#this is why we hate rassilon and the prydonian chapter

[mndvx]

My brothers became Time Lords, but I was abandoned and forgotten! DOCTOR WHO — The Three Doctors (Season 10 - Story 1) ››› Stephen Thorne as Omega ››› Jon Pertwee as The Doctor

[the-worms-in-your-bones]

Part 2: the questing beast

‘He did not remember much of the vortex’ → something his brain did itself, or is the vortex just not able to be fully comprehended by the mind so it just forgets it

‘Every second stretched as thin as piano wire’ → like the idea that the vortex is a bit like a singularity where all of time is one point, because what’s the point of having time in any linear or separate sense when you are in time itself

‘A sky as orange as childhood memory towards a skyline of mountains and bristling red forest’ → i know this is an alternate gallifrey, but i’ll take nay description of the planet i can get, i do hate how the trees on gallifrey are consistently mentioned, but we never once get to see a gallifreyan forest or the red grass, it's all just desert when we see the outside (also brax is just falling from the fucking here, i would love to know just how much fall damage a time lord can take, because a fall killed four, but brax obviously survives this and ten fell from a pretty good height too and was fine ish after)

‘The sigils and collars (colors?) adorning their clothes the only indication that he was anywhere familiar → interesting how even on an alternate gallifrey that is pretty different to his own they still have some similarities, are the symbols he’s talking about things like the seal of rassilon or gallifreyan writing, what does it say about gallifrey and time lord society that even in different universes their dress sense is still recognizable (also i couldn’t tell what word he was saying, but they either still dress in chapter colors or high collars, both of which have interesting implications to what gallifreyan society is like at its core, because sure these are alternate gallifreys along different timelines, but there still seems to be a need for them to be Gallifrey if that makes any sense, like there are some things that are essential to making gallifrey gallifrey no matter the universe)

Medieval gallifrey → still have two suns though, if i’m remembering correctly the second sun was artificial, so if this gallifrey doesn’t seem to have the technology of our gallifrey why does it still have two suns (maybe they once had this technology and then it was lost?)

Also the reference to specifically the technological might of the capitol → clearly its the hub for gallifreyan innovation and technology, but that makes me curious as to what the rest of gallifrey is like in respects to technology, i mean we do kind of see that with the houses its less tech and more the things around you are alive

‘He couldn’t remember when he’d last seen rain on his home gallifrey, or if he had only dreamt of it’ → again with the reference to it not raining much on gallifrey, i mean even if it was a desert planet, deserts still get rain, it wouldn’t have been long enough for him to not be able to remember the last time (especially given the lifespan of time lords) (also they have fucking trees and grass that they talk about but never actually show us), i’m inclined to believe this is due to time lords having almost complete control over the environment of gallifrey, but sometimes things slip through

‘Soldiers clad in metallic red’ → this universes version of the chancellery guard? Or is a prydonian red?

(unrelated to the lore, but my cat keeps stepping on my phone and making the audio skip around, and as i was typing this she stepped on my computer and managed to close this window)

Gold and white are still the colors worn by the leader on this gallifrey → i am very curious as to why the fashion seems to be the thing that carries over even when almost everything else is different

‘A crown branded with the mark of rassilon’ → again same with the clothing thing, why is it that the seal of rassilon carries over between universes

‘Braxiatel would have recognized her anywhere → yeah dude we know

On an actual lore note, i find it very interesting seeing what things carry over between the universes, the fashion for example, and in this case people’s roles in time lord (or gallifreyan) society, like it seems that if the society is in anyway recognizable as gallifreyan society (so not something like the true lords and vampire war gallifrey or something) there are certain things that will be the same, people will play similar roles in their society that they do on our gallifrey, you’ll find at least some of the same people (i know they’re our main characters, so it makes sense that this would focus on romana, leela, narvin, and brax, but it is still interesting to note that a good amount of the time most of them can be found on the alternate gallifreys, i’m not sure we’ve actually seen a gallifrey without at least one of them) (and it’s especially odd how often leela shows up given that she really has no reason to be on gallifrey outside of a very specific set of circumstances, unlike the other three who are all time lords) what does this say about gallifreyan history (and possibly the relative stability of gallifrey’s time line) that these similarities seem to pop up this often, something something to get something recognizable as gallifreyan society you have to have a certain amount of factors/events happen in a specific way

