On Gallifrey, the Toclafane were spoken of in fairytales, much like the bogeyman on Earth. [273] The Doctor was told as a boy that there was no point being an explorer, as the Time Lords had already discovered everything. [274]
The children of Gallifrey were taken from their families at age eight, and brought to the Academy. Each novice was taken for Initiation, and made to stand in front of the Untempered Schism: a gap in the fabric of reality. From there, each novice would see the whole of the Vortex, and stare at the raw power of time and space. Some novices would become inspired, some would run away, and some would go mad.
The Master looked into the Vortex while he was a child, and some believed this was the beginning of his madness. Rassilon and the High Council of Time Lords, trapped in the time-lock of The Last Great Time War, seeded the heartbeat of a Time Lord through the Vortex and into the eight-year-old Master’s mind as a means of facilitating their escape. Throughout his lives, the Master was made to hear the sound of drums as a call to war. [275]
The Doctor chose his name, as did the Master. [276] The Doctor claimed that he didn’t spend centuries at “that poxy academy” just to be called “Mister.” [277] The Doctor worked as a courier in the vast spaceport Desiree during his gap century, although he was fired because he kept getting lost. [278] When the Doctor was “just a kid”, only 90 years old, he visited the Medusa Cascade, a rift in time and space that reached into every dimension and every parallel reality. [279] At some point, he sealed the rift of the Medusa Cascade single-handed. [280] The Doctor’s real name burns in the Cascade of Medusa. [281]
The Academy Years
The Doctor was a member of the Prydonian Chapter but came to forsake his birthright. [282] When the Doctor was on Gallifrey, Cardinal Lenadi led the Prydonians. [283]
Gallifrey’s highest peak, Mount Cadon, extended to the fringes of the planet’s atmosphere and held the Prydonian Academy far up its slopes. Acolytes there endlessly recanted protocols and procedures. In high towers, special pupils learned dark arts. [284]
The Academy was basically a self-contained city annexed to the Gallifreyan Capitol. It took up twenty-eight square miles of Gallifrey’s surface. [285]
The Doctor was a contemporary of the Master, Runcible, Drax and the Rani. [286] He was “fifty years before” the Monk. [287] The War Chief and the Doctor recognised each other. [288] The Doctor knew Hedin and Damon. [289] He knew the Time Lord who warned him about the Master. [290]
The Doctor was at the Academy with Vansell. [291] He attended the Rani’s raucous 94th birthday party. [292] The Doctor attended University with the Rani, and his speciality was thermodynamics. [293] He got an education at the “University of Gallifrey”. [294] The Doctor said his field was “mainly” the science of macro-cosmology. [295]
Anzor, the son of a High Council member, bullied the Doctor into doing his homework at the Prydonian Academy. He also tormented him with a pain-inducing Galvanizer stick. One of the Doctor’s friends, Cheevah, stood up to Anzor - who sealed Cheevah in a block of crystal, and dropped him from the Academy belltower. [296]
He attended “the Academy” with the Master. [297] The Doctor attended a Tech Course with the Class of ‘92, which included Drax, before he gained his Doctorate. [298] The Doctor was taught quantum mechanics at infant school. He and his friends once put a teacher in a time loop. He kept a pet flubble under his bed during his first year at the Academy, and was nearly caught when she went into heat and started a mating song. [299] He took his Gallifrey Lifesaver’s Certificate. [300]
The Doctor studied at Prydon Academy (where Borusa taught him). [301] Lord Cardinal Lenadi led the Prydonian Chapter during the Doctor’s time on Gallifrey. [302] Cardinal Borusa wrote a history called Rassilon the God. [303] The Doctor was taught by Azmael. [304] The Doctor’s old academy teacher told him, “Ignore history at your peril”. [305] He used to build time jammers to disrupt others’ experiments. [306] When the Doctor was young, he kept enough odds and ends in his pockets to build a holo-field scrambler in five minutes flat - and often did. [307] He used to build space-time portals for fun. [308]
