From: markc@hydra.maths.unsw.EDU.AU ()
Subject: Re: ST:TNG (critiques) vs Dr. Who
Organization: school of Mathematics UNSW
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 1992 04:10:07 GMT

Other stuff deleted since it is hardly worth going over.
I write:

>Now this is silly. We know the Time Lords are the most powerful race in the
>Whoniverse because we have so often been told they are by the Doctor and
>others. The Tharils needed a TimeLord, and Romana did the job for them.
>Why would the Tharils need a Time Lord? Whether the Time Lords could defeat 
>Sutekh is debatable. The Doctor said that they couldn't but he may have been
>exagerating the threat to impress Sarah. But the Osirians are extinct in 
>any case. The Daleks had crude Time Travel technology and wanted an artifact
>from ancient Gallifrey to improve their technology. In Trial of A TimeLord,
>the doctor says the Daleks , Sonatrans and Cybermen are "still in the nursery
>compared to us", and the TLs have had ten million years of absolute power.
> The Toymaker would hardly
>be a concern to them. The Black and white Guardians are not a race, and we don'teven know what they are. The Eternals were banished to the void by the white 
>guardian, and were insubstantial creatures anyway. The Mara couldn't even defeat the Doctor, a single Time Lord. Omega and the Master are Time Lords so they
>hardly count. 

Mystic replies:

>>Well for one thing, I just saw Pyramids of Mars again this weekend, and I know
>>the TimeLords could not handle Sutekh.  The Doctor makes it absolutely clear,
>><paraphrasing>.

>>Doctor:  "If Sutekh breaks his ancient bonds, there isn't a race in this
>>universe that can stop him!" 

>>Sarah:  "A-a-a-h, Doctor, not even your lot?" <smiling>

>>Doctor:  <looking dead serious> "Not even my lot!"

Yeah that's close. Actually he says race in the "Galaxy", but who cares?
Anyway, the Doctor may have meant a lot of things. He may have meant that
the Time Lords were simply to damn disorganised or corrupt to get into 
action fast enough to stop him. So Sutekh would arrive at Gallifrey and
the high council would spend a few days debating what to do while 
Sutekh overpowered the transduction barrier and then they would ne history.
It is rather hard to say. But Sutekh is dead and so are is his race, so 
they do not really count. I never actually believed that Sutekh could
defeat the Time Lords, given what we know they can do. I always thought
that if worst came to worst Rassilon, (The once and future king) would
emerge from his tomb and kick them into action. I think this is the 
real problem with the Time Lords. They have the power to do just about
anything, but they are apparently stagnant. I always thought a great story 
would be to have the Time Lords as some kind of cosmic sleeping giant.
Races like the Daleks and the Sonatarans have grown utterly contemptuos
of them. Then something happens and for a brief moment they actually *do*
something spectacular. (Mind you what do they do on a day to day basis?
When Borusa talked about his work half done, what did he mean? This has
never really been explored. Are they always doddering old fools? Does
their society change. Do other time lords leave Gallifrey and explore?
Perhaps the TLs are mostly apolitical. The high council has its machinations
and the population mostly doesn't give a stuff, being mainly concerned
with the day to day monitoring of the time streams? This would be a 
good basis for a New Adventures story).

>I do not wish to get into another Time Lord debate. Regardless of what
>one thinks of the scripts that the Time Lords have been given, we have been
>told that they are the oldest and most powerful civilisation in the universe,
>and the Time Lord president is more powerful" than anyone else in the known
>universe" (Borusa, Invasion of Time). I like few Time Lord stories, but 
>a race that can customise stars and time loop planets at will is not to be
>taken lightly. I just wish that the shows writers hadn't decided to 
>portray them as a bunch of doddering nincompoops in the "Deadly Assassin",
>but that is another story.
>		

>Mark C.

>>Well, sorry but if you say something like that, I just have to answer.  Anybody

What I meant was another Mawdryn type argument.

>>with knowledge over time can do the things that the TimeLords do.  A simple
>>cactus put the Doctor in a chronic hysteresis (Meglos), for other answers, we
>>do not know exactly what the Tharils needed the TimeLord for.  My opinion is
>>that they needed her to help with freeing the other slaves - helping with her
>>technical experience.  But if the Tharils can phase out of time, I'm not sure
>>what the TimeLords can possibly do to them.  I'm also reminded that the Keeper
>>of Traken was able to enter the Tardis rather easily - anybody/anything that
>>can do that must be pretty powerful.  The mara defeated by the Doctor.  You make
>>it sound so simple.  Let's see the Doctor defeat the Mara already transformed
>>into it's normal self!  You kind of avoided the Toymaker...I've always expected 
>>him to come back someday.  Wanting vengeance for his loss!  Lastly, though Omega
>>was a TimeLord, he resembles nothing of the kind anymore.  He has nothing to
>>regenerate, no power/travel into time, not even a physical body, not even
>>matter!!!.  I'd say he's a separate entity to contend with now.  I'm sure there
>>are other things that I just can't remember.  Oh one more thing, we do not know
>>what the black and white guardian are - therefore it is kind of ignorant to say
>>that they are not a race when we do not know if there are more like them and 
>>where they come from!

The thrust of your argument is that there are lots of powerful races in Dr Who.
Yes agreed. But no race has the Time Lords mastery over time. That is the 
basis of their power. In Rememberance, the Doctor says the Dalek's time travel
 is very crude, and they want the  power the Time Lords have. The Sontarans are
the same. In the Two Doctors we are also told by whatisname when he is speaking
to the Androgum woman that "the Time Lords have powers we haven't even dreamed
of", and they were on the verge of an efficient time travel system! The TLs
seem to know just about everything there is to know about time. They can loop
it, they can travel in it easily, they can reverse time streams, they can 
move sideways in time, they can do the thing that Rassilon did to the Tardis
in the 5 doctors. They can build machines which are bigger on the inside than 
the outside. They can capture black holes and detonate stars by remote control.
They can make a metal which will destroy an entire battle fleet, and who 
knows what the hell the Demat gun was supposed to do? No other race on 
Dr Who has come close to this. Meglos could create time loops, but
his race is extinct too, or seemed to be, and for all we know he may be related to the Time Lords in some way. The basic problem with the Time Lords is that
they are corrupt and complacent, that is their weakness, not a lack of power.

Mark C.	
	>>Mystic
	(alex.soto@analog.com)





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