Howling:Time Lords evolved?

It's stated in A Good Man Goes to War that the ancient Gallifreyans evolved time-sensitivity and the ability to regenerate over billions of years. Well if all Gallifreyans could regenerate and were time-sensitive, I suppose that would make all Gallifreyans Time Lords. But there are hints in the classic series that some Gallifreyans were not Time Lords, such as the Castellan and the Chancellory Guards. Furthermore, when the Castellan is shot dead in The Five Doctors, he does not regenerate, which would suggest that regeneration is by no means a natural ability of all Gallifreyans. I realise that it's of dubious reliability, as it was ultimately never produced, but Andrew Cartmel intended the character of Ace to eventually be enrolled in the Time Lord Academy by the Doctor, opening up the possibility that not all Time Lords were even from Gallifrey!! If candidates have to be naturally time-sensitive and able to regenerate, that would immedietely disqualify Ace, as she was neither of those things! I'm currently unsure how all of this can be made to fit together coherently. 213.121.200.42 09:58, August 17, 2011 (UTC)

They weren't very clear about it in A Good Man Goes to War, but it seemed like the Time Lords didn't just evolve, but billions of years exposed to the untempered schism made them what they are. River, who is not a Gallifreyan, may still be considered a Time Lady due to the fact that she can regenerate. Instead of being exposed to the untempered schism for billions of years, River was concieved in the TARDIS in the vortex and then experimented on by Madame Kovarian. In The Five Doctors, the Castellan was shot dead by a Time Lord staser. Time Lord weapons would almost certainly be designed to prevent regeneration, or they would be rather useless on Gallifrey. Maybe all Gallifreyans are capable of becoming Time Lords due to their billions of years exposed to the time vortex, but they don't become one until they reach the age of eight and look into the untempered schism. This would explain the outsiders seen in The Invasion of Time. Ace can certainly never become a true Time Lord, and she can't really be used as evidence of anything since that was never produced. Maybe she would have just learned from the Time Lords, but wouldn't actually become one.Icecreamdif 19:42, August 17, 2011 (UTC)


 * First, please put your content after the little icon thingies (it's more obvious in Source view), and sign your posts.


 * Oops, I see now that you did sign your post, it just got split up by the forum header. I reattached your signature. --173.228.85.35 03:52, August 18, 2011 (UTC)


 * Anyway, I think the best answer to the Gallifreyan/Time Lord distinction is that the former is a biological thing, and the latter a social thing. Jenny, who's biologically Gallifreyan but not a Time Lady, has a second heart and presumably all the other stuff that goes with it. (And post-TV Leela, who's a Time Lady but not Gallifreyan has one heart, and ages and dies like a human. Presumably the same would be true for Ace if the 7th Doctor and Andrew Cartmel got their way.) River is part-Gallifreyan, but not really part-Time Lady.


 * My guess is that being a Time Lord is a lot like being a Norman Lord in medieval England. You can inherit it, and that's how most Time Lords become Time Lords, but on rare occasions it can also be granted in some kind of ritual (looking into the Schism, graduating the Academy, having the Rod of Rassilon waved at you by the President, whatever). It may require the ritual even if you're born to it. Sometimes people use the term "Time Lord" sloppily, just as people sometimes used the term "Norman" to mean basically anyone in England who knew French (especially knights who weren't peers).


 * That fits pretty much everything that's ever been said on TV, and almost everything that's been said in any other media. The only problem is that every earlier source, TV and otherwise, agrees that Gallifreyans got their special abilities because Rassilon tinkered with their genetics/biodata/morphic fields, while A Good Man Goes to War says it's from eons of exposure to the untempered schism. in fact, that's a problem for _any_ explanation, not just mine.


 * One possibility is that history has radically changed with the erasure of Gallifrey (as it definitely did the last time Gallifrey was erased, in the EDAs); the Rassilon story was true before the LGTW, but it's not true anymore (just as it wasn't true between the SWiH and the restoration of Gallifrey).


 * But there's another possibility, for the people who hate any "history changed, deal with it" explanation: The schism changed the Gallifreyan people over the eons, but then Rassilon edited those changes to clean them up and improve them. River got the Rassilon-edited changes (in particular, including regeneration), not just the raw-schism changes, because she was conceived in flight in the vortex _in a TARDIS_. --173.228.85.35 03:51, August 18, 2011 (UTC)

My understanding of A Good Man Goes to War is that River was part Time Lady, but not part Gallifreyan. She has two Human parents and has never been to Gallifrey, but she has at least some of a Time Lords abilities, like regeneration. It was also said in Mawdryn Undead that if the Doctor's remaining regenenerations were stolen, he would cease to be a Time Lord. Icecreamdif 04:51, August 18, 2011 (UTC)


 * OK, obviously "Gallifreyan" can also mean "resident of Gallifrey" as well as "member of the biological species", just like "German" can denote residency as well as ancestry, but that's not relevant here. Regeneration, etc., are obviously a part of being biologically Gallifreyan, not part of having legal Gallifreyan citizenship.


 * Anyway, despite having two human parents, River's biology (genetics, biodata, morphic fields, whatever) is clearly not just human. The "human+" scan explicitly tells us that, as does the fact that she can apparently regenerate. She's partway between human and Gallifreyan biologically; if you don't want to call that "half-Gallifreyan", that's fine; it's just a matter of definition. (Oddly, I like calling that "half-Gallifreyan", but when one of the EDAs hinted that the Doctor's "half-human" meant the same thing, I hated it…) But she's definitely not half-Time Lady in any sense; she doesn't have any of the shared ethics, suffering, blah blah any more than Jenny does.


 * As for Mawdryn Undead, the best explanation for that is that it's a case of people using the word "Time Lord" sloppily to mean "Gallifreyan", just as I already explained. (Yes, the _real_ best explanation is that some of the writers didn't know or care about any such distinction, and they kept contradicting the other writers who were trying to establish one—that story in particular was chock full of contradictions, like the idea of physical "regeneration packets" that can be stolen from Time Lords, a completely different thing than usual called the "Blinovich Limitation Effect", etc. But in-universe, you can blame it on the characters being sloppy instead of the writers.) --173.228.85.35 02:29, August 19, 2011 (UTC)

Maybe prior to Rassilon's genetic tinkering, Gallifreyans did already have the ability to regenerate, but it was extremely rare and unreliable; those could only regenerated once, and most of those could not survive the regenerative process. Rassilon made artificial modifications to the ability, leading to a total of 12 regenerations. So it could be a bit of both - a natural ability AND technologically enhanced. 213.121.200.42 12:37, August 18, 2011 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I didn't want to get into specifics because we have almost no specifics to go by, but that's the kind of thing I meant by "clean them up and improve them".

