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The Time Lords were inhabitants of the planet Gallifrey, who were most famous for the creation and attempted monopolisation of time travel technology. (TVThe Time Warrior) They created and upheld the Laws of Time. (TVThe Three DoctorsAttack of the Cybermen)

They had an instinctive urge to stay away from events that would always happen. They were seen as nearly immortal, (TVThe War Games) partially due to their ability to regenerate. (TVPlanet of the Spiders)

One of their many conflicts was a war against the Great Vampires, which was so long and bloody that they turned against violence in general. (TVState of Decay) For at least part of their history, the Time Lords adhered to a strict policy of non-interference. (TVThe War Games) Despite their attempts to keep up an appearance of being uninterested in the affairs of others, they still sent discreet missions where other Time Lords would act on their behalf. (TVColony in SpaceThe Two DoctorsGenesis of the Daleks, et al.) On one occasion, the Fourth Doctor was instructed to intercept the creation of the Dalek race, (TVGenesis of the Daleks)

By the time of the Sixth Doctor, the Time Lords had reigned in "absolute power" for ten million years. (TVThe Ultimate Foe)

Characteristics[]

Taxonomy[]

External appearance[]

Externally, Gallifreyans were usually identical to humans. Hair and eye colour were of any colour found among humans. Teeth were indistinguishable from human teeth. (TVThe Gunfighters)  However, while Romana I was regenerating into Romana II, she took on various appearances varying in height and build, and even one with blue skin. (TVDestiny of the Daleks)

The Eighth Doctor's eyes could change colour between green and blue. (TV: Vampire Science)  The Master's eyes could change colour from dark brown, flecked with gold, to midnight blue, to a deep purple. (PROSEDoctor Who and the Dæmons

However, Time Lords' physical forms were only fragments of much vaster multi-dimensional ones, existing in a realm invisible to humans. (PROSE:  Sky Pirates!, Deceit, The Taking of Planet 5) For at least some, referred to as caillou, this aspect was able to manipulate luck around a Time Lord. (TVChristmas on a Rational Planet)

Resilience[]

Gallifreyans were, on the whole, extremely tough and resilient. An average Gallifreyan was superior to a human at their peak. (PROSEDoctor Who and the Terror of the Autons)

If pushed from a height into a liquid, as the Fifth Doctor was during a scuffle in the reactor room of Sea Base 4 when a guard was fighting him on a gangway over the cooling tank, a Time Lord body was capable of protecting them, sealing up the lungs to conserve air for a short period. (PROSEWarriors of the Deep)

They could even survive the subzero temperatures and extremely low pressure of vacuum for around six minutes, (TVFour to Doomsday)  and survive electric shocks that would be fatal to humans. (TVGenesis of the DaleksTerror of the Zygons)

Radiation could be fatal, but even then a Gallifreyan could handle much higher doses than a normal human could, and could hold out much longer than even most terrestrial life-forms, (TVPlanet of the Spiders)

Gallifreyans needed less sleep than humans, and could make do with as little as an hour. (TVThe Talons of Weng-Chiang; PROSEThe Highlanders)

A Gallifreyan who was severely injured without actually needing to regenerate to heal the damage would generally slip into a healing coma, and devote all his or her energy to healing the injury. While in the coma, they would appear to be dead. (TVInfernoPlanet of the Daleks)

Special abilities[]

Time Lords occasionally displayed, or referred to, the ability to fly. Due to his coordinates having "slipped", the Time Lord messenger who warned the Third Doctor of the Master's presence on Earthmaterialised hovering in the air, an error he soon corrected. (TVTerror of the Autons)  However, later incarnations of the Doctor were not so keen to fly; the Fourth Doctor and Romana II briefly considered flying to get to the top of the Eiffel Tower, though they eventually took the lifts because flying would have been too conspicuous. (TVCity of Death) As part of a scheme to be carried out by both himself and the Fourth Doctor, Drax told the Doctor he could "fly over there and shut the door", although this plan was not carried out. (TVThe Armageddon Factor)

Life Cycle[]

Time Lords were born from individual Family Looms, machines that operated on genetic banks that would weave random patterns until forming a new person. (TV: Lungbarrow)

Female Time Lords were also referred to as Time Ladies. (TVCity of Death)

