Howling:How does everyone know the Time Lords are gone?

So far in the New Series, we've had characters such as the Forest of Cheem woman in "The End of the World", Mr Finch in "School Reunion", the Sontarans in "The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky", and Lady Rosanna in "The Vampires of Venice", all displaying intimate knowledge of the Time Lords' ultimate destruction at the hands of the Doctor; the Time Lords are always spoken of in the past tense in all eras of history. How is this possible, it doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense to me. In the article in the 2005 annual, RTD stated that only the more highly evolved races were ever aware of the Time War, but now it's like everyone not only knows about it, but knows how it ended. EJA 17:24, April 5, 2011 (UTC)

All of those characters are members of more advanced races. Less advanced races, like modern-day humans, know little about the Time War, but more advanced races, that travel through space, know about the Time War. They don't know details, like how exactly it ended, but it must have been apparent to the entire universe that the Daleks and the Timelords dissappeared after the war ended. The reason that it is always spoken of in the past tense is that the war was fought across all of time. It has always happened, even though in the classic series, the Timelords hadn't experienced it yet.Icecreamdif 20:28, April 5, 2011 (UTC)

But what about all the Time Lords BEFORE they were blown up? They aren't bound by time, so they should still be around somewhere. So speaking of the current Doctor as the last of his kind is a bit meaningless. Sure, he's the last in his personal timeline, but not in the timeline of the rest of the universe. EJA 20:25, April 28, 2011 (UTC)
 * The Time Lords weren't bound by time, but neither was whatever that wiped them out. -- Bold  Clone  20:35, April 28, 2011 (UTC)

By all logic the Time Lords should have been completely forgotten, throughout time and space. The Moment was a Demat Gun which wipes out all traces of those it destroys, unless the few Daleks and the Doctor that survived meant that by extention the race they belong are still remembered. --Revan\Talk 20:38, April 28, 2011 (UTC)

It doesn't make sense, does it? EJA 21:02, April 28, 2011 (UTC)


 * Nope, but in the end, how can a production team maintain coherent sense 48 years down the line and with hundreds of spin off projects going on all the time? --Revan\Talk 21:04, April 28, 2011 (UTC)
 * The thing is, in the new series, the Doctor will meet aliens who are indigenous to the Earth year 2010, and when he tells them who he is, they will recognise him as being the last of his race. But Sabalom Glitz was a native of the year 2,000,000 AD, and neither he nor anyone else of his timeframe ever said to the Doctor "You're the last of the Time Lords!" If people from 2010 know the Time Lords are gone, shouldn't those in all later eras?
 * The thing is, in the new series, the Doctor will meet aliens who are indigenous to the Earth year 2010, and when he tells them who he is, they will recognise him as being the last of his race. But Sabalom Glitz was a native of the year 2,000,000 AD, and neither he nor anyone else of his timeframe ever said to the Doctor "You're the last of the Time Lords!" If people from 2010 know the Time Lords are gone, shouldn't those in all later eras?

Not necessarily. As firmly stated in The Unquiet Dead, time can be rewritten. That's obviously the case here, with the time war having not happened.Skittles the hog-- Talk 21:26, April 28, 2011 (UTC)

The Time War did still happen though, because people know about it. EJA 21:37, April 28, 2011 (UTC)

What? I'm referencing Sabalom's non-knowledge.Skittles the hog-- Talk 21:52, April 28, 2011 (UTC)

In Doctor Who, time is nonlinear, so an event that hasn't happened yet in 2,000,000 AD could have already happened in 2010. All that matters is where in the timeline events are occuring from the Doctor's perspective. When the Time War happened, all Timelords were destroyed, and it was known that they were destroyed in every time zone, but before the war, it was known that they were still alive in every time zone. The Timelords have not been wiped from history. They still used to exist, but they don't exist anymore. It is not the same thing as when people fall into cracks in time. In The Invasion of Time the de-mat gun didn't seem to remove people from history, as people still remembered all the Sontarans that were killed. All it seemed to do was dematerialize them, like when the Timelords destroyed the War Lord and his guards in The War Games. Even if the de-mat gun did wipe people from history, it is still unlikely that the Doctor used it to destroy the Gallifrey. Only the Lord President has the power to construct it, and it is unlikely that Lord President Rassilon would have given the Doctor the Great Key. The de-mat gun was shown to be a handheld weapon that wouldn't possibly have the firepower to destroy an entire planet. Also, the Doctor has been repeatedly described as "burning" Gallifrey. The de-mat gun didn't burn people, so even if the Doctor could make a de-mat gun, and it was powerful enough to destroy Gallifrey, it would simply dematerialize the planet, rather than producing the described burning effect. When the Timelords and Daleks were destroyed in the Time War, time was not rewritten. All of the Dalek invasions still happened (apart from any that may have been erased by Genesis of the Daleks) and all of the Time Lord episodes still occured, including those that did not take place on Gallifrey. However, now the Timelords are dead in all time periods, and are unable to make new appearances, and the Daleks that don't look like they are made of plastic are dead, and are unable to invade other worlds.Icecreamdif 02:43, April 29, 2011 (UTC)

Question: If the Doctor went to visit someone like Sabalom Glitz in the new series, would Glitz be aware that Gallifrey and the Time Lords were dead, and the Doctor was the only one of his kind? EJA 09:29, April 29, 2011 (UTC)

It depends. If he's into current affairs then sure. There's no reason why not.Skittles the hog-- Talk 11:51, April 29, 2011 (UTC)

If Gallifrey was destroyed across all time zones, then all their appearances in the classic series would be negated. EJA 14:41, April 29, 2011 (UTC)

When Gallifrey was destroyed in "The Ancestor Cell", didn't it effectively destroy the universe and create an entirely new one where none of the classic series ever happened? EJA 16:25, April 29, 2011 (UTC)

Nope, Bullet Time, Wolfsbane and many other stories from the classic era still happened which interacted with that timeline. --Revan\Talk 16:27, April 29, 2011 (UTC)

Wasn't the Doctor's past altered though, so that he was no longer from Gallifrey (a world that had been deleted completely from history)? EJA 16:34, April 29, 2011 (UTC)

