8/17/08 Captain Jack's Repossession Repo Cruise to PC thru TPC #4

[micmse2003]

OMG, I'm traumatized...where are their sweet little marshmallow faces ??

In my tummy!!!!

& ex-spouses

OOPS!!!! I don't have one but ignore on ex-spouses is bettter than even children.

Regarding all this lobster talk:

On the last cruise, through a miscommunication with the head server, my wife and I ended up with four lobster tails apiece!

Of course they didn't go to waste, but DW wanted to know why the seats in the Walt Disney Theater were smaller that night.

If you have too many Lobster tails....just save them for Arlene and me!!! Lobster is not fattening unless butter is used!!!

 

[dahuffy]

Debi, A hoagie is nothing like a sandwich from subway... bite your tongue.

Ooops,my bad!

 

[arlenesp]

Howdy Crew!

Just a quick posting. I've caught Crash's super bug and have been down for the count for the last week. I'm to the point where I'm simply trying to cough up a lung now.

On the other hand - I lost 7 pounds. Don't recommend the super bug as a weight loss program though.

I actually managed to work a bunch today. But, I've hit my wall and will toddle off for a nap soon. This really sucks.
.

Esteri, so sorry you aren't feeling well. Take care

Hello everyone. Just thought I would pop my head in here and say I will also be there along with everyone else here.

Thanks for the welcomes. Now I wonder how long it will take me to go back and read all the previous posts......

WELCOME
Don't even try to catch up.

Around here, the women would put the lobster in their pocketbooks to take home, and ask for another on their plate. (I'm so embarassed to live here)

 

[tom31b]

Well we had Channel 5 (KTLA) out to our school twice this week. Won't know until 3/18. Tom I have not heard from you regarding DL on 3/15. Are you going to make it?

I think he posted he was hosting relatives and can't

 

[allshookup]

You really don't want to know



Formals by Omar!

I could fit a lot of bahama mamas, lobster tails, souffle's etc. under this beauty. The latest addition to Omar's spring collection!

 

[dahuffy]

That's insane When was this I'm a Yankee and I can't get my head around this

My Godson just turned 20 in Oct. By the way...I'm a yankee too! Born and raised in Mpls. We are the "Buckle of the Bible Belt" here.

 

[allshookup]

In my tummy!!!!



OOPS!!!! I don't have one but ignore on ex-spouses is bettter than even children.



If you have too many Lobster tails....just save them for Arlene and me!!! Lobster is not fattening unless butter is used!!!

unless? unless? How can you eat lobstah without buttah?

 

[arlenesp]

Oh - I remember another one -
I am going to board my dogs for the first time for this cruise - it's going to cost between $1200 & $1600. (2 dogs)
For those who have experience w/boarding pets - what should I look for when I check out these places???
Also, I'm thinking about having the dogs have a few day sessions at the place so that they dont' go into abandonment shock or something being left for 2+ weeks. Good idea?? I can't think of any other way to prepare them.

TIA

We left Rocky at the Vets overnight to see how he fared.He was still being put in his crate at the time so we really didn't think it would be a big deal But He didn't do well.. I really don't think he was taken care of enough.He loves everyone and loves going to the Vet. Then we found a Pet Country Club. The pets have different grades of boarding. Rocky had one with an outside run. Literally he had a small space inside (which was Airconditioned) and a long fenced in run. They took him out 1x a day to run in the yard for an hour and I have to say, he never looked back when we left. He was too busy marking his territory. Now here is the sticker shock. $17 a day plus they gave us a senior discount .The place truly is a find. Too bad it's here and not in Calif.

This time we are calling on DS to watch him. He did it last year for a few days and it worked out great. It gave DS some company and it makes him get out of his office into the sunlight

Hope it works out for you Chris.

 

[Esteri]

Is anyone else expecting to see a peep with a teeny-tiny mustache on a podium off to the right there?

STOP!! Everytime I start to laugh I try to cough up a lung.
.

 

[micmse2003]

unless? unless? How can you eat lobstah without buttah?

I didn't say I would eat lobstah widout buttah!!!!

 

[captaincrash]

I really appreciate all of your insightfulness. You also made me feel really welcome on the boards and made it more comfortable for me to post. Thanks. And I can even put up with all the plugs for that Dr. Who guy!

[ed]....

Mike...

... you do NOT want to mess with a Time Lord now, do ya? Dr. Who is a Time Lord and his friends (myself and Andrew, to name a couple) also possess varying degrees of Time Lord powers too... so please cut us a little respectful slack when referrin' to da' commercial televison show otherwise known as Dr Who.

< wink >​

This article is about the Time Lords from Doctor Who. For other uses, see Time Lord (disambiguation).

The Time Lords are a fictional civilisation from the planet Gallifrey, portrayed in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, of which the series' main character, the Doctor, is a member. Time Lords are so called because they are able to travel in and manipulate time through technology to a far greater degree than any other civilisation.[1] It is also implied heavily in the series that there are those from Gallifrey who are not Time Lords, though it is not stated categorically either way (see Trial of a Time Lord, among others).

