#just like. the doctor president of gallifrey

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

do you think 13 would actually still be a little knee-jerky defensive about “no im a timelord” after all this? like can i be justified in doing that. can i be justified if i make yaz first tease her about her desert barn origins a little bit, hit a “he’ll never make a timelord” nerve? or would she still just not, like, claim that title at all anymore?

[the-worms-in-your-bones]

Thinking about skin of the sleek and thief who stole time again……………… romana I would have been your friend

[voidisverytired]

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

[intuitive-revelations]

Headcanon: one of the reasons why Gallifreyan is a) so complex, and b) so inconsistent, is because it's less one language and more a complex mishmash of thousands of languages and dialects.

Think about how one of the reasons English can be complex to learn is because of the mix of Germanic and romance language roots, and now take it up to 11.

While one might expect Gallifrey to be monolingual, given its age and class structure, this probably isn't technically the case. After all, why limit your culture to one language when the average citizen is effectively panlingual (to the point that TARDIS translation circuits are actually dependent on their pilots' knowledge, rather than the other way round)?

Thus, if there once were distinct languages on Gallifrey, they probably have all been merged at this point into modern Gallifrey's super-Esperanto. Add in loan words from notable civilisations across all of spacetime (but likely primarily from Gallifreyan colonies and allies like Dronid, Minyos, Cartego etc.), and it quickly becomes quite unwieldy.

It's also likely that there's a lot of overlap between these sub-languages, which can make distinguishing meaning hard to an outsider. Gallifreyans likely get around this courtesy of their telepathic connections.

TBH, given Time Lord sensibilities, it's likely that every single word variation has its own delicate meanings, derived not just from their societal uses but also from the etymology and history of each one. Canonically (though I don't have a source) we know that there are 30 different words meaning "culture shock", for example, which likely have very minor distinctions in meaning. We also know, unsurprisingly, that there's at least 208 tenses to help in describing time travel.

As an example - imagine being a Sunari ambassador at an embassy gathering and accidentally offending every Time Lord in the room because you accidentally used a definite article derived from the memeovored Old High Tersuran colony dialect, now considered low-brow by association with modern Tersuran, when you intended to use a nearly identical form of the word originating from the Founding Conflict, a triumphant post-Rassilonian intervention, distinguished by a near-imperceptible glottal stop.

It's likely that some of these Gallifreyan sub-languages/dialects may still be spoken with increased frequency under certain conditions, such as in one's own House or when visiting other city complexes. We know, for example, that Arcadia seems to be associated with a "Northern English" accent (which Nine picked up subconsciously post-regeneration, with the Fall of Arcadia being one of the last things the War Doctor remembered before DOTD's multi-Doctor event - hence "lots of planets have a north") when translated, which may indicate some dialect differences in the original language. I suspect there is a societal expectation for Gallifreyans to code-switch depending on the situation, with Citadel business generally expecting the Gallifreyan equivalent of RP, though it's relatively common for Time Lords less concerned with respectability and politicking to not comply.

One nice benefit of all this complexity, and the reason I made this post, is that there's a good argument to be made that every fan attempt to construct a Gallifreyan language can be 'canon', contradictions and all.

Greencook Gallifreyan? A formal evolution of Pythian prophecy scripture into the post-Intuitive Revelation era (based on its similarities with the Visionary's scrawling in The End of Time).

Sherman Gallifreyan? A modern katakana-like phonetic alphabet for the rapid-onslaught of new loan words following President Romana's open academy policies. Recently adopted by the Fifteenth Doctor for writing human proverbs.

Teegarden Gallifreyan? An archaic but recognisable near-Capitolian dialect from the Prydonian mountains, once spoken by Oldblood houses like Lungbarrow and Blyledge.

Or, in a nutshell, the state of Gallifreyan conlangs (and maybe in-universe Gallifreyan dialects):

I guess the dream project would be to accept the complexity and create some sort of grand modular "meta-Gallifreyan" conlang, merging as many fan interpretations as possible with their own distinctions and overlaps, that can continue to be updated as new ideas come up and new stories are released...

[nethnad]

thinking about time lords and their fucked up little society again and i just realized how devastating the revelation of the drums in the end of time is in relation to the master's character.

because of all the renegade time lords in the universe, i think it's the master who most exemplifies the philosophical outlook that the time lords have towards the rest of the universe. they're stuffy observers, administrators, yes - but this position is one they've decided for themselves because of this concept of supremacy over other life forms. imposed and upheld this idea that other species that lack a time sense are less-than, primitive. and the master buys into this hard.

and i mean... compared to the doctor, the master is good at being a time lord. he buys into these supremacist concepts, this idea that every other species (and especially humans) is practically a meaningless ant in the grand scheme of the universe. takes it to the extreme, yes, but its the same underlying principle. he's a good student (despite whatever chibnall might think) - that one time lord from terror of the autons (identity forever a mystery) (its brax) even says "he did receive a higher degree of cosmic science than you." the master could play their game if he wanted to. he's remarkably comfortable with being on gallifrey/the idea of gallifrey(in eot/tlotl) than the doctor ever is. where the doctor avoids the subject of the lord presidency like the plague, the master is like "well if you kill the president you ARE the president! and then you have all of gallifrey!" and when the doctor destroys gallifrey (nominally), the master tries to rebuild it in the sound of drums/last of the time lords. tries to emulate their society. honor them in his little fucked up way. he brings them back from the time war!

and what does he get for it? how did the time lords treat him in response?

they decide to implant the sound of drums in his head, stretching back until he's a child. puts this insufferable noise, this splitting headache, in his head for his entire life. all so that they may live while he dies. because he is diseased, because of them. he has swallowed the pill, bought their propaganda, he has followed the rules, he tried to rebuild them he tried. and in response he is chewed up and spit out like trash so that rassilon's god complex can survive while the universe crumbles.

how crushing must that be to someone? to have your whole worldview - that you are better, you are chosen, you are special - come crumbling down in a few short moments? to see the revered founder-god of the civilization you have so desperately tried to revive look at you and say "you are diseased," even though he was the one to poison you in the first place?

and as his heart is torn to pieces... when rassilon says "no more," and charges his gauntlet, the master - who has spent countless lives fighting death with his bare hands - does not move.

part of me thinks he does not want to.