Ruath and the Doctor staged pranks together - they introduced cats into the Gallifreyan ecosystem, altered gravity to make a Panopticon graduation take place in mid-air and electrified Borusa’s perigosto stick. [309] Cats were very popular on Gallifrey, to such an extent that every President had a presidential cat... until an incident with giant mice. [310]
A Cardinal Sendok taught them at the Academy. [311] The Doctor skipped his Academy class on transdimensional locus attraction dynamics to learn the yo-yo and juggling. [312] The Time Lord Dimension Ethics Committee banned all exploration of the higher dimensions. Nevertheless, fascinated by the legends of the Great Old Ones at the Academy, the Doctor and Master travelled back in time to search for Valdemar. They found nothing but warnings. [313]
Daring neonates at the Academy played a dangerous game called Eighth Man Bound. This entailed deliberately putting an “Initiate” into a state of flux between life or death, enabling them to witness and experience their future regenerations. The term was coined after a student of the Arcalian Chapter who discovered the natures of his first seven bodies, but couldn’t observe the eighth. A student of the Prydonian Chapter was rumoured to have tied this record. [314]
The Doctor used to play truant so he could down pints of Best Shobogan beer at the Golden Grockle in Low Town. He seethed with anger at the High Council. [315] The Doctor at this time was called “Theta Sigma”, his nickname. [316] The Master got a higher grade at Cosmic Science than the Doctor. The Doctor claims he was a late developer. [317] Cardinal Sendok taught the Doctor and the Master cosmic science. [318]
Divided Loyalties
The Doctor was part of the Deca, a group of ten brilliant students who were activists in favour of more Time Lord intervention. The Deca members were: the Doctor, Koschei (the Master), Mortimus (the Monk), Magnus (the War Chief), Drax, Ushas (the Rani), Vansell (actually a Celestial Intervention Agency spy), Rallon, Millennia and Jelpax.
They were taught by Borusa, Franilla, Sendok and Zass.
It was as part of the Deca that the Doctor learned about the Celestial Toymaker. The Doctor, Rallon and Millennia located the Toymaker and were caught up in his games. Rallon and Millennia were apparently killed, and the Doctor was expelled from the Academy on his return to Gallifrey, and ordered to spend five hundred years in Records and Traffic Control. He studied for his doctorate in his spare time.
The President at this time was Drall, the Castellan was Rannex. Type 35 TARDISes were in operation; the Doctor used a Type 18 to visit the Toymaker.
Only Jelpax completed his time at the Academy in the conventional manner, the others either went to special projects or vanished. Jelpax went on to work with Borusa.
Time Lords had to pass a test to fly a TARDIS; the Doctor failed his. [319] The Doctor wasn’t much for studying at school. [320] He deliberately failed his exams so that people would underestimate him, and to avoid office duty. [321] The Doctor eventually scraped through the Academy with 51% on the second attempt. [322] His poor results were a grave disappointment to his parents. [323]
Iris Wildthyme
The adventurer in time and space known as Iris Wildthyme claimed to have grown up in a House in southern Gallifrey. It was ruled by Aunts including Baba, her favourite. Iris’ mother ran away with an offworlder. Iris found an abandoned TARDIS in the wilderness and adopted it. [324]
Iris also claimed to come from one of the New Towns under the Gallifreyan Capitol. She found her TARDIS abandoned in the mountains as a wasted experiment, helping it to learn, feed and evolve. In turn, the bus gave Iris advice. She’s been travelling longer than the Doctor.