Overview

The nature and history of the Time Lords were gradually revealed as the television series progressed. Each story to feature them and their home planet added additional layers of complexity and intrigue, stemming from the dissatisfaction of various scriptwriters wrestling with the question of why the Doctor is in exile in the first place. Among other things, Time Lords are increasingly revealed as being corrupted by their inaction and Time Lord society as stagnant. Over the course of the show's initial 26-year run, it was never made entirely clear what purpose or mission the Time Lords served, or what exactly they did with their mastery over time.

Nor, ultimately, was it ever explicitly made clear what had caused the Doctor to leave his people, although it is suggested in some stories that he was an involuntary exile[2] and in others that he had simply grown tired of the restrictions of Time Lord society and left.[3].

The Time Lords are normally considered one of the oldest and most technologically powerful races in the Doctor Who universe. The small number of beings more powerful than the Time Lords includes the (now extinct) Osirans and higher powers of the universe such as the Black and White Guardians[4] and, from the spin-off novels, which are of uncertain canonicity, The People, with whom the Time Lords signed a non-aggression treaty.[5] The power of the Time Lords appears limited by their policy of non-interference with the universe and sometimes by intense internecine division.

However, the view that they are, to a degree, custodians of time developed in the spin-off media. This is also suggested in the television series; in The War Games[6] the Time Lords return time-displaced humans abducted by the War Lord to their proper time zones on Earth. The name of the Time Lords' central hall, the Panopticon, suggests that they are perpetual observers of all existence.

In "Father's Day"[7] the Ninth Doctor remarks that prior to their destruction, the Time Lords would have prevented or repaired paradoxes such as that which attracted the Reapers to 1987 Earth. In "Rise of the Cybermen",[8] the Tenth Doctor mentions that while the Time Lords were around, travel between alternative realities was easier, but with their demise, the paths between worlds were closed. In "The Satan Pit",[9] the Tenth Doctor states that his people "practically invented black holes. Well, in fact they did."

Physical characteristics

Time Lords appear human, but differ from them in many respects. All Time Lords in the classic television series were portrayed by white adults, although in Planet of the Spiders some of those white actors used yellowface to appear Tibetan. A Black Time Lord appears in the 2007 episode "The Sound of Drums"[11] and others in the spin-off novel The Shadows of Avalon[12] and the comic strip Blood Invocation[13], both by Paul Cornell. In addition, Time Lord founder Rassilon was portrayed in several audio plays by black actor Don Warrington, and a black Time Lord was seen in various crowd scenes in 1975's The Deadly Assassin. An 8-year-old Time Lord child (implied to be the renegade Time Lord known as the Master) was depicted in "The Sound of Drums" and appeared identical to a human child of the same age.[11]

No explanation is given in the series as to why Time Lords look human, nor why the universe seems filled with predominantly humanoid species. The Virgin New Adventures novel Lucifer Rising[14] by Andy Lane and Jim Mortimore suggests that the Time Lords were the first sentient life-form. As such, their evolutionary pattern created a morphogenetic field that resonated across the universe, making the development of humanoids far more likely. The Big Finish Productions audio play Zagreus[15] offers a more sinister explanation, that the xenophobic Rassilon seeded the universe with biogenic molecules so that (save for worlds where humanoids could never evolve) only intelligent species that approximated the Gallifreyan humanoid norm would develop. However, in the Cushing movie Dr. Who and the Daleks (though not necessarily thought to be canon), one of the Thals states that the 'humanoid' form has been proven to be ideal for survival, hence many species in the universe have it for survival. The canonicity of these accounts, as with all spin-off media, is unclear.

Time Lords are extremely long-lived, routinely counting their ages in terms of centuries. It is not known how long a Time Lord can live, although the Doctor claimed in The War Games[6] that Time Lords could live "practically forever, barring accidents." In The Daleks' Master Plan[16] the First Doctor is able to resist the effects of the Time Destructor better than his companions, who are visibly aged by it; one of them, Sara Kingdom, ages to dust before the Destructor device can be reversed, although the Fourth Doctor is briefly aged 500 years in The Leisure Hive, which leaves him an old man but still somewhat active. A similar situation occurred in "The Sound of Drums", where the Master uses specially made technology to age the Tenth Doctor by a century, leaving him in a frail and helpless state. A further application of this in "The Last of the Time Lords" ages the Doctor another 900 years and turns him into a shrunken, wrinkled humanoid. It's likely this was 'aging as a human would' because being 900 years old yet having only had lived 10 lives, the Doctor had to have spent centuries in one body at a time without aging. The Doctor is quoted as saying 'I don't age' in the episode School Reunion when talking to his companion, Rose, although this is contradicted somewhat by the First Doctor's claims to be "wearing a bit thin" and encounters between different regenerations where the previous actors have necessarily aged noticeably ("The Two Doctors", "Time Crash").

