Time Lord

The Time Lords were inhabitants of the planet Gallifrey, who were most famous for the creation and attempted monopolisation of time travel technology. (COMIC: Time Bomb!, TV: The Time Warrior, PROSE: The Crystal Bucephalus et al.) They created and upheld the Laws of Time. (TV: The Three Doctors, Attack of the Cybermen)

Time Lords were sensitive to timelines, being able to see "all that is, all that was, all that ever could be," (TV: The Parting of the Ways) but also "what must not [be]". (TV: The Fires of Pompeii) They had an instinctive urge to stay away from events that would always happen. (TV: The Waters of Mars) They were seen as nearly immortal, (TV: The War Games, Last of the Time Lords) partially due to their ability to regenerate. (TV: Planet of the Spiders)

The ancient Time Lords were known to take part in battles and conflicts, often helping to hunt species known to be dangerous. (PROSE: Pandoric's Box, et al.) One of the last of these was a waragainst the Great Vampires, which was so long and bloody that they turned against violence in general. (TV: State of Decay) For at least part of their history, the Time Lords adhered to a strict policy of non-interference. (TV: The War Games) Despite their attempts to keep up an appearance of being uninterested in the affairs of others, they still sent discreet missions where other Time Lords would act on their behalf. (TV: Colony in Space, The Two Doctors, Genesis of the Daleks, et al.) On one occasion, the Fourth Doctorwas instructed to intercept the creation of the Dalek race, (TV: Genesis of the Daleks) a step which eventually led to a war between the two species. (COMIC: Hunters of the Burning Stone, et al.)

By the time of the Sixth Doctor, the Time Lords had reigned in "absolute power" for ten million years. (TV: The Ultimate Foe, PROSE: The Book of the War) During the final day of the Time War, it was claimed the Time Lords' civilisation had lived for a billion years, and they had been time travelling for ten million years. (TV: The End of Time)

History edit

Main article: Gallifreyan history

The Time Lords held absolute power for some ten million years. (TV: The Ultimate Foe, PROSE: The Book of the War) Finally, it appeared, and was assumed by the Doctor for a time, that the Last Great Time War all but wiped out the race. (TV: The End of the World, The End of Time) However, intervention by "all thirteen" incarnations of the Doctor placed the Time Lords into a pocket universe. (TV: The Day of the Doctor) They later attempted to get the Doctor to release them on Trenzalore and while he did not, due to the threat of a new time war breaking out, the Time Lords saved him from what would have been his thirteenth and final death by granting him a new cycle of regenerations. (TV: The Time of the Doctor) Under Rassilon, they eventually unfroze Gallifrey and moved it to the end of the universe for protection, at the same time locking the Twelfth Doctor in his confession dial to learn about the Hybrid. The Doctor eventually escaped, overthrew Rassilon, and used Time Lord technology to save Clara Oswald before fleeing Gallifrey once more in another stolen TARDIS. (TV: Hell Bent)

Life cycle edit

Main article: Gallifreyan physiology

The Eleventh Doctor once said to a group of humans, "We were all jelly once. Little jelly eggs, sitting in goop", indicating that Gallifreyans began as ovum similar to Earth mammals. (TV: The Rebel Flesh) Time Lords could also be born from individual Family Looms, machines that operated on genetic banks that would weave random patterns until forming a new person. (PROSE: Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible, Cold Fusion, Lungbarrow) According to some accounts, the commonness of Looms rendered traditional family units redundant for Time Lords; by the time the Doctor and Susan left Gallifrey, parental relations were viewed as a rare or shocking occurrence. (AUDIO: The Beginning)

Provost-Major Beltempest listed Time Lords separately when he said: "My Time Lords, ladies, gentlemen, and those of indeterminate gender". (PROSE: Happy Endings) Female Time Lords were also referred to as Time Ladies, although the Master's first female incarnation Missy referred to the term as "old-fashioned". (TV: City of Death, Dark Water) Biological sex and gender could change from one regeneration to another. (TV: The Doctor's Wife, Dark Water, Hell Bent, Twice Upon a Time, et al.)

Biological sex is flexible among my people, and gender is merely a social construct.Thirteenth Doctor [src]

Young Gallifreyans were known as Time Tots, (PROSE: Big Bang Generation, AUDIO: Trial of the Valeyard, COMIC: Weapons of Past Destruction, WC: Shada) loomlings, (PROSE: Unnatural History) or childrene. (PROSE: Of the City of the Saved..., Against Nature) Some Time Tots were loomed. (PROSE: Apocrypha Bipedium) In many cases, their life cycle seemed to include a phase similar to human childhood. Like human children, Gallifreyan children slept in cribs. (TV: A Good Man Goes to War) Children were entertained with nursery rhymes (TV: The Five Doctors, AUDIO: Zagreus) and stories such as Snow White and the Seven Keys to Doomsday. (TV: Night Terrors, PROSE: Snow White and the Seven Keys to Doomsday) There were specialised books for Gallifreyan children, including Every Gallifreyan Child's Pop-Up Book of Nasty Creatures From Other Dimensions. (AUDIO: Shada, WC: Shada, PROSE: Shada) Many Time Lords were once physically children and at least some lived in homes with others of their own gender before going off to join the Academy or the army. (TV: The Sound of Drums, Listen) Many Time Lords were loomed as full grown adults. (PROSE: Lungbarrow, Against Nature)

