The Time Lords were an immensely proud and civilised race – the oldest in the universe. Sworn never to interfere, only to watch. The Time Lords possessed the ability to travel through time and to regenerate their bodies when fatally injured, a maximum of 12 times. However, some of their number turned their abilities to destruction, death, power and domination. Here is a list of some of the most prominent renegade Time Lords.

The Meddling Monk

• The First Doctor, Steven and Vicki arrived in England 1066, shortly before the Norman Invasion (The Time Meddler). They encountered the Meddling Monk, a rogue Time Lord intent on disrupting Earth’s history for his own pleasure. The Monk intended to destroy the Norman fleet of ships, thereby preventing the Norman conquest of England in 1066 and altering the course of history. Thankfully, the Doctor was able to thwart the Monk and trap him in the Middle Ages by shrinking the interior of his TARDIS. The Doctor and Steven later encountered the Monk again in a whirlwind of an adventure in Ancient Egypt with the Daleks (The Daleks’ Master Plan).

The War Chief & The War Lord

• The War Chief and the War Lord conspired against their fellow Time Lords and decided to create their own army. Their army was composed of soldiers from various wars from throughout Earth’s history, fighting each other in order to create the ultimate force to conquer the universe with (The War Games). However, the Second Doctor, Jamie and Zoe uncovered this diabolical plot and the Doctor was able to contact the Time Lords via psychic container (The Doctor’s Wife). This enabled the Time Lords to capture the War Lord and bring him to justice… but unfortunately this also included the Doctor himself too. Some fan theories suggest that the War Chief was in fact an early incarnation of the Master.

The Master

• The Doctor’s childhood friend on Gallifrey, the Master was the opposite of the Doctor. Whilst the Doctor voyaged throughout the universe, keen to see the wonders of time and space, the Master sought domination and power. The two looked into the untempered schism when they were both 8 years old and stared at the raw power of time and space (The Sound of Drums). But the Master saw beyond and it sent him mad. A drumbeat entered his mind, placed there retroactively by the Time Lords of the future (The End of Time). This turned the Master insane and he therefore committed barbaric acts against other species. The Master wasted all of his 12 regenerations and he was desperate to survive (The TV Movie). Time Lords can only live a maximum of 13 lives (The Deadly Assassin). However, there have been some exceptions to this, i.e. when the High Council of the Time Lords have granted a new regeneration cycle to members of their own race, (The Five Doctors) including the Doctor himself (The Time of the Doctor). This occurred when the Time Lords were calling through a crack in time on the planet Trenzalore and the Doctor needed help. The Time Lords occasionally asked the Doctor and the Master to go on missions for them. The Master was once asked by the Time Lords to carry the Seal of Rassilon as proof of their credentials, but the Doctor stole this. The Master wore a variety of disguises throughout his many incarnations. He also hypnotised people and shrunk his victims with a tissue compression eliminator. The Master sometimes had a beard which added to his Machiavellian complexion. He also once became Prime Minster (Harold Saxon) and took over the Earth and ruled the planet for a year – the Year That Never Was. In that cruel incarnation, the Master was married to Lucy Saxon – unfortunately, some women like rude and nasty guys because they think that they can save them (or because they are horrible too). I really wish that all women liked nice guys and I wish that some women didn’t prefer nasty guys instead of us. The Master became the Doctor’s ultimate Moriarty and frenemy, although the Master is not completely beyond redemption in the Doctor’s eyes.

Omega

• A black hole in space was draining energy from the Time Lords. So, they decided to send the first three incarnations of the Doctor to investigate, beyond the event horizon. What the Doctors, Jo Grant and U.N.I.T discovered was that a legendary Time Lord called Omega was trapped in a universe of anti-matter, on the other side of the black hole (The Three Doctors). Omega was a stellar engineer and he was responsible for the Time Lords originally gaining the ability to travel through time. He also created a remote stellar manipulator, colloquially known as the Hand of Omega. However, a stellar explosion led to Omega’s eternal imprisonment in the anti-matter universe. Desperate to escape, Omega proposed that the Second and Third Doctors should take over the burden of his duties. However, the Doctors discovered that Omega’s physical form had long since eroded and only his will lives on. This did not prevent Omega from wanting to escape again via Amsterdam, Earth by taking on the body of the Fifth Doctor (Arc of Infinity). But with help from Tegan Jovanka and Nyssa of Traken, the Doctor thwarted Omega again. But how long will it be until we encounter this ancient Time Lord again?

