Rassilon Rassilon was , alongside Omega and the Other , the founder of Time Lord civilisation . In his own time , Rassilon was chiefly an engineer and architect , but later Time Lord society would hail him as the first Time Lord and the single greatest figure of Gallifreyan history . However , some Time Lords contended that Rassilon was a corrupt megalomaniac who tried to murder his friend Omega and stole his invention . After his physical death , Rassilon stayed active in the Matrix and manipulated the Doctor into performing many missions for him . During the Last Great Time War , he was resurrected from the Matrix to lead the Time Lords , and he tried to find ways to break the time lock and escape the war . After the Doctor saved Gallifrey , Rassilon was overthrown , banished , and converted into a Cyber - Leader . Biography . Early accomplishments . Rassilon was the son of a suet shredder . ( PROSE : " " ) According to Coordinator Engin , Rassilon was initially chiefly regarded as an engineer and architect . ( TV : " The Deadly Assassin " ) He and Omega created validium ( TV : " Silver Nemesis " ) and , with the Other , they created the Hand of Omega . ( PROSE : " Remembrance of the Daleks " ) With the Hand , they planned to use to induce a supernova in the star Qqaba . The energy released would enable the Gallifreyan s to travel through time . ( COMIC : " Star Death " ) However , Rassilon was jealous of Omega ' s popularity amongst the people of Gallifrey , and he prompted Omega ' s assistant Vandekirian to betray him at the last second . ( AUDIO : " Omega " ) Another account stated that Rassilon instead deactivated Omega ' s protective forcefield remotely seconds before the star ' s detonation . ( PROSE : " The Scrolls of Rassilon " ) This betrayal was hidden from the Gallifreyans : the Fourth Doctor believed that Omega ' s death was caused by the interference of a Black Sun agent named Fenris the Hellbringer . ( COMIC : " Star Death " ) Rassilon used his new technology to map out of all of creation , invent rules for the universe , and purge reality of all irrationality . This anchoring of the thread created history in Gallifrey ' s image , and with it , Rassilon and his people truly became lords of all time and space . ( PROSE : " Christmas on a Rational Planet " , " The Book of the War " ) War against the Vampires . During the anchoring of the thread , Rassilon accidentally unleashed the Great Vampire s into the universe , ( PROSE : " Interference - Book One " , " The Book of the War " ) beginning the Eternal War . ( PROSE : " The Pit " ) Rassilon led the campaign to eliminate the vampires , fighting on the front lines of the conflict for several hundred years . ( PROSE : " The Book of Lists " ) At one point during the war , Rassilon left the safety of the main fleet to investigate rumours of a vampire hive . His ship was attacked by the bird - like Ra ' ra ' vis , and he became their prisoner . Rassilon was asked to perform time experiments for them , in order to advance their technology . He was saved by Jorus , a Vogan . Rassilon gave Jorus his seal , and told the Vogan the power of his race . The seal of Rassilon then became a key piece of iconography on Voga . ( PROSE : " Jorus and the Voganauts " ) General Skellis told the recently regenerated and full - bearded Rassilon that his tactic of using dispersal as a way of eliminating any Great Vampire they found actually caused the Vampires to spread across the universe , and told him that penetrating their heart was a much simpler way of killing them . Rassilon then employed Bowship s to hunt them down . ( PROSE : " The Multi - Faceted War " ) The campaign was largely successful , but the King Vampire was not found . ( TV : " State of Decay " , PROSE : " Interference - Book One " ) After the war , Rassilon wrote the Record of Rassilon , giving a history of the war and instructions to all Time Lords to kill the King Vampire if ever they came across him . ( TV : " State of Decay " ) The record was written into every TARDIS . ( PROSE : " The Multi - Faceted War " ) According to Faction Paradox - influenced transmissions from Anathema , during the war Rassilon had been exposed to vampire biodata in what he described as inoculation . ( PROSE : " Interference - Book One " ) The Cult of Rassilon the Vampire on Gallifrey believed that this caused him to become a vampire . ( PROSE : " Goth Opera " ) Foundation of Time Lord society . When Rassilon returned from the Eternal