Time Lord

:This article is about the Time Lords from Doctor Who. For alternate meanings, see Time Lord (disambiguation).

Physical characteristics

Time Lords appear human, but differ from them in many respects. Racially, all the Time Lords in the television series so far have been portrayed by Caucasian actors, although a black Time Lord appeared in the spin-off novel The Shadows of Avalon by Paul Cornell, and Time Lord founder Rassilon was portrayed in several audio plays by black actor Don Warrington.

Related Topics:
Caucasian - Black - Paul Cornell - Rassilon - Don Warrington

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Time Lords are extremely long-lived, routinely counting their ages in terms of centuries. It is not known how long a Time Lord can live, although the Doctor claimed in The War Games that Time Lords could live forever, "barring accidents." They also have the ability to regenerate their bodies when their current body has become too old or is mortally wounded. This process results in their body undergoing a transformation, gaining a new physical form and a somewhat different personality. Regenerations can be traumatic events, and have been known to fail.

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It was stated in The Deadly Assassin that a Time Lord can regenerate twelve times before dying. The ability to regenerate may be linked to what is known as the "Rassilon Imprimatur", the symbiotic nuclei of a Time Lord that bonds him or her to a TARDIS, and allows his or her body to withstand the molecular stresses of time travel. There were exceptions to this rule, however: when the renegade Time Lord called the Master reached the end of his regenerative cycle, he took possession the body of another person to continue living.

Related Topics:
The Deadly Assassin - Symbiotic - Master

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It may be that the Time Lords have the ability to circumvent the limit — in The Five Doctors the Master is offered a new cycle of regenerations by the High Council in exchange for his help. Since the Master was still inhabiting a non-Gallifreyan body at the time this implies that it is possible to grant them to a non-Gallifreyan, albeit one inhabited by a Time Lord mind. Non-Gallifreyans are also seen to regenerate in Underworld and Mawdryn Undead, but with adverse side effects.

Related Topics:
The Five Doctors - Underworld - Mawdryn Undead

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The revelation in the 1996 television movie that the Doctor was half-human proved controversial among fans, and some have suggested that only the Eighth Doctor was half-human due to the particularly traumatic circumstances of his regeneration (as opposed to the Doctor having been half-human all along). The evidence for or against this in the series is, typically, equivocal. The Time Lords' ability to change species during regeneration is referred to by the Eighth Doctor in relation to the Master in the television movie. It is also supported by Romana's regeneration scene in the 1979 serial Destiny of the Daleks. Romana demonstrated an apparent ability to "try on" different bodies from a number of different species during her regeneration, before settling on a final, Gallifreyan form which physically resembled Princess Astra of Atrios (see Romana's regeneration).

Related Topics:
1996 - Television movie - 1979 - Destiny of the Daleks - Romana - Princess Astra of Atrios - Romana's regeneration

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Other physiological differences from humans include two hearts (which normally beat at 170 beats a second) and a "respiratory bypass system" that allows them to survive strangulation or even extended exposure to a vacuum. If severely injured, they can go into a healing coma which lowers their body temperature to below freezing. Time Lords can also communicate by telepathy, and it is implied that they may be clairvoyant, or have additional time-related senses. In The Time Monster and Invasion of the Dinosaurs the Third Doctor is able to resist fields of slow time, being able to move through them even though others were paralysed. In City of Death both the Fourth Doctor and Romana notice distortions and jumps in time that no-one else does.

Related Topics:
Heart - Coma - Clairvoyant - The Time Monster - Invasion of the Dinosaurs - Third Doctor - City of Death - Fourth Doctor - Romana

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In the 2005 series the Ninth Doctor claimed that he could sense the movement of the Earth through space as well as being able to perceive the past and all possible futures. A commonly held piece of fan continuity (referenced in the Virgin Missing Adventures novel The Man in the Velvet Mask by Daniel O'Mahony) is that Time Lords only grow their second heart during their first regeneration.

Related Topics:
2005 - Ninth Doctor - Fan continuity - Virgin Missing Adventures

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The biological imprint (or bio-data) of a Time Lord, which also defines his personal history, is kept in the Matrix, a computer network that contains the sum total of all Time Lord knowledge. The unauthorised extraction of a Time Lord's bio-data is tantamount to treason (Arc of Infinity).

Related Topics:
Matrix - Arc of Infinity

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