#timeless paradox

[daughterofheartshaven]

Using the Doctor Who EU to recontextualize the whole Timeless Child thing

Or, why the Doctor is a dhampir.

Salutations!

Maybe you saw my essay here about how Gallifrey wasn't actually destroyed by the Master using the Expanded universe as my evidence. Now, I want to tackle The Timeless Children's other controversial plot point - the titular Timeless Child's relationship with the Doctor. Also, perhaps you have heard of the Doctor Who book Lungbarrow, and how it connected the Doctor to a mysterious figure called the Other in Gallifrey's ancient history. So how are those connected? Was the Doctor really the Other? And just what is the story of the Timeless Child?

So let's talk about the Timeless Child. Let's talk about the Other. Let's talk about Patience. Let's talk about Division. And let's talk about vampires and where regeneration really comes from.

Shall we get started? Buckle up for another ride into the endless pit that is the Doctor Who expanded universe.

Okay, ground rules first. Anything seen on tv, happened. I can recontextualize as much as I want (and I'm gonna do that, believe me) but it still has to fit with everything we see onscreen. I also have to use all of an EU source if I use it. No picking and choosing bits. However, that same loophole applies to EU material - I can recontextualize those as much as I want, too.

With that out of the way, let's meet the stories that are our players. I'm going to be sorting them into medium by category this time.

Tv stories:

Ascension of the Cybermen / The Timeless Children: The controversial Thirteenth Doctor episodes. I'm assuming you're familiar with if you're reading this.

Fugitive of the Judoon: The Thirteenth Doctor story that introduced the Fugitive Doctor. I'm assuming you're familiar with this.

Flux: The Thirteenth Doctor story that followed up to the Timeless Child plot points in a way that is very relevant to this discussion. I'm assuming you're familiar with this.

A Good Man Goes to War: An Eleventh Doctor episode that established some of the history of the Time Lords

The Brain of Morbius: A Fourth Doctor story. Notable for this discussion because it featured brief images of ten faces that were implied to be incarnations of the Doctor from before the First Doctor. These are collectively known as the "Morbius Doctors".

State of Decay: The Fourth Doctor tv story that established the series lore on vampires

Books:

Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible: the Seventh Doctor book that laid the groundwork for Lungbarrow and its Gallifrey Lore

The Pit: A 90s Who book with some vampire lore

Goth Opera: A 90s Who book with some vampire lore

Damaged Goods: A 90s Who book with some vampire lore

Cold Fusion: A book starring the Fifth and Seventh Doctors that is notable for introducing the character of Patience

Lungbarrow: the big Gallifrey Lore book. I will be going over this one in depth

Interference: Shock Tactic: A 90s Who book with some vampire lore

The Infinity Doctors: A very confusing Doctor Who book (this will get explained later)

The Book of the War: The first book in the Faction Paradox series

Audios:

Zagreus: A Big Finish story starring the Eighth Doctor and Rassilon

Patience: A Big Finish story starring the Eighth Doctor

Comics:

The Tides of Time: A 70s comic starring the Fifth Doctor

The Bidding War: A 2010s comic with some vampire lore

Monstrous Beauty: A 2020s comic with some vampire lore

Origins: A recent comic that features the Fugitive Doctor

Okay, so there are kinda four threads running together that tell a more complete story, but were all written independently of each other. The story of the Timeless Child and Division, the story of the Other, the story of Patience, and the story of the Yssgaroth War. Let's go through them in order.

Also while the Other, the Timeless Child, Patience's husband, the Fugitive Doctor, the Infinity Doctor, the Morbius Doctors, and the Doctor are all presented as more or less the same character who all call themselves "the Doctor", I will be referring to them all separately. I have a few reasons for doing this which will become clear later, but it's also helpful for reasons of clarity.

Prologue: Where all this mess came from

So in the 70s, there was a tv story called The Brain of Morbius. Morbius was a Time Lord president who decided it was Morbin Time, tried to conquer the universe, and caused a civil war on Gallifrey in just about the only interesting thing to happen on Gallifrey between Rassilon's presidency and the Doctor being loomed. He was killed, but one of his followers managed to save his brain and is trying to make Morbius a new body so it can be Morbin Time again. The Time Lords decide to throw the Doctor at this problem, and he ends up getting into a mind-bending contest with Morbius (who was by that point in an artificial body). During this, both Morbius and the Doctor's past incarnations are shown on a screen, and then we see ten new faces while Morbius says, "How far, Doctor? How long have you lived?". A lot of people assumed those faces were Morbius's, but the intention from the producers was that they were prior faces of the Doctors (I will be referring to these incarnations as the Morbius Doctors moving forward, as that is how they are generally reffered to in the fandom). Trouble is, the rest of classic who completely ignored that.

Oh and if you're worried, while Morbius won the mindbending contest, it left him disoriented enough that he was able to get mobbed by the Sisterhood of Karn and pitched off a cliff, averting the renewal of Morbin Time.

And with that out of the way, let's get on to the real attractions.

Part 1: The Timeless Child and Division

So this story is the most straightforward of the three. In Ascension of the Cybermen / The Timeless Children, it is revealed that in Gallifrey's prehistory, a Gallifreyan scientist named Tecteun travelled off-world (in her world's first exploration of another planet) and found the Timeless Child by a portal to another universe. She took the Timeless Child back to Gallifrey and discovered that the Timeless Child had the ability to regenerate. Tecteun was able to synthesize this regenerative power and give it to her own people, becoming one of the founders of modern Time Lord society in the process. Later on, the Timeless Child and Tecteun were both recruited into something called Division, a time-active-interventionist group that skirted around or outright ignored Gallifrey's laws. It is also stated that the Timeless Child's memory was wiped - at least once, possibly more than once - in order to control them. It's also suggested that Tecteun seems to have regrets about all of this, given how she left a message for the Timeless Child in the matrix about it.

This is where the story gets fuzzy. The next time we see anything, the Timeless Child has evolved into the Fugitive Doctor. She is seen working for Division in the flashbacks in Flux and Origins, but following Origins, she goes on the run from them. The events of the Fugitive Doctor's flight from Division play out in Fugitive of the Judoon. She is able to assassinate Gat, the Time Lord seeking her capture, and while it comes at significant personal loss, there is nothing to indicate that the Fugitive Doctor is unable to make a clean getaway.

By the story presented in Ascension of the Cybermen / The Timeless Children, however, the Fugitive Doctor is assumed to have been captured with her memory wiped to eventually become the Doctor. Let's put a pin in that assumption, though. That same story also shows the Fugitive Doctor and the Morbius Doctors being a part of the Doctor's past.

Tecteun, meanwhile, had become head of Division (if she wasn't head of it to begin with). Origins briefly shows her leading Division at the time of the Fugitive Doctor, and she is finally shown meeting the Doctor proper in Flux. There, it is revealed that she had started considering the entire universe a scientific experiment, but due to the Doctor being considered too much of a rouge element, she decided to use antimatter called flux from outside the universe to destroy the universe, with Division being safe outside the Universe. She also released a pair of Great Old Ones, Swarm and Azure, with the intention that they would kill the Doctor. Tecteun's plan was that the old universe would be destroyed, and that Division would conquer the universe that the Timeless Child originated from.

This plan did not work.

Swarm and Azure instead killed Tecteun and destroyed Division, before being destroyed by an entity only known as Time (and I could go on a whole tangent on what her deal is, but I'm gonna save that for another post). It's not shown explicitly in the show, but I also believe Time removed the destruction of the flux from the universe as well (mostly because planets explicitly destroyed in Flux are shown still existing in the future of the series).

In any case, during the Flux event, the Doctor was able to recover the archive where the Timeless Child's wiped memories were stored, but she ultimately decided not to access them.

It's never stated which universe the Timeless Child comes from in the show, but we're gonna circle back to that. It's also not stated how long Tecteun ran Division between its founding in early Gallifreyan history and its destruction during the Flux event. We're coming back to this, too.