War , he seized control of Gallifrey ( PROSE : " The Pit " ) by overthrowing the matriarchal society of the Pythia . ( PROSE : " " ) He brought the Eye of Harmony , actually the singularity of a black hole , to Gallifrey . There it lay beneath the Panopticon . ( TV : " The Deadly Assassin " ) As the Time Lords banished the last fragment of impossibility from the universe , Rassilon said : According to the histories that Rassilon himself wrote , Pythia retaliated by wrathfully cursing Gallifreyan s to be sterile . ( PROSE : " " ) However , the sterility may have in reality been a result of the anchoring of the thread . ( PROSE : " The Book of the War " ) Rassilon solved the problem by creating the Great Houses and building the Loom s that artificially birthed new Time Lords and Ladies . ( PROSE : " " ) According to a different account , the President at the time of the Vampire War was Pandak , who Rassilon overthrew in a coup . ( PROSE : " The Scrolls of Rassilon " ) In the early days of his rule , Rassilon imposed higher taxes on the Gallifreyan people and changed the Games in the Death Zone to use alien warriors rather than Gallifreyans . He also also created the transduction barrier that protected Gallifrey from outsiders . Around this time , he was approached by the Stranger , who told him of Gallifrey ' s future and pleaded with him to change established events to make the Time Lords less powerful and selfish than they would become . ( PROSE : " The Scrolls of Rassilon " ) Rassilon led the Fledgling Empires against the Racnoss in the Racnoss Wars , and ultimately won the conflict . ( PROSE : " Pandoric ' s Box " ) Not long after Omega ' s incident , Rassilon led the Time Lords against the Nestene s , managing to contain their forces in the Illia galaxy . He personally persuaded scientist Roppen to reconfigure the Eye of Discord into a new device , one which he dubbed the " Galaxy Eater " . After the device ' s interface gave him a brief encounter with several of his future selves , Rassilon activated the device , and destroyed the Nestenes in the Illia galaxy . He then placed the device in the Omega Arsenal for safe keeping . ( PROSE : " Pandoric ' s Box " ) Rassilon led the Time Lords in the Millennium War , against the Mad Mind of Bophemeral . His memory of the event was erased , as happened to all others who took part in the war . ( PROSE : " The Quantum Archangel " ) Rassilon created the Alliance of Races ( COMIC : " Gangland " ) in a war against the Hyperions . ( COMIC : " Terrorformer " ) After the Hyperions were defeated , Rassilon and the Alliance of Races embarked on another purge of races that were a threat to universal harmony . One such enemy was Count D ' if and his Cybock Imperium . Rassilon challenged D ' if to a game of Rassilon ' s roulette using the Time - Gun of Rassilon . D ' if lost and he was wiped from existence . The Twelfth Doctor claimed that it was that moment that the Gallifreyans first began to fear their president . ( COMIC : " Gangland " ) Rassilon invented TARDIS es after a war with the Archons . ( AUDIO : " The Next Life " , PROSE : " The Nameless City " ) The Eleventh Doctor , having travelled back into Gallifrey ' s past , helped him with the Type 1 TARDIS , and was lost in the vortex during its first flight . ( COMIC : " The Lost Dimension " ) To enable Time Lords to travel through time without ill effects , Rassilon created a gene tic link called the Rassilon Imprimatur . ( PROSE : " Interference - Book One " ) He also worked with a biologist named Thremix , who had created a virus that he speculated would grant the Gallifreyans immortality . Rassilon ordered the release of the virus , which wiped out a large proportion of the Gallifreyan population , and gave the remainder the ability of full - bodily regeneration . ( PROSE : " The Scrolls of Rassilon " ) The Valeyard claimed that Rassilon intentionally implemented a flaw in regeneration , meaning that Time Lords could only do so twelve times , so he alone could have true immortality . ( AUDIO : " Trial of the Valeyard " ) Rassilon created a living weapon known as the Pariah which he used for missions throughout time and space . Rassilon gave the Pariah independent thought . This proved to be a mistake ; the Pariah developed a mind of its own and rebelled against him . Rassilon banished the Pariah from Gallifrey , then created Shayde , a more evolved version of the Pariah incapable of independent thought . The Pariah would cause the