Characters / Doctor Who – Time Lords

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The Time Lords (First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, War, Tenth, Eleventh, Twelfth and Thirteenth Doctors)

Wilf: But I've heard you talk about your people like they're wonderful.
Tenth Doctor: That’s how I choose to remember them, the Time Lords of old. But then they went to war, an endless war. And it changed them, right to the core. You’ve seen my enemies, Wilf. The Time Lords are more dangerous than any of them.

— "The End of Time, Part Two"

The Doctor's own people. They hail from the planet Gallifrey, and claim to be the universe's first civilization and the mightiest of them all. Time Lords can travel through time and manipulate it to a huge degree. Though they generally operate under a policy of non-interference, they've also appointed themselves the guardians of the space-time continuum, and (at least in the Expanded Universe) look rather askance at attempts by the "lesser races" to develop time travel. The Doctor claims to have left Gallifrey in opposition to its xenophobia and stagnation.

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In General

• Absolute Xenophobe: Nowhere near as bad as the Daleks, but the Time Lords don't like anyone visiting their planet, they don't like to leave home, and with the exception of the Space Amish ones, tend to live in a couple of giant cities encased in massive glass domes. A lot of tension in the Gallifrey spinoff is due to the reformist President Romana's desire to open the planet to outsiders, including letting them attend the Time Lord Academy, and the more conservative elements opposing it. Got a lot worse after the Time War, when all but two of the Time Lords voted to eradicate every living thing in creation except themselves.
• Abusive Alien Parents:
  • Prospective Time Lords are taken to the Academy at the age of eight, and it starts with a glimpse of the raw Time Vortex that's been known to drive people insane. The only alternative seems to be the army, which scared the young Doctor even more.
    The Master: It began on Gallifrey, as children. Not that you'd call it childhood. More a life of duty.
  • It seems they were like this to some extent even before they became the Time Lords, given the Timeless Child was experimented on for the key to regeneration by their adoptive mother, going through several incarnations in the process.
• Abusive Precursors:
  • They used to amuse themselves by snatching people out of time, dropping them in the Death Zone and watching them fight.
  • The Minyans of the former planet Minyos see them as gods, and they view their gods as evil.
• Advanced Civilization, Hollow Imagination: The Time Lords are one of the most advanced societies in the universe, being so knowledgeable about time travel that they've become, as the name implies, the overseers of keeping time itself stable. However, they've stagnated over the years and are holed up in Sisyphean bureaucracy and a xenophobic attitude towards other civilizations, motivating the Doctor to steal a TARDIS that was in for repairs and flee throughout time and space, kickstarting the events of the series. When the Doctor returns to Gallifrey as a wanted criminal in "The Deadly Assassin", most of the Time Lords are so interchangeable that he easily masquerades among them simply by stealing a set of robes and keeping his head low.
• Agri World: Bizarrely, A Brief History of Time Lords says that most Gallifreyans outside of the Time Lord cities are farmers.
• Alien Non-Interference Clause:
  • Officially, which is part of their dislike of renegades like the Doctor who get "involved". Unofficially, they are perfectly willing to send the Doctor (or even the Master) to fix their messes or perform tasks they don't want to get their hands dirty with. They justify this by saying the Doctor is a "special" case.
  • It's also one of their more frustratingly backwards qualities: they condemn the Doctor for "interfering" in the course of history, even though said interference almost always preserves the course of history (unless you'd rather, just for example, let lava monsters from space take over the Roman Empire).
• Always Someone Better: Certainly the Guardians and the Eternals, and arguably the Chronovores and the Osirians.
  Eternal: A lord of time. Are there lords in such a small domain?
• Anti-Villain: Until "The Trial of a Time Lord", the Time Lords were often antagonists to the Doctor but were originally on the side of good. (Television Doctor Who, up until the present, has portrayed them very inconsistently, sometimes as good, sometimes as evil and often as something in-between.)
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: This is their ultimate plan in "The End of Time". Or Rassilon's, and no-one dared argue with him. The method they intended to use would have had devastating consequences for the rest of reality, letting the Time War loose if nothing else.
• Awakening the Sleeping Giant: They did this to the Daleks, and the Daleks did this in turn. The Time Lords had spent most of their existence not getting involved and not bothering other species, but for a race of shut-ins, they managed to fight the Daleks for hundreds of years. And then the war went temporal.
• Badass Decay: In-Universe, their status before the Time War. With Rassilon locked away in his tomb, there was no strong leader to guide them, so they stagnated, which is one of the reasons the Doctor claimed he left as he couldn't stand the boredom. They took their immense power for granted, confident they were protected from any outside threats, and preferred to plod around dusty archives instead of using their TARDISes to explore the Universe. Rassilon's artifacts became regarded as mere historical trinkets, the massive power they contained forgotten. The only exception to this was the CIA, who dedicated themselves to protecting time and developing new tech like time rings.
• Big Bad: The Time Lord High Council plays this role for Season 23, having set up the Doctor's sham trial and appointed the Valeyard to be its prosecutor, although the Valeyard ends up betraying them.
• Big Brother Is Watching: "The Deadly Assassin" reveals they have files on every Time Lord (except the Master — he destroyed his). Other stories show they can pop the Doctor anywhere in time and space they want.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: Aside from regeneration, Time Lords have a lot of interesting features, such as a respiratory bypass system, two hearts (and corresponding pulse to go with), low level immunity to certain varieties of radiation (Roentgen, specifically. Gallifreyan nurseries have building blocks made of the stuff) which they can funnel to specific parts of their bodies with the only major effect of that being an itch, and a general Made of Iron tendency.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: They do on some occasions express a view of life as something to be preserved, yet they obey their Alien Non-Interference Clause without hesitation.
• Body Horror: Can apparently happen if regeneration goes wrong. In his final moments the Ninth Doctor mentions he might end up with two heads, or no head at all, and the Eleventh once mentioned he had a godmother with two heads (and bad breath, twice). And then there's what happens if they run out of regenerations.
• Born as an Adult: The Lungbarrow novel says that Time Lords are born fully matured with no physical childhood but this was contradicted by later episodes that showed Time Lord children.
• Born Lucky: According to Christmas On A Rational Planet the laws of probability bend around Time Lords, tipping the odds in their favour, and the idea resurfaces in the Eighth Doctor Adventures.
• Break the Haughty: The Time War brought a Higher-Tech Species to their knees.
• Call to Agriculture: The revival and A Brief History of Time Lords reveals that plenty of Gallifreyans live outside the two cities on farms and homesteads.
• Came Back Wrong: We've never seen it on screen but the regeneration process can go awry, which is apparently not uncommon. When this happens Time Lords usually take a trip to Karn, where the Sisterhood's Elixir can fix them up.
  Ninth Doctor: I might never make sense again! I might have two heads, or no head. Imagine me with no head, ha! And don't say that's an improvement... But it's a bit dodgy, this process. You never know what you're going to end up with.
• Can't Argue with Elves: They're cleverer than you, more intelligent than you, and arguing with them is pointless. Even the Doctor thinks like this, and it is why he needs a Morality Chain in his companions. Four even stated this when Romana II begged him not to return her to Gallifrey per the Time Lords' wishes, noting it would be futile to try to disobey them in the end. Of course, she doesn't go home... well, except in the Expanded Universe.
• Corrupt Bureaucrat: The high society is loaded with arrogant and greedy officials who bend rules. It's why the Doctor doesn't like being associated with them.
• Crystal Spires and Togas: On the surface, with their gorgeous Citadel and fancy regalia. But scratch it and you find a Decadent Court, where "simple palace revolutions" are the norm.
• Descriptively-Named Species: The Time Lords. Guess what their specialty is.
• Depending on the Writer:
  • Are they a basically well-intentioned Higher-Tech Species devoid of sympathy for individual lesser beings ("The War Games"), uncomplicatedly good protectors of the universe ("The Three Doctors"), pompous but weak dotards who don't really understand their own role or technology anymore ("The Deadly Assassin"), or a powerful but almost entirely self-serving Decadent Court ("The Invasion of Time" and all TV and expanded universe stories subsequently)? Depends what the scriptwriter thought. The official explanation by the BBC is that the CIA were responsible for the god-like displays of power seen in the Second and Third Doctor eras, while the pompous decadent court are the general upper-class seen in the Fourth Doctor era onwards.
  • Are all Gallifreyans full Time Lords? It's a question that's kept the fanbase puzzled for eons.
• The Dreaded: Before the Time War, the rest of the universe treated them with a mixture of vague respect, bemused apathy and in some cases, covetousness of their power. During and after the Time War, they were easily as feared as the Daleks, if not more so — a mere untranslated message during "The Time of the Doctor" made every single living creature that detected it feel fear and come to investigate with weapons hot; and they didn't even know who sent it. Once it's revealed that it's the Time Lords, waiting for the okay from the Doctor to let them back into the universe, the result is a Mass "Oh, Crap!", and the various alien races are willing to blow up the planet simply because the crack in reality that the transmission is coming through is on it. It gets to the point where, in the same episode, the Doctor threatens to "unleash the Time Lords" on the Daleks, who are absolutely terrified of the prospect. Considering that the Daleks are the Big Bad of the Whoniverse, this is saying something.
  • Once they return to the universe, they have to hide at the end of the universe because everyone's so scared of them.
• Dying Race: Due to the Last Great Time War, the Time Lord race was rendered functionally extinct. In "The Day of the Doctor", the timeline is altered by the combined efforts of thirteen incarnations of the Doctor, but this led to the entire population of Gallifrey being shunted into a pocket universe and lost. The only Time Lords currently known in the universe are the Doctor, Jenny (who's currently MIA), River Song (who's sort of dead), and the Master, who's still as unkillable as ever. As for the Doctor's own family, he claims they are now all deceased, but we still don't know precisely what happened to Susan after Series 4 of the New Eighth Doctor Adventures.
  • As of "Hell Bent", they've returned to the main universe, but their reputation means they've had to hide Gallifrey at the end of time.
  • After the events of "Spyfall" this trope is now once again in effect due to the Master destroying Gallifrey due to learning the Awful Truth about the Time Lords and "The Timeless Child". Of course, how long that will last is open to question.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • Before they went off the rails, they at least had enough decency in "Genesis of the Daleks" to recognize that the Daleks being the sole dominant life-form in the Universe would be a very bad idea.
  • In "School Reunion", the Krilitanes tried to crack the Skasis Paradigm and rebuild the universe in their own image. Even the Time Lords, as bad as they were, never actually tried to achieve this, probably because they knew it was a massive mistake.
• Face–Heel Turn:
  • Between "The Trial of a Time Lord" and the Time War scenes of "The End of Time", the Time Lords become Knights Templar in the Time War against the Daleks.
  • Zig-zagged. It's later shown that this extends only to the Time Lord High Council, especially under the leadership of the revived Rassilon, and even then there are some Punch-Clock Villains, who're only going along with it because Rassilon will vaporise them if they don't. The soldiers actually fighting the war and the civilians caught in the crossfire are a lot more sane.
• Fantastic Caste System: The higher echelons of Time Lord society appear to live in either the Capitol or Arcadia. Those who live in the Dry Lands, in Rassilon's words, "don't matter" — whether they're even full Time Lords or not is up for debate.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Their arrogance, stuffiness, contempt for Going Native, imperialist meddling, and emphasis on academic background all seem to be based on the worst qualities of imperial Britain's upper crust. (The giant collars are also evocative of the fashions of Elizabethan England.) Though they also follow a President and have a shady intelligence group called the CIA, so there's a little dose of "meddling Americans" as well.
• Flight: Are sometimes shown or implied to be able to fly:
  • In "Terror of the Autons", the Time Lord who alerts the Doctor about the Master's arrival on Earth appears in mid-air and stays there because his "co-ordinates slipped" when teleporting to Earth.
  • In "City of Death", Romana suggests they fly down from the Eiffel Tower. The Doctor suggests taking the lift instead, his only complaint being that flying would look silly.
• A Form You Are Comfortable With: According to Sky Pirates! and Christmas On A Rational Planet, Time Lords' physical appearance are a fragment of their vast multi-dimensional form existing in a metaspace realm invisible to humans.
• Gender Bender:.
  • Missy — aka the Master — provides the first proof that Time Lords can change gender when they regenerate.
  • The Corsair, an old friend of the Doctor, was also said to have both male and female incarnations. In the novelisation of a never-completed Fourth Doctor TV story, "Shada", the Doctor casually switches between male and female pronouns when reminiscing about the Corsair.
  • Borusa is also implied to have had a female form at some point in his past in Engines of War.
  • In "Hell Bent" the General regenerates into a woman and comments that it's good to be "back to normal" after her only male incarnation, suggesting that at least some Time Lords have a sense of gender identity (or at least, preference) if in a rather vague sense.
  • Thirteen sees the Doctor's first gender switch (though they turn out to have had several before the First Doctor).
  • The general ease with which Time Lords adapt to differently sexed bodies (without any gender identity worries) seems to imply that they are all gender fluid, though with regeneration thrown into the mix it's not quite the same as human gender fluidity.
• Good Is Not Nice: They are the most powerful and mighty race in the universe, self-appointed guardians of all time and space, billions of years old and unchallenged for ten million of them by the time of "The Trial of a Time Lord". With such credentials under their belt, they are naturally boastful, arrogant and extremely corrupt. They drop the good part during the Time War, at least the High Council did.
• Hated by All: Thanks to the Time War, the rest of the Universe went from treating them with bemused apathy to loathing them like they do Daleks. In "The Night of the Doctor", it's outright stated that there's no difference between them and the Daleks anymore. They're so hated that they have to hide at the end of time for their own safety; otherwise they'd have another Time War on their hands. "The Five Doctors" and "The Timeless Children" reveal they were monsters in their distant past, too.
  Clara: You're monsters. Here you are, hiding away at the end of time. Do you even know why? Because you are hated. You are hated. By everybody.
• He Who Fights Monsters:
  • If the Doctor hadn't ended the Time War the way he did, the Time Lord leadership would have destroyed all of reality so they could survive as pure energy. This makes them little different from the Omnicidal Maniac Daleks they had been fighting.
  • "The Day of the Doctor" reveals that in the face of the Daleks' assault, the military had been forced to turn to the Doomsday Weapons kept in the Forbidden Vaults, designed during the Dark Times on Ancient Gallifrey. By the last day of the Time War, they'd used them all, save for the Moment.
• Healing Factor: They heal pretty quickly anyway, shaking off gamma-infused lightning strikes in less than a minute. But it only really shows when a regeneration has started. Before the Time Lord changes completely, the body heals all injuries and may rejuvenate the individual. However, as shown in both the Classic and New Series, regeneration isn't completely reliable as it's possible for Time Lords to die or be killed before the regeneration process can be triggered: Time Lords drop like flies in "The Deadly Assassin" and "Arc of Infinity", and Ten died in the Bad Future of "Turn Left".
• Heel–Face Revolving Door: It's a roll of the dice as to how helpful or harmful they'll be to the Doctor if they happen to show up. Their appearances range from them being harsh but lawful (The War Games), squabbling and bureaucratic (The Deadly Assassin), outright malevolent (The End of Time) or some combination of the above (Hell Bent).
• Higher-Tech Species: They are the higher tech species. A vehicle that can travel anywhere in time and space, be Bigger on the Inside and disguise itself as anything around it as well as generating food and drink for its whole crew, with an engine that's essentially a Dyson Sphere powered by a star constantly kept on the precipice of a supernova... is laughably primitive by their standards.
• Human Aliens:
  • Time Lords are visually indistinguishable from humans, though anyone who takes even a slightly closer look, or who has medical training, will notice some differences straight away.
    Amy: You look human.
    Eleventh Doctor: No, you look Time Lord. We came first.
  • According to the Expanded Universe, they're the reason so many Whoniverse species are human-looking. Or rather, Rassilon is.
  • A long-standing puzzle in the fandom is the question of why the First and Second Doctors are Ambiguously Human and later Doctors are Human Aliens, with the Third Doctor being the first to have two hearts. One proposed solution is that they picked up their more alien features via regeneration.
• Humanoid Abomination: The more dangerous ones, like Rassilon, the Master, even the Doctor, tend towards this, with their nigh-immortality, bizarre senses, vast intellects, often Blue-and-Orange Morality, and vast power. If they get warped the way Borusa was in the Time War, then they become even more so.
• Human Outside, Alien Inside: On the surface they (usually) look human, but underneath everything's different.
• I Meant to Do That:
  • The Time Lords as a whole seem convinced they're "allowing" the Doctor freedom, ignoring the fact that he ran away from them, and constantly takes every chance he gets to stay away from them.
  • Subverted to an extent. Stories like "Genesis of the Daleks" and "The Trial of a Time Lord" prove they can move the Doctor and his TARDIS anywhere in time and space whenever they like; they usually don't unless they need him for something.