Oh, and how come so many people who meet him in the new series seem to instinctively know that the Doctor they see is the one who's survived the Time War? For all they know, he could be an incarnation who hasn't experienced those events in his personal timeline yet. EJA 19:33, April 29, 2011 (UTC)

If the Doctor was to meet Glitz again, Glitz would remember the past episodes where he encountered Timelords, but unless he is very uninformed he would know that the Timelords are gone now. It was the same thing in Death of the Doctor. Jo made some reference to going to Gallifrey, which the Doctor ignored, because she remembers Gallifrey being around from the classic series, and noone had told her that the planet had been destroyed in the new series. People instinctively know that the Doctor they meet is one who survived the Time War, because if he hadn't survived the Time War he wouldn't be walking around and talking to them. They know that he has already experienced those events in his personal timeline, because those events have already occured in the time line. In the classic series, nobody assumed that the Doctor was the last of the Timelords, because the Time War hadn't happened yet, but now that it has happened, he has clearly survived it.Icecreamdif 20:10, April 29, 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, but that makes absolutely no sense at all. If the Time Lords were cut off from all of time and space, all of their prior influence on the universe would be negated. Nobody would ever have heard of them in the first place. EJA 18:53, April 30, 2011 (UTC)

They weren't removed from time. They were kiled. They died at a point in Gallifreyan history after any that we saw in the classic series. Because they are all dead, they can't travel through time and space to the rest of the universe, so the rest of the univers knows that they are dead.Icecreamdif 18:58, April 30, 2011 (UTC)

That would only make sense if prior to their extinction, Time Lord activity was confined to the past, relative to us alive now. Aliens active in our present all know the Time Lords are gone, so Gallifrey's demise had to have happened before now. And before anyone tries to suggest that the Sontarans are one of those higher races that've been mentioned, let me point out that the Doctor in the classic series considered them to be far behind the Time Lords in terms of technology and temporal mechanics. EJA 21:59, April 30, 2011 (UTC)

The Timelords have time-travel technology, so whether they were killed in the past, present, or future, people will know about it. The Sontarans may be primitve compared to the Timelords, but so are most species. Compared to modern-day humans, the Sontarans are a higher species, and if anyone would know about the biggest war in creation, it would be the Sontarans. You may not think that it makes sense, but the show has pretty much confirmed it. In Death of the Doctor, Jo suggested that she would get the Doctor into trouble with the Timelords if she travelled with him. This suggests that she remembers episodes like The Three Doctors and The Planet of the Daleks where the Timelords interacted with them, not to mention the Doctor's exile. If characters didn't remember past Timelord episodes, Jo would remember the Doctor as having always been the last of the Timelords. Icecreamdif 22:22, April 30, 2011 (UTC)

If it's a historical fact by 2010 that the Time Lords are extinct, then all subsequent generations would proceed according to this knowledge. This would negate stories like "The Mysterious Planet", where the Time Lords were an active power in 2,000,000 AD. It would also negate "Brain of Morbius", where they interacted with Earth in the far future during the Morbius incident. You just can't have both scenarios; reality would tear itself apart and the entire universe would collapse. The rest of time isn't in synch with Gallifreyan time, you see? I hope you understand what I'm trying to say here. EJA 08:39, May 1, 2011 (UTC)

The Doctor is not the last of the Time Lords, because all those Time Lords who come from Gallifrey before the War are still around. They must be, otherwise none of the stuff we saw in the classic series would ever have happened. EJA 12:18, May 1, 2011 (UTC)

It is not a historical fact that the Timelords are extinct by 2010. It is a histroical fact that the Timelords are extincct by the end of the Last Great Time War, somewhere in the Rassilon Era. Every Timelord we have seen is from the Rassionl Era (with the possible exceptions of Omega and Rassilon), but characters from different points in history have interacted with Timelords from the Rassilon Era. In the Classic Series, we mostly just saw renegade Timelords leave Gallifrey. The only non-renegade Timelords we saw off of Gallifrey only left Gallifrey to speak with the Doctor (Genesis of the Daleks and Terror of the Autons) and did not remain away from home for long. As for the renegades, the Doctor was surprised to see the Master in Utopia. This suggests that he believes that the Master is dead, and does not believe that it is a Master from before the Time War. The fact that he constantly refers to himself as "the last of the Time Lords," and the fact that he didn't believe the Face of Boe when he said "you are not alone," pretty much prove that the other Time Lords are not there. Time is very complicated in the Whoniverse, and it can be very hard to make sense of, but the Time Lords are now dead in every time period, but they used to be alive in every time period.Icecreamdif 13:06, May 1, 2011 (UTC)

Ok, what about those Time Lords who attended that galactic conference in Proxima Centauri in the 30th century (This is a purely hypothetic scenario)? What happens with them? How do people react to them now, after the Time War? EJA 17:26, May 1, 2011 (UTC)

It gets very parodoxical then, if people did know of the Time War and told them then history would have changed for the Time Lords and something different could have happened about the war. Its best just to say that the chronicled event was the one that "mattered" so to speak. --Revan\Talk 17:31, May 1, 2011 (UTC)

But how do all these aliens know that the current Doctor is the one who survived the Time War? The numerous Doctors jump all across history, so one Doctor could arrive somewhere and see the effects that a future incarnation of himself had on the environment. The Doctor's personal timeline is not the same as everyone else's. EJA 18:04, May 1, 2011 (UTC)

The Time War was fought across time, so it has already happened in every time zone. The aliens all know that the Doctor has already survived the Time War, because the Time War has already happened in every time zone, so the Doctor has to have survived it. In the classic series, the Time War hadn't happened yet in any time zone, so none of the aliens the Doctor encountered knew that the Time War would happen, so they all knew that the Doctor hadn't fought in the Time War yet.Icecreamdif 22:38, May 1, 2011 (UTC)

For time travelers, causal past has nothing to do with chronological past. The Doctor's timeline jumps all around, but his memory follows the order he experienced those events in, not the chronological order in which they happened. He can remember meeting Zoe in 2050 because he did that centuries ago, and he can't remember meeting Captain Avery in 1650 because he hasn't done that yet. Memory is based on causality--things happen, that causes changes in your brain, and those changes in your brain are what memory is.