When on the brink of death a Time Lord could regenerate, changing their entire physical appearance and giving them a new life. (TV: The Tenth Planet) They had thirteen lives and could regenerate twelve times, an attempted thirteenth regeneration would cause their current body to decay and would cause insanity. (TV: The Deadly Assassin)

Even without regeneration, Gallifreyans had considerable lifespans. Within one regeneration, Gallifreyans could live for hundreds of years, yet look much younger than a human of equivalent age. When artificially aged 500 years, the Fourth Doctor looked like an elderly human. (TVThe Leisure Hive)

The Second Doctor once stated that, barring accidents, his people could "live forever". (TVThe War Games) The Doctor once said that he considered himself at approaching 750 to be middle-aged. (TVPyramids of Mars) One Time Lord, Quences, was killed when he was over 7,000 years old. (TVLungbarrow)

Time Lords had some control over their own deaths, some would elect a specific "Death-Day," which would allow them time to read their will to their family in their ancestral home, to die after a time of contemplation and acceptance, and then to have their mind transferred to the Matrix. (TVLungbarrow)

Once they had died, a Time Lord's mind and experiences were usually uploaded to the Matrix on Gallifrey. (TVThe Deadly Assassin)

Culture[]

Education[]

One of the major institutions of the Time Lords was the Time Lord Academy. It was split up into Chapters, each of which was identified by its distinctive colours. (TVThe Deadly Assassin) The subjects at the academy ranged from the study of cosmic science (TVTerror of the Autons) to Veteran and Vintage Vehicles (TVThe Pirate Planet) to Gallifreyan flutterwings. (TVThe Pirate Planet)

Food and sustenance[]

Gallifreyan physiology provided for a diet similar to the human one (TVThe Keys of Marinus, Family of Evil) including fruit and flesh, but the Time Lords had long lost the habit of feeding with raw or complex food by the time of the presidency of the Fourth Doctor. Freeze-dried pills were employed instead. (TVThe Invasion of Time) Fruit and meat would be eaten on formal occasions, such as holidays, Name Days of Family and Death Days. Such food included fish, Trumpberries, Magenta Fruits and Pig Rats. (TVLungbarrow) is

Dress[]

At events like the resignation of a Lord President, Time Lords who attended wore long robes in bright colours. The different colours signified where on Gallifrey each Time Lord had come from: Prydonians wore robes of scarlet and orange; Arcalians wore green; Patrexes wore heliotrope; Scendeles robes changed from light pink to a darker shade of red; Dromeians wore grey, black and silver; and Ceruleans wore subdued blue colours. (TVThe Deadly AssassinLungbarrow) In addition, most high-ranking Time Lords donned a decorative headdress and crest, complete with a scarlet cap. (TVThe Deadly Assassin)

Of those Time Lords seen repeatedly visiting other worlds, such as the Doctor and Romana, they tended to adopt the local dress of their preferred destination - in the Doctor's case, that of Earth - that mixed well with the locals, though Romana adopted the same largely to mimic him. (TVDestiny of the Daleks)

Politics[]

Government[]

The Time Lords were led by the High Council. The Council consisted of the Lord or Lady President, the Lord or Lady Chancellor, the Castellan and Lords Cardinal. (TVThe Deadly Assassin)

The Lord or Lady Chancellor was next in power and handled many of the government functions. The Castellan controlled the Chancellery Guard and therefore the safety of Gallifrey. (TVThe Deadly Assassin)

The rest of the High Council was made up of the Lords Cardinal, which represented the various Gallifreyan Chapters. (TVThe Deadly Assassin)

Justice[]

The protection of the Time Lords was carried out by the Chancellery Guard. They protected the Capitol, investigated crimes and captured criminals. (TVThe Deadly Assassin

By the Doctor's time, punishment was done via disintegration. Morbius was executed this way, but managed to survive as just a brain. (TVThe Brain of Morbius)

The punishments used for crimes varied in severity.