The Doctor said Iris wasn’t a proper Time Lady and that the Time Lords were unsure of her identity. [325] Iris referred to the Doctor’s people as “a snobby, over-privileged bunch”. [326] Iris was unique in the whole of creation, and had no duplicates in parallel realities. [32
7]
Iris said the Obverse was her home, and that she was “not who she said she was, and more besides!” [328] On another occasion, Iris claimed to hail from the Clockworks - a place of logic and reason, inhabited by beings who tinkered with time and were “the grease in the cogs of the multiverse”. She was just a kid from the slums, and rebelled by stealing her time-travelling bus. [329]
The Doctor on Gallifrey
The Doctor says he was a pioneer among his people. [330] He claimed to have built his Ship. Susan coined the acronym TARDIS. [331] The Doctor excelled himself when he built the TARDIS force field. [332] He and the Master referred to each other as “Lords”. [333]
Before leaving Gallifrey, the Doctor was used on a diplomatic mission at least once, when he visited the inauguration of Station Chimera in the Third Zone. [334] Following a campaign by the Doctor, the Time Lords banned MiniScopes. [335]
The Doctor’s reflex link connected him to the Time Lord intelligentsia. [336] Like all Time Lords, he swore an oath to protect the Law of Gallifrey. [337]
The Doctor was a member of the Supreme Council. [338] He held a powerful position before leaving Gallifrey. [339] He was a member of the High Council during the latter years of his first incarnation. [340]
“Flashback” [341]
The first Doctor (“Thete”) supervised Magnus’ project to tap into a giant ball of Artron energy that Magnus had extracted from the Vortex. It would provide the Time Lords with more power than even Rassilon and Omega had dreamt of, and Magnus saw this as leading to “a new beginning for our stagnant race”. The Doctor was more sceptical, and his fears were confirmed when they learned the energy ball was alive. Magnus wanted to continue regardless - so the Doctor destroyed his equipment with a staser. “And that was that. Any chance of a reconciliation between the two - any hope of regaining their former friendship - died at that moment.” The Doctor was commended for his action.
Lord Braxiatel never wanted to conform, but graduated with a “fistful of firsts” and initiated many research projects - all to position himself as a nonconformist in conformist’s clothing. By the time Braxiatel’s brother was doing his exams (and scraped through with the barest minimum of effort), Braxiatel was trusted enough to achieve his dream of serving as an unofficial ambassador, and saw the universe by undertaking clandestine missions for Gallifrey’s benefit. Braxiatel’s brother followed his example to more of an extreme, and outright left their homeworld. [342]
The Minyan Incident
The Minyans used nuclear technology to destroy their planet. The Time Lords subsequently renounced intervention in the affairs of other planets. [343]
The truth was more complicated. Braxiatel and the Time Lord Narvin had become involved in Project Alpha, an undertaking to create a timonic fusion device capable of obliterating portions of space-time. As Braxiatel feared, the device was more powerful than its designers believed - when tested, it created a shockwave that ravaged Minyos. The High Council launched a cover-up, saying Minyos was destroyed in a civil war. Braxiatel felt that technology’s potential for destruction had become so great that the universe’s great artistic and cultural treasures needed better protection. He started sneaking away from Gallifrey and amassing a personal collection of such works.
(=) The isolationist Torvald travelled back to this point from Gallifrey’s future and stole the timonic fusion device as part of a scheme to discredit President Romana, causing alterations to Gallifrey’s history. Narvin covered up the theft.
Romana and Braxiatel travelled back and ensured the device was detonated as history recorded. Minyos was destroyed, and Torvald stole a fake device instead. [344]
Time Lords were “forbidden to interfere”. [345]
Past Lives
Morbius would later probe the Doctor’s mind, and see eight incarnations of the Doctor before the one generally accepted as the “first” Doctor. [346]
The Doctor’s Marriage
The Doctor fell in love with his former nurse and tutor, the Womb-born Gallifreyan who would become known as Patience. She taught him to dance, which he did in front of some house guests including Mr Saldaamir, a pair from Althrace and a yellow-skinned man with red fins.
They married. Savar was one of the guests at the wedding. [347] The Doctor painted his wife’s portrait. As he finished, she told him she was pregnant. [348] They went on to have thirteen children. [349]
Shortly after he regenerated, the Doctor and Patience celebrated the birth of their first grandchild. Their son was a Cardinal and the Doctor sat on the Supreme Council, as his father did before him. The President ordered the Guard to search the Doctor’s family home for “children born of woman”. The Doctor’s thirteen children were dragged out and his daughter-in-law’s baby was scheduled for termination. The Doctor’s whereabouts during this incident were unknown, but there was a warrant for his arrest - he stood accused of “consorting with aliens”.
