Why Time Lords Go Rogue.

[Doctor X]

This idea has been percolating in my head for a while, so wanted to at least start to get it out. I might not finish the whole thing in one sitting, but wanted to get something concrete out there. A cornerstone, if you will. (As far as game practicality, it might help to get inside your time lord's head if you're going about making your own.)

Of the other time lords that the Doctor meets in his travels, only two that I can think of aren't rogues. (The one who comes to warn him about the Master in "Terror of the Autons," and the one who tells him to kill the Daleks in "Genesis of the Daleks.") Beyond that, every time lord we see away from Gallifrey is a renegade of one stripe or another, so what makes them decide to break away from Gallifreyan society?

Prior to the New Who stuff about the Untempered Schism and the Doctor and the Master's time together as children, the first we hear of the time lords is how perfect their society is.

JAMIE: Why did you run away from them in the first place?
DOCTOR: What? Well, I was bored.
ZOE: What do you mean, you were bored?
DOCTOR: Well, the Time Lords are an immensely civilized race. We can control our own environment, we can live forever, barring accidents, and we have the secret of space time travel.
JAMIE: Well what's so wrong in all that?
DOCTOR: Well we hardly ever use our great powers. We consent simply to observe and to gather knowledge.

The other big piece of information that we get is that there are the three Time Lord Academies. There's where I think it begins.

Think of your average college freshman: Not the frat boy image, the Ivory Tower image. The one who thinks their ideas for changing the world are new and unheard-of. (Nobody ever thought of just NOT HAVING wars before YOU came along!) And nobody will tell them they're wrong because they're either trying to encourage creativity or they're afraid of being told that they themselves are wrong. Now, take the 4-12 years that usually goes on for and add a zero to those numbers. For the entire average human lifespan, you're left thinking that you've got all the answers that nobody even thought of before you came along and no one will tell you you're wrong.

And then you graduate. The world is your oyster, now let's take a look at that oyster: No private sector to go into (You never get that vitally needed "You want fries with that?" hard slap of reality.), no military option (We know Gallifrey has a police force, but there's no real crime for them to take care of, and the two times the planet's been invaded, everyone just surrendered.), no arts to go into (Gallifreyan art is made by computers.). Your only options are politics or academia. Going straight from your dorm room to the Panopticon. From the Students' Lounge to the Teachers' Lounge. But hey! Now you've got a foot on the ladder to power! NOW you'll get some REAL changes made!

Ok, we already know how that works in the human world: The only way to advance is for the old men at the top of the ladder to die or retire. (Yeah, yeah, hard work and determination. That works SOMETIMES in our world, but for the most part, hard work just leads to more hard work.) The problem with Time Lord society, though, is that NO ONE dies or retires unless they WANT TO! So you can attempt little power games in the interim, but for the most part, you're just going in circles. If by some miracle you DO reach the top of the pyramid, by the time you get there, you're as old and set in your ways and much a cog in the machine as the guy whose job you wanted, and so those changes you've wanted to make for so long won't happen either.

Now imagine a hundred years or more of this. Yes, I'll join you in stealing that TARDIS.

[Catsmate]

I think you're on the right lines, it's the ego of the (potential) renegades. They've been trained well and are aware that they're the elite of one of the most powerful species in the universe. Then they find themselves without outlets for their abilities (real and imagined). Frankly I'm surprised that more of them don't depart to remake the universe in their own image (unless they actually do and are quietly eliminated), conquer or simply experiment with the entirety of space-time as their lab bench.

[Stormcrow]

Why do we see so many rogue Time Lords? Because well-behaved Time Lords usually don't leave Gallifrey, so any that we DO see must be rogues.

[misterharry]

I agree with Stormcrow - the ones that don't go rogue tend not to leave Gallifrey except on official business, so the ones we do see away from Gallifrey are the rogues.

But if you want an explanation of why they've gone rogue, then it's because staring into the Untempered Schism is such a traumatic experience: "Some would be inspired, some would run away, and some would go mad."

[Catsmate]

Of course one point that influences the number of renegade Time Lords is, how many Time Lords are there? Given the various bits of information, albeit mostly from extracanonical sources, it seems that Gallifrey has a relatively small and stable population, perhaps in the low billions. So how many new Gallifreyans/Time Lords are birthed/loomed? And how often?

It's also possible that new Gallifreyans are born at selected multi-year (or multi-decade) intervals and selected for the academies in groups, unlike the human model of annual classes.

Amongst humans it's often estimated that about 5% display significant psychopathic traits, assuming Gallifrey has better mental healthcare (pre and post birth) this would be far lower, say 0.05%. If one-tenth of one percent of these are willing and able to leave permanently then that's one renegade per two million Time Lords.

Of course all this is rampant speculation...


Now given that Gallifreyan politics are often portrayed as pretty vicious, so it seems likely that the losers of such factional fights might chose to leave, either to live quietly outside Gallifreyan society, or to find new fields for their talents.

Ace was looking thoughtfully at him. "You like it, don't you. Professor?" she
said suddenly. "All the lying and cheating and treachery. You even enjoy it."


The Doctor smiled wryly. "Perhaps I do, in a way. You have to remember, I grew
up in a society so complex, devious and corrupt it makes this lot look like a
kindergarten.
"What, you? A Time Lord? I should have thought it was all sweetness and light
and high tea in the nursery."


The Doctor shook his head. "When it comes to low cunning and high treason, the
Nazis have got nothing on the Time Lords of Gallifrey."

So perhaps the majority of renegade Time Lords are more "passive" than active, like Drax, Chronotis and Azmael. Living relatively quietly, at least compared to Morbius, the Doctor, the Master and similar, and not posing a threat to the universe.

[Stormcrow]

Oct 6, 2014 8:11:52 GMT misterharry said:

But if you want an explanation of why they've gone rogue, then it's because staring into the Untempered Schism is such a traumatic experience: "Some would be inspired, some would run away, and some would go mad."

Or it's just mindlessly boring—constantly watching, never doing.

[rulandor]

The Seventh Doctor's point of view, quoted above, suits me more than the magic trick of the new Who storytellers, Davies and Moffat, the Untempered Schism.

A stagnant social structure, any oppressive social structure produces any amount of mental disorders without needing some strange space-time-phenomenon.

[sirkalon]

hmmm, I agree with all three the tired weary bored tedium, that cause perks and interesting positions to be fought and schemed over, and the schism that causes some to go mad, inspired to higher levels or run away either figuratively (going rogue) or running and hiding in mundane positions in academia, politics etc,

[sirkalon]

That said my plan is to make a time lord ex secret operative for the council whose one last job was to take a group of students, some children and some teachers and keep them safe from the war. after humanising them or making them believe they were he watched over them waiting until they need to be awoken, then one of younger ones wake up playing with trigger device and long story short the operative is forced to travel with younger timelord as well as picking up a few strays here and there