Were Time Lords Ever Nice?

[TedShatner10]

Some fans who overly romanticise the 70s/80s era and bash the 00s/10s era seemed to be up in arms on how the Time Lords were depicted in "The End of Time", where surviving Time Lord fanatics led by a resurrected Lord President Rassilon were seeking to instigate the Final Sanction to escape/win the Time War (ascension to a higher plain of existence, but apparently ripping apart the fabric of time and space in the process). While Time Lords still don't come across as intrinsically evil as the Daleks (Timothy Dalton's Rassilon came across more of a amoral badass driven to extreme desperation) the results would've still been the same as the Dalek's Reality Bomb.

Where the Time Lords really acting out of character and fundamentally despoiled by RTD?

While I enjoyed older DW stories such as "The Brain of Morbius" and "The Five Doctors" even in those very old episodes, the direct and indirect depiction of Time Lord civlization is not really highly favourable. In "Brain..." we had an evil Time Lord conquerer who rose to power and attempted to take over the Universe, albiet he was a renegade but a renegade with popular support. And "The Five..." does not paint a flattering picture of an entombed Rassilon either, if his "gift" of immortality turned people into living statues as a sick trick, while his mausoleum is equipped with the Time Scoop (which was used by the incumbant Lord President for evil ends, putting the various Doctors and companions into mortal peril). And what about the fatal blowback from their botched attempt to stop/alter Dalek evolution?

Where the Time Lords ever really competent good guys?

 

[Gov Kodos]

I imagine it depends on the point of view. The Racnos or the Great Vampires wouldn't see them as good guys, but the rest of us, the living, might. They seem more a plot monkey to justify the Doctor's leaving Gallifrey. In War Games, his speech sums up the Time Lords as having been too powerful for too long living above the lesser species of the universe.

 

[Christopher]

Well, the whole origin story behind the Doctor is that he fled from the Time Lords because he didn't approve of their ways of doing things. So the very premise somewhat requires the Time Lords to be, if not villains, at least the kind of hidebound authority figure that a hero like the Doctor would be warranted in rebelling against.

The first Time Lord we met other than the Doctor (and Susan) was the Meddling Monk, a villain seeking to tamper with history just for the hell of it. The next one was the War Chief, who gave the War Lords the technology to abduct human soldiers from history and train them into a galaxy-conquering fighting force. In the same story, the Doctor was forced to contact the Time Lords and we got our first look at their civilization -- and while they were not portrayed as evil, they were certainly imperious and harsh; the Doctor needed to convince them that there was value in fighting evil, and while they agreed up to a point, they nonetheless punished him with exile and the "death" of his second incarnation. In the years after that, when we saw the Time Lords, they were generally portrayed as devious and manipulative; they were concerned with stopping major threats, but tended to coerce the Doctor into doing their dirty work.

Starting with "The Deadly Assassin," we began seeing Gallifrey itself periodically and getting to know the Time Lords better, and while there were some good people among them, there were plenty of villains and misguided, obstructionist authority figures too, and as a whole their society was rather stagnant, insular, and ossified, something of a satire of British nobility. And pretty much every single time the Doctor went to Gallifrey (or to a Time Lord space station, in the "Trial of a Time Lord" season), he found himself sentenced to execution for one reason or another -- the one exception being "The Five Doctors," in which he wasn't formally sentenced to death but was still placed in mortal danger by a Time Lord he'd once considered a friend.

So yeah, there's abundant precedent for portraying the Time Lords in a negative light. While they had some decent people among them, on the whole their society was decadent, self-serving, and fraught with corruption, and the people in charge tended to be morally ambiguous at best.

I think if some fans are saying that RTD committed heresy by painting the Time Lords negatively, they're letting nostalgia distort their perception of the facts. I hear the same things from Star Trek fans complaining about Enterprise's portrayal of the Vulcans as condescending, capable of violence, and borderline racist toward humans, even though there's abundant precedent for all of that in the previous several series. Heck, it's something of a recurring SF trope -- if there's a main character belonging to a certain alien species, we'll often see the rest of his/her species portrayed more negatively in comparison to the main character, in order to create conflict or to make the main character look better by contrast. Particuarly when the main character is explicitly an outcast from his own people as the Doctor was.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

Not good, not pure evil. Certainly felt themselves above other species. God-like beings who, on the best of days, were complacent and indifferent. At the same time, they seemed to have a function in protecting time and their fight against the Daleks was a good thing.

The "death" of the Time Lords showed them at their most desperate. Who knows how long they were militarized. Even then, I wouldn't view them as being on par with the Daleks.

 

[Christopher]

The "death" of the Time Lords showed them at their most desperate.

