Gallifreyan history

Gallifrey, the home planet of the Time Lords, had a long and storied history. The Time Lord civilisation lasted billions of years, existing in the distant past at the dawn of time (PROSE: The Crystal Bucephalus) so that by the 20th century there was no sign of any civilisation on Gallifrey. (PROSE: Goth Opera)


 * Due to the use of time travel by the Time Lords and the lack of outside points of reference, some historical events can be hard to date accurately, if at all.

Pre-Time Lords
The Daleks tried to travel back to prehistoric Gallifrey to prevent the Time Lords evolving. Before the Time Lords a lizard-like creature inhabited the planet which later went extinct. (PROSE: Engines of War)

Time of Empires
The Dark Time, also known as the Old Times or the Age of the Pythias, preceded the unrelated Dark Times of the universe itself. (COMIC: Agent Provocateur) This first era, the Time of Empires preceded the Time of Chaos. (PROSE: Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible) The history of this period was recorded by Rassilon in the Black Scrolls of Rassilon, which became forbidden by the time of the Doctor. (TV: The Five Doctors)

The Gallifreyans were an ancient species, one of the first humanoid species to evolve. (PROSE: Lucifer Rising, TV: The Beast Below) A Time Lord emissary reminded the Fourth Doctor that Gallifrey had perfected the transmat beam when the universe was less than half its "present" size. (TV: Genesis of the Daleks)

Gallifreyans were known as the Shadow People during this era, caught between the warm darkness of magic and the cold light of science. Magic dominated Gallifreyan culture for a long time. (PROSE: So Vile a Sin) During the Fledgling Empires' war against the Racnoss, the Empress of the Racnoss claimed that Gallifrey "murdered" the Racnoss. (TV: The Runaway Bride) The Gallifreyans fought against the Old Ones. (PROSE: Interference - Book Two)

The Gallifreyans' early empire was huge. They had colonies across their galaxy. Slave trading, protested by some, was common. Gallifrey was ruled by the Pythia, a line of female seers who divined the future and ruled Gallifrey. They also perpetuated mysticism on Gallifrey, and were against the use of reason. After the Intuitive Revelation, telepathy was used rather than speech and few individuals kept their own personality or secrets. (PROSE: Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible) Many Gallifreyans worshipped the Menti Celesti. (PROSE: Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible) Gallifreyan religious classes, including priests, monks and wardens of the church, had a high place in Gallifreyan society until after the rise of the Time Lords. (PROSE: Interference - Book Two)

Early research into time travel was performed. The first time machine, the Time Scaphe, was powered psychically rather than technologically. (PROSE: Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible) The Archons claimed that the Time Lords didn't discover time travel for themselves, but developed it after they declared war on the Archons and stole their technology. (PROSE: The Nameless City)

The Time of Chaos
The power of the Pythia declined in the Time of Chaos. The Neo-Technologists, led by Rassilon, rose to power. The last Pythia lost her power of prediction, cursed Gallifrey with sterility and killed herself. Surviving members of the Pythian order fled to Karn, where they became the Sisterhood. After the collapse of the Pythia, war and chaos threatened the empire. An ice age began and Gallifrey's colonies demanded their freedom. (PROSE: Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible)

Out of the Time of Chaos, a living metal, validium, came in to use by the Time Lords. A piece of validium left Gallifrey and came to Earth. (TV: Silver Nemesis)

The early days of the Time Lords
The Time Lords had two main founders, namely the technological polymath Rassilon (TV: The Deadly Assassin) and the stellar engineer Omega. (TV: The Three Doctors) They lived at the same time. (COMIC: Star Death, TV: Remembrance of the Daleks) The Time Lords had four other founders, namely the Other, Apeiron, Pandak, and possibly Eutenoyar. (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors, PROSE: The Ancestor Cell)

The Age of Rassilon
Rassilon instituted changes to deal with the problems of the Empire. He ordered the creation of genetic looms to permit the Gallifreyan race to reproduce. The Great Houses were formed to stabilise society. (PROSE: Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible)