  • Up until the climax of "The War Games," he had successfully eluded them; then he found himself in a situation where he had to call home for help, revealing his location. From then until the end of the original series, they could consistently find him when they wanted to, and he knew they could. Then the Time War happened.
• Immortality Begins at Twenty: Played With by their regeneration ability. While Gallifreyans do otherwise have a normal (if significantly slowed compared to humans) ageing process, when an adult has to regenerate (it's implied that Gallifreyan children inherit the ability to regenerate, but it's unknown when it manifests, or whether it works differently for them), their physical age at the time of regeneration seems to have no correlation with the "starting" age they wind up with for the next one. That said, while it's been indicated that an adult can regenerate into a child again, it's not been shown, and neither has anyone been seen getting jumped to the sort of decrepit states that the Master is seen artificially accelerating the Doctor to in "Last of the Time Lords".
• Immortal Procreation Clause: Time Lords can live for millennia. The TV show averts this, with the Doctor and Susan referring to each other as granddaughter and grandfather, and Missy referring to her daughter. This trope is fully and elaborately in play in the Expanded Universe: the whole species has been infertile for hundreds of thousands of years, and reproduces artificially through "Looms". The only reason they are infertile is because the original leader (who was overthrown as a result of a revolution), placed a curse on them that took thousands of years to remove. Odds are that they reproduce like normal humans do, but now have gotten so used to the looms that they have stopped sexually reproducing.
• Impossibly Tacky Clothes: To the point you start wondering if it's genetic rather than cultural. Even the (very few) co-ordinated Time Lords will do a little something weird to throw the entire ensemble right into WTH, Costuming Department? territory. Most just skip the whole "spot the odd thing out" option and go straight to full-on eye-bleed.
• Lady Land: The Expanded Universe says that Gallifrey was a matriarchy before the rise of the Time Lords. It was ruled by the Pythian Order that went on to become the Sisterhood Of Karn.
• Large Ham: A lot of individual Time Lords are this. That's what happens when you're a race that has the propensity to be portrayed by classically-trained actors.
• Last of His Kind:
  • The Doctor, due to having wiped the others out at the end of the Time War. Or so he believed.
  • As of series 12, the Master, since he's wiped out Gallifrey and the Doctor isn't a Time Lord by birth after all.
• Leitmotif: "This Is Gallifrey", which acts as the theme to both the planet Gallifrey and the Time Lords themselves.
• Long-Lived: It’s stated that even before the benefit of Regeneration, a Galefreyian’s double heart system grants them a 300 year lifespan on average. After experimenting with the Timeless Child, regeneration not only granted them access to multiple lifespans, but also augmented their already longer than human lifespans within a single life. The Eleventh Doctor for example live 1200 years within a single regeneration.
• Made of Iron: Slightly tougher than squishy humans. A Time Lord can survive a twenty-foot fall with little more than a few bruises. The Tenth Doctor managed to survive leaping out of a moving spaceship, through a glass window and onto a marble floor from significantly higher than that, and still managed to scrape himself up pretty quickly.
• Magic from Technology: The Time Lords, in particular Rassilon, love this trope. Much of their technology might as well be magical items for all practical intents and purposes.
• Magic Versus Science: According to EU materials, Gallifrey used to be ruled by a cult of witches under the leadership of the seeresses known as the Pythias. Rassilon, Omega, and the Other overthrew them and turned Gallifrey into a more scientifically-minded society. The Sisterhood of Karn, not happy at this development, left the planet to set up shop on Karn.
• Memory Jar: The "fob watch" devices can store a Time Lord's identity and memories, returning them when they look into the watch. "Fugitive of the Judoon" has a glass-protected version, where the return is triggered by smashing the glass casing.
• Mercy Invincibility: A non-video game example. While the aftermath of a regeneration can leave them mentally out-of-sorts, the energy lingering in their systems lets them re-grow whole limbs.
• Merlin Sickness:
  • Issue 42◊ of the Doctor Who? parody comic in Doctor Who Magazine says that Time Lords get younger each time they regenerate (making Susan Foreman The Doctor's great grandmother).
  • There's shades of this in the show as up until his Twelfth incarnation, the Doctor tended to get younger-looking with each regeneration.
• Miniature Senior Citizens: If the Toclafane arc of the Revived Series is any indication, Gallifreyans who manage to live long enough on a single incarnation eventually shrink to under half a meter before they have to regenerate!
• Mirroring Factions: Fought the Daleks in the Time War, but by the end they (or at least the High Council) are little better than them. Their final plan involved destroying everything else in the universe for their own self-preservation, which is scarily close to Davros' plan involving the Reality Bomb in "Journey's End".
• Move in the Frozen Time: Time Lords are less affected by slowed time or time loops than most beings. Even when Gallifrey was sealed away in a Pocket Dimension that supposedly had frozen time, they were still able to take actions.
• Multicultural Alien Planet:
  • Gallifrey has a larger civilian class of Gallifreyans who aren't Time Lords and don't have TARDISes.
  • There was intended to be a race of Cat Folk on Gallifrey called the Killer Cats of Gin-Seng. They were written for a cancelled serial called Killers of The Dark but went on to appear in Expanded Universe novels and audio stories.
• Multiple Head Case: The Ninth Doctor says that they can grow a second head as a result of a botched regeneration.
• Mystical High Collar:
  • Their formal robes have notoriously large collars.
  • Hilariously, a Freeze-Frame Bonus from John Smith's Journal of Impossible Things in "Human Nature" reveals that the Doctor, in his youth, "could never get the collar right".
• Named After Their Planet:
  • "Gallifreyan" has been used in addition to "Time Lord". Whether or not the two terms are completely synonymous is rather unclear.
  • Expanded Universe novels generally have the Time Lords as a ruling class of a larger race called Gallifreyans who are basically Time Lords without access to TARDISes.
  • According to "The Timeless Children", they were originally known as Shobogans; based on the derogatory use of the name on present-day Gallifrey, it appears to have fallen out of favour since they became the Time Lords.
• Never Speak Ill of the Dead:
  • The revival Doctor is a lot fonder of Gallifrey than they ever were when it was still there. When it looks like the Time Lords are coming back, the nostalgia goes out the window and Ten grabs the nearest revolver — as he does so, he explains to Wilf that he prefers to remember them at their best, but he's under no illusions of what they actually ended up being like.
  • In "In the Forest of the Night", Twelve calls Earth "his world", perhaps exactly because this trope is no longer in play — now that Gallifrey's been saved, he no longer has to feel guilty about feeling more at home with the "pudding brains".
• No Man Should Have This Power: The abuse of their power in the past is why they developed their Alien Non-Interference Clause — officially. Subverted in that the High Council is more then willing to abuse their power when they see fit.
• Non-Protagonist Resolver: In "The War Games", the Doctor is forced to call on them after realizing he can't put a stop to the War Lord's plans on his own. They promptly obliterate the War Lord and his minions before taking the Doctor into custody for violating their non-interference clause.
• Noodle Incident: So how did they manage to get their planet out of the pocket universe and move it to the end of the universe with nobody noticing? Even the Doctor doesn't know, and he doesn't want to ask because it would make them feel clever.
• Not-So-Omniscient Council of Bickering: While they project the outward appearance of being omniscient overseers of time, internally their society is quite stagnant with a number of greedy and power-grubbing bureaucrats all making their own power plays in its upper echelons.
• Omnicidal Maniac: Their plan in "The End of Time" involves the destruction of time itself.
• The Omniscient Council of Vagueness: Their early appearances in the classic series portray them as a race of Physical Gods overseeing time and occasionally enlisting the Doctor to perform missions for them. Their later appearances have them waffle between this and a Not-So-Omniscient Council of Bickering, with the High Council being full of bureaucrats whose main concern is covering their own arses. By The End of Time however they're back to being this, slowly manipulating things in order to hijack the Master's scheme for their own ends.
• People's Republic of Tyranny: Nominally, Gallifrey is a Parliamentary republic. In reality it's the opposite; when the Lord President ends his term he gets to name his successor and he is promptly brought into office via a non-contested election (there's nothing stopping another candidate entering the race — in fact the law specifically states no candidate can be barred from the race, but it's not considered traditional). Things slightly get better when Romana becomes President... only for everything to go to hell thanks to the Time War and Rassilon is resurrected to be President again and quickly rules the planet with an iron fist.
• Pet the Dog: In "The Time of the Doctor", the Time Lords used the cracks in the universe to grant Eleven a new cycle of regenerations, allowing him to regenerate into Twelve. A more cynical viewpoint is that they only did so because the Doctor was the only one able to bring them back into the universe, making this a little more self-serving on their part. (Given that "The Timeless Children" reveals the Doctor has unlimited regenerations, the question becomes whether or not the Time Lords knew this, and pretended they'd given him a new cycle to hide the truth, or they just kickstarted his regeneration.)
• The Philosopher King: The Time Lords' entire hierarchy is based on academia, with everyone belonging to a specific College. Training at the Academy begins as age 8.
• Powered by a Forsaken Child: The Timeless Child's (who is later revealed to be the Doctor) ability to infinitely regenerate is the source of their Resurrective Immortality, with Tecteun experimenting on the child and inducing multiple regenerations until she could isolate the genes responsible and splice them into her race, creating the Time Lords. The Master suggests she felt some regret over her actions, hence mindwiping the Timeless Child and giving them a normal life as the Doctor, but her later appearance in "Flux" suggests otherwise.
• Psychic Powers: Time Lords have a significantly higher degree of psychic potential than humans. In particular it is explicitly stated that they all have Telepathy to some degree. But, as per the Magic Versus Science trope (see above), they tend to focus on their technology rather than on Training the Gift of Magic. The Sisterhood of Karn and the renegade Time Lord K'anpo Rimpoche have gone in the opposite direction and eschew technology in favour of developing their mental powers.
• Racial Transformation: The Expanded Universe first introduced Time Lords being able to change their human-perceived ethnicity when regenerating in the wilderness years, and Steven Moffat brought it into the TV series during his tenure as showrunner, with changes shown including the General, the Master, the Doctor, and Tecteun. (The Master, not being above possessing other people's bodies, has also changed ethnicity like this at least once in the Expanded Universe, in the Eighth Doctor Doctor Who Magazine comics, when they took the body of a dead black human man.)
• Reality Warper: The non-canon Death Comes to Time says Time Lords can warp reality from healing injuries to creating black holes. They just rarely use their powers.
• Really 700 Years Old: A single Time Lord incarnation can, with proper care and attention, last for hundreds of years, sometimes more.
• Removing the Head or Destroying the Brain: Sometimes said to prevent them regenerating:
  • The novel Cold Fusion had a Time Lady being killed permanently when shot through the brain.
  • Per "The Impossible Astronaut" a Time Lord can be killed permanently if they are killed again while in the process of regenerating. However, the whole thing being a set-up to fake the Doctor's death calls the idea into question — after all, it's not that difficult to shoot someone twice a few seconds apart, so one would expect it to be common knowledge among the Time Lords' enemies if true.
  • Missy said the best way to kill her without her regenerating was to have three snipers shoot through each of her hearts and two through the brainstem simultaneously. Though given Missy's penchant for lying, the veracity of these claims is uncertain, especially given that a later episode establishes the existence of two other brainstems she apparently forgot to mention.
• Resurrective Immortality: Their regeneration ability lets them come back from death.
• Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: While nominally they stick to their rules of time, they bend and break them whenever they feel the need (or even just feel like it), and they aren't shy about letting other races know this.
• Smug Snake: The average Time Lord is very confident in themselves and their abilities. Some of it is admittedly justified, but still...
  Fourth Doctor: Who are you? Don't you realise how dangerous it is to intercept a transmat beam?
  Time Lord: [with indescribably smug air] Oh, come now, Doctor, not with our techniques. We Time Lords mastered such simple things when the universe was less than half its present size.
• Snobs Vs Slobs: Gallifreyans who don't go to the Academy and become full Time Lords go into the army instead; the Academy is the more respected option — the Doctor did not want to go into the army at all. And then there are the Space Amish ones who live in the wilderness outside the cities.
• Space Amish: "The Invasion of Time" reveals there are a handful of malcontents who reject Time Lord tech for a simpler life.
• Space Elves: Ancient, scholarly, reclusive, frequently haughty, devious, powerful and usually robed.
• Spare Body Parts: Their most obvious and widely-known alien trait is that they have two hearts. Though the Doctor shows that the second heart isn't just for show, being nearly incapacitated whenever one of his hearts stops. Later, it is stated that they have three brainstems and multiple brains.
• Standard Evil Empire Hierarchy: In Series 9.
  • The Emperor: Lord President Rassilon.
  • The Right Hand: Ohila and the Sisterhood of Karn.
  • The General: The General.
  • The Guard: The Veil who keeps the Doctor trapped in his Confession Dial.
  • The Oddball: Ashildr / Me, who isn't one of them but plays a critical role in capturing the Doctor for them.
• Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: The revived series said that all of them apart from the Doctor had been wiped out in the Last Great Time War.
• Sufficiently Advanced Alien: As a result of being the Higher-Tech Species. Even the Daleks, their most dangerous foe, never came close to matching the Time Lords' skill at time travel and transcendental technology; even the Doctor has a special contempt for less refined time travel tech, especially time vortex manipulators, calling them "cheap and nasty time travel" (though the fact that using them tends to hurt probably didn't improve his opinion).
  Seventh Doctor: Oh yes, Daleks have got time corridor technology, but it's very crude and nasty. What they want is the power that Time Lords have.
• Super-Reflexes: It's revealed in "The Witch's Familiar" that Time Lords have much faster processing power than humans, being able to respond to threats in less than seconds.
• That Man Is Dead: Most renegade Time Lords and Ladies who leave or are exiled from Gallifrey forfeit their names and take up "titles" instead, and are addressed as such by their fellow Time Lords. Examples include: the Doctor, the Monk, the War Chief, the Master, the Rani, and the Corsair. Why they do this has never been explained.
• Took a Level in Badass: In the classic series, at least from the Fourth Doctor's tenure onward, the Time Lords were portrayed as being highly bureaucratic and ineffectual, often relying on the Doctor to save the day. By the time of the Revival era, the Time War has molded them into a highly formidable warrior race whom the Doctor even regards as more dangerous than any of the other foes he's fought.
• Training from Hell: At the age of eight, Time Lords attending the Academy are taken in front of the Untempered Schism, a gap in the fabric of reality in which the entire Time Vortex can be seen. According to the Doctor, "Some would be inspired, some would run away, and some would go mad." The Doctor was one of the ones who ran away (and never stopped) and he suspects the Master was one of those who went insane (though that was explicitly thanks to what the High Council did to him).
• Ungrateful Bastard: Played With. The Doctor has saved their bacon multiple times throughout the series, and they repay that by alternating between treating him with outright contempt, letting him wander the Universe without a fuss, or trying to kill him, like when they struck a deal with the Valeyard so he would have all of the Sixth Doctor's remaining regenerations. However, it's eventually zig-zagged in "Hell Bent". While Rassilon and possibly the High Council are these, the rest of Gallifrey are certainly not.
• Vampire Hunter:
  • "State of Decay" reveals the Time Lords went to war against the Great Vampires, wiping them all out save for one, the king of their kind, who managed to escape. Rassilon issued a directive that any Time Lord who found the king destroy him at all costs, even if it meant their own life, and the Doctor is the one to finally kill him at the end of the story. Just one catch: knowledge of the Great Vampires isn't common on present-day Gallifrey, and the Doctor only knows of them due to an old hermit who told him ghost stories, and his TARDIS having the Record of Rassilon on its magnetic card system.
  • According to Vampire Science every Time Lord had a duty to deal with any vampires they encountered since the Eternal War.
  • In the Doctor Who Adventures Bat Attack comic, Time Lords are immune to the vampire virus to the point they can ingest it and burp a cure.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: They really don't get involved in Universal affairs unless it's drastic: when they foresaw a future when the Daleks would be the dominant species in the Universe, they came to the conclusion that wiping them out from reality would be the best course of action. This led them down a very dark path.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: The regeneration cycle is a built-in biological trait, but it is possible for new regeneration cycles to be given after the original one is used up as seen with the Master and the Doctor. However barring those cases, Time Lords will eventually die when their regenerations are used up. In "The Brain of Morbius", the Fourth Doctor states that the Time Lords believe that outright immortality causes stagnation and thus reject the chance to extend the regeneration cycle; unfortunately the millennia-long life span of Time Lords is enough for their culture to stagnate anyway. The only Time Lord that has explicit immortality is Rassilon, the Time Lord founder, who is both insane and power-hungry. The Doctor turns out to have an unlimited ability to regenerate, but may still be able to die a final death.
• Xeno Nucleic Acid: If "A Good Man Goes to War" is any indication, they have triple-stranded DNA.

