Gallifrey
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gallifrey is a fictional planet in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. The planet is home to the Doctor and others of his race, the Time Lords. It is supposed to be located in the constellation of Kasterborous, at "galactic coordinates ten-zero-eleven-zero-zero by zero-two from galactic zero centre" (Pyramids of Mars, 1975), some 250 million light years away from Earth (as stated in the 1996 Doctor Who television movie).[1] During the first decade of the television series, the Doctor's home planet was not identified by name. It was first shown in The War Games (1969), and was first identified by name in The Time Warrior (1973).
It is never definitively stated "when" the appearances of Gallifrey in the television series take place. As the planet is often reached by means of time travel, it could conceivably exist anywhere in the past or future relative to our present.[2]
Contents |
[edit] Geography
From space, Gallifrey is seen as a yellow-orange planet and is close enough to central space lanes for spacecraft to require clearance from Gallifreyan Space Traffic Control as they pass through its system. The planet is surrounded by an impenetrable force field called the transduction barrier. This prevents all outsiders (with hostile intent, or otherwise) from approaching the planet and allows the Time Lords to maintain their status of absolute neutrality. It also lets them observe the actions of the rest of the Universe without actually taking part in its affairs. The barrier was breached on one occasion by the Sontarans, when it was sabotaged from within (The Invasion of Time, 1978).
The Doctor's granddaughter Susan described Gallifrey as having bright, silver-leafed trees and a burnt orange sky (The Sensorites, 1964). This casts an amber tint on anything outside the city, as seen in The Invasion of Time, although Gallifrey's sky appeared blue and Earth-like in The Five Doctors (1983). In several spin-off novels, Gallifrey is said to have a moon, Pazithi Gallifreya.
Gallifrey is also the name of its major city, the Citadel, which holds the Capitol of the Time Lords. The Capitol is also known as the Panopticon, under which the Eye of Harmony, the nucleus of a black hole, is kept. The Eye provides the power required for time travel (The Three Doctors, 1973), and all Time Lord TARDIS time machines draw their power from it (the 1996 television movie). Also situated in the Capitol is the Matrix, the vast extradimensional computer network which acts as the repository of all Time Lord knowledge as well as containing the memories of dead Time Lords (The Deadly Assassin, 1976).
Outside the city lie wastelands where "Outsiders"[3], Time Lords who have dropped out of Time Lord society, live in less technological tribal communities. The wastes of Gallifrey include the Death Zone, an area that was used as a gladiatorial arena by the first Time Lords, pitting various species kidnapped from their respective time zones against each other (although Daleks and Cybermen were considered too dangerous to use). Inside the Death Zone stands the Tomb of Rassilon, the founder of Time Lord society (The Five Doctors).
[edit] History
For general Time Lord history, see History of the Time Lords.
[edit] On screen
Little to no detail on the history of the planet itself emerged from the original series run from 1963–1989. In the 2005 series episode The End of the World, the Ninth Doctor stated that his home planet (not mentioned by name, but presumably Gallifrey) was destroyed in a war and that he is the last of the Time Lords. However, the episode also indicated that the Time Lords are remembered in the far future.
Subsequently, in Dalek, it was revealed that the last great Time War was fought between the Time Lords and the Daleks, ending in the obliteration of both sides and with only two apparent survivors; the Doctor and a lone Dalek that had somehow fallen through time and crashed on Earth. At the conclusion of that episode, that surviving Dalek self-destructed, leaving the Doctor believing that he was the sole survivor of the Time War. However, as the Daleks returned in the two-part 2005 series finale, Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways, as well as the two-part 2006 series finale, Army of Ghosts/Doomsday, the fate of the Time Lords may not be as definitive as the Doctor seems to think.
[edit] Novels
Various spin-off novels have expanded on the history and nature of Gallifrey, although many fans do not consider the information in them to be canon.
In the Eighth Doctor Adventures novel The Ancestor Cell by Peter Anghelides and Stephen Cole, Gallifrey was destroyed as a result of the Eighth Doctor's desire to prevent the voodoo cult Faction Paradox from starting a war between the Time Lords and an unnamed Enemy. This also apparently (and retroactively) wiped the Time Lords from history. It is unclear what the attitude of the new Doctor Who television series is toward the information in the novels and audio plays, the latter produced by Big Finish Productions. However, a number of writers of the novels and audio plays are also writing for the new television series.
In the last regular Eighth Doctor novel, The Gallifrey Chronicles by Lance Parkin, it was revealed that while Gallifrey was destroyed, the Time Lords were not erased from history. However, the cataclysm set up an event horizon in time that prevented anyone from entering Gallifrey's relative past or travelling from it to the present or future. The Time Lords also survived within the Matrix, which had been downloaded into the Eighth Doctor's mind, but their reconstruction required a sufficiently advanced computer. At the novel's end, the question of whether or not the Time Lords would be restored remained unanswered. However, it can be assumed that both they and the planet were restored at some point before the start of the 2005 series if the novels are to remain consistent with the new series' continuity.