The Time Lords, before any race, began their research into black holes. (TV: The Satan Pit) One of Rassilon's early attempts to create a black hole accidentally punched a hole into the Yssgaroth's universe. The Yssgaroth escaped and caused mass destruction. The Time Lords, led by Kopyion Liall a Mahajetsu, tried to stop them, leading to the thousand year Eternal War. They eventually pushed the Yssgaroth back into their own universe. Kopyion Liall a Mahajetsu guarded the final opening. (PROSE: The Pit)

Omega used two stellar manipulators, the "hands" of Omega, to detonate a star (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks, PROSE: The Infinity Doctors) known as Qqaba, to create a black hole from which the Time Lords drew the power for time travel. Omega was himself cast through the black hole into an anti-matter universe and was presumed dead. (TV: The Three Doctors, COMIC: Star Death, AUDIO: Omega) Rassilon eventually retrieved the Eye of Harmony and stored it in a vault beneath the Time Lord capitol as a source of power. (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors)



While the Time Lords were still influencing other worlds, they tried doing business with the Hoothi. They caused a war on one of the worlds with which Gallifrey was negotiating, and later attacked Gallifrey itself using a Time Lord ambassador as a host. The Time Lords struck back with a counterattack and put the Hoothi worlds in a time loop. The Hoothi were forced to leave the galaxy. (PROSE: Love and War, AUDIO: Love and War)

The Game of Rassilon was a blood sport played in the Death Zone on Gallifrey using the Time Scoop. The Time Scoop relocated beings from all of time and space (with the exception of the Daleks and Cybermen, considered too dangerous to try to contain) and placed them in the Death Zone to fight each other to the death. (TV: The Five Doctors)

After the damage that had been done by the Time Lords to other species using time travel, the Non-interference policy was instituted. (TV: Underworld, PROSE: The Quantum Archangel)

The Matrix was set up during the reign of Rassilon. Following damage to the Time Vortex, a robotic construction, Dawn 726-Alpha Continua, was set up to repair the damage. (COMIC: Dawn of Time!)

Rassilon's rule saw the war with the Great Vampires (TV: State of Decay) and the end of the games in the Death Zone. (TV: The Five Doctors) During the Millennium War 150 million years BC, Rassilon defied the non-interference policy and led the Time Lords against the Mad Mind of Bophemeral. (PROSE: The Quantum Archangel)

One legend said that despite Rassilon's great achievements, the Time Lords rebelled against him and imprisoned him in the Dark Tower in the Death Zone. (TV: The Five Doctors)

Later history
Millennia of isolation induced a complacency among the Time Lords. Their technology and power stagnated, even as other races became more powerful and dangerous. (TV: The Deadly Assassin)
 * The specific order of the following events is unknown.


 * The High Council dissolved the monasteries and churches of Gallifrey. (PROSE: Interference - Book Two)
 * Mawdryn and a group of scientists tried to steal the secrets of Regeneration from Gallifrey, stealing a metamorphic symbiosis regenerator, but they were unsuccessful and they became stuck in a cycle of never-ending mutated regeneration. (TV: Mawdryn Undead)
 * The Doctor attempted to ban the Miniscope as a cruel practice. The Time Lords set aside their non-interference policy to have the Miniscopes recalled. (TV: Carnival of Monsters)
 * The Time Lords developed a chemical that could turn vertebrate blood into acid, but the Doctor successfully campaigned for it to be banned. (PROSE: The Age of Ambition)
 * The Time Lords tried to prevent human researches centred on the USS Eldridge, which was tearing a hole in space. Though they succeeded, the ship was believed to be lost. (AUDIO: The Macros, GAME: Shadows of the Vashta Nerada)

The Doctor's era
During the lifetime of the Doctor, several crises occurred which brought to light the vulnerabilities of the once-omnipotent Time Lords. Testimony at the Second Doctor's malfeasance tribunal revealed many marauding races had emerged in the universe after the Time Lords adopted their isolationist policies. (TV: The War Games)

When the Doctor was very young, Ulysses was told by Larna, a Time Lady from the future, that the fate of Gallifrey was mixed with that of the Doctor and that the Doctor would have a part to play in its downfall. (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles)

The Time Lords were easily rendered helpless when Omega began to drain energy from Gallifrey, and were only saved by the intervention of the Second and Third Doctor. (TV: The Three Doctors)

The ease with which was able to alter records in the Archives and manipulate the Matrix was due largely to the fact that the technology behind the Matrix's APC Net had been surpassed on other worlds. On those worlds the technology would, according to the Doctor, be considered "prehistoric junk".

