Talk:Time Lord

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Jenny

A "generated anomaly", Jenny, the artificially created daughter of the Tenth Doctor, had two hearts but was not a full Time Lady, and Martha Jones suspected she was unable to regenerate. She was shot, and was believed by the Doctor to be dead. However, soon after her death, she came back to life with an energy release in a process which appeared similar to regeneration, but without the change of appearance. (TV: The Doctor's Daughter)

The Doctor's Daughter doesn't really come to a conclusion that I can think of as to whether Jenny "counts" as a Time Lord and whether or not the "shared suffering" explanation was an excuse, but assuming "Time Lord" is used in the sense of a species, the Doctor was the only biological parent of Jenny, so in what way could she only be part-Time Lord (and by extension, partially something else)? Wasn't the point of the scene with the double heartbeat to show that Jenny was like the Doctor, whatever you want to call it biologically speaking? Also, does anything in the narrative say what brought her back and whether or not it was "similar to regeneration"? -- Tybort (talk page) 22:26, December 19, 2014 (UTC)

Readding to lead

Reinserting this part of the lead which was removed on 16 July on the really weak and unsatisfying rationales by OttselSpy25: "Total rewrite. There is no need to mention such insignificant things in this lead as one source saying that the Time Lords invented black holes. Also, having paragraphs filled with direct quotes honestly is boring," and "Really that again is a statement that really doesn't serve to be in the opening paragraph" (although I'm withholding readding the part specifically about black holes for now).

They were sensitive to timelines, being able to see "All that is, all that was, all that ever could be." (TV: The Parting of the Ways) ... According to the Third Doctor, the Time Lords were "very keen to stamp out unlicensed time travel". He equated them to "galactic ticket inspectors". (TV: The Time Warrior)

A total of 53 words not counting citations were removed or changed, 44 from a single paragraph consisting of short quotations of which I'm reinstating. Forty-four. It's absurd and incredibly subjective to call something on a page with barely any lead at all boring or insignificant or "a statement that really doesn't serve to be in the opening paragraph". Observing time including potential futures and premonitions, along with making sure people who don't know what they're doing interfere with time, is absolutely a part of their modus operandi and not obscure or insignificant. -- Tybort (talk page) 22:57, July 26, 2017 (UTC)

I tend to agree with Tybort on this. Comparing black holes with the controversy over species vs. rank, a casual reader could be much better served by the information about black holes. I think we all got too embroiled in our internal debates of the finer points of DWU lore and forgot that the primary goal of the wiki is to provide information to a wider community, including new viewers/readers/listeners. The question of rank vs. species has its own section and that's where it belongs given that a) it does not have a clear answer and b) it is very rarely relevant to a given story. With the first three years of the show needing no more information than "my people" remarks and the first two years of the revived show dropping vague hints, even the existence of Time Lords is not necessarily crucial to every single story. How many stories depend on Time Lords being a species but not a rank or vice versa? Why should a novice in DW be first treated to conflicting accounts regarding a question he/she never asked? The phrase "inhabitants of Gallifrey" was coined specifically to allow such a reader to learn basic knowledge regarding Time Lords without getting bogged down on boring details.

An encyclopaedic article on Shakespeare should not question his authorship in the lead but should devote a separate section to it, exactly as is done in Britannica. This wiki is an encyclopaedia of Doctor Who, so the same guidelines should be applied. The number of regenerations controversy is not discussed in the lead. The born vs. woven controversy is not discussed in the lead. Even the discussion of Time Lord vs. Time Lady is not currently present in the lead (though Time Lady should be added an alternative name). All these questions are not in the lead because they are not central to understanding who Time Lords were. Neither is the rank vs. species discussion. Amorkuz ☎ 00:06, July 30, 2017 (UTC)

I frankly disagree. I removed most of the introductory paragraphs because they were heavily based on direct quotes from the TV show. This makes for ugly coverage. One can discuss scenes without quoting them in-text every time. The sentence "the Time Lords... were most famous for the... attempted monopolisation of time travel" tells the reader the exact same information as the Third Doctor quote down at the end of the next paragraph (which isn't about their creation of Time Travel) but without being a huge quote.

Furthermore the information about them inventing black holes was mentioned once in a story that wasn't about Time Lords. It's not opening-paragraph information, and it's not something that many fans need to know. It reads less like an essential fact about understanding the species and more like a super-boring tid-bit. "Fun fact that I couldn't fit anywhere but the lead!" It's not needed.

What do people need to know about the Time Lords? That they invented Time Travel, according to the sources which involve them (and those are all that matter), and the ins and outs of that. You can also discuss their ability to regenerate, their senses of time-related things, and how they've policed the existence of Time Travel. But when you start getting into things like "Hey, in one story the Doctor said that they invented black holes", then it just stops being intro-worthy. I would go as far as to say that if that line were included in a novel or audio book, no one would ever have included it in the opening paragraph.

I don't take back any of my edits, no matter how many characters they might include.

The discussion about the Time Lord's culture and the existence of non-Gallifreyan Time Lords is essential to discussing their existence as a species. Sure, it should be worded better to just talk about the Academy and the culture of the race while also touching upon the other stuff. But it hardly needs to be purged. OS25🤙☎️ 00:25, July 30, 2017 (UTC)

Just interjecting here, not taking a side, but Amorkuz, I'm a bit confused by what you're saying. You say you agree with Tybort that black holes belong in the intro more than the race/species debate, when Tybort tried to make the intro paragraph solely about said debate?

