In which case, the question must be asked: If Gallifrey has, somehow, developed the ability to grant Time Lords a new set of regenerations, why would this invaluable life-extender be an option for one of the Time Lords’ most infamous and evil renegades, but not their own Lord President? One theory, fronted by Neil Gaiman, holds that the limitation on regenerations is as much a legal limit as a naturally occurring one. The idea would seem to be that Time Lords are born with twelve regenerations “in the bank” (as it were), because they evolved that way due to exposure to the Untempered Schism (A Good Man Goes to War). But, given enough of an energy top-up, like recharging a battery, Time Lords can acquire even more lives - the Master attempts just that in The Deadly Assassin, albeit while going to the drastic lengths of trying to open the main Eye of Harmony (and threatening the destruction of Gallifrey) to achieve the energy required.
Following Gaiman’s reasoning (and that of his associate Steve Manfred), we might imagine that the High Council in The Five Doctors has a safe, controlled and humane way of granting more lives that is normally illegal. Why it’s verboten isn’t clear - possibly, Rassilon laid down such a rule because (as The Five Doctors makes abundantly clear) immortality is “a curse, not a blessing”. Alternatively, Head Games (p173) builds upon the idea in the New Adventures (Timewyrm: Revelation especially) that traces of previous personas remain in a Time Lord’s mind after each regeneration, and has the Doctor state that the number of regenerations was limited because “too often the mind can’t handle the multiplicity of psyches”. (The mental schism that occurs between the seventh Doctor and his previous self - see Love and War and Head Games - stands in evidence of this.)
If the High Council can grant new lives, however, this presumably can’t be done indefinitely - so adamant is The Five Doctors in keeping immortality the exclusive province of Rassilon. That might square with Borusa’s actions, actually - if Gallifrey can implant (say) one extra set of twelve regenerations, he might not be content even if given a waiver and allowed twenty-five lives (that, or he wants to present himself as Rassilon’s immortal, fully empowered heir to ward off all political opposition). Alternatively, it’s possible that the Master’s unique status as a former Time Lord now hosted within the body of a Trakenite via the lingering energies of the Source of Traken (The Keeper of Traken) qualifies him for a new set of regenerations, whereas a purebred Time Lord such as Borusa doesn’t have that option.
A third option is that the High Council is simply lying when they offer to give the Master more lives - and yet, the Master doesn’t seem to doubt their word on this, and he’s better informed about Gallifreyan secrets and developments than most (Colony in Space, The Ultimate Foe, etc.). That would, however, create the lingering oddity that if Gallifrey has developed a means of dispensing new regenerations and the Master knows about it, it’s remarkable that he hasn’t (even allowing for his aborted attempt in The Deadly Assassin) tried to acquire/steal a new set for himself, choosing instead (after The Keeper of Traken) to go about space-time in a hijacked body in which he’s altogether too mortal.
In Gallifrey: Reborn (set long after The Five Doctors), Romana comments that Gallifrey has the ability to “implant a new regeneration cycle, but not extract, divide or redistribute an existing one”. This curiously, though, overlooks the Master’s claim that the High Council has promised the Valeyard the sixth Doctor’s remaining lives if he helps them cover up the Ravolox affair (The Ultimate Foe). Also, the Master nearly succeeds in “redistributing” the Doctor’s regenerations to himself in Doctor Who - The Movie, using nothing more than the Eye of Harmony in the Doctor’s TARDIS.
The new Doctor Who has largely steered clear of the topic of how many regenerations Time Lords possess, save that the formerly regeneration-less Master regenerates in Utopia (possibly part and parcel of his being “resurrected” for the Last Great Time War; see The Sound of Drums), that River Song burns up her finite number of regenerations healing the Doctor (Let’s Kill Hitler), and that the eleventh Doctor tells Clyde in SJA: Death of the Doctor that he can regenerate five hundred and seven times - possibly indicating his unique status, possibly suggesting that the limitation on regenerations was done away with in the Last Great Time War, possibly suggesting that he could acquire new lives but hasn’t done so yet, or possibly that he’s just poking fun with Clyde, a teenager. It remains to be seen how future production teams will address the issue, or choose to ignore it.