‘If there was a romana in this world, of course there would also be a narvin, yapping at her heels’ → see above (also he’s wearing all black it seems, and given that this gallifrey seems to have similar clothing to ours this probably signifies something like his job or rank)

There are horses on this gallifrey (are there horses on our gallifrey? I mean brax clearly knows what a horse is, but also it’s brax, that isn’t saying much about the status of horses on gallifrey)

‘He thought of his friends. Could he call them friends?’ → next few minutes are about to deal me psychic damage 

It’s kind of wild to me how brax seems to have like genuine fighting skills when they seem to be so rare among other time lords, like we get that bit in soldier obscura about his training and all that, but it’s not like you learn these things once and then are great at them forever, you have to practice or you’ll lose the skill and who the hell is he practicing with (or even just knowing how to fight puts him at an advantage over most time lords so he doesn’t bother?)

‘Leela is dead because of you’ → ignoring the actual emotional impact behind this line for a moment because how did leela get to gallifrey in this universe, they don’t seem to have time travel technology (though there is the second sun) so how would an alien get to their planet?

‘Why avenge a savage like leela’ → i love when there’s little bits to show that, yes, our characters are still time lords, no matter how much they’ve learned and grow, they still had probably hundreds of years worth of time lord propaganda taught to them (‘old habits from early days on gallifrey’)

‘She was my wife’ → i can’t fucking do this, they were married!!!!!!!! (i shouted when i first heard this line)

‘They always found one another didn’t they, romana and narvin and leela, always together in some combination, an enclave of familiarity against the vastness of time’ → them… just something about how they are meant to find each other, in universe after universe, their bond is strong enough that they can’t truly be separated, not completely, the universe wants them to be together so they are (or it doesn’t care but they’ll still fight to find each other) (i am going to cry)

‘But he stood apart’ → brax cares for them, but he still distances himself from them

‘It always seemed a shame to find a world where the other three were parted’

‘I know she’s a warrior, in every world i’ve ever visited. It’s part of her core nature’ → something something there are immutable traits to a person, even across universes (if they don't’ have those traits then can they really even be considered that person or something) (i’d love to have come up with something better to say, but alas, it is 2 am)

And brax almost called the doctor his brother, i truly don’t think i’ll ever get tired of this bit, it’s great

‘She bested me in every way that counted’ → i don’t even know what to say about this, i just, them, you know, i mean if you’re reading this i’m sure you get it

Oh narvin

‘Familiar, and yet clear and bright in a way he’d never seen them on his gallifrey’ → same constellations, but easier to see here, my two theories are light pollution and the transduction barriers, this gallifrey is medieval so they probably don’t have either a ton of light or the transduction barriers, but even still the gallifrey we know isn’t super populated, so light pollution might not be a huge problem (though maybe if you’re in one of the cities that wouldn’t matter) i also just like that the idea of the transduction barriers somewhat obscure space and the stars, you know because the time lords are so isolationist, it’s just another barrier between them and everything else, even when that everything is just stars, gallifrey is truly in its own little bubble

‘“Magic” he said, and refused to be pressed further’ → well i want to know, i mean there’s plenty of things relating to the time lords on our gallifrey that seem close enough to magic so maybe he’s looking for something similar on this gallifrey, or he’s just curious, idk

‘Dawn rose, gilding the forest in red and gold’ → look, i like that gallifrey is an audio series, i don’t think it would work as a tv show, but man, i wish so badly we got any visuals of gallifrey that weren’t just desert and mountains and the citadel

‘Blue tinged clouds’ → just putting this here for a description of gallifreyan environment, though this is an alternate gallifrey, so who knows how this compares to the gallifrey we know (also this whole bit, around 18 minutes into the audio, has some good descriptions of the landscape)

‘White checkerboard of his tabard’ → described as wearing black earlier, now we know his outfit has white, this man truly only wears one thing, no matter the universe (funny to me to think about how narvin’s sense of fashion is as consistent access universes as his loyalty or leela being a warrior)

‘A huge horned head, the size of a transport shuttle’ → unit of measurement that is only useful if one has seen a transport shuttle, though i guess a possibly interesting insight to how brax thinks if this is the first thing he thinks to compare size wise to a dragon

‘A creature ripped straight from earths mythology’ → interesting how dragons are apparently of earth origin here, now don’t quote me on this but i think its mentioned somewhere how some earth myths started on gallifrey or somewhere else and made their way to earth, but dragons apparently are an earth thing (this does beg the question of how and why brax on this gallifrey is a dragon though)