The Time Lords faced "the most dangerous crisis in their long history" when the Master arranged the President's assassination as part of a plan to take control of the Eye of Harmony. The Eye was thought mythical, but in reality it resided underneath the Panopticon and continued to power all of Gallifrey's technology. The Fourth Doctor saved Gallifrey and left. (TV: The Deadly Assassin)

The Doctor's departure left Gallifrey in the midst of a constitutional crisis. Due to a legal technicality exploited by the Doctor, he was now technically President, the only other candidate, Goth, having been killed. For a time, Gallifrey seemed to have no President. The Doctor eventually returned to claim the title as part of a plot to defeat a Vardan invasion. This invasion was a front, however, for a Sontaran invasion of Gallifrey. Although defeated, these invasions exposed weaknesses in Gallifrey's defences. (TV: The Invasion of Time)

Later, the High Council decided to physically move Earth in order to preserve secrets stolen from the Matrix. (TV: The Mysterious Planet)

These revelations caused a revolution on Gallifrey. (TV: The Ultimate Foe)

Romana's Presidency and the Free Time Movement
Romana II became president after a coup that overthrew Flavia's government and a right of challenge (AUDIO: Lies, Indurgency) A couple of years into her presidency she made a routine visit to Etra Prime when it disappeared. She was imprisoned there by the Daleks for twenty years, when the Sixth Doctor arrived on Archetryx during the Archetryx Convention. Vansell was at the convention spying on the other temporal powers time machines. When Romana escaped the Daleks back to Gallifrey, they followed her and tricked Vansell into allowing them on the planet thinking them to be a deposition from the Monan Host. When on Gallofrey they slaughtered the Chancellery Guard as they needed the use of the Eye of Harmony, which was keyed to Evelyn Smythe's retina scan due to restricting the Dalek Movement around Gallifrey, in order to stop the Apocalypse Element's destruction of the Seriphia Galaxy this action killed all the Daleks on Gallifrey. (AUDIO: The Apocalypse Element)

On his travels, the Eighth Doctor saved Charlotte Pollard on the R101. (AUDIO: Storm Warning) According to Romana and Vansell this action wouldn't normally have changed the Web of Time, but the Neverperson Sentris used this event to break into the universe and caused an anti-time incursion which stretched the web to its limits. Vansell set the Matrix to remembering the correct path of history. At this point the matrix was predicting only one future, Romana becoming Imperiatrix. Using many Battle TARDISes the Celestial Intervention Agency captured the Doctor and Charley and planned to use Charley as a way to enter the universe of anti-time. Vansell thought that Rassilon was in this universe and planed to bring him back. This was a ploy by Sentris as the casket containing the supposed Rassilon was an anti-time bomb, which the Neverpeople planed to detonate passed the transduction barrier, as Gallifrey was the only place in the universe that hadn't been tainted by anti-time. The Doctor used his TARDIS to contain the explosion. (AUDIO: Neverland)

