The Garvond was imprisoned for a time in the Gallifreyan Matrix, where it assimilated copies of Time Lord minds, including that of the Doctor. The creature’s exact origins were unknown, although by nature it was the embodiment of the evil in the minds in the Matrix. The Garvond wanted to sail the Time Vortex and consume all life. It had several thousand names, all corruptions of the High Gallifreyan term for “of darkest thought”. [165]
The Land of Fiction was originally part of the Matrix. [166]
Technological and Scientific Advancement
Gallifreyan technology has been refined, rather than totally reworked, over the last ten million years. [167] A dark science of earlier Time Lords was quantum mnemonics, a reality-altering power that manipulated the basic nature of reality and probability. Quantum mnemonics allowed one to transform the history of a planet or an individual by warping space and time. [168]
The Time Lords used devices called amaranths to rebuild parts of time and space that were damaged in the Time Wars. They were originally built to manipulate black holes. [169] The Time Lords discovered an indestructible material. [170] They learnt to engineer micro-universes. Eventually, they abandoned the barren road of technology. [171]
They abandoned tachyonics for warp matrix engineering. [172] They invented the Magnotron. Over time, the Primitive Phases One and Two of the Matrix were relegated to the Archives. Phases Three to Six remained in use. [173] They developed Gallifreyan Morse. [174] The science of Temporal Reversion was so tricky, the Time Lords avoided using it. [175] Gallifreyan zinc was an excellent conductor, and one of the strongest substances in the known universe. [176]
Erkulon, the greatest nano-engineer in Gallifreyan history, created the time ram. [177]
The Time Lords took the credit for the Library of Carsus, although no-one knew for sure who built it. It was built millennia ago, and contained every book ever written. It was in an area of space known for time anomalies - the same solar system as Minerva, Schyllus, Tessus, Lakertya, Molinda, Hollus and Garrett. [178]
Three thousand years ago, Mawdryn and his followers stole a Metamorphic Symbiosis Regenerator. [179] Two thousand years ago, the Time Lords abandoned interspacial geometry. [180] Some Time Lords such as Epsilon Delta could rehearse various events without altering the true timeline. [181] Time Lords could use Reverse Tachyon-Chronons to move time backwards and forwards, manipulating material so that it wouldn’t age. [182]
With great effort, Time Lords used a process called “soul-catching” to absorb a dying Gallifreyan’s memories. [183] The Time Lords built the Parachronistic Chamber, deep in the Capitol, to regulate time distortions. [184] Mimesis was a Gallifreyan art in which anything you write came true. It was practiced by a cult that held an annual ritual, the Thirteenth Night, but the High Council banned the ritual and the art - probably because it was too arcane and unpredictable. [185]
Time Lords’ extended lifespans sometimes necessitated that they edit out their more useless memories, storing them electronically or erasing them. [186] An artificial, multi-dimensional art gallery was located beneath the Capitol. [187]
TARDISes were grown, not built. [188] They were intended to have six pilots, but on numerous occasions had just one. [189] They were grown in space, away from Gallifrey, to prevent time pollution. Stattenheim signals could broadcast along Eye of Harmony time contours, so TARDIS remote control worked even from across the Universe. [190] Time Lord technology could retrieve ancestral memories from the blood of virgins. Time Lords could communicate telepathically across the Time Vortex. The poisons in tea couldn’t harm them. [191]
Time Lords used two hundred and eight language tenses, most of which didn’t translate well. [192] The Time Lords used an omegabet, which was better than an alphabet. [193] Castellan Lode, a female, was the greatest literary historian the Time Lords ever had. [194]
A Gallifreyan golden guinea could buy you a few drinks at a bar. [195] Time Lords had an emergency messaging system that entailed bundling their thoughts into cube-shaped psychic containers that could be dispatched through time and space. [196]
Foreign Policy
The Time Lords were the oldest and most mighty race in the universe, sworn only to watch, never to interfere. Gallifrey was called “the Shining World of the Seven Systems”. [197]
Alien races from all periods of recorded time have had dealings with the Time Lords, ranging from those in the ancient past such as the Kastrians and the destroyer Sutekh to those in the far future such as the Usurians. Other races or beings who know something of the Time Lords and Gallifrey (without hearing just of the Doctor or another individual) include the Andromedans, the Bandrils, the Cryons, the Cybermen, the Daleks, the Face of Boe, the Family of Blood, the Fendahl, Fenric, the Forest of Cheem, the Guardians, House, the Keeper of Traken, Mawdryn’s race, the Mentors, the Minyans, the Nestene, Prisoner Zero, the Racnoss, Saturnynians, the Shadow Proclamation, the Silence and the Academy of the Question, the Sisterhood of Karn, the Sontarans, some residents of the Third Zone, the Tractators, Vampires and the Vardans.