[natequarter]

🎉 yourbutchboyfriend Follow

considering changing my url but like what even to. yourbutchboyfriend?

💣 commiedyke Follow

DO ITTT

🎉 yourbutchboyfriend Follow

alright :3 here goes nothing

#anything for you

3 notes

🎉 yourbutchboyfriend Follow

man why does the doctor always act like i don't know what sex is? i'm 17 not 7 lol

🖋️ edwardianadvcnturess  Follow

He does the same with me! It's so utterly infuriating, why does he think just because I'm young I don't know what an orgy is?

🔫 thebrigadier Follow

I do believe he views all humans as deeply immature. I am nearing fifty now and he still patronises me whenever we meet.

❄️ icemaiden Follow

You're FIFTY??? No wonder the Doctor refuses to talk to you about such matters, that's practically cradle snatching. Or grooming.

⚰️ themaster Follow

hey didn't you lie about your age the first time you met the doctor? also you are literally 120. TIME TOT ☝️

❄️ icemaiden Follow

And you are literally a mass murderer. Go away.

⚰️ themaster Follow

you are like a little baby. watch this

*dies in his arms and he cries because he loves me unlike you who he could never love*

🎉 yourbutchboyfriend Follow

are you guys done yet or

#man what the fuck #is this like. time lord flirting

617 notes

🐧 coordinatorsupreme Follow

Tell me why the Rassilon character study I was just reading has an author's note that says "Sorry I haven't updated in decades, I got kidnapped and tortured by Daleks for twenty years!" Are all Mo3 users like this or is it just r*negades

🧶 elizabethtudor-blog Follow

Isn't this what happened to the president of Gallifrey?

🐧 coordinatorsupreme Follow

First of all, get off my post, I specifically have it in my DNI that humans are blocked on sight. Second of all,

WHAT?

👑 fred Follow

well what were YOU doing at the devils sacrament dare i ask

🐧 coordinatorsupreme Follow

None of those words are in the Matrix.

#What in Rassilon's name is a sacrament

132 notes

🗡️ worsthumanongallifrey Follow

it's always the little things in life. for example today i discovered that the writer behind all those doctor/romana fics on mo3 is none other than romana herself

#but does she write anything about me #nooo #no she does not

550 notes

📑 anordinaryjournalist Follow

Having a lovely coffee date with Harry to celebrate twenty years of the Doctor abandoning me! For some reason Harry hates it when I phrase things this way

📑 anordinaryjournalist Follow

Only 3 people died this time, it sounds terrible but I was hoping for something more interesting in all honesty

#the cafe didn't even explode or anything this time round #last time we had to pick up the dismembered bits of several corpses. much more fun #on the other hand Harry had to take his shirt off today (long story) #so that was fun #I mean it wasn't even really necessary but shhh he doesn't need to know that #eternally glad someone else is willing to put up with my nonsense (exploding fish-puma alien hybrids)

12 notes

🚬 fitz-crier Follow

nneed himmto fied merinto a pjper shrrder thrgn eastthe paper until wahts ke and whsts him is indenifinsble

📺 compassion Follow

I think he should not do that. Get help.

1 note

🏏 the--adventurer5 Follow

Repeat after me: your psychosexual obsession with an alien threat that wants to kill you is valid. Cosplaying as intergalactic mass murderers does not make you a bad person.

👑 fred Follow

if you make ONE MORE post glorifying cricket like this i may actually have to report you to the high council

🏏 the--adventurer5 Follow

Wait Romana I didn't mean it I'm sorry. I'll do anything. I'll unexplode Adric please don't report me to the High Council

👑 fred Follow

i'm not angry, i'm just disappointed.

✈️ donewiththisshit573 Follow

I'm angry! Stop fucking bringing up Adric when clearly none of you care about him!

⚰️ themaster Follow

what she said. be psychosexually obsessed with ME please please pretty please. i'll treat you right i won't report you to the high council i won't even kill you a little bit this time

🏏 the--adventurer5 Follow

You are pathetic.

#if you died right now I wouldn't even be sad I would be overjoyed

467,343 notes

[cough-droplet]

So I just watched The Enemy of the World, which is the story where the Doctor is asked to impersonate an aspiring dictator who happens to look exactly like him

And it absolutely slapped and there's a million super fascinating things about it I've been rambling to my friends but the one that really really got me is the fact that it's very emphatically set in the year 2018, aka now a couple years ago

I am obsessed with this fact, I need some Doctor Who writer to pick up on it and bring it up. I need something like, the Doctor pulls out a bunch of pictures of their past selves to explain regeneration to the newest companion but then has to leave the room and leaves the pictures there and it's just like

Companion's supporting-cast family member or something: (walks in and sees the pictures) "Hey, who're these people?" Companion: "Oh, they're-" Supporting-cast family member: "Oh wait no I know this guy, he was on the news! Remember, that politician who turns out was keeping a bunch of slaves in an underground bunker? Killed a bunch of people?" Companion: "What?"

And then the companion tries to subtly bring it up around the Doctor to try and figure out if that was him without arousing suspicion but it just doesn't inspire confidence

Companion: "Hey, Doctor, you ever been involved in politics?" The Doctor: (having been the president of both Gallifrey and Earth) "Yeah, why"

[makeithappenandreal]

If Donna stayed the Doctor's companion Part 2:

12th Doctor: *trying his best act* Look, Donna, So I am with monks now, I don't care about the Earth or your people...

Donna: You know I can tell the type of breakfast you had today from looking into your eyes at this point , right?

Donna: So wrap your acting up, we have an afternoon tea arranged at Jupiter after we get this monks out of the Planet.

