The Time Lords ...

[WhiteCrowNZ]

One of the legacies of RTD's era was to remove the Time Lords - erase them.

I had mixed feelings about that - although I like them as a race, generally I didn't want to see an "adventure on Gallifrey". And oh how he teased us in The End of Time, only to make them extinct again.

Okay in a lot of ways it ups the ante in the series, as the Doctor is the last of his kind, and the last line. There are no race of omnipotent superbeings to save the galaxy if he fails. RTD is an atheist is he?

Personally though I think they worked best with the first two Doctors, with a minimal presence. In the War Games, they're all aloof, God-like and mysterious. However I think with increasing reuse they lost a considerable amount of their mystique.

The Doctor also quickly went from being an outcast and petty criminal in their society, to a revered figure and Presidential heavyweight.

Thoughts?

[Larry]

Personally though I think they worked best with the first two Doctors, with a minimal presence. In the War Games, they're all aloof, God-like and mysterious. However I think with increasing reuse they lost a considerable amount of their mystique.

?

I'd pretty much agree with that in The War Games, we got a real feeling of them being an all powerfull god like race yet by Invasion of Time, they had become a bunch of incompitant bumbling baffoons that even a piece of tin foil could defeat.

I to have mixed feelings about killing the time lords off, in some respects RTD, could have returned them to that all powerfull god race we don't ever need to see them but they could just from time to time be there lerking in the shadows manipulating things.

[Andrew Curnow]

The Time Lords in the War Games suited the story perfectly - after several episodes (and arguable several years!) of build up, our first glimpse of the Doctor's race is spot on, being an aloof bunch in comparison to which the Doctor is an obvious rebel. They are mysterious, all-powerful, and not even really 'good' in an obvious sense.

But a story set amidst those kind of people would have been very dull I think, very difficult to write. I don't think there's anything wrong with the 'revision' of The Deadly Assassin, etc, but once we'd seen Gallifrey once I don't think it was, or could, ever be that exciting again.

For me, I think RTD was right to ditch them - equally right to use them as a way to up the stakes for Tennant's finale, but then right a third time to consign them back to the Time War. Maybe they'll be back again, but I'm not sure really what you could do with them. The Doctor works best, for me, as a homeless traveller and that's definitely what he is now.