Time Lords

This article still uses the traditional number of regenerations for Time Lords, though more recent episodes have discreetly retconned that number up.

Powers and Abilities

The Time Lords were a humanoid species who externally resembled human beings in every way. Internally they were different in various ways, possessing significantly greater strength and stamina. They also had the ability to place themselves in a deathlike trance for limited periods of time.

The most important differences, however, lay in their telepathic abilities and their vastly greater intellect.

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Time Lord regeneration, part 1

This normally occurs when a Time Lord Character sustains injuries that would be severe enough to kill most other humanoid beings. Regeneration involves a dying body breaking itself down into energy. It then converts itself back into matter. This new body is in perfect health.

The process nearly always causes some scrambling of the genetic code. This results in changes to the physical appearance of the individual. These are often accompanied by personality changes resulting from alterations to his brain chemistry. How much control a Time Lord can exert over this process varies greatly from one individual to another.

Those with more control often choose to minimize the changes. But a few who desire some novelty might maximize the changes. And the Time Lady Romana could control her regenerations so well that as to become a duplicate of a person she’d previously met.

Those Time Lords with less control are largely at the mercy of chance as to what a regeneration changes. For instance, the Doctor is exceptionally poor at controlling his regenerations. Thus his appearance and personality have often varied greatly from one to another.)

Time Lord regeneration, part 2

Some injuries, such as decapitation or a headshot which totally destroys the brain, may be so severe as to prevent regeneration. This would result in true death. In a few rare cases, the injuries may be so severe and traumatic that regeneration is only able to occur by a very narrow margin.

This can have an effect on the formation of the new body. This is vaguely comparable to premature birth or other trauma during a pregnancy. It thus may cause biochemical imbalances which may result in mental dysfunction or instability.

A rare regeneration initiated by an extremely narrow margin may fail to complete. This would cause the new body to be severely physically malformed. This extreme case may also have the effect of burning out the regenerative ability altogether.

This will usually condemn the Time Lord to be pitied at best, or despised at worst, for centuries. Theirs is a culture whose advanced medical science has left it with almost no experience of physical disability. The Lords have thus displayed an altogether unenlightened attitude when it does occur.

Time Lord regeneration, part 3

If a Time Lord Player Character  gets fatally injured and forced to regenerate, the GM and the player running the Character must agree between them how much or how little the Character will change.

It may be advisable for GMs to discuss the point in advance. Agreeing upon just how susceptible the character will be to random changes during regenerations will minimize arguments later on.

If the player likes surprises, they may even be willing to essentially let the GM design a new Character for them with the same number of Character Points as the old one.

Agents

Our game stats include a set for generic Time Lord, and one for field agents.

Time Agents possess all the same abilities as a bureaucrat, archivist or technician. In addition, their psionic  senses allow them to subconsciously monitor the natural flow of time around them at all times. They thus will consciously register any significant disruption to it.

If caught up in a zone of disrupted time, they may be able to resist becoming permanently trapped in it by force of will alone.

An Agent will also benefit from instantaneous language translation by his TARDIS. This lasts as long as he remains in the same time period it currently occupies, even if separated from it by great distances in space.

History

The alien Time Lords were native to the planet Gallifrey, in the Kasterborous constellation.

They were the first indigenous intelligent species to evolve in this Universe. Their existence created an expanding morphogenetic field, encouraging the evolution of humanoid species on worlds with suitable environments. This eventually included humanity on Earth.

During their early history the Gallifreyan built a barbaric interstellar empire. It enslaved numerous other alien races. They were ruled by a repressive psionic priestesshood. It was headed by a precognitive high priestess called the Pythia.

The last Pythia was overthrown in a largely bloodless technocratic revolution led by the great reformer Rassilon. But even as she committed suicide she used some form of psionically-channelled magic. It cursed most of the Gallifreyan population with sterility.

An extinction problem

Rassilon and his fellow technocrats focused on devising machines called Looms. These could artificially replicate Gallifreyan DNA, weaving strands of it together in a semi-randomized way. This allowed for synthesizing new genomes and assembling new individuals cell by cell.

This intensive research into genetics also allowed for numerous enhancements to the Gallifreyan genome. These included greatly increased lifespans and the power of regeneration.

Each of the extended family groups in Gallifreyan society was given its own Loom. They were allowed to take charge of the process of producing a replacement whenever a family member died.

A question of time

Rassilon also oversaw the dismantling of the Gallifreyan empire, considering it a wasteful extravagance. He and his chief lieutenant, the great engineer Omega, thought that the true future of the Gallifreyans lay with the mastery of time rather than space.

Omega planned to detonate a star in a supernova explosion. That was to generate the initial energy necessary to power time travel technology on a wide scale. The project succeeded, but Omega was seemingly killed in the process due to a mistake in his calculations.

