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[342] Benny: The Tears of the Oracle (p166-167)
[343] Underworld
[344] Gallifrey: The Inquiry
[345] According to the Cyber Lieutenant in Earthshock.
Forbidden to Interfere
Underworld established that the destruction of Minyos led directly to the Time Lords’ policy of non-intervention. Previous versions of Ahistory have assumed that this happened in the distant past, but Gallifrey: The Inquiry establishes that this happens after the Doctor graduated. Divided Loyalties, however, states that while the Doctor was studying, there were those who wanted Gallifrey to intervene more often; The Gallifrey Chronicles says that this was true a generation before.
Clearly, this is a perennial and active debate among the Time Lords, with three factions. In descending order of size and influence: most are opposed to any form of intervention; a significant number think the Time Lords should be a benign influence; a very few feel Gallifrey should impose its rule on the rest of the universe. The majority of Time Lords clearly worry that “benign” intervention will quickly become tyranny, and this is not an unfounded fear.
From the time of Rassilon through to the Doctor’s time, however, there seems to be a status quo - the Time Lords fight wars against immense threats, and perhaps monitor time-travel experiments and send occasional delegations out for specific reasons, but broadly confine themselves to Gallifrey. The existence of the Celestial Intervention Agency suggests that covert operations were also conducted.
If Gallifrey’s “zero tolerance” attitude to intervention is a recent crackdown, rather than dogma since the time of Rassilon, this would help explain a few of the apparent contradictions in its policies towards other races. We can see that when the Doctor was young, he travelled and was involved in interventionist efforts, like banning the MiniScopes. Clearly, Gallifrey in this period was relatively willing to interact with the wider universe.
The Minyan Incident seems to have been a shock to the system that resulted in a clampdown in all interventionism. As the Doctor left soon after this, and given what we know of the Doctor’s attitude to intervention, it’s extremely tempting to imagine that this clampdown was a factor in his departure. As the varying accounts of why the Doctor left Gallifrey show, what motivates him leaving could be anything from a principled rejection of Time Lord society to punishment for his being caught redhanded in a newly-illegal act.
[346] The Brain of Morbius. See the Past Lives sidebar.
[347] Cold Fusion, The Infinity Doctors.
[348] The Infinity Doctors
[349] Cold Fusion
[350] Cold Fusion, The Infinity Doctors. The Doctor’s new incarnation matches the description of the “Camfield Doctor” seen in The Brain of Morbius.
[351] The Infinity Doctors
[352] Cold Fusion
[353] Unnatural History. There’s also no account of what happened to the Doctor’s son and daughter-in-law, or any of the Doctor’s other children.
[354] Fear Her. Although some have seen this as a reference to the Doctor raising Miranda in Father Time, if he was indeed Susan’s biological grandfather, then he clearly must also have been a father.
[355] The Doctor’s Daughter
[356] “A Fairytale Life”
[357] Dating The Infinity Doctors (PDA #17) - The story takes place an unspecified amount of time after Patience disappears, to an unspecified incarnation of the Doctor, at an unspecified point before Gallifrey’s destruction (possibly between The Gallifrey Chronicles and Rose). It’s a thousand years since Savar lost his eyes.
Is The Infinity Doctors Canon?
The Infinity Doctors is a story set on Gallifrey that takes all the information from every previous story (in all media) set on Gallifrey - and other references to it - at face value and incorporates them into the narrative. The paradox being that we’ve seen a vast number of contradictory accounts of the Doctor’s home planet, so that The Infinity Doctors’ super-adherence to established continuity actually makes it impossible to place at a particular point in continuity without contradicting something established elsewhere.
References in Seeing I, Unnatural History, The Taking of Planet 5, Father Time and The Gallifrey Chronicles all make it clear that The Infinity Doctors (or, at the very least, events identical to it) took place in the “real” Doctor Who universe.
Latterly a fan consensus has built up that The Infinity Doctors is set on the “reconstructed” Gallifrey promised by The Gallifrey Chronicles, that the Infinity Doctor is the eighth Doctor, and his Gallifrey is the one destined to be destroyed in the Time War. This wasn’t the author’s intention, but isn’t ruled out by the book.