The Time Lords visited many worlds in many time periods, even in an official capacity. [198] They authorised (or prevented) other races’ time travel experiments and defended the Laws of Time. [199] Time Lords observed but didn’t interfere. [200] At times they intervened with regards to unauthorised time travel, and could almost be thought of as “galactic ticket inspectors”. [201]
They were committed to protecting weaker species, and to preventing aggression against indigenous populations. [202] The vast majority of Time Lords didn’t concern themselves with the universe outside the Capitol, and were more concerned with internal politics. [203] Time Lords were taught “very early on” not to visit newly formed planets, as the morphogenetic fields of such worlds were still in flux, and therefore susceptible to undue influence from visitors. [204]
The Celestial Intervention Agency was concerned with covert intervention. [205] The CIA’s motto was, “The story changes, the ending stays the same”, meaning that it didn’t matter how one fixed temporal anomalies so long as time continued along a straight path. For instance, if a man who would start a war were erased from time, it was incumbent on the organisation to start it anyway. [206] Study of the later Humanian era was forbidden by the Academy as being outside the Gallifreyan sphere of influence. [207]
Political
More Presidents hailed from the Prydonian Chapter than all other chapters combined. Prydonians were viewed as cunning, but claimed they “simply saw a little further ahead than most”. They wore scarlet and orange robes. Other chapters included the Arcalians (who wore green) and Patrexes (who wore heliotrope). [208] The Patrexes were aesthetes who saw artistic value in all things, including suffering, but lacked the imagination to be true artists. [209]
The Celestial Intervention Agency evolved from Rassilon’s personal guard. [210] At some point, the Time Lords Rungar and Sabjatric were sent to Shada. They remained there. [211] Apart from Rassilon, only President Torkal was ever referred to as “the Great”. [212] While young, Salyavin learnt how to project his mind into others’ and was sentenced to imprisonment in Shada as a result. He escaped, using his powers to erase all knowledge of the prison planet. [213] “Burn orders”, i.e. kill orders, issued by Gallifreyan presidents were carried out by their personal assassin, a Time Lord with the title of Lord Burner. Such orders were sent directly into Lord Burner’s mind, and not made public. [214]
Mundat the Third’s reputation swung from his being a brutal murderer to a noble warrior - and that’s just in the documentaries of the historian Ertikus. [215] Pandora became the first female President of Gallifrey, assumed the dictatorial title of Imperiatrix and sought to overturn the ancient laws of Rassilon. Legends would claim that Pandora tried to lead Gallifrey to war, hoping to reshape the web of time to her liking. The High Council defeated Pandora - her offworld bodyguard was sent home, and their planet time-looped. Pandora herself was placed in a dispersal chamber beneath the old
Capitol and erased from history. However, her spirit survived in a partition of the Matrix, which was immune to such historical alterations. [216]
In the lifetime of some contemporary Time Lords, President Pandak III ruled for nine hundred years. [217] President Pandak III suppressed a report on Lampreys by Lord Rellox of the Arcalian Council for Temporal Research. [218]
Savar tried to rescue Omega from his black hole, but was ambushed by the Time Lord god Ohm. Attempting to escape, Savar’s TARDIS was stretched until it became the light-year-long structure called the Needle. Savar fled in an escape capsule, which was intercepted by the I. The I stripped the ship of technology and took Savar’s eyes. He was found by the Time Lords, but was utterly insane from the experience. He regenerated, but was a broken man. [219]
The Doctor’s TARDIS
The Doctor’s TARDIS was a Type 40, Mark 3. [220] The Type 40 TT-Capsule was introduced when Salyavin was young. [221] The Type 40 was withdrawn centuries ago and was considered a “Veteran and Vintage Vehicle”. [222]
The Early Life of the Doctor
There are a number of seemingly contradictory facts about the Doctor’s birth and upbringing.