  • For his breaking of the non-interference policy, the Second Doctor was forced to regenerate and was exiled to Earth with a non-functioning TARDIS. (TVThe War Games)
  • Committing genocide would lead to the removal of any remaining regenerations a Time Lord had; artificial species were not considered alive, thus genocide was impossible. (TVThe Trial of a Time Lord)
  • For the various crimes the Master committed, his punishment would have been the reversal of his time stream, such that he had never existed. (PROSEDoctor Who and the Terror of the Autons) A similar punishment was carried out on the War Lord for his interference in human history which led to the deaths of thousands; he (and several of his guards) were dematerialised out of existence. The War Lord homeworld had a force field placed around it. (TVThe War Games)
  • When the Doctor was framed for assassinating the Time Lord President, he would have been vaporised if found guilty. (TVThe Deadly Assassin)

Leisure[]

Academy students sometimes played a dangerous game called "Eighth Man Bound". The multidimensional game of Perigosto, played with a ball and a specialised Perigosto stick, was also a favourite, as was a complicated board game called Sepulchasm. (TVLungbarrow)

During a darker, more barbarous time in the planet's past, Time Lords enjoyed watching time-displaced individuals fight to the death in a dedicated area called the Death Zone, but that practice had been entirely abandoned by the Doctor's day. (TVThe Five Doctors)

Technology[]

Stellar manipulation[]

Using the Hand of Omega, the Time Lords could speed up the development of stars. (TVRemembrance of the Daleks

Weaponry and defences[]

Despite being one of the most powerful species in the universe, the Time Lords had little in the way of defences and their conventional warfare technology was lagging behind many other civilisations. This may be due in part to the transduction barrier, which covered the planet and which was almost completely impenetrable by outside forces or their general policy of non-interference. As such, when they were invaded by the Sontarans, they were unable to defend themselves with their regular stasers and the Fourth Doctor needed to use an ancient Time Lord weapon called the De-mat Gun. (TVThe Invasion of Time

History[]

Time of Empires[]

There were no laws of physics, only infinite possibility. (TVChristmas on a Rational Planet)  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. (TVGenesis of the Daleks)

Anchoring of the Thread[]

This caused whole civilisations to disappear and drove the children of Pythia to powerlessness as they lost their power of precognition. (TVChristmas on a Rational Planet)

Time of Chaos[]

Rassilon accidentally opened a doorway into another universe. (TVHostage) The Great Vampires escaped and caused mass destructionhi . (TVState of Decay) The Time Lords, led by Kopyion Liall a Mahajetsu, tried to stop them, leading to the thousand year Eternal War. They eventually pushed them back into their own universe, (TVHostage)

The Old Time[]

The Time Lords had three main founders: the technological polymath Rassilon, (TVThe Deadly Assassin) the stellar engineer Omega, (TVThe Three Doctors) and an other. (TV: Lungbarrow)

Omega used two stellar manipulators, the "hands" of Omega, to detonate a star (TVRemembrance of the Daleks)  Although he survived in the anti-matter universe, Omega was presumed dead. (TVThe Three Doctors)

when the Watchmakers surrounded the creative and changeable parts of their minds, (TVChristmas on a Rational Planet) the last Pythia cursed Gallifrey with sterility before killing herself. To stabilise Gallifreyan society, the looms and Great Houses were created, (TV: Lungbarrow)

Beginning of Rassilon's era[]

The Game of Rassilon was a blood sport played in the Death Zone on Gallifrey using the Time Scoop, which relocated beings from all of time and space (except for Daleks and Cybermen, considered too dangerous to try to contain) and placed them in the Death Zone to fight each other to the death. (TVThe Five Doctors) Rassilon's rule saw the end of the games in the Death Zone. (TVThe Five Doctors)

The Time Lords tried doing business with the Hoothi. The Hoothi 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. (TVLove and War)

Beginning of non-interference[]

A non-interference policy was created  due to the damage that had been done by the Time Lords to other species using time travel. (TVUnderworld)

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. Rassilon survived in the tower (TVThe Five Doctors

Eons of Stability[]

Millennia of isolation induced a complacency among the Time Lords. Their technology and power stagnated, even as other races became more powerful and dangerous. (TVThe Deadly Assassin)

The specific order of the following events is unknown.
  • 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. (TVMawdryn Undead)

The Imperitor Presidency[]