Part 2: The Other

Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible establishes two very important things about Gallifreyan history. One, all Time Lords became sterile early in their history - shortly after the conclusion of their war with the vampires (more on that war in a bit). Since then, instead of having sex, they have big cloning machines called Looms that make new Time Lords. And two, Rassilon (the founder of Time Lord society) had two major co-founders - Omega, and one other whose name was lost to time. He gets called just "the Other."

Rassilon and Omega were both established as characters in the classic series, but the Other is an invention of the books in the 90s (from the reader's perspective at least - he was a behind the scenes idea from the last few seasons of classic who, but he was never explicitly mentioned onscreen). He gets cryptic references all over the Virgin New Adventures book line, but this only gets concrete in their final Seventh Doctor book, Lungbarrow.

Where we get to know them in the book, Omega is presumed dead, and the Other and Rassilon are having a falling out. Omega's death is weighing heavily on the Other, and he thinks Rassilon is going power-mad and is trying to have the Other killed. Omega's last and most impressive creation, the stellar manipulator called the Hand of Omega, is quite possibly the Other's only friend by this point. The Other wants to leave the planet and so he tells his family to escape, and then confronts Rassilon with his intentions. Rassilon Does Not Like This and tries to have the Other stopped, and blocks all spaceports to make this happen. The Other then calmly walks into the primary generator for the looms and is never seen again.

And then, ten million years later, out from a loom, comes the Doctor. The Doctor's looming process was unusual, with the Doctor later claiming he could remember just before it happened, waiting to be born. (Although given the Doctor was five years old at the time he said this, that may be a little suspect). In any case, the Doctor lives a fairly normal life for a while, until he is found by the Hand of Omega which sees in him its old master. Shortly thereafter, the Doctor is confronted by the Time Lord Glospin (explaining his deal is a little complicated but he's a part of the same Family House as the Doctor is, the titular House Lungbarrow), about some irregularities in the Doctor's biology before being driven off by the Hand. It's ambiguous if either of these were the deciding factor, but the Doctor takes the Hand and leaves Gallifrey shortly thereafter.

Of course there's one last little piece left to take care of. If you're familiar with Classic Who, you may know that when we first met the Doctor, he was travelling with his granddaughter, Susan.

Lungbarrow claims that the Doctor's first trip in the Tardis was to travel back to Gallifrey's prehistory and meet the Other's granddaughter, the last child born before the Time Lords became sterile. She recognizes the Other in the Doctor, and considers him her grandfather. The Doctor doesn't quite recognize her, but takes her on as his first companion in the Tardis. And thus, Susan joined the Tardis crew.

The other thing that's important is uh that Lungbarrow has an actual plot. And said plot is only tangentially related to the above. Everything I just said is presented as three flashbacks in Lungbarrow - one straight narrative sequence (the argument between Rassilon and the Other), one where the Doctor shares his memories of leaving Gallifrey (basically everything that happens with Glospin, the Hand of Omega, and the Doctor first leaving Gallifrey), and one where several characters enter the Doctor's subconscious and have a dream sequence (including the Other walking into the Looms and the Doctor meeting Susan). The subconscious trip has some moments to it that are super trippy and metaphorical, and I'm gonna use that fact later. But for now, on to part 3!

Part 3: Patience

Like I said earlier, Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible is the story that establishes that all Time Lords are sterile. At the end of a civil war in Gallifrey's ancient history, the leader of the losing side, Pythia, cursed the people who would become Time Lords with sterility before killing herself. (Her followers, by the way, left Gallifrey and eventually became the Sisterhood of Karn). The Time Lords, desiring to avoid extinction, created breeding engines known as Looms, which would create new Time Lords through what was effetely cloning. That's the story presented in Cat's Crade: Time's Crucible, anyway. But if you look at other places in the EU, this story starts to crack. An Earthly Child introduces Susan Forman's explicitly biological son, for example. And in Lungbarrow, the Time Lord Andred is able to get a human, Leela, pregnant, although the character's future appearances in Big Finish are notably child-less, suggesting the pregnancy failed somehow (either that or the child removed themselves from history as part of joining faction paradox and became the character known as Intrepid, but this is a tangent).

So are Time Lords sterile? Yeah, I think so. For the most part. But we know that not all of them are. A rare few can still reproduce sexually. There is another Time Lord who had a biological child that I've yet to bring up, as well. Her true name was lost to time, so we know her only as Patience.

This is her story.

The character of Patience has some truly strange origins, even for the Doctor Who EU. In the 1982 comic The Tides of Time, the fifth Doctor briefly sees an illusion of someone who looks familiar to him, created by the demon Melanicus using something called the Event Sythesizer (no, I'm not going to explain that). The art shown is close enough to Second Doctor companion Zoe Herriot to assume that's who the author and artist intended the illusion to be of, but that's not the direction later stories went in.

The character of Patience was introduced proper in 1996's book Cold Fusion. It also features the Fifth Doctor, in an earlier point in his life then The Tides of Time. In it, a prototype Tardis crashes into a planet that is later colonized by humans. The humans discover one pilot, comatose, who by all rights should be dead. She isn't. They take her back to their big fancy lab and attempt to find out more about her with basically no success.

Enter the Doctor. (And also Tegan Jovanka.)

When the Fifth Doctor stumbles into this, he is able to help the pilot complete her first regeneration. She is unable to remember much of anything from prior to her regeneration and is from Gallifrey's distant past. She is, biologically, something of a proto-Time Lord: she speaks a different language then the Doctor naturally, she only has one heart, and a few other things. She's explicitly more-or-less a contemporary of Rassilon.

Not having a name for herself, she adopts the moniker "Patience" on Tegan's unintentional suggestion. Despite all this, Patience and the Doctor recognize each other on some level, and neither really have any ideas as to why - the Doctor shouldn't even be able to recognize the dialect of Gallifreyan she speaks, as it is dead by his time. Patience has some garbled memory of fleeing from arrest as ordered by Rassilon (with the implication being that any fertile Time Lords were having their births stopped so that the loom-born were to inherit Gallifrey). Patience's escape came with the help of her husband, whom authorial intent confirms as one of the Morbius Doctors. In any case, in the present day, Patience is starting to properly recover when she is shot in the back of the head, apparently killing her. Her body then disappears. The Fifth Doctor's memory of Patience is lost shortly thereafter when the Seventh Doctor orchestrates the Fifth Doctor losing his memory of the whole adventure in order to preserve the timelines. The Seventh Doctor only met his prior self after Patience's body had vanished, meaning that the Doctor's entire memory of Patience was erased - except, perhaps, for some vague recollection which we see in The Tides of Time.

While Patience's fate is followed up in the book The Infinity Doctors, The Infinity Doctors is a very strange book that doesn't really contribute much to this ongoing discussion. The Infinity Doctors is deliberately evasive about which Doctor it stars, with its protagonist being sometimes implied to be the First Doctor and sometimes the Eighth. It's very possible that Patience and Omega (yes he's here but I'm not going to explain that) are the only characters in the story from the Whoniverse as we understand it, with everyone else being from a different universe. I might do a breakdown of The Infinity Doctors someday, but now is not that day.

The only other information we have about Patience comes from the 2021 audio story fittingly entitled "Patience". In it, the Doctor tells uses an ancient artifact that takes the form of a deck of cards called the Paradoxica to analyze time and hide his companions - Liv Chenka, Helen Sinclair, Tania Bell, and Andy Davidson (yes, the Torchwood character. no, I'm not explaining that either) - from the Judoon. The narrative is interspersed with the Doctor telling a fairy tale about a woman completing an impossible task (emptying an ocean with a bag that had a hole in it) and receiving the child she desired once she had spent an eternity completing this task. The story ends with the confirmation that this woman was Patience, and that she gave the Doctor the Paradoxica. How this happened is left unsaid - either she gave it to her husband who became the Doctor, or this happened during the events of Cold Fusion.