12th Doctor: Can't you just play along for once...

-

12th Doctor: I can't tell Donna that I am blind! She will fuss over me!

Nardole: You need to tell her! How can you hide it?

12th Doctor: Trust me, she will not notice one single thing.

Donna: *the second she walks into TARDIS* You are still blind, aren't you?

12th Doctor: Oh for Time's sake...

_

11th Doctor: So, River is Amy and Rory's daughter and she is also my wife as well... Does that mean Amy is my in law?!

Donna: She can berate you Like a child at any time. Living my dream for real

_

Donna: ...

12th Doctor: Not another word-

Donna: WORLD PRESIDENT LOL *bursts out laughing while pointing at him*

Donna: UPGRADE FROM TIME LORD VICTORIOUS THO

12th Doctor: Oh hell.. *puts his head on his hands*

_

_

War Doctor: We are surrounded by knights, we need to do something to escape!

11th Doctor: Oh there is no need to espace. Watch. Donna?

Donna, from the portal: YOU STUPID SPACEBOY WHERE IN THE EARTH ARE YOU AND I AM COMING THERE TO KICK YOUR IDIOT ASS TO SPACE

Knights: *run away in true terror*

10th Doctor: It's like we never left...

_

12th Doctor: *after turning up on the coffee shop Donna's relaxing* So, remember Davros?

Donna: ... Of course I do.

12th Doctor: *laughing nervously while thinking how he fucked up* So Guess what...

_

10th Doctor: *getting married to Queen Elizabeth*

Donna and 11th whispering aggressively behind* : - I cannot believe you did not mention you were married to QUEEN ELIZABETH! -.OBVIOUSLY i diDN'T KNOW!-

_

12th Doctor: So this is Gallifrey!

Donna: I thought it was Space Eden or something from the way you described it, this is just red sand. Like literal Azirona has more eccentric places than here.

12th Doctor: ...i sincerely want to believe I will be able to impress you one day because this is killing me.

_

Donna: So...

12th Doctor: ...

Donna: Why did you kidnap the president's wife?

12th Doctor: Oh, Heaven, you had a conversation with Missy, didn't you?

Donna: I literally have enough material in my hand to embarrase you for at least one regeneration, yeah.

Missy: She is my favorite.

_

13th Doctor: *steals Donna's coats every once in a while and does not give the clothes back*

Donna: *rants to her about that but secretly loves it*

_

12th Doctor: Clara, please be rational and give the TARDIS keys to me.

Donna: *whispers to Doctor* Not to interrupt an emotional moment but she does know you can just snap your fingers and get into TARDIS doesn't she?

12th Doctor: *shakes his head slightly*

Donna: Also that I have an extra key...

Donna: In fact I have a bowl of them because you like the noise the keys make when you drop it in there

Donna: But I guess this is what we are doing because you like to see people in angst. Okay.

[dalekofchaos]

Didn't have enough room for it, but the Paternoster Gang, so if you want that, just reply or reblog with that option

Context

U.NI.IT.

the Unified Intelligence Taskforce. The Power of the Doctor set up a new UNIT that recruited some of the Doctor's former companions so it feels like there's fertile ground for a show about who protects modern-day Earth when the Doctor's not available. An episodic structure would fit a UNIT show well, allowing it to shift from espionage thriller, to alien invasion, to weird science, like The X-Files.

An alternative UNIT show could follow in the footsteps of Star Trek: Lower Decks by focusing on a group of lowly officers who are left to pick up the pieces after one of the big exciting Doctor Who alien invasions. The Doctor always leaves a lot of destruction in their wake, so it would provide a lot of opportunities for an affectionate parody of Doctor Who. They could be led by a former UNIT operative like Sergeant Benton (John Levene) who would be an ideal character for an irreverent Doctor Who comedy. There's a lot of potential for UNIT in the new RTD era and hopefully, the Disney+ deal can help to realize it.

For obvious reasons, Jack and Mickey would be recast

Companions united.

Showing everyone who traveled with the Doctor saving the world in their own way. Each episode showing individual companions. From all the alive Classic Companions to all the New Who Companions.

Master Who? Basically The Master's show and showing what happens when The Doctor isn't there to stop The Master's universal conquest. And The Master taking on the worst people imaginable as companions. Could have Michelle Gomez, John Simm, Sascha Dhawan, Derek Jacobi, Geoffrey Beevers, Eric Roberts and Gordon Tipple return as their respective Masters/Missy

Time Lord Academy. The childhood of The Doctor, Master, and Rani during their years at the academy

Eighth Doctor adventures.

Finally giving Eight the run he deserves. Could bring in Charley or Lucie as his companions and lead into Eight in the Time War

Showing Romana and Leela on Gallifrey. During Romana's reign as Time Lady President. Leading to the Time War and how Romana was removed from power and Leela's last stand

[lurking-latinist]

👀👀 wanna say more about your eusocial timelord theory?

when you sent this ask like a year ago apparently I did not, for which I apologize.

now it's the wee small hours and I'm trying to clear out my asks. but eusocial time lords are so fun. forgive anything that doesn't make sense/jars weirdly in this, I'm trying to explain some quite spitbally worldbuilding.

among other things, it's an explanation for (1) why are there so few time ladies on screen and (2) that very strange thing in I think it's in Gallifrey where Pandora was 'the first female President' and apparently that's a big deal? but like why would a different planet (where they regenerate!!) have the same manifestations of sexism as we have? and also vaguely riffing on the VNAs lore that Gallifrey used to be a matriarchy and Rassilon overthrew it, but also kind of completely transforming that lore.

so forget gender, this is not about gender. "male"/"female" is at best a very rough translation of the binary that Gallifreyans are concerned with, which is worker/queen. They are bees!