It is implied (in The Invasion of Time and The Deadly Assassin) that the terms "Gallifreyan" and "Time Lord" may not be synonymous, and that Time Lords are simply that subset of Gallifreyans who have achieved the status of Time Lord via achievement in the Gallifreyan collegiate system yet in the episode Sound of Drums The Doctor talks of 'Time Lord children' which implies the title is inheritted in a sort of cultural class system. Romana and the Doctor have also referred to "Time Tots", or infant Time Lords,[17], and (in "Smith and Jones") the Doctor refers to his and his compatriots playing "with Röntgen bricks in the nursery"[18]. In "The Sound of Drums", the Master is seen as a child, apparently at the age of 8.[11]

Other physiological differences from humans include two hearts (which normally beat at 170 beats a minute), an internal body temperature of 15 degrees Celsius and a "respiratory bypass system" that allows them to survive strangulation. Time Lords can also survive full exposure to the vacuum of space with no ill effects, though in such cases, even with their respiratory bypass boosting the length of time they can go without air, when in vacuum for an extended period a Time Lord must take a supply of air along, or else suffocate. A commonly held piece of fan continuity is that Time Lords only grow their second heart during their first regeneration.[19] If severely injured, Time Lords can go into a healing coma which lowers their body temperature to below freezing. In the serial Destiny of the Daleks, Romana was able to voluntarily stop both of her hearts beating, to fool the Daleks into believing that she was dead. In "World War Three"[20], the Doctor is able to shake off an electrocution attempt which is fatal to a number of humans, and appears unaffected by the energy whip wielded by the Sycorax in "The Christmas Invasion".[21] Time Lords, or at least the Doctor, can read extremely quickly.[22] They appear to have greater physical stamina than humans and need considerably less sleep. In "Smith and Jones" the Tenth Doctor says that Röntgen radiation poses no real threat to Time Lords, and proceeds to absorb an amount that would be lethal to a human, which he subsequently expels through his foot.[18]

The Doctor states in The Mind of Evil[23] that a pill (apparently aspirin) could kill him. It is not known whether this is a susceptibility shared by all Time Lords, or merely something like an allergy unique to the Doctor (or if he was lying for comedic effect).

The biological imprint (also known as bio-data) of a Time Lord, which also defines his personal history, is kept in the Matrix, a computer network that contains the sum total of all Time Lord knowledge. The unauthorised extraction of a Time Lord's bio-data is tantamount to treason.[24]

It is stated that the Time Lords are biologically suited for time travel. Also in The Two Doctors, it is stated that the "Rassilon Imprimatur" allows Time Lords to safely travel through time, becoming symbiants with their TARDISes, and that the reason other species are incapable of developing time travel are that they lack the imprimatur. At the beginning of The Trial of a Time Lord, the Doctor suggests that a number of elder Time Lords were able to use their combined mental energy to summon his TARDIS against his will.

It is stated and seen in the Fourth Doctor serial The Robots of Death that Time Lords are immune to the voice-changing effects of helium. However, the Doctor alludes to this being a learnt ability rather than a basic biological immunity[25].

Mental powers

Time Lords can also communicate by telepathy. The Doctor's granddaughter, Susan Foreman, displays psychic abilities in The Sensorites[26] and in The Invasion of Time it is revealed the Doctor's old tutor Borusa also taught him telepathy. In both the final episode of Frontier in Space[27] and the first of Planet of the Daleks, the Doctor communicates with the Time Lords via telepathic circuits in the TARDIS, and in Castrovalva, the Doctor activates the TARDIS' Zero Room mentally. In The Deadly Assassin,[28] the Doctor mentions that Time Lords are telepathic. Additionally, in The Three Doctors,[29] the Doctor's first three incarnations communicate with each other telepathically. This ability is exhibited by the Doctors during other occasions where multiple incarnations are present in one location and used primarily as a means of updating the other selves to the current situation. In Logopolis,[30] the Doctor hints at a kind of shared consciousness among Time Lords when he comments of the Master: "He's a Time Lord. In many ways, we have the same mind." This comment may refer to the existence of a "reflex link" in his brain that is said to connect his thoughts to a Time Lord Intelligentsia, a sort of communal shared mind (although he does state in The Invisible Enemy that his own reflex link was disconnected when he went into exile).

In "The Girl in the Fireplace",[31] the Tenth Doctor reads the mind of Madame de Pompadour--and in the process, to his surprise, she is able to read his mind as well. In Paul Cornell's Virgin New Adventures novel Love and War,[32] the Doctor uses a similar method to read the mind of his companion Bernice Summerfield. He later displays his telepathic communion powers in "Fear Her" and in "The Shakespeare Code", where by using his mind melding technique he is partially able to relieve a man of his mental illness as he traces back through his memories.

The Doctor also contacts the Time Lords by going into a trance and creating an assembling box (suggesting telekinesis as well) in The War Games.[6] In The Two Doctors, the Doctor engages in astral projection, but warns that if he is disturbed while doing so, his mind could become severed from his body and he could die. In "Last of the Time Lords", the Doctor telepathically interfaces with a network tapped into the human population who collectively chant his name.[33] The focus of psychic energy granted the Doctor the ability to de-age himself, float through the air, deflect shots from the Master's laser screwdriver, and telekinetically disarm the Master while surrounded in a powerful blue glow.