Morbius, a renegade Time Lord wanted the Time Lords to abandon their non-interference policy and intervene in the outside universe in their own self-interest, and he campaigned for conquest of the lesser species. He gathered an army of mercenaries to himself, making extravagant promises to them about time travel and immortality. He was eventually captured, put on trial, and executed on Karn. However, Mehendri Solon removed Morbius' brain prior to his disintegration and he began building a new body for Morbius. (TVThe Brain of Morbius)

The Doctor's missions for the CIA[]

the Master went to Uxarieus to get the Doomsday weapon, the Time Lords temporarily fixed the Doctor's TARDIS and took him and Jo Grant to Uxarieus. The Doctor stopped the Master and destroyed weapon before it could be used. (TVColony in Space)

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. (TVThe Three Doctors)

The Time Lords continued to give the Doctor missions after his third regeneration. After the Time Lords foresaw a future where Daleks became the dominant lifeform in the universe, they brought the Doctor, Sarah Jane Smith, and Harry Sullivan to Skaro during the creation of the Daleks. Ferain informed them that they had to stop Davros' experiments and gave them time rings to escape. The Doctor was unable to stop the creation of the Daleks, but still changed history by forcing Davros to rush the creation. (TV: Genesis of the DaleksLungbarrow)

Constitutional crisis[]

The Time Lords faced "the most dangerous crisis in their long history" when, during the President's resignation, he was assassinated by Chancellor Goth before he could name his successor. Goth was plotting with the Master to frame the Fourth Doctor and take power uncontested. The Doctor ran against Goth in the election to buy himself time to investigate the death; he succeeded in unraveling the scheme, but in the process, the Master killed Goth, leaving the Doctor as the next President. Because the Doctor didn't want this responsibility, he left in his TARDIS. (TVThe Deadly Assassin)

When the Fourth Doctor returned to Gallifrey, he found the planet without a President and led by Lord Chancellor Borusa. Claiming his right to the Presidency from the old election, he briefly became the 407th President (TV: The Invasion of Time, 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. (TVThe Invasion of Time)

Borusa was later officially inducted as Lord President of Gallifrey and dealt with Omega's attempted incursion into normal space via the Arc of Infinity. Omega utilised the Fifth Doctor's biodata extract (supplied by Hedin) to do so. To prevent Omega's incursion Borusa ordered the Doctor's termination. (TVArc of Infinity)

Following another regeneration Lord President Borusa began to investigate the legacy of Rassilon, specifically immortality. Borusa sought to be "President Eternal" ruling Gallifrey forever. Utilising the time scoop he summoned four of the Doctor's incarnations to the Death Zone, using them gain access for him to the Tomb of Rassilon. Ultimately Borusa gained the immortality he sought by Rassilon, entombed as a living statue on Rassilon's sarcophagus. (TVThe Five Doctors)

Following the close of the crisis induced by Borusa the full High Council utilised its emergency powers and made the Doctor President of Gallifrey. The Doctor departed briskly leaving Chancellor Flavia, giving her "full deputy powers until (he) returned", (TVThe Five Doctors)

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

These revelations caused a revolution on Gallifrey. (TVThe Ultimate Foe)

Romana's Presidency[]

At some point Romana returned from E-Space with K-9 Mark II and became Lady President of Gallifrey. (TV: Lungbarrow, Election Day)

Ferain led a group of corrupt CIA members in an attempt to overthrow Romana. Romana allied with the Sisterhood of Karn and together they lifted Pythia's Curse. (TV: Lungbarrow)

Romana ran in an Election against Kalien who attempted to rig the Election. Her plans were thwarted by the Eighth Doctor and Romana continued as President. (TV: Election Day)

List of Appearances[]

Doctor Who[]

Season 6[]

  • The War Games

Season 8[]

  • Terror of the Autons

Season 10[]

  • The Three Doctors

Season 11[]

  • Planet of the Spiders

Season 14[]

  • The Deadly Assassin

Season 15[]

  • The Invasion of Time

Season 16[]

  • The Armageddon Factor

Season 20[]

  • Arc of Infinity

20th Anniversary Special[]

  • The Five Doctors

Season 23[]

  • The Mysterious Planet
  • Mindwarp
  • Terror of the Vervoids
  • The Ultimate Foe

Season 27[]

Season 29[]

Season 30[]

  • Election Day
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