The Legacy of Gallifrey (short story)

 was a prose story by Gary Russell. Published in Doctor Who Magazine 100, it predated the novel A Brief History of Time Lords as a narrative, in-universe overview of the history of Gallifrey and the Time Lords framed as the unfurling masterplan of Rassilon.

Not content to simply summarise TV stories in the manner of a reference work, The Legacy of Gallifrey gave plenty of new information about Gallifrey's history and various notable Time Lords' lives (including the Master and the Doctor's).

Summary
After their translation, the Scrolls of Gallifrey reveal the true history of the planet of the Time Lords. This unlikely tale of dimensional engineering and academic closed-mindedness starts with the genetic engineering of cats to lead all the way to the presidency and reforms of Flavia…

Plot
After fragments of an ancient document in an alien language are found in St. Paulo's Churchyard by tourists, a group of dedicated linguists and historians led by a certain Mr Russell end up cracking the code of Polstar the Perfidious and translating the true history of the planet Gallifrey.

That history begins in a time before the edict of the Laws of Time, when most Gallifreyans instead turned to the stars and worked on interstellar travel to make themselves into gods for lesser species. Only a small fraction of the population remained on Gallifrey and had the sense to work to build a future there. Among them are solar engineers who, after discovering that it is impossible to compute the square root of minus 3, decide to have their biological engineers design an intelligent species they would seed throughout the universe, whose purpose would be to teach all species they encountered that there was no sense in wasting resources on computing this nonexistent square root. These creatures become the Gallifreyan cats, a symbol of intelligence on Gallifrey ever after.

One of the solar engineers, Rassilon, wishes to see more of the universe than one could see in a lifetime, even with the fastest ships, and thus dreams of immortality. His friend Omega, recognising that immortality is currently impossible, instead turns his mind to investigating the possibility of time travel as another way to see planets past and future which would remain out of reach of mortals otherwise. After working on the project of 3 years, they come to the conclusion that if they can detonate a black hole and funnel the power back to Gallifrey in a controlled fashion, they will have found "the answer to time travel". The Gallifreyan Council (then wholly Arcalian) is uninterested in the proposal, with the Council Leader, Tussan, deciding to belittle the two engineers by asking his (intelligent) cat for his opinion. The cat, to everyone's surprise, is of the opinion that the Council should finance the project, and Tussan is forced to honor his word.

As planning goes underway, it becomes clear that one engineer must venture into the black hole alone and detonate it, while another operates the mast back on Gallifrey which will funnel all the explosion's power. While Omega makes "the ultimate sacrifice" detonating the black hole, Rassilon remains behind a console controlling the mast, and gets all the credit after the experiment succeeds. Renamed the Eye of Harmony, the mast infused with temporal energy is buried deep beneath the floor of the Capitol, and locked away with the Great Key. As the years pass, the Eye's power grows unbidden, and Rassilon eventually decides to venture down to check exactly how. Gaining a greater understanding of the Eye's contents than anyone short of the late Omega, he is able to stabilise its elements into a "perpetually dynamic equation" balanced against the very mass of Gallifrey. This has the side-effect of making it impossible ever to remove the Eye from the planet: if this were done, the planet would turn into anti-matter wholesale. Realising what a latent threat this power source has become, Rassilon devises a further safeguard against tampering with the Eye, a sash.

Rassilon's body begins to age and decay at an accelerated rate due to the strain of interacting with the trapped elemental forces of the Eye. He is forced into retirement by Tussan's Council, being offered a pension and a seat on the largely-powerless Prydonian opposition council on the condition that he surrender the Sash, and thus, control of the Eye, to them. In his anger, Rassilon instead tears the Sash apart. As he is taken away by the Chancellery Guard to be punished, the dying engineer collapses to the floor, the stress of the situation finally killing him. However, before the guards' astonished eye, the first regeneration of any person on the planet of Gallifrey takes place as Rassilon's face grows younger and his brown hair turns fair.

