Add to that, I’m only slightly joking when I suggest everyone conflating the Division with the CIA, when clearly it’s The Order of the Weal from Book of the War. The Time Lord who inducts the Doctor is evidently Chatelaine Thessalia.
“If God existed it would be necessary to abolish him” is such a raw line, you’d think it came from some edgelord 1990s anarcho-punk zine but it’s actually from an edgelord 1990s doctor who spinoff book series
Been taking a look at Death Comes to Time for map reasons (since it’s here we’re introduced to Mt. Plutarch and the Lune Forest - the latter of which is also mentioned in Gallifrey: Time War, though it seems a lot of people misheard it as ‘Loom Forest’). Got a couple of theories based on some details of the scenes with Ace:
1. There might be a connection between this timeline and The End of Time:
Ace recognises some of the constellations in the sky on Gallifrey from Earth. Casmus doesn’t correct her. But this is ludicrous, the planets are at least 29000 ly apart, if not galaxies. Even if some of the stars can be seen from both Gallifrey and Earth, they would be oriented differently.
Now you could point out that 'constellation’ is sometimes used differently in DW, such as for stars that are near eachother locally (this definition is used a lot actually), rather than angularly, or may even refer to stars that are temporally connected in some way. But that doesn’t seem to make sense here. At best, maybe Ace is flat out wrong and Casmus is misunderstanding based on different definitions, or just ignoring the statement.
On the other hand, I think it has been suggested that Gallifrey’s heavens behave differently (though I thought that was simply related to Gallifrey’s changing flow of time?) so maybe this is some sort of alignment corresponding to “Ace’s era”? One could probably link this in some way to the Younger World Story or Earth’s caldera.
My suggestion, however, is this timeline might be related to Gallifrey being moved from the Time War into the Solar System in Rassilon’s Final Sanction. Perhaps this is a universe where the Sanction was completed and reverberated back in time as it collapsed, as far as the Seventh Doctor’s era, creating new branching timelines as it went. It would even help justify the Time Lords’ powers in this universe, if they’re in the process of ascending and becoming 'beings of consciousness alone’ ala the Celestis.
In other words, the stars look like they do from Earth because Gallifrey is quite literally in Earth’s place (though obviously not quite in Earth’s present day).
2. “Saronite” explains why Gallifrey’s oceans aren’t as blue as Earth’s.
A much less grandiose theory here, but in Ace’s tests, she must cross the “Cavern of Infinite Death” without falling into the pool of saronite. When she does and believes she’s been poisoned, Casmus explains:
ACE: But what about the poison? CASMUS: Who said it was poisonous? ACE: But … but … you said it… CASMUS: I said you mustn’t touch the saronite. ACE: Well, what is saronite? CASMUS: It is much like water, with one important exception. ACE: What exception? What is it! CASMUS: It is red.
Presumably the pool is water with some mineral 'saronite’ mixed in. If 'saronite’ is common enough across Gallifrey, it may tint the oceans enough, combined with the reddish glows of the Suns and the atmospheric tint, to result in the dark red-brown-purple-ish colour of the seas we tend to see from space.
Fun fact: I googled saronite to see if it was some real mineral, but all the results related to World of Warcraft, where it is the name of a mineral formed of the blood of 'Yogg-Saron’?
I don’t know where saronite first appeared. If it came from Wrath of the Lich King, then the Doctor Who usage predates it. However I know Warcraft as a franchise is older than Death Comes to Time, so saronite might have appeared there earlier.
Either way, I guess Gallifrey’s water is literally filled with the blood of an elder god.
First of all, I was thinking about the “Time” we saw in Flux. While TARDIS wiki and others have taken her to be Time the Eternal, who we met in the VNAs, a lot doesn’t match up perfectly.
There’s never any previous indication of that Time having to be imprisoned by the Time Lords, nor is she particulalrly connected to the pre-Anchoring universe. In fact, if anything, she seems quite the opposite, taking up the Seventh Doctor as her Champion, whose duty was to protect history.
Now, a lot of this can arguably be put down to different forms. since we see members of the Menti Celesti being ‘born’ in the VNAs (and we have met multiple versions of Death, from Torchwood’s grim reaper to the goth girl resembling Death from The Sandman at Benny’s wedding), but it’s still not a perfect match.
