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Time Lord - This article is about the Time Lords from Doctor Who. For alternate meanings, see Time Lord (disambiguation).
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. Time Lord time machines are known as TARDISes. 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) Osirians 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. Physical characteristics Time Lords appear human, but differ from them in many respects. Time Lords are extremely long-lived, routinely counting their ages in terms of centuries. It is not known how long a Time Lord can live, but they also 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. It was stated in The Deadly Assassin that a Time Lord can regenerate twelve times before permanently dying. 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 and allows their bodies to withstand the molecular stresses of time travel. As with most such "rules" there were occasionally exceptions. For example, when the renegade Time Lord called the Master reached the end of his regenerative cycle he possessed the body of another person to continue living. 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. Since the Master was still inhabiting a non-Gallifreyan body at the time this implies that it is possible to grant them to a non-Gallifreyan, albeit one inhabited by a Time Lord mind. Non-Gallifreyans are also seen to regenerate in Underworld and Mawdryn Undead, but with adverse side effects. The revelation in the 1996 television movie that the Doctor was half-human proved controversial among fans, and some have suggested that only the Eighth Doctor was half-human due to the particularly traumatic circumstances of his regeneration, rather than the Doctor having been half-human all along. (The evidence for or against this in the series is, typically, equivocal.) The Time Lord ability to change species during regeneration is referenced by the Eighth Doctor in relation to the Master in the television movie, and is supported by Romana's regeneration scene. In the 1979 serial Destiny of the Daleks, Romana demonstrated an apparent ability to "try on" different bodies from a number of different species during her regeneration, before settling on a final, Gallifreyan form which physically resembled Princess Astra of Atrios. Other physiological differences from humans include a second heart and a "respiratory bypass system" that allows them to survive being strangled or even extended exposure to the vacuum of space. 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, a computer network that contains the sum total of all Time Lord knowledge. Culture and society Time Lords are, in general, an aloof people. The Doctor has characterised the Time Lords as a stagnant and corrupt society, and their portrayal in the series has been reminiscent of academics living in ivory towers, unconcerned with external affairs. It has been suggested that, since perfecting the science of time travel, they have withdrawn, bound by the moral complexity of interfering in the natural flow of history (compare with the Prime Directive). Another explanation might be that they simply find the outside universe distasteful. While interference is apparently against Time Lord policy, there are occasions when they have intervened. The show also referred to the Celestial Intervention Agency, an organization that occasionally sent the Doctor on missions, sometimes even 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 or chapters, such as the Patrexes, Arcalian, and the Prydonian chapters, which have ceremonial and possibly political significance. Each chapter also has its own colours; the Prydonians wear scarlet and orange (or gold), the Arcalians wear green and the Patrexeans wear heliotrope. Others mentioned in spin-off novels include the Dromeian and Cerulean chapters. The Prydonian chapter has a reputation for being devious, and tends to produce renegades; the Doctor, the Master and the Rani are all Prydonians. 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". Paradoxically, although the Time Lords are a scientifically and technologically advanced race, the civilization is so old that key pieces of their technology became shrouded in legend and myth. The edict and general aversion against exploring Gallifrey's past (see below) also contributed to this. Accordingly, until the Doctor discovered it, the Time Lords did not know the location of the Eye beneath their Capitol. They also treated such ceremonial symbols as the Key and Sash of Rassilon as mere historical curiosities, being unaware of their true function. History (Note: Some of the information below is taken from the spin-off 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. When these three overthrew the Pythia, she cursed the people with sterility. Her cult fled to a nearby planet where they became the Sisterhood of Karn. Forced to find a new way to reproduce, Rassilon built the Looms, cloning machines that could create new Gallifreyans to replace the dead. The Looms were eventually incorporated into great Houses of Cousins, to regulate the population levels and organize the new society. Omega, in the meantime, threw himself into his time travel experiments. The Other's role was unclear but he seemed 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 a star into a new form to create a source of energy necessary for time travel. Omega used the hand on the star Qqaba, but it first flared into a supernova, then collapsed into the black hole whose nucleus eventually became known as the Eye of Harmony. Omega was thought to have died, either in the supernova or consumed by the black hole, 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 could now live up to their name. 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 these 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, Rassilon led the Time Lords in a war against the Great Vampires, a war so horrific that the Time Lords foreswore violence from that point on. However, Rassilon's rule became dictatorial, and eventually reached the point where he became obsessed with implementing his reforms and preserving Gallifreyan society as he saw it before the end of his life. Despite the protest of the Other, bloody purges began, and Rassilon began to dabble in immortality. The Other, knowing that Rassilon would hold his family hostage to secure his cooperation, told his granddaughter Susan to go into hiding and threw himself into the Looms, disintegrating and spreading his genetic code into the machines. A year later, the Doctor arrived in his "borrowed" TARDIS from Gallifrey's future and discovered Susan on the streets of the city, where she had been living since failing to make it off-world. Somehow, Susan recognized him as her grandfather and he also knew her name. The Doctor then left Gallifrey's past, taking Susan with him into his exile. Many of the novels (especially Lungbarrow and The Infinity Doctors) have implied that the Doctor may be the Other, genetically reincarnated from the Looms, but the truth of the matter remains uncertain. At one point 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 timonic fusion device that destroyed Minyos, an incident that was covered up by the High Council. Regardless, as a result, the Time Lords apparently 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 honoured 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. In the 2005 series episode The End of the World, the Ninth Doctor says that his home planet - presumably Gallifrey - was destroyed in a war and that he is the last of the Time Lords. Partial list of Time Lords appearing in Doctor Who 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.
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