[358] Is Susan the Doctor’s Granddaughter?
Cold Fusion recounts Susan being rescued by the Doctor as an infant, which followed the description in the original “Cartmel Masterplan” document. When the events of that document were dramatised in Lungbarrow, Susan was an older child.
This complicates an already rather convoluted story. If both the accounts of Cold Fusion and Lungbarrow are taken at face value (and both contain degrees of ambiguity), it seems that Susan was born to the Camfield Doctor’s daughter-in-law in the recent past (ie: when the Doctor was a younger man and living on Gallifrey, not millions of years ago at the time of Rassilon). The Hartnell Doctor came back to this time zone (in Cold Fusion, it’s possible he simply regenerated, but this would seem to seriously contradict Lungbarrow) with the Hand of Omega and then rescued the infant Susan and Patience. The Doctor then travelled deep into the past of Gallifrey, where Susan was left in “safety” with the Other (where she was considered the last womb-born child). Patience fled Gallifrey in an early TARDIS (possibly she was taken into the distant past, too, and stole the TARDIS there). The Hartnell Doctor would revisit ancient Gallifrey and discover that following the death of the Other, Susan had been living on the streets there.
[359] An Unearthly Child, the quote comes from The Dalek Invasion of Earth. The Doctor and Susan frequently refer to each other as grandfather and grandchild.
[360] Marco Polo
[361] The Five Doctors
[362] Barbara says Susan is 15 in An Unearthly Child. In Marco Polo, Ping Cho says she is “in my sixteenth year”, and Susan says “Well, so am I”. So Susan is not far older than she looks, unlike Romana.
[363] On screen, Susan is never mentioned by any Time Lord, either those on Gallifrey or the various renegades.
[364] An Unearthly Child. Later stories showed the manual for the Doctor’s TARDIS which has the word on the cover, suggesting it was coined long before the Doctor’s time. One possible conclusion is that Susan is from an earlier period of Gallifreyan history, and which is indeed what Lungbarrow established.
[365] Cold Fusion
[366] Lungbarrow
[367] Here There Be Monsters. Having “a perfect memory” certainly isn’t something one could convict the Doctor of, though.
[368] An Earthly Child
[369] As The First Doctor Handbook (p181) spells out, while the series was being devised and before the first scripts were in, the production team had a relatively clear idea of what the Doctor’s secret was: “He has flashes of garbled memory which indicates he was involved in a galactic war and still fears pursuit by some undefined enemy... he escaped from his own galaxy in the year 5733”. There’s no supporting evidence for this on screen.
[370] The War Games
[371] Dating Lungbarrow (NA #60) - This was “eight hundred and seventy-three years ago”. Given that this is set just before Doctor Who - The Movie, and Vampire Science states that the Doctor was 1009 when he regenerated, it would make him 136. However, given the contradictions over his age, it is probably best not to rely on this figure. Owis was Loomed 675 years ago.
The Doctor’s Family
Sixteen of the Doctor’s forty-four Cousins are named in Lungbarrow: Quences, Owis, Glospin, Satthralope, Jobiska, Rynde, Arkhew, Maljamin, Farg, Celesia, Almund, Tugel, Chovor the Various
, DeRoosifa, Salpash and Luton. Braxiatel is presumably another.
[372] Here There Be Monsters
[373] Gallifrey: Annihilation. The inauguration of Pandak III is mentioned in The Deadly Assassin.
[374] The War Games, Resurrection of the Daleks, Pyramids of Mars, The Deadly Assassin.
[375] The Invisible Enemy, The Five Doctors.
[376] The Sound of Drums, The Beast Below.
[377] An Unearthly Child, The Edge of Destruction, The Massacre, The Two Doctors.
[378] The War Games
[379] The Tomb of the Cybermen, suggesting that he thought he could go back by that point, or he’s just being cute with her.
[380] World Game
[381] Aliens of London
[382] The Reign of Terror, Galaxy 4, The Massacre, The Celestial Toymaker, Colony in Space.
[383] According to Susan in Marco Polo.
[384] Timewyrm: Revelation (p48).
[385] Frontier in Space, Logopolis.