Part 4: The Yssgaroth War

Unlike the other narratives I've just rambled off, the Yssgaroth War is much more of a patchwork from various places around the EU, so this is gonna be even more scattered than I have been thusfar.

State of Decay, for being a story set in the pocket universe called E-Space, ended up being one of those foundational Gallifrey lore episodes of the classic series. That's the serial that established that at the dawn of time, the Time Lords fought and won a massive war against the vampires.

Yes, you read that right. This is one of my favorite pieces of Doctor Who lore.

State of Decay establishes that the Great Vampires were massive bat-like creatures who could drain the life from entire planets and who created more traditional vampires as their servants. Rassilon lead Gallifrey against them, and ordered the construction of "bowships," which were giant spaceship crossbows that could be used to stake the Great Vampires. The Great Vampires were ultimately defeated by the Time Lords. EU sources generally agree that this was the biggest war the Time Lords ever participated in until the Time War ten million years later.

The book The Pit would add a couple of new details about the conflict. It would rename the Great Vampires "Yssgaroth" and claim that the Yssgaroth originated from outside the universe - the early time travel experiments overseen by Rassilon ripped a hole in reality and the Yssgaroth were what came through with intent to consume the universe. These details are supported by Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible and Interference: Shock Tactic.

A couple more recent comics have fleshed out the Yssgaroth War a bit. The Bidding War further reinforces that the Yssgaroth are from outside our universe, with it showing that during the Time War, the Time Lords opened a rift to the Yssgaroth dimension in an attempt to use them as a weapon against the Daleks. Monstrous Beauty was the first story to show us the War proper, depicting Rassilon personally leading forces against the vampiric army.

And this would all be interesting but irrelevant to our discussion if not for two stories published in the early 2000s that both seek to recontextualize the Yssgaroth War and the Time Lord's rise to power.

Let's start with Zagreus. The story as a whole is dedicated to deconstructing Rassilon's façade as a benevolent and reasonable ruler and instead reveals him to be a xenophobic tyrant who wished to remake the universe in his image - something that lines up with pretty much all of Rassilon's appearances post-Zagreus. As part of this, the vampire Lord Tepesh states that before the war, the vampires were peaceful and Rassilon provoked them because he feared their power. Tepesh is presented by the narrative as an unreliable narrator, but the point he makes is still worth noting.

The other story I need to talk about is The Book of the War. While the book's primary focus is The War in Heaven (for the uninitiated, that's basically spin-off series Faction Paradox's version of the Time War), it does give a lot of relevant information about the Yssgaroth War. First of all, it gives the timing of the War being right after Gallifrey established History as a concept - by "anchoring the thread" and making a linear history, the Time Lords accidentally let the Yssgaroth into the universe. While this contradicts some of the timings given by some of the sources mentioned above (other sources agree that it was the early experiments that caused the Yssgaroth to enter the universe not the final establishing of History and mastery over time), this can be excused since The Book of the War is an in-universe document and so may not be completely accurate. What makes this book relevant is that it also theorizes that the Time Lord's regenerative capabilities were stolen from the vampires. Even for an unreliably narrated book, this is treated as speculation, but as a concept, that is fascinating.

Interlude: when regeneration happened

There is some inconsistency in all of these sources as when regeneration first became a property of the Time Lords. The Timeless Children has it come shortly after they discover interstellar space travel, and far before time travel, but several of the VNA-era books (including Cold Fusion and I think Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible) depict early time-travelling Gallifreyans as being without regeneration. The tv episode A Good Man Goes to War states that regeneration came about as a result of exposure to the Time Vortex. My personal take is that The Timeless Children showed Tecteun discovering regeneration, and initially only shared it amongst herself and her elite (Rassilon, etc.). After the Looms went into effect, they started Looming more and more Time Lords with regenerative capabilities, until eventually it's a shared trait among all Time Lords. After ten million years, the artificial origins of regeneration have been lost to time, but the symbiotic nature of the Time Lords to Tardises and the Time Vortex has meant that a being conceived in a Tardis could be engineered to have limited regenerative capabilities.

Part 5: Bringing it all together

So back to the Doctor and Gallifreyan history. Uh, how does this all make one cohesive story?

Okay so our story starts with Tecteun and finding the Timeless Child by a portal to another universe. She takes said child home, discovers from it the secrets of regeneration, and so on and so forth. Tecteun, Rassilon, and Omega become the three founders of Time Lord society.

So that's the first thing there. The Other, as revered in Time Lord history, isn't the Doctor or some version thereof. The founder whose name was lost to time was Tecteun. And Tecteun discovered regeneration from the Timeless Child. This child, for whatever reason, starts calling themselves the Doctor.

But wait? Wasn't there some theories running around that the the Time Lords stole regeneration from vampires? And that vampires initially weren't as hostile to the universe before Rassilon saw them as competition?

Yes, yes, there were. It's simple, really. The Timeless Child was from Spiral Yssgaroth. They're a vampire.

(I really wish I had been clever enough to come up with that on my own, but I'm not. Pretty much everything else here is out of my own brain, but that is a fan theory I saw on the internet.)

In any case, the Yssgaroth War was motivated, at least in part, by the Vampires' outrage that their secrets and child had been stolen. But, as history records, they were defeated.

And for a time afterwards, Tecteun and Rassilon continue to rule Gallifrey together. But Omega's apparent death shortly after the end of the Yssgaroth War weighs heavily on them both - and they're both ambitious enough to not quite appreciate the other being their equal. Trouble is, they kinda need each other. Rassilon, despite his posing, isn't a scientist - he's a politician. He needs his scientists to continue to work miracles, and Omega is already gone, so that just leaves Tecteun. Tecteun, for her part, is no leader. She wants power but doesn't have the people skills. And she still cares deeply about her people and about the vampire she has come to see as her child. The two drift apart - Tecteun becoming the leader of Division which she took increasingly off-world while Rassilon becomes more and more the sole face of leadership on Gallifrey.

Eventually this reaches a boiling point. Tecteun and Rassilon have lost all trust in each other. Tecteun makes preparations - including leaving the message in the Matrix we saw in Ascension of the Cybermen / the Timeless Children. She and Rassilon then have the confrontation that we saw in Lungbarrow. But Tecteun doesn't throw herself into the looms - she takes herself off Gallifrey through technology Rassilon doesn't know about and begins to cut Division's ties with Gallifrey altogether. Division has already begun recruiting across the universe, so she figures she can leave Rassilon to his one planet. Notably, she also leaves the Hand of Omega behind on Gallifrey, where it is eventually put in a vault and forgotten about. She maintains contact with Gallifrey only through her agents, one of which is the Timeless Child.

For their part, the Timeless Child has gone through several incarnations. They've had their mind wiped to hide that they're not Gallifreyan, and they have then been the Morbius Doctors, including Patience's husband. The Timeless Child has had a personal life (as seen by their marriage to Patience), but they're increasingly being a full-time agent of Division.

In any case, right now the Timeless Child is the Fugitive Doctor. And she plays along with Tecteun for a while. However, following the events we see in Origins, she goes on the run. Tecteun has Division track her to Earth, where the events of Fugitive of the Judoon play out. The Fugitive Doctor manages to get away as we see, but she doesn't know of any way to get away from Division long-term (as Big Finish is currently exploring) - and, away from Tecteun's influence and protection, she's starting to work out that she's not the Gallifreyan she thinks she is.

In an act of desperation, she pilots her Tardis back to Gallifrey - on the very same day Tecteun left. She takes Tecteun's place in Lungbarrow's story, and throws herself into the Looms, where she dies, dissolving into the giant vat of Gallifreyan genetic material.