Related Groups

The Sisterhood of Karn

The Sisterhood of Karn (Fourth, Eighth, War and Twelfth Doctors)

The Eighth Doctor: The Sisterhood of Karn, Keepers of the Flame of Utter Boredom.
Ohila: Eternal Life!
The Eighth Doctor: That's the one.

— "The Night of the Doctor"

A mystic cult that originated on Gallifrey before they left and set up shop on Karn. They guard the Flame of Eternal Life which produces an Elixir that grants extended life; something Time Lords find handy if the regeneration process goes awry. They are currently led by the High Priestess Ohila.

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• Ambiguously Related: It's not entirely clear how close the Sisterhood are to Gallifreyans, biologically. Since they use the Elixir, they have no need for regeneration; what we do know is that they have similar mental powers like telepathy, but their powers are stronger than the Time Lords'.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Their mysticism in the classic series makes them seem a touch ridiculous, especially since the Doctor solves their problem with the Eternal Flame by just dropping a fire-cracker down the chute to clear out the rubbish. However, they're more or less immortal, can bring back the dead within a limited timespan, they have stronger Psychic Powers than the Time Lords, and they can control the regeneration process.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: As a result of their immortality.
• Conveniently Close Planet: The Night Of The Doctor has the Doctor fatally crash landing on a planet inhabited by women who specialise in healing injured Time Lords.
• Derelict Graveyard: The planet's covered in spaceships that the Sisterhood telekinetically crashed because they thought they were trying to steal the Elixir of Life.
• Early-Bird Cameo: According to the Past Doctor Adventures novel Verdigris, Iris Wildthyme was one of the Sisters when they first appeared in "The Brain Of Morbius".
• Elixir of Life: It's their source of immortality and used as a medicine for when Time Lord regenerations go wrong.
• Good Is Not Nice: As the Eighth Doctor notes in "The Night of the Doctor" when wondering why they were helping him, they were never especially big on gratitude, and they tacitly admit that they're mainly getting involved out of self-preservation. Additionally, they might have been the ones to bring down the ship the Doctor was on, just to get him to Karn. Ohila's main interest in the Doctor's return to Gallifrey is not in trying to defuse the tensions, but to watch the fireworks — though she could just have been trolling Rassilon, as she did try to talk the Doctor down (her Blue-and-Orange Morality didn't help).
• Healing Potion: Time Lords find their elixirs useful when the regeneration process goes awry, which is apparently not uncommon.
• Human Aliens: As the standard Time Lords.
• Lady in Red: All of them wear red robes and habits.
• Lady Land: There are no male life-forms on Karn, save for the time the Twelfth Doctor temporarily took up residence.
• Living Prop: In the revival, Ohila is the only member who speaks, the rest being literally props who just stand around.
• Magic Feather: The Night of The Doctor short has the Eighth Doctor asking them for a potion that will make him regenerate into a warrior. The novelization to The Day of The Doctor says this was just lemonade, with dry ice to make it smoke.
• Magic Versus Science: A Brief History of Time Lords suggests this is the reason why they left Gallifrey, as the increasingly scientific-minded Time Lords were beginning to become dismissive of the Cult's mystic beliefs, in a nod to the magic vs. science portrayal of the Time Lords' origins in the Doctor Who New Adventures. On the Cult's part, their Elixirs have the ability to give Time Lords a greater control over regeneration than normal, and they have stronger telepathic powers.
• Pet the Dog: They let the Twelfth Doctor take up residence when he was hiding from the universe; Ohila warns him about going to face Davros, and delivers his Confession Dial.
• Really 700 Years Old: All of them. Their Elixir grants immortality, but only within the vicinity of the Flame; try to drink it off Karn and it's useless.
• Renegade Splinter Faction: They used to live on Gallifrey before having a disagreement with the Time Lords. However, they can get back to Gallifrey if they want to, and aren't totally estranged.
• Small Role, Big Impact: They don't appear nearly as often as their Time Lord cousins, but they were instrumental in convincing the Doctor to enter the Time War and end it.
• Solar System Neighbors: Not ours but Karn is in the same solar system as the Time Lord homeworld, Gallifrey.
• Took a Level in Badass: In "The Brain of Morbius", they came off as weak and self-important, especially since the Fourth Doctor was able to fix the Flame by throwing a firecracker down the vent to clean out the soot. By the later stages of the Time War, they've elevated their magic as they're able to refine the Elixir into multiple varieties that enable a Time Lord to choose the characteristics of his next regeneration. They're also one of the few groups to neither fear the Doctor, nor be intimidated by him.
• Vestigial Empire: The ''Seven Keys To Doomsday" audio play mentions the planet was originally home to the Masters Of Karn who ruled a major galactic empire but it's not clear if they were a native race or related to Gallifreyan colonists. The Sisterhood themselves are descended from the Pythian Order that ruled Gallifrey before the Time Lords.
• We Used to Be Friends: The Time War really strained relations with their Time Lord cousins.
• Wizards from Outer Space: Are magic using Time Lords.

Celestial Intervention Agency

Celestial Intervention Agency (Fourth Doctor)

"Celestial Intervention Agency. They get their fingers into everything."

— Castellan Spandrell, "The Deadly Assassin"

A shadowy organization on Gallifrey, whose primary mission is protecting the Time Lords and the Universe, no matter what. While the rest of Gallifrey stagnated, the CIA kept churning out new technology — like the Time Ring. They were the ones responsible for the Doctor's exile on Earth, seeing him as an ideal Rogue Agent.

In the TV series, they're only explicitly brought up in "The Deadly Assassin", but several of Robert Holmes's stories imply they're behind many of the Doctor's adventures (including but not limited to the ones the Time Lords sent him on), and Word of God and the Expanded Universe have fleshed them out much more.

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• Be Careful What You Wish For: The Doctor would routinely call out the Time Lords for ignoring the suffering of less advanced societies and not intervening... but he rarely seems pleased with the CIA for doing exactly that, and absolutely resents repeatedly getting drafted as their errand boy.
• Covert Group: Their mission is to protect the timeline and the Universe, ignoring the official Alien Non-Interference Clause. Amongst other things, this induced sending the Fourth Doctor to Skaro to stop the Daleks' creation before they eventually conquered the universe.
• Fun with Acronyms: They appear to have been named after a certain real-life intelligence agency noted for shady interference in the affairs of other countries.
• The Handler: What they were to the Third Doctor during his exile on Earth, particularly on the occasions when they decided he needed to leave 20th Century Earth to go on missions elsewhere. Unfortunately for them, they underestimated how much the Doctor hated this arrangement and, after he saved Gallifrey from Omega, they gladly had his exile lifted.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Similar to Section 31 from Star Trek, it's their mission to do whatever's necessary to protect the Time Lords specifically and the Universe in general no matter what. This includes stopping other races from developing time travel, and cleaning up the messes of those who abuse it, like the War Lord.

Cloister Wraiths

Cloister Wraiths (Twelfth Doctor)

Also referred to by the name "Sliders", Cloister Wraiths are dead Time Lords whose minds have been forcefully uploaded into the Matrix. They're found beneath the crypts of The Citadel, and guard the Matrix from intruders; acting as a sort of firewall, ensnaring their prey with fibre optic cables and reducing them to raw data.

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• And I Must Scream: Their faces are frozen in a perpetual rictus of horror.
• Brain Uploading: They have their minds forcibly uploaded to the Matrix.
• Cobweb of Disuse: What happens to their prey. The Doctor and Clara find Daleks, Cybermen and Weeping Angels that have been caught by them.
• Fate Worse than Death: Becoming one of these things doesn't look very pleasant.
• Frozen Face: They don't emote much, to say the least.
• Non-Human Undead: They're long dead-Time Lords, and appear almost akin to ghosts.
• Threshold Guardian: The Cloister Wraiths guard the Matrix. Anybody caught in there eventually becomes a part of the firewall.
• Virtual Ghost: They appear to be at least partially holographic, and they don't look happy about it.

The Division

The Division (Fugitive and Thirteenth Doctors)

"Working for the Division must be so compromising."

—Swarm, "Once, Upon Time"

There are times when the Time Lords need to intervene in the outside universe but cannot officially do so due to the Alien Non-Interference Clause. That's where the Division come in, a black ops interventionist group that acts to serve Gallifrey's interests.

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• The Man Behind the Man: The Weeping Angels in "Village of the Angels" turn out to be an extraction team for the Division, sent to retrieve an Angel Rogue Agent. They do, however, manage to snag another rogue agent of the Division, the Doctor herself.
• No Such Agency: In the words of one Division recruiter, "The Division does not exist. The Division does not have operatives. We are not even here."
• Omnicidal Maniac: They created the Flux to wipe out the universe, and then move on to the next one.
• Pocket Dimension: They operate from a space station perched between our universe and the next.
• Sinister Spy Agency: Any group that uses Weeping Angels of all things as operatives is not on the up-and-up, whatever their goals may be.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: For the Celestial Intervention Agency, such that there's speculation the two are one and the same.
• Tailor-Made Prison: Constructed a planet to bind and harness Time itself, stop it from running wild.
• They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: A variant. Since they're a covert group that operates across time and space, and recruits from various species along with Time Lords, you can't tell who - or what - is a Division operative on sight.
• We Are Everywhere: They boast that they recruit from all species, across all of time and space.

Individual Time Lords

Classic Series Debut

The Monk

The Monk (First Doctor)

Played by: Peter Butterworth (1965, 1966)

First Doctor: Yes, I regret that we do [both come from the same place], but I would say that I am fifty years earlier. Now when are you going to answer my questions?
The Monk: Which questions?
First Doctor: The reason for this deliberate destruction.
The Monk: I, I want to improve things.
First Doctor: Improve things? Improve things, yes, that's good. Very good. Improve what, for instance?
The Monk: Well, for instance, Harold, King Harold, I know he'd be a good king. There wouldn't be all those wars in Europe, those claims over France went on for years and years. With peace the people'd be able to better themselves. With a few hints and tips from me they'd be able to have jet airliners by 1320! Shakespeare'd be able to put Hamlet on television.

— "The Time Meddler"

In-Universe referred to as "the Monk", out-of-universe "the Meddling Monk". The first other member of the Doctor and Susan's (at that point, still-unnamed) species ever seen on-screen. In his first appearance, the Meddling Monk liked to "improve" history, or rather Earth's history with advanced technology. (He didn't ever mention altering any other planet's history.) In his second, he jointly wished for revenge against the Doctor and allied with the Daleks and a third, human villain, as self-preservation. He re-appeared in two Doctor Who Magazine comics and in the New Adventures novel No Future by Paul Cornell. Following that, he came back with a vengeance as a main antagonist in the New Eighth Doctor Adventures, played by Graeme Garden, then later Rufus Hound and Gemma Whelan — you can see their Big Finish-specific character tropes here.

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• Affably Evil: Closer to affably amoral, actually.
• Ancient Astronauts: Helped the Ancient Britons build Stonehenge and talked with Leonardo da Vinci about flying machines.
• Anti-Villain: Wants to help humanity... by bringing about technological developments centuries before humans are ready for them.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Inverted from the Monk's perspective; he considers himself a hero who is prevented from doing things the way he wants to because of the Doctor and those who enforce the Laws of Time.
• Butt-Monkey:
  • Treated like crap onscreen by Mavic Chen, the Daleks and the Doctor. (The Doctor probably treated him worst of all.)
  • In No Future by Paul Cornell, he's abused and turned on by a pissed-off goddess.
  • Brought on even more by the Daleks in Big Finish.
• Compound-Interest Time Travel Gambit: His logbook includes an entry recording his use of this.
  • Funnily enough, while the Monk's money sat in a bank, the Daleks took over the world. One wonders if he was actually able to withdraw it.
• Evil Counterpart: To the Doctor, although the Monk doesn't consider himself evil at all. Thoroughly explored in Big Finish.
• Evil Former Friend: Subverted. It is claimed that the Doctor and Monk haven't met before when he first appears.
• Gender Bender: Gemma Whelan's incarnation goes by "the Nun".
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: The "sympathy" really does start to build up in his later appearances in the audio dramas.
• Mirror Character: He's a Time Lord who got bored with Gallifrey and decided to travel through space and time. The major difference from the Doctor is that the Monk decided to try to improve history. Later the Doctor starts acting more like the Monk, but they know when to stop.
• No Name Given: Expanded Universe novels given him the name of Mortimus, though.
• Out-Gambitted: In each encounter with the Doctor in the TV series, he loses a component of his TARDIS.
• Put on a Bus: Hasn't been seen in the main series since 1966, sadly. Probably because the Doctor stole the directional unit from his TARDIS, so he can't control where he goes. Also, Peter Butterworth sadly died just before the creators started making a big thing of bringing back famous one-shot villains. (In theory the Monk could just regenerate and turn up played by a new actor.)
• Revenge Before Reason: In the Doctor Who New Adventures "Alternative Universe" Story Arc, against the Doctor; also used in various audios, where he attempts elaborate plans against the Doctor even when he is the reason everything went wrong for himself.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Or at least, he likes to think this is what he's doing.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: Believes his meddling with time is worth it since he's enabling humanity to become advanced at a far earlier time in history than they're supposed to.
• We Will Meet Again: Well, he said they would, but he never seemed to get around to it onscreen. This is one of those reasons the Expanded Universe is so handy.
• Wham Line: "It's a TARDIS! The Monk's got a TARDIS!"