The Time Ladies (i.e. Gallifreyans played by female human actors) that we see in the pre-War era (all of this applies to the pre-War era)--Romana, the Rani, Flavia, Inquisitor Darkel--are biologically the equivalent of insect queens. (And the Doctor, the Master, Borusa, the Floating Time Lord, Commander Maxil, etc. etc. are the equivalent of worker bees. The fact that the former all present as female and the latter all present as male is just sort of a translation convention/useful coincidence, I guess.) Gallifreyans evolved from a eusocial species and their early political structures were developments of the hive structure, with reproductive capacity strongly linked to political authority.

Presumably this is what Rassilon, or whatever revolutionary Rassilon stole credit from, is supposed to have overturned--the link between reproductive capacity and political authority. But in my version, it was before that that Looming became a thing: the queens had control of the Looms, so it was the ultimate refinement of their arts and sciences, and it was their way of getting rid of whatever drone class there used to be, if they weren't already parthenogenetic.

And that's why there's the stereotype in Gallifrey--mentioned in connection with Pandora, suggested as a concern about Romana--that a "female" (queen) President will be autocratic. It's seen as a potential return to "how things once were."

And then I did a lot of worldbuilding for how government worked at a stage in history when there was a sort of uneasy balance between reproductive and political power, but that was for a fic Moki was working on and I think she's still working on it, so no spoilers!

So what you end up with is a hive structure where the role of the queen has been sort of abstracted away into... well, the hive itself. The power at the heart of Gallifrey is Gallifrey. I feel like that explains a lot of what's wrong with them.

There might be another branch of the species that evolved away from eusocial structure into something more like solitary bees and that's the Shobogans, possibly, since nobody seems at all clear what the Shobogans are.

Also I read that with naked mole rats, the only eusocial mammal, there are a few in each colony that are predisposed to not fit into the colony and instead go and wander and find other colonies, to promote genetic diversity, and I'm just saying, renegades.

And after the War when there are often maybe two Gallifreyans left, that's why whatever's left of the hivemind keeps trying to get at least one of them to turn out as a Time Lady. Fortunately for the universe, neither of them seems that interested in reproducing.

[mintyimperiatrix]

so wild theory time but what if the Master is Omega's son

ok hear me out because that sounds insane but i think it kinda works? cause first off we know now thanks to the Timeless Children that the Doctor is the daughter of the Other(/Tecteun). the Other is a scientist and explorer and while their morality's differ to the extreme the Doctor does, on the surface level, adopt these traits from them.

we also know that the Doctor, in their first childhood, had a friend on Gallifrey. a friend with no name. a friend who... accidentally killed her during a fight. i know i'm not the first to say that the kid on the cliff is the Master but it's a good starting point

so then we get to Omega, someone who was friends with the other two Founders and yet easily the one who's life we know the least about, at least from before he was chucked into a black hole. he wasn't an explorer like Tecteun, he was an engineer. he wanted to build his own things, be famous for his achievements and use them to obtain godlike power but when his usefulness ended he was thrown aside by Rassilon. does any this sound familiar?

All of those traits are shared by the Master.

lets cut to the End of Time real quick. the Master builds a device to bring Gallifrey back into the universe, allowing the next 'ascension' to take place (before the Doctor broke the machine) but when his moment of glory was about to come Rassilon, like Omega before him, threw him aside. obviously this is all pretty circumstantial and doesn't actually prove anything but then there's this exchange earlier in the episode

"Two Children of Gallifrey" could just be a poetic way to refer to two random Time Lords. except we know it doesn't, because the Doctor isn't a random Time Lord and even if the average Time Lord doesn't know that the Matrix Does. so if the Doctor is the daughter of one of the Founders then she is (almost) literally a 'Child of Gallifrey'. take the same idea and apply it to the Master and logic dictates he would be the child of either Rassilon or Omega

i think the most interesting part happens after that though, when the Time Lord dude refers to them as 'the Enmity of Ages' (which would be an amazing name for a band just saying) and Rassilon immediately knows that this means the Doctor and the Master. the only time we've seen him meet either of those characters before is in passing during the Five Doctors. it's easy to infer that he'd know the Doctor from their role Time War but the Master? he didn't fight in the war, he mostly refused to work with the Time Lords during the War and then hid himself as Professor Yana when it got too much so why would Rassilon, who has only seen the Master once when he was tied up on the floor in the body of a Trakenite, know that the Master was the other half of the Enmity of Ages?

you Could say he learnt of the Master's reputation during the Time War but i frankly don't think he'd care about that? so to me at least it feels like the best explanation would be that he's met the Master before, way back when he was first President. and the reason he's so disgusted by the Master, the reason he finds it amusing that the Doctor's 'final act' is the murder of Gallifrey is because he knows who these two are. he is staring at the children of his fellow Founders, realistically these two are the only people in the universe he might consider a threat to his power or his status, and much like he did with their parents he tries to use both of them before casting them aside but just like before they both come out the other end alive

also saying the Enmity of Ages to me infers a greater conflict than just that of two normal Time Lords. from any single character it would be just a dramatic phrase but this is directly from the Matrix itself, which knows all of Time Lord history, so they are a Big Deal

but now we skip to everyone's favourite episode: The Timeless Children (genuinely one of my favourite finales it gets such a bad wrap). we learn the Doctor has unlimited regenerations, or at least had unlimited regenerations at some point because whether they still do or not is kinda up to interpretation. it was the Doctor's biology which allowed the Time Lords to unlock the power of regeneration, however the Other limited the number of regenerations to 12 lives when giving it to the rest of the population. i think Tecteun's presence in Flux implies that she never limited her own regenerations and you could probably say the same to Rassilon's, with that being his secret of immortality.

now in the episode the Master claims that Tecteun took the ultimate sacrifice by testing the raw ability on herself, but suppose she didn't. suppose she had another test subject first. suppose she promised one of her friends that his son, the best friend of her own child, could become the first Time Lord to receive the gift of infinite life. suppose then that Omega, wanting glory for himself and for his son, agreed to this and allowed Tecteun test her discovery on the boy, who was then granted an endless cycle of regenerations to match his friend's. from there Tecteun, now knowing the ability would work, put into herself, into Rassilon and into Omega before limiting it to a dozen lives per person and spreading it out among the population.