The awed fame Rassilon accrues during the following days due to his seemingly-supernatural transformation allows him to depose Tussan and assume leadership of the Council. He sets about restructuring Gallifreyan society, and creates a new elite by choosing a 100 Gallifreyan from each chapter to be granted the privilege of standing in front of the Eye and being infused with its power, thus making them into Time Lords capable of regenerating, an ability they will pass down to their children. Meanwhile, Tussan's cat, deciding it is destined for greater things than being the pet of a deposed Arcalian, deserts him and joins Rassilon, declaring "I am the cat that walks by himself and all places are alike to me".

Over the next few centuries, Rassilon, now possessing immortality, turns back to the matter of time travel. Time capsules are developed under the name of TARDIS (for "Time And Relative Dimensions In Space") and, a short while later, made bigger on the inside after the Time Lords dicover transdimensional engineering. Confident that everything is running smoothly, Rassilon decides to use his people's newfound power over Time and Space for entertainment, creating the Death Zone and the "Game of Rassilon" wherein which anything from anywhere in Time and Space could be Time Scooped into the Zone and forced to fight for its life as it attempted to reach the Dark Tower, from which survivors would be returned home.

The other Time Lords (and Tussan's cat) are horrified at this misuse of their power, but are unable to reason with Rassilon, whom the Cardinal Pandad only manages to convince that the Game is a bad idea when the fight between some Scooped Daleks and Cybermen ends with the Cybermen not only winning, but threatening to destroy the Dark Tower. Since the Tower channeled part of the power of the Eye of Harmony as part of the Time Scoop process, destroying the Tower might mean the Cybermen would be exposed to the same effects as the Gallifreyans and gain mastery over Time and Space. The risk of an unrelenting warlike species like them becoming equal to the Time Lords is enough for Rassilon not only to lock away the Time Scoop from the Eye's power using the Great Key, but also to declare that anyone who now came to the Death Zone seeking immortality would have to pay the price.

By then nearing his twelfth regeneration, Rassilon puts it off when he learns of a creature called the Fendahl rampaging on the fifth planet in the Sol system in Mutter's Spiral. To defeat it, the High Council decides to disintegrate the planet, put a force field sealing its former location from the outside universe, and permanently reverses Time within that spot so that the Fendahl would never have existed. This brute-force approach is seen as a victory by the Patrex councilman Morbius, but is not approved of by Rassilon. When he learns that an Arcalian senate on the planet Minyos has been destroyed, he decides enough is enough and edicts a series of Laws of Time. Satisfied with his work at long last, Rassilon relinquishes the Presidency to Pandad, letting Time Lord government settle in a new and complicated form involving a President, a Chancellor, a Castellan and the High Council.

Though retired and once more working on his own scientific undertakings, Rassilon takes Chancellor Azmeal into his confidence, instructing him of the whereabouts of the Great Key but also decreeing that from this day forwards, no Chancellor knowing the secret of the Key will be allowed to ascend to the Presidency. The project Rassilon is working on turns out to be another bid at immortality: the Matrix, a sort of "psychic history book" into which the minds of dying Time Lords could be uploaded. Rassilon leaves it dormant and refuses to share its workings with anyone, ruling that as the first and greatest of the Time Lords, he should have the privilege of being the first one to achieve digital immortality as well, if and when a time of true death arose for him. Indeed, as he attempts a thirteenth regeneration, Rassilon realises the regeneration cycle granted by exposure to the Eye of Harmony only grants twelve renewals, and a thirteenth is impossible. He teaches Azmeal the workings of the machine and lets his mind pass into the Matrix; his body is transported to the Dark Tower, which becomes known as the Tomb of Rassilon.

Characters

 * Polstar the Perfidious
 * Gary Russell
 * Rassilon
 * Omega
 * Tussan
 * Tussan's cat
 * Pandad
 * Morbius
 * Azmeal
 * Helron
 * Socra
 * The Master
 * The Doctor
 * The Rani
 * Salyavin
 * Borusa

Continuity
To be added