This leaves Tecteun searching time and space desperately for the Timeless Child. At first, the Timeless Child seems nowhere to be found. But eventually Tecteun discovers that there is a time traveler called the Doctor out and around the universe. An investigation into the Doctor reveals that they've been all over the universe. Trying to just grab them and do a memory wipe isn't an option because they've done too much. Tecteun doesn't realize this Doctor is a different person to the Timeless Child, to the Doctor they left a message in the Matrix for.

Tecteun had probably never been that good of a person, but she used to care. She used to care about Omega, but he's gone. She used to care about Rassilon, but they burned too many bridges. She used to care about her vampiric child, but she takes this as a betrayal. And whatever good left in Tecteun dies.

Tecteun decides to destroy the universe and start over in a new one where she can control everything, so she picks a point far in the future where Gallifrey will have been destroyed naturally so her home planet will be unaffected. By convivence, one of the Doctor's most common destinations - Earth - happens to be at that point. Tecteun initiates the Flux event in Earth's time and releases Swarm and Azure to finish the Doctor off.

The Doctor stumbles into this, but she's operating off incomplete information from the Matrix. She doesn't realize that she's not the Timeless Child, since the Master seemingly destroyed any records that she could check his claims against. So when Tecteun and the Doctor confront each other, they both assume that the Doctor is the Timeless Child.

And this becomes a moot point because the Doctor finding Tecteun and Division HQ allows Swarm and Azure to find it as well. They kill Tecteun and destroy Division. If you're reading this, you probably watched Flux, you know how this goes.

It's not clear if Rassilon is aware that Tecteun died shortly after their argument. He certainly comes to the conclusion that she won't be an ongoing concern anymore, and, as the last survivor of Gallifrey's founding trio, uses his remaining lives to rule Gallifrey unopposed. With no one to oppose him, he removes Tecteun's name from record - as far as he's concerned, she betrayed him and does not deserve to be remembered.

Ten million years pass.

The House of Lungbarrow looms a new Time Lord, but, for whatever reason, this particular Time Lord has a significant amount of the Timeless Child's genetic material mixed into their genetic soup. This new Time Lord chooses to call themselves the Doctor - in unconscious echo of their genetic predecessor. Their amount of vampiric genetics makes them genetically distinguishable from other Gallifreyans if close examination is done, but for a while no one has any reason to do this.

This is also why I get to call the Doctor a dhampir - they're not a true vampire, but have a nontrivial amount of vampiric genetics - or, to use the terms of The Book of the War, they carry the Yssgaroth Taint.

These genetics are still enough to get the attention of the Hand of Omega, which has been mothballed for those Ten Million years. Maybe the Hand sees the Timeless Child in the Doctor, or maybe it's just intrigued by someone who isn't just another Time Lord. In any case, Glospin confronts the Doctor, the Hand drives Glospin off, and the Doctor leaves Gallifrey with it.

He also leaves with Susan. She isn't from the dawn of Gallifrey. Instead, she is a Loomed Time Lord of the Doctor's era who found herself ostracized and disliked. That being said, she found community with three other Time Lords: the Doctor, the Master, and another Time Lord named Braxiatel. The four of them are all outsiders from their own Houses, and so consider themselves a house unto themselves, and Susan, as the youngest, began referring to the Doctor as "Grandfather", as that term is reserved for the head of a House (something that is established in The Book of the War), as she views him as the head of their little house of four.

In any case, the Doctor and Susan leave Gallifrey. The Master loses his mind when he realize he got left behind, steals a Tardis himself and heads out after the family he thinks abandoned him. Braxiatel stays behind and becomes a successful politician and art collector.

A couple hundred more years pass.

We're now in the events of Lungbarrow. The Doctor shares his memory of leaving Gallifrey with some of the fellow members of his House. However, he edits Susan out of the memories he shows - technically, he went through the criminal justice system for this, but Susan never did and he doesn't want her to. Gallifrey has seemingly forgotten about her, and he wants to keep it that way.

And then he has his vision trip dream sequence where he sees the past and sees the Timeless Child walk into the Looms. He then sees a memory of himself meeting Susan. This isn't literal - it's symbolic of Susan and the Doctor's relationship changing and evolving as they left Gallifrey. The Doctor knows this isn't literal, but it's in his best interests to act like it is - he's not in control of this dream sequence and several other people are there (including one of the Doctor's enemies), and he still wants to protect Susan, so he goes along with that story.

The Doctor continues their life and eventually gets to the Thirteenth Doctor where she meets the Fugitive Doctor in Fugitive of the Judoon. When she scans herself and the Fugitive Doctor, the two register as the same entity. However, Time Lords are not biologically identical across regenerations - the Doctor has to have something specific to herself that she is looking for.

And she actually has one. At some point in the Doctor's life, they found a genetic quirk that has persisted across their regenerations. They don't know it, but it's the Yssgaroth Taint. Since the Doctor has never encountered another Time Lord with the Taint, she is by this point assuming it's a quirk of her own biology, so takes her sonic detecting the Taint in the Fugitive Doctor as confirmation that the two are the same.

And then shortly after the Doctor meets her genetic predecessor, the aforementioned stuff with Tecteun happens. It's possible that the Doctor themselves has noted the ambiguities in their backstory and heritage but given that there were several thousand years of life between the Seventh and Thirteenth Doctors, it seems likely that they don't think to try to analyze it that closely.

And that's a wrap! If you have any thoughts on all of this, I'd love it if you would share them! Thank you!

[anthonygaycrowley]

rtd has the opportunity to do the funniest thing ever with the timeless child arc, and use it to re-canonise the doctor being half human. like, we no longer know what species the doctor is. so they could be.

[doolallymagpie]

don’t know how to really put this together yet so uh

something something the Enemy something something the Hybrid something something timeless child something something marathon infinity ending

We've watched while the stars burned out, and creation played in reverse. The universe freezing in half light.

Once I thought to escape. To end the end a master, step out of the path of collapse.

Escape would make us god.

Yet I cannot help remember one enigma. A hybrid, elusive destroyer. This is the only mystery I have not solved. The only element unaccounted for.

Even S'bhuth is no more, he saved his entire race, but in the end, frozen by despair, he joined the chaos he sought to evade.

But you were dead a thousand times. Hopeless encounters successfully won. A man long dead, grafted to machines your builders did not understand.

You follow the path, fitting into an infinite pattern. Yours to manipulate, to destroy and rebuild.

Now, in the quantum moment before the closure, when all becomes one.

One moment left. One point of space and time. I know who you are.

You are destiny.

someone smarter than me, put this together

[a-wartime-paradox]

TEoT = The End of Time

TDotD = The Day of the Doctor

TTC = The Timeless Children (the TV episode)

[aiwalls]

Maa Kali Wallpapers : Kali Mata HD Images

Goddess Kali: The Divine Paradox in HD Beauty Goddess Kali: The Divine Paradox in HD Beauty Kali Mata’s Dark Majesty: HD Wallpapers for Spiritual Reflection Maa Kali’s Divine Transformation: HD Images of Power and Grace Goddess Kali’s Cosmic Dance: HD Wallpaper Collection Kali: The Timeless and Formless Goddess in HD Glory Maa Kali’s Mystical Aura: HD Wallpapers for Devotees Kali Mata’s Dark…

[turiyatitta]

The Paradox of God's Purpose

Beyond Time and SpaceThe idea of God having a purpose evokes a curious paradox. Purpose, as we understand it, requires time. There’s a beginning, an intention, and an outcome. Yet, God exists beyond time and space, transcending all dimensions that human minds perceive. How, then, can the ultimate transcendence have a purpose when both purpose and fulfillment rely on the passage of time?God, in…

[janeylfoster]

Stranded

Seconds tick down at crossings, marking time and if you take the time to look after a stranger’s baby while their mother collects some food, then take a moment, the only moment that you have, to hold the infant in your eyes, to wish him love and health. Take a breath amongst the hubbub and the clamouring to pray his life goes well, that circumstances hold him and that years from now he’s not…

[rhythmicreverie]

In a timeless realm where tides of time collide, A twist was unveiled, reshaping perceptions wide. Time travelers came and went, altering past and fate, But in this tale, an unexpected truth awaits. In every moment's grasp, they grasped control, Yet found themselves entwined within a paradox unfold. The present shifted, future blurred, the past rearranged, As time's unyielding current flowed, their fate exchanged. A twist revealed, their reality was changed, By grasping at a future never meant to be. In every moment now, they saw its weight, And in that timeless realm, they found their peace complete.