‘And yet, it looked familiar’ → i am once again asking by what measure time lords are recognizing other people, because how the hell does a dragon look familiar brax, this is of course unless they are looking at something other than purely physical appearance, time lords do have extra senses (and extra dimensions), we also see this in the deadly assassin where runcible recognizes the doctor before realizing that he’s regenerated

‘He could see it now, etched against the dragons smooth scales and dark horns, lashing tail and glinting claws-’ → see above rant

‘Nor was it the first time he’d met himself changed’ → now what do you mean by that brax

‘Forged by magic’ → counting this as a ‘gallifrey’s haunted’

‘Gold flecked gaze’ → look, this is probably due to the whole dragon thing, but wouldn’t it be cool if time lords could have gold eyes, wouldn’t that be fun

‘A loose thread, torn from the tapestry of time. Even the vortex will not have you’ → so this seems to be a gallifrey with a lower level of technology than ours, but they still know of the vortex and their own version of the web of time, very interesting (maybe the time vortex is an inherent part of this gallifrey’s ‘magic’)

‘I’ve never been this insufferable have i’ → brax, we need to be realistic here, you absolutely have

Also the recognizing like for like bit, since time lords don’t seem to be looking at physical appearance to see a person, do you think they can always tell when its themself (and this begs the question why the doctor is so fucking bad at recognizing other time lords, especially the master (though i did have the thought while writing this that the first time we see the master the doctor is exiled on earth and has had their brain messed with a bit, so maybe they no longer really have access to the sense that lets them see other time lords for who they are past appearance, and if that even fully recovers in their next regeneration the master is no longer in a time lord body up until we see them again in new who, so its very possible that whatever the doctor is looking to to identify the master is muddled, and once they do get a new time lord body in new who, that part of them might be altered and the doctor has spent so long knowing one version of what the master ‘looks’ like that they can’t quite get used to what they ‘look’ like with their new regeneration cycle))

‘Metal grey scales’ → look idk if it actually says/means anything that dragon brax is grey, but i’m writing it down anyway

‘Rassilon’s beard’ → love learning weird gallifreyan phrases

‘Every braxiatel needed a collection’ → so it seems the consistencies between universes for each of them are brax - collection, romana - leader, narvin - loyalty, leela - warrior

Okay so magic on this gallifrey is just temporal technology under another name, good to know → so was this gallifrey kind of like leela’s home planet, once an advanced civilization that has slipped back into a more ‘primitive’ way of being

‘This was still gallifrey, not matter its name in this place, temporal theory still held sway’ → time technology is what makes gallifrey gallifrey

‘The meeting of a same person duplicated across their own timeline’ → interesting that even though these braxs are from different universes them meeting still causes a paradox, that it’s still considered the same timeline

Dragon brax killed leela because she tried to get him to come back to the city, just like how our brax brought leela back into the citadel at the beginning of gallifrey

Interesting how much of a physical effect time paradoxes have (something something spacetime as one thing rather than space and time as separate, idk i’m a zoology guy not a physics guy)

‘The void lit the darkness with a rainbow glare’ → there’s probably something to say here, but all i can think of at the moment is how i really like this line, the void is like an oil spill across real space

‘The red an orange forest’ → so we’ve got silver trees and red trees, good to know, now they should show them to us, please i am begging you, i don’t even need like a good gallifrey episode, i just need an episode on gallifrey that shows us something other than desert and the inside of the citadel (actually who am i kidding, if the episodes shit i’m going to be complaining about that as well) like the scenes described here paint a wonderful picture, it’s just that forests on gallifrey are one of the first things we hear about the planet and yet we never see them

I love how time is painted as a force of nature at the end of this audio, the time winds and the seas of time, with brax having no option but to just go along with it

Echoes through eternity notes

Part 1: damned if you do

(i already did my reactions so this is mostly going to be focusing on lore implications) (fair warning, this is Long)

i will say, i love that they're putting the theme for the era each audio takes place in, season one theme i have missed you

the comments about bad weather not being common on gallifrey are interesting to me, is it a case of they're really just not common, or is it due to environmental manipulation (i'm inclined to go with the latter)

very interesting that the transduction barriers are only over the citadel (pretty sure this is contradicted in other things, but also maybe there are just different layers of transduction barriers, idk)

they're soundproof

outsiders -> societal rejects, like renegades, but without the leaving gallifrey (or possibly that they can't given they never reached time lord status in the first place (called 'uneducated'), is renegade only applicable to time lords) (also shaboggans are referenced later in this audio, are they different or just two names for the same group of people)

leela lives with the outsiders 50% of the time, wonder when this stopped (i'd say after becoming romana's body guard, but i feel like in the early seasons she still managed to find some time to spend in the outlands, and in the later seasons I doubt she leaves the capitol as much) (something something becoming more integrated into time lord society whether or not she or the time lords like it)