But Melody wasn't described as being human plus Gallifreyan, she was human plus Time Lord. Everything that the Doctor said to Jenny really had more to do with the fact that he hadn't fully accepted her as his daughter yet, and wasn't willing to accept an artificially created being as one of the great Time Lords. I think that by the time she "died," and certainly if she had continued to travel with the Doctor, the Doctor had come to accept her as a Time Lord. Either way, the episode stated that Melody's DNA is human plus Time Lord, so that is what we must assume that she is unless a future episode contradicts this. Hopefully we will get more details into River's Time Lord/Gallifreyan DNA by the end of the season.Icecreamdif 04:43, August 19, 2011 (UTC)

It wasn't the Doctor who said "Human plus Time Lord," it was Madame Vashtra(sp?). In another thread we've argued about the general interchangeability of the word "Gallifreyan" and "Time Lord". Just because #10 is punctillious about the distinction doesn't mean #11 is. While #10 was vague about one thing ('timey-wimey'), #11 seems to lack the patience to explain much. In any cause, it seems clear that Time Lords are a society or class of the population of Gallifreyans. As for the evolution part, even assuming that that hasn't been dropped, notice that human beings evolved after billions of years of exposure to the Earth, but it is quite likely that within a hundred years we will have techniques to gene splice humans and create deliberately and specifically genetically modified people.Boblipton 11:23, August 19, 2011 (UTC)


 * Good luck trying to get Icecreamdif to accept the fact that people sometimes speak imprecisely on Doctor Who just as they do in reality; I'm giving up on that one.


 * But your other point is an important one. We probably won't be able to give ourselves the ability to regenerate like the Doctor in 100 years—but we will be able to improve abilities that we naturally evolved. So, 213.121.200.42's theory (that Rassilon improved a fitful and unreliable regeneration capability that evolved through exposure to time travel) actually makes more sense than the classic theory (Rassilon invented regeneration), not less. I think I'm convinced now. Except, of course, for the pretty good possibility that this really is a "Time Lord history has changed" thing in Moffat's head. --173.228.85.35 05:43, August 20, 2011 (UTC)
 * Info to Boblipton: The name is spelled "Vastra" (no "h"). --89.240.247.37 13:26, August 20, 2011 (UTC)

I undertand that Gallifreyan and Time Lord are sometimes used interchangably, but I think that in this case they actually did mean Time Lord. Vastra talked about how billions of years of exposure to the time vortex made the Time Lords what they were. Now, it didn't take billions of years of being exposed to the time vortex to make the Gallifreyans into Gallifreyans. Just being from Gallifrey made them that. The billions of years of exposure to the time vortex and the untempered schism made the Time Lords time sensitive, giving the Time Lords the ability to sense fixed points in space time, to see different possible time lines, and to ignore disturbances in time that effect humans around them. According to Mawdryn Undead, regeneration is also a trait of Time Lords, not Gallifreyans. I think that we have to assume that the Doctor actually did mean Time Lord in that case as well, because although he can apparently stop being a Time Lord, he can never stop being a Gallifreyan (unlesss he uses a chameleon arch, but that is irrelevant). His father was from Gallifrey, he was born and raised on Gallifrey, he is Gallifreyan. Losing his regenerations would not make him non-Gallifreayan, but it would apparantly make him non-Timelord. Melody has the ability to regenerate which is a Time Lord trait. A mere Gallifreyan would not be a very useful weapon to Madame Kovarian. She would want a Time Lord. Somebody who can regenerate, operate a TARDIS, and see everything-all that is, all that was, all that ever could be. The traits that would make Melody an effective weapon are Time Lord traits, not Gallifreyan traits. Melody Pond is a Human who is at least part Time Lord, but she is not a Gallifreyan.Icecreamdif 05:52, August 21, 2011 (UTC)


 * The fact that Vastra talks about billions of years of exposure is proof that she's _not_ talking about Time Lords (unless Time Lord history has radically changed). There were no Time Lords before Rassilon, and that's only 6241 years before The Deadly Assassin, not billions. (If you ignore the novels, we don't know for sure that Gallifreyan years are the same length as ours, but they're not a million times longer. And there's plenty of other evidence to corroborate the fact that Rassilon wasn't billions of years ago—for example, he was the first Lord President, and the Doctor was the 407th.)


 * More importantly, you're confusing different senses of the word "Gallifreyan". Obviously the ancestors of the modern species of Gallifreyans were also "Gallifreyan" in the same sense that Australopithecines are Earthlings, and hominids. But they weren't the same species. It's being "Gallifreyan" in the sense of "the species of modern near-humans who've been affected by time travel" that determines whether you have time sensitivity, not being a member of any species that evolved on Gallifrey, or being a citizen or resident or native of Gallifrey or anything else. Just because we only have one word "Gallifreyan" for all those things (unlike "human" vs. "Earthling" vs. "Earthborn" etc.) doesn't mean they're all the same thing. --173.228.85.35 20:15, August 21, 2011 (UTC)

Of course Time Lords haven't been around for billions of years, but it took billions of years of exposure to make it possible for the Gallifreyans to become Time Lords. The billions of years of exposure left the door open for Rassilon and Omega to create the Time Lords. Jenny is a good example of this. She is half Gallifreyan just like the Doctor is, as evidenced by the fact that she has two hearts. However, she was never exposed to the time vortex or the untempered schism, and so is not a Time Lady, as evidenced by the fact that she can not regenerate. Melody, on the other hand, was concieve in the time vortex, which opened the way for Kovarian to turn her into a time lady just like Rassilon turned the Gallifreyans into Time Lords. Icecreamdif 01:00, August 22, 2011 (UTC)


 * We don't know Jenny can't regenerate. She survived, so she didn't have to. Out-of-universe, when asked whether she could, RTD said something like, "I never decided, so it's up to Moffat." And the only evidence that she's not a Time Lady is the Doctor's shared-ethics/etc. speech, which contradicts what you're saying. --173.228.85.35 06:46, August 22, 2011 (UTC)