Instead I have an alternative suggestion: the “Time” in Flux is actually the Carnival Queen.
I’m the one who starts the carnivals, Christopher Cwej. The one who makes the music that plays when civilizations fall. Sister to superstitions, grandmother of gynoids. The spirit imprisoned in every piece of clockwork.
Both were imprisoned by the Time Lords around the time of the Anchoring of the Thread to make the universe logical and establish the laws of physics as we know them. The Carnvial Queen also seemed to be captured on a desert world set out of time.
Her personality and history matches the Time we meet a lot better than VNA!Time. She attempts to escape back into the universe for much the same reason the Ravagers wanted to free Time - to undo the Anchoring.
– All that time. All that time I’ve been trapped here, shut off from the universe outside. Ohh, I’ve managed to influence things a little. Pushing a few irrational ideas out into the Majestic Clockwork. Little spanners in the works. A sorceress here, an alchemaître there, a pocket universe somewhere else. I’ve whispered words into the occasional ear. I’ve even managed to nurture a few, ah, special powers. Latent abilities, waiting to be triggered, wrapped in little genetic parcels marked ‘Do Not Open Till Xmas’…
– But I could never venture out into the rational universe. Not without an invitation.
Though she pushes it as a paradise, there is of course a lot of danger in an irrational universe, as we get to see a glimpse of in Flux, let alone all the Eldritch beings that would be able to exist again.
Interestingly, the “Watchmakers” in Christmas on a Rational Planet also refer to “their temple” a couple of times. They also grant Catcher a gun from their temple which marks him clearly as an agent - an “electro-static galvanistic rifle“.
Perhaps the kicker though? Just as the TARDIS seemed sick throughout Flux and into Eve of the Daleks, so too was the TARDIS directly threatened by the unleashing of the Carnival Queen to the point she even gives Chris false memories to be sure he’ll choose order over chaos, out of self-preservation.
No?’ The mouth twitched at the corner. ‘Please, Doctor, consider the situation. The “force” in the desert, as you describe it, wanted to create an irrational universe. Yes?’
‘Yes, yes.’
“And who has the most to lose from that? Consider what the TARDIS represents. The ship is the ultimate expression of reason. Its heart is made of mathematics, its architecture the very model of order.’
This isn’t to say that this Time / the Carnival Queen couldn’t in a sense still be the Time of the VNAs. If we are imagining the Menti Celesti split into multiple incarnations, then it’s just as reasonable that Time could have been split into the rational Gallifreyan God and an irrational imprisoned demon.
In fact, they almost definitely ARE linked. It’s already known that Time was born from Time Lord dreams and while the Carnival Queen was “born from the irrational parts of their souls”, she too is linked to Time Lord dreams in some way:
‘You’re the one the Watchmakers… I mean, you’re the thing that…’
– That they couldn’t live with . They don’t remember me at all now, and don’t even let themselves dream of me. On their homeworld, buried in the deepest archives, there are books, that only the Highest of the High are ever allowed to read. The only books that describe the old time before the days of the clockwork universe, locked away from the eyes of the world.
Side note: the “Highest of the High” and the “Deepest Archives”? 100% the Division.
The Missing Link of TARDIS Evolution?
I am far from the only person to have spotted some similarities between the “Passenger-forms” (which, we should note, sounds quite similar to the “N-forms” used first against the Great Vampires then later in the Time War) and TARDISes, which themselves can be humanoid.
Well while thinking about the previous theory, I considered the “Gynoids”, the Carnival Queen’s granddaughters. They’re kinda set up as a gender-essentialist manifestation of feminity in the universe, vs the ‘orderly masculinity’ of the Time Lords. Which, is uh…
But getting past that, there’s a lot more interesting about them. For one thing, they can change their forms:
It had just lain there, pockmarked and sand-blown, its big, bloated body expanding and contracting, like a sea creature washed up on a beach and gasping for water. Quite dead, the Doctor had insisted, though he couldn’t tell the cause. Its movement had been some kind of automatic function, the thing constantly adjusting and re-adjusting its shape even after death, still uncertain of the exact form it should take.