In addition, it is implied that Time Lords may be clairvoyant, or have additional time-related senses. In The Time Monster[34] and Invasion of the Dinosaurs[35] the Third Doctor is able to resist fields of slow time, being able to move through them even though others are paralysed. In City of Death[36] both the Fourth Doctor and Romana notice distortions and jumps in time that no one else does. In the 2005 series, the Ninth Doctor claims that he can sense the movement of the Earth through space[37] as well as being able to perceive the past and all possible futures.[38] He is also able to concentrate and time his motions well enough to step safely through the blades of a rapidly spinning fan and later claims that if any Time Lords still existed, he would be able to sense them.[11]

Time Lord

Time Lords also have the ability to regenerate their bodies when their current body is mortally wounded. This process results in their body undergoing a transformation, gaining a new physical form.

Regenerations can be traumatic events. In Castrovalva,[39] the Doctor requires the use of a Zero Room, a chamber shielded from the outside universe that provides an area of calm for him to recuperate. He comments that there is an excellent polygonal zero room beneath the junior senate block on Gallifrey. The Time Lord's personality also sometimes goes through a period of instability following a regeneration.[21].

It was first stated in The Deadly Assassin[28] that a Time Lord can regenerate twelve times before dying (thirteen incarnations in all). There were exceptions to this rule, however: when the Master reached the end of his regenerative cycle, he took possession of the body of another person to continue living. The Master was also offered a new cycle of regenerations by the High Council to save the Doctor from the Death Zone, which may indicate that there are methods to circumvent the 12 regeneration limit. The Master says in "The Sound of Drums" that the Time Lords "resurrected" him to fight in the Time War, which appears to support this. It was revealed in "The Brain of Morbius" that the Time Lords also use the Elixir of Life in extreme cases, where regeneration is not possible. This may be the reason for additional regeneration cycles being granted.

Also in The Deadly Assassin, several Time Lords including the President are stated to have been "murdered" and are not stated to have regenerated. Although it is possible that all of the Time Lords killed were at the end of their regeneration cycles (somewhat more likely with a retiring President: potentially his reaching the end of his regeneration cycle was the very reason for his retirement), it is also possible that regeneration regardless of how many regenerations the individual Time Lord has already undergone is a conditional and non-inevitable phenomenon. In The Deadly Assassin at least one of the murders was carried out with a 'staser', possibly a weapon designed to both kill and prevent regeneration (stasers are also stated to have little effect on non-living tissue)[28].

In Destiny of the Daleks,[40] Romana showed the ability to rapidly change form several times in a row during her first regeneration and apparently had the ability to change into whatever appearance she desired. This brings up many questions about the degree of control that Time Lords have over their regeneration process. It should be noted, however, that, despite showing several appearances, Romana regenerated only once on that occasion.

Whether or not Time Lords can recognise each other across regenerations is not made entirely clear in the original television series. In The Deadly Assassin[28] an old classmate recognizes the 4th Doctor despite his changes in appearance. And in a later serial, The Armageddon Factor,[41] another alumnus immediately recognises the Doctor, though the Doctor does not recognise him. In Planet of the Spiders, the Third Doctor has trouble recognising his former mentor. In The Five Doctors,[42] the Third Doctor is also unable to initially recognise the Master in his non-Gallifreyan body. Similarly, the Eighth Doctor is unable to recognise the Master while he possesses a human body in the 1996 television movie[43]. The Master recognises the Seventh Doctor on sight in Survival,[44] although this may simply point to an earlier, unseen encounter.

The Tenth Doctor does not recognise the human form of the Master in "Utopia", although the Doctor did recognise him, and name him "Master", as soon as he recovered his Time Lord physiology and mind. In "The Sound of Drums" the Doctor states that Time Lords can "always" recognise each other, although, while on Earth, the Master used satellites with a telepathic network to mask his presence from the Doctor.[11] However, in "Time Crash," the Fifth Doctor could not instinctively recognise that the Tenth Doctor was a Time Lord, nor did he guess that they were different incarnations of the same Time Lord.

In "The Last of the Time Lords", when the Master is fatally wounded, he chooses not to regenerate, "suiciding" rather than regenerate only to be kept prisoner by the Doctor forever. This again implies that regeneration is not inevitable and can indeed be refused.

Culture and society

The Time Lord homeworld, Gallifrey, is an Earth-like planet in the "constellation" of Kasterborous. Its capital city is referred to as the Citadel, and contains the Capitol, the seat of Time Lord government. At the centre of the Capitol is the Panopticon, beneath which is the Eye of Harmony. Outside the Capitol lie wastelands where the "Outsiders", Time Lords who have dropped out of Time Lord society, live in less technologically advanced communities, shunning life in the cities. The Outsiders have often been equated with the "Shobogans", a group mentioned briefly in The Deadly Assassin[28] as being responsible for acts of vandalism around the Panopticon, but there is actually nothing on screen that explicitly connects the two. The name may actually be no more than a Gallifreyan term for "hooligans".

In general, the Time Lords are an aloof people, with a society full of pomp and ceremony. The Doctor has observed that his people "enjoy making speeches"[45] and have an "infinite capacity for pretension".[46] The Time Lord penchant for ceremony extends to their technology, with various artefacts given weighty names like the Hand of Omega, the Eye of Harmony or the Key of Rassilon.