 * We certainly don't know Jenny can't regenerate. The glowing breath she exhaled as she revived closely resembled the breaths exhaled by the Doctor in The Christmas Invasion (and, later, in The Eleventh Hour) while he was still in the process of regenerating. Also, it's worth remembering the compressed timescale of events in The Doctor's Daughter: an entire multi-generational war took only a week. When Jenny was shot, it was significantly less than 15 hours after she had been generated by the machine. She may (repeat, may) have been the same state as the Doctor was when his hand was cut off -- still full of (re)generation energy and able to repair herself without going through the full regeneration process. She took longer to recover but that could have been because she was unconscious or because she had no training or because the injury was more serious or a combination of those reasons. Until/unless we learn more about her, the question of her ability to regenerate has to stay an open question. --89.242.65.86 07:30, August 22, 2011 (UTC)

Well I doubt that being clonedish really counts as a regeneration. It was the same process that was used to create the humans their, and I always assumed that the glowing breath she exhaled was supposed to be the source. I guess you're right that Jenny can't really be used as an argument for either side until we learn more about hr, but the rest of my point still stands.Icecreamdif 20:05, August 22, 2011 (UTC)

I didn't say it counted as a regeneration. I only speculated that her initial generation might have left her in a similar state to the Doctor, immediately after a regeneration (ie, that's a line future scriptwrites could take, if it suited them). The fact that the same machine was used to generate humans is rather beside the point; neither the Doctor nor Jenny is human. The Source being responsible for her revival is an alternative line future scriptwrites could take, of course. Until/unless someone actually does take one or other of those lines (or dreams up another one I've not thought of), we won't know just what happened. --89.242.68.217 17:27, August 23, 2011 (UTC)


 * In fact, RTD explicitly told us that he deliberately made the scene look similar but not identical to a regeneration, so a future writer could decide whether it had anything to do with regeneration or not. And as far as I know, that's the last word so far.


 * Plus, I dreamed up another one: We've seen cases where a Time Lord in a healing trance fooled even other Time Lords into thinking he was dead, so it could certainly fool Martha. Since I don't think we know whether healing trances are a natural part of their biology, or a special technique they learn at the Academy (although in the novels, the Doctor goes into trances involuntarily a few times), some future writer could decide Jenny was in a healing trance, and that would tell us nothing about the whole Gallifrey/Time Lord distinction… --173.228.85.35 03:18, August 24, 2011 (UTC)


 * Isn't there a line somewhere in the classic series to the effect that a "plebian" class exists on Gallifrey that are lower in status than the Time Lords? In light of what's been revealed recently in the new series, what do people think is the difference between Time Lords and ordinary Gallifreyans in the Doctor's time? 82.2.136.93 09:51, August 29, 2011 (UTC)
 * There's at least one such line: "Well, Castellan, in your line of duty you probably have more experience with the more plebian classes." It's not at all clear whether those plebians are urban Gallifreyans who aren't Time Lords, or just the lower classes of Time Lords. Then there's the Outsiders. In The Invasion of Time, they're primitives living in the wilderness of Gallifrey, wearing leather and skins and carrying bows and arrows. And finally, the Shobogans. The only mention of them on TV is that Shobogans were responsible for vandalism and graffiti in the Capitol. In the NAs by the Cartmel/Platt/Aaronovich contingent, they're are a tribe of primitive Outsiders going back to the time of Rassilon; in another NA, All-Consuming Fire, they're the Time Lord equivalent of "New Age dropouts"; in John Peel's NAs and EDAs, they're the peasant farmers of Time Lord society.
 * So, there's not much firm detail, and what there is, is somewhat contradictory. Which leaves lots of room for fan speculation. There are long threads on r.a.dw and the old OG forums full of such speculation over the decades, and I think I summarized the popular theories on another thread on this forum, so I won't go over all of them again. But I'll repeat my favorite theory because it's my favorite:
 * Time Lords are a sort of cross between modern British aristocracy and ancient Roman citizenship. Being born (or loomed, if you prefer) to one of the Great Houses means you're an automatic candidate for the title, but you still have to go through the right training and initiations (probably starting with looking into the Untempered Schism, and ending with graduating from the Academy). Someone from outside the Houses (even from outside Gallifrey) can be sponsored on the path as a child, similar to adoption into Roman families, but it's not that common. And meanwhile, the Lord President can grant titles (even to non-Gallifreyans) the way the British Monarch can, but that's even less common. Many Time Lords, including the Doctor at times, have the same kind of romantic notion of nobility that 19th-century British aristocrats did, which explains why the Doctor sees the real meaning of being a Time Lord as a shared history, code of ethics, suffering, responsibility, etc.
 * So, there's not much firm detail, and what there is, is somewhat contradictory. Which leaves lots of room for fan speculation. There are long threads on r.a.dw and the old OG forums full of such speculation over the decades, and I think I summarized the popular theories on another thread on this forum, so I won't go over all of them again. But I'll repeat my favorite theory because it's my favorite:
 * Time Lords are a sort of cross between modern British aristocracy and ancient Roman citizenship. Being born (or loomed, if you prefer) to one of the Great Houses means you're an automatic candidate for the title, but you still have to go through the right training and initiations (probably starting with looking into the Untempered Schism, and ending with graduating from the Academy). Someone from outside the Houses (even from outside Gallifrey) can be sponsored on the path as a child, similar to adoption into Roman families, but it's not that common. And meanwhile, the Lord President can grant titles (even to non-Gallifreyans) the way the British Monarch can, but that's even less common. Many Time Lords, including the Doctor at times, have the same kind of romantic notion of nobility that 19th-century British aristocrats did, which explains why the Doctor sees the real meaning of being a Time Lord as a shared history, code of ethics, suffering, responsibility, etc.


 * Historically, "Shobogans" were a rival tribe or nation (explaining Lungbarrow, etc.), but in modern (meaning classic-series through EDA) times, the word is used more generally, kind of like the word "vandal". Some Outsiders live in shantytowns around the Capitol, like the medieval lower classes in Europe; others deliberately avoid technology to live "naturally" in the wilderness; others live on relatively modern farms, and there may be even more variety than that. Some of the shantytown Outsiders use the name "Shobogan" with pride. The New Age dropouts mentioned in ACF are a group of Time Lords who chose to leave the Capitol, live among the primitive Outsiders, and call themselves Shobogans.


