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. They created and upheld the Laws of Time.

They were seen as immortal, or nearly so, partially due to their ability to regenerate. They had a great place in the mythologies and cultures of other civilisations, being outright called "the **Gods**" by several species, including the Minyans.

The ancient Time Lords were known to take part in battles and conflicts, often helping to hunt species known to be dangerous. One of the last of these was a war against the Great Vampires, which was so long and bloody that they turned against violence in general. For at least part of their history, the Time Lords adhered to a strict policy of non-interference. 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. On one occasion, the Fourth Doctor was instructed to intercept the creation of the Dalek race.

## Characteristics

### Taxonomy

#### External Appearance

Externally, Gallifreyans were usually identical to humans. Hair and eye colour were of any colour found among humans. Teeth were indistinguishable from human teeth. (TV: *The Gunfighters)*  However, while Romana I was regenerating into Romana II, she took on various appearances varying in height and build, and even one with blue skin. (TV: *Destiny of the Daleks*)

The Master's eyes could change colour from dark brown, flecked with gold, to midnight blue, to a deep purple. (PROSE: *Doctor Who and the Dæmons*)

#### Resilience

Gallifreyans were, on the whole, extremely tough and resilient. An average Gallifreyan was superior to a human at their peak. (PROSE: *Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons*)

Radiation could be fatal, but even then a Gallifreyan could handle much higher doses than a normal human could, and could hold out much longer than even most terrestrial life-forms, (TV: *Planet of the Spiders*)

Gallifreyans needed less sleep than humans, and could make do with as little as an hour. (TV: *The Talons of Weng-Chiang;* PROSE: *The Highlanders*)

A Gallifreyan who was severely injured without actually needing to regenerate to heal the damage would generally slip into a healing coma, and devote all his or her energy to healing the injury. While in the coma, they would appear to be dead. (TV: *Inferno*, *Planet of the Daleks*)

Time Lords were capable of taking blasts from a staser or a de-mat gun, though multiple in quick succession would warrant a regeneration, or even prove fatal. (TV: *Sealed Orders*)

### Special Abilities

Time Lords occasionally displayed, or referred to, the ability to fly. Due to his coordinates having "slipped", the Time Lord messenger who warned the Third Doctor of the Master's presence on Earthmaterialised hovering in the air, an error he soon corrected. (TV: *Terror of the Autons*)  However, later incarnations of the Doctor were not so keen to fly; the Fourth Doctor and Romana II briefly considered flying to get to the top of the Eiffel Tower, though they eventually took the lifts because flying would have been too conspicuous. (TV: *City of Death*) As part of a scheme to be carried out by both himself and the Fourth Doctor, Drax told the Doctor he could "fly over there and shut the door", although this plan was not carried out. (TV: *The Armageddon Factor*)

### Life Cycle

Female Time Lords were also referred to as Time Ladies. (TV: *City of Death*)

When on the brink of death a Time Lord could regenerate, changing their entire physical appearance and giving them a new life. (TV: *The Tenth Planet*) They had thirteen lives and could regenerate twelve times, an attempted thirteenth regeneration would cause their current body to decay and would cause insanity. (TV: *The Deadly Assassin*)

The Second Doctor once stated that, barring accidents, his people could "live forever". (TV: *The War Games*) The Fourth Doctor once said that he considered himself at approaching 750 to be middle-aged. (TV: *Pyramids of Mars*) Later, he told Niersicht that his people could "live for thousands of years without a single grey hair, if you're lucky". (TV: *The Castle of Doom*)

Once they had died, a Time Lord's mind and experiences were usually uploaded to the Matrix on Gallifrey. (TV: *The Deadly Assassin*)

### Culture

#### Food and Sustenance

Gallifreyan physiology provided for a diet similar to the human one (TV: *The Keys of Marinus)* including fruit and flesh, but the Time Lords had long lost the habit of feeding with raw or complex food by the time of the presidency of the Fourth Doctor. Freeze-dried pills were employed instead. (TV: *The Invasion of Time*)

#### Dress

At events like the resignation of a Lord President, Time Lords who attended wore long robes in bright colours. The different colours signified where on Gallifrey each Time Lord had come from: Prydonians wore robes of scarlet and orange; Arcalians wore green; Patrexes wore heliotrope; Scendeles robes changed from light pink to a darker shade of red; Dromeians wore grey, black and silver; and Ceruleans wore subdued blue colours. (TV: *The Deadly Assassin*) In addition, most high-ranking Time Lords donned a decorative headdress and crest, complete with a scarlet cap. (TV: *The Deadly Assassin*) During the time when the Time Lords acted as the interventionist Gods of Minyos, early in their history, (TV: *Underworld*) they wore golden robes with fine crystalline, organic-looking ornaments, most strikingly on their headdressess. (COMIC: *Omega*)

Of those Time Lords seen repeatedly visiting other worlds, such as the Doctor and Romana, they tended to adopt the local dress of their preferred destination - in the Doctor's case, that of Earth - that mixed well with the locals, though Romana adopted the same largely to mimic him. (TV: *Destiny of the Daleks*)

#### Education

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*)

#### Politics and Government

The Time Lords were led by the High Council. The Council consisted of the Lord or Lady President, the Lord or Lady Chancellor, the Supreme Treasurer, the Castellan and Lords Cardinal. (TV: *The Deadly Assassin, Sealed Orders*)

The Lord or Lady Chancellor was next in power and handled many of the government functions. The Castellan controlled the Chancellery Guard and therefore the safety of Gallifrey. (TV: *The Deadly Assassin*)

The rest of the High Council was made up of the Lords Cardinal, which represented the various Gallifreyan Chapters. (TV: *The Deadly Assassin*) At some point, the Supreme Treasurer was added to the High Council to preside over the Matrix. (TV: *Sealed Orders*)

#### Justice

The protection of the Time Lords was carried out by the Chancellery Guard. They protected the Capitol, investigated crimes and captured criminals. (TV: *The Deadly Assassin*)

By the Doctor's time, punishment was done via disintegration. Morbius was executed this way, but managed to survive as just a brain. (TV: *The Brain of Morbius*)

The punishments used for crimes varied in severity.