The Tenth Doctor considered himself a "kid" at 90, (TV: The Stolen Earth) but after the age of two hundred years, the Third Doctor no longer saw himself as young anymore. (TV: The Time Warrior) They could live for hundreds of years before regenerating. (TV: The Tomb of the Cybermen) Handrel claimed that Time Lords could live around ten thousand years before regenerating. (PROSE: The Time Lord's Story) The Eleventh Doctorphysically lived for at least 1,200 years before having to regenerate, resulting in an advanced physical age. However, this was partially due to the fact that for 900 of those years, he was under extreme stress, as well as him no longer being able to regenerate and so his incarnation continued past the point where age would have required him to regenerate. Notably, by the end of that incarnation, he was dying of old age and when he was granted the ability to regenerate once more, he immediately started to do so. (TV: The Time of the Doctor)

Time Lords, once they had reached old age, were allowed to leave Gallifrey and retire on another planet. This was very rarely done; Chronotis was the only person known to take up the offer. (PROSE: Shada)

According to Missy, a Time Lord was supposed to face death by meditation: repentance, acceptance and contemplation of the absolute (TV: The Magician's Apprentice) while in an earlier incarnation, the Mastercommented that Time Lords should face death with dignity. (TV: Terror of the Autons)

Time Lords had some control over their own deaths, some would elect a specific "Death-Day," which would allow them time to read their will to their family in their ancestral home, to die after a time of contemplation and acceptance, and then to have their mind transferred to the Matrix. (PROSE: Lungbarrow)

When a Time Lord eventually died with their regenerations exhausted, they could release one last burst of regeneration energy which would see their last body vanish, leaving only the clothing they had been wearing. (PROSE: Shada) Accordingly, in the alternate timeline where he died on Trenzalore, the Doctor's tomb did not contain a body (which the Doctor said would have been "boring"), but rather an embodiment of the deceased's time stream. (TV: The Name of the Doctor) However, one had to will this to happen prior to death, (PROSE: Shada) and if a Time Lord's death did leave behind a body, it was considered necessary to destroy their corpse soon afterwards. This was because, by harvesting the body, one could gain the ability to regenerate and cheat death. River Song claimed many were prepared to go to war to obtain even a single Time Lord cell. (TV: Last of the Time Lords, The Impossible Astronaut, PROSE: Shada)

Once they had died, a Time Lord's mind and experiences were usually uploaded to the Matrix on Gallifrey. (TV: The Deadly Assassin) Though usually confined to this virtual world, some of the deceased Time Lords would again walk the material plane in the form of the mechanical Cloister Wraiths, (TV: Hell Bent) and although Time Lords were connected to the Matrix throughout their lives, (AUDIO: Pandora) the Time Lords also had a rite called Soul Catching, which was done to dying Time Lords before they were assimilated into the Matrix. This allowed them to assimilate their memories before they died. (PROSE: The Devil Goblins from Neptune, TV: Hell Bent)

The Master eventually learned and revealed to the Thirteenth Doctor that the Time Lords' ability to regenerate came from studying the Timeless Child, a child with the ability to regenerate infinitely. The Timeless Child was in fact the Doctor, whose memories were redacted. (TV: The Timeless Children).

Culture edit

Art edit

Time Lords appreciated music, as indicated by such artefacts as the Harp of Rassilon. (TV: The Five Doctors) They also appreciated art, although painting on Gallifrey was done by computer. (TV: City of Death) Time Lord art, known as stasis cubes, were unique in that they were in 3D, as they acted as snapshots of a single moment in time. This meant that they could be used as rudimentary time travel, by freezing a person inside a painting and then letting them out at the required point in time. (TV: The Day of the Doctor)

By the time of the Doctor the Patrexes Chapter specialised in art and aesthetics. (PROSE: Damaged Goods)

Education edit

One of the major institutions of the Time Lords was the Time Lord Academy. It was split up into Chapters, each of which was identified by its distinctive colours. (TV: The Deadly Assassin) The subjects at the academy ranged from the study of cosmic science (TV: Terror of the Autons) to Veteran and Vintage Vehicles (TV: The Pirate Planet) to Gallifreyan flutterwings. (TV: The Pirate Planet)

Children began instruction at the Time Lord Academy, at the age of 8, in a special ceremony. The Gallifreyans would be forced to look into the Untempered Schism, which showed the entirety of the Time Vortex and the power that the Time Lords had. The Gallifreyans subjected to its terrifying effects would react differently: "Some would be inspired, some would run away, and some would go mad." (TV: The Sound of Drums) They would then spend "centuries" studying at the Academy. (COMIC: Mortal Beloved)

Time Lords took a variety of classes at the Time Lord Academy of which one was recreational mathematics, which included the study of Happy prime numbers. (TV: 42)

For reasons unknown to Time Lords, a mammoth that fell on and killed a Cro-Magnon became a fixed point. Videos of the event were played for young Time Lords "as a sort of learning experience." (PROSE: Keeping up with the Joneses)

Immediately after being doused with roentgen radiation, the Tenth Doctor told Martha Jones that he used to play with roentgen bricks in the nursery. (TV: Smith and Jones)