The War Chief

The War Chief (First and Second Doctors)

Played by: Edward Brayshaw (1969)

"Consider [mankind's] history. For a half a million years they have been systematically killing each other. Now we can turn this savagery to some purpose. We can bring peace to the galaxy, and you can help. You see, I'm not the cold-hearted villain you suppose me to be. My motives are purely peaceful."

— The War Games

Before the TV series introduced the Master, there was the War Chief: a renegade Time Lord with facial hair, a dark Nehru jacket, an alliance with a malevolent alien race (which he plans to betray), and powers of hypnotism, who has some type of history with the Doctor from before leaving Gallifrey, recognizing the Second Doctor even though he had regenerated.

A popular fan theory is that, due to the many similarities between the two characters, the War Chief is an earlier incarnation of the Master. Word of God differs on whether they are the same or two different characters, depending on which God you ask. For what it's worth, the writers of The War Games, Terrance Dicks and Malcolm Hulke, were in the 'same person' camp. Some Expanded Universe media have suggested this, while others have listed them together as two of the former classmates of the Doctor.

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• Affably Evil: Very polite, even when plotting to built a galaxy-conquering army.
• Beard of Evil: Regardless on whether or not he is the Master, they at least share a fondness for diabolical facial hair.
• Camp: He sets a nice precedent for the Master.
• Depending on the Writer: There's no word in the TV series on if he's an incarnation of the Master, and depending on what EU source you use, he may or may not be.
• Dirty Coward: He told the War Lord that the Flame of Eternal Life was vital to his people’s regeneration powers, which the Doctor theorises was to avoid appearing weak.
• Evil Counterpart: He's a Time Lord scientist who stole a TARDIS and is serving as scientific adviser to a military program, and is trying to keep things at the base steady while hostile aliens surround it and attempt to penetrate its defences.
• Humans Are Warriors: The War Chief firmly believes this, so he and the War Lords try to create a mighty army out of various warriors and soldiers from human history.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Would you trust a guy who calls himself "War Chief"?
• No Name Given: Like all renegade Time Lords, he has no name, only a title. The Expanded Universe reveals his name as Magnus.
• No Sense of Personal Space: In regard to the Doctor.
• "Not So Different" Remark: He is very insistent of this.
  War Chief: Stealing a TARDIS? Oh, I'm not criticizing you. We are two of a kind.
  The Doctor: We most certainly are not!
  War Chief: We were both Time Lords and we both decided to leave our race.
  The Doctor: I had reasons of my own.
  War Chief: Just as I had.
  The Doctor: Your reasons are only too obvious. Power!
• Really 700 Years Old: He has some type of history with the Doctor from before leaving Gallifrey, so he must be at least a few hundred years old.
• Rival Turned Evil: Much like the Master, he's someone the Doctor knew back on Gallifrey who's since turned evil.
• The Starscream: He plans to overthrow the War Lord. He is Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves.
• Trrrilling Rrrs: He does this every now and then.
• We Can Rule Together: Offers this to the Doctor.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: He tries to come across as one, claiming if the Galaxy is conquered there can be peace.
• Worthy Opponent: Views the Doctor as this.

Chancellor Goth

Chancellor Goth (Second and Fourth Doctors)

Played by: Bernard Horsfall (1969, 1976)

"You're finished, Doctor! You're finished!"

— "The Deadly Assassin"

A ruthless Time Lord politician who organized the Doctor's banishment to Earth and later teamed up with the Master to seize control of Gallifrey. Same actor as the one playing a high-up Time Lord who's part of the Doctor's trial at the end of "The War Games", so it's generally assumed it's the same character both times.

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• Battle in the Centre of the Mind: Engages in a long cat-and-mouse game with the Doctor in the Matrix.
• Egomaniac Hunter: How he appears in the Matrix.
• Evil Chancellor: A chancellor and a power-hungry villain.
• Expanded Universe: Marc Platt's Doctor Who Yearbook short story "Future Imperfect" claims that Goth had earlier gone undercover as Lemuel Gulliver in the Land of Fiction during "The Mind Robber" to monitor the Second Doctor. (Gulliver was also played by Bernard Horsfall.)
• Fake Ultimate Hero: Borusa gives him credit for the Master's supposed death in order to maintain public confidence in the Time Lord government.
• Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: His pursuit of the Doctor in the Matrix has heavy shades of this.
• Knight of Cerebus: Within the Matrix, Goth proves to be a dangerous adversary (a deadly assassin, if you will), doing everything in his power to terrify the Doctor into submission before engaging in brutal on-foot guerilla warfare. Over the course of the battle, the Doctor get thrown off a cliff, shot twice with a rifle, beaten up in hand-to-hand combat, and almost drowned (this last part severely incurred the wrath of the Moral Guardians at the time).
• More than Mind Control: Admits that some of the Master's manipulation was his natural lust for power, and some of it was he was just unable to fight the Master's control.
• Names to Run Away From: Gothic Horror comes to mind.
• Not So Above It All: His debut in "The War Games" saw him embody the Time Lords' irreproachable superiority as the Second Doctor's judge, jury and executioner. His second appearance reveals his true nature as a treacherous, power-hungry political schemer willing to assassinate the Lord President and hunt the Doctor with primitive human weaponry inside the Matrix.
• Tall, Dark, and Handsome: Tall, athletic and with chiselled features, all emphasised by his Time Lord regalia and silver lip gloss.
• Unwitting Pawn: He unwittingly aids the Master in his plan, and gets killed in return.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: Able to morph the digital landscape in almost any way he wishes, he shifts through several forms while harrassing the Doctor, including a Monster Clown, a creepy surgeon with an enormous syringe, a katana-wielding Shogun, a World War I fighter pilot, and a trio of train drivers, before settling on his masked Egomaniac Hunter persona.
• Weasel Words: Even while dying painfully, he refuses to give straight answers to some of the Doctor's basic questions. Typical politician.

Omega

Omega (Second, Third and Fifth Doctors)

Played by: Stephen Thorne (1973, pictured left); Ian Collier (and briefly Peter Davison) (1983, pictured right)

"A hero?! I should have been a god!"

— "The Three Doctors"

Omega was, together with Rassilon, a founder of Gallifreyan society. (The Doctor Who Expanded Universe makes him one of three or one out of six.) Believed to have been killed after being sucked into a black hole while performing an experiment to provide the Time Lords with time travel. Like with other Time Lords, this didn't stick. Instead, he wound up in an anti-matter universe, and tried to return to our own universe twice, once in "The Three Doctors", and again in "Arc of Infinity". The "bad" part is that he believes his fellow Gallifreyans forgot and abandoned him, and he is obsessed with getting revenge. The Expanded Universe has given him a few more visits, including one where he just wants to return to the anti-matter universe. He appears in the Past Doctor Adventures novel The Infinity Doctors by Lance Parkin and in the Big Finish Doctor Who audio "Omega", and has minor appearances in a few other works during Gallifrey's past.

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• And I Must Scream: Was trapped in an empty anti-matter universe for millions of years, causing him to go insane.
• Anti-Villain: When he has the Doctor's body, he... just goes around enjoying having a body again and smiling at people. Okay, the smile is creepy, but the guy's only company for the past million years have been monsters made of red bubble wrap in an anti-matter dimension... he's a bit out of practice with social interaction.
• Body Horror: The slow degeneration of his body.
• Broken Pedestal: This guy was the Doctor's childhood hero. It hurt to discover that he had gone nuts and become obsessed with destroying his own race, after having helped them progress so far.
• Cool Mask: His masks in both appearances, while very different, were really ornate.
• Dramatic Unmask: Has two, one in "The Three Doctors" where he reveals his true face to himself and to the Doctors. (Except that by now, Omega literally has no face or physical body.) In the second, to reveal that he has assumed the form of the Doctor.
• Driven to Villainy: He became insane, and a villain, after being trapped in an empty anti-matter universe for millions of years.
• Dude, Where's My Reward?: He's not happy at being forgotten in spite of all of his achievements.
• Emperor Scientist: He was one of the founders of Gallifreyan society alongside Rassilon, and together gave the Time Lords their time-related tecnology.
• Evil Counterpart: The Doctor seems to have a lot of these... Originally Omega would have had the name Ohm: "Who" upside down and backwards.
• Evil Is Hammy: With each new actor trying to out-ham the others.
• Fallen Hero: In hindsight, the first of a trend of Gallifreyan idols turning out to be not so great.
• Godhood Seeker: See the quote above.
• Grand Theft Me: ... Does it still count when a copy of the body is made?
• Hair-Trigger Temper: However long it's been on his own has left him with a poor temper.
• Heel–Face Revolving Door: In his rare moments of lucidity, he genuinely appears to regret his actions. Unfortunately, it doesn't take much to unsettle him again.
• Heroic Sacrifice: What started him down the road to villainy, supposedly.
• Meaningful Name: Explained in his titular audio play, Omega was a nickname he received after a professor gave him the lowest possible grade (omega) as punishment for challenging orthodoxy. While Omega later proved correct across the board, the nickname stuck, to Omega's chagrin.
• Mirror Match: Played absolutely straight during "Arc of Infinity". Downright creepy, to boot.
• No Face Under the Mask: Or, for that matter, a body — by the time the Doctors met him, he existed solely through willpower.
• No Indoor Voice: One of the hammiest Doctor Who villains, and that's saying something.
• Not Even Human: Or, in his case, Not Even Human Alien. His time in the anti-matter universe left him with no body, existing solely through willpower.
• Not Quite Dead: Twice in the main series, several more in the Expanded Universe.
• Omnicidal Maniac: Feeling he got massively screwed over by being left in the anti-matter universe, he plans to destroy Gallifrey. When the Third Doctor tells him this could take the entire universe with it, he shrugs it off. Hell, he thinks it'd be interesting to watch. And then when he really hits rock bottom...
  Omega: ALL THINGS SHALL BE DESTROYED! ALLLLLLL THIIIIINNGS!
• Psychic Powers: Considering he has an entire universe under his command...
• The Scream: Lets out a disturbingly heartbreaking, raw, primal scream in "The Three Doctors".
• Sealed Evil in a Can: The anti-matter universe being said can.
• Villainous Breakdown: Suffers from this twice. First in "The Three Doctors" when Omega realizes that he no longer exists outside his force of will, and again in "Arc of Infinity" when he realizes that his copy of the Doctor's body is falling apart. Both times result in the typical "blow it all up" behaviour.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: He pretty much rolls around in the trope. His confusion when running around in Amsterdam, while wearing the Doctor's body, is nothing short of adorable. The Third Doctor even feels upset about destroying him, saying he gave him the only freedom he could.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Some Expanded Universe sources imply that Rassilon deliberately sabotaged his ship so he would be sucked into the black hole, and Rassilon could rule the newly time-travel capable Gallifrey alone.

K'anpo Rimpoche

K'anpo Rimpoche (First and Third Doctors)

Played by: George Cormack and Kevin Lindsay (1974)

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• Enlightenment Superpowers: Displays abilities no other Time Lords have shown, including teleportation without technology and the very existence of Cho Je, who appears to be a tulpa.
• Foreign Culture Fetish: A Gallifreyan Time Lord into Tibetan Buddhism.
• Hermit Guru: Pretty much a stock example, except the distant, remote area he moved to is Earth.
• The Mentor: To the Doctor — it's heavily implied that K'anpo is the mysterious hermit who taught him the value of life when he was young.
• Proverbial Wisdom: Tends to specialize in this.
• Teleporters and Transporters: He can seemingly appear and disappear at will.
• Time Master: K'anpo chides the Doctor for stealing a TARDIS to flee from Gallifrey. The Doctor's rebuttal is that, unlike K'anpo, he actually needed one to do so.
• Tulpa: Cho Je vanishes when Rimpoche "dies", and then the latter regenerates into him, and finishes the sentence he'd started. Some stories have theorised he's a more sophisticated form of the Watcher thanks to Rimpoche's Enlightenment Superpowers.
• Yellowface: Kevin Lindsay wore makeup and affected a slight, generic accent as Cho Je, as the character is (allegedly) Tibetan. Since he retains this look as K'anpo's regeneration, it's clearly meant to be his diegetic ethnicity. (Which would, in a rather technical and roundabout way, make this the first regeneration to change the Earth-ethnicity of the character.)

Morbius

Morbius (Fourth Doctor)

Played by: Michael Spice (voice) and Stuart Fell (body) (1976)

Morbius was a high-ranking Time Lord. His career was the first in millennia to dramatically alter Gallifrey's relations with the wider universe. He briefly moved Gallifrey's policy away from observation and manipulation and towards a brutal restructuring of the universe to suit Gallifrey's interests. His career ended in ignominy and destruction. He escaped a death sentence only by a secret brain transplant, subsequent to which he encountered the fourth incarnation of the Doctor. Comes back with a vengeance in Big Finish Doctor Who.

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• And I Must Scream: Being a brain in a jar means he can't see or feel anything. Gaining a body did little to help him on this front.
• Brain in a Jar: Only his brain survived his execution.
• Early Instalment Weirdness: Famous in fandom for using a device which showed several prior incarnations of the Doctor, including eight of them who supposedly came before Hartnell, the First Doctor. For decades this was written off, excused, or ignored with the indication of them being prior incarnations of Morbius. Later averted retroactively by the Timeless Child storyline.
• Evil Is Hammy: Very, very hammy.
• Frankenstein's Monster: His final body is created out of various alien corpses.
• Large Ham: For a guy who's nothing but a brain and vocal chords, he hams it up.
• Mix-and-Match Critter: The body his servant Solon builds for him is a Frankenstein-like mishmash of various alien races that have crash landed on Karn.
• My Brain Is Big: His brain would have a hard time fitting in a chest cavity, never mind a human (or Time Lord) braincase.
• Was Once a Man: Or in his case, a Time Lord.

Castellan Spandrell

Castellan Spandrell (Fourth Doctor)

Played by: George Pravda (1976)

The Castellan when the Master tried to use the Eye of Harmony to restore his body.

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• Aliens of London: Subverted, unlike the other Time Lords he doesn't speak with a British accent. Instead he shares his actor's native Czech accent, and he stands out all the more because of it.
• Audience Surrogate: He's surprisingly unknowledgeable about various facets of his own culture. As such, he fills the role as The Watson in an otherwise companion-less story, asking questions about the Time Lord chapters, the Matrix technology, and who exactly the Master is (bearing in mind that the Master hadn't appeared for several years at this point) for the audience's benefit.
• Book Dumb: He's not as tech savvy as the other Time Lords and this works in his favour; he doesn't have blind faith in Time Lord technology and rightly deduces that somebody who knows what they're doing — i.e., the Master — can hack it and change records.
• By-the-Book Cop: Unscrupulously honest, but is still forced to be part of a coverup if the High Council sees fit.
• Da Chief: Often seen barking orders to the Chancellery Guard and offering stinging criticisms when they screw up.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: The only Time Lord in "The Deadly Assassin" with any pull who insists on a thorough investigation, and believes in the Doctor's innocence.
• Spanner in the Works: For Goth and the Master's plan to frame the Doctor for the President's assassination, because of how competent at his job he is and his willingness to listen to the Doctor.
• Surrounded by Idiots: His opinion of his subordinates, and to be fair he has a point.
  "Well done, Hilred! An antiquated capsule, for which you get adequate early warning, transducts on the very steps of the Capitol. You are warned that the occupant is a known criminal, therefore you allow him to escape and conceal himself in a building a mere 53 stories high. A clever stratagem, Hilred. You're trying to confuse him, I take it?"
• Those Two Guys: With Engin.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: He isn't seen or mentioned in any of the Gallifrey stories of the Classic Series post-"The Deadly Assassin". The Castellans that followed were either corrupt or incompetent.