Irving Braxiatel was tasked with tracking the remnants of the Doctor's TARDIS, and notified Romana when it disappeared. She went with Leela into the Death Zone where she discovered a Matrix door to Rassilon's Foundry where she met the Doctor who was infected with zagreus. He banished himself to the Divergent Universe and Romana told him that he wouldn't be able to return to our universe. (AUDIO: Zagreus) Soon after on the planet Gryben, the Time Lords holding planet of unlicensed travel through the Time Vortex, the Free Time movement obtained a Timonic Fusion Device and planed to detonate it and destroy the Time Lords. The current Celestial Intervention Agency Coordinator Narvin sent Torvald and Leela there to discover it's location. Whilst on this mission it was discovered that the Monan Host had agents on the planet, and if Narvin used the Battle TARDISes in orbit to stop the escalating actions of the human Nepenthe he would have provoke the third space war. To counteract this Romana head to the planet knowing that if the TARDISes had to bomb the planet the action was just as they chose to kill their president. The Timon Fusion Device was found to be a contrivance and there was no real threat. Narvin then initiated a presidential inquiry into Romana's actions. (AUDIO: Weapon of Choice) Leela was then sent to investigate a temporal summit to see if it was a neutral as it was supposed to be, considering the actions of the Archetryx Convention. There Leela discovered that time was being rewritten to make the summit go smoothly. This removed the accidental death of an exotic dance by the Nekkistani ambassador Flinkstab and the murder of Pule of Unvoss. Leela told Romana of this and she arrived at the summit to expose Hossak as well as Narvin's actions after the Dalek attack on the Monan Host world as the Monan V'rell was committing terrorist acts because of it. (AUDIO: Square One) By now Romana's inquiry was ready and Inquisitor Prime Darkel, who had previously resided over the Sixth Doctor's trial, was presenting the case for the prosecution. In obtaining evidence for his mistress, K9 Mark II accidentally set of a data bomb in the Matrix. It was extrapolated that Irving Braxiatel had set it there after the outcome of Project Alpha to expose Glower and the high council's actions in the destruction of Minyos. In discovering this information, Romana found that Braxiatel was transgressing the laws of time by conversing to his past and future selves in creating the Braxiatel Collection. (AUDIO: The Inquiry)

Mephistopheles Arkadian invited Romana to France in 1939, as she would find something useful about the Free Time movement and the CIA agent Torvald. It was also revealed to her that Andred was not dead. (AUDIO: A Blind Eye)

Romana then decided to allow non-gallifreyans to attend the Time Lord Academy much to the disdain of Darkel. It was at this time that an ancient evil from Gallifrey's past started to regain a presence by hijacking Narvin's brainwaves. As Leela was combing the catacombs after discovering that her husband was not dead, she encounter Pandora, Gallifrey's first Imperiatrix was manifesting itself in the Matrix. Romana had encountered Pandora in her youth and was given the Imperiatrix Imprimatur. Pandora wanted to make herself corporeal by taking over Romana's biogdata. K9 managed to squeeze her back into the Matrix. (AUDIO: Lies) Leela and Romana went to Davidia to recuperate, when a rogue TARDIS passed through the security barriers and a severely burnt Time Lord came out. (AUDIO: Spirit) On returning back to Gallifrey, Darkel manipulated the situation to put Castellan Wynter, who was inexperienced, in charge of the investigation of the burnt Time Lord. She also persuaded Romana to allow Braxiatel to become chancellor. Meanwhile the student Gillestes tried to poison the water in the name of Free Time, though Andred stopped her. K9 analysed the poison and found it to be the Dogma Virus. Pandora then invaded Wynter's mind who went mad and tried to stop her but drinking the Dogma Virus vial, crushing his hands and burning himself with K9's laser becoming the burnt Time Lord he was investigating. Pandora managed to escape the matrix using Braxiatel's ambition, but Braxiatel stopped her. He had to be banished to stop her manifesting again, as she was still in his minf, and Darkel had his chancellorship stripped from him. (AUDIO: Pandora)

Leela then started teaching at the academy as Braxiatel's last request. Here she taught about how to live in Time Lord society. With the new Chancellor Valyes, Darkel proceeded to try to find any ways to get the alien students of the planet. In the process she caused the death of Taylor Addison who was trying to keep his friends together throughout this time, he discovered a chamber under the Panopticon and was killed trying to find it's secrets. By this time Romana was conversing with Pandora, usually through K9, to find a way to stop this insurrection. It was during one of these conversations she was briefly taken over by Pandora and killed Andred. Darkel openly challenged her presidency, and started an election. (AUDIO: Insurgency) After this challenge, there was an open terrorist attack on the alien students caused by Antimon. This gained Darkel many followers and a full high council session was called to deal with this crisis. Romana thought that the only answer was become the Imperiatrix, and become a dictator. Antimon revealed himself to be a Free Time agent and planed to kill the high council, Romana and Darkel. Romana had to free K9 of Pandora to allow him to stop the bombs, in doing this Pandora manifested herself completely through her first incarnation claimed her title back and declared civil war. (AUDIO: Imperiatrix)