Exactly. My understanding of the Time War is that it raged on for an undefinable length of time as battles kept being rewritten and refought over and over, each side using time travel to try to reverse its losses and the enemy's victories. What we saw in "The End of Time" was a Gallifrey at the end of that immeasurably long war, deeply hardened and devoid of hope, seeing no way to break the endless impasse except the doomsday option.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

To add on Christopher's excellent analysis, collectively the Time Lords were never portrayed in good light but we've seen plenty of individuals who were good: Romana, Drax, Andred, K'anpo Rimpoche, Azmael, Rodan (a precursor to Romana herself), Damon, to name just a few. It's those individuals The Doctor must be thinking about whenever he's lamenting over the Time Lords' death (other than that whole genocide bit).

 

[The Wormhole]

In the year and a half in which I've been watching classic Who, I've determined that the Time Lords as depicted in The End of Time is 100% faithful and accurate to their portrayal in the classic era. Granted, things have deteriorated further, in TEOT Rassilon was instantly executing people on the sport for disagreeing with him. But I can easily believe that these are the same people we saw in stories like The Deadly Assassin, Arc of Inifinity or Trial of a Time Lord. And even before TEOT showed us how bad they got, there certainly were hints in RTD's episodes. First and foremost, the Doctor would not commit genocide unless he felt the species was a genuine threat and there were no alterantives. Then there were smaller clues, like when the Doctor told the Racnoss Empress he was from Gallifrey, she instantly screamed "Murderer!"

To be honest, even though when I first saw TEOT I had no familiarty with classic era, its depition of the Time Lords seemed very consistent with what had been stated and hinted at about them prior. And since I've started watching classic era my I see nothing different about those Time Lords. I think Colin Baker's "Daleks, Sotarans, Cybermen. They're still in the nursery compared to us!" speech sums it up nicely,

I personally like to believe that yes there was one point in which hte Time Lords truly were the most enlightened race in the universe. But they were gradually corrupted and eventually became villainous.

 

[Sindatur]

Some fans who overly romanticise the 70s/80s era and bash the 00s/10s era seemed to be up in arms on how the Time Lords were depicted in "The End of Time", where surviving Time Lord fanatics led by a resurrected Lord President Rassilon were seeking to instigate the Final Sanction to escape/win the Time War (ascension to a higher plain of existence, but apparently ripping apart the fabric of time and space in the process). While Time Lords still don't come across as intrinsically evil as the Daleks (Timothy Dalton's Rassilon came across more of a amoral badass driven to extreme desperation) the results would've still been the same as the Dalek's Reality Bomb.

Where the Time Lords really acting out of character and fundamentally despoiled by RTD?

While I enjoyed older DW stories such as "The Brain of Morbius" and "The Five Doctors" even in those very old episodes, the direct and indirect depiction of Time Lord civlization is not really highly favourable. In "Brain..." we had an evil Time Lord conquerer who rose to power and attempted to take over the Universe, albiet he was a renegade but a renegade with popular support. And "The Five..." does not paint a flattering picture of an entombed Rassilon either, if his "gift" of immortality turned people into living statues as a sick trick, while his mausoleum is equipped with the Time Scoop (which was used by the incumbant Lord President for evil ends, putting the various Doctors and companions into mortal peril). And what about the fatal blowback from their botched attempt to stop/alter Dalek evolution?

Where the Time Lords ever really competent good guys?

Speaking of the Five Doctors (And Trial of a Timelord), The Romana/Leela Audios tell us a bit more about Chancellor Flavia, (that's rather surprising) who was left as President by 5 in The Five Doctors and quite a bit more about The Inquisitor (Judge) from Trial of A Timelord

 

[DWF]

Robert Holmes believed that the Time Lord cutlure was stagnant which is why it produced so many renegades.

To this point, the Time Lords had been depicted in Doctor Who as essentially godlike individuals. To fill in the details of their culture, however, Holmes drew upon the fact that Gallifrey had been seen to produce so many renegades -- not just the Doctor amd the Master, but also the Meddling Monk (from The Time Meddler), the War Chief (from The War Games), Omega (from The Three Doctors) and Morbius (from The Brain Of Morbius). He decided to show that the Time Lords' previous manifestations masked a decaying, corrupt and stagnant civilisation. In so doing, Holmes created many of the concepts which would become hallmarks of Doctor Who's mythology, including Rassilon (the founder of Gallifreyan society), the Eye of Harmony, the Panopticon, the Matrix, the Prydonian chapter, artron energy, and the notion that Time Lords are limited to only twelve regenerations.

 

[Marc]

. In War Games, his speech sums up the Time Lords as having been too powerful for too long living above the lesser species of the universe.

Which I guess was echoed in in his speech from ToaTL

In all my travelling throughout the universe, I have battled against evil, against power-mad conspirators. I should have stayed here. The oldest civilisation: decadent, degenerate, and rotten to the core. Power-mad conspirators, Daleks, Sontarans, Cybermen - they're still in the nursery compared to us. Ten million years of absolute power. That's what it takes to be really corrupt.