'all with more than a passing interest in our temporal capabilities' -> this is either referring to those at the academy and narvin distrusting them because of this or that the academy is open to anyone with an interest and i can't actually tell which

'all cia coordinators' -> very interesting to me that there are multiple coordinatiors, the thing is though that we still only really see narvin as the coordinator (same with vansell while he has that job), so my theory is that there is a head coordinator (in this case narvin) who has oversight over the whole cia and handles the majority of the diplomatic relations with the other branches of the government and is the one who is put in the public eye, allowing the others to work with more secrecy, i'd also assume that other coordinators oversee sections of the agency rather than the whole thing

establishment that the high council, inner council, and supreme council are all separate things, unfortunately this does not tell us what the actual differences between them are and neither does anything else really, though that's typical of anything relating to time lords

'various chancellors and castellans of the chapters and houses' -> there were references to different chapters having their own castellans in other gallifrey audios, but the inclusion of houses is interesting to me, i have the feeling that it wouldn't be all houses with their own castellan, but i'm not entirely sure what he means by this (maybe theres something along the lines of each chapter having a house that represents it on the high council?), also i thought the implication was that there was only one chancellor, it wasn't a per chapter things (though maybe theres like a chancellor chancellor who works directly with the president and then chancellors appointed for each chapter)

'that's the one constant on gallifrey, change is never irreversible' oh buddy you have no clue what's coming. I do find it hilarious how much he talks about not liking romana here knowing what he's going to be like in the future, it is genuinely fun to get to see early narvin in a context we never have before, especially with access to his inner thoughts, because even though he's an ass and still working against romana and leela, you can see the basis for the person he will become later, he still fundamentally is a guy that cares a lot about the things that are important to him

'rassilon, omega, and the other' -> finally the other gets mentioned, also kind of interesting to me how he's remembered, but his name is still lost (do we get an explanation as to why anywhere else? feels like some shit rassilon would pull, and given the other two have their names remembered i don't think it just happened naturally)

matthias used to be cia -> it's interesting to me that he goes from being cia to working in other parts of the government, because from what we've seen it seems that the cia is kind of at odds with the other parts of the government (especially the president and their immediate inner circle) so I feel like being ex-cia would not lend itself well to getting a job in another branch of government, it feels like they wouldn't be trusted enough by other politicians for that (not that there's really a whole lot of trust anywhere in time lord politics but you get my point) (though possibly depending on when he was cia it might just not be known by those outside the cia that he was once a part of it) (i say depending on the time because of the implications that romana forced the cia to become more public with its dealings and stripped it of some of its power) (that being said, i do think the coordinator was always a kind of public facing figure there to cover up what the cia was really doing and have a hand in politics outside the cia to keep the organization informed)

'although the practice was frowned upon for a cia coordinator, i had adjusted my wrist communicators chime to identify the caller' -> interesting how he specifies that its frowned upon for his position in particular (something something secrecy and not giving any info to the enemy (other time lords) something something)

'junior rank time lord' -> i do not understand time lord ranks, this seems to be used both in reference to experience and nobility status at different times, i need a fucking encyclopedia or something

shitting on prydonians!!!! <- words of a guy who definitely doesn't have opinions on the chapters and how prydonians are kind of stuck up assholes a lot of the time

'at the end of each semester she was seconded to me' -> she was just mentioned as having been a recent academy graduate, so i'm assuming that this is in reference to her cia training (pretty sure there's an audio somewhere where narvin mentions it being two hundred years, though i could never figure out if that was academy + cia training or just cia training) also if this is here cia training i find it interesting that shes working under a coordinator, i wouldn't exactly imagine the guy who runs the place having to deal with recent academy graduates unless that was something he chose to do (and given narvin's tendency to try and adopt/mentor any young adult he spends more than five minutes around this does not surprise me)