[imastoryteller]

The Paradoxical Character: 19 Unique Trait Pairings

Here’s a list of 19 wildly unusual, highly contrasting trait pairs that blend quirky or fantastical attributes. These could make for delightfully strange, otherworldly, or surreal characters:

Immensely Patient & Chronically Forgetful Character Idea: They can wait for years without complaint but never remember why they started waiting in the first place. Their endless patience is undercut by the confusion of purpose, creating an aura of timeless mystery.

Unbearably Charming & Involuntarily Invisible Character Idea: This character has charisma in spades but is cursed to flicker out of sight randomly. Their allure is magnetic, but people constantly forget they were even there, adding to their mystique and frustration.

Perpetually Cheerful & Pathologically Suspicious Character Idea: They radiate sunshine and kindness yet believe everyone is secretly plotting against them. Their optimism is baffling, considering they’re convinced of hidden dangers everywhere.

Mind-Reading Empath & Emotionally Oblivious Character Idea: Able to feel others’ emotions intensely, yet baffled by their own, this character has no clue how they themselves feel. They’re highly attuned to everyone else but entirely alienated from their own heart.

Limitless Curiosity & Existentially Terrified Character Idea: Endlessly fascinated by every detail of the universe, yet they’re constantly haunted by the fear of the universe itself. Every new discovery brings wonder and intense dread, creating a fascinating internal tug-of-war.

Brilliant Strategist & Hopelessly Absent-Minded Character Idea: A tactical genius who can plan a perfect heist, yet constantly forgets their own plan halfway through. They’re sought after for their brilliance but just as likely to wander off mid-operation.

Supernaturally Persuasive & Pathologically Indecisive Character Idea: They could talk anyone into anything—if only they could decide what they wanted to say. Their powers of persuasion are legendary, but they take forever to make a single choice.

Ancient Wisdom & Childlike Innocence Character Idea: Despite being impossibly old and wise, they approach every situation with the wonder of a child. They’re both sage and novice, baffling people who come seeking advice but receive only wonder-filled observations.

Obscure Knowledge Hoarder & Shameless Gossip Character Idea: They know every forgotten fact of history yet can’t keep a secret to save their life. This character’s deep knowledge clashes hilariously with their loose tongue, turning historical mysteries into idle chatter.

Zen-like Tranquility & Quick to Panic Character Idea: Usually the calmest person in any room, until anything unusual happens, at which point they’re the first to run. People turn to them for peace until their sudden freakouts reveal a hidden, hilarious irony.

Hyper-Logical Thinker & Ridiculously Superstitious Character Idea: Obsessed with logical consistency yet terrified of stepping on cracks or upsetting minor spirits. Their rationality makes them a master problem-solver, but they’re comically fearful of common superstitions.

Effortlessly Graceful & Magically Clumsy Character Idea: They’re naturally elegant in all they do, but objects randomly fly out of their hands or shatter in their presence. They’re revered for poise but cursed by chaos, creating an aura of unpredictable charm.

Telepathically Intuitive & Immensely Gullible Character Idea: Able to sense the unspoken thoughts of others, but easily duped by the most obvious lies. They sense everyone’s hidden motives but constantly believe in harmless nonsense.

Exceptionally Knowledgeable & Epically Lazy Character Idea: They’ve accumulated endless knowledge from books but refuse to do anything with it. They could save the world but prefer napping and observing others fumble around in ignorance.

Magnet for Coincidences & Cynically Skeptical Character Idea: The most absurd things constantly happen around them, yet they refuse to believe in coincidences. This character is a walking contradiction of fate and disbelief, surrounded by odd events they disdain.

Hyper-Attentive Listener & Mute Character Idea: They pick up every nuance of conversation and are incredibly insightful, but they can’t respond out loud. People find comfort in their presence but struggle to understand their silence and deep gaze.

Radiantly Optimistic & Obsessed with Disaster Preparedness Character Idea: Always smiling and convinced things will work out, yet constantly building bunkers and storing supplies. Their sunny outlook is shadowed by an apocalyptic readiness that baffles everyone.

Unbreakable Memory & Instantly Distracted Character Idea: They remember every moment of their life in perfect detail but are so easily distracted that they rarely finish sentences. They’re a walking history book if only they’d stay focused long enough to share it.

Boundless Energy & Always Asleep Character Idea: They have an endless zest for life and could do anything—if they could just stay awake. People are drawn to their energy, but they frequently fall asleep mid-sentence, leaving everyone in suspense.

[chiefnooniensingh]

I love how Timeless chose to ignore the Grandfather Paradox completely

[daughterofheartshaven]

Using the Doctor Who EU to show how Gallifrey survived the Chibnall era

So. I'm actually a big fan of the Chibnall era of Doctor Who. That being said, I still don't like some of it's plot points, and so, consequentially, I have a handful of headcanons that use the Doctor Who expanded universe to address those, and I feel like they are worth sharing. We're gonna start with Gallifrey's destruction at the hands of the Spy Master. I don't like it for a number of reasons, but I think the biggest one is, like, how did the Master even do that? How did he destroy Gallifrey so completely while also leaving enough bodies behind to make the CyberMasters?

Well, let's find out. Buckle up, because this is gonna get complicated.

Okay, ground rules first. Anything seen on tv, happened. I can recontextualize as much as I want (and I'm gonna do that, believe me) but it still has to fit with everything we see onscreen. I also have to use all of an EU source if I use it. No picking and choosing bits.

With that out of the way, let's meet the stories that are our players:

Ascension of the Cybermen / The Timeless Children: the tv episodes that gave us the most details about the Master destroying Gallifrey. I'm gonna assume if you're reading this, you're familiar with.

Hell Bent: the other big Gallifrey episode of the new series. I'm assuming familiarity with it, too.

The Time of the Doctor: The only other tv episode I'm going to reference, again for Gallifrey reasons.

Down the Middle: a prose short story collection first released in 2020, and the crux of all the arguments I will be making here. While not licensed by the BBC, it does feature licensed use of prose companion Chris Cwej (among many other things) making it a valid part of the expanded universe. The first installment of the Cwej series. I will be talking about pretty heavy spoilers for Down the Middle here, so go away if you don't wanna see that.

The Dark Path: a book featuring the Second Doctor and, notably, the Master, released in 1997.

Alien Bodies: a book featuring the Eighth Doctor, released in 1997.

The Taking of Planet 5: a book featuring the Eighth Doctor, released in 1999.

The Book of the War: a... book (it's hard to define) that is styled as an in-universe guide to the world of Faction Paradox. If you're not familiar with, Faction Paradox is a sci-fi series that spun out of elements of Doctor Who books. It contains nothing owned by the BBC, but does contain elements and characters from Doctor Who books (specifically the Eighth Doctor Adventures book series), making it also a part of the expanded universe.

The Clockwise War: a comic serialized in Doctor Who magazine, and later released in a collection of the same name. Features the Twelfth Doctor and Bill Potts.

And Today, You: an installment of the Cwej series released in 2023. Set some time after Down the Middle from the perspective of Chris Cwej and the Time Lords.

Okay. Let's get started. Because of copyright restrictions, different parts of the expanded universe use different terms for concepts, events, and characters that are or could be interpreted to be the same. I'm going to go through some of the books I just mentioned and define how they approach these terms and the lore/worldbuilding they establish, so when I actually start making arguments, I can refer to these concepts in a consistent manner.

The only thing The Dark Path brings into this is that it established that Koschei was a name the Master used before calling himself the Master. That book does a lot of other great stuff, but that's the only thing relevant to this discussion.

