Garvond The Garvond was a monstrous psychic entity , a time - creature that was a group mind of the evil and demented thoughts of Time Lord s when their minds were imprinted into the APC Net of the Matrix . Existence . The Garvond was a creature feared to be more powerful than time itself . The Doctor , having foreseen his own part in its creation when he entered the Matrix , erased his own mind print from the Panotropic Net to avert its creation . Its rebirth was initiated by ' s use of the Chronovore Artemis . It had several thousand names , including Garivont and Garavond . All names were corruptions of the High Gallifreyan " gjara ' vont " which meant " of darkest thought . " The Garvond ' s form resembled a skeleton cloaked in darkness , sitting upon a throne outlined in blazing fire and surrounded by dark and light tendrils . In the deepest sense , it was highly similar to the equally malevolent Dark Matrix . Power . It was more or less crippled at the moment of its rebirth , desperately requiring enormous amounts of time energy to replenish itself . It fed off paradox es and could seize control of artificial devices . The Garvond was also able to inflict massive psychic damage by reaching into people ' s minds . It could extend itself to other items and use them to complete a circuit , as it did when it made the starship " Icarus " a part of it ; additionally , it needed a Time Focus which connected two points in time and which it could possess . It also made use of Time Soldier s , humanoid ghost - like creatures that had at once been human s , Gallifreyan s , Tharil s , and possibly other creatures who had travelled in time . They could phase out of time and appear anywhere , invulnerable to energy weapon s . They were tall and had snouts that looked like gas masks ; they carried wide - barreled blasters as part of their arms which fired time beams that could age / de - age their targets . Their senses were bombarded with so much information that they couldn ' t actually see and tracked targets by movement . Hylerium reflected their time energy and was the only effective weapon against them . The Garvond was able to speak through them as they acted as a part of its being . History . " The Worshipful and Ancient Law of Gallifrey " recorded that a Cardinal wrestled with the Garvond in the Matrix and it ate away his remaining lives , killing him without hope of regeneration . The book also foretold the coming of the Garvond , after being trapped in the Matrix for millennia , imprisoned by the minds whose fear and hate fed it . Due to ' s meddling , the Garvond ' s existence was ensured and it remained in the Time Vortex as it gathered its Time Soldiers and grew stronger . It became allies with Epsilon Delta , a renegade Time Lord , and agreed to help his TARDIS achieve feats unimagined . Having Epsilon Delta ' s android Amanda assassinate a government minister during a thousand year period of " crystallised time " when he wasn ' t assassinated would release vast amounts of energy as the " natural " flow of time snapped back after the disruption . It wanted to feed on this and continue to ravage the fields of Time . Surrendering his TARDIS to it , the Doctor lured the Garvond into a randomised Architectural Configuration and had it chase him into the TARDIS library . There he caught it in a book , possibly a copy of " The Worshipful and Ancient Law of Gallifrey " , and tossed it into a dimensional trap . It remained trapped there as long as the reconfiguration circuits were not played with . ( PROSE : " The Dimension Riders " )