For non-time-travelers, things are usually a lot simpler. As long as no time traveler ever interferes with you directly, the things you experience as 2010 happen before the things you experience as 2011, and so on.

But in the LGTW, time travelers _did_ interfere directly. That's the whole point. The two sides removed themselves from history (so it doesn't even matter when it started, chronologically), and then fought a war across every time zone. Their war crossed every timeline at every point. So, that war is now in the causal past of not just the Doctor, but everyone he will ever meet, even non-time-travelers.

If this is too confusing, try reading the later EDAs and the FP books. They won't make anything clearer, but they'll be so much more confusing that you'll start to believe this stuff is simple. :) --99.33.26.0 06:12, May 5, 2011 (UTC)

What is the consequence of "The Doctor's Wife" with regards to this problem? There are the hypercubes, evidently pre-Time War, or concurrent with it (mentioning the High Council of the Time Lords), as well as the arm and other body parts of various Time Lords. It does not seem to fit well with the whole 'time lock' concept introduced quite definitely by the end of series four and the specials - here we see direct physical evidence of the existence of Time Lords. On top of this there appears to be no explicit mechanism in place to prevent the Doctor going back in time on House to interact with these Time Lords, had the TARDIS been functional at the time of course. So what is the verdict - significant numbers of surviving Time Lords (Doctor style) still using somewhat dated distress messages, or has the time lock somehow been broken? Poggin 10:10, May 18, 2011 (UTC)


 * Let's say House killed those Time Lords before the War. If so, they probably wouldn't have ever been inside the time lock. They were both dead and outside the universe when the War started, and when the lock went up, and nobody knew where the were, so who would have thought to include them, and how would they have been able to do so?


 * So, the reason the Doctor can't meet these Time Lords isn't the same as the reason he can't meet the rest; it's just the usual Law of Time about Time Lords having to meet each other in proper linear sequence. Now that he's been to the end of their timeline, he can't meet them anywhere earlier in it.


 * But there is a massive loophole, if Moffat wants it. The Five Doctors and a few other classic stories had lots of timeline crossing going on, and it was implied that this was a legal rule, or at worst a health-and-safety thing, rather than a physical law of nature. The novel Legacy of the Daleks confirmed it--the Doctor met the Master out of order (and may hve even radically changed the Master's timeline), and mused that he'd probably get a nasty slap on the wrist for doing so next time he dropped in on Gallifrey.


 * So, maybe the Doctor can't go visit his parents or Romana, but he can go visit the Corsair just by going back into the Corsair's past. It might be difficult or dangerous, or maybe the Doctor doesn't know how to do it, but if Moffat wants to write more Time Lord stories, that's an easy way out. --99.170.145.26 16:59, May 18, 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, I guess you are right on the fact that it is more likely to be an open end that Moffat has allowed for possible future plot development.

However, I do think there is more of an issue here. It is fine to say that the Corsair and the other Time Lord victims found House and were killed before the war began, or ended and was time locked. Thus it would seem logical that they, not at all involved or contemporary to the War, are not time locked. However, given this is a Time War, we have problems defining when it began, when it actually ended, and what period it's combat was confined to. Surely it this case, it must be said that these Time Lords were concurrent with the War at some point. In which case you might exclude them as non combatants, never having encountered the actual battles. But then this causes another problem, as the initial assumption made by the Doctor is that ALL the Time Lords and Daleks are gone - despite the fact there may have been many non-combatant Time Lords, and a significant number of Daleks in periods not involved with the war. By the non-combatant non-locked thinking, these would all still be accessible.

The issue really is that up until this point it has been clear that the Time Lock applied to all the Daleks and all the Time Lords (excepting a few stragglers), because of their species alone and regardless of combative status (nb, the Master, a definite combatant, escaped by use of the chameleon arc - reinforcement of this PoV). The Doctor has been consistently surprised when either of these species has turned up - the possibility of Time War non-combatants not being time locked is clearly not even a consideration. However, I would argue that this is a totally different situation. It is not another case of stragglers getting through, but hundreds of Time Lords that House should never have been able to access... Poggin 19:33, May 18, 2011 (UTC)

Remember how during the classic series nobody ever mentioned the Time War, or how in The End of Time the Doctor and the Master discuseed their childhood from before the Time War. That is because, the Time War didn't happen until some point in between The TV Movie and Rose. The Corsair and the other Timelords ended up in the bubble universe sometime before the Time War began. If House hadn't killed them, they would have survived the Time War by being in another universe, just like the Master survived the war by using a chameleon arch, or the Dalek in Dalek survived by being stranded and seperated by the Dalek fleet. It has been established before that it is possible for Daleks and Timelords to be alive by surviving the Time War. The Cult of Skaro already proved that leaving the universe is a good way to survive the war. The Timelords still have existed, as has been established many times. Unfortuanetly, House killed all the Timelords in the bubble universe, so none of them survived. Even before the Doctor landed on House, he would not have been able to travel to a point in time from before house killed the Corsair, because that version of the Corsair would have been from a different point in Gallifreyan history then him. Its the same reason that the Doctor and the Master have always met in linear order. Even if that weren't the case, he became a part of events as soon as the TARDIS landed on House, and he wouldn't be able to go back in time to save the dead Timelords. The Doctor explained this in Parting of the Ways. Even if he did try to break the laws of time in a future episode, and go to an earlier point in the bubble universe's history, before House killed the Corsair and the other Timelords, he can't. The TARDIS said that the bubble universe was going to be destroyed wihtin a few hours, so he can never go back there again.Icecreamdif 20:17, May 18, 2011 (UTC)

Ok, fair enough, there is now way for the Doctor to go back to meet the Time Lord Victims in question (without breaking a few laws, which I believe no.11 is apt to do quite frequently...). However, the fundamental point is that the victim Time Lords were not time locked, otherwise House would have to have become time locked too by association. In which case we are both arguing for a view where Time-War non-combatants, even Time Lords, are not time locked. Which I suggest is a different standpoint to what the Doctor holds to be the case (he could *shock* be a bit wrong?). Which may possibly open some new possibilities... Poggin 21:02, May 18, 2011 (UTC)

All timelords who were involved in any way in the Time War are time locked. However, all Time Lords in the universe were involved in the Time War, so they are all time locked. The Corsair, and the other Timelords that House killed, were not in the universe, so they were able to avoid the Time War.Icecreamdif 21:09, May 18, 2011 (UTC)

Ok, to summarise...