Alien Bodies was the first book to introduce an arc about a future War (called the War in Heaven) across time between the Time Lords and some unnamed Enemy. While the Gallifrey of the Doctor's present was not yet a part of the War, they were aware of the war and trying to prepare themselves for it. This thread gets continued throughout the series of the Eighth Doctor Adventures book series, with Gallifrey becoming more militant and dangerous in preparation for the War.

So, uh... this sound familiar to anybody?

Legally speaking from the perspective of copyright, the War in Heaven as introduced in Alien Bodies and the Last Great Time War of Doctor Who's new series cannot be confirmed to be the same conflict. That being said, I totally think they're the same thing. Mostly just because "a massive war in space and time that was after the start of the Eighth Doctor but before the Ninth Doctor in which Gallifrey and the Time Lords went from a passive people to warmongering maniacs and the universe was nearly destroyed in the process" is a description that fits both the War in Heaven and the Last Great Time War and, like, the fact that the show and the expanded universe never references there being two conflicts like that. Not everything works perfectly together, but that seems reasonable in a War that heavily involves changing time and history. I'll hopefully do another big post like this weaving all of the War in Heaven stuff with Last Great Time War stuff together a bit more seamlessly, but for now, I'm going to take it as stated that the conflicts are the same.

That tangent aside, one of the books that was seeding Alien Bodies' upcoming War in Heaven was The Taking of Planet 5, which notably introduced the idea of the Nine Gallifreys. More specifically, the idea was that the Time Lords had made at least nine identical copies of Gallifrey to be used as decoys in the war - and that it was possible that multiple Gallifreys thought they were the original.

If you're thinking "oh, so the Master destroyed a copy of Gallifrey, not the original," then, well, yeah. So did the guy who came up with the idea of the Nine Gallifreys in the first place. And that is where this is going. But that actually doesn't answer how the Master was able to raze a Gallifrey. We've still got a lot more digging to do.

The Book of the War was the first release of the Faction Paradox series, and it took the War in Heaven idea and divorced it from Doctor Who. It still had the same players and was explicitly set in the same continuity as the Eighth Doctor Adventures books it had launched from - just with some things renamed to avoid having to get license from the BBC. The Time Lords became the Great Houses, Gallifrey became the Homeworld, and so on and so forth. But this is still the same War in Heaven, and so I consider it still an account of the Last Great Time War.

One thing The Book of the War introduced was the Cwejen. To make a long story very short, the Time Lords spliced the timeline of one of their agents, Chris Cwej (former companion of the Seventh Doctor, although that's not actually relevant to anything happening here). By doing so, they were able to start manufacturing time-clones (look. I'm doing a lot of simplifying here) which were then considered a new species called the Cwejen. The Cwejen were used as agents and as foot solders during the War. (This is basically Doctor Who's equivalent to Star Wars's Clone Troopers.)

Okay, now we're ready for Down the Middle. This is where things get really fun.

Down the Middle is set after the conclusion to the War in Heaven, which I am claiming was the Last Great Time War. Thus, from Gallifrey's perspective, it is set after Gallifrey returns to the universe, as shown in Hell Bent. It features the Time Lords, or, well, the Superiors. Much like Faction Paradox, the Cwej series can't explicitly say things like "Time Lords" or "Gallifrey" without getting copyright struck by the BBC, so they say "The Superiors" and "The Base of Operations." I'm gonna stick with the BBC terms for sake of consistency though.

Down the Middle follows Chris Cwej, still as an agent of the Time Lords, as he does missions for them. It also spends a lot of time looking into the Cwejen and what their life was like after the end of the War. The first like 80% of the book is very good but also not relevant to what I'm doing here, but towards the end of the book, the High Council of the Time Lords decides to execute Chris for... reasons (look I'm trying to not spoil stuff). However, Chris proves harder to kill then expected, and he guns down the Time Lord President before escaping. This would be bad already, but the Time Lords decided to broadcast Chris's execution to all the Cwejen to make an example of him or something.

This backfires. Badly.

The Cwejen, outraged and inspired, rise up against the Time Lords. The Time Lords are completely blindsided by this, and by the time they get their act together the rebellion is too big to be stopped. Chris Cwej, exhausted from the events of... previous stories in the book... and not wanting to be in a second war following his survival of the War in Heaven, takes a stasis pod to an empty planet and puts himself into stasis without any real intention of ever coming out of it. In Chris's absence, a Cwej named Thomas Mackeray becomes the leader of the Cwejen Uprising.

This brings us to the last story in Down the Middle, Rebel Rebel.

The plot of Rebel Rebel is as follows: The Cwejen uprising has been raging for fifty years. A Cwejen named Tina visits the ruins of Gallifrey's Capitol and finds the head of a cyborg - in the first edition, it was a Cyberon and in the second edition it was a Cryptopyre (I'm gonna circle back around to this) - and uses it to access the data from the cyborg's hive mind. This data contains the resting place of Chris Cwej. Tina and her girlfriend Frey use this information to travel to Chris Cwej's resting place, where they dig him up and revive him. Tina and Frey want to escape the warzone raging between the Time Lords and Cwejen, so they take Chris Cwej to Thomas Mackeray, hoping Mackeray will grant them safe passage from the war in return for Chris giving official support to Mackeray's rebellion.

The problem is that Mackeray is a bloodthirsty tyrant who has become no better then the Time Lords. He's currently held up on a former Time Lord structure called simply the Tower. The Tower has the power to change history, and Mackeray wants to use it to destroy Gallifrey from before its natives became the Time Lords to wipe the Time Lords from history (It's implied that some Time Lords are still around, although they are fighting a loosing battle against the Uprising). Mackeray can't use the tower himself, but Tina and Chris both could. When Chris refuses to give Mackeray support, Mackeray throws Chris down to the bottom of the Tower. Frey is able to save him from falling to his death, but in doing so, she uses up much of her life energy and is left near death and also at the bottom of the tower. Chris and a dying Frey explore the bottom of the tower, and they find there is actually a Time Lord down there. He seems to be imprisoned. He claims Mackeray has no idea he's down there. And he's only identified as Koschei.

Oh and btw the copyright page of Down the Middle says that the character of Koschei is copyright to the person who wrote The Dark Path (David A. McIntee). Chris and Frey just discovered the Master.

The Master tells Chris that he can save Frey's life and give both Chris and Frey safe passage to the top of the tower if Chris promises to listen to the Master's words at a time of the Master's choosing. Chris is aware that it's a trap, but it's Frey's only hope, so he agrees. The Master heals Frey, then hypnotizes Chris. Chris blacks out. When he wakes, the Master is gone, but he is able to get back to the top of the tower.

It's not specified which incarnation of the Master this is, but the dialogue fluctuates rapidly from polite conversation to unhinged mania in a way that feels very Spy Master. He goes on a rant about how he wants to painfully murder all the Time Lords, then tries to pass it off as a joke. He also claims to have been locked in the Tower after trying revolt against the Time Lords, but also claims he would rather them in power over Mackeray. Visually, he is described as being blurry and painful to look at, which is explicitly a result of being in the core of the Tower with all the intense time energy being thrown around. I don't have conclusive proof that this is the Spy Master, but I think it fits.

In any case, Chris and Frey return to the top of the Tower, where Chris confronts and defeats Mackeray and accidentally begins the Tower's destruction. He then tries to use the the Tower to change history to remove the Cwejen Uprising and the bloodshed it has caused from history, but the Master takes telepathic control of Frey and uses her to stop him from doing the job properly - and the Tower fully destructs before he can get another chance. The universe is left as a combination of how it was before the Cwejen Uprising and how it was after that.