They also aren’t built, but exist independently of a creator:
‘Gynoids aren’t “built”. Only androids are “built”. Gynoids just are.’
And are bigger on the inside…
There was a whole new world trapped inside every little piece of glass, and whenever the pieces locked together to form a ‘circuit’, an entire alien universe was born inside its body, the shape becoming something totally new and unfamiliar, sculpted by different laws of physics. Roz felt she was just looking at a fragment of the thing, if ‘thing’ was a big enough word, one face of something that had a million faces. And was that all the gynoids really were? Walking windows, that you could look through to catch glimpses of something bigger and older and stranger?
You should see what I’m getting at. TARDISes too are largely considered female (not that TARDISes would have gender identities anything like humans or other species, but they have usually been referred to as “sisters” or by “she”), of course dimensionally transcendental, and can change their form. They also are speculated to exist, in a sense, beyond their creation by the Time Lords, according to Toy Story. They also, again, can be humanoid.
InChristmas on a Rational Planet, where we learn about these Gynoids, we even also see an “un-TARDIS” which literally manifested seemingly on its own, without being manufactured (which I’d argue also sounds a lot like I.M. Foreman’s Travelling Show).
The fact that the Gynoids are described as Cacophany’s granddaughters also rather evokes the idea of the TARDISes being children of the Matrix, as if establishing a lineage between them.
Then add Passenger-forms in as well. Physically, they may not seem to exactly have the more stereotypically ‘feminine’ forms of Gynoids or TARDISes (‘masculine’ TARDISes seem to exist to some extent too though) but there is a pretty strong resemblance in abilities and their roles in regards to the Carnival Queen / Time. And hey, who knows, it’s not like we know that much about Passengers:
But there’s one more creature / technology that resembles all of the above. Feminine-seeming, glass robots, capable of shapeshifting, time manipulation, perception filters. Literally full of people, who interestingly are being preserved in a manner akin to Matrix soul-catching.
Am I suggesting that Testimony’s glass avatars are literally TARDISes? Not exactly. But I think, in the same way we see certain themes echo through some of the major time-sensitive civilisations that could have been / could become the Lords of Time (eg. regeneration/renewal, central databases/afterlifes, bridges to the next universe), the avatars may well be humanity’s technology equivalent to the gynoids or TARDISes.
And perhaps these are all indeed parts of the one conceptual species with multiple possible histories we know primarily as TARDISes, depending on the time track of the universe (pre-Anchoring, post-Anchoring, War in Heaven, post-Ancestor Cell, Time War etc.)?
Maybe they really do, quite literally, form a meta family of sorts?
“However, there are other things that can have distortional effects on the continuum.’
“It’s what your friend mistook for a ley line. (…) It’s part of the fabric of space-time itself. What DNA is to your genetic code, this stuff is to biodata. And it’s just exposed here now. Personality, history, memory, perception, all vulnerable. (…) It’s me.”
(…)
“Kyra said she’d been mapping these lines all over the city …”
(Kate Orman & Jon Blum, “Unnatural History”)
“Imagine if time all happened at once. Every moment of your life laid out around you like a city. Streets full of buildings made of days. The day you were born, the day you die. The day you fall in love, the day that love ends. A whole city built from triumph and heartbreak and boredom and laughter and cutting your toenails. It’s the best place you will ever be.”
(Steven Moffat, “The Pilot”)
“Consider the nature of a city. It is a vast repository of time, the discarded times of all the men and women who have lived, worked, dreamed and died in the streets which grow like a willfully organic thing, unfurl like the petals of a mired rose and yet lack evanescence so entirely that they preserve the past in haphazard layers, so this alley is old while the avenue that runs beside it is newly built but nevertheless has been built over the deep-down, dead-in-the-ground relics of the older, perhaps the original, huddle of alleys which germinated the entire quarter.”
(Angela Carter, “The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman”)
Add to that, I’m only slightly joking when I suggest everyone conflating the Division with the CIA, when clearly it’s The Order of the Weal from Book of the War. The Time Lord who inducts the Doctor is evidently Chatelaine Thessalia.