 * Biologically, they're all Gallifreyan. However, at least some of the Outsiders didn't benefit from Rassilon's improvements (remember, he originally wanted to share them with only a select few even)—although there's probably been more interbreeding than many Time Lords could care to admit.


 * The new series doesn't really change any of it, except for adding the Schism as part of the training/initiation. (As much as I'd like to believe that Time Lord history is actually unraveling the way it did in the later EDAs, there's absolutely no evidence of that, and some evidence against it.)


 * But keep in mind: All of that is speculation, and there are many alternative possibilities that are equally popular in fandom. Also, most of that theory originates with John Peel, whose attitude toward canonicity is 'whatever the people currently paying me to write say I should reference is true, everything else is false or irrelevant', and most of it comes from his posts during the early EDA era, so take that into consideration.
 * Within that framework, I was suggesting that River has all of the abilities of a Time Lord (even the ones that Outsiders don't have, if any) because of the TARDIS, and possibly because of Kovarian and the Silence. But that doesn't make her a Time Lord in the social sense, of course. I think the last episode, where she explicitly calls herself a "child of the TARDIS", adds some weight to that, but doesn't actually confirm it. --173.228.85.35 16:24, August 29, 2011 (UTC)
 * Within that framework, I was suggesting that River has all of the abilities of a Time Lord (even the ones that Outsiders don't have, if any) because of the TARDIS, and possibly because of Kovarian and the Silence. But that doesn't make her a Time Lord in the social sense, of course. I think the last episode, where she explicitly calls herself a "child of the TARDIS", adds some weight to that, but doesn't actually confirm it. --173.228.85.35 16:24, August 29, 2011 (UTC)

I actually agree with most of what you just said, but I still think that River is a Time Lady. I think the Academy is where Time Lords go to learn the laws of time and everything else they need to know, but they officialy become a Time Lord just by looking through the untempered schism. If they did not go to the academy, they would still be a timelod, just an untrained Time Lord.Through years of exposure to the votex, any Gallifreyan can become a Time Lord by looking into the schism, but many do not and becomd shobogans, or plebians, oroutsiders. I wouldn't be surprised if most of the guards with the funny helmets that we always saw in the classic Gallifrey episodes were not Time Lords. River however is a weird exception. Being concievved in the vortex replaced looking into the untempered schism, and being experimented on by Kovarian replaced being Gallifreyan. She is now a timelord, b ut not a Gallifreyan.Icecreamdif 22:32, August 29, 2011 (UTC)


 * I think River is something unique, the one and only "child of the TARDIS".


 * Then again, every surviving Time Lord (or Time Lord-esque character) in the new series is something unique. The Doctor is the half-human Champion of Time sole survivor of the Time War. River is whatever she is. The Master (assuming he'll come back some day, which seems a good assumption) was resurrected by the Time Lords, and then resurrected by humans in some quasi-magical ritual. Jenny is probably the only of one her kind ever. The Meta-Crisis Doctor and Doctor-Donna, we were explicitly told that had never happened before. The Ganger Doctor is probably the only one ever.


 * Lance Parkin once said that there's no point arguing over what makes a Time Lord in the post-War EDAs, because all that's left are four special cases, so there are no generalities. While this War didn't seem to affect the Doctor's history the same way as the last one, maybe the overall point is still valid. --173.228.85.35 03:57, August 30, 2011 (UTC)

I don't think that anyone is arguing that River isn't unique. The Doctor didn't really seem to believe that it was possible that Kovarian could create a Timelord in A Good Man Goes to War. That would suggest that what happenned to baby Melody was completely unheard of. My interpretation has always been tthat she is unique as the only human or non-Gallifreyan Time Lord, but I doubt that they will ever spell out exactly what she is.Icecreamdif 23:24, August 30, 2011 (UTC)


 * Well, Leela was a human Time Lady before her, but it's almost the exact opposite—she can't regenerate, or any of that, but she was given Time Lady status so she could officially work for Lady President Romana. (I may be remembering that wrong; it might have been the CIA doing it so they could hire her, or Andred doing it because he felt guilty, or just some Time Lady who was hoping it would mean she'd stop wearing the leather bikini around the Panopticon…)


 * Anyway, I think we can agree on this: If by "Time Lord" you mean "someone who can regenerate, absorb radiation, and commune naturally with TARDISes", she's half-Time Lord; if you mean "someone who's got the fancy robes in her closet and is allowed to wear them," she's not. If, like the Doctor, you sometimes mean one thing, sometimes the other, sometimes both, and sometimes neither, then the answer is different each time. --173.228.85.35 04:07, August 31, 2011 (UTC)


 * We know other species can regenerate, so I'd say is indeed more of a political term. Technically, The Doctor's the President of the Timelords, so if he wants to appoint someone that status, of course he could. Perhaps he will?


 * 86.160.74.7 20:17, September 3, 2011 (UTC)
 * Good point; they actually did establish that a President Elect who never assumed the role could take over the position if his successor died, he's still assumed the role one less time than he was elected to it, and he's probably the last one ever to be in that position, so technically he could declare himself President. Or, hell, forget the technicalities; just call for a new vote among all living Time Lords, and he wins 1-0. (Unless the Master happens to be back alive at that point.)
 * And that could be a great plotline for a novel or IDW arc, the Doctor re-creating the Time Lords by appointing humans (or maybe different species from around time and space) to take over for his people. But it's hard to see it working on TV. (That could just be a failure of my imagination, and if Moffat or some future writer, or even a fan with clever ideas, wanted to prove me wrong, I'd definitely be open to it, of course.) --173.228.85.35 03:37, September 4, 2011 (UTC)
 * And that could be a great plotline for a novel or IDW arc, the Doctor re-creating the Time Lords by appointing humans (or maybe different species from around time and space) to take over for his people. But it's hard to see it working on TV. (That could just be a failure of my imagination, and if Moffat or some future writer, or even a fan with clever ideas, wanted to prove me wrong, I'd definitely be open to it, of course.) --173.228.85.35 03:37, September 4, 2011 (UTC)

Wasn't there a line in Trial of a Timelord that said that he had forfeited his presidency by not showing up? Knowing the Time Lords, becoming Lord President is more complicated than just declaring a vote. I'm sure that its filled with all sorts of rituals, more than we saw in just Deadly Assasin. And the, of course, in Invasion of Time we saw that you need to hook yourself up to the matrix. Right now, the mosst likely way fo the Time Lords to come back would probably be the Doctor and River's descendants. Icecreamdif 15:18, September 4, 2011 (UTC)