[1] In The Deadly Assassin, the Time Lords don’t know that their power comes from the Eye of Harmony, and in both that story and The Ultimate Foe, they haven’t heard of the Master. In The Deadly Assassin, even the Doctor seems unaware of the APC Net, and knows little about Rassilon.
[2] The phrase “the Old Time” is first used in The Deadly Assassin. Not all Gallifreyans are Time Lords, as the Time Lords are the ruling elite of Gallifrey - the Doctor seems to say in The Invisible Enemy that there are only “one thousand” Time Lords. However, the terms “Time Lord” and “Gallifreyan” seem interchangeable for most practical purposes. Likewise, “Time Lord” is used to refer to the Doctor’s race even before they master time travel (e.g.: Remembrance of the Daleks, where the “Time Lords” have trouble with the prototype of the Hand of Omega). Gallifrey is first named in The Time Warrior, although the Time Lords’ home planet was called Jewel in the TV Comic strip “Return of the Daleks”.
[3] The Ultimate Foe
[4] The End of Time (TV)
[5] Genesis of the Daleks
[6] The Five Doctors
[7] Borrowed Time
[8] The Time of Angels
[9] The Pit
[10] Pyramids of Mars
[11] An Earthly Child
[12] Lungbarrow
[13] The Brain of Morbius
[14] Lungbarrow
[15] We learn that Susan is telepathic in The Sensorites, and it has been stated on a number of occasions that the Doctor (e.g. The Three Doctors), the TARDIS (e.g. The Time Monster) and all Time Lords (e.g. The Deadly Assassin) are mildly telepathic. The Doctor has also stated on a number of occasions that the TARDIS is alive (e.g. The Five Doctors), and so is the Nemesis seen in Silver Nemesis.
[16] The Invisible Enemy
[17] Omega has a “dark side” to his mind in The Three Doctors. The Valeyard [q.v.] represents the Doctor’s dark side (The Ultimate Foe), and the Dream Lord (Amy’s Choice) is “everything dark” in the Doctor given voice by space pollen. In Falls the Shadow, the Doctor refers to this as the “Dark Design”.
[18] Gridlock, expanding a little on Susan’s description of her home planet in Marco Polo. As such, it’s explicit confirmation that Susan is from Gallifrey.
[19] The Deadly Assassin. Engin says that deep beneath the Capitol there are “vaults and foundations dating from the Old Time”.
[20] Cat’s Cradle: Time’s Crucible, The Infinity Doctors, The Gallifrey Chronicles and the Gallifrey mini-series.
[21] The Nightmare Fair
[22] House of Blue Fire
[23] The Five Doctors
[24] Silver Nemesis
[25] According to the Doctor in The Five Doctors.
[26] City of Death, Warriors’ Gate, Time and the Rani.
[27] The Claws of Axos
[28] The Robots of Death
[29] Just War. The Time Vortex was first named in The Time Monster.
[30] A Good Man Goes to War, implicitly suggesting that Time Lords developed the ability to regenerate in this fashion, hence why River Song has the talent (Day of the Moon, Let’s Kill Hitler), because she was conceived while the TARDIS was in the Vortex.
[31] The Five Doctors
[32] The Infinity Doctors
[33] The War Games; the claim is repeated in The Infinity Doctors, and by the tenth Doctor in “The Crimson Hand”.
[34] Lungbarrow
[35] Gallifrey: Annihilation
[36] Cat’s Cradle: Time’s Crucible, Lungbarrow.
[37] Lungbarrow
[
38] Interference. Rassilon’s dissolution of the monasteries presumably accompanies his defeat of the Pythia.
[39] The Song of the Megaptera
[40] “The Age of Ice”
[41] Omega first appears in The Three Doctors and reappears in Arc of Infinity, The Infinity Doctors and Omega. The Hand of Omega, his stellar-manipulation device, appears in Remembrance of the Daleks, Lungbarrow and The Infinity Doctors.
The first reference to Rassilon is in The Deadly Assassin; after that he becomes the central figure of Gallifreyan history, referred to in many subsequent stories (the quotes are from the Doctor, in The Five Doctors and Shada respectively). Both Rassilon and Omega are the legendary founders of Time Lord society, both are “the greatest” of the Doctor’s race and supply the energy necessary for time travel. The first time that it is explicitly stated on-screen that they were contemporaries is in Silver Nemesis, although earlier in Season 25, Remembrance of the Daleks attempted to rationalise the two accounts of Time Lord origins. Early Doctor Who Weekly issues included a back-up strip written by Alan Moore which was an account of the origins of the Time Lords, and which has been referred to in novels such as The Infinity Doctors and Interference.