The Doctor was born under the sign of “Crossed Computers”. [223] As a baby, the Doctor had a cot. [224] He was born the same year as the Rani. [225] He was one of forty-five cousins from the House of Lungbarrow. Unusually for a Time Lord, he had a belly button, which earned him the nicknames “Wormhole” and “Snail”. [226] His Gallifreyan name had thirty-eight syllables. [227] He dreamed of stars when he was very young. [228] The Doctor has been running from the question “doctor who?” all his life. [229]
The Doctor was half human on his mother’s side. [230] He was acquainted, somehow, with the Woman in White. [231] He had a family. [232] He had an “excellent if smelly” godmother with two heads and halitosis. She gifted him with a device that could recognise different alien species. [233] He may have had an uncle [234], but he didn’t have an aunt. [235] As the Doctor let the Master die on Sarn, the Master called out, “Won’t you show mercy to your own ---” [236]
Irving Braxiatel, a.k.a. Lord Braxiatel, was a relative of the Doctor, either his brother or one of his Cousins. [237] The tenth Doctor said he didn’t have a brother “anymore”. [238]
The Doctor’s family owned a home in South Gallifrey. [239] This home was House Lungbarrow, which was perched on the side of Mount Lung, overlooking the Cadonflood river, two days from Rassilon’s Rampart. [240] The Doctor doesn’t know much about Gallifrey’s Southern Hemisphere. [241]
There are a number of seemingly contradictory facts about the Doctor’s age. [242]
The Doctor’s Father
The Doctor remembered “I’m with my father. We’re lying back in the grass... it’s a warm Gallifreyan night”. [243] The Doctor’s father was taught by the ancient Gallifreyan who would be known as Patience, as his father had been. Many of his generation - such as Savar; Hedin; the Doctor’s mentor, Lady Zurvana; the future President (a Chancellor at the time) and Marnal thought they could change the universe. [244]
The Doctor’s father was a member of the High Council. He launched a great exploration of the universe, which became known as the Odyssey. [245] On his travels, he met an Earthwoman, the Victorian time traveller Penelope Gate. They married, and had at least one child. The Doctor’s father adopted the name Ulysses. [246]
The Time Lord Astrolabus was known as the thief of time - he stole the Book of Old Time before the Doctor was born. Astrolabus saw himself as a real Time Lord, a pioneer who charted the first meridians of time: “It was I who released Gallifrey from the chains of the present.” However, he plundered the timezones he visited. [247]
The Master had a copy of the Insidium of Astrolabus in his TARDIS library. [248]
The Doctor’s father had many friends and allies from alien planets. He broke protocol by inviting them to his House on Gallifrey. The Doctor’s mother owned a Bible from which the Doctor read.
A computer portrait of the Doctor’s parents hung on the wall of his quarters on Gallifrey. His father was “powerfully built with rugged features, a weathered face with dark eyes”. His mother “a redhead, a little plump”. [249]
One contemporary of the Doctor’s father was Marnal, who believed that the Time Lords should intervene to eliminate potential threats to Gallifrey. He became known - dismissively - as a crusader. On one mission, to the Shoal on the edge of Mutter’s Spiral, he stumbled across a race of insect creatures that he believed were a threat to Gallifrey. They weren’t - until he intervened and changed history. “Marnal’s Error” (meaning that he did not know his enemy) became a Time Lord proverb. Marnal had a son. [250]
Shortly after the Doctor was born, the Doctor’s father was leading a team working on a mysterious Project. Other members included Penelope, Mr Saldaamir and a Time Lady from the relative future, Larna. Some Time Lords (including Marnal and Larna) knew of the Scrolls, recently-discovered prophecies that warned, in Larna’s words:
“For millions of years, Gallifrey has existed in isolation. Soon - not imminently, not all at once - there will be a spate of attacks. Omega, the Sontarans, Tannis, Faction Paradox, Varnax, Catavolcus, the Timewyrm. You know some of those names, you will come to know the others. It is very important that Gallifrey survives all these attacks. All things must pass. Gallifrey will fall. But it must fall at precisely the right time. The enemy is unknown to us. It will be until Last Contact is made. If it’s destroyed before that, by any of those other enemies, then the consequences... that is as much as I know.”
