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Doctor Who mythology: How The Deadly Assassin shaped Gallifrey and the Time Lords

By James Aggas

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The Deadly Assassin was a huge story that shaped the depiction of the Time Lords for decades to come. We take a look at how it achieved this.

(Image credit: Doctor Who/BBC.

Image obtained from: official Doctor Who website.)

In many ways, The Deadly Assassin was an extremely influential story in Doctor Who, particularly with its depiction of both Gallifrey and the Time Lords. We take a look at the many ways it left an impact for decades to come.

The Deadly Assassin is one of my all-time favorite stories in Doctor Who. It combines so many genres – sci-fi, horror, political thriller, to name a few – and features a great confrontation between the Doctor and the Master. But just as importantly, it also really helped to flesh out the Time Lords, and that’s what we’ll be looking at today.

At this point, the Time Lords had been around for a number of years already. First showing up in Patrick Troughton’s final story The War Games, they had made a few key appearances throughout the years.

Some of them were major, such as The Three Doctors, where we learned about Omega, one of the founders of Time Lord civilization. Some of them were brief and minor, such as in Terror of the Autons or Genesis of the Daleks.

But The Deadly Assassin was the story that fleshed them out like never before. Perhaps because it was the first time that Gallifrey had been focused on in such detail.

The story focused on the Doctor’s return to Gallifrey for the first time since The War Games. Not only was that previous visit at the very end of the epic serial, but at that point, the planet hadn’t even been given a name!

So a full four-part story on Gallifrey was big. The Doctor didn’t even have a companion with him at the time, as he had left Sarah Jane behind on Earth in the previous story, The Hand of Fear. As such, it gave us a very different look at the Doctor, as we saw him back home.

Of course, moments within arriving, he’s in danger of being arrested and chased by the Chancellary Guards. And that’s before he’s framed for assassinating the President!

Gallifreyan Chapters

This story established that there are numerous “Chapters” on Gallifrey. Different Time Lords belonged to different Chapters and Houses. These include the Arcalian and the Patrex Chapters.

But perhaps the most notable was the Prydonian Chapter. Most of the interesting Time Lords from Gallifrey (particularly the ones who broke the law) were from this very Chapter – including the Doctor himself. Basically, the Doctor’s the equivalent of a Slytherin on Gallifrey.

We also saw that within these Houses were different colors and symbols. One such symbol was the Prydonian seal, which later became the seal of Rassilon.

This seal has become distinctly iconic over the decades. If the symbol showed up, it basically meant “Time Lords”. (Or, in the case of the cover of The Eight Doctors, “we couldn’t think of a single image to use for this cover, so we thought this would do”.) It still occasionally crops up in the New Series too, most notably (naturally) in episodes set on Gallifrey.

Even the Time Lords’s very costumes were essentially defined right here until the very end of the Classic Series – and even beyond. Their distinctive high collar design featuring the symbols of their Chapters captured the pompousness of the race perfectly, and still remains a great look for them to this day.

In fact, when we got our first look of Gallifrey in the New Series in The Sound of Drums, those very costumes were essentially reused for the flashback scene. (See above.)

The Deadly Assassin shaped the politics of the Time Lords in a big way and left a large impact, particularly in the popular Doctor Who audio spin-off, Gallifrey.

(Image credit: Gallifrey/Big Finish Productions.

Image obtained from: Big Finish Productions.)

Gallifreyan politics

One other key way that The Deadly Assassin shaped the Time Lords was with their politics. Particularly in revealing just how ruthless some of them could be.

For example, while the assassination of the President was essentially orchestrated by the Master, in a desperate bid to gain more life, the man who helped him was simply desperate to be President himself. Naturally, the Master used him as an easy way to achieve his real goals.

The ambition and hunger for power seen by the Time Lords in this story has followed through to many others. The Five Doctors is definitely a key example with the character of Borusa. Originally a tutor of the Doctor, and in fact a good friend in many stories shown on screen, by the time of The Five Doctors, he was desperate for immortality. He had already been President for some time, but he wanted to rule Gallifrey forever.

Devious Time Lords

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However, worse was to come in The Trial of a Time Lord, when it was revealed that the High Council of Gallifrey had put the Doctor on trial, all because he had got too close to a conspiracy that they wanted to remain covered up. This is how tricky and dangerous the Time Lords can really be.

So it’s not surprising that the spin-off series Gallifrey, which is naturally set on the Doctor’s homeworld, primarily focuses on Gallifreyan politics. The series loves to explore the Time Lords’s greed and ambition, whether they have good intentions or not. It’s a very strong spin-off series, and one that we’ve greatly enjoyed reviewing at Doctor Who Watch.

All of these key aspects began with one story: The Deadly Assassin. The War Games may have introduced the Time Lords, and we should all be very thankful for that. But it’s with The Deadly Assassin – from Robert Holmes’s excellent writing to the wonderful set and costume design – that the Time Lords we know really became fully established.

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Have you seen The Deadly Assassin? Do you agree that it left quite an impact on the series? Let us know in the comments below.

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