1- Pre-Time War Time Lords are not time locked, so long as they have not had "contact" with the war.

2- Pre-Time War Time Lords can avoid the Time War and hence the lock in a manner as displayed in "The Doctor's Wife", ie leaving N-Space to a Bubble Universe.

3- There is no principle which excludes the existence of more such Time Lords, escaping via different sub-universes similar to the Bubble Universe, eg E-Space, where they might not be killed by an entity such as House.

4- Being not-killed, they may eventually travel to the Post-Time War main universe, avoiding the time lock.

5- However, this tells us only a possibility of the Doctor meeting more Time Lords, rather than predicting definitively there are more Time Lords out there for him to meet.

Poggin 21:24, May 18, 2011 (UTC)

That's basically what the Doctor had assumed happenned at the beginning of The Doctor's Wife. If they ever do decide to bring back the Timelords, that would be as good a way to do it as any. Of course, non-renegade Timelords rarely left Gallifrey unless they had to, so it's unlikely that there is a large group of surviving Timelords outside of the universe, but it is theoretically possible.Icecreamdif 22:45, May 18, 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, if (and it may be a big if) the past TV series only are held to be true, then Romana could well fulfil the criteria for Time War survival (and later accessibility from the main Universe). That is, assuming that she remained in E-Space... But with this sort of thing, the writers could go either way. She has not yet been explicitly mentioned in the new series, and hence her fate is not at all concrete. Poggin 14:45, May 20, 2011 (UTC)


 * Yeah, as Icecreamdif said, the Doctor must have been assuming pretty much what you summarized for the start of The Doctor's Wife to make any sense. And yes, if you ignore the spinoff media and RTD's off-camera interviews, Romana would qualify.


 * Except... wouldn't the Doctor have told them about Romana once he came home to join the War? And, if he'd done so, would they really have had a hard time getting her back?


 * Then again, that ties into a mystery we already had: The Time Lords already knew Susan was alive, and even had the ability to time scoop her, and a powerful psychic like her would have been a valuable war asset, and yet from everything the Doctor's said since, it sounds like she didn't fight (or at least he didn't know whether she did). And the same goes for Salyavin/Chronotis (if you accept Shada).


 * Maybe the Doctor had a plan B in case the Daleks won the war, a plan that involved Susan, Salyavin, Romana, and a handful of other renegades. (In fact, you can almost imagine what that plan would look like.) He didn't tell the Time Lords about the plan; instead, he told them, "OK, I'll lead the troops, if you keep my family out of the War," and then kept mum about Salyavin and Romana. In the end, he didn't need to use that plan B because he came up with another one (using the Moment). And that's why they're still a mystery.


 * If you accept the spinoff media, Romana's taken out of the equation, but more renegades are added in, including the Doctor's father Ulysses. But the same thing works. --99.35.132.17 20:44, May 20, 2011 (UTC)

If you ignore all the spin-off stuff, and assume that Romana is still in 0-space, that would be a good way to bring her back to the show. However, given that the Doctor knows that she was in 0-space, and given that he constantly talks about being the last of the Timelords, it is likely that Romana is dead. My guess would be that the Timelords managed to bring her back to N-space to fight in the Time War, as they would need every available Time Lord to fight.Icecreamdif 04:18, May 21, 2011 (UTC)


 * Also, think about it from the Moff's point of view. Nobody but the hardcore fans would care about Romana coming back. But all of the hardcore fans are sure that Romana already came back, and was even President during the War. Although it never made it on-screen, RTD has said multiple times that he intended all of that to be true when writing about the LGTW. It's also one of the few bits of history that's consistent across all of the spinoff media--and it's such an important plot point in all of them that ignoring it would amount to declaring that nothing but the TV shows ever happened. The hardcore fans would be angry, and everyone else wouldn't care in the slightest, so why bother? From a writer's perspective, it would make much more sense to bring back Susan that way, or Chronotis, or a non-TV character, or (simplest of all) another Time Lord we'd never heard of. --99.35.132.17 20:55, May 21, 2011 (UTC)

Different fans have different opinions of what is canon. There are plenty of hardcore fans who don't care about anything but the TV series, and they ignore stuff from the spin-off stuff all the time (like that nonsense about the Time Lords being "loomed"). We already know that Romana wasn't the president during the war, because we know that Lord President Rassilon was the president. Either way, since the Doctor has never gone back to 0-space to find her and always refers to himself as the last of the Timelords, we can assume that Romana died in the Time War, whether she was the president, or the Timelords brought her back to fight.Icecreamdif 02:21, May 22, 2011 (UTC)


 * Sure, I hate Lungbarrow too. (That's the one with the looms, etc.) And I have no problem with them throwing away parts of continuity (even TV continuity) when the story demands it. For example, I loved Human Nature, even if (to my mind, at least) it means the wonderful novel of the same name never happened. But throwing away continuity gratuitously is a different story--especially if they do it for the sole purpose of a continuity nod. What would be the point in that?


 * More importantly, even if you only care about the TV show, RTD said repeatedly, in articles and interviews, that Romana was the President that Rassilon replaced. True, he never got that on camera, but still, if the Moff threw that away, do you really think more fans would cheer him for it, or whine about him rewriting RTD's history?