Marnal added:
“The President and members of the Supreme Council know the prophecy. They have been told that a Time Lord now living will be central to all these events. That he will find the lost scrolls of Rassilon and lead Gallifrey from darkness.”
To prevent the exposure of the Project, the Doctor’s father wiped Marnal’s memory and exiled him to Earth in 1883. He took Marnal’s TARDIS, a Type 40, from him. [251]
In the nursery, the Doctor used to play with bricks that contained Roentgen radiation. [252] The Doctor remembered his mother smiling and his father holding him up to see the stars. [253] When the Doctor was ten years old, he was caught skinny-dipping with one of his Cousins. [254] The Doctor flew skimmers as a boy on Gallifrey. [255]
The Doctor was a lonely little boy. [256] Three of the Doctor’s favourite bedtime stories as a child were The Three Little Sontarans, The Emperor Dalek’s New Clothes and Snow White and the Seven Keys to Doomsday. [257] The Doctor heard legends of the Pantheon of Discord when he was a little boy. [258]
The first time the Doctor left Gallifrey was to visit his family’s summer house on the other side of the Constellation. While looking up into the night’s sky with his mother, he saw a fleet of time ships but never asked where they were going. [259]
An account of the Doctor’s boyhood claims that he and the Master grew up together, and played near the river Lethe. A bully, Torvic, menaced the Master, but the Doctor fought back and thereby caused Torvic’s death. Death later visited the Doctor in a dream, and sought to take him as her Champion, but the Doctor told her to take the Master instead. This gave rise to the Master becoming Death’s Champion, and would motivate the Doctor and the Master to leave Gallifrey. [260]
The Doctor’s Early Education
Jo: “Makes it seem so pointless really, doesn’t it?”
The Doctor: “I felt like that once when I was young. It was the blackest day of my life.”
Jo: “Why?”
The Doctor: “Ah, well, that’s another story. I’ll tell you about it one day. The point is, that day was not only my blackest, it was also my best... when I was a little boy, we used to live in a house that was perched halfway up the top of a mountain. And behind our house, there sat under a tree an old man, a hermit, a monk. He’d lived under this tree for half his lifetime, so they said, and he’d learned the secret of life. So, when my black day came, I went and asked him to help
me... He just sat there, silently, expressionless, and he listened whilst I poured out my troubles to him. I was too unhappy even for tears, I remember. And when I’d finished, he lifted a skeletal hand and he pointed. Do you know what he pointed at?... A flower. One of those little weeds. Just like a daisy, it was. Well, I looked at it for a moment and suddenly I saw it through his eyes. It was simply glowing with life, like a perfectly cut jewel. And the colours? Well, the colours were deeper and richer than you could possibly imagine. Yes, that was the daisiest daisy I’d ever seen.”
Jo: “And that was the secret of life? A daisy? Honestly, Doctor.”
The Doctor: “Yes, I laughed too when I first heard it. So, later, I got up and I ran down that mountain and I found that the rocks weren’t grey at all, but they were red, brown and purple and gold. And those pathetic little patches of sludgy snow, they were shining white. Shining white in the sunlight.” [261]
The same mentor told the Doctor ghost stories about the Vampires. [262] Satthralope, a member of House Lungbarrow, sacked the hermit because he was a bad influence and too expensive. [263]
The Doctor was interested enough in Gallifreyan history to take the unusual step of learning the dead language of Old High Gallifreyan. [264] The Doctor admired Salyavin. [265] He was frightened by stories of the Fendahl. [266] He always wanted to be a train driver. [267] The Doctor took up trainspotting as a hobby. [268] His first train set was a Hornby, Double-O. [269]
The Doctor’s mother told him a nursery rhyme about Zagreus, which spoke of people disappearing up paradoxical staircases. [270] When he was an impressionable age, she also told him scary stories about Grandfather Paradox. [271] The Doctor read Arabian Nights when he was a Time Tot. [272]
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