* For his breaking of the non-interference policy, the Second Doctor was forced to regenerate and was exiled to Earth with a non-functioning TARDIS. (TV: *The War Games*)
* For the various crimes the Master committed, his punishment would have been the reversal of his time stream, such that he had never existed. (PROSE: *Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons*) A similar punishment was carried out on the War Lord for his interference in human history which led to the deaths of thousands; he (and several of his guards) were dematerialised out of existence. The War Lord homeworld had a force field placed around it. (TV: *The War Games*)
* When the Doctor was framed for assassinating the Time Lord President, he would have been vaporised if found guilty. (TV: The Deadly Assassin)

### Weaponry and Defences

Despite being one of the most powerful species in the universe, the Time Lords had little in the way of defences and their conventional warfare technology was lagging behind many other civilisations. This may be due in part to the transduction barrier, which covered the planet and which was almost completely impenetrable by outside forces or their general policy of non-interference. As such, when they were invaded by the Sontarans, they were unable to defend themselves with their regular stasers and the Fourth Doctor needed to use an ancient Time Lord weapon called the De-mat Gun. (TV: *The Invasion of Time*)The most common sidearm used by Time Lords were stasers, which were carried by the Chancellery Guards. Stasers fired a type of directed energy, which was relatively harmless to inorganic matter but caused massive tissue disruption to living creatures.(TV: *The Deadly Assassin*) De-mat guns became regular Chacellery Guard firearms soon after the Sontaran invasion, though they were to only be used in times of great emergency. (TV: *Sealed Orders*)

## History

A Time Lord emissary reminded the Fourth Doctor that Gallifrey had perfected the transmat beam when the universe was less than half its "present" size. (TV: *Genesis of the Daleks*)

The Time Lord founders included the technological polymath Rassilon (TV: *The Deadly Assassin*) and the stellar engineer Omega (TV: *The Three Doctors*). Although he survived in an anti-matter universe, Omega was presumed dead. (TV: *The Three Doctors*) Rassilon accidentally opened a doorway into another universe. (TV: Hostage) The Great Vampires escaped and caused mass destruction. *(TV: State of Decay*) They eventually pushed them back into their own universe.

A non-interference policy was created  due to the damage that had been done by the Time Lords to other species using time travel. (TV: *Underworld*)

Millennia of isolation induced a complacency among the Time Lords. Their technology and power stagnated, even as other races became more powerful and dangerous. (TV: *The Deadly Assassin*)

Morbius, a renegade Time Lord wanted the Time Lords to abandon their non-interference policy and intervene in the outside universe in their own self-interest, and he campaigned for conquest of the lesser species. He gathered an army of mercenaries to himself, making extravagant promises to them about time travel and immortality. He was eventually captured, put on trial, and executed on Karn. However, Mehendri Solon removed Morbius' brain prior to his disintegration and he began building a new body for Morbius. (TV: *The Brain of Morbius*)

the Master went to Uxarieus to get the Doomsday weapon, the Time Lords temporarily fixed the Doctor's TARDIS and took him and Jo Grant to Uxarieus. The Doctor stopped the Master and destroyed weapon before it could be used. (TV: *Colony in Space*)

The Time Lords were easily rendered helpless when Omega began to drain energy from Gallifrey, and were only saved by the intervention of the Second and Third Doctor. (TV: *The Three Doctors*)

The Time Lords continued to give the Doctor missions after his third regeneration. After the Time Lords foresaw a future where Daleks became the dominant lifeform in the universe, they brought the Doctor, Sarah Jane Smith, and Harry Sullivan to Skaro during the creation of the Daleks. Ferain informed them that they had to stop Davros' experiments and gave them time rings to escape. The Doctor was unable to stop the creation of the Daleks, but still changed history by forcing Davros to rush the creation. (TV: *Genesis of the Daleks*)

The Time Lords faced "the most dangerous crisis in their long history" when, during the President's resignation, he was assassinated by Chancellor Goth before he could name his successor. Goth was plotting with the Master to frame the Fourth Doctor and take power uncontested. The Doctor ran against Goth in the election to buy himself time to investigate the death; he succeeded in unraveling the scheme, but in the process, the Master killed Goth, leaving the Doctor as the next President. Because the Doctor didn't want this responsibility, he left in his TARDIS. (TV: *The Deadly Assassin*)

When the Fourth Doctor returned to Gallifrey, he found the planet without a President and led by Lord Chancellor Borusa. Claiming his right to the Presidency from the old election, he briefly became the 407th President (TV: *The Invasion of Time*), as part of a plot to defeat a Vardan invasion. This invasion was a front, however, for a Sontaran invasion of Gallifrey. Although defeated, these invasions exposed weaknesses in Gallifrey's defences. (TV: *The Invasion of Time*)

Borusa was later officially inducted as Lord President of Gallifrey and dealt with the Great Converging, where multiple timelines of the Doctor and Romana were converged on Gallifrey. He sent the reinstated Castellan Spandrell and Captain Andred to investigate into the root cause, with the perpetrator, Supreme Treasurer Halvak, being brought to justice by them, with help from the Doctor, Romana and K9 Mark II. Romana was sworn in by Borusa in Halvak's place. (TV: *Sealed Orders*).