Runcible

Runcible (First and Fourth Doctors)

Played by: Hugh Walters (1976)

"Runcible, you had ample opportunity to ask me questions during your misspent years at the Academy. You failed to avail yourself of the opportunity then and it is too late now."

— Cardinal Borusa, "The Deadly Assassin"

Runcible, nicknamed "Runcible the Fatuous", is old schoolmate of the Doctor from the Academy who ended up working as a commentator for the Public Video Registry.

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• Butt-Monkey: Gets no respect from anybody on Gallifrey. The Doctor is the only one to pay him any compliment, albeit a vaguely sarcastic one, though he does seem to remember him fondly.
• Embarrassing Nickname: Pejoratively nicknamed "Runcible the Fatuous" by his classmates in the Academy.
• Forgot About His Powers: He's killed off by a knife in the back courtesy of Chancellor Goth, quick enough that he couldn't regenerate.
• He Knows Too Much: Goth killed him for the video disc that would have proven the Doctor innocent of the Lord President's murder.
• Kent Brockman News: He desperately wants to be an Intrepid Reporter, but he's actually this — getting no respect from his old teacher and being generally seen as a joke. It's implied he flunked out of the Academy and this was the only job he could get.
• Meaningful Name: "Runcible" is a nonsense word coined by Edward Lear and used in several of his poems, usually to describe a fork curved like a spoon (a spork, basically). This may reflect how Runcible wants to mingle into Gallifreyan high society, but doesn't quite fit in due to his lack of academic prowess that the other Time Lords prize.
• Old Friend: Well, more like acquaintance, but he and the Doctor were at the Academy together, and they knew each other well enough to recognize each other on sight, despite a few regenerations between meetings — though it takes Runcible a few seconds.

Borusa

Borusa (First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth and War Doctors)

Played by: Angus MacKay (1976, pictured top left); John Arnatt (1978, pictured top right); Leonard Sachs (1983, pictured bottom left); Philip Latham (1983, pictured bottom right)

"To lose is to win, and he who wins shall lose."

— "The Five Doctors"

One of the Doctor's oldest friends, and a beloved mentor; originally a teacher at the Academy, he eventually retired and went into politics — Cardinal, Chancellor, and then Lord President. Borusa was a major recurring character throughout the franchise in the 1970s and 1980s. Each time with a different face. While he was obviously on the Doctor's side during his first two appearances, Borusa appeared to be a little shady during "Arc of Infinity" and turned out to be outright evil in "The Five Doctors". While he certainly survived until the end of the Time War, he didn't do much beyond his last appearance.

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• And I Must Scream: Gained the immortality he searched after... by being fused into an immobile stone slab.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: He pays the ultimate price for true immortality.
• Broken Pedestal: The Doctor admitted that he never showed him much respect as a student, but clearly admired him personally.
• The Chessmaster: Borusa is shown to even have little chess figurines of the Doctors, companions, and the Master made so he can mess around with them at the beginning of "The Five Doctors".
• Drunk with Power: He's a bit of a cynical pragmatist when we first meet him, but he's ultimately on the side of good. When he reaches the presidency, however, he begins to change for the worse until he'll do anything to hold on to his power forever.
• Eldritch Abomination: How the Time Lords view him, as the Possibility Engine.
• Fallen Hero: Was once the closest thing the Doctor had to a true Time Lord ally, then turned on him to obtain immortality. He gets a Heel–Face Turn in the Expanded Universe.
• Fate Worse than Death: Becomes a stone slab in Rassilon's Tomb. During the events of the Time War, Rassilion turned him into the Possibility Engine.
• Foreshadowing: His idea of "adjusting the truth" in "The Deadly Assassin" so Goth would be the hero who died trying to kill the Master and ignoring the Doctor's heroics was a good indication of where his shady politics would eventually take him.
• Heel–Face Revolving Door: It seems that each of his incarnations has a different moral compass. In "The Deadly Assassin", Borusa comes off as exceptionally pompous and smug, belittling poor Runcible and downplaying the Doctor's crucial role in defeating the Master for the sake of maintaining the Time Lords' reputation. In "The Invasion of Time", he's much more mellow and comes to respect the Doctor's way of life. As Lord President in "Arc of Infinity", he reluctantly orders the Doctor's execution but ultimately proves to be innocent of any wrongdoing related to Omega's resurrection, before finally becoming outright evil in "The Five Doctors".
• Hoist by His Own Petard: He searched for immortality, but never counted on Rassilon's flavour of immortality being turning someone into a stone slab.
• It's All About Me: “Time in Office” makes it clear that Borusa had become far too defined by his own ego; he apparently created a complex and twisted political system that was totally dependent on the idea that he would rule Gallifrey forever, leading to the Time Lords appointing the Doctor as Lord President in his place as the only one with the necessary strength of will to undo Borusa’s current system without Gallifrey collapsing on itself in the process.
• Jerkass: The fact that he's willing to throw the Doctor under the bus cements him as this.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Once he became Lord President and went through another regeneration, he became very power-hungry, determined to hold the office at all costs, not just for the rest of his life but as President Eternal to rule Gallifrey forever!
• Karmic Death: More a Karmic Fate: getting immortality by becoming a statue.
• Large Ham: Depends upon the actor, actually...
• Meaningless Villain Victory: Having manipulated the Doctors into granting him access to Rassilon's tomb, he claims the reward of immortality promised to the winner of the game of death. Rassilon grants it, which, unfortunately for Borusa, takes the form of being turned into a living statue.
• More than Mind Control: Borusa really likes the coronet of Rassilon, which he uses to control the Fifth Doctor in his last story.
• The Nth Doctor: As seen above, he's played by a number of actors. Goes with being a Time Lord.
• President Evil: He served as Lord President of Gallifrey once after the Fourth Doctor left the office vacant, and Borusa's last story has him pulling a Face–Heel Turn.
• Rank Up: From Cardinal to Chancellor and finally to Lord President.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Serves as one in his first three appearances, especially "The Invasion of Time", before becoming evil.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: It is not known what happened to him and his bas-relief mates when Rassilon emerged. The Expanded Universe gives various stories featuring Borusa, and he plays a major part in the War Doctor story Engines of War, in which he dies while destroying a Dalek force.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: This seems to happen a lot with evil Time Lords.
• You Are in Command Now: Although he was only a Cardinal in "The Deadly Assassin", since both the President and Chancellor Goth ended up dead, he became Gallifrey's leader — the High Council made him Chancellor to lead the planet... until the Doctor showed up to claim the office of the Presidency (since he technically won the election by virtue of being not dead); Borusa was later elected as Lord President, but that's when he began to go wrong.

Coordinator Engin

Coordinator Engin (Fourth Doctor)

Played by: Erik Chitty (1976)

The first Keeper of the Matrix seen on the show. A bit of a pompous gent, but quite friendly.

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• Everyone Has Standards: He's outraged when Borusa wants to cover up Goth's treachery by making him a hero and downplaying the Doctor's involvement.
• Nice Guy: Smugness aside, he's really a nice guy, outraged at Borusa's coverup, and is very friendly to the Doctor to the point of asking him to stay on Gallifrey.
• Old Master: In The Eight Doctors, the Sixth and Eighth Doctors recruit him to their commission of inquiry into the Sixth Doctor's trial as an honest Time Lord who is an acknowledged expert on the Matrix.
• Smug Super: He's really convinced of the superiority of Time Lord tech, refusing to believe it could be hacked or the records erased. He's in a for a rude shock when the Master does just that and the Doctor informs him that the Matrix would be seen as "primitive" on other worlds.
• Those Two Guys: With Spandrell.

Commander Andred

Commander Andred (Fourth Doctor)

Played by: Christopher Tranchell (1978)

A Chancellery Guard Commander who opposes the Vardans' (and Sontarans') invasion of Gallifrey after the Doctor seemingly aids them. He also falls in love with Leela, causing her to stay behind with him on Gallifrey.

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• Babies Ever After: According to the Expanded Universe, he and Leela have a half-human/half-Time Lord child named after the Doctor... which may or may not grow up to become the Doctor himself via a Stable Time Loop Timey-Wimey Ball. Seriously. See The Other folder for more details on that whole kettle of fish.
• Badass Cape: As part of his centurion-like uniform.
• La Résistance: He leads a palace revolt against the Doctor's apparently corrupt leadership, which fails miserably.
• Strangled by the Red String: Invoked. One of the more infamous cases in the show's history. After barely interacting throughout the story, Leela and Andred inexplicably fall in love and decide to stay together on Gallifrey, ending Leela's run as companion. With Leela being fiercely independent and lacking any prior love interests, combined with the logistical problems of a Time Lord marrying a mortal, this turn of events wasn't very well-received.

Rodan

Rodan (Fourth Doctor)

Played by: Hilary Ryan (1978)

A Time Lord on Gallifrey that originally met Leela when she tried to escape the citadel.

• Deadpan Snarker: She had her moments
• Bridge Bunny: Seemed to have this type of position only not on a bridge.
• Wrench Wench: Shows shades of this.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Her fate even in the expanded universe is unknown.

Drax

Drax (First and Fourth Doctors)

Played by: Barry Jackson (1979)

An old friend of the Doctor's from his days at the Prydonian Academy, Drax is a shifty con-man renegade Time Lord, who spent ten years in an Earth prison before he ended up captured and imprisoned on Zeos by agents of the Black Guardian.

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• Con Man: Demonstrates this trait to varying degrees of skill.
• Everyone Went to School Together: He's an old schoolfriend of the Doctor's, to the point that he calls the Doctor "Thete".
• Going Native: Speaks with a cockney accent as a result of spending time in a Brixton prison.
• London Gangster: Not native to London, but developed a cockney accent after he spent ten years in a London prison.
• Lovable Rogue: He's technically a criminal, but he's friendly enough.
• Xanatos Speed Chess: "The Trouble with Drax" depicts Drax basically doing this to steal a Blinovitch Limitation Effect Limiter and then return it once he's finished using it, but this particular trope is downplayed as multiple incarnations of him are involved in the plot, so he's had literally centuries to plan his "next" move to ensure success.

Professor Chronotis

Professor Chronotis (Fourth and Eighth Doctors) ^note It's all Timey-Wimey, this one.

Played by: Denis Carey

Voiced by: James Fox

A kindly old Time Lord renegade whom the Doctor knows of old, Chronotis has disguised his TARDIS as his college living room and retired to live on Earth as a Cambridge professor. However, it turns out that he is actually Salyavin, a Time Lord criminal, who has apparently reformed and forgotten all about his past.

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• Absent-Minded Professor: He's getting a little dotty in his old age.
• Actually, I Am Him: Chronotis is actually the former Time Lord criminal Salyavin.
• Character Overlap: Eventually appears in the Douglas Adams book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (since many plot elements from Shada were recycled for the novel), although no mention is made of him being a Time Lord.
• Continuity Snarl: So did the events of "Shada" happen with the Fourth or Eighth Doctor? The BBC has never made an official stance, while the book A Brief History of Time Lords takes the view that both versions happened.
• Cursed with Awesome: How he views his mental powers, since they made him a pariah amongst the power-hungry paranoid Time Lords.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Salyavin was a feared criminal with extraordinary mental powers — at least, that's the official record; in reality his exploits were exaggerated — as in completely fabricated by the other Time Lords, who feared that he would use his mental powers to take control of the planet; in reality Salyavin just wanted a quiet life.
• Doctor Whomage: Professor Chronotis is something of an Expy of the retired Fourth Doctor Douglas Adams originally wanted to write this serial about.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: Cambridge has so many old professors who had been around for as long as anyone could remember because of tenure that nobody noticed that Chronotis had been in their number for 300 years.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: Contrary to what the Time Lords thought, he never had any ambitions to rise to power; he just wanted a quiet life.
• Refuge in Audacity: He's been living as a Cambridge professor in rooms that are actually his TARDIS (which is actually older than the Doctor's) for centuries; Cambridge is a very discreet place.
• Retired Badass: He's been living quietly in Cambridge now for eons, using his powers only when necessary to maintain his disguise.

Rassilon

Rassilon (First, Second, Third, Fifth, War, Tenth and Twelfth Doctors)

Played by: Richard Matthews (1983); Timothy Dalton (2009–10); Donald Sumpter (2015)

"This day was the day upon which the whole of creation would change forever."

— "The End of Time"

You know that guy everything in Time Lord society (and we do mean everything) is named after? Yeah, this is him. Rassilon, like Omega, is one of the triumvirate who founded all of Time Lord society. As this was in the distant past, even for Time Lords, he's mostly not in the franchise, despite his name showing up everywhere in the old show and showing up at times in the revived series. He gets along rather well with the Doctor in the classic series, though he showed his Evilutionary Biologist side in Big Finish; after the Last Great Time War, the series gave him plenty of reasons to become the Doctor's enemy.