Romana spent most of the civil war destroying infrastructure of the capitol, on one such mission she instructed Leela and Narvin the destroy the Artron forum. After the failure of the mission, leaving Leela blind and Narvin severely injured, they fled to the outlands and to the Anomaly Vaults to find a way to defeat Pandora. In the vaults they discovered the CIA assassin Aesino and became trapped in the vaults. They escaped via the use of Braxiatel's transmat that K9 gave Romana to the academy. (AUDIO: Fractures) Pandora accelerated her attack by creating a technological variant of the Dogma virus. Darkel tried to trick Matthias into infecting Romana with the virus but instead infected Hallan. Romana then won the war by trapping Pandora in the Matrix and then wiping it clean. (AUDIO: Warfare)

With the matrix lost to them and the technological variant of the virus infecting systems across the Capitol, Gallifrey was prone to invasion. The Sunari, Nekkistani and Warpsmiths of Phaidon took advantage of this and invaded to emancipate their students who were caught up in the war. Romana was incapacitated due to her defeat of Pandora, and Valyes became acting president and planed to resign and give the presidency to Darkel. Mathias used the situation to become de facto vice president of Gallifrey and negotiated a peace settlement. (AUDIO: Arbitration) There was a power struggle, and a presidential elections was called, with Romana, Darkel, and Matthias contesting the role. Matthias found a loophole and got Romana's candidacy revoked as she would have been impeached. Darkel also had Romana's presidency annulled up to the point Pandora escaped from the Matrix. Because of this Braxiatel returned to the planet as chancellor and became president. Darkel tried to get him to loose control of the part of Pandora in his mind, which occurred and she was killed as a result. Braxiatel then resigned and named Matthias as is successor. (AUDIO: Mindbomb)

To gain capital for the planet, Matthias invited Mephistopheles Arkadian to the planet to sell of Pandora's temporal weaponry. Romana then started to investigate the Dogma Virus infestation, and discovered that a large proportion of the population were infected in this. Elbon was trying to find a cure. As part of the bargain with Arkadian, Romana was sent with Elbon to deliver the weapons to the buyers as they had the cure to the Dogma Virus. Meanwhile Leela and Narvin weren't sure about Arkadian and chased him to the Biog data Archive just when it was time scooped by Braxiatel. Braxiatel then asked for a decision on whether to use the cure for the Dogma Virus. (AUDIO: Panacea) Romana, Braxiatel, Narvin and Leela then went to the Axis to explore alternative Gallifreys for a better cure for the Dogma Virus. (AUDIO: Reborn, Disassembled, Annihilation, Forever, Emancipation, Evolution, Arbitration)
 * see Gallifrey (Reborn), Gallifrey (Disassembled), Gallifrey (Annihilation), Gallifrey (Forever)

They returned to the main universe after the Dalek invasion of the Gallifrey they settled on. (AUDIO: Extermination) On returning to a ruined Gallifrey, Romana encountered her next incarnation who told her that they needed to rebuild Gallifrey, and transplanted her capitol with the current one. Trying to keep the Eye of Harmony and Transduction barrier from destroying Gallifrey she accidentally killed the Unvossi ambassador who came to the planet. When the balance between the Eye and the Barrier became unstable Romana managed to fix it but the dimensional forces started her regeneration. (AUDIO: Renaiisance) This occurred in the Matrix. Romana returned to her planet and discovered the state that the Dogma Virus had left the planet in. Having discovered a workable cure, she rewrote the biog data of the Time Lords and destroyed the virus. It was during this time that Slyne, a Castellan from one of the alternate Gallifrey's opened the Matrix and allowed the Daleks to invade. Leela gave Romana a message from her future incarnation saying that her plan was ready. Romana lured the Daleks into the Matrix and sealed herself in there trapping herself. Narvin realised that Gallifrey would fall without her and sent Valyes to tell the Fourth Doctor to avert the creation of the Daleks. Not knowing that the Romana trapped in the Matrix was an avatar, Narvin accidentally started the Last Great Time War. (AUDIO: Ascension)

Return of Omega
In her last term in office Romana, there was an anomaly growing in the Mutter's Spiral that was threatening creation. She discovered that the Adherents of Ohm were still active on Gallifrey and that they were planning the return of Omega. One of their members Tauras took Celestial Intervention Agency operative Ace to Earth and used the Hand of Omega to create a black hole to Omega's domain. Omega then possessed Ace, then Tauras after they entered Omega's domain. Narvin and Romana soon followed and discovered that Omega had escaped, using Ace's TARDIS. Romana, Ace and Narvin tried to follow but were trapped in the black hole, before Romana was rescued by Irving Braxiatel. (AUDIO: Intervention Earth)

War with the Enemy

 * See also The War.