The Doctor (in what we would consider his “first” incarnation) would later travel back in time to this point. He rescued his infant granddaughter and took her to the ancient past. He then got Patience to safety by taking her to an ancient TARDIS. As he did this, the Capitol was burning. [350] Mobs stormed the Panopticon that night. [351]
The Doctor’s memories of this trauma were blocked, although by who or what is unclear. He believed his wife had died. [352] It is unclear if the Doctor’s father was still on Gallifrey at this point. After this, the Doctor’s father may have adopted the name “Joyce” and relocated to San Francisco on Earth, continuing the Project with Larna and Mr Saldaamir. [353]
The Doctor remembered that he was a father, once. [354] He was a father, but “lost all that a long time ago”, and remembered “the hole the left, all the pain that filled it” - when they died, a part of him died with them. [355] He “had plenty of family and knew what it was like to lose them”. [356]
The Infinity Doctor
? (=?) (w?) - The Infinity Doctors [357]
The Doctor mourned for his dead wife, and even though she died a long time ago, he still lit a new candle every year in her memory. Before this time, he had travelled the universe and returned to Gallifrey. He had defeated and imprisoned Centro, a mechanical being that could warp space.
On Gallifrey, the Doctor served as a tutor who oversaw - amongst others - the brilliant student Larna. He negotiated a final peace between the Sontarans and the Rutans, ending their eternal war. Gallifrey monitored the Effect, a reality-altering ripple. The Doctor and his friend the Magistrate went to the end of time to confront the one who was responsible: Omega. The Doctor met his wife Patience, whom Omega had rescued from death, but again lost her. Omega was defeated, but the Magistrate didn’t return from this mission. The Doctor did, and had grown restless with Gallifrey.
Voran became President. Larna was charged to travel the universe and clear up after the Effect, a mission that would take two thousand years.
Susan
The Doctor’s granddaughter Susan was something of an enigma. [358]
Susan was the Doctor’s grand-daughter “and always will be”. [359] Susan described her home planet as “quite like Earth, but at night the sky is a burned orange, and the leaves on the trees are bright silver”. [360] She knew about the Dark Tower. [361] She was 15 when she met Ian and Barbara. [362] The other Time Lords never referred to Susan. [363] She coined the name “TARDIS”. [364]
Susan was born in Gallifrey’s recent past. Her grandfather was the Doctor. She was a naturally-born child, an abomination in the eyes of the authorities of Gallifrey. Her mother’s fate was unknown. Her father was a Cardinal. [365]
Susan was born in Gallifrey’s distant past. Her grandfather was the Other. She was the last naturally-born child on Gallifrey. Her mother died at the moment of her birth, as the Pythia’s curse of sterility came into effect. Her father was a warrior. [366] Susan had a perfect memory, which she said was “the curse of her people”. [367] Circumstances denied Susan a proper education on Gall
ifrey. [368]
The Doctor Leaves Gallifrey
The exact nature of the Doctor’s departure from Gallifrey is still a mystery, and there have been a number of seemingly contradictory accounts of the circumstances in which he left. [369]
Account One: [370]
Jamie: “Why did you run away from [your people] in the first place?”
The Doctor: “What? Well... I was bored... The Time Lords are an immensely civilised race. We can control our own environment, we can live forever barring accidents, and we have the secret of space/time travel.”
Jamie: “Well, what’s so wrong in all that?”
The Doctor: “Well, we hardly ever use our great powers! We consent simply to observe and to gather knowledge.”
Zoe: “And that wasn’t enough for you?”
The Doctor: “No, of course not. With a whole galaxy to explore? Millions of planets? Aeons of time, countless civilisations to meet?”
Jamie: “Well, why do they object to you doing all that?
The Doctor: “Well... It is a fact, Jamie, that I do tend to get involved with things.”
Jamie: “Aye, you can say that again! Whenever there’s any trouble he’s in it right up to his neck.”
Zoe: “But you’ve helped people, Doctor.”
The Doctor: Yes, yes, but that’s no excuse in [the Time Lords’] eyes.”
Account Two: Lungbarrow [371]
The Doctor worked as a Scrutationary Archivist in the Prydonian Chapterhouse Bureau of Possible Events. His applications for promotion were always turned down.
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