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• Artifact of Doom: If it has this man's name on it, the artifact is going to be 1) powerful and 2) evil. Some representative examples include the Key of Rassilon, the Great Key of Rassilon (which isn't the same thing), the Coronet of Rassilon, the Sash of Rassilon, the Ring of Rassilon, the Tower of Rassilon, the Harp of Rassilon, the Black Scrolls of Rassilon, and Rassilon knows what else.
  • The Record of Rassilon is an aversion. It's just a data card containing instructions on how to be a Vampire Hunter, recorded shortly after the end of a war against space vampires (which ended around the time when the Doctor's Mk 40 TARDIS was state-of-the-art) in case they ever come back.
• Authority Equals Asskicking: Why he's Lord President of Gallifrey. He's far more powerful than your average Time Lord.
• Bad Boss: Question Rassilon? Nice knowing you...
• Big Bad: Of "The End of Time", manipulating the Master into summoning him to avert the destruction of the Time Lords. Also the closest thing to a main antagonist of Series 9, having orchestrated the plan in the three-part finale to capture and interrogate the Doctor.
• Break the Haughty: Despite his immense power, he was unable to stop the Time War. As a result, the Time Lords refuse to recognize his authority anymore — and the Doctor banishes him.
• Broken Pedestal Revered by present-day Time Lords. Well, he was. Then they brought him back to life to be their Lord President and he revealed himself to be the petty tyrant he truly is.
• Came Back Strong: Inverted; in every reappearance after "The Five Doctors" he seems to come back weaker. When he reappers in "The End of Time", while still very powerful thanks to his gauntlet, he's vastly depowered in comparison to his previous portrayal, a Physical God who transformed a villain into a living statue with a thought while unconscious (and only technically not dead). When we see him again in "Hell Bent", he's just a feeble old man; it's implied he regenerated after his tussle with the Master in "The End of Time" and he got the short end of the regeneration lottery.
• Clothes Make the Superman: Is inordinately fond of turning his bling into Magic from Technology.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: An EU anthology reveals that after the Time Lords were sent back to the Time War in "The End of Time", the Master proceeded to stuff white-point star diamonds down Rassilon's throat, which triggered a regeneration that was so excruciatingly painful that Ohila had to give him a special potion to cope. And to add insult to injury, the resulting regeneration resulted in the least threatening incarnation of Rassilon yet.
• Deus ex Machina: He solves both villain-related problems in his first two appearances with literally a wave of his hand or a nod of his floating head.
• Do Not Taunt Cthulhu:
  • Rebukes the Doctor for trying to threaten him.
  • The Master gloatingly states his intent to repeat his Grand Theft Me trick on the Time Lords in "The End of Time", thinking that Rassilon can't stop him. He does, with a literal, and effortless, flick of his wrist, before pulling a Kneel Before Zod, quickly establishing him as Eviler than Thou.
• The Dreaded: Originally in the Classic series, the Doctor was terrified of him and his mass power. But come the Time War which for all his power even Rassilon can't stop, the Doctor fears him no longer to the point that in two different incarnations he tells him to go to Hell and get off Gallifrey.
• Emperor Scientist: He developed time travel together with Omega and is effectively the one who elevated Gallifrey's people into Time Lords in the first place, which is what allowed him to become their ruler. He also designed a number of Doomsday Devices...
• Evil Counterpart: Acts as one to the Tenth Doctor throughout "The End of Time". Both seek to avert their coming deaths, the difference between them being that Rassilon is willing to let everyone else hang purely to save himself. The self-centered lengths Rassilon goes to preserve his own life are what contributes to the Doctor deciding to let go at the end and give his own life to save Wilford.
• Evilutionary Biologist: Experimented on lesser species, both to give certain races Time Lord characteristics and to eliminate any species capable of becoming a threat to the Time Lords.
• Evil Overlord: Implied to be one in the classic series, where despite being publicly revered as the founder of Time Lord society he's also rumored to have been a cruel tyrant during his reign. Fully confirmed in "The End of Time", where he's shown to be a larger than life megalomaniac willing to damn the entire universe to ensure the salvation of his kind.
• Fallen Hero: From a revered founder of Time Lord society to an omnicidal asshat trying to destroy existence. The Time Lord General even stated that he was a good man. Pity that the operative word is was.
• False Friend: Expanded Universe materials suggest that he was this to Omega. At best, he misled Omega that he would survive the journey into the black hole and the experiment that ultimately created the Eye of Harmony. At worst, he deliberately sabotaged it so he could take all the glory and get a rival to his own power out of the way.
• Founder of the Kingdom: One of the founders of Time Lord society, alongside Omega and the Other.
• Foreshadowing: In "The Five Doctors", Two gets very nervous in the shadow of the Dark Tower, telling the Brig that despite official Time Lord history proclaiming Rassilon a hero, there are plenty of rumours and legends saying he was a vicious tyrant. In the end, the rumours turned out to be true, as the Time War revealed his true colours to his fellow Time Lords.
  The Brigadier: Didn't you say he was supposed to be rather a good type?
  Second Doctor: So the official history says, but there are many rumours and legends to the contrary. Some say his fellow Time Lords rebelled against his cruelty and locked him in the Tower in eternal sleep.
• Gambit Roulette: He makes this kind of plan. His plan to initiate the "final sanction" involved inserting himself into the Master's life as The Man Behind the Man to him and guiding him to a point where he could use him to break the Time Lock and pull Gallifrey out of the Time War.
• Glory Hound: Time Lord society was founded by a trio — Rassilon, Omega, and the Other. Out of all of them, Rassilon gets the credit for nearly everything... Omega isn't happy about it, while no one's quite sure about what happened to the Other (the prevailing theory is that he was technologically reincarnated as the Doctor). There are only two significant Time Lord artifacts that don't bear Rassilon's name or seal: the Eye of Harmony and the Hand of Omega.
• Greater-Scope Villain:
  • To the Master, or at least his Yana and Saxon incarnations, having planted the drumming inside of the Master's head and driven him to insanity.
  • If he was really the one behind Omega's crash and imprisonment in the anti-matter dimension, as some EU materials imply, then this would make him one to "The Three Doctors".
• He Who Fights Monsters: He started as a Well-Intentioned Extremist, trying to improve and protect his race. He ended as an Omnicidal Maniac, trying to save himself and his race at the cost of the universe. The Expanded Universe explains that his fall occurred a long time ago; the Time War just finished it.
• Hyperaffixation: of Rassilon! There are a lot of Time Lord artifacts which he seems to have stuck his name onto, just so nobody forgets who made it. "The Five Doctors" alone gives us the Coronet, the Harp, the Ring and the Tomb of Rassilon.
• King in the Mountain: Spent most of the Classic Era asleep in his tower/tomb. Then the Time Lords woke him up during the Time War. Big mistake.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • In "The End of Time", Rassilon's plans are undone due in part to the Master, the very pawn Rassilon used to see said plans realised to begin with. What's more, the Master, Driven to Madness by the drumbeat Rassilon implanted in his head, lashes out at the Lord-President in a towering rage, triggering Rassilon's regeneration into a far less fearsome body.
  • Rassilon's machinations against the Twelfth Doctor end up breaking the latter to the point that, once he's in a position to do so, the Doctor mercilessly deposes and exiles Rassilon to further his own goals, all while Rassilon can do nothing but roar in ineffectual rage.
• The Magnificent: During the Time War he dubbed himself "Rassilon the Resurrected". After Gallifrey managed to survive the Time War he dubbed himself "Rassilon the Redeemer", even though the Doctor was the one responsible for saving the planet.
• Narcissist: Whether he started out that way is a matter of debate (though the endless Sigil Spam and instances of his name on any number of Gallifreyan artifacts imply that he always thought a bit much of himself), but by the time he appears in the revival, Rassilon's ego has exploded to monstrous proportions. He considers all of Gallifrey to be rightfully his and an extension of him, and the notion of his own death (not that of the billions of others on Gallifrey) fills him with rage, and he's willing to obliterate all of time to save himself and the people he feels belong to him. When the Doctor averts this plan and manages to save Gallifrey anyway, Rassilon seeks revenge because it wasn't him who was the renowned hero (though he's happy to call himself Gallifrey's redeemer), and subjects the Doctor to billions of years of torture for it.
• The Nth Doctor: Standard for a Time Lord. The incarnations we've seen thus far in the TV series are a floating face played by Richard Matthews, a hammy megalomaniac played by Timothy Dalton and a ranting old man played by Donald Sumpter.
• One-Steve Limit: Due to some fandom confusion, Davies had to confirm that the Lord President from "The End of Time" is the same guy in The Writer's Tale. He's played by a different actor in the quarter-century since "The Five Doctors".
• Power Fist: Sass him, and expect him to age you to nothing with it.
• President Evil: He is Lord President of the Time Lords. And an egomaniac Knight Templar.
• Returning Big Bad: He was the Big Bad of "The End of Time" Grand Finale to the Tenth Doctor's era. He returns several seasons (and two Doctors) later as the main antagonist of Series 9.
• Running Gag: Everything is named after him. Gets a Lampshade Hanging in Big Finish, when the Doctor is tired of Rassilon's games:
  The Doctor: So what have you got squirrelled away [here]? The Hairdryer of Rassilon? The Hoover of Rassilon? The Rassilon Patent Trouser Press? "These creases last forever!"
• Sigil Spam: The Seal of Rassilon is found everywhere in Time Lord society. Heck, even the Doctor's TARDIS was at one time liberally decorated with it during his Seventh and Eighth incarnations.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Though long thought to be a benign leader, he is shown to be a ruthless tyrant. The stories told about him through the series imply that he was Good Is Not Nice at first, so he was a hero, though a long time ago.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Started as one and presents himself as such. He is not one in the modern series.
  • Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Come the Time War, he is ultimately willing to destroy all of time as a means of having he and the Time Lords Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence. Though he claims to ensure that the Time Lords survive and break free of the Last Great Time War, it's clear he's motivated by a fear of death and ascending the Time Lords is an ego stroke as he sees them as extensions of his greatness.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: He's the only Time Lord that is explicitly immortal and doesn't have to worry about a limited regeneration cycle. Heck, when he was put in his tomb, he wasn't even dead, he was just sleeping. However, he believes it to be a curse, and he recognized that any other Time Lord who would want to be immortal would be crazy, so his tomb is one big Schmuck Bait to anyone who seeks to become immortal; they are turned into living statues on Rassilon's plinth. Unfortunately, he ultimately forgot his own lesson when it became clear the Time Lords were losing the War, and sought to destroy the Universe using its energy to make himself and the Time Lords "beings of pure consciousness".
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Only generally hinted at in the Expanded Universe, but outright shown in his second appearance, although the fact that everything in Time Lord society is named after him is a good clue that there's a pretty monstrous ego at work here.

Tropes exclusive to his "The Five Doctors" incarnation

• Big Good: For "The Five Doctors", while not very nice and having a rather shady history, he is the one who puts a stop to Borusa's plans by turning him to stone.
• Not Quite Dead: In "The Five Doctors", the Second Doctor says that even though Rassilon is in his tomb, it's uncertain if he's actually dead. Turns out he's not dead, he's merely resting.
• Physical God: In "The Five Doctors", he's asleep in his tomb, yet he's able to manifest his consciousness as a disembodied head and when all is said and done is able to put all of the past Doctors and their companions back to their proper place in time. It's as awe-inspiring and frightening as it sounds. His subsequent incarnations don't show any of the same display of power.

Tropes exclusive to his Time War incarnation

• Ascended to a Higher Plane of Existence: His "final sanction" to save Gallifrey at the end of the Time War involved destroying all of existence in order to ascend the Time Lords to a higher plain where they would live as beings of pure consciousness in a void without the concept of time.
• Big Bad: Of the 2009 "Year of Specials", which culminates in his plan to enact the eponymous cataclysm in "The End of Time".
• The Corrupter: Somewhat. The Time Lords were already shown to be corrupt and decadent even before the Time War, but Rassilon's leadership during it is what led them to become a race of Omnicidal Maniacs little better than the Daleks.
• Dark Messiah: The Time Lords awoke him from his tomb to lead them through the Time War. He ended up guiding them to become a race of omnicidal Knight Templars.
• Delayed Narrator Introduction: In "The End of Time", when he's revealed at the end of Part 1 to be the narrator.
• Dirty Coward: In "The End of Time" Rassilon would rather risk all of creation than let himself be killed.
• Establishing Character Moment: Rassilon disintegrating a member of his own Council for daring to suggest that their time is over, then shouting "I WILL NOT DIE!" establishes straight away that he isn't a leader desperate to save his people, but a dictator desperate to save himself.
• Eviler than Thou: Quickly establishes himself as a far bigger fish than the Master in "The End of Time" by casually undoing the Master's Grand Theft Me of humanity with a flick of his wrist, then stating his intent to destroy the universe.
• Evil Versus Evil: While Rassilon may have led the Time Lords against the Daleks during the Last Great Time War, it's established in "The End of Time" that he's about as evil as they are, particularly since his final plan to secure victory for the Time Lords involves destroying the entire universe and wiping out all other lifeforms in existence.
• Faux Affably Evil: He is initially quite pleasant to the Doctor and the Master, addressing them formally as "my Lord Doctor" and "my Lord Master". That affable façade vanishes very quickly, even if you aren't against him... Also his Bad Boss tendencies.
• It's All About Me: He would sacrifice all of creation to stave off his death, and the death of the Time Lords, as he sees them as extensions of himself.
  Rassilon: I will NOT! DIE! DO! YOU HEAR ME? A billion years of Time Lord history riding on our backs... I will not let this perish. I. Will. Not.
• Kneel Before Zod: "On your knees, mankind." Scarily, they do.
• Knight Templar: Before, he destroyed or imprisoned entire species which might overcome or destroy Time Lords. Now he wants to destroy the entire universe to save himself and his race.
• Large Ham: "FOR GALLIFREY! FOR VICTORY! FOR THE END OF TIME ITSELF!"
• The Man Behind the Man: In "The End of Time", he turns out to be the bigger threat behind the Master, as well as the source of the Master's drumming, which he planted inside of the Master as part of a grand scheme to enable the Time Lords to escape the Time War.
• Meet the New Boss: His "The End of Time" incarnation is a megalomaniac determined to elevate his kind by destroying everything else. Sounds a lot like Davros in "Journey's End" now doesn't it?
• Mirror Character: He's one to Davros and the Daleks in "The End of Time", with his plan to save the Time Lords by destroying the rest of time and space being little different from Davros's Reality Bomb.
• Omnicidal Maniac: As of "The End of Time" — he's the one trying to bring about the eponymous cataclysm.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Looks down on the Master as "diseased" (though he admits that he's responsible for the Master being evil and insane).
• Resurrected for a Job: He was brought back from his "death" to guide the Time Lords through the Time War as their Lord President. Given his position in "The End of Time", he hasn't done a very good job of it.
• Tyrant Takes the Helm: After he was brought back to lead the Time Lords during the Time War, the Time Lords went from an ineffectual, bureaucratic species to an increasingly warlike one.

Tropes exclusive to his Series 9 incarnation

• 0% Approval Rating: By "Hell Bent", the Time Lords refuse to submit to his tyranny anymore (again) and he and the High Council are banished by the Doctor after their own soldiers rebel against them.
• Badass Decay: In-Universe. By "Hell Bent", he's just a ranting feeble old man desperate to hold on to power, a far cry from the imposing presence of his previous incarnations. The Time Lords finally rebel against him and the Doctor banishes him from Gallifrey as a result.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: The psychological variant. He had the Doctor's confession dial turned into a torture chamber that would only release him if he told the Time Lords everything he knew about the Hybrid.
• Disc-One Final Boss: He's the Big Bad of Series 9, but he's deposed a fifth of the way into "Hell Bent", with the rest of the episode focusing on the Doctor's universe-threatening attempts to save Clara.
• Driven by Envy: It's hinted in "Hell Bent" that he harbours a great deal of resentment over the fact that the Doctor — a disgraced renegade — was able to end the Time War and save the Time Lords, something that he — Rassilon, Lord President, the Founder of Time Lord Society, and possibly the most powerful Time Lord ever — was not able to do.
• Evil Is Petty: In the Series 9 finale, he imprisons Twelve in his confession dial to get him to reveal information about the Hybrid — on the pretext of trying to protect Gallifrey, but in reality to get revenge for his humiliation in "The End of Time". It backfires spectacularly; the Doctor, furious over Clara's death, does not give him anything, spending billions of years in there until he's able to finally escape and then exile him into a dead universe.
• Evil Old Folks: His post-"The End of Time" regeneration is that of an old man. He's still just as cruel.
• The Exile: The Doctor unceremoniously boots him off Gallifrey in "Hell Bent".
• Fake Ultimate Hero: Post-"The Day of the Doctor", he tries to take credit for Gallifrey's survival, deeming himself "Rassilon the Redeemer", but everybody on Gallifrey knows this is a lie.
  Rassilon: Who does [the Doctor] think he is!?
  The General: The man who won the Time War, sir.
• Hate Sink: While War Rassilon was quite evil and selfish he was balanced out by Timothy Dalton’s ham mines and charm. With his regeneration, all of that is gone making his reprehensible qualities more pronounced.
• Hidden Villain: He turns out to be the one who struck a deal with Ashildr to lure the Doctor into a trap in Series 9.
• Humiliation Conga: Oh boy… After his confrontation with the Master he regenerates into a feeble old man. Then when the Doctor comes back to Gallifrey, he's deposed and exiled. Not that he deserved any better, mind you.
• Sadist: In "Hell Bent", as he's preparing to electrocute the Doctor he asks him how many regenerations he has left, implying that rather than simply killing the Doctor as he's regenerating to put him down for good, Rassilon intended to kill the Doctor and wait for him to regenerate so he could keep on killing him over and over.
• Small Name, Big Ego: As part of his Badass Decay, as of "Hell Bent", he can't even rest on his laurels anymore, with his attempts at intimidating the soldiers he commanded to execute the Doctor when they chose to side with the latter.
  "I am Rassilon the Redeemer! Rassilon the Resurrected! Gallifrey is MINE!"
• Ungrateful Bastard: He has the Doctor captured, put through a torture chamber for billions of years and later tries to kill despite the fact that he ended the Time War. Luckily for the Doctor, the rest of the Time Lords appreciate the man who saved them...

Commander Maxil

Commander Maxil (Fifth Doctor)

Played by: Colin Baker (1983)

A zealous, no-nonsense Chancellery Guard Commander. Played by Colin Baker, before he became the Sixth Doctor.