 * Finally, the Doctor always refers to himself as Last of the Time Lords--but they keep showing us over and over (the Master, Jenny, the Time Lords that House killed) that he's wrong. When they do bring back another Time Lord (which they will do eventually), you can't complain that they've lied to us. --99.35.132.17 08:22, May 22, 2011 (UTC)

Are you really saying that Moffat would never rewrite RTD's Dr. Who history, after all that stuff about the cracks literally erasing RTD's Dr. Who history? Since it never made it to the screen, Romana's presidency is not actually part of RTD's Dr. Who. It is RTD's opinion that she was president, but that doesn't really matter since he is writing the show. I know that they will obviously bring back the Timelords eventually, even if they do just bring back the Master. My point was that the Doctor knows that Romana decided to stay in 0-space at the end of Warrior's Gate, so if Romana had avoided the Time War by staying in 0-space, the Doctor would know about it, and would not refer to himself as the last of the Time Lords. When the Time Lords do return, the Doctor can't know that there were surviving Timelords.Icecreamdif 15:04, May 22, 2011 (UTC)


 * Do you not know how to read simple English? Of course Moffat will change RTD's history, and novel history and classic-show history too, if he has a good reason. But a continuity nod is not a good reason to break continuity--the very people you're trying to please are the same ones who are going to get angry. I don't know how many more ways I can explain that. But I think everyone besides you understands (or just doesn't care anymore), so I won't try again. --99.35.132.17 02:43, May 23, 2011 (UTC)

How's this for a simple answer: Maybe the reason everyone knows the Time Lords are gone is that, for the past 8 years of his subjective time, the Doctor has been running around all of spacetime, from Event One to Utopia, loudly whining, and occasionally bragging, about being the Last of the Time Lords. Anyone who doesn't live under a rock (and some that do, like the Beast) must have heard by now. "Oh, look, it's that Doctor, you remember, our Susan ran into him in the market over by Betelgeuse and he told her he'd killed all the Time Lords, whatever they are?" --99.20.128.135 08:06, May 25, 2011 (UTC)

ok, going back to the original point of this article/thread thingie, how come the doctor doesn't encounter pre-war timelords? for example, if the pre-war master decides to invade 21st century earth at the same time post-war doctor is there, then it's not like that event would just dissapear because a post-war timelord was there. how come there are no interactions of this sort?121.216.229.210 10:35, July 20, 2011 (UTC)


 * First, please sign your posts. Now, to answer your question:


 * First, the RTD answer. Even if the War started in, say, 2005, it started with the Time Lords and Daleks removing themselves from history, it was fought between two time-traveling enemies, and it ended with the entire war being time-locked. To anyone who's not time sensitive, it never happened, because the Time Lords and Daleks never existed. To time-sensitive species, as the 10th Doctor explained somewhere or other, it's in the past of every timeline. There is no pre-War anything to meet anywhere or anywhen. The big problem with this answer is Time Crash—there obviously is a 5th Doctor out there somewhere and somewhen for the 10th Doctor to run into.


 * Next, the John Peel answer. In one of the early EDA novels, Legacy of the Daleks, we learn that there's a law against Time Lords meeting each other out of temporal sequence. It's not a physical law in the sense that it's impossible to do it; it's a law passed by the Time Lords to prevent something which is difficult and very dangerous. It's almost certain to create the kind of temporal paradoxes that could destroy the Web of Time. Fortunately, the 8th Doctor, as always, gets lucky, and ends up fulfilling the Master's destiny instead of derailing it. Probably nobody but the 8th Doctor could count on being that lucky, and nobody but the 7th Doctor could count on being able to plan something like that intentionally, so no other incarnation would dare to do it.


 * I suspect that Moffat subscribes to a sort of hybrid of these. The pre-War Time Lords really are removed from history, but that doesn't means it's not impossible for him to meet them, just very, very hard and very, very dangerous. In fact, it's as hard as Amy reuniting with Rory, her parents, or the Doctor after they'd been removed from history, and as dangerous as the Doctor finding out about his own death two centuries in advance. So, if the Moff wants Romana in the 50th anniversary special (and Lalla Ward is available), he'll come up with a good story to make it happen. --99.40.53.116 10:21, July 20, 2011 (UTC)

The Time War didn't remove the Timelords and Daleks from history. Otherwise, Sarah Jane wouldn't remember the Doctor or Davros or the Daleks, and UNIT wouldn't consider the Doctor to be a legend, if it even existed. Remember, in Death of the Doctor Jo assumed that the Timelords were still around because she remembered that they were around during the Third Doctor's time. If the Timelords had been removed from history, Jo would have assumed that the Doctor had always been the last of the Timelords. The events of the Time War are in a timelock, but all Time Lord and Dalek history from before and after the Time War remains unchanged. Since the Doctor has always met the Master in chronological order, and always returned to Gallifrey in chronological order, we can probably assume that for whatever reason, Timelords have to meet in the proper order. Of course, that still doesn't explain River Song, but she isn't entirely Timelord, is she?Icecreamdif 18:15, July 20, 2011 (UTC)


 * You forget: Sarah Jane was a time traveler, which means she remembers even when things are removed from history. So her memory means no more than that of the Doctor, and all of the "higher" time-sensitive species. If we'd met, say, a non-time-traveling human from the 22nd to 50th centuries in any of the new series episodes before the Daleks were re-revealed, that would have been interesting… but unfortunately, RTD never showed us that. Anyway, the Doctor specifically said "The Daleks removed themselves from history" on TV, so if you don't believe that means what it sounds like, you need some other good explanation.


 * Meanwhile, as for Time Lords having to meet in chronological order, the Doctor saying that it's one of the Laws of Time is enough to establish that—but there are nevertheless exceptions (especially if you consider that a Time Lord meeting his past/future self is a special case of the same thing). Sure, usually either there's a whole team of Time Lords working directly under the President to monitor the timelines or the meeting threatens to blow a hole in spacetime, but at least it can happen. So, there's a way out if the Moff wants to bring back a Time Lord or two, but not a gaping hole that leaves us wondering why they're not all showing up every week. --173.228.85.118 03:46, July 23, 2011 (UTC)

Parting of the Ways pretty much confirms that the Daleks didn't remove themselves from history. Rodrick said that the Daleks disappeared thousands of years ago. If they had removed themselves from history, he would have never even heard of the Daleks.Icecreamdif 04:24, July 23, 2011 (UTC)

You still have to explain what the Doctor meant when he said that the Daleks removed themselves from history, and what RTD meant when he said the same thing about both sides in the Annual. Maybe that was just a continuity error, but then maybe Rodrick was just a continuity error—and besides, that's always the most boring way out.

So, here are some theories:


 * 1. Rodrick is from 195 millennia after humans discovered time travel. It's perfectly plausible that by that time, humans are one of those "higher species" that can remember things despite the Time War. That's why I specifically said "from the 22nd to 50th centuries".