The Doctor has also characterised the Time Lords as a stagnant and corrupt society, a state caused by ten million years of absolute power.[47] Brother Lassar, in the episode "School Reunion",[48] describes the Time Lords as "a pompous race" of "ancient, dusty senators... frightened of change and chaos" and "peaceful to the point of indolence". Their portrayal in the series is reminiscent of academics living in ivory towers, unconcerned with external affairs. The Doctor states that the Time Lords were sworn never to interfere, only to watch ("The Sound of Drums"). It has been suggested that, since perfecting the science of time travel, they have withdrawn, bound by the moral complexity of interfering in the natural flow of history (compare with the Prime Directive from Star Trek); in Earthshock, the Cyberleader, when notified of the arrival of a TARDIS, is surprised at the presence of a Time Lord, stating "they are forbidden to interfere." In The Two Doctors, it is suggested that Time Lords are responsible for maintaining a general balance of power between the races of the Universe. Another explanation might be that they simply find the outside universe distasteful.

While interference is apparently against Time Lord policy, there are occasions when they do intervene, albeit indirectly. The Time Lords occasionally send the Doctor on missions that required plausible deniability, as in The Two Doctors,[49] and sometimes against his will, like in Colony in Space[50] and The Monster of Peladon.[51] He is also sent on a mission in The Mutants which was intended to help preserve the existence of a unique race, which was being destroyed by the excesses of the Earth empire. The Doctor's mission in Genesis of the Daleks[52] even involves changing history to avert the creation of the Daleks, or at least temper their aggressiveness. In fanon, these apparent violations of neutrality have been attributed to the Celestial Intervention Agency, an organisation mentioned in The Deadly Assassin.[28]

Time Lord children are taken from their families at the age of 8 and admitted into the Academy. Novices are then taken to an initiation ceremony before the Untempered Schism, a gap in the fabric of reality that looks into the time vortex. Of those that stare into it, some are inspired, some run away and others go mad. The Doctor suggests that the latter happened to the Master, and that he himself ran away [11].

Each Time Lord belongs to one of a number of various colleges or chapters, such as the Patrexes, Arcalian, and the Prydonian chapters, which have ceremonial and possibly political significance. Each chapter also has its own colours; the Prydonians wear scarlet and orange, the Arcalians wear green and the Patrexeans wear heliotrope. Others mentioned in spin-off novels include the Dromeian and Cerulean chapters. The Prydonian chapter has a reputation for being devious, and tends to produce renegades; the Doctor, the Master and the Rani are all Prydonians. The colleges of the Academy are led by the Cardinals. Ushers, who provide security and assistance at official Time Lord functions, may belong to any chapter, and wear all-gold uniforms.[28]

The executive political leadership is split between the Lord President, who keeps the ceremonial relics of the Time Lords, and the Chancellor, who appears to be the administrative leader of the Cardinals and who acts as a check on the power of the Lord President. The President is an elected position and on Presidential Resignation Day, the outgoing President usually names his successor, who is then also usually confirmed in a non-contested "election". However, it is still constitutionally possible for another candidate to put themselves forward for the post, as the Doctor did in The Deadly Assassin.[28] In that story, the Presidency was described as a largely ceremonial role, but in The Invasion of Time[45] the orders of the office were to be obeyed without question.

The President and Chancellor also sit on the Time Lord High Council, akin to a legislative body, composed variously of Councillors and more senior Cardinals. Also on the High Council is the Castellan of the Chancellory Guard, in charge of the security of the Citadel, whom the Doctor has referred to as the leader of a trumped-up palace guard. According to the constitution, if while in emergency session the other members of the High Council are in unanimous agreement, even the President's orders can be overruled.[42]

Technology

Paradoxically, although the Time Lords are a scientifically and technologically advanced race, the civilisation is so old that key pieces of their technology have become shrouded in legend and myth. In the spin-off fiction, an edict and general aversion against exploring Gallifrey's past also contributes to this. Accordingly, until the Doctor rediscovers it, the Time Lords do not know the location of the Eye beneath their capital. They also treat such ceremonial symbols as the Key and Sash of Rassilon as mere historical curiosities, being unaware of their true function.

TARDISes are characterised not just by their ability to travel in time, but also their dimensionally transcendent nature. A TARDIS's interior spaces exist in a different dimension from its exterior, which is how it's bigger on the inside. The Doctor states that transdimensional engineering was a key Time Lord discovery in The Robots of Death.[53] In the revived series, the TARDIS has an organic look, and the Doctor states in "The Impossible Planet" that TARDISes are grown, not made.

Fitting their generally defensive nature, Time Lord weapons technology is rarely seen, other than the staser hand weapons used by the Guard within the Capitol. Stasers (acronym unknown) are lethal energy weapons, specifically designed to prevent the unwanted regeneration of rogue Time Lords; staser beams also shatter the crystalline structure of non-organic targets.