In a now defunct future, the Time Lords went to war with a foe known only as the Enemy. The war was temporal in nature and cracks appeared throughout the Web of Time. They ran backwards through time, affecting the past. (PROSE: Alien Bodies) The war with the Enemy raged for an undefinable time, but eventually temporal events reached a critical level. The Eighth Doctor attacked openly, destroying Gallifrey, and averting the war ever happening. (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell)


 * At some point after this, Gallifrey was restored. (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles, The Tomorrow Windows)



Gallifrey falls no more
During the Last Great Time War, Rassilon was resurrected by the Time Lords. (PROSE: Engines of War)

After more than 400 years of war, (PROSE: Engines of War) the Time Lords grew mad, and sought to end time itself to free themselves from physical bodies.

To avert their destruction, the Time Lords sent a four-beat signal into the Master's mind and then sent a White-Point Star diamond to 2009 Earth. With the drumming as a signal and the diamond as a connection,, who had survived the war, broke the Time lock at the end of the war and pulled a group of Time Lords through to Earth, and also pulled Gallifrey through. However, Gallifrey was returned to the last day of the Time War inside the Time lock when the Tenth Doctor destroyed the White-Point Star within the Nuclear Bolt that was generating the signal. (TV: The End of Time)

During the Eleventh Doctor's timestream, he and all of his prior incarnations (as well as his successor incarnation, unbeknownst to him) came together to freeze Gallifrey and the surviving Time Lords in time; and transferred Gallifrey to a pocket universe where it was safe from the Daleks, who destroyed themselves. (TV: The Day of the Doctor) Due to the memory of these events being wiped from every incarnation before the Eleventh Doctor, the Ninth Doctor believed himself responsible for the destruction of both the Time Lords and Gallifrey. (TV: The End of the World, Dalek)

The Time Lords began reaching out through a Crack sending the message "Doctor who?" on the planet Trenzalore in order that the Eleventh Doctor might speak his true name and return them to the universe. Rather than restart the Time War, the Doctor refused for hundreds of years. The Time Lords did save the dying Doctor's life by granting him the a new cycle of regenerations, allowing him to regenerate into the Twelfth Doctor before closing the crack and sealing themselves away in the pocket universe. (TV: The Time of the Doctor)

At some point the Time Lords and Gallifrey managed to leave the dimension they were frozen in, returning to the universe, but were now at the end of the universe, "for its own protection". They hatched a plan to get the Doctor to confess what "the Hybrid" was. Mayor Me, under Rassilon's orders, (TV: Hell Bent) tricked the Twelfth Doctor into having a teleport bracelet attached to his arm, and was teleported (TV: Face the Raven) inside his confession dial where he was tortured to confess what he knew about the Hybrid. Instead, he gradually tried breaking out of a wall of azbantium inside the dial through repeatedly burning his old body to create a new one. (TV: Heaven Sent) After approximately 4.5 billion years, (TV: Hell Bent) the Doctor broke free. (TV: Heaven Sent) Rassilon was then dethroned from his position by the Doctor and the Time Lords, and the Doctor later ran to a later period of Gallifrey in a TARDIS. (TV: Hell Bent)

After the end
New Alexandria, the planet on which the Crystal Bucephalus was located, was implied to be the ruined remains of Gallifrey. (PROSE: The Crystal Bucephalus)

According to one account, apparently 60 billion years after 2367 AD, at the end of the universe, Gallifrey had been destroyed and Winkle's Wonderland had been relocated there. The Divergence made an attempt to break free at the end. (AUDIO: Zagreus)

According to one account, five minutes before "Hell", Gallifrey was maintained by a reality bubble when Me was the only being left in the Cloisters. Ashildr watched stars die, and later left Gallifrey with the Twelfth Doctor and Clara Oswald in a TARDIS after the Doctor's memory of Clara was wiped by a neural block. (TV: Hell Bent)