# Talk:Time Lord

What about Susan, if we accept Eric Saward's contribution to the ouvre?

Saward's story aside, actually, Susan should be on the list, since we've already categorised her as a Time Lord - with a side note. I'll take care of it. Incidentally, which anniversary special was this? 1993? --khaosworks 13:21, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I'll have a look tonight - it's on my beside table. It has Colin Baker in it...GraemeLeggett 15:03, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Cool. I know there've been a few, so it's good to specify. --khaosworks 15:18, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I am uncomfortable with placing Saward's story within the portion of the article that is basically an iteration of the background that the novels and audios seem to draw on, i.e. the Cartmel Masterplan. It's not that Saward's story is not valid, but it's so contradictory to what current fanon seems to assume that it seems out of place there. The reason I say that Saward's story is generally ignored by fans is because that appears to be true at the moment - everybody working on the licensed fiction seems to draw from the "Other" story in Lungbarrow or at least does not contradict it, and nobody appears to make any reference to the Saward version. 
Part of my uneasiness also stems from the fact that there's a lot of different stories out there as well which are also ignored, like the origin of the Cybermen on a medieval type Mondas reprinted in Banks' Cybermen book that no-one seriously even considers as canon, so if Saward's story is in there why not those? I grant that as the script editor during the 80s, his story carries a bit of weight, so I'm not sure what a good solution would be here, as I am also hesitant in leaving it out. Perhaps the history section needs a rewrite to sort out on-screen from off. --khaosworks 09:38, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I think it helps to illustrate the rich variety of the history. (or that canon is what you want it to be) The greatest problem with the "ignored by fandom" is in what fandom means - we can't quantify it, making NPOV difficult. As it was a one off in a magazine and 20 years ago, I suspect only some of those who read it at the time took it into their personal canon and the rest forgot. The Catrmel masterplan have a broader reach in time though maybe known by fewer numbers???. Perhaps we need to identify the sketchy TV history from the alternative threads of the novels etc. Let me try something with that bit of the section it can always rv. GraemeLeggett 10:27, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

"Doctorin the TARDIS" was before their KLF days. The name of the group was "The Timelords". -- Tarquin 11:43 Aug 25, 2002 (PDT)

The redirect No not the mind probe has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 July 15 § No not the mind probe until a consensus is reached.  Magneton Considerer: Pokelego999 (Talk) (Contribs) 05:22, 15 July 2025 (UTC)

Why were entire sourced sections removed recently, such as Time Lord Technology? Did they end up elsewhere? Tduk (talk) 15:50, 15 July 2025 (UTC)

@Tduk many of these sections were sourced exclusively to the episodes of the show, and many of them were either CRUFT (Lists or paragraphs consisting of every time a character mentioned something pertaining to a specific Time Lord subject in the show) or original research (Attempting to draw a conclusion regarding lore elements by citing specific lines from different episodes without any source making the connection themselves). I tried to preserve what I could that was relevant to the subject throughout the article, though I did shuffle a few things around (In the case of technology, I ended up redirecting a few items to relevant articles where they're better discussed, such as The Moment to The Day of the Doctor and the hypercubes to The Doctor's Wife). If you feel there's anything else worth adding feel free, but make sure it's cited to a third party source unless it's some basic plot info.  Magneton Considerer: Pokelego999 (Talk) (Contribs) 17:20, 15 July 2025 (UTC)

Posted by Pokelego999 on  my talk page; I will reply here to keep everything together.
-I'm very confused how the plot summary is supposed to be Wikipedia:OR, as all I've done is summarize each Time Lord television appearance. I didn't exactly pick and choose, or draw any original conclusions of my own. I find this being weighed against the article is just very confusing, and I'm not quite sure how this is even factoring into the article in the first place. If you feel it's an issue of how the individual Time Lords are handled in comparison to Time Lords as a species, then I'd appreciate some advice on how best to handle that. 

WP:PLOTCITE says "For consolidated articles, discussing a work published or broadcast in a serial form, a citation to the individual issue or episode is appropriate." A lot of the content is not even implicitly cited to individual episodes, for example, "The First Doctor steals a TARDIS, one of the time-travel ships the Time Lords use, and flees Gallifrey with his granddaughter Susan Foreman. The Doctor, during his travels, encounters and thwarts many conflicts throughout history. Another Time Lord who fled Gallifrey, the Meddling Monk, is also encountered multiple times by the Doctor",  " the Rani, who acts as a recurring enemy." The citation to "the first series" for "the Time Lords had fought the Daleks in the "Last Great Time War", a massive interstellar war fought across time and space" is rather imprecise. Anyway, the vast majority of this can easily be cited to [1]. Generally it is best in my view to keep uncited information to decicated "plot" sections for small individual pieces of media, not for overview articles on a 50 year show.
And yes, I think the handling of "Time Lords in general" versus "individual Time Lords" is a part of my critique, which I have not brought across well (if at all). You mention all of these individual Time Lords, but somehow we don't learn so much about Time Lords in general from them in this article. (For most of the modern series, there are only two Time Lords). Perhaps the summarizing of all Time Lord appearances isn't actually so beneficial.
Consider the version that passed GA in 2007, where the in-universe information is sorted more clearly by theme. We learn about Time Lord physiology, regeneration, technology, and society.
-"so perhaps you shouldn't even try to describe what Time Lords are like in-universe, but focus on how every new writer changes them quite a lot" I'm a bit confused on what the latter bit means. The conception and development section already covers the out of universe information like how writers change the Time Lords, so I'm not quite sure how this is meant to apply to the plot. 