In Remembrance of the Daleks, when addressing Davros, the Doctor called himself "President-Elect of the High Council of Time Lords" and used several other titles that seem to go with the Presidency. Without reviewing the DVD, I can't recall all of them but I'm fairly sure one of the titles was "Keeper of the Legacy of Rassilon". That was later in his timeline than Trial of a Time Lord, so either he'd not forfeited his Presidency (but still hadn't taken it up) or the High Council had decided to make another attempt to saddle him with the Presidency. He'd apparently not taken up the office of President by the time of Survival, a couple of years later, so it's clear he really didn't want it. --2.96.28.193 00:19, September 5, 2011 (UTC)

I haven't seen Trial of a Timelord in a while, but there was definetly a line where he tries to get out of his trial being, the Lord Presidnt and all, and the Timelords said something along the lines of "You never showeed up, you're not esident anymore." Maybe he was just lying to impress Davros. Icecreamdif 02:52, September 5, 2011 (UTC)


 * Remember, the Doctor was elected twice (4th in The Invasion of Time, and 5th in The Five Doctors), and only the second one was rescinded. (I forget the wording in the TV episodes, but the Trial novelization makes it clear that he was officially deposed, and a new election was held.)


 * One of the NA novels later says that the Doctor can't claim the Presidency on the basis of his first election because he has a legitimate successor. The EDA The Ancestor Cell seems to imply that wasn't actually true, given that Greyjan is able to claim the Presidency away from Romana. (Unless that was a special case—Greyjan only lost the office because he was dead, and now he's no longer dead?) But whether legitimate successors would stand in his way or not doesn't seem to matter given that he no longer has any.


 * More importantly, if he wanted to call himself Lord President and start appointing new Time Lords, who would argue with him? --173.228.85.35 07:14, September 5, 2011 (UTC)

I haven't seenn the episodes dealing with his presidency in a while, but didn't he un in Deadly Assassin win by default, leave, come back to claim the presidency in Invasion of Time, then Borusa was President for a while, then he became a statue, then the Doctor became President due to the fist election from The Deadly Assassin? I might be remembering wrong though. Either way, he can declare himself any Time Lord position and noone would argue(Time Lord Victorius, for example). I doubt that appointing humans to be Time Lords would do much good anyway. If I understand you correctly about Leela, she became a Time Lord by going to the academy. Since the Academy is gone, ino humans the Doctor appoints could be trained as Time Lords, and without billioons of years of exposure to the time vortex they aren't biologically Time Lords, so the whole thing would be rather pointless. Icecreamdif 15:55, September 5, 2011 (UTC)


 * That's all correct up to The Five Doctors (although only if you accept either the EDAs or the BFAs; otherwise, there's no evidence that the President the Guardians impersonated was Borusa's previous incarnation). However, when Borusa turned to stone, the 5th Doctor didn't automatically become President because of his previous election. Instead, the Council considered the post vacant and held a special emergency summit of the Full Council to elect a replacement, and they chose him because of his qualifications.


 * As for Leela, I think you're mixing up her and Ace. The Doctor wanted to send Ace to the Academy, but never did; Leela was simply declared a Time Lady (and given one of their long silly names) to shut up someone who challenged her right to some position.


 * Anyway, if the Doctor appointed new Time Lords, he could presumably also create a new Academy and train the first batch personally, just like Luke Skywalker did in the Star Wars novels with his new Jedi Academy. Of course they wouldn't be exactly the same as the Gallifreyan Time Lords, but the Doctor wouldn't want them to be anyway.


 * He could save himself a bit of effort by starting with people who are part of the way there as far as experience, theoretical knowledge, and/or abilities. Gather up Captain Jack, Ace (assuming she's cruising around on her timebike, and not running a charity on Earth), Nyssa, the Chestertons, Jenny, Luke Smith, Fitz, and maybe a few other non-TV characters. Then, while training them, start having them recruit new candidates (more like Professor Xavier than Luke Skywalker now, but same idea). Just make sure to remind Jack and Fitz not to take the "fathering a new race" thing too literally, and it should work out great. --173.228.85.35 02:39, September 6, 2011 (UTC)

Well, I don't know what happenned in the spin-off stuff, but I can't really see Leela as a time lady. I think she'd be much happier as an outider, but that's beside the point. I guess the Doctor training new Time Lords could could work, but I can't really see the Doctor staying in one place long enough to teach a class how to be Time Lords, not to mention the serious lack of TARDISes left in the universe. Besides, didn't Romana say that he got terrible grades at the academy?I guess they could use vortex manipulators or ssomething though. Besides, most of the people ayou listed are busy, aren't they. Jack's with Torchwood trying to make everyone on Earth die, Nyssa's off on a space leper ship, and the Doctor think's Jenny's dead. The Chestertons also probably wouldn't know the first thing about the laws of time. Still, even if he did give a bunch of people his time lord training, would they really be Time Lords? What would be the differenece between them and, say, the Time Agency? There's still all that stuff the Doctor said to Jenny about a combined hsitory and suffering etc. Icecreamdif 03:48, September 6, 2011 (UTC)


 * The Doctor clearly understands his stuff. Presumably he got bad grades at the Academy because he was too smart and wasn't being stimulated enough (that being the prevailing wisdom in the 70s, before PhiCorp discovered how much money they could make selling ritalin). The fact that they're each busy at some particular point in time doesn't matter; having a time machine means you don't have to sit around tapping your feet while Jack kills all humans, you can just hop a few months ahead and pick him up then. As for the Chestertons: nobody on the list is a ready-made Time Lord, but they'd all be useful—in their case, wouldn't you want a couple of trained teachers (who've even taught a Time Lady) and who somehow happen to have been in their 30s for 50+ years?


 * For the most important question, whether they'd really be Time Lords is a matter of definition. He could definitely mold them into something much more than just a Time Agency—especially with access to all of the knowledge in his head and in the TARDIS's databanks, rather than just what humanity managed to discover on its own over a few centuries. On top of that, if the Eternals have come back to the universe (as I think RTD implied somewhere or other), they'd presumably have Time herself to guide them. Of course they wouldn't be like the old Time Lords in every way, but, again, he wouldn't want that anyway. It really is exactly the same thing as Luke's New Jedi Academy; he couldn't possibly re-create exactly the same Jedi Council we saw in the prequels, but he was could easily create something better than just another army or police force. (Of course, having done a quick look around the net to see what happened in all those Star Wars novels I never read, it looks like he actually did a lot more training up his own worst enemies and turning himself to the dark side than anything else… but Luke's a whiny little brat who doesn't wear either bowties or hats, so what does that prove?)


