Gallefrey

	Gallefrey History

See also the racial description of Time Lords.

Gallifrey is the oldest civilisation in the Universe (or almost so). Its
solar system is in the same galaxy as Earth's, but is not nearby even in
interstellar terms.

The population of Ancient Gallifrey lived in telepathic communication.
Some - the female priest-rulers - were prescient. The concept of insight
into time was therefore not alien. Advanced technology mixed with barbaric
superstition: Ancient Gallifreyan culture was like Hellenic Greece with
space travel.

Rassilon returned home to Gallifrey as the hero of the space wars against
the Giant Vampires. This was an era of great scientific strides.  Rassilon
championed reason against superstition. He seized power and forged ahead
with scientific research. In this area, although perhaps not politically,
he was part of a triumvirate that also included Omega, a brilliant
practical technologist, and a mysterious figure known as the Other whose
identity is now lost in the mists of legend, if it was ever known. (The
Other is not the Doctor: time will tell if the Other and the Doctor are
linked in some way.)  Rassilon's area of technological expertise was in
force fields: his was the genius that bound and controlled the unthinkably
huge energy sources that Omega harnessed.

Other jewels in the crown of this scientific age of miracles were:

   * the Hand of Omega, which manipulated the power of stars
   * the Eye of Harmony, created when Rassilon completed Omega's work and
     bound a black hole on Gallifrey as a never-failing source of
     almost-infinite power
   * genetic engineering, nanotechnology, friendly viruses - a direction of
     research that led to the spreading to all Gallifreyans of a genetic
     'bug' that caused many to die and all to become less fertile and
     decreasingly telepathic. A few Gallifreyans, however, gained the
     benefits of perfect health and regeneration: the bug worked according
     to specification in these few cases, creating nanomachines that
     reproduce within the body and work ceaselessly to repair and prune
     damaged and malformed cells. If the body is subjected to great stress,
     the nanomachines rebuild it cell by cell - the fortunate Gallifreyan
     regenerates. The nanomachines will perform this function twelve times;
     thereafter the subject requires a new shot of the 'bug' in order to
     regenerate again. Until the first regeneration, the body is similar to
     a human's, at the first regeneration the nanomachines are programmed to
     build into the new body a number of improvements and backup systems,
     the most obvious of which is a second heart. Gallifreyans with this
     ability came to be known as Time Lords, and became quite naturally the
     rulers of Gallifrey (One of the side-effects of virtual immorality:
     Time Lords are completely infertile. The gene pool of each great Time
     Lord Family is stored, so that a replacement can be created if and when
     the occasional Time Lord dies. Regeneration does nothing to prevent the
     loss of the gift of telepathy, although occasional Time Lords -
     throwbacks to an earlier era - seem to have more ability than most.)
     NOTE: many do not support the nanomachine theory of regeneration.
   * The Matrix: a vast extra-dimensional panotropic computer net. It stores
     all the memories of past Time Lords, as well as the input from sensors
     fitted into TARDlSes. Thus it provides the Time Lords with (not
     entirely complete) information about the past and the future.
   * Time travel technology. A combination of the inherent Gallifreyan
     awareness of time and force-field technology. Rassilon instigated the
     research that proceeded from the Ancient Gallifreyans' ability to see
     into future possibilities and to retrieve things from them. The next
     stage was to create and, protect artificial universes - mathematically
     modelled areas that, by transcending the dimensions of this universe,
     exist outside it. From there it is but a small step (relatively
     speaking) for a Time Lord to enter such a universe, and thus be able to
     view our universe - past, present and future - from the outside. Once
     the artificial universe is fitted with computing power sufficient to
     analyse this view of time, to carry out the mathematical modelling of
     physical objects with its own resources, and to forge a symbiotic link
     with its Time Lord occupant, a TARDIS has been made. The Time Lord can
     then use his TARDIS to manifest a part of itself physically at any
     point in the universe
   * Validium, the living, sentient metal, was created.

Gallifreyan society became organised into the Time Lords and the rest.
With their perfect health, augmented physiology, almost infinitely long
lives, and access to technological expertise, the Time Lords took the reins
of power on the planet. Their Families were organised into chapters, and
representatives of the chapters formed the High Council which ruled the
planet.

The ossification of Gallifreyan society began almost immediately. The
dwindling of their telepathic ability, and the disastrous result of their
attempt to use their great power to influence the Minyans, caused an
overwhelming sense of guilt, helplessness and fatalism among the Time
Lords.  They soon felt that they had declined from a Golden Age. Rassilon
and Omega were mythologised. The overall feeling was that only by strict
adherence to established customs could further decline be arrested. The
gift of near-immortality began to seem more like a curse; we can assume
that at least some Time Lords came to look forward to the end of their
regenerations and the pooling of their minds in the Matrix. Certainly it
seems true that there was always a requirement for new Time Lords to be
born, albeit occasionally, from the gene banks.

		Other Time Lord histories out there

			Dark Scrolls

>From Alastair's homepage:
http://www.tardis.ed.ac.uk/%7Eabr/drwho/