 * 2. When history changes or things are erased, it's never perfect; there are always echoes (as the Doctor explains in Flesh and Stone and Cold Blood). Maybe the farther away you are from the erasure, the less effective it is. In fact, it does seem like the farther into the future they go, the more everyone knows the Time Lords and Daleks are gone instead of everyone but a handful of "higher species" not even knowing they ever existed.


 * 3. There are now two (or more?) contradictory histories that are equally real. A story that takes place in 2005 can only happen in one or the other, but in a story set in 200100, both of them could be in the past simultaneously. If Iris Wildthyme couldn't explain this idea to the Doctor, a mere human like me has no chance of explaining it to a fellow mere human, but maybe reading a bit of Lance Parkin, Larry Miles, Kate Orman, or Paul Cornell would help. That's how the Whoniverse worked during at least some of the NAs and EDAs, and as long as the stories just hint at the idea without making the plot rely on you fully comprehending it, it can actually work. I just don't see it working on TV.


 * Personally, I like the first one, but that's probably more because it's another small hint in the decades-long, never-to-be-fulfilled, all-media-spanning arc about the true future history of humanity than because it's simple and plausible (although it is). --173.228.85.118 05:13, July 23, 2011 (UTC)

In which episode did the Doctor say that the Daleks removed themselves from history?Icecreamdif 05:26, July 23, 2011 (UTC)


 * Well, I don't have the subtitles to grep through on this computer, but I do have some scripts… and I don't see that exact wording, but I do see "vanish from all of space and time" in Parting of the Ways, and I think that's the Doctor.


 * Meanwhile, searching PDFs, in addition to the Annual saying that they removed themselves from time and space, the Time Traveller's Almanac also says "the Daleks vanished from time and space" to start of the war.


 * Finally, going to Last Great Time War on this wiki, the section "The Conflict" says:

Shortly after the Tenth Dalek Occupation, the Daleks vanished from time and space and wielding the full might of the Deathsmiths of Goth, launched a massive fleet into the Time Vortex, initiating the war.


 * So, it's not just some crazy interpretation I've dreamed up; this wiki says the same thing.


 * Meanwhile, while it sounds really cool to say "vanished from time", what does that actually mean? To a non-time-sensitive, it's nonsense; things can only vanish from the present. If something vanished from your past (or future) you'd have no way of knowing about it. But to a time-sensitive, it would have to mean that you remember them having existed across a stretch of time, and now you can tell that they no longer exist in any time. Unless you can think of another way to make sense of that sentence? --173.228.85.118 06:58, July 23, 2011 (UTC)

That phrase is open to interpretation. The main question would be does a non time sensitive species forget the Daleks ever existed, or do they simply percieve the Daleks as having vanished from the present. Rodricck's statements seem to suggest the latter. If he was time sensitive, and knew that the Daleks had vanished across all of space and time, then the phase "thousands of years ago" wouldn't make any sense.Icecreamdif 15:37, July 23, 2011 (UTC)


 * But it doesn't make sense in your interpretation either.


 * Imagine that, as you're reading this paragraph, Egypt vanishes from all of time. In my interpretation, that includes vanishing from all records, including memories (except those of time travelers), so it just never existed. In your interpretation, we still remember it, and to us, it's as if it just vanished a few seconds ago. And to Herodotus as he's writing his histories, it also just vanished. And so on up to the guy who wrote your high-school history book. If you went back and read that book, it would tell you that, despite classical and ancient historians claiming Egypt had vanished far earlier, everyone knows it actually vanished in 1973--even though _you_ knew it vanished in 2011. And if you hopped into the TARDIS for your first time travel voyage into the year 2015, you'd meet people who tell you you're crazy, it didn't vanish until 2015, and in fact they were there on holiday in 2013. The whole thing would be a massive naked paradox.


 * It would be the same with the Daleks. People in 2164 would see the Daleks vanish in the middle of the occupation, but people in 2174 would remember the entire war and see the Daleks vanish right before they were driven off, and people in the 27th century would see them vanish in the middle of the Second Dalek War, and so on.


 * Of course it's possible that the Daleks had already been destroyed by humanity in, say, 198000, so their vanishing from time to fight the LGTW just didn't affect Rodrick at all. But that still leaves human history a mass of contradiction from 2157 to 198000. (Of course the fact that the Doctor didn't talk to anyone from that span about Daleks in the episodes between the LGTW and the Cracks means that we can't know what those people would have remembered… but it seems distinctly unlikely that RTD intended anything like that.)


 * Meanwhile, if you want to interpret "vanished from time and space" as "went back in time from 198000 to the Rassilon Era to start the war, not changing their past history at all", then at any time up to 198000, the universe is still swarming with Daleks. (If the Time Lords managed to wipe them out throughout those times, then we're back to the same problem.) So, the plots of most of the other Dalek episodes make no sense. For example, in Dalek, the fact that the Daleks will vanish in 196 centuries is just irrelevant far future history to the lone Dalek; there are millions of Daleks flying around in 2012 to give him orders.


 * In fact, the more I think about it, the more I think this must be a continuity error. RTD came up with the "vanished from time" thing because it sounded cool and appropriate, and also came up with the "thousands of years ago" thing because it worked in that episode's plot, and didn't realize there was no way to reconcile the two until later. But that doesn't relieve us of the responsibility for fanwanking some continuity (or explicit discontinuity) out of things—as RTD himself would have done back when he was a fan—which takes me back to my three ideas above. --173.228.85.118 00:06, July 24, 2011 (UTC)

There isn't really any way to remove the Daleks fom history without causing maajor paradoxes. It is possible that vanish from time and space doesn't mean that they wee removed from history. It could just mean that whatever Daleks were left after the Hand of Omega in Rememberance of the Daleks left the greater space time continuum to fight in the time-locked war. They still used to exist but disappeared at a specific point in history. The last appearance of the Daleks would then have been thousands of years before 200,100.Icecreamdif 02:21, July 24, 2011 (UTC)


 * Removing them completely from history, including records, including memory, doesn't cause any major paradoxes. The exception for time travelers makes things a bit more complicated, but not much. There are no paradoxes visible to anyone who never interacts with a time traveler; there can be paradoxes to anyone who does interact with a time traveler, but that was already true before.