 * The one question I can't answer is your first one. Could the Doctor really come up with enough patience to put together a new Academy and run it for at least the first generation? Probably not. Maybe if it were absolutely necessary (because the only alternative was something like the Council of Eight from the novels, or even the Daleks, becoming Lords of Time), but even then it would certainly be difficult for him, and far too tempting to just say, "Hey, Ace, I had this dream where all the Time Lords died and you took over without any help from me and everything turned out just fine, so… I'm off, good luck." --173.228.85.35 05:09, September 6, 2011 (UTC)


 * Ace would shout at him -- quite a lot -- if he did that. Of course, she might then go ahead, anyway. --89.241.68.80 17:36, September 6, 2011 (UTC)
 * Why do you think she calls him 'Professor'? Boblipton 17:39, September 6, 2011 (UTC)
 * Partly because he told her not to. "I'm the Doctor, not the 'Professor'."--89.242.67.85 20:32, September 7, 2011 (UTC)
 * Why do you think she calls him 'Professor'? Boblipton 17:39, September 6, 2011 (UTC)
 * Partly because he told her not to. "I'm the Doctor, not the 'Professor'."--89.242.67.85 20:32, September 7, 2011 (UTC)


 * The more I think about it, the more I think that if the series does ever finally end, it has to be with Ace coming back and either taking over the universe in the Doctor's stead, or blowing it up in Davros's stead. --173.228.85.35 04:18, September 8, 2011 (UTC)
 * I'd certainly like to see Ace come back, but not under those particular circumstances (either option). --2.96.20.250 15:20, September 8, 2011 (UTC)

If Ace ever does come back, the mot likely time will probably be for the 50th anniversary in 2 years. Somehow I doubt that they are randomly going to bring the character back for the last episode. She was already there the first time the series ended anyway.Icecreamdif 18:13, September 8, 2011 (UTC)

When I say I'd like to see Ace come back, I don't mean just for one episode, and most definitely not just for a cameo in one episode. I'd like her to return as at least a semi-regular companion -- someone who, unlike Sarah Jane, would not say, "I couldn't do this anymore," when invited to travel with the Doctor again, but would say, "Wicked! Let's go." --78.146.188.130 22:07, September 8, 2011 (UTC)

While Ace was easily the best companion of the classic sereies after Romana left, I doubt that they'll brng her back on a semi-permanent basis. The closest the've done to that is Saraah Jane who's just appeared in a few episodes, and got her own spin-off. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want to see Ace running around with a gang of children, fighting aliens from her attic. The show has never rally brought companions back on a semi-permanent basis (unless you ccount Tegan who came back in the episode after she left). They generallly create new companions, rather than bringing back old ones. The new series likes to have companions guest star after they leave, but I don't think that they would want to bring back any past companion as a regular. If Moffat has any sense, there will probably be more than a few past companions returning in 2013. I'd personally like to see something like The Five Doctors, with the different Doctors working together with their companions, but perhaps done a bit better than that episode. The Five Doctors wasn't bad, but it's kind of a weird title when one of the Doctors was stuck insiede the TV (and couldn't talk like The Three Doctors), and they had to recast another Doctor. Has anybody else noticed how completely off topic this has gotten? What ddoes Ace becoming a regular companion have to do with how the time Lords evolved.Icecreamdif 23:30, September 8, 2011 (UTC)

Not a lot. This may be an indication we've run out of ideas that are actually relevant to the topic. --78.146.188.130 23:53, September 8, 2011 (UTC)

It's amusing. Boblipton 23:57, September 8, 2011 (UTC)

i will atempt to get every one back on track

time lord is not a species more a order and it can include any species for instance river is time lady/ human the doc and master are time lord /galifrayen remember in the first adventure game the emp dalek says we will be the new time lords so this means you could have any species as time lord for instance raxacoricofalapatorian timelord or sontaran timelord as for jenny i think she is a galafrayen that has strugled with the conspt of regenaration from her dad -Whooligist 15:22, September 9, 2011 (UTC)-

Yeah, but in the past, during the Classic Series, there were only Gallifreayn Time Lords. Becoming a Time Lord must be more complicated than just deciidng to be one, thus the untempered schism. For example, regeneration really seems to be more of a Time Lord thing than a Gallifreyan thing, as was hinted in Mawdryn Undead. A raxicoricofalapatorian, for example, would have to spend billions of years exposed to the time vortex and then look into the untempered schism to become a time lord. That, or be concieved inside the time vortex and then be experimented o {C}have their DNA messed with while they're still an egg. Come to think of itt, wasn't the Slitheen in Boom Town exposed to the vortex as an egg.Icecreamdif 20:19, September 9, 2011 (UTC)

In Boom Town Blon Fel-Fotch Passameer-Day Slitheen was regressed to an egg by the TARDIS using (I assume) the power of the vortex. However, that egg had not been conceived in the vortex, so the situation is different.

With respect to Whooligist, not only is that a game, rather than an aired episode of the series, but what the Dalek Emperor meant by the term "time lords" tells us nothing about what the Time Lords meant by it.

Although Time Lord status does have many of the features of an order, rather than a species, that does not mean species is irrelevant. The situation wasn't made completely clear in the 1963-89 run of the show (we'd not be having this discussion, if it had) but all the Time Lords in the show were Gallifreyan in origin, although it seems not all Gallifreyans were regarded as Time Lords. In the revived series, in The Doctor's Daughter, the Doctor says, "There's more to being a Time Lord than biology," (that may not be an exact quote but it gets the meaning right) and he goes on to talk of shared history and so on. However, one of us might say much the same about being human, especially if confronted with someone biologically human who'd been generated in the way Jenny was. The Doctor did not say the biology didn't matter. He only said there was more to it than that. Both the 1963-89 run and the revival agree that genetics are involved, so that it makes sense to talk of "Time Lord DNA", just as it does to talk of "human DNA".