god i would love to see what young narvin was like, i mean we know he was at least somewhat defiant (you know the whole abandoning his chapter for the cia thing) but i wonder what he was like as a cia trainee (also the implication here that he was working under vansell much in the way that kransa is working under him, maybe the cia coordinators do take on apprentices (or what i think is more likely is that they select promising agents young and train them to take on higher up positions within the organization later in life, i mean we know vansell was working with the cia even in his academy days, so i don't feel like this is much of a stretch)) (though the way narvin talks about it makes it seem like it's just a part of the job and not something they choose to do, but then again time lords love nothing more than tradition so maybe its just a thing that is done and has been done, so they do it even if they don't particularly want to or have to)

the matrix keepers -> interesting how its a job for those on their last regenerations (something something the old are given the task of upkeep of gallifreys secrets because they're old enough to know them just from life experience?) (or them knowing the secrets is not seen as a threat because of how close to becoming a part of the matrix they are, whatever they learn there is just going to go back into the matrix after all, and there's really not that much time until that happens), they also seem to be separate from the rest of time lord society (they've got their own coordinators and they seem to live down there) so they're not really at rick of spreading gallifrey's secrets

the ability to see through perception filters is learned

catacombs protected by perception filters at the entrance and psychic defenses within the air itself -> and yet academy era romana was just hanging out down there for fun it seems (also the reference to the ancient beings that live down there ('almost mythical' which is so interesting to me since we see over and over again that gallifreyan myths are just stories about their actual history and that their monsters are real, it seems here that narvin is acknowledging this to some extent), so they just know that there's things down there i guess? i mean seems very time lord to not do anything about it because if they're in the catacombs they're presumably not bothering them, but they're still accessible if needed for whatever purpose they may see fit

love that narvin is just letting kransa tag along even though it mean she's technically disobeying orders just because it annoys valyes

'the cia decides who does and doesn't have clearance in all security matters' -> interesting implications that they have the final say when it comes to security of gallifrey, not entirely surprising though (something something it being leftover from their start as rassilons guards even though they've split from their association with the presidential office by this point)

'i was rather surprised at how easily i lied' -> narvin shouldn't that be part of your fucking job description, though it does have the interesting implication that lying isn't necessarily needed to get into the high rankings of the cia, this could make sense given how much power they seem to hold, its more of a need to know how to proper wield that power than to be able to lie

cia intervention used to get around the legal and political consequences fro certain actions -> they seem to still operate outside the law to an extent, though narvins reaction says that maybe they are still able to be held accountable to it

'perception filters had not been fully triggered' -> ???? narvin what do you mean by that, i've been typing for too long to actually put the effort into thinking about this one, i would like to request that narvin explain it to me personally, but honestly i don't think he actually knows about about perception filters for that

capitol seems to be split up into sectors, i very much would like a map of this place or something because it seems huge and complicated based on everything we've heard about its architecture

love the idea that you can look through a perception filter by catching it out of the corner of your eye

narvin not knowing how the perception filters work -> i wonder if this is a type of thing that you only learn if you pursue certain career paths, like you're not going to learn the details of how a perception filter works in an introductory engineering class, but you might learn how to create one in a more advanced class (also probably something something they don't want people knowing these things because even if they are other time lords they still need to be able to hide information from the general public and people knowing exactly how perception filters work puts that at risk)

being a time lord lets them see through the perception filter -> interesting how this is something that seems explicitly linked with the whole looking into the untempered schism thing, having that experience fundamentally changes a person and how they see the universe (also interesting how he links it to being 'time lords of rank and status' because as we have previously seen its a thing that happens when gallifreyans are pretty young, i am curious as to if he's just saying this to separate them from the alien students that managed to see through it though)

'a time lord, probably of the first or second rank' -> again with the time lord ranks, see he's talking about academy students here so i would assume said time lord is also an academy student, based on other bits from this audio i wonder if the ranks are sort of a way of showing how far along in their education they are (sort of an analog to stuff like elementary, middle, and highschool, as well as college and postgrad stuff), with his comment about the 'time lord of rank' and looking into the untempered schism possibly that is how you earn being a first rank time lord, if you pass the test of the untempered schism you get that rank, and then there's second rank which idk what that would refer to but it seems that it possibly still means you're at the academy, and given kransa is called a junior rank time lord, i'm assuming that is given to time lords pretty fresh out of the academy

interesting the implication that the houses get punished for the actions of their members whether or not they actually had anything to do with what that person was doing (something something legacies and nobility, can't have a bad mark on their record otherwise it says something about the whole bloodline)

the doors use biodata -> interesting to me because we see in other things that there also seem to be retinal scans and just straight up codes, wonder if this is a case of differing security levels, anyone can learn a code, and i would assume its much easier to fake a retinal scan than a scan of someones biodata

is it just the time lords we meet, or are all of them weirdly self sacrificial

'according to some accounts, we were no longer in the same time and space as the rest of the planet' -> fascinated by this, the catacombs are their own sort of pocket dimension (and there's the whole thing with the door disappearing after they go through it)