 * Anyway, if there was no timey-wimey going on, and it's just that the Daleks at a certain period of time all left, what happened to all the Daleks in the future of that time? For example, if they left after Remembrance, as you suggest, how did they invade Earth two centuries later? (Actually, it couldn't be Remembrance, because they had later appearances—in the TV movie, even if you want to ignore the novels—but that doesn't solve the problem, it just changes the date.)


 * Come to think of it, that's a problem for my first two theories just as much as for yours. There's no paradox if Dalek Invasion of Earth just didn't happen (except in time travelers' memories and records), but that does change the future, and it changes what certainly sounds like a "fixed point in time", given that RTD has talked about how pivotal that was in our future development: no Invasion, no Earth Empire, etc. So, that only leaves theory #3, or at best a less-Iris-y version of it where there are two parallel timelines that run through at least the next few millennia until they merge in the future. --173.228.85.118 02:57, July 24, 2011 (UTC)

Dalek Invasion of Earth is what I was thinking of when I said that removing the Daleks from history would cause paradoxes. With ememberance of the Daleks, I wasn't talking about 1963, but about whatever distant year in the future they travelled to 1963 from. since Davros is in every classic Dalek episode from Genesis onwards, we can assume that the Doctor met the Daleks in a linear order from Genesis on. This woulld mean that Rememberance was the latest episode, from the Daleks point of view, in the classic series. I wasn't really counting their appearance in the TV movie, since that was just a cameo, where you don't even see the Daleks, and just hear an awful impression of their voices, but yes, they would have left space and time after the TV Movie(though that still doesn't explain how Skaro got undestroyed in the movie). Presumably, after Rememberance, the surviving Daleks went back to the future, started offeing Timelords trials for some reason, and eventually left space and time to fight in the Time War, all thousands of years before 200,100.Icecreamdif 03:19, July 24, 2011 (UTC)


 * As a quick aside: Even without the TV movie, you have to explain how Skaro got undestroyed, because it was also destroyed in the Last Great Time War. And then it was there again in City of the Daleks. (Unless you want to take the Dalek Prime's story in War of the Daleks at face value, that is.)


 * Anyway, even if the Doctor met the Daleks in linear order from Genesis on, he certainly didn't before that, and you still have to explain how the Daleks were there in all of those episodes—not to mention the appearances in novels, audios, etc. that were after Remembrance in the Daleks' timeline, the Doctor's timeline, and local time.


 * Also, all indications are that the far future the Daleks came back from was early in the 5th millennium; for someone 200100 to call that "thousands of years ago" would be like saying that the Neanderthals died out "centuries ago": a vast, and silly, understatement. --173.228.85.118 03:51, July 24, 2011 (UTC)

Well, someone who deoesn't know anything about Neanderthals, and in't that smart, might be able to make that mistake, though I suppose Rodrick would havee to be smart to win Weakest Link. Where are you getting the 5th century from, anyway? Is that from an episode, or is it fom a novel or something. Either way, just because the Daleks have to have left space and time after Rememberance, that doesn't mean that it had to be right after Rememberance. Really, all that has to happen is the Daleks have to have left time and space sometime after their latest chronological appearance, but a few thousand years beore Parting of the Ways.Icecreamdif 04:40, July 24, 2011 (UTC)


 * Before answering, let me mention something you just reminded me of: In the 10th Doctor New Series novel Prisoner of the Daleks, the Doctor accidentally "jumped a time track" and ended up meeting pre-LGTW Daleks in the middle of the Second Dalek-Human War. That means he could obviously meet pre-LGTW Time Lords the same way. But, as this novel and the classic TV story The Space Museum both imply (and a couple of BFAs make explicit), that's probably not something he can do intentionally, and definitely not safe. Which makes it perfect for a one-shot reunion (e.g., for the 50th anniversary special) without actually bringing Gallifrey back.


 * Anyway, 5th millennium, not 5th century. Besides the fact that every dated Dalek story or even mention of the Daleks before the new series takes place in or before the 5th century, here's what we know: The Dalek Civil War takes place while the Daleks are fighting humans. There are three Dalek-Human Wars, the second one was somewhere in the 3rd millennium (established off-TV to be around the 26th century). Master Plan takes place in 4000, in the runup to one of the wars, so that has to be the Third one. Meanwhile, from the new series, the Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire controlled the entire galaxy and two others by the 42nd century (and Prisoner establishes that it existed even pre-LGTW), which means the Daleks were no longer a force by then.


 * I'm completely ignoring the NA and EDA novels, because the only relevant source I can remember there is War of the Daleks, which (if you take everything the Dalek Prime and the Doctor say seriously) not only retcons every Dalek story, it also puts the 26th century after the year 4000 and shows that even the fake Skaro that Davros and the 7th Doctor were tricked into destroying wasn't actually destroyed, and it's just all far too silly.


 * However, the Big Finish audios and stories fit in with the 5th millennium timeline.


 * Of course it's always possible that there was another post-LGTW Dalek Empire we never saw that was only a few millennia before 200100. It's also possible that the Dalek Empire was destroyed in the 42nd century, but scattered remnants survived and built a new Empire after the fall of the Second (or Third) Great and Bountiful Human Empire, and it was those Daleks who left to fight the LGTW. But either way, it's a huge stretch just to accomodate that one line. --173.228.85.118 05:46, July 24, 2011 (UTC)

Any theory that accomadates every line regarding the Time War is a huge stretch.Icecreamdif 20:55, July 24, 2011 (UTC)


 * Well, yes, but a theory that basically copies what was in the novels is a stretch that's already been taken… Anyway, ultimately I think the answer is that RTD didn't think everything through, and then he didn't go back and fix things later. And that's perfectly reasonable. The only way to really fix things later is to have stories like Unnatural History and The Gallifrey Chronicles that are explicitly about sorting out continuity, which works great in a novel (well, it can; War of the Daleks shows how miserably it can fail…), but would be deadly dull on TV, and completely meaningless to the casual fans. The best they can do is try to avoid creating new major contradictions or highlighting the ones that already exist, and get on with the job of writing great stories within the 90% of continuity that works just fine. --173.228.85.118 23:12, July 24, 2011 (UTC)


 * If you think about it, it boils down to "What did Jack Harkness see/hear about during the UNIT years. He's a time traveller and has only interacted with post-TimeWar Doctors. He lived through the period where The Third Doctor would have been exiled. He was working for Torchwood, so he'd have access to information. Did he hear about (or even participate in some fashion) in the events of "The Three Doctors" and "Day of the Daleks"?


