (TV: Hell Bent ^[+]Loading...["Hell Bent (TV story)"])

Behind the scenes

• In TEDW 7, various writers were interviewed on how they understood the highly ambiguous status of Rassilon's appearance in The Five Doctors ^[+]Loading...["The Five Doctors (TV story)"]. Steven Moffat, who coined Rassilon's title as "Rassilon the Resurrected" in Hell Bent ^[+]Loading...["Hell Bent (TV story)"], denied that he had intended it to refer to Rassilon being resurrected to fight in the War, instead suggesting that the incident took place later on in the War: as far as he was concerned, Rassilon in the Tower was physically alive but in eternal sleep, from which he reluctantly awoke to take part in the fighting, after which he "got killed. And resurrected. Because that happened a lot in the Time War".
• In The Writer's Tale - The Final Chapter, Russell T Davies describes the Time War as being "so dark, so obscene, that the dead were walking, called back into life to fight the terrible fight". From his perspective, this justification connected the resurrections of Rassilon, the Master, and the Doctor's mother.
• A version of the resurrection was seen in STAGE: Time Fracture ^[+]Loading...["Time Fracture (stage play)"], with the Time Lords using the temporal disruptor to resurrect a new incarnation of Rassilon to initiate the Ultimate Sanction during the Time Fracture.