creation of the Threshold . ( COMIC : " Wormwood " ) Using temporal technology , Rassilon studied the future . He learned of the Divergence , a race which would eclipse his within ten thousand millennia . Fearing this future , he created a self - replicating , biogenic molecule which he sent back in time to seed all habitable planets in Gallifrey ' s galaxy . This ensured all intelligent life evolved in the form of the Gallifreyans . He trapped the Divergence in their own timeline , which Rassilon sealed into a time loop . ( AUDIO : " Zagreus " ) Supposed death and survival . Rassilon died whilst in his final incarnation . Before his death , he prepared his tomb to test those who sought the gift of immortality . ( PROSE : " Pandoric ' s Box " ) Many rumours surrounded Rassilon ' s death ( or lack thereof ) . One stated that the Time Lords had revolted and imprisoned him in the Dark Tower in the Death Zone . Borusa , Lord President and the Doctor ' s former mentor , believed that Rassilon had discovered a form of true immortality beyond the regeneration s known to Time Lords . Borusa uncovered and used several artefacts from the Dark Times , including the Coronet of Rassilon ( a mind control device ) and the Game of Rassilon . The Doctor discovered the truth when Borusa used him to try to discover Rassilon ' s secret ; Rassilon had indeed discovered immortality , but realised it was too dangerous a secret to share . Borusa was condemned to immortality as a living statue , imprisoned immobile in Rassilon ' s tomb . ( TV : " The Five Doctors " ) Over the millions of years after the end of Rassilon ' s Presidency , he came to be revered on Gallifrey . Time Lord history credited Rassilon with creating the traditions of their society ; for instance , after Rassilon had a nightmarish vision of a dictatorial , imperialistic Gallifrey , he was said to have created the principles of non - intervention . ( COMIC : " The Final Chapter " ) Secret societies on Gallifrey worshipped Rassilon as a god . ( AUDIO : " Intervention Earth " ) The Eremite s , who fled the Homeworld during the Diaspora immediately after the anchoring of the thread , remembered the first President as " Urizen the Architect " , a blind old man measuring his own dung with a compass . They ironically worshiped this drooling god with the rites of Urizen , during which they were permitted to break their vows of silence to freely laugh . ( PROSE : " The Book of the War " ) Copy in the Matrix . Before he died , Rassilon copied his mind into his creation , the Matrix . ( AUDIO : " Zagreus " ) Within the Matrix he sat with other advanced beings who collectively called themselves High Evolutionaries and had some involvement in the affairs of the universe . The High Evolutionaries used the Gallifreyan construct known as Shayde on their behalf . ( COMIC : " The Tides of Time " ) After President Romana reconciled Gallifrey with the Sisterhood of Karn , lifting the Curse of Pythia , ( PROSE : " Lungbarrow " ) the Book of Lies said that , from within his tomb , the " Great Grey Eminence " made a deal with Faction Paradox to fold the Doctor ' s timeline back on itself and return Gallifreyan history to passionless sterility . ( PROSE : " Unnatural History " ) When ' s last trap left the Eighth Doctor suffering from amnesia , Rassilon ' s spirit guided the Doctor to various locations where his past selves were about to face crucial dangers or defining moments . In the process , the Doctor made " improvements to the pattern of history " for Rassilon . At the end , Rassilon guided the Doctor to Sam Jones , ( PROSE : " The Eight Doctors " ) who he knew would never dare to " screw " the Doctor . After Gallifreyan history was rewritten , ( PROSE : " Unnatural History " ) Flavia was the current President ( PROSE : " The Eight Doctors " ) and the " Eminence " had been taught the ways of paradox . However , these changes to Gallifrey ' s history were unstable , and the Doctor wasn ' t sure if Flavia or Romana was President , ( PROSE : " Unnatural History " ) or if he ' d had parents or been born of a Loom . ( PROSE : " The Shadows of Avalon " ) Rassilon and the other Evolutionaries once hired the Threshold to stop a Dalek attempt to invade other realities . ( COMIC : " Fire and Brimstone " ) They sent Shayde to help the Eighth Doctor destroy the Threshold base at Wormwood located on Earth ' s Moon . ( COMIC : " The Final Chapter " ) From within the Matrix , Rassilon began to manipulate the Doctor