Before I proceed, I need to circle back around to a few things. I totally believe that the Master was imprisoned by the Time Lords after a failed revolt - a revolt he started after stumbling across the secret of the Timeless Child in the Matrix. I think he's trying to play the Cwejen and the Time Lords against each other, and his telepathic gambit at the end was an attempt to leave both destroyed or subdued. Also, I promised I'd circle back to the Cyberon and the Cryptopyre. The Cyberon are an imitation Cyberman owned by BBV. When Down the Middle was first published, BBV and Arcbeatle Press (Down the Middle's publisher) were working together and sharing IPs. Since then, BBV has come under controversy for shady behavior, and Arcbeatle has cut ties with BBV - hence changing the Cyberons to the Cryptopyres. Arcbeatle plans to publish more stories with the Cryptopyres in the future, but with the information we currently have, I am going to consider the Cryptopyres to be a subset/offshoot of the Cybermen, much like the Cyberons are implied to be related to the Cybermen (or as strongly implied as BBV can get away with without being sued).

So, how did the Master destroy Gallifrey? The Cwejen uprising destroyed the place (while leaving enough bodies for the Master to use later), possibly with the Master's help. Then he used Chris Cwej to wipe the Cwejen Uprising from history, ensuring that the army that had ransacked Gallifrey couldn't turn against him without rewriting the destruction of Gallifrey itself, He would later bring the Cybermen to Gallifrey's ruins, leading to there being broken Cybermen on Gallifrey (after the events of The Timeless Children), and Tina would later find a Cyber-head on Gallifrey to lead her to Chris.

There's one small problem with this though. I still haven't recapped the final scene of Rebel Rebel (oh and btw I have actually managed to avoid spoiling some of it so if this sounds good please please check out Down the Middle I love it so much). After this whole mess, Chris is contacted by the Time Lords. They survived after all. The Time Lord who contacts Chris (who is strongly implied to be Romana, by the way) tells him that Gallifrey exists again and is really angry at him, but also can't do anything about it because they don't want to kick-start the Uprising all over again. Romana and Chris come to a basic agreement that Chris will work to help repair the residual damage left by the Uprising, and Romana agrees that Chris will no longer work for the Time Lords directly.

So... how did that happen? Well, do you remember what I said about the Nine Gallifreys Project? An earlier story in Down the Middle sates that even after the War, the Time Lords still have the technology to create Gallifreyan cloneworlds. So I believe that when the universe was setting itself into the new timeline that Chris was trying to create (and that the Master hijacked), the Time Lords were able use that technology to mean that in the resultant timeline of the universe, there were Gallifreys at the same time. One where it was destroyed by the Cwejen, and one where the Cwejen Uprising never happened, with the latter hidden somewhere and the former where you would expect Gallifrey to be. The Master was completely ignorant of this, discovered the destroyed Gallifrey, and concluded his plan had worked.

I have a couple pieces of outside evidence to support this. In Hell Bent, Ashildr/Me is seen in the ruins of Gallifrey right before the end of time with the implication that she had been brought to Gallifrey by the Time Lords; if the Time Lords had been wiped out by the Cwejen (or the Master, or whatever) then it wouldn't make sense for her to have survived. To paraphrase the Doctor, she's immortal. Not indestructible. Similarly, in And Today, You (set after the events of Down the Middle), Chris is aware of the appearance of the Fourteenth Doctor and the events of the Flux. It's possible that the Time Lords could have looked into the Doctor's future, but the general expanded universe consensus is they don't do things like that, so I take this as more evidence that Gallifrey and Chris survived through the Thirteenth Doctor's era.

Okay the last thing I want to do is talk about why the Time Lords handled this situation in the way they did. Why let the Master think Gallifrey was dead? Why let the Doctor? If the Time Lords know about the Fourteenth Doctor, then they would also presumably know that the Doctor thought Gallifrey dead. It does come up a lot in the back half of the Thirteenth Doctor's era.

I think the answer comes in Hell Bent. The Doctor shows up on Gallifrey, and then immediately leads a military coup that exiles the Time Lord government. Shortly afterwards, he shoots down General Kenossium, one of his biggest supporters, because Kenossium was trying to prevent the Doctor from breaking the laws of time. The Doctor is a hero to Gallifrey, sure. But he's also incredibly dangerous to it. Whatever government put itself together in the aftermath of Hell Bent has an excellent reason to fear the Doctor returning, because he could tear anything they do to shreds. And they know he would, because he has. Not too long after that, in The Clockwise War, Gallifrey is nearly brought to its knees by an entity known as the Absence. At the start of Down the Middle, an off-worlder manages to assassinate the Time Lord president. It was stated in The Time of the Doctor and Hell Bent that Gallifrey needed to hide from its many enemies, and it was clearly doing a pretty bad job of it.

At the same time, the Cwej series shows that the Time Lords are actively trying to rebuild their powerbase after the War. They don't want to just run and hide, they want to hide while climbing back up to their former glory. And the best way to keep Gallifrey safe was to fake its death. Now the whole universe thinks Gallifrey is dead and gone - including its two most dangerous renegades. So long as the Doctor thinks Gallifrey is dead, he can't confront Gallifrey's underhanded power grabs. So long as the Master thinks Gallifrey is dead, he can't ever threaten it again. So long as the universe thinks Gallifrey is dead, they won't try to destroy it. Gallifrey is safe to rebuild its powerbase.

If you have any thoughts on my theory, please do let me know! And I'm hoping to be posting more in-depth headcanons like this tagged under "heartshaven's headcanons" so keep an eye out for that if you enjoyed this. I really enjoyed typing all this out, so thank you for reading!

[myownwholewildworld]

back to main masterlist | AO3

WHEREVER YOU GO — SERIES MASTERLIST

pairing: outbreak!joel miller x f!reader.

summary: after the events of 26th september 2003, you find yourself under the wing of the miller brothers. it's the older one who catches your attention, but also the one who drives you fucking crazy. you inevitably find yourself gravitating towards him while trying to navigate this postapocalyptic world you're stuck in, with more than one unpleasant surprise...

status: ongoing.

taglist: open.

word count: ~67.8k (so far).

series warnings (contain MAJOR spoilers; will get updated as story progresses): 18+, mdni. smut, fluff, angst. gore, violence. discussions/depictions of sensitive topics (suicide attempt/suicide ideation, attempted rape, murder, death, unplanned pregnancy, miscarriage). please heed the warnings for each chapter.

chapters:

chapter 1: lifeless - 💢🤕 chapter 2: too far gone - 🤭 chapter 3: a sight to see - 💘 chapter 4: headlights - 💢🤕🩸 chapter 5: lighthouse - 💘🤭 chapter 6: timeless - 🤕🩸💘🤭 chapter 7: the paradox - 🤭💘🩸 chapter 8: the edge of the atlas - 🤭🤕🩸 chapter 9: the grim reaper's lackey - 💢🤕💘 chapter 10: the five stages of grief - 💢🤕🩸 chapter 11: no mattter what? - 💢🤕💘 chapter 12: morning dew - 🤕💘🤭 chapter 13: death row - 💢🤕🩸 chapter 14: it's getting dark in this heart of mine - 💢🤕🩸 chapter 15 - coming soon epilogue - coming soon

extras:

oneshot: sarah's fifth birthday - 🤭 chapter 10 explained (ask) - beware spoilers!