it's a lot of inference i'll admit but it would add a good few extra layers to these lines:

and this of course opens the door to the possibility that other character's we've met of cryptic origin with seemingly impossible knowledge but too dark a morality to be the Doctor could be the Master instead. characters like Lee Clayton or Gat (obviously not both at once) could be an early version of the Master. maybe Magus and Hazel from the Forgotten Lives books are also past versions of the Master. hell if you want to go wild maybe even the War Chief is the Master from before they had their memory wiped (but thats very unlikely)

also as i was finding the right screenshots and clips for this post i found these as well...

the way the Master refers to the Founders as 'our parents' (Tecteun and Omega being referred to as separate parents, as a Thoschei shipper i'm not touching the sibling theory with a forty foot pole) does make me wonder if he found out about his own past too but didn't tell the Doctor, not wanting to admit that he was the reason for the Doctor's first regeneration, the reason for Tecteun's torture and experimentation on her and the reason she could safely discover the ability for herself

so yeah who's to say that the Master isn't Omega's child who, like Tecteun's child, was captured by the Time Lords, regressed into a child, restricted to only 12 regenerations and robbed of all their memories. maybe he isn't any of that though. i mean maybe he is just a whiny crybaby who wants to be as important as his best friend. maybe he was the Timeless Child and the Doctor was the kid who pushed her. maybe he's actually Rassilon's child instead. who knows? not me!

[kronos-lungbarrow-oakdown]

Doctor Who YT animations compilation

In case you feel like watching and supporting things created by fans for fans of this big fandom but don't know where to start!

Rules by RKE2006

Misery x CPR x Reese’s Puffs Remix by RKE2006

TWO AND THREE BUT IT’S decently (?) REANIMATED by RKE2006

Counting Stars by Adisa

Karma by AngelBless | @doodlebless

DW animatic by Jo Bee

Hurly Burly Party by 清洁工Cleaner

Last Words by President Romana by Just a Fox

Doctor Who Parody: Dalek Who by mashed

Burning Pile by Moosepudding

Gallifrey - animated scenes from the end of Enemy Lines by Aethira

Doctor Who Animatic by SVORTOCH

I’m you, ten minutes from now by EntropySan

I AM THE MAN // THE MASTER by Ashesfordayz

Circletine by Snake

50 Years in Time and Space by Richard Swarbrick

Buying Time by James McDonald

The Women Who Lived | Doctor Who by Doctor Who

[grainjew]

On Gallifreyan Vestigial Gender

[this is the revised and expanded version of some rambling i initially did in my cowriter's discord DMs. i tried cite sources where i could, but a lot of this has been marinating in my brain since half-absorbing posts twenty pages deep into peoples' dw tags 3 years ago, and also i spend way too much time on the wiki, so please excuse anything i can't quite source, which is most of it. huge thanks to @oriigami for being my original conversation partner and contributing extremely to the concepts here, and to @bird-of-paradox and @waywren, neither of whom I am being allowed to @, for bothering me into not leaving it as unreadable discord screenshots]

-

There's this tendency among queer Doctor Who fans to look at Time Lord society, with its alienness and regeneration, and ask, frustrated, "Why do they even have gender?"

I sympathize with this extremely. I've been the one asking this question plenty in the past, and I do think it's a bit silly, and even sillier that the genders are "man" and "woman" and there are apparently two of them. But I also think that the section of canon most insistent about the Gallifreyan gender binary, the 7th Doctor novels from the 90s, also has the potential to be the most interesting about it.

Now, this is not to say that the text of those novels isn't weird about gender in a flawed, written by (as far as I know) cis people in the 90s way. But I think that you can extrapolate and queer what's there in very interesting ways, often because it's so flawed in the first place: Gallifrey, too, is an extremely flawed society. Decadent, degenerate, and rotten to the core, as the show put it.

So, VNAs Gallifrey: living Houses and their female Housekeepers, cultural and literal planet-wide sterility, Loom birth, rigid overcomplicated bureaucracy, the enduring legacy of the pre-Rassilon Pythian regime. The gender binary as presented here goes something like

women: chaos/magic/psychic powers/superstition/the house (scary)/biological childbirth/fertility men: cold rationality/order/science/bureaucracy/loom-birth/sterility

The Pythia and the Lord President. Magic and science. The House and the Web of Time.

Obviously a lot of this is classic gender binary stuff. But let's put the exasperated question of "Why must we do the gender binary like this?" aside for a moment and think about Gallifreyan society instead.

Pythia-ruled and Time Lord-ruled Gallifrey have a lot of the same problems in the end, just wearing different faces: they're both very much totalitarian states that believe themselves to be above everyone else. But while the Time Lords observe and micromanage the Web of Time from their Panopticon, maintaining its integrity to their standards, the Pythians didn't have time travel, so this preoccupation with control manifested--as far as I know; this is the bit in the meta where I admit I haven't actually read Time's Crucible yet--as keeping the entirety of society in one psychic hivemind, leaving nobody any privacy, plus a lot of future-reading and prophecy and whatnot.

The main relics of that societal layout into post-Rassilon Gallifreyan society are the Matrix, which has every single dead Time Lord's brain in it and does their prophecies for them, just couched in a little bit more science than Pythian magic, the Houses, which are alive all around you and in which you're constantly being watched by the Housekeeper through her mirrors, and, of course, the gender binary.

The Pythia was always a woman. Women were the ones with vast psychic powers, with magic; women were the ones in charge. Pythian Gallifrey was a heavily gendered society. This is because Gallifreyans are a kind of bug /shot with the "irrelevant to the point at hand" gun.