The opportunity for the original run to make it clear that a non-Gallifreyan could become a Time Lord was lost when the series was cancelled before the episode in which Ace (yes, her again!) was due to leave to go to Gallifrey to train as a Time Lord. Even if that episode had been made and aired, it might not have told us much about how a non-Gallifreyan could become a Time Lord. It would certainly have told us training was involved but would probably not have told us if anything more was required -- not unless it had been decided to follow Ace's subsequent career, and there were no plans for that.

To indulge in speculation: Perhaps Ace would have had her biology rewritten permanently by some technology related to the chameleon arch, so that she'd have 2 hearts, etc. We don't know.

It is, of course, entirely possible that we'll learn more before the end of the current series. In Let's Kill Hitler, for example, we were shown that the people responsible for the Teselecta regarded Time Lord as a species. Again, though, this is an "outsiders' view" that doesn't necessarily correspond to the Time Lords' own "insiders' view" of what makes a Time Lord a Time Lord. --89.242.72.177 22:15, September 9, 2011 (UTC)


 * Whatever we learn isn't going to help anyone who can't understand the concept that words are ambiguous and vague. The word "Time Lord" is sometimes used for a species or subspecies (the Teselecta records), sometimes for an order or whatever social thing (the Doctor's speech about Jenny), sometimes for the general concept of mastery over time (the Emperor Dalek's speech). Trying to argue that it can't be biological because of the Emperor Dalek's speech, but no, it can't be social because of the Teselecta records, is silly; it's like trying to argue that "edit" can't be a verb because there are edit summaries, but "edit" can't be a noun because there's an "edit this page" link.


 * PS, Margaret Slitheen was regressed to an egg by the power of the Heart of the TARDIS. Maybe that means she can't be a half-Time-Lady Child of the TARDIS like River, but instead only a quarter-Time-Lady/half-Bad-Wolf-Entity Niece of the TARDIS instead. But honestly, that sounds like even more fun. :) --12.249.226.210 22:23, September 9, 2011 (UTC)

The thing about Margaret was just a random thought since Raxacaricofalapatorians somehow got involved in this conversation, but even if the TARDIS did do more than deage her, somebody would still have to mess with her DNA while she was in the egg if she was to become a Time Lord. Since the Doctor took her back to Raaxacoricofalapatorius, I doubt that anything like that happened. I think that everyone here knows that Time Lord can be used dometimes to describe the species and sometimes to describe what is basically an order. I don't know much about the planned story with Ace, but my guess would be that the plan was for her to go to the Time Lord Academy, learn about the laws of time and whatever else Time Lords learn about, and maybe even wear their robes and funny hats, but she would never become a true Time Lady. Has there ever been an episode that stated that the two hearts thing was a Time Lord trait, because I always assumed that that was a Gallifreyan thing. That would mean that the outsiders would have two hearts but River would only have one.-Icecreamdif


 * Based on what we know in the TV show: the First Doctor had one heart, all or most of his later incarnations had two, a handful of other Time Lords who were probably not in their first incarnation had two, the 10th Doctor's clone-daughter had two, there are aliens out there who might be another species (but for all we know might be a Gallifreyan colony) who also have two hearts… and that's it. At one point, it seemed like the NAs had confirmed the long-standing fanon that you get your second heart when you regenerate the first time, but later novels made it either more complicated or just contradictory. Meanwhile, we don't actually know whether Outsiders have two hearts (or only have two hearts after they regenerate… or even if they regenerate), so even if we could decide what two hearts meant, the Outsiders wouldn't help find any answers. --12.249.226.210 22:52, September 9, 2011 (UTC)


 * As far as I recall, the number of hearts the First Doctor had was never specified on air. However, in The End of Time, Rassilon spoke of a rhythm of 4 as "the heartbeat of a Time Lord", implying that a Time Lord -- any Time Lord -- has 2 hearts. --89.242.72.177 23:31, September 9, 2011 (UTC)

I haven't seen a lot of First Doctor episodes, but which episode said he only has one heart. It's been pretty much confirmed that regeneraton is a Time Lord rather than a Gallifreya trait, so the outsiders can probably not regeneerate. Icecreamdif 01:15, September 10, 2011 (UTC)


 * How has that been confirmed? The classic series definitely implied that Rassilon invented regeneration, but the new information this season implies very strongly that they evolved regeneration over billions of years. That's the whole point of this thread.


 * As for the one heart thing: It's one of the oldest debates in fandom; I can't believe you've never heard of it. Here's the problem: There are two 1st Doctor episodes (one was in The Edge of Destruction; I forget the other, but it was a Ben and Polly story) that show that the 1st Doctor has a human-normal pulse. Spearhead from Space, which firmly establishes the 3rd Doctor's two hearts, also implies a double pulse to go with it, and The Five Doctors later confirms the double pulse (and of course both the two hearts and the double pulse have been referenced many times since, including The End of Time). So, how do you explain that single pulse?


 * Obviously, out of universe, the writers just hadn't decided that Time Lords have two hearts yet (or, for that matter, that the Doctor was a Time Lord—at the time of Destruction, they were still debating whether to make him an alien at all). But fans always want an in-universe explanation, so they invented a variety of them. One possibility is that his apparent single pulse didn't mean he only had one heart; it was just an artifact of the same heart condition that ultimately led to his regeneration. But the more popular theory was that it did mean only one heart, and Time Lords only get their second heart at their first regeneration.


 * For decades, this was just a fanon debate, completely ignored by the series. The season-27 serial Lungbarrow was apparently going to finally canonize the "one heart" theory, but of course season 27 never happened, so that had to wait for the NAs. Despie what 12 said above, the NAs never contradicted this theory; they did add a lot to it, but all of it ties together. Pre-Curse Gallifreyans were born with two hearts. After the Curse, when Rassilon invented the looms, new Gallifreyans were loomed with only one heart, and only gained the second on regeneration. A few millennia later, someone figured out how to improve the looms, so they could have two hearts from the start. However, the "Oldblood Houses" had looms going back to the days of Rassilon, and didn't cotton to these newfangled ideas. Since Lungbarrow was an Oldblood House, the Doctor was loomed with one heart.


