Howling:Millennia of time travel turned Gallifreyans into TIme Lords?

According to the discussion at the end of A Good Man Goes to War, the Gallifreyans became Time Lords, gaining their super-human powers, because of eons of time travel. And just being conceived in the TARDIS was enough to change Melody Pond sufficiently to give the baddies a starting point to turn her into a quasi-Time Lord.

In the classic series, it was Rassilon's genetic/biomorphic/whatever engineering that made the Time Lords what they are today.

Sure, Rassilon might still be important. Maybe he sifted through the myriad changes that had natually happened to his people's biodata through eons of time travel, and organized it all into a consistent set of improvements that all Time Lords could inherit. But still, no matter how you look at it, it's a major retcon.

Maybe this shouldn't be surprising. The EDAs made it pretty clear that the Second War in Heaven dramatically changed the history of the Time Lords, and many of those changes were a lot more radical than the origin of their regeneration abilities. And that war ended with their entire history being completely erased. They were later recreated from the information in the Matrix and the Doctor's own personal memory (implied to happen at some point after the last EDA). And then came the Last Great Time War, and a reboot of the entire universe which both affected history in ways that haven't been made clear.

Meanwhile, is it a coincidence that Melody's DNA scanned as "human+"? There's a background thread running through the EDAs which was never paid off in those novels: When humans from around 2000 are scanned, they show up as "human", but humans from the future show up as "human+"--and Time Lords as "human++++". There are a few different interpretations to that. But Lawrence Miles says that when he first introduced this idea, what he had in mind is something like this: When Rassilon reshaped the biomorphic field of the universe trying to ensure that nobody could rise to universe-wide power unless they were like the Gallifreyans (at the end of the First War in Heaven), he was more successful than he thought. Humans started off not just like pre-Rassilon Gallifeyans, but identical to them. And they have at least the potential to evolve into Time Lords in the same way the Gallifeyans did. This could be an inspiration from the Moff's current plot. (Keep in mind that someone involved in the show has obviously been going over the EDAs and BFAs, because they've been borrowing and altering plot lines from some, while directly referencing others. And the EDA that started that whole human++++ thing, Alien Bodies, starts off with the Doctor's future corpse.) --99.175.102.45 05:32, June 5, 2011 (UTC)


 * 1- I would be pleased to see anything Lawrence Miles ever wrote, being worked into modern Who. LM certainly seems to feel the new show owes him some apologies. :) (Go read his "Doctor Who Thing" blog.) 2- You're making good sense about the need to play retcon detective; I was howling about "time tots" back in the Saxon trilogy, because dangit, Gallifreyans are sterile and are born in looms! Not wombs! 3- By all appearances, and the internal logic of both the novels and the show, the show's universe would be (from the POV of Rassilon's Wheel) fraying a bit; the Matrix's recordings are gone, so history is free to change, so retcons can happen more frequently. The universe is weaker... which, among other things, works fine for Rassilon. I'm sure he'd like to restore from one of those 8 backup universes, and the universe certainly seems to be in read-write mode.
 * 99.175, I've been starting on the EDAs, so thanks for the cue about Alien Bodies. Agonaga 16:35, June 5, 2011 (UTC)
 * "Gallifreyans are sterile and are born in looms! Not wombs!" Only if you accept material that's in novels. In the TV show, Susan was stated to be the Doctor's granddaughter, never his "adopted" granddaughter. The Doctor has several times said he's been a parent. He's implied he had at least one brother (Smith and Jones). I know some people are very keen on the loom idea, but it can't be relied on where the TV show is concerned. --2.101.58.149 20:32, June 5, 2011 (UTC)
 * :: Yes, but remember according to 8, the Doctor is only half Gallifreyan. 187.78.119.32 18:05, June 8, 2011 (UTC)
 * The ancient Gallifreyans had no access to the Time Vortex until Omega detonated the star referred to in The Three Doctors, and Omega was a contemporary of Rassilon and the Other. Those three were the first Time Lords. They did not have to wait billions of years before they gained the ability to regenerate; that was something discovered quite early on by Rassilon. EJA 10:12, June 8, 2011 (UTC)
 * My first thought was - "The Doctor lies". In this case he would have good reason to - to discourage others from attempting to create a new race of Timelords. 187.78.119.32 18:05, June 8, 2011 (UTC)
 * :: Yes, but remember according to 8, the Doctor is only half Gallifreyan. 187.78.119.32 18:05, June 8, 2011 (UTC)
 * The ancient Gallifreyans had no access to the Time Vortex until Omega detonated the star referred to in The Three Doctors, and Omega was a contemporary of Rassilon and the Other. Those three were the first Time Lords. They did not have to wait billions of years before they gained the ability to regenerate; that was something discovered quite early on by Rassilon. EJA 10:12, June 8, 2011 (UTC)
 * My first thought was - "The Doctor lies". In this case he would have good reason to - to discourage others from attempting to create a new race of Timelords. 187.78.119.32 18:05, June 8, 2011 (UTC)
 * My first thought was - "The Doctor lies". In this case he would have good reason to - to discourage others from attempting to create a new race of Timelords. 187.78.119.32 18:05, June 8, 2011 (UTC)
 * My first thought was - "The Doctor lies". In this case he would have good reason to - to discourage others from attempting to create a new race of Timelords. 187.78.119.32 18:05, June 8, 2011 (UTC)

If he's trying to avoid anyone creating a new race of Time Lords, he may have a slight problem, right now. --78.146.183.134 18:24, June 8, 2011 (UTC)


 * He has the only remaining TARDIS, which is supposedly what gave Melody a headstart by being conceived in it. Others may try but they would have to go the "long way around" as it were. (Although of course we have seen the Silence apparently trying to build at least one TARDIS.) 187.78.119.32 19:36, June 8, 2011 (UTC)
 * The Doctor does have the only remaining TARDIS, as far as anyone yet knows, but from what was said in A Good Man Goes to War (dialogue between the Doctor and Vastra) it wasn't being conceived in the TARDIS that gave Melody her head start, it was being conceived in the vortex. Admittedly, that really requires a time capsule of some kind. The other means of travelling the vortex (like the vortex manipulators used by River and, when his works, by Jack) don't really lend themselves to conceiving offspring en route. Nevertheless, something like the Silence ship might be enough. The same could be said of a capsule that used a (presumably more powerful) vortex manipulator. --2.96.25.232 20:48, June 8, 2011 (UTC)
 * The Doctor does have the only remaining TARDIS, as far as anyone yet knows, but from what was said in A Good Man Goes to War (dialogue between the Doctor and Vastra) it wasn't being conceived in the TARDIS that gave Melody her head start, it was being conceived in the vortex. Admittedly, that really requires a time capsule of some kind. The other means of travelling the vortex (like the vortex manipulators used by River and, when his works, by Jack) don't really lend themselves to conceiving offspring en route. Nevertheless, something like the Silence ship might be enough. The same could be said of a capsule that used a (presumably more powerful) vortex manipulator. --2.96.25.232 20:48, June 8, 2011 (UTC)