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• Agent Peacock: He wears a large feather accessory on his helmet, making him easy to spot among his subordinates.
• Identical Stranger: Colin Baker playing a Time Lord! But not the Doctor, not just yet anyway. Baker admitted there was a missed opportunity in not having Maxil meet the Sixth Doctor during the latter's trial, likely via split-screen trickery.
• It's All About Me: Maxil certainly seems to view himself as the Hero of Another Story of a show called Commander Maxil. Unfortunately for him, he's stuck in Doctor Who.
• Just Following Orders: Despite this, he seems to take some sadistic pleasure in escorting the Doctor to his execution.
• Large Ham: Very brash and full of himself, immediately commanding any scene he's in. That said, he rarely raises his voice louder than a stern baritone. Baker explained that he played Maxil as though he believed he was the main character of his own story, which is quite ironic considering who he went on to play next.
• Trigger-Happy: He infamously shoots the Fifth Doctor with a staser, which serves as a cliffhanger.

The Rani

The Rani (Sixth and Seventh Doctors)

Played by: Kate O'Mara (1985–87, 1993)

"Oh, what's [the Master] up to now? It'll be something devious and overcomplicated ... he'd get dizzy if he tried to walk in a straight line."

— "The Mark of the Rani"

An evil Time Lady and contemporary of both the Doctor and the Master at the Academy. Would dearly love to rule her planet and experiment on various other species (including humans) in peace and quiet, but the Doctor and the Master keep getting in the way. She only appears in two serials and the "Dimensions in Time" special, but is notable for being one of the few Time Ladies shown in the classic series.

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• '80s Hair: While in "The Mark of the Rani" Kate O'Mara wears her hair in a straight style◊ that rather avoids getting dated, by the time of her reappearance in "Time and the Rani" she wears pretty much the same hairstyle◊ O'Mara wore during her stint on Dynasty, in fact!
• The Baroness: A frigid, sadistic, and dominant villainess, with her backstory making a point about how the sadism of her experiments led her to be exiled from Gallifrey. Interestingly, while she looks the Sexpot variant, she is more of a Rosa Klebb variant, sharing the asexuality of the (Classic Series) Doctor and the Master.
• Berserk Button: Do not mention her exile from Gallifrey. She isn't over it. And as the Master learns, keep your hands off her TARDIS.
• The Collector: This is what she is portrayed as in "Dimensions in Time", collecting a specimen of every race in the universe. Actually, this wouldn't be out of character for her.
• Dastardly Whiplash: A rare female example. Except for the mustache-twirling (for obvious reasons), she pretty much fits the definition of one, being an over-the-top, shallow villainess who seems to perform her openly evil plans, aside from scientific purposes, just because she can.
• Distaff Counterpart: To the Master, more or less. They're both Time Lords who went to the Time Lord Academy with the Doctor before leaving Gallifrey for a life of villainy (with the twist in the Rani's case that she was actually exiled due to the cruelty of her experiments, while the Master appears to have left the planet on his own volition).
• Emperor Scientist: The Rani rules Miasimia Goria and experiments on her subjects. Her accidental elimination of their ability to sleep is what kick-starts the plot of "The Mark of the Rani".
• Evil Duo: Forms a duo with the Master in "The Mark of the Rani", acting as the more subdued and logical one to his unabashed hamminess.
• Evil Laugh: Played straight in "Time and the Rani", but in the mine shaft scene with the Master and Peri in "The Mark of the Rani", she starts choking and knocks Peri out with her poison gas capsules.
• Evilutionary Biologist: Her giant pet mice ate the Lord President's cat, and got her exiled from Gallifrey. She's a bit pissed about that. She also starts kidnapping geniuses to power a giant brain. She views humans as lower life forms and has no qualms about experimenting on them.
• Fate Worse than Death: Tends to leave her human subjects in terrible states, such as driven mad from sleeplessness or living out prolonged lives as trees.
• For Science!: Unlike the Master, the Rani's schemes are purely to advance her scientific research. Even when she does enslave people, it is only because she has need of them to support her experiments and not because she is particularly interested in ruling anybody.
• Groin Attack: Remains the only person in the Whoniverse to have the sense to knee the Master in the groin.
• Have We Met Yet?: Used to great extent in the Big Finish audios, which introduce a new incarnation of her (portrayed by Siobhan Redmond) who has already witnessed the Sixth Doctor's regeneration into the Seventh, but has no qualms about trying to kill the Sixth Doctor in her current encounters with him.
• Mad Scientist: Well, a mad chemist and biologist.
• Master of Disguise: She disguises herself as an old crone in her first story and as the Doctor's companion, Mel, in her second.
• Mother Nature, Father Science: Inverted. Much like Romana and Chancellor Flavia, she's arguably more rational and linear than her male counterparts, though still rather selfish and cruel.
• No Name Given: Though the Expanded Universe novels give her Gallifreyan name (the first few syllables, at least) as Ushas, which is also used by Big Finish Doctor Who from 2014 onwards.
• Rival Turned Evil: A university colleague to both the Doctor and the Master. She teams up with the Master, but only because he's Blackmailing her.
• The Sociopath: Depicted as being neutral to dismissive about the suffering she causes rather than relishing it. Either she can't understand the pain of others or can't bring herself to care.
• Übermensch: The Rani may be an amoral scientist, but even the Doctor admits she's a genius — shame he can't stand her.
• Unwilling Suspension: In "Time and the Rani".
• The Vamp: She appears to be as asexual as the Doctor, but seems to have a taste for loud, tight fashion and flashy makeup.
• Villains Blend in Better: Like the Master, she has far less problems with making herself inconspicuous on Earth than a certain other Time Lord...
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Like the Monk, she only makes two (canonical) appearances on the show before never being seen again; what part she played in the Time War has yet to be discussed in the series proper. She hasn't even been given a passing mention in the revival series, to the point it's become somewhat of a Running Gag in the fandom to speculate that any female character (Rose, Donna, River, Clara, Missy etc) might turn out to be the Rani.
• Wig, Dress, Accent: In "Time and the Rani", she's able to impersonate Mel and fool the Doctor with nothing more than a wig! Granted, the Doctor was suffering from regeneration sickness at the time. In general, the Rani just likes disguises.

The Inquisitor

The Inquisitor (Sixth Doctor)

Played by: Lynda Bellingham (1986)

"Your puerile attempts at flippancy are not appreciated in this court, Doctor."

The presiding officer at the Doctor's second trial. A stern, no-nonsense Time Lady, she firmly kept order during proceedings. Given that this involved controlling both the Doctor and the Valeyard, this was no mean feat. At the end of the trial, the Doctor suggested that she stand for the vacant Presidency.

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• The Comically Serious: She doesn't seem to have much of a sense of humour, as shown in her folder quote.
• Death by Adaptation: Her character is Killed Off for Real in the Gallifrey series of the Big Finish audios.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": She's only called "The Inquisitor" after her role in the Doctor's trial.
• Lawful Neutral: Invoked. She's not really interested in the morality of the Doctor's actions, just their legality.
• No Name Given: She's only called "The Inquisitor" after her role in the Doctor's trial, her given Gallifreyan name not being revealed in the programme. The Big Finish Doctor Who audios give her name as Darkelatraquistahastrad (Darkel for short).
• Reasonable Authority Figure: She does, after all, clear the Doctor on all charges after it's revealed that the whole trial was a plan of the Valeyard and the Master.

The Other

The Other

"Of those three Gallifreyans who would reshape their world, two would become great legends; the other would vanish altogether from history."

— Ben Aaronovitch, "Remembrance of the Daleks" (novelization)

The mysterious third member of the triumvirate in Gallifrey's past, who founded Time Lord Society along with Rassilon and Omega. Very little is known about them, save that they might be connected to the Doctor in some way. While barely mentioned in the show proper, they get considerably more acknowledgment in the EU materials.

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• All There in the Manual:
  • The only allusion to the Other in the series was the original script for "Silver Nemesis", where it's more explicit there was another founder besides Omega and Rassilon which for some reason the Doctor is being coy about.
  • Chris Chibnall's script for "The Timeless Children" indicates that Tecteun, not the Doctor, may have been the Other in some capacity, as the real third founder of Time Lord society. Though the Other incarnations of the Doctor - the Douglas Camfield and Robert Holmes incarnations - still exist, and that a pre-Hartnell Doctor was key to Tecteun's rise to power.
• Canon Discontinuity: The Virgin NA novel Lungbarrow revealed that the Doctor was a reincarnation of the Other. The revival promptly ignored this, along with everything else about Time Lord culture from the NA novels, especially the infamous Looms. Though because virtually nothing in Doctor Who is ever truly abandoned, similar ideas have been hinted at, most significantly in "The Timeless Children".
• Early-Bird Cameo: Their first appearance proper is in a flashback in the novelization of "Remembrance of the Daleks".
• Founder of the Kingdom: Along with Rassilon and Omega.
• Multiple-Choice Past: A number of potential pasts for the Other were hinted at by different writers at different times. Is the Other...
  • Leela and Andred's baby, grown up and gone back in time to found Time Lord society (and incidentally explaining how the Doctor could be half human)?
  • A human inventor (possibly from the Victorian-era) who invented the first TARDIS, found a planet called Gallifrey and made the native people into a time-spanning civilisation, before running away again because he would rather be free than be in charge?
  • The Eleventh Doctor having accidentally gone back in time to the dawn of Gallifrey during a universal crisis?
  • Tecteun, and not the child that became the Doctor at all?
• No Name Given: In the novelization of "Remembrance of the Daleks" they're merely described as "the other who would vanish altogether from history". The Virgin New Adventures novels capitalized the pronoun to make it into their title — the Other.
• Only Sane Man: In the novelization of "Remembrance of the Daleks", they're the only one who's pessimistic about the time travel experiments and Omega and Rassilon's ambitions to turn their race into Lords of Time, reminding their colleagues of what happened to the Minyans, incredulous at their colleagues' hubris.
• Related in the Adaptation: When discussing Lungbarrow in Doctor Who Magazine Marc Platt said Leela's baby grows up to become the Other.
• Shrouded in Myth: Out of the founding triumvirate, the Other is regarded more as legend than a historical figure. Heck, we don't even know their name.
• Was Once a Man: Human Nature explores some of the Doctor's erased memories, having one where he was a human inventor who built the first TARDIS, then educated a race of primitive Human Aliens who became Gallifreyans. This implies that the Other was originally Peter Cushing's human Dr. Who from Dr. Who and the Daleks, and backing up Lungbarrow in that the Doctor is a reincarnation of the Other.

New Series Debut

The Woman

The Woman (Tenth Doctor)

Played by: Claire Bloom

One of two Time Lords who opposed Rassilon's insane plan to save the Time Lords at the expense of reality. She appears to Wilfred Mott, in the final days of the Tenth Doctor's life. She and the Doctor know each other, but her identity is a mystery.

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• Ambiguously Related: Russell T Davies originally wrote her as the Doctor's mother, he later decided to leave her identity vague and suggested she might be Susan Foreman or her mother. Titan comics notably has the Eleventh Doctor identify a woman who resembles her as his mother.
• Canon Character All Along: Russell T. Davies also suggested that she might be Romana or the Rani rather than the Doctor's mother.
• Ethereal White Dress: She wears white when she appears to Wilf, concealing her identity as a Time Lady.
• Make an Example of Them: She and another Time Lord voted against Rassilon's plan to bring about the End of Time. Rassilon uses his powers to force them to "stand as monuments to their shame like the Weeping Angels of old."
• No Name Given: Rassilon had her name erased from history for voting against his plan.
• One-Steve Limit: Another nameless Gallifreyan character credited only as "The Woman" appears in the Series 9 finale, "Hell Bent", played by Linda Broughton. Rather than a high-ranking Time Lady, this second Woman appears to be a low-class Shobogan maintaining the Dryland barn that the Doctor used to sleep in as a child, and they recognise each other on sight. Similar to how Davies approached questions about the Woman's identity, Steven Moffat has been open yet elusive about any connections that can be made and would rather leave it to fans to debate among themselves.
• Stealth Hi/Bye: She closes her vague discussions with Wilfred by vanishing as soon as he turns away. Justified, as she is seemingly projecting herself to him psychically rather than appearing in person.
• The Un-Reveal: Wilfred asks the Doctor directly who the Woman is, but the Doctor remains silent.

Ohila

Ohila (Eighth and Twelfth Doctors)

Played by: Clare Higgins (2013, 2015)

Current High Priestess of the Sisterhood of Karn, who assisted the Eighth Doctor's regeneration and apparently is entrusted with the Twelfth Doctor's confession dial (i.e. his testament).

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• Blue-and-Orange Morality: As with all the Sisterhood, due to her status as a detached immortal. This makes her possibly the worst person to try and be The Conscience for the Doctor.
• The Conscience: Tries to be one for the Doctor in the absence of his companions, with variable success. Part of the reason she fails at this in "Hell Bent" is that while her reasoning is pragmatic, she's chewing him out for 1) getting back at Rassilon and co. for trapping and torturing him, and 2) trying to save a companion, while having No Sympathy for how much he's suffered of late.
• Cryptic Conversation: Has one with Twelve in the prologue to Series 9, about an enemy of his that he's running from, after which he gives her his Confession Dial. It's not until "The Magician's Apprentice" that it's revealed the enemy in question is Davros.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • In "The Magician's Apprentice", she shrugs off Colony Sarff's claim that Davros is dying, contemptuously remarking that Davros should have been dead centuries ago, implying that, despite her skewed idea of morality, Ohila has no more love for Davros than the Doctor does.
  • In "Hell Bent", she's disgusted that the Doctor chooses to overthrow and exile Rassilon and the High Council upon returning to Gallifrey instead of just coming to terms with them about the Time War and his recent imprisonment in the confession dial (calling him a Dirty Coward), and later running away from Gallifrey rather than facing her and the Time Lords over his desperate efforts to save Clara.
    Ohila: He's running away.
    The General: Where is he running to?
    Ohila: Same place he always does: Away. Just... away.
• Fire Is Red: As keeper of the sacred flame, she's always seen in a red robe.
• Internal Homage: Named after one of the classic series' Karn priestesses, Ohica.
• Jerkass Has a Point: She may be a jerk about it, but her point about the Doctor giving Clara false hope is spot-on. And in the comics, her point about how exiling Rassilon was a bad idea also turns out to be spot-on, as he returns having taken over the Cybermen to conquer Gallifrey.
• No Sympathy:
  • When informed that Davros is dying, Ohila coldly replies that Davros is ancient and should have been dead centuries ago.
  • As a detached immortal she does not understand Twelve's deep love for Clara, how much he has suffered from the Time Lords' betrayal, and how much torment he ultimately willingly went through in the confession dial — all in hopes of saving her. Thus, her What the Hell, Hero? speeches have no effect on him in "Hell Bent"; they condemn his actions as cruel and cowardly, yet offer no compassion or alternative ways of handling his pain.
• Really 700 Years Old: It's unknown how old she is, but she's older than the Doctor. ("Come out and face me, boy!")
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: In "Hell Bent", she berates Twelve for breaking "every vow [he's] ever lived by" in trying to save Clara despite knowing he's risking the entire universe on a ploy that just won't work.
• Time Abyss: She's still around to drop in on Gallifrey four-and-a-half billion years in the future.
• We Used to Be Friends: Her relationship with the Doctor was a semi-friendly one — Twelve trusted her enough to leave his confession dial with her, but the events of "Hell Bent" have undoubtedly soured it, as she seems to think that the Doctor bloodlessly overthrowing and exiling Rassilon and company once he escaped the confession dial was the act of a Dirty Coward who was too scared of them to try and deal with them in other ways — apparently seeing his torture, which was possibly solely to get information about the Hybrid out of him because they were scared of it, as understandable if not justified. She also doesn't seem to care that they are unrepentant war criminals (though an alternate interpretation suggests she thinks he's not being hard enough on them, given her scenes with Rassilon, and her anger is based on the fact that he's just made them someone else's problem — and considering that in the comics Rassilon returned with an army of Cybermen who took over Gallifrey, she had a point).
• What the Hell, Hero?: In "Hell Bent", she accuses Twelve of being a Dirty Coward by exiling Rassilon and co., and later berates him for breaking "every vow [he's] ever lived by" in trying to save Clara despite knowing he's risking the entire universe on a ploy that just won't work. They have no effect on him because she clearly doesn't understand how much he's suffered to get to that point nor how much he cares for/loves Clara. Also, given what she did to Eight, she's one to talk about him tossing his principles out the window as being a bad thing! (though in that case, the Doctor casting aside his principles was a key part of saving the universe, while his current actions risk destroying it, so there is some difference).
• Wild Card: Sometimes she'll side with the Doctor, sometimes not — it depends if she thinks he's being an idiot.