 * Also, someone mentioned Sarah Jane retaining her memories because she'd travelled throug time. Is that all it takes to become "time sensitive"? Does one trip in the TARDIS make you immune to any changes in the timeline? Where would that leave Liz Shaw, who never travelled in the TARDIS on-screen? What about the hundreds of people who participated in The Doctor's adventures, but never travelled with him? Is the portion of the universe destroyed by the Master (including Trakken) back? Is Tremas alive and well sitting in The Keeper's chair since the Master would never have posed as the Melkur? More importantly, what would have happened to Nyssa's history? She never would have left Trakken if the Master hadn't taken over her father's body and might have returned if it hadn't been destroyed. Since she'd qualify as a "time sensitive" according to the Sarah Jane rule, but her personal history rewritted so she never had a reason to leave home, where is she? On Trakken? On Terminus? I'm invoking the MST3K motto. 69.74.43.35 13:17, July 27, 2011 (UTC)cdr69.74.43.35 13:17, July 27, 2011 (UTC) 09:17, July 27, 2011 (EDT)

I think people are saying that Sarah Jane would have remembered any changes to the timeline, because in Time of Angels, the Doctor explained to Amy that she could remember the clerics who were erased from time because she was a time traveller and saw the universe in a different way now. Of course, Sarah's travels with the Doctor would probably be forgotten if they were actually erased, similar to how Amy forgot about Rory. It is much simpler to assume that the Timelords and Daleks weren't erased from history, and everything that they did before the Timelord still effected the universe, so the Master still destroyed a big chink of the universe, and Nyssa is still on Terminus. Jack probably never knew the Doctor was working for UNIT anyway. According to UNIT, there scientific advisor was named John Smith, and if Torchwood 1 knew that the Doctor was there they would probaably have arested him at the first available opportunity.Icecreamdif 16:09, July 27, 2011 (UTC)


 * A priori it may seem unlikely that "that's all it takes", but the Doctor pretty much explicitly said it's true, and we saw it work, so yeah, that's how the Whoniverse works. Of course there's more to it than that—a one-time companion doesn't have the Doctor's sixth sense for history, his intelligence, his vast knowledge of history, his experience and training at dealing with time travel and paradoxes, or his mental discipline at remembering the impossible, so they don't automatically see history the same way he does. But they do automatically see history differently from normal people.


 * As for what happens if Gallifrey were removed from history, of course that causes paradoxes, but so does any changing of history through time travel. So, if your argument is, "It couldn't have happened, because that would be a paradox," you're standing on thin air. If you're just asking what this particular chunk of spacetime would look like from outside, well, the show has never been consistent about what happens with all these paradoxes. Sometimes history stitches itself together to make events rational, sometimes the paradoxical events vanish from history, sometimes time just finds ways to hide the paradoxes from plain sight, sometimes they're naked and visible, etc. Again, the EDAs gave us some clues as to what happened the first time Gallifrey was wiped out, but that's no guarantee it worked the same way the second time—and, even if it did, what it tells us is: expect to be confused.


 * Personally, I think the most likely story for Nyssa is this: On her timeline, all those things happened (she's a time traveler). On the timeline of the people she's with now, maybe something very different happened—but it doesn't really matter, because they have no way of finding out. They'd never seen Traken or Logopolis or 20th century Earth or Tremas or the Master. Nyssa is there, she has her story for how she got there, the parts of the story they did experience (the end) match their own memory, and that's all that matters.


 * As for Jack and UNIT: You could just as easily ask why we never saw Torchwood in any of the UNIT stories. It might just be coincidence. Or it might be explained by meta-time: the UNIT era is chronologically after the creation of Torchwood, but the first time through for the Doctor was meta-chronologically before Torchwood existed, so he couldn't have met them (unless Jack "jumped a time track"). Even without Torchwood, past and future Doctors were running around a dozen different places (most of them in the London area) during any given month of the UNIT era. How did both Jack and the 3rd Doctor fail to recognize that the 8th Doctor from Father Time, for example, was the Doctor? (That's assuming UNIT took place in the 80s; if it was the 70s, pick another story.)


 * As for the MST3K motto, if you haven't read Paul Cornell's blog post at http://www.paulcornell.com/2007/02/canonicity-in-doctor-who.html (which Steven Moffat has referenced, although of course he hasn't explicitly endorsed it as The Truth), go read it. --173.228.85.118 22:34, July 27, 2011 (UTC)

We don't know that being a time traveller allows you to see shenever something is wrong with history. We only know that that works when ssomething has been erased by the cracks, and even that doesn't work in all circumstances. Also, we know that it is possible for the Doctor to encounter Torchwood before he meets Queen Victoria and the Werewolf, because Torchwood already existed by The Christmas Invasion. We can therefore assume that it would have been possible for the Third Doctor to have met Torchwood during the UNIT era, except, obviously, the writers hadn't come up with the concept yet. Torchwood presumably didn't know twhat the different incarnations of the Doctor looked like, and the TARDIS was generally sitting safely in his lab at UNIT HQ during that time, so Torchwood would have no way of knowing that the Doctor was exiled on Earth. I think the most likely story for Nyssa is that everything happenned as we saw it, because that was all before the Time War happenned. The Time Lords have always been depicted as such an influential species in the universe, that the results of their being totally erased from time would be at least as catastrophic as Turn Left. The destruction of the Time Lords has always been described as "burning" so we should accept that statement at face value. Icecreamdif 04:49, July 28, 2011 (UTC)

Actually, we can date Torchwood all the way back to "Aliens of London", since its been confirmed that Tosh was posing as the medical examiner. It was also the answer to a "Weakest Link" question in "Bad Wolf". Therefore, it was already part of history before The Doctor travelled back to provide the impetus for its creation.69.74.43.35 17:14, July 28, 2011 (UTC)