 

[Admiral_Young]

I've often stated that the Time Lords remind me of the Kryptonian High Council from Superman. The High Council were arrogant, and removed from their own people, isolationist, etc. The Time Lords seem to share a lot of these aspects. The Doctor reminds me of Jor-El.

 

[23skidoo]

To add on Christopher's excellent analysis, collectively the Time Lords were never portrayed in good light but we've seen plenty of individuals who were good: Romana, Drax, Andred, K'anpo Rimpoche, Azmael, Rodan (a precursor to Romana herself), Damon, to name just a few. It's those individuals The Doctor must be thinking about whenever he's lamenting over the Time Lords' death (other than that whole genocide bit).

And don't forget his granddaughter Susan, too.

And in The Doctor's Wife we also learned about the Corsair, "one of the good ones" meaning there were probably quite a few good ones out there. I think it's mostly the Time Lord leadership that is at fault. In the novels and audios Romana is Lord President for a time, and everything seems to be going not too badly (she even "hires" Leela to help out in the Gallifrey spin-off series), but in the novels she eventually regenerates into Romana III and starts to be less good. So it could be a case of absolute power corrupting. Just look at Borusa and Rassilon. Yet Flavia seemed to be OK.

Alex

 

[StalwartUK]

They always seemed to be a selfish self-righteous people to me. Other than the Doctor they never seemed interested in what happened outside of Gallifrey unless their existence was at stake.

Their main problem in The End of Time was they just stood around rattled off a few speeches and then were sent back into their time lock.

The only other Time Lord I believe that ever had any good in them was Romana and even she was shown to be selfish and self-centered before the Doctor mellowed her out.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

^You don't think the Time Lords I listed were good?

To add on Christopher's excellent analysis, collectively the Time Lords were never portrayed in good light but we've seen plenty of individuals who were good: Romana, Drax, Andred, K'anpo Rimpoche, Azmael, Rodan (a precursor to Romana herself), Damon, to name just a few. It's those individuals The Doctor must be thinking about whenever he's lamenting over the Time Lords' death (other than that whole genocide bit).

And don't forget his granddaughter Susan, too.

D'oh! I knew there was someone big who I was forgetting. That's one hell of a character to forget.

 

[MacLeod]

As already quoted above. The 6th Doctor summed up the Time Lords quiet nicely.

 

[Sindatur]

... Yet Flavia seemed to be OK.

Alex

When 5 left her as President in The Five Doctors, but, the Romana Audios reveal Power got to Flavia as well

 

[MacLeod]

We've seen what can happen even to the Doctor without someone to temper him.

"The laws of time are mine to command and they will OBEY"

 

[PorthosShadow]

We've seen what can happen even to the Doctor without someone to temper him.

"The laws of time are mine to command and they will OBEY"[/The]

The Time Lord Victorious says it all.

 

[TedShatner10]

I think if some fans are saying that RTD committed heresy by painting the Time Lords negatively, they're letting nostalgia distort their perception of the facts.

Yeah, damn right.

I hear the same things from Star Trek fans complaining about Enterprise's portrayal of the Vulcans as condescending, capable of violence, and borderline racist toward humans, even though there's abundant precedent for all of that in the previous several series.

I think the snark towards the Vulcans in ENT is (while always depicted as insular, sanctimonious snobs with big biological and social faults) in how they were depicted as irrationally too snide and obstructive to create drama. However the badness of Vulcan society is succinctly demonstrated in Star Trek XI, where not only are school yard bullies racist towards humans, but they are also institutionally xenophobic at pretty much the highest level.

Heck, it's something of a recurring SF trope -- if there's a main character belonging to a certain alien species, we'll often see the rest of his/her species portrayed more negatively in comparison to the main character, in order to create conflict or to make the main character look better by contrast. Particuarly when the main character is explicitly an outcast from his own people as the Doctor was.

Some fans ranted about RTD making the Doctor "Mr. Wonderful" when he cast the Time Lords back into the Time War and their probable destruction at the hands of his earlier self, however that seems stupidly harsh when in the following Moffat seasons the destruction of the Time Lords still scars the 11th Doctor and that was most implicitly demonstrated in "The Doctor's Wife".

However the Master being reintroduced into the Time War may have likely changed events and creates the possiblity of victory for Gallifrey...

 

[The Wormhole]

However the badness of Vulcan society is succinctly demonstrated in Star Trek XI, where not only are school yard bullies racist towards humans, but they are also institutionally xenophobic at pretty much the highest level.

Vulcan bullies have been around since TAS. In fact, the scene in Trek XI is essentially an adaptation of a scene from Yesteryear.

However the Master being reintroduced into the Time War may have likely changed events and creates the possiblity of victory for Gallifrey...

I was under the impression that Gallifrey was mere hours away from the Doctor using the Moment and ending the Time War. The only realistic thing I can see the Master doing is finding a convoluted means of escape.