Post by The Doctor on Mar 28, 2013 19:07:12 GMT -5
(Note: None of this is mandatory. It's a sort of mental exercise in thinking about how the Time Lords view time, and simultaneously a way to approach the layout of our boards. I quite like it myself, and I hope you do too. But don't feel like you have to let it get in the way of a good story.)
The Web of History
Human beings, like all species with no instinctive comprehension of the movement of time, tend to think of time as a "line". Each new second tacks on to the end of the old second, creating a chain of links stretching from the first instants of the big bang all the way into the endless, freezing night of the Dark Era. Every effect has a cause, and each event gives rise to the next in logical progression.
The Time Lords see history differently.
To imagine time as the Time Lords see it, imagine standing on a path. In front of you, the trail branches. Each branch branches again. And again. And again. Sometimes, branches meet back up. Sometimes they veer off wildly. Got that? Now, try to imagine an infinite number of branches.
That, to a limited degree, is the way this instant of time looks to a Time Lord. Time itself, to a Time Lord, is an interconnected multidimensional web of decision points and pathways. With a TARDIS, a Time Lord can navigate this web, moving to one possible future (or past) or another as desired.
At the dawn of the civilization of the Time Lords, it is said that Rassilon led his people in an act of temporal engineering of unprecedented scale. Known as the Anchoring of the Threads, the Time Lords took it upon themselves to prune and shape the chaotic mass of the Web of History, ensuring their own survival and primacy by cutting away branches of time that would lead to universes in which they no longer ruled (or, worse, never existed).
The Anchoring of the Threads also unleashed the cosmic horrors called the ysgaroth into the universe. But that is a tale for another day.
Gallifrey, Time, and History
On Gallifrey, the Time Lords made a distinction between Time and History. History is what the "young races" lived in, the span of interconnected branches from the Big Bang to the Dark Era that made up what they thought of as the "timeline of history". This was distinct from Time, which is what the Time Lords lived in.
Because of the Anchoring of the Threads, Gallifrey was outside History - in much the same way that the weaver is not part of the tapestry. From outside History, a "tamed" history controlled from the Cruciform atop the great artificial mountain Axis Mundi, the Time Lords could insert their TARDISes into any point of History and return again. The great living timeships were used to maintain the "machinery" that maintained the Web of History, to explore the Spiral Politic, and to interene in direct and subtle ways at a million million points of interest to the Time Lords.
To preserve the sanctity of their own Time, the Time Lords constructed the Web to make retromodification of Gallifrey's own history nearly impossible. Secure behind their fortified walls of Time, the vast majority of them even came to believe that it was impossible to do so.
The Layout of the Board
You can think of the various boards as historical "benchmarks" in the history of Gallifrey. Time Lords in a given board cannot travel between boards except by aging, as that would represent free movement through Gallifrey's history - and not even a TARDIS can do that easily or with impunity.
In the First Doctor's board, for instance, you can travel from the Big Bang to the Dark Era, and never find the Toclafane. Those horrors were created in the age of the Tenth Doctor. Likewise, you would never find Davros - the Daleks of the time are still mutated Dals, powered by static electricity and hate.
As a result, questions like "when did the Time War happen" only take on meaning from the perspective of the Time Lords. The Time War happened outside History, and impacted every part of it.
(Again, needless to say, we don't bother to enforce this. But, when the crossovers happen, you should wave your hands a little and comment on how impossible it all is. That seems well in keeping with the spirit of the show.)
The Web of History
Human beings, like all species with no instinctive comprehension of the movement of time, tend to think of time as a "line". Each new second tacks on to the end of the old second, creating a chain of links stretching from the first instants of the big bang all the way into the endless, freezing night of the Dark Era. Every effect has a cause, and each event gives rise to the next in logical progression.
The Time Lords see history differently.
To imagine time as the Time Lords see it, imagine standing on a path. In front of you, the trail branches. Each branch branches again. And again. And again. Sometimes, branches meet back up. Sometimes they veer off wildly. Got that? Now, try to imagine an infinite number of branches.
That, to a limited degree, is the way this instant of time looks to a Time Lord. Time itself, to a Time Lord, is an interconnected multidimensional web of decision points and pathways. With a TARDIS, a Time Lord can navigate this web, moving to one possible future (or past) or another as desired.
At the dawn of the civilization of the Time Lords, it is said that Rassilon led his people in an act of temporal engineering of unprecedented scale. Known as the Anchoring of the Threads, the Time Lords took it upon themselves to prune and shape the chaotic mass of the Web of History, ensuring their own survival and primacy by cutting away branches of time that would lead to universes in which they no longer ruled (or, worse, never existed).
The Anchoring of the Threads also unleashed the cosmic horrors called the ysgaroth into the universe. But that is a tale for another day.
Gallifrey, Time, and History
On Gallifrey, the Time Lords made a distinction between Time and History. History is what the "young races" lived in, the span of interconnected branches from the Big Bang to the Dark Era that made up what they thought of as the "timeline of history". This was distinct from Time, which is what the Time Lords lived in.
Because of the Anchoring of the Threads, Gallifrey was outside History - in much the same way that the weaver is not part of the tapestry. From outside History, a "tamed" history controlled from the Cruciform atop the great artificial mountain Axis Mundi, the Time Lords could insert their TARDISes into any point of History and return again. The great living timeships were used to maintain the "machinery" that maintained the Web of History, to explore the Spiral Politic, and to interene in direct and subtle ways at a million million points of interest to the Time Lords.
To preserve the sanctity of their own Time, the Time Lords constructed the Web to make retromodification of Gallifrey's own history nearly impossible. Secure behind their fortified walls of Time, the vast majority of them even came to believe that it was impossible to do so.
The Layout of the Board
You can think of the various boards as historical "benchmarks" in the history of Gallifrey. Time Lords in a given board cannot travel between boards except by aging, as that would represent free movement through Gallifrey's history - and not even a TARDIS can do that easily or with impunity.
In the First Doctor's board, for instance, you can travel from the Big Bang to the Dark Era, and never find the Toclafane. Those horrors were created in the age of the Tenth Doctor. Likewise, you would never find Davros - the Daleks of the time are still mutated Dals, powered by static electricity and hate.
As a result, questions like "when did the Time War happen" only take on meaning from the perspective of the Time Lords. The Time War happened outside History, and impacted every part of it.
(Again, needless to say, we don't bother to enforce this. But, when the crossovers happen, you should wave your hands a little and comment on how impossible it all is. That seems well in keeping with the spirit of the show.)