 * None of this is contradicted by the TV movie, the EDA/PDA novels, or (so far) the new series. However, they all imply pretty strongly that, even if most Gallifreyans are loomed (which doesn't seem likely), the 1st Doctor was not. (Lungbarrow takes care of the TV movie, but not the EDAs and the new series.) Which means the whole thing seems irrelevant as an explanation for his single pulse. (Over in Faction Paradox land, it seems like the Time Lords may have intentionally rewritten their history during the War so that even the Oldblood Houses had always kept their looms up to date with modern technology, which would imply that if you went back and met the 1st Doctor now, he'd have a double pulse. But that doesn't help wih the new series at all.) The one place it _is_ contradicted is the BFAs. In Frostfire (written by, of all people, Marc Platt), the Cinder tells Vicki that the 1st Doctor has two hearts. --173.228.85.35 08:42, September 10, 2011 (UTC)


 * For now, I'm going with the idea that the Time Lords were like mutants in Marvel comics - a separate race that existed alongside ordinary Gallifreyans for tens of thousands of years. Rassilon and Omega were members of this race, and were responsible for its rise to power. 82.2.136.93 09:51, September 10, 2011 (UTC)


 * Well, given that characters from DWM and the Marvel Universe crossed over (like when Death's Head went from chasing Galvatron to the Doctor), I suppose you can get away with that. :) --173.228.85.35 11:20, September 10, 2011 (UTC)


 * just to add to the idea that the doctor had just 1 heart in his first incarnation, he looked very old (relatively) for his age. seeing as he was "just a child" at age 90 and regenerated at age 450 (according to this wiki), lets say that a timelord decade is like 1 human year so he was the equivalent of 9 when he close the madusa cascade and 45 when he regenerated. he looked much older than 45 at the time of regeneration. mybe the single heart was the cause of him seeming to age faster in that incarnation than the others. for example, the 11 doctor didn't look much different after 200 (equivalent of 20) years. i'm not so familiar with the clasic series, but i think this could be evidence leading towards that theory.Imamadmad 11:53, September 10, 2011 (UTC)

The noly Ben and Polly episode I've sen iis The War Machines, but in The Edge of Destruction wasn't it Ian or Barbara who took his pulse. Neither of them are exxactly doctors, are they. They could have easily been unable to tel the difference.Icecreamdif 17:43, September 10, 2011 (UTC)


 * If you've seen The Sound of The Drums, The End of Time, or The Five Doctors, the difference is pretty obvious to any layman.


 * For the one heart making him age and weaken faster: It's possible. If you read the series of EDAs starting with The Adventuress of Henrietta Street, after losing his second heart, the 8th Doctor finds some of his Time Lord abilities gone, others diminished, and others unchanged. For example, his stamina is still super-human, but not nearly as good as he's used to. So, it's possible that it meant the 1st Doctor aged at 1/5th human speed instead of 1/25th, or whatever. On the other hand, if you the novels leading up to Adventuress, they can just as well be used to back up the other theory, that he had two hearts but had a heart condition that made him weak, because that's exactly what's going on in those novels. --173.228.85.35 20:48, September 10, 2011 (UTC)


 * Inexperienced humans can have trouble finding any pulse at all, never mind telling the difference between one and two. Anyway, it's expremely rare for anyone (other than a medical professional or trainee) even to try to find a pulse unless someone is ill/injured and unconscious. In the stories referred to, the humans concerned wouldn't have known to check for more than one and would stop looking as soon as they found any pulse at all. We know from The Christmas Invasion (if from nowhere else) that a Time Lord who is sufficiently unwell may only have one heart beating. In those circumstances, only a single pulse would be there to be found. That means that, even if the Doctor really did have only one pulse at the time, rather than having two but one being overlooked, it still doesn't mean he only had one heart, just that only one was functioning. --89.240.248.153 06:10, September 11, 2011 (UTC)


 * You don't have to stop and look for another pulse; it's pretty clear from The Five Doctors that putting your finger in one place, you feel a four-beat pattern instead of a two-beat pattern. And you heard what that pattern sounds like in Sound of the Drums; it's clearly different from a human pulse.


 * As for the other part, both Imamadmad and I posted reasons above why his apparent single pulse wouldn't necessarily mean he only had one heart, so you don't need to keep harping on about The Christmas Invasion, which has already been mentioned.


 * Anyway, none of this has any effect on the fact that there's been a fan controversy over this going back probably before you were born, and the two most popular theories have each been canonized in conflicting stories. Obviously 12 above is part of the "one heart" faction, and so are thousands of other fans, while thousands of others believe the "weakness" theory instead, and they've both got canonical stories to back them up now. You can't just declare one or the other wrong, unless you want to say that the BFAs are canon but the NAs aren't, or vice-versa. --173.228.85.35 06:36, September 11, 2011 (UTC)
 * "there's been a fan controversy over this going back probably before you were born": I was 10 years, 1 month and 20 days old when An Unearthly Child was first broadcast, so there couldn't be a Doctor Who fan before I was born, never mind enough fans to have a controversy. Furthermore, the heartbeat pattern as heard needn't indicate what would be felt when taking a pulse. Time Lords, as has been stated numerous times in the show, have a binary vascular system. That means 2 sets of blood vessels. Even if nothing earlier had told us anything about it, the display shown in Dalek made it clear that each heart is connected to its own set of blood vessels. A pulse is felt where an artery is near enough to the surface. The pulse can't be felt even a short distance away, which is why you need to know where to look for it. If there are 2 sets of arteries, they may be very near each other in, say, the wrist or the neck, but they cannot be in precisely the same place. Thus, it's at least possible for someone to feel one of the two pulses but not the other. If you get your fingers positioned over both arteries, you'll feel both pulses; if you put them over one artery but not the other, you'll feel only one (or the second will be faint enough that, unless you're expecting it, you won't notice it). Furthermore, when an inexperienced person tries to find a pulse, it's by no means unknown for the pulse that's felt to be that person's own pulse, rather than the patient's. Finally, I don't actually care what novels, audios, etc. say. I'm going only by broadcast episodes. --2.96.20.145 17:15, September 11, 2011 (UTC)

Going by broadcast episodes, Doctor's Daughter pretty much confirms that Time Lords are born with one heart. As for regeneration being a Time Lord trait rather than a Gallifreyan trait, I was mainly referring to Mawdryn Undead, and the fact that the part-Time Laady River Song can regenerate(though I suppose using River as evidnece is going in circles since 173 is still convinced that River is actually part-Gallifreyan).Icecreamdif 17:26, September 11, 2011 (UTC)

How did The Doctor's Daughter confirm that Time Lords are born with one heart? Jenny had two hearts, right from the start. Besides, she wasn't born, so she proves nothing about Time Lords who are born. --2.96.20.145 20:35, September 11, 2011 (UTC)