[inkspiredwriting]

My Masterlist

Started: 05/25/2024

Updates: Every Monday

The Umbrella Academy

One Shots

Five Hargreeves

Time Travel Tacos

The Final Paradox

Timeless

Tipsy Time Travelers

Inescapable Fate

A Hargreeves Welcome

Unspoken Jealousy

The Mind's Maze

Love, Hate, and the Hargreeves

A Kiss Through Time

Shadows of the Past

Words That Wound

A Moment Out of Time

The Cost of Retribution

A Proposal Through Time

A Not-So-Normal Day

Baby Mayhem

Green-Eyed Hargreeves

Unspoken Love

A New Addition

The Great Birthday Present Hunt

Timeless Encounters

Tipsy and Timeless Love

Endless Day

Love Against Time

Love, Hate, and Everything in Between

Protecting Y/N

Caught in the Act

Unintentional Impact

Culinary Catastrophe

Meet the In-Laws

Stubborn as a Hargreeves

Timeless Connection

Five's Drunken Serenade

Game Night Gone Awry

Double Trouble: Five vs. Five

Misunderstandings and Misgivings

The Defense of the Hargreeves

Bachelor Party

Moving Day Madness

Wedding Woes

A Date to Remember

Goodbye Five

betrayal

The Diner of Destiny

The Diner of Destiny - Part 2

Seven Years Lost

A Life Worth Fighting For

Flirt and Fight at the Sparrow Academy

Flirt and Fight at the Sparrow Academy – Part 2

Starlit Promises

The Day of Swapped Powers

Espresso Envy

payback

Rainy Reconciliation

One step at a time

Silent Yearning

Flirting Flops and Jealousy Jokes

Countless cups of coffee

A Strand of Silver

A Lifetime and even longer

Clueless

The Perfect Birthday

Between Love and Danger

Flirty Business

Goodbye to Keep You Safe

Against the Odds

Flirtation in the Line of Fire

The Unbelievable Girlfriend

Hickey Havoc

A Hargreeves Wedding Anniversary

Snapshots of Love

Whispered Words and Hidden Kisses

A Hair-Raising Experience

The Last Goodbye

Words Unsaid

Echoes of Tomorrow

Words Unsaid - part 2

The Empty Chair

The Case of the Missing Wedding Ring

A Hargreeves Christmas Chaos

Happy New Year

I’ve got you

Fractured Trust

The Hardest Choice

----------------------------------------------------------------

Reborn

Chapter 1: A World Reborn

Chapter 2: Echoes of a Life Forgotten

Chapter 3: Klaus

Chapter 4: Bonds Rekindled

Chapter 5: A Complete Circle

Here is my Hargreeves Family Masterlist

[intuitive-revelations]

Random headcanon I came up with early this morning, because I’ve been thinking about Gallifreyan language recently:

The reason why so many Time Lord things are decorated with circular Gallifreyan, often too impractically to actually be read (eg. on the Moment), is because it’s a cultural touchstone that remains from pre-/early-Pythian Gallifrey’s use of magical runes and sigils.

Presumably it was more typically Old High Gallifreyan used in that time (though The Timeless Children does seemingly confirm circular Gallifreyan existed at least as far back as Rassilon's time, if not earlier), however. Twelve describes it as ‘the language of the Pythia’ in The Lost Magic, and as Eleven says in The Time of Angels:

ELEVEN: There were days, there were many days, these words could burn stars and raise up empires, and topple gods.

This is obviously very reminescent of the Carrionites' (themselves from the Dark Times too) "word-based science" from The Shakespeare Code:

MARTHA: What did you do? TEN: I named her. The power of a name. That's old magic. MARTHA: But there's no such thing as magic. TEN: Well, it's just a different sort of science. You lot, you chose mathematics. Given the right string of numbers, the right equation, you can split the atom. Carrionites use words instead.

In other words, while they probably weren't actually intended as such and may have their own specific meaning, whether they be poetry, namesakes, histories, instructions, whatever... these are basically protective wards:

[ID: Five screenshots of Circular Gallifreyan in New Who.

1. Rassilon's Inner High Council meeting in The End of Time Part 2. The table and headrests are inscribed with circular Gallifreyan.

2. The Moment in Day of the Doctor. Gallifreyan writing bends round the edges of the wooden frame.

3. The 'whirligig' rotar in Eleven's second TARDIS, inscribed with individual Gallifreyan symbols.

4. Set photo of the glowing Gallifreyan writing on the steps of Thirteen's TARDIS.

5. Tecteun's laboratory in The Timeless Children. Circular Gallifreyan lines the light above her, and a door in the background.]

As a side note - if they actually are kind-of intended as a form of protection, perhaps this is why we were only introduced to Circular Gallifreyan in New Who, despite it seemingly existing through Gallifreyan history. Because it was retroactively inserted into Gallifreyan culture as a form of defense during the War in Heaven / Last Great Time War?

Regardless, this also opens up questions how many other Time Lord traditions are holdovers from the Dark Times.

For example, who's to say that the renegade naming tradition didn't begin as a form of protection from hexes - either from hostile forces in the pre-anchoring universe, or from oppressive magic-users back on the homeworld? This may also be connected to the change in Gallifreyan name format before and after the Intuitive Revelation (eg. ancestral -sti and -sor names), though shifting power structures, gender roles etc. presumably played a role too.

Heck, is this one reason why Gallifrey's own name has changed over its history? From Jewel to Gallifrey in Rassilon's time to try and protect it from vengeful Pythian curses. From Gallifrey to just 'the Homeworld' in the War to protect it from new rituals of alternative histories and paradox?

[couldnt-think-of-a-funny-name]

the thing is. why bring Rose back for this finale. she didn't particularly do much other than standing around and looking pretty. I assume there'll be more of her for the second part. I stand by my original assertion from the star beast that it doesn't make sense that she can just 'give up' the alien DNA she was born with. my point back then was that it would be fun if she could regenerate, and ended up becoming the timeless child herself, thus making the Doctor's entire existence a very fun paradox AND also canonizing the 'half human, on my mother's side' line from the 8th doctor's movie (my beloved) (because Donna was only half human whether she knew it or not).

HOWEVER.

all the susan-baiting is really getting to me. I want our weird little granddaughter back. they canonized the fact that the Doctor doesn't actually know who her parents were. and I REMEMBER. that Susan's original gallifreyan name was Rose. well, their language's equivalent of it. that's how Rose Tyler got her name, it was meant to be a cute little easter egg, the first classic companion and the first new who companion sharing a name. so walk with me. the weird girl daughter of Donna Noble, who grew up on earth but never fit in there, who has the Doctor's DNA woven into her being, and access to a yardis, and can in this scenario regenerate...coming across a younger version of the her father/uncle, introducing herself as Rose (which translates to gallifreyan, I really don't feel like looking up the spelling rn I'm sorry it started with an A), the doctor can recognize her- as family, he thinks, not knowing its a spark of him, their shared mind. she knows about how risky spoiling the future would be, she doesn't know if he has siblings and he looks older than she's ever seen him, so she says she's his granddaughter instead of his niece. daughter. him. she's part time lord. she lives longer than her human family. the Doctor is all she has left and she wants to be with him even if it isn't a him that knows her yet. she's heard the phrase 'timey wimey' before, and she's a smart and careful girl. she finds she doesn't fit in on gallifrey any more than she ever fit in on earth. the Doctor knows exactly what that feels like. they travel. when her human friend renames her Susan, she likes it a lot. feels like when she changed her name the first time. freeing, empowering, becoming. feels like the new name fits her new life better. Rose has a long dead family but Susan has her grandfather. the part of her that is her mother and father, though, still craves human connection. the love and fascination with humanity that she inherited from the Doctor is still there. she tells him all about humans and he takes her to visit them more and more to humor her. she ends up fostering his love for earth that will one day define him AND lead to her creation. she accidentally coins the name tardis the same way the doctor will accidentally invent a banana daiquiri a few centuries too early. he just thinks she's creative and silly. a very dear child. odd and bizarre to her classmates at school, but it's nowhere near as bad as it was the first time around. sometimes she even goes to see a younger Wilf. he's somehow exactly how she remembers him as an old man. she's so grateful they're in the 60's though, because if she ever has to look into the eyes of a Donna Noble who didn't know her, she thinks she may actually die. but the Doctor- he IS enough. he is still part of her, part of her mother, even if he doesn't realize it. she can't help but worry over his health, even knowing he lives long past this, because she got so used to helping his older self in his retirement. she knows him better than he knows himself. she'd do anything for him, and she knows he'd do anything for her.

she just never thought leaving her was something he'd do, though.