[386] The Big Bang
[387] Frontier in Space, The Big Bang.
[388] The Invasion of Time
[389] Logopolis, Cold Fusion.
[390] Planet of the Dead
[391] The Song of the Megaptera
[392] Logopolis - although it was working until An Unearthly Child.
[393] Mindwarp
[394] The Doctor’s Wife. The Doctor was 909 in The Impossible Astronaut, a couple of episodes earlier, so was around 209 when he stole the TARDIS.
[395] The Infinity Doctors
[396] The Gallifrey Chronicles
[397] Lungbarrow
[398] The Eight Doctors
[399] Remembrance of the Daleks, Silver Nemesis, An Unearthly Child.
[400] The Sensorites
[401] The Time Meddler. The Doctor says the Monk left their home planet fifty years after he did.
[402] “Time and Time Again”
[403] Seen in “Timeslip”.
[404] The Twin Dilemma, The Mark of the Rani, Planet of the Spiders respectively.
[405] The Doctor’s Wife
[406] Spiral Scratch
[407] The Doctor says he comes from “fifty years earlier” than the Monk in The Time Meddler. The War Chief remembers him leaving his home planet in The War Games. The Master is first seen in Terror of the Autons.
[408] We first meet Irving Braxiatel in Theatre of War, but he’s also present at the Armageddon Convention in The Empire of Glass, which occurs first chronologically. The Braxiatel Collection was first mentioned in City of Death.
[409] Neverland
[410] The Brain of Morbius. Gallifrey: The Inquiry establishes that the non-interference doctrine in its current hardline form is a development within the Doctor’s lifetime, so the rebellion led by Morbius would seem to be against recent policy, rather than an ancient dogma.
[411] Dating Warmonger (PDA #53) - It is never stated in The Brain of Morbius how long ago Morbius ruled Gallifrey. The Doctor recognises Morbius, but Morbius doesn’t recognise the Doctor.
In his novelisation of the story, Terrance Dicks states that Morbius came to power after the Doctor left Gallifrey, and that the Doctor heard of Morbius on his travels. In Warmonger, also by Dicks, the Doctor (who has travelled into Gallifrey’s past) muses that Borusa might be in his first incarnation (p166), and that this is the first time Borusa has met him, almost certainly setting it before the Doctor was born - but this is directly contradicted just a few pages later (p173), when it’s made clear that it’s after the Doctor stole a TARDIS and has left Gallifrey.
Neverland places it before the Master steals the files on the Doomsday Weapon. FP: The Book of the War has its “the Imperator Presidency” occurring between 870 and 866 years before the War starts, so (almost certainly) after the Doctor left Gallifrey. Timelink prefers the idea that Morbius rose after The Three Doctors.
[412] According to FP: The Book of the War, the Order of the Weal was formed during the “Imperator Presidency” - the Faction Paradox term for Morbius’ tenure as President. Presumably the ancient Celestial Intervention Agency concerned itself with external issues, not Gallifreyan politics.
[413] Fandom has tended to assume that Morbius was President of the Time Lords, although this isn’t stated in his TV story. The Vengeance of Morbius, though, makes reference to his presidential robes of office.
[414] While everyone is happy to call him “Lord President” in Warmonger, Saran is only Acting President until elections are held (p175). The Doctor thinks of Saran as “a very minor figure in Time Lord history” (p166), so we can probably infer that he lost the election. We can also speculate that the President who is elected at this point is the one seen in The Three Doctors and (after regenerating) the one assassinated in The Deadly Assassin. The Doctor never met the President killed in The Deadly Assassin, according to that story, but he had known Saran before originally leaving Gallifrey.
[415] Interference and FP: The Book of the War, the latter of which clarifies that the genesis of Faction Paradox lies in the founding of House Paradox two hundred and fifty-two years beforehand. Lawrence Miles, upon reading an advance draft of Ahistory (First Edition) verified that while Morbius and Grandfather Paradox were close contemporaries, “... It’s the long-term effects of the Morbius/Imperator crisis that lead to the rise of the Faction, rather than its direct aftermath”.
[416] Interference, FP: The Book of the War - see the events of 1752 in the main timeline.