The black hole created by the supernova was later harnessed to create a permanent energy source dubbed the Eye of Harmony. It provided power for all the technology on Gallifrey. It also powered a fleet of TARDIS time machines/spaceships. The initials stand for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space.

The Gallifreyans proclaimed themselves the Lords of Time. Rassilon became Lord President of their ruling High Council. He led them to victory over other species who sought to challenge their supremacy. Some such enemies were completely erased from history. The Lords used super-weapons of great destructive power, not all of which were based on time travel technology.

Rassilon gradually became a tyrant. His cruelty ultimately provoked another revolution to overthrow him. The Time Lords still felt too much reverence for him to execute him, and settled for perpetual suspended animation. His successors did not share his love of power for its own sake.

A great temporal power

The last of the alien races who posed a genuine threat had been vanquished. The Lords became archivists and curators of the past and future history of the Universe. They also set themselves the task of preserving it from interference on the part of others.

They learned that their civilization and species would be long gone and forgotten in far future eras. But their great self-restraint meant that they refrained from learning the circumstances of their eventual extinction. They fatalistically accepted that nothing lasts forever.

The same philosophy led to the number of regenerations a Time Lord could undergo being arbitrarily limited to 12. That compelled individuals to resign themselves to ultimate mortality. The goal was to prevent their society as a whole from becoming unwilling to do so.

Once everything of importance about the Universe was judged to have already been learned, the Time Lords gradually lost interest in travelling through time and space. They just organized their existing knowledge. Nearly all cultural vigour gradually faded away from Gallifreyan society. It was ultimately left as sterile intellectually as it was biologically.

An unexciting fate

Although unchanged for millions of years, its population became concentrated in the Capitol gleaming technopolis. The rest of the planet was turned into parkland. Satisfied that their own world was the most perfect place in the Universe, the Time Lords lost interest in visiting other worlds.

Thus, those who had the greatest ability to travel became a race of stay-at-homes. Only a handful ever used a TARDIS. Regulation for the sake of regulating led to the use of a TARDIS without a demonstrable need being at first discouraged and eventually prohibited.

The Time Lords also created the Amplified Pantropic Computer Net or APC Net, also known as the Matrix. This was an immensely powerful computer system to which all Gallifreyans were telepathically linked at a subconscious level. It recorded every thought and feeling a Time Lord experienced from birth to final death and preserved a complete record for posterity.

The APC also allows for simulation of their personality and memories. The goal is for future generations to interface with these simulacra in VR. Since the majority of Gallifreyans lived entirely unremarkable lives, this was all largely wasted effort.

Misfits

Over aeons, a handful Gallifreyans would find themselves discontent with their grey bureaucratic technocracy. The only avenue of escape open to most of them was to join the Shobogans. These were a back-to-nature movement who lived in communes scattered throughout the wilderness.

Obtaining permission to travel was almost impossible. Merely making the request ran the risk of being sent to psychological readjustment. Anyone who tried to steal a TARDIS in order to leave without permission risked the death penalty. Yet a few succeeded, most notably including the Doctor and the Master.

The first real challenge to the long hegemony of the Time Lords came with the return of Omega. He had been trapped in a pocket dimension  within his black hole. Omega had learned how to shape the pocket dimension by will. Then how to project this vast power back into his dimension. Now insane, Omega sought to destroy the Time Lords for their imagined betrayal.

Though Gallifrey was saved by the actions of the Doctor, the Time Lords were shaken to realise they weren’t safe. They began actively seeking out potential threats, to preemptively neutralise them.

Exterminate

This is what led the genocidal Daleks to redirect all their efforts towards destroying the Lords of Time, to replace them. The result was the apocalyptic Last Great Time War. The unfettered might of the two most technologically advanced species in the universe wrought unimaginable devastation.

During this time the Doctor and the Master both undertook intelligence-gathering and sabotage missions. They also commanded fleets of War TARDISes in battle.

The increasingly desperate Time Lords freed Rassilon from suspended animation. They reinstating him as Lord President. Rassilon resorted to the services of precognitives much like those of the priestesshood he himself had originally overthrown.

This return to their Gallifreyan roots did not suffice. They and the Daleks stood on the brink of annihilating each other and taking the entire universe with them. Rather than allow this, the Doctor used a Time Lord doomsday weapon to destroy both of them.

This himself and the Master as the only surviving members of their species. The only Time Lords who can still be encountered today were dispatched on missions to other worlds and times at some point during the long past history of Gallifrey.

From their individual viewpoint, their actions are occurring in the present. But from the viewpoint of the Time Lords as a whole at the time of their destruction, the success of failure of their missions had already been determined by the outcome of events in the past.

Personality

Most ordinary Gallifreyans were bureaucrats, archivists and technicians. They spent their entire lives filling out standard forms, consulting ancient records and performing routine tests. They had the mentality of a typical civil servant, librarian or worker in the IT industry on Earth.