And so, when Rassilon rebelled, he was very much playing the part of "opposite gender with opposite worldview." The Pythia had female magic and superstition; he had male science and technology. His most trusted Founders were either all or mostly men, depending on the version of events you prefer. (Personally I have my doubts about the Other.) Rassilon built his new society as a man, among men, in opposition to the matriarchs before him.

Gallifrey, despite the invention (or theft, depending on the story) of regeneration allowing people to trans their gender randomly and sometimes unintentionally, never left the gender binary behind.

The whole point of modern Gallifreyan society is that they're still stuck in that exact same moment Rassilon took over (and the Pythia cursed them to sterility, if thats the version you're going with). You could easily make an argument for this being some cycle of abuse type situation; Rassilon and co overthrew the Pythia and immediately did exactly what she was doing to them to the wider universe. I tend to read it as a regeneration: it's the same society, really. It just died and was reborn, and now it looks and sounds different.

-

The downside of trying to translate a discord conversation into a proper meta post is that sometimes making a coherent transition between thoughts is impossible. So to introduce the next bit of this post, I'm going to hand you off for a moment to this post about the 8th Doctor's "I'm not sure I've ever even been a man" quote from Interference. As op of that post says, the Doctor is genderqueer even by Gallifreyan standards- he's being questioned in that scene by another Gallifreyan, who doesn't understand his experience of gender.

The EDAs are full of "Eight is nonbinary" quotes, of course. Every queer fan who's ever engaged with them has a collection (and if anyone knows where that one google doc compilation that was going around awhile back went I'd be in your debt, because I'd love to know if my collection is missing any), but almost all those quotes refer to his genderqueerness in human terms, as observed by human companions, or in response to human assumptions. Except that one. Not only is Gallifrey's gender binary alive and well in a society where people can literally change their gender when they die, but the Doctor doesn't fit inside it.

All this to say that being a renegade Time Lord is a nonbinary thing to do. Especially the Doctor, with all sorts of weird Other Timeless nonsense in their biodata. Women stay on Gallifrey (or Karn!) and do magic and watch you. Men stay on Gallifrey and do science and watch other people. Renegades go out and do whatever they please. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

-

So. Gallifrey has a gender binary. It's vestigial, a remnant of an earlier iteration of society with a much sharper male-female divide, and it doesn't make logical sense for it to exist. So: How does it manifest? And what function does its continued existence serve in the interests of the status quo and ruling class?

Let's take a look at 7th Doctor novel Lungbarrow.

Lungbarrow introduces us to (among many other things) the living Houses of the Time Lord Families, and to the family structures within: the patriarchal figure of the Kithriarch, the always-female Housekeeper, bound in her ritual marriage to the House itself, and hordes of petty squabbling Cousins.

Kithriarch is already an interesting title. It's obviously a gender neutral version of matriarch or patriarch, but the role itself seems to be almost entirely a male sort of thing in opposition to the feminine Housekeeper.

The Housekeeper, meanwhile, seems to be in a direct conceptual and societal line of descent from the Pythian priestesses: she can see anything within her domain, she has a psychic connection to the House, from whom she cannot hide anything, she can command the wooden Drudge servants and other House subsystems, she prioritizes the House above all where the Kithriarch is supposed to prioritize the Family. Women are frightening and powerful psychics. They know everything you want to keep secret, and prioritize the collective.

(There's also something here about how Lungbarrow presents duelling dualities--the Doctor and the Master, the CIA head and the Lord President, the Kithriarch and the Housekeeper, the masculine and the feminine--but I haven't quite tied it into the rest of this yet.) (Although while we're mentioning the Master. He's girlcoded by Gallifreyan standards and the Rani is boycoded by the same. I will not be expanding on this at this time just trust me.)

I think Housekeepers and women who want to be Housekeepers try to keep their self-image as women strong enough that they never regenerate into a male body (whatever a '"male body" means, of course, but I'm not sure Time Lords have gotten that far in their queer theory yet). I also think that there are more female Kithriarchs than male Housekeepers, because Housekeeper is much more heavily ritualized role in keeping with the Pythia's more ritualized general vibe, but I do think female Kithriarchs are still few and far between.

I also think that these are probably the most explicitly gendered occupations on Gallifrey, although of course you'll see some drift. Most women are out there getting the same scientific, military, and bureaucratic positions as men. But there's this lingering specter of gender roles, a Pythia-shaped hole that exists around the concept of womanhood. As my cowriter put it when we were talking about this, an "ideal of womanhood. not ‘ideal’ as in desirable, [but] ‘ideal’ as in the quintessential image of the thing."

This is further amplified by the continued existence of the Pythians in the form of the Sisterhood of Karn, living in their perfectly functional all-women magic society just out of sight. Their presence at the edge of the Gallifreyan consciousness must haunt the Time Lords, as any imperialist power is haunted by its own past and its own ultimate impotence.

Because that's the other thing. Gender roles are, to quote my cowriter again, "stupid and antiquated and historically potent tools of authoritarianism." Of course the Time Lords have them. Have you seen them?

They're tools of control, of conformity, of idealizing the past. Of conservatism. Consider, to once more quote my cowriter, "the weird traditionalist psychosis of having gender roles in a society that can’t bear children."

The ideal woman on Gallifrey is still the Pythia, millenia or even billenia on. And the ideal man is still the Lord President Rassilon.

-

[thank you for your time! if you liked this please consider checking out my fic Something Old, which is about lungbarrow, the adventuress of henrietta street, and the gallifreyan concept of marriage, and in the writing of which i initially articulated most of the thoughts in this post. i've previously characterized it as a fic that's actually a meta post. and please don't be too mean to me for anything i got wrong in here! i'm just a little guy]

[thetardisisnotourdivision]

THEORY: SUSAN FOREMAN IS THE ONE WHO WAITS.

And also possibly Ruby's mother. 

And also Mrs Flood. Probably.

The Doctor promised her that he'd come back. And she never stopped waiting. She's been waiting for sixty years. 

