This article is about the Time Lords from Doctor Who. See Time Lord (Ultima) for information on the character from the Ultima series and The Timelords for information about the musical group. See Doctor Who spin-offs for details on the Time Lord tabletop roleplaying game.

The Time Lords are a fictional race of humanoids, originating on the planet Gallifrey, seen in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. The Doctor himself is a Time Lord. The female members of this group, like Romana, are sometimes called Time Ladies. They are so called because they have the technology to effect time travel, to a degree more advanced than any other civilization.

The nature and history of the Time Lords were gradually revealed as the television series progressed. Each story to feature them and their home planet added additional layers of complexity and intrigue, stemming from the dissatisfaction of various scriptwriters wrestling with the thorny problem of why the Doctor is in exile in the first place. Among other things, Time Lords are increasingly revealed as being corrupted by their inaction and Time Lord society as stagnant. Over the course of the show's initial 26-year run, it was never made entirely clear what purpose or mission the Time Lords served, or what exactly they did with their mastery over time. Nor, ultimately, was it ever explicity made clear what had caused the Doctor to leave his people.

The Time Lords are normally held to be some of the most technologically powerful beings in the Doctor Who universe, although there are a number of notable exceptions such as the (now extinct) Osirans and the various higher powers of the universe such as the Black and White Guardians. The power of the Time Lords appears limited by their policy of non-interference with the universe and sometimes by intense internecine division.

Contents

1 Physical makeup 2 Culture and society 3 History 4 Partial list of Time Lords appearing in Doctor Who 5 References

Physical makeup

Time Lords appear human, but differ from them in many respects. Most prominently, they have the ability to regenerate their bodies when their current body or "incarnation" has become too old or is mortally wounded. This process results in their body undergoing a transformation, gaining a new physical form and a somewhat different personality. Regenerations can be traumatic events, and have been known to fail. Each Time Lord is limited to twelve regenerations, though the Master has exceeded this limit through various means. It may be that the Time Lords have the ability to circumvent the limit - in The Five Doctors the Master is offered a new cycle of regenerations by the High Council in exchange for his help, although it should be noted that he was forcefully occupying the body of a non-Gallifreyan at the time.

While the Doctor's appearances on regeneration have apparently been random, it also appears possible for some Time Lords to change bodies without undergoing a regeneration before settling on the regenerated body that they want, as in the case of Romana in Destiny of the Daleks . The ability to regenerate may be linked to what is known as the "Rassilon Imprimatur", the symbiotic nuclei of a Time Lord that bonds him to a TARDIS (the name given to their time machines) and allows their bodies to withstand the molecular stresses of time travel.

Other physiological differences from humans include a backup Cardiovascular System (ie. two hearts) and a "respiratory bypass system" that allows them to survive even being strangled. If severely injured, they can go into a healing coma which dips their body temperature to below freezing. Time Lords can also communicate by telepathy, and it is implied that they may be clairvoyant, or have additional time-related senses.

The biological imprint (or bio-data) of a Time Lord is kept in the Matrix, the computer network that contains the sum total of all Time Lord knowledge.

Culture and society

Time Lords are, in general, an aloof people. Since perfecting the science of time travel, they have withdrawn, bound by the moral complexity of interfering in the natural flow of history. However, due to corruption or the good intentions of some individual Time Lords, this restriction is often secretly violated (compare with the Prime Directive). The show referred to a Celestial Intervention Agency, a shadowy organization that occasionally sent the Doctor on missions, sometimes to change history.

It has also been hinted that the terms "Gallifreyan" and "Time Lord" may not be synonymous, and that Time Lords are simply that subset of Gallifreyans who have achieved the status of Time Lord via achievement in the Gallifreyan collegiate system. Time Lords are divided into various colleges, such as the Patrexis, Arcalian, and the Prydonian college (to which the Doctor belongs), which seems to have ceremonial and possibly political significance.

The political leadership of the Time Lords includes the President who keeps the cermonial relics of the Time Lords, and the Chancellor who appears to be the administrative leader of the Time Lords. In addition there is the Castellan of the Chancellory Guard who the Doctor has referred to as the leader of a trumped-up palace guard. There is also a body of officials called Cardinals which form the Time Lord aristocracy. Time Lord society is full of pomp and ceremony, with artifacts given weighty names like the Hand of Omega, the Eye of Harmony or the Key of Rassilon. The Doctor has commented that his people have an "infinite capacity for pretension".