Crime and disease had long ago been virtually eliminated on Gallifrey. Unpleasant events were almost unheard of beyond the occasional recreational accident. By Earth standards most of them would have seemed arrogant, effete, cowardly and often conniving.

They spent their days forever striving for Duteous Advancement to the next grade of their professional hierarchy. Then wonder why it left them feeling unsatisfied if they ever actually achieved it. For instance, the Doctor rose to the rank of Assistant Scrutationary Archivist, Third Class, before giving up his profoundly unfulfilling career.

Those who walk away

Only a few exceptional individuals ever grew that discontent with the intellectual sterility of life on Gallifrey. Even fewer were prepared to mark themselves out as social malcontents by requesting official permission to see other cultures. And fewer still were prepared to risk the death penalty for stealing a TARDIS in order to leave without permission.

A select handful of individuals with a restless temperament were offered limited opportunities for authorized travel. They were made Time Agents of the Celestial Intervention Agency. These would undertake occasional covert missions at the direction of the High Council missions.

Such agents required a more subtle, calculating, ruthless or amoral approach than that of an idealistic maverick like the Doctor. The Master appears to have worked as a Time Agent before he decided to go freelance as a would-be universal conqueror instead.

Celestial Intervention Agency

Given how few in number Time Agents were during most of Gallifreyan history, encounters with them are extremely rare. They would probably have personalities resembling those of secret agents on Earth. They’d have been practiced at blending in with native populations.

Over time most would probably have learned from experience to be less dismissive of or contemptuous towards other beings than their aloof superiors back home were. But their first loyalty would always have been to their own species.

They’d have favoured subtlety over brute force. But few if any of them would ever have been as reluctant to make use of guns as the Doctor has usually been. They’d also have been willing and able to employ lethal forms of unarmed combat when needed.

During the era of the Last Great Time War a need for more skilled personnel forced the Celestial Intervention Agency to recruit additional Time Agents from other species, notably including humanity. But they fall outside the scope of this writeup.

DC Universe History

The Time Lords would have taken an interest in many of the same things the Guardians of the Universe — the bosses of the Green Lanterns — did. They might sometimes have disagreed with them over the appropriate measures to be taken in response to perceived threats.

Marvel Universe History

The Time Lords are already integrated into the Marvel Universe, or at least the Marvel UK Sub-Universe. Death’s Head has met both the Doctor and the Fantastic Four, for example.

As the last surviving representatives of one of the oldest intelligent species of all, the Doctor and the Master might now qualify for membership in the ranks of the Elders of the Universe.

TARDISes

These incredibly versatile vehicles are semi-organic machines. They are grown rather than built. Each one exists within and fills its own self-contained, artificially-maintained pocket dimension.

This space in turn forms a kind of bubble within the vast Time Vortex dimension. The Time Vortex underlies all time and space. The TARDIS can move from one part of the Vortex to another at will. This gives it mobility in time and space far greater than any conventional form of propulsion.

The internal volume of a TARDIS is unrevealed, but it can be assumed to be pretty huge. The internal layout can be varied at will.

Each can project an extension of itself into other dimensions. This allows its passengers to enter and exit. This “bridge” can be made to look like anything large enough to have a concealed door which the passengers can fit through. Some sources suggest that giving one the form of anything bigger than a large starship would at least cause a strain on the TARDIS as a whole.

Hurtling through time

The Self-Linked aspect of the Time Travel Power of a TARDIS refers to the fact that it exists primarily within and simultaneously contains within itself a part of the Time Vortex, which is in some way actually alive. Looking directly into the Vortex at the Heart of the TARDIS creates a mental link with it.

The Vortex itself can be considered to have INT: 18, Continuum Control (Self-Linked): 40, Truesight: 12, Telepathy: 01, Mind Probe: 20, Comprehend Languages: 15, Postcognition: 40, Precognition: 40, Recall: 40. When attempting to enter the Vortex from outside through the use of Dimension Travel, it has a Travel Value of 04.

A person who looks into it will either have their greatest wish granted or become joined with it in a symbiotic relationship. The problem with the latter is that hosting its energies will rapidly prove lethal under normal circumstances. It has APs of Cell Rot equal to the time spent hosting the Vortex energies (after 1 AP of time, 01/01, after 4 APs, 04/04 and so on).

Semi-sapient organism

A TARDIS will slowly assimilate any piece of equipment connected up to it into itself. It will add the device and its functions into its own systems, as with coral growing around a rock. After (BODY – Miniaturization + 1)8 APs of time following installation a Gadget will have become part of the TARDIS.