into destroying the Divergence , arranging for him to be possessed by the essence of anti - time and appearing to him before this happened as well as saving him , so that he could become the destructive Zagreus and be used against Gallifrey ' s enemies . Rassilon possessed the body of Leela – the only body on Gallifrey that he could influence without setting off mental alarms – and used Romana II to teleport them past the barriers in the Death Zone which was her presidential right . He did this to obtain the Ring of Rassilon and unlock his Foundry . He then tried to force Romana to resign in favour of Zagreus , believing that this would ensure the destruction of the Divergence . Rassilon formed an alliance with the Doctor ' s TARDIS , which had also been infected with anti - time , promising to release its consciousness from the infection while using its body to create a sword of anti - time , with which he hoped Zagreus would kill the Divergence . However , his plan failed when the Doctor refused to kill , proclaiming his status as the Doctor . Rassilon then used the anti - time sword to kill Matthew Townsend , Tepesh , and Walton Winkle , who had seen the Divergence and been re - constituted in the Matrix with parts of the Doctor . Although Rassilon had hoped that the deaths of his other selves would further break the Doctor , this failed when , at the Doctor ' s behest , Charley Pollard used the anti - time blade on him . However , he gave into his Zagreus persona to survive with the help of the aspects of himself released when the three were killed , recognising that Rassilon was the real threat . Armed with the anti - time blade , Zagreus refused to be Rassilon ' s puppet and cast him into the Divergent Universe to end his actions . ( AUDIO : " Neverland " , " Zagreus " ) In the Divergent universe , Rassilon planned to steal the Doctor ' s TARDIS and escape , but the Doctor stopped Rassilon and left him behind . Rassilon ' s temporal senses broke down as the universe ' s time - looped nature left him trapped in a repeating pattern , while the Doctor and his companions returned to the main universe . ( AUDIO : " The Next Life " ) The Last Great Time War . In the early days of the Last Great Time War , Rassilon was resurrected from his tomb in the Dark Tower in the Death Zone to lead the Time Lords to battle . ( PROSE : " Engines of War " ) To resurrect him , 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 . ( AUDIO : " Desperate Measures " ) Rassilon wiped out the Tharil s , the Porfue and the Krajonnu in the first year of the Time War so that they didn ' t threaten the Time Lord ' s supremacy . ( PROSE : " Lords and Masters " ) He also retro - evolved dozens of Time Lords to become at possibility engine to aid him in victories throughout the War , creating the discarded race of the Interstitial s and succeeding with Borusa . ( PROSE : " Engines of War " ) During the War , Rassilon was taken to the Death Zone by Pandoric to offer advice to his former self in whether to use the Galaxy Eater to destroy the Nestenes . He warned his former self that he would live past his death and that there would be even greater conflicts in his future . ( PROSE : " Pandoric ' s Box " ) When the Time Lords feared that the Compassionate would side with the Daleks in the War , Rassilon sealed them in a rift at the heart of the planet Galen , and told the War Doctor that the Daleks had done this . ( AUDIO : " The Bleeding Heart " ) Late into the War , Rassilon sent the War Doctor on a mission to find after he had fled the War . Four hundred years into the War , Rassilon planned to detonate the Tear of Isha in the Tantalus Eye to stop a Dalek plan to wipe Gallifrey and the Time Lords from history . He consulted Borusa on his plan , who told him it would succeed . Rassilon ' s plan was foiled by the Doctor , who stole Borusa and the Tear of Isha , using Borusa to wipe the Daleks from the Tantalus Eye without killing all life around it . Rassilon condemned the Doctor ' s actions and made him an enemy of the Time Lords because of it . ( PROSE : " Engines of War " ) On the last day of the Time War , Rassilon intended to spare Gallifrey from destruction by using the Ultimate Sanction to turn the Time Lords into beings of pure consciousness to escape the end of creation . Knowing that the Doctor intended to destroy both Time Lords and Daleks by using the Moment , Rassilon contrived to break Gallifrey out of the time - lock that blocked the