And I may be wrong about this. I don't really know what you should do, all I can say is that the in-universe section is currently not working for me. There is some canonical core to what Time Lords are like, just their overall history and origins change completely every couple of writers, while physiology, society and technology seem to be reasonably stable.
-Plot information doesn't need to be cited per MOS:PLOT, so I'm a bit confused why the lack of citations there is inherently problematic. Additionally, for spin-offs, the Time Lords did not have any significant pieces of media discussed by secondary sources, who mostly focused on their television appearances, and any primary sources I found didn't describe any either. They appear in a lot of stuff, so I feel like including a ton of unnecessary in-universe information wouldn't be too helpful for readers when it isn't relevant to the rest of the article. 

See above. As for books, Lists of books based on Doctor Who has a lot of blue links. Lungbarrow at least seems to have some Google Scholar hits and nontrivial relevant backstory, like no children born on Gallifrey for a couple of millennia. [2] (don't ask me about the reliability of this; separating "fan content" from "scholarly content" is quite difficult in Doctor Who; things like TARDIS Eruditorum written by long-time Wikipedian El Sandifer do get quite a few citations).
-The scholarly analysis in the article is basically all I could find that was significant and not strictly about some other concept; beyond this is just trivial mentions and the like. Regeneration in particular is not mentioned because there isn't much on it specifically, which was a major issue brought up in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Regeneration (Doctor Who), which led to its redirection to Time Lord in the first place, and the only potential significant coverage brought up there was solely about how regeneration affected the Doctor, not the Time Lords. I'm not sure what you'd want me to do to improve that section when I've exhausted most of the major discussion sources as is. 

Regeneration is such a central concept for Time Lords that it is difficult to claim it should not be mentioned in more detail. The doctor's and master's sex changes (or gender changes [3]?) by themselves have some coverage in trans-related scholarship, and there is more about the use of regeneration to renew the character.
-I'm also a bit confused how you mean about putting "Time Lords in context of other sci-fi stories". Do you mean comparing it to other franchises? Other episodes of the show? On the former, there's not really much of it from what I saw during my searches, and the latter is already being done in the article.

I thought of other stories mostly. The concept of Trills in Star Trek or that of a phoenix reborn came to mind.
Sorry I may still be less clear than I would like to be, but I need to go make some food now :) —Kusma (talk) 11:17, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