[42] Silver Nemesis
[43] The Other was mentioned or alluded to in several New and Missing Adventures; he first appeared (in flashback) in the Remembrance of the Daleks novelisation.
[44] Engin, The Deadly Assassin.
[45] The Infinity Doctors
[46] The Quantum Archangel, following up a reference from Castrovalva.
[47] The tenth Doctor’s first reference to Citadel and its dome is in Gridlock, and it is actually seen in The Sound of Drums.
[48] The Three Doctors
[49] The Doctor, Remembrance of the Daleks.
[50] Omega. These details hail from Omega’s unreliable memories and are highly suspect. The details about Omega committing genocide, certainly, stem from a blending of the Doctor’s recollections and are likely to be false.
[51] Lungbarrow
[52] Omega, an idea supported by Zagreus.
[53] Zagreus. According to a questionable simulation, this occurred after Omega detonated his star. Arata is named as the third member of the Council of Three. The Great Mother belongs to the Sisterhood of Karn, although it isn’t mentioned by name. Of all the suspect recreations shown in Zagreus, this one is the most dubious due to Tepesh’s biased claims, and because he and Ouida, as vampires, would be unlikely to hold such authority in the Gallifreyan echelons for long, if at all.
[54] The Book of the Old Time, referred to in The Deadly Assassin.
[55] The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit
[56] The Three Doctors, The Deadly Assassin, Remembrance of the Daleks.
[57] The Deadly Assassin
[58] “The Final Chapter”. As it’s only reached 5725.2 by the time of Doctor Who - The Movie - a period of millions of years after Rassilon’s time - each unit can’t represent a calendar year. Perhaps it misses out some of the numbers (i.e. it’s short for 10,005,725 RE, or something like it), or it’s more like a stardate in Star Trek, and the exact method of calculation is impossible for us to decipher.
[59] Heart of TARDIS
[60] Neverland
[61] The tenth Doctor, “The Forgotten”.
[62] Gallifrey: Annihilation
[63] Shada
[64] Four to Doomsday
[65] Neverland
[66] The Deadly Assassin, The Invasion of Time.
[67] The Two Doctors. Zagreus further suggests that the Imprimature also facilitated regeneration, and that Rassilon introduced the limit of twelve regenerations to avoid the problem of degenerating biogenic molecules.
[68] The Five Doctors
[69] The Invasion of Time
The Key
In The Deadly Assassin, the Great Key is “an ebonite rod” that seals the Eye of Harmony within its monolith. By The Invasion of Time, that artifact is called “the Rod”, and the Great Key is an ordinary-looking mortise key that can power the Demat Gun and has been hidden from the President by successive Chancellors since the time of Rassilon. We might presume that the Chancellor told the President that the Rod is the Key, hence the confusion of the two. However, two Chancellors we know about - Goth and Borusa - are both in line to be President while (presumably, in Goth’s case) knowing the whereabouts of the real Great Key.
In The Ultimate Foe, “The Key of Rassilon” allows access to the Matrix through portals such as the Seventh Door, and the Keeper of the Matrix wears it on his robes - this is presumably an entirely different artifact.
[70] The War Games
[71] “Wormwood”
[72] Managra
[73] Shada
[74] The Deadly Assassin
[75] Alien Bodies
[76] The Infinity Doctors
[77] Interference
[78] The Invasion of Time, The Androids of Tara.
[79] State of Decay
[80] The Five Doctors
[81] Blood Harvest. He played the Harp in The Five Doctors.
[82] Tomb of Valdemar
[83] The Two Doctors, Interference. The term is spelled “Imprimature” in The Two Doctors script and novelisation, and as “Imprimatur” in some of the later books.
[84] The Ultimate Foe
[85] Remembrance of the Daleks
[86] Happy Endings
[87] Timewyrm: Revelation (p54), No Future (p203).