Last Great Time War from temporal manipulation , and then follow through on his plan . He succeeded . For a brief time , Gallifrey broke free of the time lock and appeared in the skies above Earth . However , Rassilon was opposed by the Tenth Doctor , one of only two Time Lord survivors of the war . Rassilon was badly hurt by a last attack by the Master , the other survivor , out of vengeance once he realised that Rassilon had deliberately driven him mad and destroyed his life . The time - lock resumed and Rassilon , the Time Lords , and Gallifrey itself were all flung back to the Time War . ( TV : " The End of Time " ) After the Time War . Rassilon ' s battle with the Master caused him to regenerate , ( PROSE : " Pandoric ' s Box " ) reportedly because the Master " shoved White Point Stars down his throat " . Rassilon screamed all the way through the regeneration , so much that Ohila had to make him " a special draft of potion " to help . ( PROSE : " Lords and Masters " ) Despite Rassilon ' s previous intention to kill the " diseased " Master , ( TV : " The End of Time " ) the Time Lords instead cured the Master ' s " condition " ( TV : " The Doctor Falls " ) and locked him up in Gomer ' s Asylum , which he later escaped from . ( PROSE : " Lords and Masters " ) After the Doctors united to place Gallifrey in a stasis cube to prevent its destruction , ( TV : " The Day of the Doctor " ) Rassilon began work to place it back in the main universe . Not wanting to return to another war , Rassilon found a weak point in the universe at Trenzalore caused by cracks in time and broadcasted a signal calling to the Doctor to see if it was safe to return . When the signal lead to the Siege of Trenzalore , Rassilon continued to wait for the Doctor ' s signal until Clara Oswald alerted him and the Time Lords to the Doctor ' s inability to regenerate and that the Daleks were preparing to kill him . Rassilon then granted the Doctor a new regeneration cycle , but the Doctor left Trenzalore without freeing Gallifrey . ( PROSE : " A Brief History of Time Lords " ) The Time Lords later returned Gallifrey to its original point in space , but were forced to hide it near the end of the universe for their own safety . ( TV : " Hell Bent " ) At some point afterwards , Rassilon was taken to the Death Zone by Pandoric to offer advice to his former self in whether to use the Galaxy Eater to destroy the Nestenes . He told his former self that Gallifrey would stand past all its conflicts . ( PROSE : " Pandoric ' s Box " ) Possibly due to being alerted by , Rassilon grew concerned about the prophecies of the Hybrid , and gave an order for Clara to be killed to entrap the Twelfth Doctor in a confession dial to get information out of him . ( PROSE : " A Brief History of Time Lords " ) To this end , Rassilon contacted Ashildr to have her assistince in the kidnapping of the Doctor ( TV : " Face the Raven " , " Hell Bent " ) and trap him within his own confession dial in an attempt to learn everything that he knew about the Hybrid . The Doctor ' s refusal to relent led to his being trapped inside the dial for four and a half billion years , constantly dying and recreating himself to breach the dial ' s barriers rather than confess his secrets . ( TV : " Heaven Sent " , " Hell Bent " ) On his escape , the Doctor finally returned to Gallifrey . ( TV : " Heaven Sent " ) Threatened by the Doctor ' s presence and still desperate for information on the Hybrid , Rassilon ordered first troops and then the High Council to make contact with the Doctor . However , the Doctor was only willing to speak directly to Rassilon himself . Eventually , Rassilon was forced out into the Drylands to confront him . There , the Doctor held him alone responsible for the crimes of the Last Great Time War , and for his treatment in his confession dial . Rassilon tried to have a firing squad execute the unarmed Doctor , who ordered him to " get off my planet . " However , the squad purposefully missed due to their great respect for the Doctor . Military reinforcements arrived , but had been summoned by the Doctor instead . When Rassilon tried to use his gauntlet to kill the Doctor himself , the General reinforced the Doctor ' s order . Rassilon was overthrown and replaced by the Doctor . He was then banished from Gallifrey by the Doctor , along with the High Council . ( TV : " Hell Bent " ) Revenge . Rassilon found the Cybermen , who were clinging to life at the end of the universe . Rassilon