(For what it's worth, my personal opinion is that the current intro is wayyyy too big and goes into a lot of completely unnecessary details about the Time Lords' evolution and history, which is completely irrelevant to 99% of the stories in which they appear, but I'm not going to try to pitch my own version just because it seems everyone's very excited about it.) NateBumber ☎ 01:21, July 30, 2017 (UTC)

Monopolisation?

The Time Lords... were most famous for the creation and monopolisation of time travel technology. (COMIC: Time Bomb!, et al.)

Um? Even without getting into the Time War and the Time Lords' death/running away to the end of the universe, there were the Daleks, and Magnus Greel, along with the Sontarans and War Lords to a limited degree, who have deliberate control over time travel. Is this like very, very early in Gallifrey's history? There's at least five pre-Christopher Eccleston Dalek stories I can think of where Daleks travel through time, and three of them were before the name "Time Lord" existed. -- Tybort (talk page) 23:16, July 26, 2017 (UTC)

At least six when we get into the DWM comic. -- Tybort (talk page) 23:27, July 26, 2017 (UTC)

Per Dead Romance, the Daleks negotiated with the Time Lords for permission to use time travel. And the fate of the War Lords is an example of the Time Lords regulating time travel. CoT ? 23:28, July 26, 2017 (UTC)

OK, I'm gonna need more context than that. (Also, I don't deny they monitor and help regulate time travel, I'm just questioning the phrasing "monopolisation".) -- Tybort (talk page) 23:55, July 26, 2017 (UTC)

It's a phrase pulled from the actual cited comic.

"My friends, until now, the commodity we know as time has been monopolised by the Time Lords of Gallifrey." - Josiah W. Dogbolter, Time Bomb!

Furthermore, the phrase monopolisation explained in the best detail possible what the Time Lords do and why they do it. At most, you could change it to say "creation, policing, and monopolisation of", but monopolisation still hits the nail on the head. Just as much as it was for order, it was also for ultimate power. OS25🤙☎️ 00:05, July 27, 2017 (UTC)

I see a problem when a word "monopolisation" used in one story and an explanation for time travel of Daleks used in another story are propagated to the lead against multiple other accounts and variant explanations. Both facts are certainly valuable additions to the page in a local capacity, but do not really reflect the whole 50+-year history of DWU. There is a First Doctor story dealing with humans developing independent time travel capabilities with Time Lords not appearing even as a name. (In fact, there are multiple conflicting accounts of the "first" time travel independently developed by the humans.) There is a story where Daleks are developing their own time travel capabilities (not very successfully) independent of Time Lords. Eight Legs could travel through time. Even individual organisations like Rulers of the Universe did their time travel with impunity completely unperturbed by the Time Lords (and yes, it was before the disappearance of Gallifrey, given the presence of the Eighth Doctor.

With 58 members in the category Time-travelling species, it's hard to imagine something further away from a "monopoly". The Time Lord "monopoly" on time travel may exist in those two sources (and several others) but is demonstrably absent in the wide DWU. As such, it should not be in the lead, which is about the DWU as a whole and, hence, cannot give preference to one source over another. "Tight control over time travel" relays the same idea without contradicting multiple sources. Amorkuz ☎ 23:35, July 29, 2017 (UTC)

At most then, we should use the phrase "attempted monopoly." Whether you want to debate if they have been able to control time based off of the MASSIVE amount of stories that we cover, they try their best, and most sources covering them interacting with other species of Time illustrates them in that way. Either way, we have an in-universe valid source calling it a monopoly, thus "attempted monopoly" is wholly acceptable. OS25🤙☎️ 23:53, July 29, 2017 (UTC)

Titles as Names?

Mostly just throwing something out there, but could the fact that Time Lords seem to readily accept titles as names for themselves be worth mentioning? The Doctor and Master don't seem to be isolated cases, cause the General, the Corsair, the Rani, and the Eleventh Doctor's joking (we assume) reference to 'the Uncle' which he says is a 'Time Lord thing' all are examples of other Time Lords who do this. Or not, I'm not married to this. Meganerd18 ☎ 07:20, July 7, 2018 (UTC)

Time Lords ate Pig Rats?

The "Food and sustenance" section says the Time Lords would eat various kinds of fruits, fish, and "Pig-rats" on formal occasions. Yet the article 'Pig rats' says nothing of the animal being a favoured prey animal of the Time Lords. In which place does it mention this? 2A02:C7D:BB52:9200:7D20:323E:36EA:1798^{talk to me} 11:14, May 26, 2019 (UTC)

Removed disputed tag

I have edited the following paragraph to remove the "disputed" tag:

Using the Hand of Omega, the Time Lords could speed up the development of stars. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks) One such star had been exploded but its development into a black hole had been frozen, trapped in a permanent state of decay and was kept either under the Panopticon as the Eye of Harmony to power the civilisation of the Time Lords, or in TARDISes to use as their power source.^{[disputed statement]} (TV: The Deadly Assassin, Journey of the Centre of the TARDIS)

There was a note to see the talk page, but there seems to be nothing relevant on either this page or the archive. The statements so tagged are accurate according to the cited episodes. --Metz77 ☎ 01:35, 9 July 2023 (UTC)