The General

General Kenossium (War, Tenth, Eleventh and Twelfth Doctors)

Played by: Ken Bones (2013, 2015) (tenth incarnation), T'Nia Miller (2015) (eleventh incarnation)

"All my worst nightmares at once."

— "The Day of the Doctor"

A General of the Time Lord army during and after the Last Great Time War. Normally female, she also has one male incarnation.

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• All There in the Script: Their name, Kenossium, was only revealed in the comic book story The Clockwise War.
• Broken Pedestal: After the thirteen Doctors saved Gallifrey, the General came to greatly admire his planet's saviour. However, that respect crumbles to dust when the Twelfth Doctor later returns to overthrow Rassilon while making it clear he's willing to risk all of time and space over an abstruse mortal romance. Getting punched and shot by the Doctor was merely the final nail in the coffin.
• Brutal Honesty: While extracting Clara from her traumatic moment of death at Trap Street, he calmly and clinically informs her that, yes, she is dead and they are not there to save her, only to momentarily postpone her death in order to request more information about the Hybrid. The Doctor has other plans.
• Character Development: Between appearances, he goes from a typical stuffy Time Lord armchair commander who regards the Doctor as a mad fool at best and a pain in the arse at worst, to a kind Reasonable Authority Figure who trusts and respects the Doctor unwaveringly.
• Deadpan Snarker: He/she gets in many dry barbs against the Doctor(s), the President, and the entire male sex.
• Everyone Has Standards: He did not like the Time Lord High Council during the war because of their plans to destroy the universe. By the end of the war, he seems to able to work with them and defend Rassilon to the Doctor, but turns on him again the second Rassilon tries to fire on innocent civilians.
• Face Death with Dignity: When the Doctor shoots him; likely because the Doctor was not in a mood to be reasoned with. Besides, he had a couple more regenerations left.
• Foreshadowing: The General is the first Time Lord in the main TV series to regenerate from male to female (and from white to black) onscreen^note  technically, Hugh Grant regenerated into Joanna Lumley onscreen in 1999, but that was a comedy special, paving the way for the Twelfth Doctor's eventual regeneration into the Thirteenth. The Master previously changed into Missy, but this occurred offscreen.
• Gender Bender: Was female up until her tenth incarnation, then went back to female in her eleventh.
• Lack of Empathy: The Eleventh General is less empathetic to the Doctor's struggle than her previous incarnation, expressing complete bafflement as to why he willingly tortured himself for billions of years when he could have simply given up the information they needed and walked free. Clara is rightfully scornful of her after that. Though considering that the Doctor killed her previous incarnation, her feelings may be justified here.
• Major Injury Under Reaction: Despite getting beaten up and shot by his own Lord President, the General has a downright peaceful regeneration and retains a lucid state of mind after the process concludes, enough to make a quick joke immediately after, unlike the Doctor's characteristic bouts of "post-regeneration mania". Must be something to do with regenerating in a controlled environment on Gallifrey.
  The Doctor: We're on Gallifrey! "Death" is Time Lord for "man-flu".
• Noble Top Enforcer: While Rassilon may be a self-serving tyrant, the General is legitimately honorable and ultimately rebels against Rassilon when he orders the death of the Doctor.
• Race Lift: Goes from a white male to a black female.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Might not like the Doctor much but is willing to let them try to engage their plan to save Gallifrey. The General also generally tries to reason with the Doctor during the events of "Hell Bent", up to and including letting the Doctor shoot him.
• Sacrificial Lamb: The Tenth General dies to dramatically showcase how far the Doctor is truly willing to go to save Clara. But of course, he's a Time Lord, so he immediately regenerates and gets up unscathed.
• Second Law of Gender-Bending: In an amusing subversion of expectations, the male General we know and love was actually the exception to the General's overall regeneration cycle, with all of their other incarnations being female. After regenerating back into a woman, the General expresses greater comfort at being back to "normal".
• Tuckerization: The name "Kenossium" is derived from the name "Ken" and "ossium", Latin for "bone", making it a reference to their tenth incarnation's actor Ken Bones.
• Wake Up Make Up: After regenerating into a woman, the previously male General miraculously awakes with lipstick and mascara.
• What the Hell, Hero?: As the Doctor is in the midst of his Sanity Slippage, the General tries to reason that his drastic actions to cheat Clara's death may fracture the Web of Time itself and possibly destroy the universe. His tone grows angrier when the Doctor still refuses to see the bigger picture, namely that Clara is already dead and has been for billions of years, and changing that inalterable fact of the timestream will have massive consequences. In response, the Doctor shoots him.

The Corsair

The Corsair (Thirteenth Doctor)

A very old friend of the Doctor's, the Corsair is a renegade Time Lord/Lady who pioneered the free-spirited adventurer lifestyle long before the Doctor. After the Corsair steals some valuable artefacts, the Doctor is falsely accused of the crime in her place before they have their long-awaited reunion and sort out the misunderstanding. Having been first mentioned nostalgically in the television episode "The Doctor's Wife" and in a handful of other stories, Titan Comics' Thirteenth Doctor series marks the Corsair's first full physical appearance (at least, all in one piece this time).

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• All There in the Manual: Much of what we knew about the Corsair prior to her first proper appearance came from Neil Gaiman's almanac writings about the character.
• Ambiguous Situation: Gaiman said that Russell T Davies believed that the Shopkeeper from The Sarah Jane Adventures was an incarnation of The Corsair but didn't elaborate if it was true or not.
• Bear Hug: She greets the Thirteenth Doctor with one.
• Big Brother Mentor: A detail left on the cutting room floor from his posthumous first appearance was that he partly inspired the Doctor's love for adventure. The Doctor confesses to being a bit of a fanboy and wanted to be his "assistant". Steven Moffat personally omitted it to maintain the Doctor's mystique and prevent Uniqueness Decay.
• The Big Guy / The Big Gal: His final incarnation was said to be a "strapping big bloke" with tree trunks for arms. Even his previous female bodies were stockier and more action-prone than the Doctor typically is.
• The Charmer: In his final body, the Corsair is noted to have an immediately trustworthy face.
• Comic-Book Fantasy Casting: Bears a striking resemblance to Katie McGrath in the comics.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: His ultimate fate is to be lured by a Hypercube to the sentient asteroid House like so many other Time Lords. Like the others, his TARDIS is devoured by the asteroid, then his body is shredded into spare parts for House's patchwork slaves.
• Foregone Conclusion: While both she and the Doctor are temporally anomalous and so can meet at different points in each other's timestreams, we know that the Corsair is destined to be lured to their Cruel and Unusual Death by House.
• Gender Bender: The Corsair was the first of many Time Lord characters in the televised continuity confirmed to have regenerated into male and female bodies, as the Eleventh Doctor switches his pronouns when talking about them. Although we first saw her distinctly masculine severed arm in "The Doctor's Wife", we meet her in a female incarnation in the comics.
• The Ghost: Was one for quite a while, though various other artists have illustrated them over the years.
• Karmic Thief: Spends at least some of her time stealing things from fellow thieves and giving them back to the rightful owners.
• The Lad-ette: Loves drinking and fighting, even as a woman. She and the Doctor have shared many drunken misadventures in the past.
• Lovable Rogue: She's overall good and likable, but not exactly trustworthy. The Eleventh Doctor wistfully remembers her as "a bad girl", but still "one of the good ones" by Time Lord standards.
• Morphic Resonance: Always has the ouroboros tattoo somewhere on their body in each regeneration.
• Old Friend, New Gender: While switching genders on a dime is nothing new for the Corsair, she's pleasantly surprised to meet the Doctor's first known female incarnation, number thirteen.
• Pirate Parrot: The Seventh Corsair had a talking parrot.
• Privateer: Eleven Things You Probably Didn't Know About the Corsair points out that "Corsair" is another word for "Privateer" and the Time Lords have the Corsair do jobs that they don't want to take responsibility for.
• Retroactive Preparation: After stealing the Hand Of Omega.
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: She said stealing the Hand Of Omega would start a small time war that would be erased by the big Time War. Her parrot said she'd remember it because she remembers everything.
• Rule of Cool: The first thing in "Eleven Things You Probably Didn't Know About The Corsair" is that their TARDIS always looked like a sailing ship when it was practical, and when it wasn't practical because "because small, piratical sailing ships are cool".
• She-Fu: She does a lot of acrobatics while fighting the Hoarder's robots.
• Space Pirate:
  • She dresses like a traditional Pirate Girl and her TARDIS is in the form of a seventeenth-century pirate ship.
  • The Bloodletters by Ryan Fogarty makes them a composite of two public domain comic-book pirates, Joe Millard's "Corsair Queen" Lila Evans from Buccaneers Comics #25 and Chas M. Quinlan's "Corsair" Jon Gallant from A1 Comics #3. He implies himself to have actually been Gallant.
• Space Sailing:
  • Their TARDIS, the Esperanza, takes the form of a pirate ship.
  • The Bloodletters gives him a timeship called the Silver Spray (named after Jon Gallant's ship mentioned above) that travels through "time tides" that can connect to bodies of water in different planets and time periods.
• Tattooed Crook: Each of the Corsair's incarnations are instantly identifiable by a distinctive Ouroboros tattoo that moves to a different place on his/her body with each regeneration. She's also a thieving Space Pirate and a Renegade Time Lord, though a nice one like the Doctor.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: They're implied to have some control over what their Regenerations look like because in " One Virtue, and a Thousand Crimes" he says he wants his next form to be muscular and have a face that people trust. At the end of the story, a man fitting this description collects a reward for offering information on the previous incarnation.
• What Did I Do Last Night?: Tends to happen when they drink with The Doctor. Twice they woke up in jail and once in the Bank of England vaults.
• What a Piece of Junk: Drives an outdated Type-60 TARDIS that they consider vintage.

Gat (Unmarked Series 12 spoilers!)

Gat (Thirteenth Doctor)

Played by: Ritu Arya (2020)

A Gallifreyan who tracks down a mysterious incarnation of the Doctor using an army of Judoon.

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• Ambiguous Situation: In her debut episode, it's left unclear just when she's from, considering Thirteen's Gallifrey was destroyed by the Master and she is shocked when Thirteen mentions it and the Time War. It's also unknown what her exact relationship with the Fugitive Doctor is, and why she stopped working with Gat. Ultimately, "The Timeless Children" indicates that she was from Gallifrey's past.
• Evil Former Friend: Not so much evil as misguided, but was once friends, or at least acquaintances, with the Doctor.
• Hoist by Her Own Petard: Is killed by her own laser rifle after the Doctor reverses its polarity.
• Never the Selves Shall Meet: Thinks that having two versions of the same Time Lord in the same place at the same time is an abomination that will end up destroying the time streams. This is consistent with "The Three Doctors" when the Time Lords had never brought two different incarnations of the same Time Lord together before, stating it would break the First Law of Time and endanger the timestreams (the Doctor she's pursuing, meanwhile, is concerned about the temporal feedback loop if their TARDIS lands too close to Thirteen's).
• Walking Spoiler: Difficult to talk about without spoiling the big twist of "Fugitive of the Judoon".

Tecteun (Unmarked Series 12 spoilers!)

Tecteun (Thirteenth Doctor)

^{Her most present form}

Played by: Seylan Baxter, Jake Nwogu (in flashbacks; 2020), Barbara Flynn (as "Awsok"; 2021)

A member of the original indigenous people of Gallifrey, the Shobogans, a scientist and explorer. She found and adopted the Timeless Child, eventually exploiting their ability to regenerate to transform her people into the Time Lords.

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• Abusive Parents: She adopted the Timeless Child then repeatedly killed her in order to test regeneration abilities.
• Big Bad Wannabe: She's the one responsible for the Flux in Series 13, but is quickly killed by Swarm the episode this is revealed.
• Bold Explorer: She was one of the first Shobogans to pioneer space travel. This led to her discovering the Timeless Child.
• The Bus Came Back: She returns in "Once, Upon Time", in the Doctor's time stream, though it is not confirmed to be her until "Surviors of the Flux".
• Dropped a Bridge on Her: She's abruptly killed off by Swarm at the end of "Survivors of the Flux" with little fanfare.
• Emperor Scientist: According to the Master, she discovered the secret of regeneration and spliced it into her own DNA. She then shared the secret with some of her closest friends, and elevated them to the ruling elite of their species, transforming them into the Time Lords.
• Evil Old Folks: By her elderly Awsok incarnation, she shows little to no remorse for her treatment of the Timeless Child and created a wave of anti-matter to destroy the universe.
• Expy: Of the Other as a secret third founder of Time Lord society.
• Founder of the Kingdom: As the discoverer of regeneration, they become one of the first Time Lords. How they relate to Rassilon, Omega and the Other (and possibly if they're even one of them) is unknown. The script, if anything, indicates the two Time Lords seen standing with their second incarnation are probably Rassilon and Omega.
• Gender Bender: After injecting herself with the Timeless Child's genes, she regenerates from a white woman to a black man. Tecteun is back to a white woman by the next time she encounters the Doctor.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Is the one responsible for the Time Lords' very existence and thus causing the events of the entire franchise, for better or worse. She's also the one responsible for unleashing the Flux, but despite all of this she only appears in a major role in one episode.
• My Greatest Failure: Posited by the Master as a reason why they left the history of the Timeless Child hidden in the Matrix for the Doctor to decode: as an apology for what they did. Though she doesn't seem that remorseful when the Doctor actually meets them.
• Omnicidal Maniac: Since she knowingly created the Flux in the first place, she's this.
• Playing with Syringes: She becomes obsessed with discovering the process behind the Child's regeneration, subjecting them to several experiments across many, many incarnations.
• Professor Guinea Pig: She injects herself with the Child's genes to test if she had successfully found the secret behind regeneration. It works.
• Start of Darkness: The Timeless Child's regeneration drove Tecteun from being a seemingly caring parental figure who only sought to understand her adopted child into an obsession-driven Mad Scientist, desperate to extract the key to the Timeless Child's immortality for herself, regardless of the Child's feelings about it. This is evidenced by how the Child's look of trust towards her gradually becomes one of fear and discomfort as the story cycles through their various regenerations.
• Time Abyss: One of the original Time Lords from the Dark Times. Though given how the series handles time travel, it’s unknown if she really is this old or not by the time the Thirteenth Doctor meets her.
• Virtue Is Weakness: She expresses contempt for the Doctor's sense of morality, considering it to be an inconveniece for the Division and her experiments.
• Walking Spoiler: Their story is the key to the Time Lords' and the Doctor's past.
• We Can Rule Together: Wants the Doctor to rejoin Division with her, even offering to preserve the Earth to sweeten the deal.
• Would Hurt a Child: Although not specifically stated, it's made clear that one of their methods for testing regeneration was to trigger it in the Child. Given that regeneration is designed to save them from death...

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