Morbius

• The legendary Time Lord Morbius led a rebellion against the Time Lords. He was thwarted and executed, but his brain survived and was retrieved by the Frankensteinian mad scientist Mehendri Solon and taken to Karn. There, Solon and his henchman Condo began rebuilding Morbius’ body using the dismembered parts of creatures and people that crash landed on the planet. However, they maintained an antagonistic relationship with the primitive Sisterhood of Karn that worshipped the sacred flame of eternal life. The Fourth Doctor and Sarah-Jane Smith landed on Karn and quickly became embroiled in Solon’s evil scheme – Solon wanted the Doctor’s head for Morbius! With help from the Sisterhood and a revealing mind-bending duel, the Doctor and Sarah-Jane were able to defeat Morbius for good (The Brain of Morbius).

Borusa

• In the ancient history of Gallifrey, Borusa was a brilliant and respectable figure. He tutored the Doctor during his school days (The Deadly Assassin, The Invasion of Time). Borusa held many respectable public offices throughout the ages, ultimately making it all the way up to being Lord President of Gallifrey (Arc of Infinity). But the power corrupted him and Borusa became greedy. He sought immortality from Rassilon, one of the founders of Time Lord society. In order to obtain immortality, Borusa forced the first Five Doctors (and some of their companions) and a number of their evil enemies (the Daleks, the Cybermen, the Master and the Yeti) to play the Game of Rassilon in the Death Zone on Gallifrey (The Five Doctors). He even framed other Time Lords like the Castellan for his own misdemeanors. Borusa ultimately received the immortality he sought… although perhaps not in quite the way he was expecting it.

The Rani

• One of the Doctor’s contemporaries at university was the diabolical Rani. The Rani was not interested in power or domination. She only cared about her own unethical experiments on other species. One of these involved removing the chemical that promotes sleep from the brains of humans in the Victorian age town of Killingsworth, England. The Sixth Doctor and Peri were able to thwart the Rani by trapping her inside her own TARDIS with the Master and a T-Rex embryo that began to grow due to time spillage (The Mark of the Rani). The Rani escapes and later attacks the Doctor’s TARDIS, forcing the Doctor to regenerate. Companion Melanie Bush manages to reunite with the newly regenerated Seventh Doctor so that they can lead the people of Lakertya in rebellion against the Rani and prevent her from obtaining the Loyhargil via appalling means (Time and the Rani). The Rani is captured once again inside her own TARDIS, this time by her own servants, the Tetraps.

The Valeyard (The Doctor)

• The Doctor is captured and put on trial by the Time Lords (again) for interfering in the affairs of other life forms (The Trial of a Time Lord). The Sixth Doctor presents evidence from both his past and his future in his defence. But the prosecutor at his trial is a dark and mysterious figure called the Valeyard. It turns out that the Valeyard is in fact an evil future incarnation of the Doctor, who has conspired against the Time Lords with the Master thanks to secrets from the Matrix, the repository of all Time Lord knowledge. The Doctor enters the Matrix and battles with the Valeyard and the Master, defeating them both.

Rassilon

• One of the legendary founders of Time Lord society was Rassilon. Rassilon had a tomb on Gallifrey dedicated to him and it was riddled with traps (The Five Doctors). Rassilon also ultimately resumed the Presidency of Gallifrey during the devastating Time War with the Daleks. Desperate to survive, Rassilon decided that he and the other Time Lords would ascend to become creatures of consciousness alone, free of their corporeal forms while reality around them collapsed in the ensuing destruction by the Daleks (The End of Time). The Doctor was aware of the High Council of the Time Lords’ plans and therefore decided to end the Time War himself by using the Moment, which wiped out both the Time Lords and the Daleks. The Doctor carried guilt and shame about this for years until he later reversed his actions and the outcome of the Time War with the help of his other incarnations (The Day of the Doctor). When the Doctor finally returned to his restored childhood home of Gallifrey, he sent the corrupt Rassilon into exile (Hell Bent).

The Timeless Child (The Doctor)

• The Timeless Child was a mythical being within Time Lord history. The Master discovered the secrets of the Child in the Matrix upon his return to Gallifrey. The revelation of the Child’s origins and its significance within Gallifreyan history enraged the Master so much that he destroyed his own people, the Time Lords and Gallifrey (Spyfall). The Master captured the Doctor and revealed to her that the Timeless Child was an immortal being that fell through a portal in space and (via morbid experimentation by the Shobogan scientist Tecteun) granted the Time Lords with the ability to regenerate in the first place. This led to the foundations of Time Lord society. Perhaps more shockingly, the Master revealed that the Timeless Child was in fact the Doctor, who had had her memories wiped by the Division centuries ago (The Timeless Children). The hitherto suggestion that there had been many incarnations that preceded that of the First Doctor (The Brain of Morbius) was now an indisputable fact. This revelation was a watershed moment in both the Doctor’s personal life and within the lore of Doctor Who itself. But it is important to remember that the canon and the lore in Doctor Who constantly changes and evolves.