Standard TARDISes do not generally seem to use any on-board weaponry, although War or Battle TARDISes (armed with "time torpedoes" that freeze their target in time) have appeared in the spin-off media. In the novels, the Eighth Doctor's companion Compassion, a living TARDIS, has enough firepower to annihilate other TARDISes.

One exception to the Time Lords' defensive weaponry is the de-mat gun (or dematerialisation gun). The De-mat gun is a weapon of mass destruction that removes its target from space-time altogether, as seen in The Invasion of Time.[45] The de-mat gun was created in Rassilon's time and is a closely guarded secret; the knowledge to create one is kept in the Matrix and is available only to the President. To make sure this knowledge is not abused, the only way to arm a de-mat gun is by means of the Great Key of Rassilon, whose location is only known to the Chancellor. As a means of extreme sanction, the Time Lords have also been known to place whole planets into time-loops, isolating them from the universe in one repeating moment of time.

In the Eighth Doctor Adventures novel The Ancestor Cell by Peter Anghelides and Stephen Cole,[54] the Time Lords are shown to house other weapons of mass destruction in a stable time eddy known as the Slaughterhouse. In the Doctor Who Annual 2006,[55] a section by Russell T. Davies says that during the Time War, the Time Lords used Bowships (used against the Great Vampires in an ancient war), Black Hole Carriers and N-Forms (war machines first mentioned in the Virgin New Adventures novel Damaged Goods,[56] written by Davies).

[edit] History within the show

Details of the Time Lords' history within the show are sketchy and are, as is usual for Doctor Who continuity, fraught with supposition and contradiction. The Time Lords became the masters of time travel when one of their number, the scientist Omega created an energy source to power their experiments in time.[29] To this end, Omega used a stellar manipulation device, the Hand of Omega, to rework a nearby star into a new form to serve that source.[46] Unfortunately, the star flared, first into a supernova, and then collapsed into a black hole. Omega was thought killed in that explosion but unknown to everyone, had somehow survived in an antimatter universe beyond the black hole's singularity. Rassilon, the ultimate founder of Time Lord society, then took a singularity (assumed by fans and the spin-off media to be the same one as Omega's) and placed it beneath the Time Lords' citadel on Gallifrey. This perfectly balanced Eye of Harmony then served as the power source for their civilisation as well as their time machines.[28] In "The Satan Pit", the Doctor states that his race "practically created black holes. In fact, we did", presumably a reference to the singularity created by Omega.

At some point in their history the Time Lords interacted with the civilisation of the planet Minyos, giving them advanced technology. This met with disastrous results, the Minyans destroying themselves in a series of nuclear wars (Underworld[57]).

As of the current series, the Time Lords have, according to the Doctor, all perished at the conclusion of a Time War with the Daleks, leaving the Doctor the sole survivor and the last of his race (It was also revealed that the Doctor was responsible for the extinction of both races, as was confirmed by the Beast). This may not be entirely true however.[58] In the episode "Gridlock", the Face of Boe tells the Doctor with his dying breath that the Doctor is "not alone".

In the episode "Utopia" the Doctor learns that the Master survived. The Doctor failed to sense him because he used a chameleon arch to turn himself into a human (as the Doctor did in "Human Nature"), while hiding at the end of the Universe. The Master's subsequent conquest of 21st century Earth and his attempt to set up a new, expansionist Time Lord empire, is foiled by the Doctor and his companions. Shortly after his plan fails, the Master is shot by his Human wife and, refusing to regenerate, dies. The Doctor burns his body on a pyre. ("Last of the Time Lords").

 

[allshookup]

STOP!! Everytime I start to laugh I try to cough up a lung.
.

I feel like Crash right now, but I don't get it!

I didn't say I would eat lobstah widout buttah!!!!

Phew! I was wicked scared for a minute there!

 

[micmse2003]

Going to say goodnight!!!! I will be at theaters for 13 hours tomorrow!!!

I will NOT be on chat tomorrow night!! Anyone willing to take notes???

 

[allshookup]

Mike...

... you do NOT want to mess with a Time Lord now, do ya? Dr. Who is a Time Lord and his friends (myself and Andrew, to name a couple) also possess varying degrees of Time Lord powers too... so please cut us a little respectful slack when referrin' to da' commercial televison show otherwise known as Dr Who.

< wink >​

We need Dr. Who alerts along with math alerts!

 

[arlenesp]

I was told by DCL since we have an extra port more than WB...no decision has been made yet!!! This was Sunday night!!!



Note to self .............bring a huge bag the night of lobster dinner!!

I'll have to bring the new tote!!

And use it on comics to reverse and distort the image!

Or, if you see a nose you like in a magazine, you can copy it and put it on!

I'm starting to see a theme here .

Ahhhh, the fine art of egging! Usually done on Halloween, "egging" is literally throwing eggs at people, buildings, cars, etc.

We lived on a block wher the city bus would go by all the time. My bestfirend and I got so good at it we could figure out when to throw the egg so it would hit the buses as they slammed into it. We also waited to drop them on bald heads.
Of course now I realize how wrong it was

In my tummy!!!!



OOPS!!!! I don't have one but ignore on ex-spouses is bettter than even children.