A TARDIS is semi-sentient. It can maintain a subconscious telepathic link with its operator. This is most often used to monitor their interactions with alien beings. When doing so the TARDIS will provide near-instantaneous translation of virtually any spoken or written language. A TARDIS has immense data-processing capabilities and pre-programmed vocabulary databases.

It can also be used to alert the operator in the event of imminent danger to the TARDIS itself. However, this will only produce a powerful general feeling of alarm. The operator will have to run external sensor scans or internal diagnostic routines to figure out exactly what the problem is.

This is because the TARDIS is not fully sentient. Its consciousness is more instinctive than rational. Therefore it cannot formulate and communicate complex descriptions of unfolding situations.

If a TARDIS is left to drift in space unmanned, it will automatically place itself in a parking orbit around the nearest safe celestial body.

The Doctor has often had difficulties in getting his TARDIS to where he wants to go. But this is primarily the result of its having been an obsolete model which went without proper maintenance for centuries. Furthermore, the Doctor had no formal training in piloting. He taught himself by trial and error. Most Time Lords authorized to operate a TARDIS are much better navigators.

General notes

The above is intended merely as a brief synopsis of a complex and sometimes confusing subject. Doctor Who is a multimedia franchise that ran for decades. There are various contradictions and incompatibilities between some of them.

Most of the information about Gallifreyan history before and during the era of Rassilon and Omega was revealed in the original novels. Back then, Doctor Who had disappeared from TV screens. These books and the comic strip in Doctor Who Magazine were the only source of new stories.

Many of them were written by people who’d worked on the TV series during its original run. This makes a stronger case for considering them canonical than many transmedia spin-offs.

Yet the revived TV series has contradicted the novels (and even the original TV series) numerous times. But even so, it still seems reasonable to argue that things established in the novels should at least be considered canonical until the TV series explicitly contradicts them. Or not, as you please.

Wheels within wheels

In the last few years prior to the revival of the TV series, the novels had a convoluted and at times impenetrable storyline. It featured two intertwined plot threads.

1. One revolved around the Eighth Doctor encountering Time Lords from the future of Gallifrey. These were fighting and apparently gradually losing a War with a mysterious Enemy.
2. The other involved insidious and often incomprehensible manipulations on the part of Faction Paradox. This bizarre organization drew its membership from various species but had apparently been founded by renegade Time Lords. This “Time Lord voodoo cult” apparently sought to plunge the entire Universe into temporal chaos.

Faction Paradox tampered with the past history of the Doctor. This was part of a wider plot to interfere with the sequence of events in Time Lord history leading up to the War. They ultimately succeeded in:

• Bypassing the defences of Gallifrey.
• Invading it en masse.
• Attempting to seize control of its arsenal of super-weapons.

The plan was use these to attack the Enemy. This would start an even worse kind of War, destroying the universe in the crossfire. Having no other way to prevent this nightmare, the Doctor himself triggered the destruction of Gallifrey and of Faction Paradox with it.

This highly involved and confusing storyline was generally unpopular with fans. Abruptly closing it down was damage control.

Toward the ninth

Afterwards the novels continued to chronicle the adventures of the Eighth Doctor. Then the revival of the TV series made it necessary to retire him and introduce the Ninth Doctor. This led to a climactic story featuring chaotic disruption of the structure of time and of the overall pattern of history.

The Eighth Doctor was last seen plunging into the heart of this chaos. What then became of him and of the Universe was left entirely up in the air.

Presumably, the chaos produced a changed history. Therein the destruction of Gallifrey by the Doctor was avoided, the War broke out on schedule, and the unspecified Enemy were the Daleks. Then history would have repeated, when the Doctor was forced to destroy the Time Lords again along with the Daleks.

After this the Eighth Doctor regenerated into the Ninth under unrevealed circumstances.

We have seen the Enemy

This scenario, however, requires fans to assume that the War in the novels is the Last Great Time War in the revived TV series. And that the Enemy was always destined to be the Daleks, which may not in fact be the case.

Before the storyline centring on the War was abruptly closed down, hints had been given that the Enemy was evolved descendants of humanity6. These were seeking to usurp the lordship of time from the Gallifreyans.

The main clue was the claim that their base of operations was Earth. This could, however, have been a red herring. After all, the Daleks are known to have conquered Earth at least once.

But if the Enemy weren’t going to be the Daleks, then history was more fundamentally altered. Therefore the Time War is an entirely new conflict which has taken the place of the War. In that case, the Enemy could still be out there somewhere.

Perhaps the high danger of violent death and enforced regeneration during the final phase of Time Lord history led to the repeal of the “only 12 regenerations” law.

In any case, with Gallifrey now gone and no superiors left alive to ever re-impose this limit on them, the Doctor and the Master may now be effectively immortal.

By Hominid71.

Source of Character: Doctor Who.

Helper(s): Woodrow Hill, Chris Cottingham, Mike, Kal-El el Vigilante, Juan, Glenn.