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)