[88] The Eight Doctors
[89] The Ancestor Cell
[90] The English Way of Death
[91] Warmonger
[92] The Quantum Archangel
[93] Gallifrey: Annihilation. It’s possible that Prydon knew Rassilon in the proper timeline and was a founder of the Prydonian Chapter. The fact that “Majestrix Borusa” is female could be viewed as either supporting evidence (as with The Doctor’s Wife) that Time Lords can have incarnations of different genders, or is simply indicative of Borusa being born/Loomed female in this timeline.
[94] Gallifrey: Forever. The Krillic don’t appear to exist in Gallifrey’s primary timeline. Strangely, they claim to have been imprisoned for “a million years”, despite repeated references to Rassilon trapping them mere millennia ago. (Possibly, time passes differently within the Krillic’s prison, or they’ve simply lost track of how long they’ve been dormant.)
[95] The Invasion of Time. The Doctor becomes “the first President since Rassilon to hold the Great Key”, implying that Rassilon was President.
[96] The Infinity Doctors
[97] Shada
[98] Gallifrey: Forever
[99] World Game
[100] Gallifrey: Forever
[101] The Deadly Assassin
[102] The Five Doctors
[103] State of Decay
[104] The Androids of Tara
[105] Terror of the Vervoids
[106] The Brain of Morbius, Arc of Infinity, Terror of the Vervoids. In The Invasion of Time, it’s said that unauthorised use of a TARDIS “carries only one penalty”, but this isn’t definitively stated as execution.
[107] Forty-Five: “False Gods”
[108] The Company of Friends: “Benny’s Story”
[109] The Three Companions
[110] Shada
[111] Timewyrm: Revelation
[112] Alien Bodies
[113] Neverland
[114] The Pit
[115] State of Decay
[116] Damaged Goods
[117] So Vile a Sin
[118] Goth Opera
[119] The Rising Night. As with the vampires the Doctor encounters in State of Decay, the Baobhan Sith might well be the progeny of the Great Vampires.
[120] Zagreus
[121] Lungbarrow
[122] The Five Doctors
[123] The Coming of the Terraphiles
[124] Gallifrey: Reborn
[125] Neverland
[126] “The Tides of Time”
The Higher Ev
olutionaries
It’s never explained in the comic strips exactly what defines a Higher Evolutionary, or what their sphere of influence is. From the examples of Rassilon and Merlin, we can see that they’re semi-legendary figures - immortals with enormous personal powers that go far beyond psychic abilities until they are indistinguishable from magic. As such, the Higher Evolutionaries are capable of viewing and influencing events across infinity and eternity.
In the final part of “The Tides of Time”, we see dozens of High Evolutionaries from “throughout the known universe”. We’re only given the names of six during the story: Rassilon; Morvane; Bedevere (“The Matrix Lords”, and implicitly the latter two are Gallifreyans); Dakon Theta and the Thane of Kordar from the Althrace system; and Merlin the Wise from Earth. By the time of “The Final Chapter”, the Higher Evolutionaries include a representative of the Order of the Black Sun, Demoiselle Drin, in the place of Merlin.
It’s unclear whether the fact that Bedevere and Merlin are both names from Arthurian legend is significant, or how this Merlin relates to the Doctor being the Merlin of a parallel universe in Battlefield.
[127] The Five Doctors
[128] The Infinity Doctors
[129] The Ancestor Cell
[130] Cat’s Cradle: Time’s Crucible
[131] We hear a female voice read an extract from the modern translation of The Book of the Old Time in The Deadly Assassin.
[132] The last extant copy of The Black Scrolls of Rassilon is destroyed in The Five Doctors.
[133] Goth Opera (p119).
[134] No Future (p203).
[135] Timewyrm: Revelation (p65).
[136] Lungbarrow
[137] The Infinity Doctors
[138] The Gallifrey Chronicles
[139] The Infinity Doctors, The Ancestor Cell.
[140] The Infinity Doctors
[141] Heart of TARDIS
[142] K9 and the Time Trap. The story bears similarity to Omega’s story, and is written by Bob Baker, Omega’s co-creator. However, there are differences - Omega was never Emperor, and he only harnessed one sun. Omegon has a crippled leg. Despite the very similar names, they do seem to be different figures from early Time Lord history. The Time Trap doesn’t mention Omega, so doesn’t explore the relationship between the characters. Perhaps Omegon is Omega’s son, building on his father’s work. As an interesting side note, Omegon says he has met K9’s master, presumably the Doctor.
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