THEORY, (it's very specific because it's inspired by “Wait For It” from Hamilton):

So Susan is left on Earth with David, whom she loves. Over the years, they become closer, even when sent to separate battlefields. The pain of being abandoned softens over time, and as she and David grow closer, eventually she allows herself to love him properly. He proposes, and they get married, and have children.

But over time, especially once she finds Ian and Barbara's diary - and possibly, subsequently, their graves - it starts to weigh on her. And, slowly, first her husband, her friends, her son Alex, and then her other children, her grandchildren, their children, start to die around her, and she's powerless to stop it.

And still the Doctor does not come back - she waits and waits for him, but he does not return. 

Until one day she receives summons from Gallifrey - a Time War, and they need her. She's extremely powerful, the only living descendant of the Timeless Child, (EDIT: in canon she had strong telepathic skills that even the Doctor was impressed by, and which almost got them all killed a few times) and one of the most important people they get on their side. Therefore, they also need a way of controlling her, which they don't yet have. During the Time War she spirals out of control - she repeatedly throws herself towards death and danger, only to find out that she cannot die once she's killed for the twelfth time. She starts experimenting with her power, testing her limits, seeing how powerful she can become. And when people ask who she is, she leaves a message for the Doctor - “tell him I'm still waiting for him to come back.” This leads to her being nicknamed "The One Who Waits".

Eventually, this madness manifests as her trying to attract the Doctor to her - creating mysteries, eventually creating fear and destruction amongst her enemies, terrorising the Pantheon - able to predict, via telepathy, every move that the Toymaker will make - in an attempt to lure him in, just so that she won't be alone anymore. (see: that one post about Sherlock post-Reichenbach where John is the murderer to lure Sherlock back to him).

The Time Lords realise that they need a way to control her, PRONTO. 

Now this bit in particular is a bit iffy:

Ruby might have been an orphan that Susan decided to look after, feeling responsible for the deaths of her parents

She may have been created like Jenny in an attempt to make more soldiers to fight, only it went wrong 

Maybe Susan fell in love, and as such has a baby.

Whatever the case, the Time Lords suddenly have their hostage. 

And they take Ruby. 

Doesn't really work. Susan's accustomed to committing war crimes at this point, therefore probably qualifies for President automatically - anyway, she storms the Capital and takes her baby back. But now she has the problem of how to protect her. So she takes Ruby to her own home - Earth. Uses a chameleon arch on herself, to make herself human, and watches over Ruby as Mrs Flood (that's a whole other theory that I'll post very soon)

Either this, OR

While Susan spirals out of control, the Time Lords, in retribution, dump Ruby on Earth, in 2004, just before we first meet the Doctor again (so near the end of the Time War probably is what I'm saying). The Doctor possibly has something to do with it. Susan, furious, burns through space and time in an attempt to find Ruby - which is why we keep seeing Susan Twist. She then - having regenerated - came up with the false identity of Mrs Flood upon finding Ruby living in London and settled down as her neighbour.

(EDIT: I would guess that Susan Twist is a red herring, created and fractured through time by the real Susan in order to find Ruby, but not only that - she's a mystery that the Doctor cannot resist, and he'll follow the trail, and finally "come back", like he promised.)

Whatever happens, Susan begins to blame the Doctor for hers and Ruby's situation, blaming him for taking everyone she loved from her - for abandoning them both on a planet where they would outlive everyone they love. 

There's the theory. Now, even in the Classic series, while Susan is often shown as the typical screaming girl stereotype, this is not the case - often, it's her who tips the balance of power within the TARDIS, she's often violent, quite ruthless, threatening, even, and seems to know more about hers and the Doctor's home, and why they left it, than the Doctor does. Whenever Gallifrey is described, it's Susan describing it - she reacts almost in horror when he says that they'll someday return there - and when Ping Cho asks where her home is, she replies evasively - “that's a very difficult question to answer, Ping Cho”. Usually, she's the one to explain things to others, a role that, when she leaves, the Doctor then takes on. 

I'm writing this out now because in the latest DWM there was an article on The Legend Of Ruby Sunday/Empire Of Death, with no less than SIX REFERENCES to Susan's era, directly using the phrase "unearthly children" to describe the Space Babies. The article also contained the phrase, "it started out as a mild curiosity in a churchyard -" (a play on a first doctor quote, "it started out as a mild curiosity in a junkyard") "- Now it's time to return". I take this as a reference to the line "One day, I shall come back" - and use it as further proof of Susan, who is waiting for him, ending up with the nickname The One Who Waits.

There's a lot more to this theory, including the Mrs Flood side of it, but there's the basics of it. Let me know what you think :-)

[intuitive-revelations]

I don't know if I'm excited or frustrated at the 'future children' angle for Susan's origin. On one hand... I'm very interested in the possible links to the likes of Miranda, the Other etc.

On the other hand... ok confession time: This may make me a minority in the fandom, but I actually really dislike the 80s-90s retcons of Susan's origin. (Birth of a Renegade, Lungbarrow etc.)

I kinda just like her and the Doctor being some of the last surviving members of what was once a family on Gallifrey. I find the mystery and tragedy of what happened on Gallifrey, with implied student uprisings and political assassinations, far more intriguing than any twists saying "actually she's not really his granddaughter". Fortunately, some things can be canonwelded into that (eg. Susan really could be also related to the president / descended from Rassilon), but stuff that actually gives her an origin elsewhere is always a pain.

Idk. I just see once being a parent (and losing it all tragically) as such a crucial part of the Doctor's background and Susan fits very well into that as far as I'm concerned. Anything disconnecting her from that, or worse erasing it completely, ultimately damages what I find to be one of the most compelling things about the Doctor and Susan. :/

The few posts I've already seen talking about this suggests this is an unpopular opinion, but I'd be interested to know what people think, and if they agree or disagree...

[the-oracle-of-the-lost]

Gallifrey timeline

i wanted to share my headcanon of how long the Gallifrey series (& relevant episodes and audios) span. there's so little indication of what the gaps are between the seasons so most of this is just my vibe check and i'll explain when i have a good reasoning to my guess. if i'm skipping episodes that's because it's pretty clear that they happen back to back with each other.