History

(Note: some of the information below is taken from the Virgin New Adventures novels and the so-called "Cartmel Masterplan" devised by former Doctor Who script editor Andrew Cartmel, and its canonicity is disputed)

Most of the history of the Time Lords is shrouded in mystery, contradictory legend, rumor and supposition, as no Time Lord is allowed to travel to Gallifrey's past for fear of altering it. However, it is known that some millions of years ago the planet was home to a civilization that could see all of the past and future. Gallifrey was also dominated by a cult of the Pythia, a great and powerful priestess. This cult was overthrown by a group of three younger Gallifreyan scientists, Rassilon, Omega and "The Other ", whose name has been lost to time. Many of the novels, especially Lungbarrow and The Infinity Doctors, have implied that the Doctor may be The Other reborn. The truth of the matter remains uncertain, like most things to do with the Doctor.

When these three drove the Pythia away she cursed the people with sterility. Forced to find a new way to live, Rassilon built the Looms, cloning machines that could create new Gallifreyans to replace the dead. Omega, in the meantime, threw himself into his time travel experiments. The Other's role is unclear but he seems to have held the alliance between Rassilon and Omega together, and was a part of the project that produced the Hand of Omega.

The Hand of Omega was a stellar manipulator able to rework stars into new forms and create a source of energy necessary for time travel. Only one star in the known universe was sufficient, a star named Qabba. This was the last remaining of the first generation of stars to shine in the universe. Omega reached it just in time to make it into what he needed, but the star first flared into a supernova, then collapsed into the black hole eventually known as the Eye of Harmony. Omega was thought to have died in the process, but in fact had been displaced into an antimatter universe (The Three Doctors). Rassilon then took control of both the Eye and Gallifreyan society, and the Time Lords were born.

The early period of Time Lord history is also known as the Dark Time, when the first Time Lords abused their powers over Time by manipulating lesser species. Among thse abuses was the use of the Time Scoop to abduct beings from throughout history to participate in gladiatorial games in an area of Gallifrey known as the Death Zone (The Five Doctors).

Also early in their history, the Time Lords attempted to uplift the civilization of the planet Minyos. Officially, this met with disastrous results, as the Minyans destroyed themselves in a series of nuclear wars (Underworld ). However, the Big Finish Productions audio play Gallifrey: The Inquiry reveals that it was actually the secret test of a Time Lord timeonic fusion device that destroyed Minyos, an incident that was covered up by the High Council.

Regardless, as a result, the Time Lords adopted an official policy of neutrality and non-interference, acting only as observers save in cases of great injustice. However, given the existence of the CIA and other Renegade Time Lords such as the Doctor, The Master, The Meddling Monk, The Rani and The War Chief, the policy again seems one more honored in the breach than the observance.

In the novel The Ancestor Cell, the Doctor destroyed Gallifrey, and retroactively wiped the Time Lords from history. As of this writing, the question of whether or not the Time Lords will be restored in the novels is unresolved. The novels are not considered canon by some fans.

Partial list of Time Lords appearing in Doctor Who

• The Doctor
  • First Doctor: William Hartnell
  • Second Doctor: Patrick Troughton
  • Third Doctor: Jon Pertwee
  • Fourth Doctor: Tom Baker
  • Fifth Doctor: Peter Davison
  • Sixth Doctor: Colin Baker
  • Seventh Doctor: Sylvester McCoy
  • Eighth Doctor: Paul McGann
  • Ninth Doctor: Christopher Eccleston
  • Other Doctors
    • Peter Cushing (in the two theatrical movies; presented as a human scientist, not a Time Lord)
    • Richard Hurndall (played the First Doctor in the twenty year anniversary special, in place of the late William Hartnell)
    • Trevor Martin (played the Fourth Doctor (a different one to Tom Baker, who had not yet been cast in the TV series at the time) in the stage show Seven Keys to Doomsday)
    • David Banks (understudy to Jon Pertwee in the stage show The Ultimate Adventure; was called on to play the Doctor at least once during the show's run)
    • Adrian Gibbs played a noncorporeal intermediate form between the Doctor's fourth and fifth incarnation.
    • Michael Jayston played the Valeyard , an evil future (or possible future or possible alternative) incarnation of the Doctor.
    • Richard E. Grant played the Doctor in an animated Flash-based webcast serial entitled Scream of the Shalka.
• The Meddling Monk
• The Master
• Romana (full name Romanadvoratrelundar)
• The Rani (The Mark of the Rani, Time and the Rani)
• Rassilon
• The War Chief
• Omega
• Borusa (The Deadly Assassin, The Invasion of Time, Arc of Infinity , The Five Doctors)
• Azmael, who the Doctor called "the best teacher [he] ever had", living under the pseudonym "Professor Edgeworth" (The Twin Dilemma)
• Drax (The Armageddon Factor )
• Salyavin, also known as Professor Chronotis (Shada).

The techno-sampling outfit the KLF adopted the name the Timelords for their hit single "Doctorin' the Tardis". Timelord is also the name of a role-playing game set in the Doctor Who universe.

References

• Parkin, Lance (1996). Doctor Who: A History of the Universe - From Before The Dawn of Time and Beyond The End of Eternity London: Virgin Publishing. ISBN 0-426-20471-9.