The "Reception and analysis" section is I think what mainly does not work for me. To use a comparison from a different franchise, it is like discussing the reception of Vulcans while excluding Spock and Tuvok. It is almost entirely about Time Lord society, with the single exception of "A paper by the Scientific American analysed how the Time Lords' two hearts could work in real life." (note also that the author does have a name). There is a little bit of analysis of how the Doctor is different from other time lords in the literature, for example [4]: "So perhaps this is what sets the Doctor aside from other Time Lords, what bonds him to the human beings that so often make up his companions: a recognition of the mutuality of ignorance and a rejection of the quietism of the Time Lords. He is, after all, “a madman with a box.”"
I hope I am making a little bit more sense now. —Kusma (talk) 16:28, 20 July 2025 (UTC)
@Kusma on a few points:
I see your point on the plot cites and will get to work on that soon, but I'm confused on how summarizing Time Lord appearances is not beneficial. Could you clarify on that? Additionally, could you clarify on what I'm meant to be taking from the old GAN? That version was passed (And was very quickly demoted) in 2007, as that version has no out of universe content and is cited entirely to television episodes with multiple uncited statements and mentions of trivial content that play minor roles in only one episode. I'm not sure what's meant to be helpful there to the current article unless there's specific plot details you want me to include.
In regards to individual Time Lords in the plot, since it seems remiss to not mention individual characters who are part of a wider race, should I perhaps trim it down to only the notable recurring ones like the Master or Rani, and remove characters who only show up once?
On books: a lot of Doctor Who books are just non-notable stubs; the list of notable ones is few and far between (We need to get to cleanup at some point). Lungbarrow is presently probably one of the few potentially notable ones given it's gotten some coverage, but I would appreciate input in regard to the prose; if there's only specific works cited, how should that be phrased in regard to the text? Usually these kinds of spin-off material sections include every piece of spin-off media a subject is in, so limiting it to specific examples is something I'm not quite used to.
I feel we have different mindsets on what content should be included. For me, the regeneration bits you want to include are good coverage, but not for the Time Lords. The coverage of these mostly talk about The Doctor or the Master specifically; there's little to no discussion of the Time Lords as a race and how that affects them overall. Similarly, I feel it's why I'm confused on your comments about Reception; I'm not sure why I would mention characters like the Doctor or the Master when the coverage you're giving as examples are largely about the individual people more than the overall race, and the only comments linking them to the Time Lords seem to be small in comparison to the larger body of work (For instance, the bit you cited is one sentence in a several thousand page book; it feels Wikipedia:UNDUE to represent that as if it's equivalent in terms of Wikipedia:SIGCOV). This coverage, to me isn't about the Time Lords, it's about subjects tangentially related to the Time Lords, which to me threatens Wikipedia:COATRACK issues where we're just sticking multiple semi-associated objects together to try and provide notability for a larger subject. It's why the analysis is largely only about the Time Lords as a group, because for me that's the subject of the article, and thus including subjects that aren't specifically the Time Lords as a group falls into the issues I mentioned above. I hope this clarifies why I'm a bit hesitant/confused on some of this, as while I get where you're coming from, I personally disagree in terms of how this works in regard to relevant policies.
Magneton Considerer: Pokelego999 (Talk) (Contribs) 23:51, 20 July 2025 (UTC)
The central point is number 4 I think. In my view you are giving undue weight to "the Time Lords as a group" in the analysis. There is a Time Lord occurring in every single Doctor Who episode, and most of what we know about Time Lord physiology and Time Lord technology we know from that particular example. Your approach focuses on the Time Lords as recurring enemies, but they are also the fictional species that Romana and the Doctor belong to. Ignoring the Doctor's regenerations because they are "about the Doctor, not about the Time Lords" just doesn't work, as they are one of the defining features of the species. Just the fact that one particular Time Lord gets 90% of the attention in the show, and another two or three get another 9%, while the remaining ones get 1%, does not make in undue to talk about the 90%; on the contrary, it makes it undue to analyse only the 1%.
Perhaps it would be good to discuss this not just with me, but with a wider group. It is entirely possible to have different opinions on this, so talking to more people from the Doctor Who project could be a good way forward. —Kusma (talk) 08:39, 21 July 2025 (UTC)
This article is about the "Time Lords" as a race. Individual Time Lords have their own articles where information pertaining to them specifically can be kept, since the information pertaining to their particular characters does not discuss the Time Lords as a race. It's like taking analysis of Donald Trump and putting it in the Human article because Trump is of the same species and an important Human figure. Unless the source is significantly comparing the two aspects, they're inherently talking about two subjects better kept apart.
This was upheld as a precedent during Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Rassilon where, despite the overlap between Rassilon and the Time Lords even before I rewrote this article, it was decided Rassilon should be kept separate from the Time Lords due to having his own coverage separate from the Time Lords, with even Daranios, who found the sources that led to the article being kept, directly stating: "But the majority of found commentary does not readily fit to Time Lord but is directed to Rassilion directly."
I bring up Rassilon because if even the small bits in his article are considered enough to be better kept separate, than why would we include analysis of the Doctor, a character with infinitely more analysis than any other character in the franchise? What would be more helpful for readers wanting information about the Time Lords as a race? Analysis regarding the Time Lords' roles in the series and how they've been received over the years, or analysis of the Doctor completely unrelated to the Time Lords?
I'll bring this up with the WikiProject but to me this doesn't really make much sense in terms of how Wikipedia:PAGEDECIDE works, among other policies.  Magneton Considerer: Pokelego999 (Talk) (Contribs) 18:17, 21 July 2025 (UTC)
@Kusma wished to ping you to clarify with you: I've done some digging and was able to turn up some stuff on the Time Lords in spin-off media. Though it gives a large overview of the Time Lords in spin-off material, there are many novels and comics in which Time Lords appear but there are no major lore repercussions or re-interpretations of them, and these appearances are additionally not mentioned in secondary sources. I'm a bit conflicted on whether to include them or not, or whether to leave it to what is currently summarized in this section. I still need to give it a copyedit, but would you be willing to take a look over what's present in this section at present and see what more, content-wise, is needed? Magneton Considerer: Pokelego999 (Talk) (Contribs) 01:40, 5 August 2025 (UTC)
@Pokelego999, I am pretty clueless what more is needed here (I am aware of the existence of a massive amount of spin off media but don't know anything about its contents), all I was looking for is a general discussion of what kind of things occur in spin-off media and whether they explore Time Lord society in detail, and your addition answers that question. I think the length of your section is appropriate at the moment unless surprising amounts of secondary sources turn up. —Kusma (talk) 10:28, 7 August 2025 (UTC)
@Kusma alright, I'll likely stick with this for now then. Thank you for looking this over!  Magneton Considerer: Pokelego999 (Talk) (Contribs) 16:17, 7 August 2025 (UTC)