[417] The Ancestor Cell. The online Faction Paradox timeline suggests that this Presidency fell between The Deadly Assassin and The Invasion of Time.
[418] FP: The Book of the War
[419] FP: Newtons Sleep and FP: The Book of the War, the latter of which says the Zo La Domini incident occurs three hundred eighty years before the War in Heaven, and twelve years after Grandfather Paradox’s imprisonment.
[420] Terror of the Autons
[421] Season 6B
The second Doctor’s status in The Two Doctors - that he’s an agent working on the behest of the Time Lords - looks like a major contradiction of the established facts, as it’s made clear in The War Games that the Doctor has fled his home planet and is terrified of any contact with his people. Fans don’t seem so worried that the Time Lords also contacted the first and second Doctors in The Three Doctors.
One theory that has gained currency since appearing in The Discontinuity Guide is that after The War Games, the Doctor wasn’t regenerated straight away but was reunited with Jamie and Victoria (who is mentioned in The Two Doctors) and sent on missions for the Time Lords. Supporting evidence for this is that the second Doctor seems to remember The War Games in The Five Doctors. It also ties in with TV Comic, which had the second Doctor exiled to Earth for a time before he became his third incarnation. Two novels by Terrance Dicks (Players and World Game) explicitly have sequences that, from the Doctor’s point of view, occur during Season 6B.
[422] The War Games. The event is recalled and dated in The Deadly Assassin, the Doctor’s exile begins in Spearhead from Space (continuing until The Three Doctors), and we learn the Tribunal is still monitoring the Doctor in Terror of the Autons. A number of accounts have taken their lead from The Auton Invasion (the novelisation of Spearhead from Space) and the first edition of The Making of Doctor Who, and stated that the Doctor is also punished for stealing the TARDIS. This is not established on television. The Time Lords have the opportunity to confiscate the TARDIS, but send the Doctor to Earth with it.
[423] Circular Time: “Spring”, in reference to The War Games.
[424] World Game
[425] The Two Doctors
[426] Terror of the Autons. The files are referred to in Colony in Space and The Sea Devils. Presumably, although this is never stated on TV, the Master also finds out about many of his other future allies and accomplices from these files.
[427] Neverland
[428] The Quantum Archangel, with reference to (respectively) The Mind of Evil, Colony in
Space, The Daemons, The Sea Devils, The Time Monster, Frontier in Space/Planet of the Daleks, The Keeper of Traken, Survival, Falls the Shadow, GodEngine and Doctor Who - The Movie.
[429] In the television series, the Time Lords sending the Doctor on missions is a rare occurrence after the Doctor’s exile is lifted - it only happens in Genesis of the Daleks and (the Doctor suspects) The Brain of Morbius. In the other media, it’s far more common, particularly the TV Comic strip (not included in this chronology), where it’s almost taken for granted that every time the Doctor uses the TARDIS, the Time Lords are controlling it at least to some extent.
[430] When Was Romana Born?
Like the Doctor, Romana doesn’t give a consistent account of her age - she’s “nearly 140” in The Ribos Operation, “125” in City of Death and “150” in The Leisure Hive. Potentially throwing another spanner into the works, Heart of TARDIS has her (between The Stones of Blood and The Androids of Tara) spending fifteen if not thirty years travelling through a nexus with the Doctor.
Nonetheless, her birth would seem to occur, in the Doctor’s personal timeline, almost exactly halfway between The Tomb of the Cybermen and Pyramids of Mars. Given the continuity of companions and the Doctor’s exile to Earth, the only certain gap between those two stories where the Doctor could age three hundred years would be between The Green Death and The Time Warrior, when the Doctor travels alone in his TARDIS. The UNIT personnel have no idea if the Doctor is away, as far as he is concerned, for decades or centuries at a time. If the Season 6B theory is true, there could be another significant gap there. The probability, then, is that Romana was born while the Doctor was in his third incarnation.
[431] As repeatedly stated in various Gallifrey stories (Lies, Panacea, Reborn and Annihilation). FP: The Book of the War, however, implies that Romana is from the House of Dvora, hence her full name (The Ribos Operation) of “Romanadvoratrelundar”.
[432] Neverland
[433] Shada