When we met I was sure out to lunch. Now my empty cup tastes as sweet as the punch. -- The Association, Along Comes Mary

Tales From /lost+found 38: Gifts for the Holidays

Another page from the 1995 Doctor Who series bible. Text below the fold.

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beings of the galaxy. This should not be mistaken to mean that the Time Lords have powers like comic book superheroes. But rather they are beings whose bodies are suited to the ENVIRONMENT of time in much the same way that the bodies of animals are adapted to their own natural environments. Chief among these adaptations are:

  • TIME SENSE: Time Lords possess a sixth sense which allows them to “see” the web of time. Thus the Doctor can innately sense when time has been tampered with. At times he may also be able to sense that certain events can not be altered, and this is why he does not try to intervene in affairs that would conflict with “our” history
  • TIME IMMUNITY: In a similar way, The Doctor is protected from the forces of time which would destroy a mortal man. This offers him protection from any changes to time that would otherwise alter his memories. HOWEVER, this is not an unbounded protection, and a powerful enough adversary may be able to break through his defenses. He is also less affected by the normal passage of time, which accounts for his exceptional longevity
  • PRECOGNITION: Because he can sense the web of time, by focusing this ability on the future, the Doctor can “see” how future events will unfold. HOWEVER, this power carries a great risk: any event he witnesses using this power becomes crystallized in time and can not be changed or avoided. Thus, if the Doctor were to risk using his power, he might witness his own defeat, and therefore be unable to avoid it. Therefore this is an ability he would only use in the most desperate of circumstances, and if he ever does, it should carry dire consequences.
  • REGENERATION: The Doctor’s most impressive physical ability. As a fourth-dimensional creature, what we see of The Doctor is only part of his physical body. If his body is ever damaged beyond repair, at the moment of death, every cell in his body will simultaneously “rotate” through higher-dimensional space, like shuffling the squares on a Rubik’s Cube. In this way, his dying body is instantaneously replaced with a new, healthy body whose features and traits are a different

2 thoughts on “Tales From /lost+found 38: Gifts for the Holidays”

  1. In the 1999 theatrical movie, “The Amazing Doctor Who” (directed by Michael Bay), we discover that the Doctor received his time-lord powers the same way Rassilon did: by being bitten by a radioactive clock.

  2. I’ve been trying to work out whether the aborted 2011 feature film is by Tim Burton with Johnny Depp as the Doctor and Helena Bonham Carter as Missy, or it’s JJ Abrams with Simon Pegg as the Doctor.

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