gave the Cybermen leadership and direction , and joined with their Cyberiad . Rassilon returned to Gallifrey and conquered the planet with the aid of his new allies . He welcomed the Twelfth Doctor when he returned to Gallifrey . As the Doctor tried to gather his remaining Gallifreyian allies , he learned that Rassilon intended to use the accumulated energy of the captured Time Lords to literally regenerate the universe to fit his vision , only for his plan to be subverted by the Cybermen . The Cybermen placed the Doctor and Rassilon into the Cyberiad . Inside , Rassilon realised his mistake and formulated a plan with the Doctor to use regeneration energy of the Time Lords to undo what the Cybermen did to the universe . Rassilon helped the Doctor to realise his plans , and the universe was regenerated , setting things to how they were before Rassilon had met the Cybermen . Rassilon was once again left in his Bowship at the end of the universe . The Twelfth Doctor wondered if Rassilon was able to remember the events with the Cybermen like he could . ( COMIC : " Supremacy of the Cybermen " ) Alternate timelines . In one alternate timeline , Rassilon failed to finish the Eye of Harmony before his death and Gallifrey never achieved time travel . ( AUDIO : " Forever " ) In three alternate timelines , Rassilon never existed , was a woman and loved Omega , and continued to rule Gallifrey after his death from within the Matrix . ( PROSE : " The Infinity Doctors " ) In a parallel universe where the Sixth Doctor led the Time Lords in the War , the flagship of the First Imperial Gallifreyan Fleet was a time dreadnought named the " Righteous Fist of Rassilon " . ( PROSE : " The Quantum Archangel " ) Skills and abilities . By the time of the foundation of the Time Lords civilisation , Rassilon already proved to be able to stop a Gallifreyan fleet from falling into a black hole ; moreover , he could spring bolts of power arc from his fingertips , a power called electro - direction . ( COMIC : " Star Death " ) He was also incredibly intelligent . He was able to create and developed the Matrix and created or designed much of the technology that the Time Lords used , although this could not have happened without Omega giving the Time lords their power source . During the final days of the Last Great Time War , with the apparent help of a gauntlet , he was able to provoke the molecular dispersal of another Time Lord and to revert the effects of an Immortality Gate on a planetary scale , just with a gesture ending the Master ' s control and was also capable of developing various scenarios and outcomes and his scheme was only foiled by the Doctor ' s timely intervention . ( TV : " The End of Time " ) Artefacts . Many important Gallifreyan artefacts bore his name . These included the Sash of Rassilon , the Rod of Rassilon ( TV : " The Deadly Assassin " ) , the Coronet of Rassilon ( TV : " The Five Doctors " ) , the Harp of Rassilon ( TV : " The Five Doctors " ) , the Crown of Rassilon ( TV : " The Invasion of Time " ) and the Seal of Rassilon , a symbol used as a mark of Time Lord authority which appeared as a motif in many Time Lord designs ( TV : " The Deadly Assassin " , " The Five Doctors " ) These were stored in the Capitol and , save for the supremely powerful Great Key , which at one stage found its way into the hand of Cardinal Borusa , were made available to the Lord President of the Time Lords . ( TV : " The Invasion of Time " ) The Black Scrolls of Rassilon , also later obtained by Borusa , contained forbidden , arcane secrets ( TV : " The Five Doctors " ) . The fabled Ring of Rassilon , however , capable of conferring immortality upon the wearer , resided in the Tomb of Rassilon in the Dark Tower located in the Death Zone . ( TV : " The Five Doctors " ) Personality . Rassilon was a charismatic leader who was capable of inspiring his people . The General himself stated that , while Rassilon eventually became corrupt , he was once a good man . ( TV : " Hell Bent " ) Indeed , Rassilon was initially a man who hated corruption and was good at detecting it . ( TV : " The Five Doctors " ) During the early history of the Time Lords , Rassilon lead the revolution against the last Pythia , ( PROSE : " " ) overthrew President Pandak , ( PROSE : " The Scrolls of Rassilon " ) and instituted changes to deal with the problems of the Empire , such as ordering the creation of genetic loom s to permit the Gallifreyan race to reproduce , ( PROSE : " " ) creating the transduction barrier , ( PROSE : " The Scrolls of Rassilon " ) and completely ended " the Games " in the Death Zone ( TV : " The Five Doctors " ) after a period of using alien warriors instead of Gallifreyans . ( PROSE : " The Scrolls of Rassilon " ) Rassilon and the Time Lords also created the Web of Time to purge the universe of irrationality . ( PROSE : " Christmas on a Rational Planet " ) Controversially , Rassilon ordered the release of a virus that wiped out a large proportion of the Gallifreyan population , while allowing the survivors to regenerate . ( PROSE : " The Scrolls of Rassilon " ) He also discovered how to become immortal without having to use regenerations to survive , but believed that the secret was too dangerous to share , and thus kept it to himself , ( TV : " The Five Doctors " ) and instituted the Non - interference policy after dreaming of a future Time Lord empire that used its power to suppress the weak of the universe . ( COMIC : " The Final Chapter " ) Rassilon was intimidating and unforgiving , but was also a hero to many Gallifreyans , ( AUDIO : " Zagreus " ) with the Second Doctor calling him " the greatest single figure in Time Lords history " , ( TV : " The Five Doctors " ) though the Twelfth Doctor recalled how the Gallifreyans began to fear Rassilon after he beat Count D ' if at Rassilon ' s roulette . ( COMIC : " Gangland " ) However , his wisdom in recognising the curse of immortality and his opposition to the corrupting influence of power ( TV : " The Five Doctors " ) did not prevent him from becoming corrupted by power himself , such as with his prejudice against Vampire s , ( AUDIO : " Zagreus " ) and becoming increasingly obsessed with avoiding death during the Last Great Time War against the Dalek s . ( TV : " The End of Time " ) After the loss of Omega , Rassilon wept for him , with the Other musing that Rassilon ' s later actions were born out of love . ( PROSE : " Lungbarrow " ) However , some believed Rassilon to actually be behind the plot to murder Omega , ( AUDIO : " Omega " ) despite the evidence against the assassin Fenris , whom Rassilon banished into the Zone of No Return to avenge Omega , ( COMIC : " Star Death " ) while another account had it that Rassilon had been responsible for Omega ' s protective forcefield failing . ( PROSE : " The Scrolls of Rassilon " ) After punishing Borusa for attempting to claim immortality , Rassilon offered immortality to the First , Second , Third and Fifth Doctors , and admitted that they had " chosen wisely " after they declined , and sent them back to where they belonged afterwards , ( TV : " The Five Doctors " ) even giving the First Doctor complete control of his TARDIS to allow him to attend to unfinished business before his regeneration as a show of gratitude . ( PROSE : " The Witch Hunters " ) Rassilon was also manipulative , trying to trick the Eighth Doctor into destroying the Divergence in the belief that they were too different to live , ( AUDIO : " Neverland " , " Zagreus " ) and using as a link between Gallifrey and the rest of the Universe which allowed him to temporarily free Gallifrey from the time lock . ( TV : " The End of Time " ) By the end of the Time War , Rassilon had become ruthless , power - hungry and insane , being willing to destroy the whole of creation rather than accept the end of the Time Lords . He planned to change himself and the Time Lords into beings of pure consciousness , free of physical bodies and the ravages of time , in his Ultimate Sanction . Rassilon had also grown in his pettiness , vaporising the Partisan for speaking against his desire to continue the Time War , and taunting the Tenth Doctor with how " the final act of [ his ] life [ would be ] murder " after a failed attempt to fool the Doctor into an alliance with him . Even as he was dragged back into the war , Rassilon made one last hateful attempt to kill the Doctor . ( TV : " The End of Time " ) Following the end of the Time War , Rassilon retained his arrogance , believing himself superior to others simply for being Lord President , and showed no remorse for locking the Twelfth Doctor in his confession dial to get the information he wanted . He also showed his sadistic side by gloating how he could remove the Doctor ' s regenerations one at a time . ( TV : " Hell Bent " ) After his banishment , Rassilon was driven to teaming up with the Cybermen to survive and reclaim Gallifrey . ( COMIC : " Supremacy of the Cybermen " )