Hi all, Ric here, the recent series of Doctor Who dropped a hint that Time Lord society
may in fact have more going on than even the Doctor is aware of. No spoilers here for series
12, but I thought I’d take a look at early Gallifreyan history as loosely established
in the old canon. So one fact about the Timelords that is common
knowledge is their homeworld of Gallifrey but since the series’ revival, we’ve never
gotten hard answers as to how the Time Lord society formed, just a few hints to ancient
lore. Much like the classic series to be honest, but let’s try to piece together the history
of Gallifrey, before the Timelords existed. Another thing to bear in mind is that a lot
of this lore predates the revival of the series in 2005 and takes place before the Time War
shook things up so it may not be the current status quo.
Time Lords as a species are old. Very old. So let’s go back to the very beginning of
the universe and work from there. But even before the big bang and the formation
of the N-Space (the designation for normal space-time) there was another universe, the
Dvapara Yuga. In this pre universe, lived a myriad of beings, some of which still existed
into its replacement, the current. Such claimed inhabitants include the Beast
and his son, Abaddon which were sealed on Krop Tor by the Disciples of Light before
the formation of the time, space or matter, Before N-space in other words. The Syriath
too was from this time as well as the Guardians of Time, the Elder Gods, the Toymakers.
The Solitract was a conscious energy field that kept the N-Space universe from forming
and was eventually removed and contained within a separate plane. Once there, creation could
begin anew. In the same fashion, the Dark was void energy that was sentient and had
existed before the universe. Other beings, not strong enough to survive
the coming big bang became beings of faith, myth and folded themselves into the fabric
of the new universe’s inhabitants stories, as gods. As that universe ended, it was also
the beginning. Event One, the first fixed point, known to the Beast as the Cataclysm
and humanity as the Big Bang. In these times the survivors of Event One
adopted their new roles as guardians, myths, prisoners or exiles. For several billions
of years galaxies formed, stars, planets, but as there was no one alive yet to witness
it (except time travellers), it was all very dull so let’s skip that. The first race
to evolve into sentience wiped itself out in biological warfare. Others soon evolved
to followed and species such as the Carrionites, Rachnoss and the Nestene evolved. On Gallifrey,
a race of people were evolving into humanoid form, known as the shadow people in their
native tongue, they were the earliest Gallifreyans. As this was in an time before the Morphogenic
field was created, an abient field that increased the likelihood of the humanoid form naturally
evolving, many of these species around this time were weird and wonderful.
In this era, called the Dark Times, the forces of magic were still prevalent as the unpredictable
and loose nature of the fabric of reality gave itself easily to manipulation. Gallifrey
evolved as a matriarchal society, under the rule of the Pythians. The Pythia had strong
psychic powers such as precognition and used their abilities to rule over the lower classes
and cement their place among the other fledgling empires.
They engaged in the use of ritualistic magicks to weave powerful spells while their less
magically inclined followers turned to science to bolster their abilities. For eons, the
Gallifreyan Empire expanded and conquered other worlds, established colonies and diplomatic
ties with the worlds it could not seize. This was a very violent time for these people and
they did not resemble the Time Lords in any true sense. During this era, they clashed
with their oldest enemy, not Daleks, the Great Vampires called the Yssgaroth. During this
war, where the giant energy devouring beasts were felled with Bow-ships characters like
Omega, Rassilon and the Other established themselves as Gallifreyan heroes.
Soon, Rassilon’s Neo Technologist movement, a political and military following of science
minded Gallifreyans rose to challenge the rule of Pythia and overthrew the sisterhood
driving them from Gallifrey. They fled to one of the colony worlds, Khan where remnants
of the Pythian society became the Sisterhood of Khan which explains their continual ties
to Gallifrey in the Time War and beyond, they are basically the exiled ruling class that
became its own culture with time. Sort of Cousins to the Time Lords.
Rassilon began to reshape the Gallifreyan society to include the Great Houses, introduced
regeneration, established the Academy and basically made Time Lords as we known them.
Following Omega’s experiments, the Gallifreyan society established themselves as the Lord
of Time and chose to bring order to the chaotic nature of the universe. This gets a little
meta here as up until the Dark Age of Gallifrey the universal laws were similar, but not quite
the same as they are now. They are consistently described as chaotic which is not to say that
Time for example, didn’t exist as a concept but it was just different. A hard thing to
process, I just have to sort of accept it and move on, the universal rules were sort
of in a Beta stage, the pre-release build of reality if you like.
So this is when the Time Lords chose to instigate their Spiral Politic. This began with the
founding of the Protocols of Linearity, a set of literal and metaphysical laws that
regulated time travel. Some of these threads were quite literally new laws of physics,
or maybe refinements to existing ones, effectively weaving a Web of Time across the fabric of
the universe to make it consistent and bring it under the Time Lords control.
It’s not like the The Anchoring of Time, as it was known was done immediately, this
process probably took eons and many calculations but was established by finding numerous anchor
points, these are eras and events that cannot be changed or time becomes unwound. Fixed
points. Huge changes to time can be wrought around these key events and actions, but certain,
very specific things must always happen or risk the universal structure of space-time
unravelling. We saw this happen at Like Silencio when River Song failed to kill the Doctor
and all of time began to overlap. This may be closer to sort of how the universe originally
operated before the Web of Time. During the implementation of to these laws,
Rassilon eradicated several species from history while Gallifrey was removed from the full
effects of the Web of Time making it a point from which the Timelords could survey over
all of time to maintain it. One big side effect was that magic was all but eradicated, including
much of the Pythain powers. The refined and reinforced laws of the universe were far more
rigid and only magic that closely followed the new status quo could even stand a chance
of continuing. Some examples include many forms of psychic power as it had rules and
biology behind it as well as the Carrionites use of word based mathematics. So aside from
a few exceptions, Magick was now dead and the universe as we know it now was truly established
with the Time Lords assuming the mantle of protecting time now it was brought into order.
Much like our own Dark Ages, the Gallifreyan Dark Times were called such because records
from this time are incomplete. This can be attributed to several things, the numerous
wars Gallfirey was involved with, the reshaping of how time functions so events may literally
have been rewritten and the fact that Rassilon got to decide what to record and what not.
As the very nature of the universe was brought into order for the purpose of stable Time
Travel, the Dark Ages may never be able to be revisited as they too would have been restructured
to adhere to the Web of Time. So honestly, this makes the most accurate
recollection of these times in the shared tales of the sisterhood of Khan. Unless there’s
another source out there that could be stumbled upon. Like I said before though, much of this
may be rewritten with extensive time travel, the Time War and so on. It could also be an
entire fabrication from the Scrolls of Rassilon who selectively rewrote history to his advantage.
Were they really instrumental in the taming of the universe? Maybe over the course of
this new series, we’ll get answers as to what exactly happened in those Dark Times
near the beginning of everything and what role the Time Lords played in the harnessing
of Time Travel, maybe if any at all. Thanks for watching this video on a very confusing
and vague topic, but that’s also why I kind of like it. All this mystery around abstract
concepts such as different laws of the universe and that actual rule breaking magic was a
thing. I love it all and hate how naff at explaining it I can be, even to myself so
I hope some of this made sense and if it didn’t then I think that’s the point? I don’t
know any more. Doctor who content has been a bit light on
my channel for a while but honestly, the last series kind of bored me then went on hiatus
but this new one has me hooked so I’m looking forwards to it. Thanks again for watching
and I’ll see you next time, goodbye!