[edit] Gallifrey audio series
Gallifrey is also the umbrella title of a line of audio plays set in the Doctor Who universe, produced by Big Finish Productions, featuring Louise Jameson as Leela, Lalla Ward as President Romana, and John Leeson as two K-9 units, Mark I and Mark II. Like all spin-off media, its canonicity in relation to the television series is unclear. The first play in the series, Weapon of Choice, was released in 2004.
The Gallifrey series focuses on political struggles within the leadership of the Time Lords, centred around Romana's presidency. In the first series, Romana's progressive policies and desires to open Gallifrey up to the outside universe faced opposition from more conservative cultures. In addition, a terrorist group known as "Free Time", who want to break the monopoly on time travel technology shared among the Time Lords and the few other temporal powers, stole a timeonic fusion device. The inquiry into Romana's handling of the incident revealed a dark secret surrounding the Time Lords' policy of non-intervention.
The second series saw the admission of non-Gallifreyans into the Time Lord Academy, leading to even more tension within the Time Lord political elite. Romana had to deal with Free Time infiltrators as well as an attempted coup by Inquisitor Darkel (from The Trial of a Time Lord, played once again by Lynda Bellingham). In addition, an ancient Gallifreyan evil escaped from the Matrix: Pandora, a megalomaniacal personality who manipulated Romana and others with the goal of regaining life and power. At the end of the second series, Pandora managed to manifest herself in the form of Romana's first incarnation (played once again by Mary Tamm). Both Romanas claimed the title of Imperiatrix, absolute ruler of Gallifrey, leading to civil war.
In the third and supposedly final series, Romana trapped Pandora in the Matrix once again, and destroyed her by sacrificing the Matrix. After an election fraught with political maneuvering, one Lord Matthias becomes Lord President. The series ends on a cliffhanger, with Gallifrey on the brink of economic and social collapse as well as in danger of being overrun by a Free Time virus, while most of the cast are trapped with no apparent means of escape.
As Big Finish's license forbids them from using aspects of the new Doctor Who television series (2005–), the Gallifrey series does not explicitly acknowledge the events of the Time War. However, in the final chapter of the third series Irving Braxiatel speaks of "rumours out there in the big wide universe — more than rumours, in fact — that something's coming to Gallifrey, something worse than you could possibly imagine".
Because of these rumours, Braxiatel engineers the removal of the Time Lord biodata archive from Gallifrey, in order that the Time Lords might someday be restored after their planet meets its doom. Former Big Finish producer Gary Russell indicated in a forum posting on Outpost Gallifrey that this was a reference to the television series' Time War.[4]
It is unclear how the destruction of the Matrix in the Gallifrey audio series can be reconciled with the events of the Eighth Doctor Adventures; some stories have suggested that the novels and audios take place in separate continuities.
[edit] Notes
- ^ In Terror of the Autons, a Time Lord emissary says that he has travelled "29,000 light years", leading to the original assumption that the Time Lord homeworld was that distance away. However, it is never actually stated in Terror of the Autons where the Time Lord is travelling from, as compared to the explicit statement made in the 1996 television movie.
- ^ The Three Doctors seemed to set Gallifrey in the near future (UNIT dating controversy) with its sequel Arc of Infinity setting it in the 1980s, although at least a decade had passed on Gallifrey (The Doctor's age). Alternatively, The Trial of a Time Lord (specifically The Mysterious Planet and The Ultimate Foe) seems to imply that it is in the far future. This is also the position taken by The Doctor Who Role Playing Game released by FASA, although the information in it is not usually considered canon. Both the Virgin New Adventures and the BBC Books Doctor Who novels seem to take the stance that Gallifrey is far in the Earth's relative past.
- ^ The Doctor Who Role Playing Game released by FASA equates the Outsiders with the "Shobogans", who are briefly mentioned in the serial The Deadly Assassin. However, there is nothing in the programme itself that connects the two. The Outsiders appeared on-screen in The Invasion of Time whilst the Shobogans were linked to acts of vandalism around the Panopticon in an off-handed remark by the Castellan.
- ^ Russell, Gary (2006-09-03). "Gallifrey 3.5: Panacea" (requires free registation to view). Outpost Gallifrey. Retrieved on 2006-09-11.
[edit] See also
- Outpost Gallifrey, a Doctor Who fan website named for the planet
[edit] External links
- Rassilon, Omega, and that Other guy — every fact about Gallifrey no matter how apocryphal