If you have too many Lobster tails....just save them for Arlene and me!!! Lobster is not fattening unless butter is used!!!

Cheryl, I have that liquid imitation buttah!!! No calories etc. All artificial but tastes just like the stuff.

Gonna turn in for the night. It's been raining since dinner...

 

[captaincrash]

We need Dr. Who alerts along with math alerts!

Would this do?

 

[Lil' Grumpy]

to start...the ball rollin...i did not give texas..permission..to send
any snow..our way.... , .

..fyi, me & my lil' ..are the only ones sharing the same
computer...& iam afraid..to even to guess..what..all over the
keyboard... , might be left over chocolate..but that's
hoping...

and its bad enough...needing new galsses, and burning the midnight
oil.....geeks, its a wonder..anything...i post..resembles..english...
danish...begining to make sense...

...well andrew....there's been times i posted on trip reports...&
been "ball out"..by not the writer..but the other readers....the only
times...i even gave them a lil'redirectin interventions...are when
they made a comment about my lil' darling...[ dragon breaths ].

& i'm not talkin this lil'fella..."


fyi, i have not only enjoyed your family pics. but i 've appricated
the very useful insights. don't let others' envy disrupt your good
feelings..after all, who's going on their "second" pc cruise?

...i'm been ..all day. my lil'nurse friend..made it back home.
believe it or..not..she already planning on returning to work next week.
* life & death..can be so clse..but if you make.it..is all the counts!
unfor., another coworker...was not so lucky..her cousin drove into
flooding waters..and her/& daughter drown. [ 49/25] .

so by golly,, if i have any choices...i'm going to find some happiness
in every day.



the "stone" theory..got me thinking...how i can really impress my lil'miss
cutie..* if i can achieve complaince here, meaning...no blabbing..
..wow, add a 20 lber...then lose it the week prior..maybe she'll
give me..a hidden mickey?


..i don't kno about you crash..but it's easier to be bold...when you
don't have to face'them?



..oh, justm, fyi..i missed you..& your daughter 's exchanges..very

..the dynamics...& tug ..of ..war.


pssst, hey..sk*? what's u talking about? not encouraging them?
..i hink if we add craftmouse & andrew....would be...

very entertaining..dinning..with, double the..... ?

[ sorry andrew...i have this awful habit of aggregator..* well once upon
a "70"..i was a gator...] . pretty self evident..why..i don't drink-trouble".



dear arlernesp....you shouldn't be hiding that darlin smile....what
a great pic!


m & m's mom..are you a born & raised texas 's girl? * they should bring
back..the old south west conference.

* you know..growing up..we made our own toys. while that seem like
ancient history..maybe that's why ...autism was...rare? have you
heard..all the talk..about lead ..in children toys?../ & how autism
have been going thru..the roof?...lead, is a major toxin....to our
nervous systems...hymmmmmmmm. we need to care more what
our society..is exposing...our next generation to. of course, then
there are otehr factors..like getting $$$ for autism...[ i 've heard
of parents..trying to "make" their children..meet this defintion...,
sadly].

 

[captaincrash]

Interesting - ranked as of Febuary 11th...

Well after 13 years of being number ONE, Bill Gates is not the richest man on the planet anymore with 58B (up 2B from last year) ...

His net worth is #3 behind Mexican telecom tycoon Carlos Slim Helú at 60B (up 11B in the last year .... and up 100% in the last 2 years!) , and Warren Buffett is #1 again at 62B (up 10B).

The son of a Nebraska politician, Buffett delivered newspapers as a boy. He filed his first tax return at age 13, claiming a $35 deduction for his bicycle. He moved on to study under value investing guru Benjamin Graham at Columbia University.

Buffett began buying shares in textile firm Berkshire Hathaway in 1962 and purchased a controlling stake in 1965. He began buying insurance companies and astutely investing those companies' cash reserves.

Today, Berkshire is invested in insurance (GEICO, General Re), jewelry (Borsheim's), utilities (MidAmerican Energy Holdings (other-otc: MDPWL.PK - news - people )) and food (Dairy Queen, See's Candies). It also has noncontrolling stakes in Anheuser-Busch (nyse: BUD - news - people ), Coca-Cola (nyse: KO - news - people ) and Wells Fargo (nyse: WFC - news - people ). Recently, the company disclosed it owns a significant stake in Kraft Foods (nyse: KFT - news - people ).

In December, the company purchased a 60% stake in the Pritzker family's manufacturing and services group, Marmon Holdings, for $4.5 billion. The privately held Marmon owns businesses across wire and cable, transportation services and industrial products.

Despite Buffett's meteoric rise, his days as the World's Richest Man are almost certainly numbered. He had long promised to give away his fortune posthumously. But in the summer of 2006 he irrevocably earmarked the majority of his Berkshire shares to charity, most going to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

At the time, the gift was valued at $31 billion. However, assuming that Berkshire shares continue to rise, the final amount of the donation will far exceed that sum. Buffett gives 5% of his shares to charity every July.

In October, Buffett issued a challenge to members of the Forbes 400 richest Americans list, saying he would donate $1 million to charity if the collective group (or a significant number of them) would admit they pay less taxes, as a percentage of income, than their secretaries.