Invasion of Time to The Apocalypse Element: ~150 years. i know in Spirit, Leela says that she's lived on Gallifrey for 25 years but to me that's simply not possible given this time gap would also include all of classic who from the Fourth Doctor on (it's lightly implied that The Apocalypse Element should be set during the Eighth Doctor's life but the Sixth Doctor turns up at the wrong time which i'm inclined to believe) and all of that can't possibly have happened in 25 years. plus one of the few canonical time spans we have is that Romana spent 20 years on Etra Prime after her election and i don't think five years could possibly explain everything that happened after The Invasion of Time and before Romana's election.

Apocalypse Element to Neverland: ~10 years. based on the fact that Romana physically healed from The Apocalypse Element and seems to have spent a decent bit of time as President.

Neverland to Zagreus: 18 months. i believe this is mentioned in Zagreus itself.

Zagreus to Weapon of Choice: ~2 years. enough time went by for Andred to have been missing for months and for Narvin to become pretty cozy as Coordinator of the CIA.

Weapon of Choice to A Blind Eye: 3 or 4 months.

A Blind Eye to Lies: 6 weeks. this is mentioned by Andred in Lies.

Lies to Pandora: ~2 weeks. which. really makes Wynter's death more tragic that he only had his job for less than a month and he already died for it.

Pandora to Imperiatrix: a month.

Imperiatrix to Warfare: 4 months. it's mentioned in Fractures that the Civil War had been ongoing for a matter of months and we only see the very end of it.

Appropriation to Mindbomb: 2 weeks. as much as the need for an imminent election was drummed up in Appropriation, i do think there was at least a little break given that Romana's health was markedly improved and the Capitol is a little more put together by Mindbomb.

Mindbomb to Panacea: a month. Matthias is obviously very green to being President and there's still a lot of damage from the Civil War but there's clearly some time passing here.

Panacea to Reborn: a couple days. i can't imagine it took longer than that for Romana to a) work out that she was on the Axis and b) to confront Braxiatel about it. i imagine everyone spent the interim trying to fix Braxiatel's time scoop/figuring out a way to get back to Gallifrey and it would have taken a bit to give up that way forward.

Reborn to Disassembled: 6 months. enough time that the gang really got some synergy together.

Disassembled to Annihilation: 3 weeks. enough time that Romana's still very much grieving Braxiatel but also enough that both Leela & Narvin feel a need to try to pull her out of it.

Annihilation to Forever: at least a year. i do like to think that Romana, Narvin, and Leela spent a lot more time on the Axis then we get to see because Narvin at least has some clear character development over the course of season 4. also alternate universes are fun. i'm sending them to more.

Forever to Emancipation: 9 months. mentioned in the episode.

Emancipation to Arbitration: 9 months. i believe it's mentioned that they spent a collective year and a half on this alt!Gallifrey.

beginning of Renaissance (for Romana): a month or two. there is something yummy about the idea of Romana being trapped with only herself and an empty city for company for a considerable time and really explains why she's Like That in the rest of Renaissance.

Ascension to Intervention Earth: ~350 years. long enough that Gallifrey has really changed and Romana thinks that her presidency is coming to a close but not long enough that Narvin has considerably aged. (though i'll also point out that this whole period is re-written)

Ascension to Enemy Lines: at least 100 years. again, there are some major political and vibe changes to Gallifrey so i've always thought this is a chunky time skip.

Enemy Lines to Celestial Intervention/start of the Time War: ~50 years. again, there's clearly been some Changes happening so it's a significant gap but i think the previous gap between season 6 & EL was longer because a) Narvin still struggles to refer to himself as Deputy Coordinator and b) Ace is still around (while being on Gallifrey does essentially give people temporary immortality, i don't think Ace would hang around the Time Lords forever).

Celestial Intervention to Desperate Measures: ~6-9 months. the war has been going on for long enough that the politics are quickly changing and the CIA forces have been largely depleted but i don't think it's that long.

Desperate Measures to Havoc: a week. considering Havoc opens with Romana's trial, it can't have been that big a gap in between seasons but it's enough for Livia to start to have doubts about her allegiances.

Havoc to Assassins: ~6 months. again enough time for some offscreen political development to happen but not that long.

Hostiles to Unity (for Narvin & Romana): a year. i really like the idea of them being stranded out in the war alone together and i think Romana's suicide attempt in Unity makes more sense if you consider that she's been trapped in the war for awhile now.

Mother Tongue to Unity (for Leela): ~30 years. Leela's aging even off of Gallifrey is inconsistent because of the vampire stuff but i think it's pretty clear through performance at least that she's older here. she also had to have lived on Unity at least as long as Rayo's been alive and considering he's a young adult, i think it makes sense that she spent 20 years on Unity and 10 years out in the war.

Deception to Homecoming (for Narvin & Leela): ~4 months. you can tell that they've grown closer again since Deception and that the Resistance seems a little more organized but it's a short enough time that they're just now finishing the plan Eris came up with in Deception.

not really a headcanon but i do think it's tragically funny that Unity, Beyond, and Homecoming is all one day for Romana. yikes. honestly it's amazing she's not doing worse in Homecoming.

i haven't spent that long thinking about the War Room audios so i don't really have specific headcanons but for Narvin, it's canonically been around 80 years for him in the Resistance and for Leela i feel like the events up until now have constituted about a year or so? given how well Leela has ingrained herself in the new political workings.

anyways tdlr – i think s1-3 of Gallifrey took place over about a year. s4-6 took place over about 3 years, about 100 years before Enemy Lines, about 50 years before the Time War started, the Time War audios take place around 2 years (more for Leela), and the War Room audios probably took place around a year so far (more for Narvin).

i'm always interested in how other people interpret the timeline so please share you're own ideas if y'all want to!