From: markc@hydra.maths.unsw.EDU.AU ()
Subject: Re: Invasion of Time
Organization: school of Mathematics UNSW
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 06:58:57 GMT

well actually this is about both Invasion and Mawdryn
I tried to send this off three times
 before, but it seems to have gotten lost in the 
ether. If this apears three times, I apologise. There seems to be something
wrong with my news mailer.

I write:
>I seem to recall that the 8 were punished by the Time Lords for trying to
>steal equipment from Gallifrey. So the fact that the pod is dimensionally
>trancendental is no surprise at all. The ship was also on some kind of 
>wierd Time path which also suggests that the Time Lords punished them. I do 
>not recall the line you mention, but my recollection from the novel, written
>by Grimwade I think, is that a group of scientists decided to make themselves
>Time Lords and stole the equipment from Gallifrey. The TLs caught and punished
>them, and the people from  the scientists home world abandoned them to the 
>Time Lords. I could be wrong about this. I will look it up. However I still see
>no reason to assume the 8 were Gallifreyans. 

Ian Robert Asplin replies:

>>Yes, this is true, and sonce it is true, then the line "Elders of our
>>planet" DOES refer to the Time Lords of Gallifrey.  

It does? How does that follow?

>>If Grimwade changed his mind in the novel, it does not matter since
>>any and all novels are non-canon.  

And utterances by the writers that you recall are even less canon.

>>If the line instead referred to the people of their own planet, then why
>>does Mawdryn use the word "abandon" since the Time Lords could do whatever
>>they bloody pleased and even if their leaders resisted, oh I see now, it
>>could also mean "they didn't even try to help us."

I had a look at Invasion of Time and Mawdryn again to clear things up.
Video is a wonderful thing. In Mawdryn the brigadier asks the Doctor who 
the 8 are? He says they were scientists who tried to turn themselves into
Time Lords. They stole the equipment which was designed to assist Time Lords
who had difficulty regenerating. They then modified the equipment giving
themselves immortality, but at a terrible cost. The Time Lords found and
punished them by putting them into a warp ellipse for eternity, or at 
least until a Time Lord took pity on them. There is no suggestion that the
8 were non Time Lord Gallifreyans. You can argue that they were, but it is
guess work. I do not think they were because the show makes clear that the
8 were brilliant scientists. The Doctor says the modifications to the 
machine they made were technically impressive, if dangerous. So the argument
that they were students who could not pass the academy exams I find unacceptable. It also seems highly unlikely to me that scientists on Gallifrey would 
not realise that what they were doing would not work. After all, with millions
of years of research on regeneration to draw upon, the scientists should 
have been able to realise how dangerous the work was. To me the whole point
of the story was that 1) immortality is a curse- a consistent theme in Who;
and 2) a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. The scientists had great skill,
but were still very ignorant about regeneration.  Brilliant Gallifreyan 
scientists would not be. A third reason why I do not think they were 
Gallifreyan is the Doctor's lack of compassion for them. The Doctor has 
always been willing to risk his life for others, yet will not give the
scientists his remaining regenerations. He sees them as criminals, tells
them that Time Lords cannot become involved (which is a strange thing for 
him to say). For some reason, a;though you may disagree, I can't see the 
Doctor being so harsh with members of his own race.

>>I still cannot believe that ANY other race could just waltz onto Gallifrey
>>past all the transduction barriers and the quantum force field not to
>>mention any of the other massive defenses Gallifrey could muster
>>and steal a regenerator machine without help from the inside.
>>Unless they had said help. the only other option is that they were indeed
>>from Gallifrey themselves.  Just because they were scientists does not
>>mean they had to be Time lords either.  Think of the mutants as professors
>>and the Time Lords as full doctors.

But how do we know they waltzed onto Gallifrey? In Trial of A Time Lord,
we learn that Andromedans or whatever, have stolen knowledge from inside the
matrix. Maybe the scientists bought the plans for the machine from the 
people who stole the matrix information? They thought they could become
Time Lords. They converted the machine and it went wrong. The high council 
of Gallifrey found out about the theft, and set the 8 in the warp ellipse.
The elders of the scientists planet did not even try diplomatic means to
have them released, so abandoning them to their fate, because they were 
afraid of the Time Lords. I admit this is just as much speculation as 
anything else, but it is certainly plausible.

Some other stuff I found from watching Invasion of Time again.

Andred went to the Academy. When he fails to kill the Doctor in
the Tardis, the Doc asks him what he learned at the Academy if he 
could not even pull off a palace revolution. (The novel says Military
academy, but the show says academy) So if people think that you become 
a Time Lord after you graduate the academy, then why do some people 
insist Andred was not a time Lord? Colin Baker thought Maxil was a
Time Lord. He said he was proud of being the only perosn on the show
to play two different Time Lords. 

Secondly Nesbin says that the outsiders are Time Lords or at least once
were.The novel has him saying that only some of them were Time Lords,
which is quite different. 

Thirdly, the character of Rodan is clearly the prototype for Romana,
who we all know is a Time Lord. Rodan has completed at least 7 grades,
and for all we know there are only 7 grades, at the academy (assuming
she meant academy) and has considerable techinical expertise with
Tardises. After all she links the controls of the force field to the 
Doctor's Tardis. She is obviously meant to be the first female Time Lord
on the show. So I still see no convincing evidence that there is a 
division in Gallifreyan society based on anything more than rank. Future
programmes (God I'm an optimist) may show otherwise of course, but they haven't
done so yet.

Mark C.