Days after issuing the challenge, Buffett appeared before Congress to encourage it to keep the estate tax. Armed with a few Forbes 400 issues, he told the hearing that "dynastic wealth, the enemy of a meritocracy, is on the rise."

Also, for the first time in a long time the majority of Billionaires are OUTside of the USA. With Moscow leading the way with the greatest concentration of billionaires in one city (40). Plus we have Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who at age 23 might just be the youngest self-made billionaire in history.

It is certainly a dawning of a new era. But not just because of Gates' fall. The 22nd annual rankings of the World's Billionaires reflects all sorts of upheavals in the list's makeup. Two years ago, half of the world's 20 richest were from the U.S. Now only four are. India wins bragging rights for having four among the top 10, more than any other country.

For the first time ever, the number of billionaires Forbes could identify crossed into four figures, reaching 1,125. The total net worth of the group is $4.4 trillion, up $900 billion from last year. Despite the turbulence in the U.S. markets, Americans account for 42% of the world's billionaires and 37%, of the total wealth; those shares are down two and three percentage points, respectively, from last year.

Sixteen years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia, with 87 billionaires, is the new No. 2 country behind the U.S., easily overtaking Germany, with 59 billionaires, which held the honor for six years.

The rankings include 226 newcomers. Seventy-seven of the new faces come from the U.S., half of whom made their fortunes in finance and investments, including John Paulson and Philip Falcone, both of whom became wealthy shorting subprime debt. Another third of the new billionaires comes from Russia (35), China (28) and India (19). Two of the most noteworthy new entrants are South Africa's Patrice Motsepe and Nigeria's Aliko Dangote, the first black Africans to make their debut among the world's richest. Dangote is also the first-ever Nigerian billionaire.

It is also a record-breaking year for young billionaires, with Forbes finding 50 under the age of 40, 25 of whom are new to the list. Sixty-eight percent of these under-age-40 tycoons built their 10-figure fortunes from scratch, including Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ) co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page; former Enron trader John Arnold, who now runs a hedge fund; India's Sameer Gehlaut, who started online brokerage Indiabulls; and, last but not least, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who at age 23 might just be the youngest self-made billionaire in history.

Zuckerberg is probably destined to be the most talked about newcomer of the year because of his age and ingenious social-networking site, but there are fascinating entrepreneurs of all ages climbing into the ranks. Some of the more notable ones include China's Gao Dekang, who is one of the world's biggest makers of down jackets and vests; Portugal's Americo Amorim, who turned his grandfather's small cork operation into the world's largest; and Brazil's Eike Batista, who built and lost a gold mining fortune, before hitting it big in iron ore. He is now one of the world's richest mining billionaires.

With all the rosy news of the past year and the overall gains, it is easy to lose sight of the volatility that has been wreaking havoc on these fortunes on a daily basis for months. For instance, Hong Kong's richest person, Li Ka-shing, lost $5.5 billion of his net worth, all tied to publicly held stocks, in the 37 days between Jan. 4 and Feb. 11.

Meanwhile, mainland China's richest person, 26-year-old Yang Huiyan, fell from $17.3 billion in September to $7.4 billion in the rankings. Google co-founder Sergey Brin's fortune touched $25.5 billion in the past year but is now down to $18.7 billion. Others were hit much harder, falling off the list entirely, including Lehman Brothers (nyse: LEH - news - people ) chief Richard Fuld and Bear Stearns (nyse: BSC - news - people ) ex-chief James Cayne (he was sacked), both victims of the world's credit crunch, and Pulte Homes (nyse: PHM - news - people )' William Pulte, whose stock collapsed along with the housing market.

What will happen in the next 12 months as we continue our wealth watching? There will likely be some big losers, some big winners and a lot of ups and downs in between. The only certainty is change itself.

Now I don't feel all that bad about MY losses in net worth this past year.

 

[Lil' Grumpy]

..i dunno..butter, butter lobsters ' storys..sounding..a lil'fishy

to me.

wedding storys?..oh, & ..noticed..the groom is
on the "extended" page..sorta shows who rules?


..well, i told you about..the bride shop..."displaying" my lil'miss
's glown?....did u think..that was the only lil'miss adventures..we
got into?..then you really don't know me....
ps..don't ask..about ..someone ..painting..our cake topper.....


wow! have you swabbies..ever seen the dcl travel channel special/

..[its on now]...they featured the sting rays....* 42

's..and one...very lucky ray!..i could be wrong, but
i could sworn..he..was smilin like the "devil"... oh, his name? ray,
of course..."devil ray"...well no wonder! [ with those kind of
odds...every jack's fantasy + "how u doing"?...] , i
need a cigarette & a chance to roll the dice!


so as the night..turns..the swabbies are up to no good, blame crash!
ps, noticed ladies,..how easy..it is to please..us swabbies?

 

[captaincrash]

...[ed]....:


..i don't kno about you crash..but it's easier to be bold...when you
don't have to face'them?

...[ed]....].

I'd rather lead from a-far If you catch my drift then "face" some characters...

< chuckles >​