'the creatures and whatever existed in the catacombs had created their own pocket reality'

the thing about gallifrey as a planet is that it's full of people who insist on scientific belief and that religion and myth and magic are below them, but it fundamentally is a place that is full of magic and myth, their history is so long and complex that the time lords themselves are mythical beings and their myths are historical accounts

'assuming the dimensions in here are stable and not in a state of flux or wither' -> interesting to me because the like fundamental state of things on gallifrey is that they don't flux of wither, but the catacombs seem exempt from this, narvin assures kransa it's probably fine, but there's no guarantee like there is on the rest of gallifrey

and narvin discovers his instinct to adopt people -> i mean on that note i do like that even though this is early narvin and he clearly holds all of the biases instilled in him by time lord society, he still also clearly cares, we see the basis of the passion he puts into the things he cares about that leads him to be a better person in his future

are they using some sort of psychic whatever to choose the direction? intuition? because this is clearly some sort of teaching moment, so its not just random, but a skill that can be learned, what exactly are they basing this off of, like what are they subconsciously looking for to lead the way or do they even not quite know and its just a thing that they do

east gallifrey doesn't have houses!!!!!! -> god i love anything that shows that gallifrey and the time lords aren't just a monolith, they may present themselves that way to outsiders, but they're not all the same, there's also the fact that despite having no house she still has a chapter which actually i feel like helps to clarify a lot of confusion around how the chapters work (at least for me), so houses probably have chapters that they are affiliated with and if you are born into that house, you are probably going to be in that chapter, but at the same time it is perfectly possible to go to the academy for a chapter that your house is not associated with (though i'd assume this is much less common than joining the chapter associated with your house)

'someone from one of the greater houses' -> brax house (sort of) mention, there's also his thing about chapters and houses not mattering as much these days and it being like a thing that he wasn't ostracized for this (something something the houses must maintain their image because their image is their power, but that power (and with it the need to control the image) is slowly fading), the whole everything about gallifreyan class structure is very interesting to me, because clearly the time lords are the ruling class on gallifrey, but even among them theres differences, your house or chapter has an influence (prydon has produced more presidents than any other chapter and we know that multiple of the chapters hold little to no political power) (and with the houses we see in transference that being born into a house doesn't mean you'll go to the academy and become a time lord, but i'm sure that for the houses of higher status (say lungbarrow since we're talking about brax here) it's pretty much a guarantee that a person will go on to become a time lord)

'my own origins from a family of humble temporal engineers, my uncles transgressions that brought about his exile many years ago' -> i need to know more about narvins backstory, please tell me more about narvins backstory, what did his uncle do? also theres the fact that narvin was not born into high status but still managed to achieve high rank within the cia, wonder what that process was like for him

the bit about narvin wondering if brax was goading him personally -> the implication that narvin is very much affected by his house status in his everyday life/his career while brax probably doesn't have to worry too much since he was born into a high house

'is my background a problem for my training or future' -> time lord classism runs deep, i mean the eveything about this interaction shows this, but yeah

'the ground beneath us, well beneath me, i can only assume it was the same for kransa' -> the fact that the catacombs are weird and fucked up enough for this to be a thing he says is really something, i mean he does go onto talk about the wall being weird and them moving, the dimensions around here are weird and i like that, citatels haunted

seventh door -> what is the significance of the different matrix doors?

'conceptual environments that simply couldn't exist but appeared completely real' -> like i said before citadels haunted, but seriously i think its interesting that the structures themselves are alive, i mean we see this with the houses and stuff, but with the matrix it's a repository for the minds of dead time lords, so i have the feeling that it's less it was built to be alive in the first place and more the accumulation of time lords within it gave it a sort of life, and that even though these structures aren't entirely 'real' because they are built from the minds of a psychic species and are interacting with the minds of a psychic species they may as well be

'were the catacombs simply an extension of the apc net itself' -> see above

'but surely others had studied it before' -> if you have to say this they probably didn't (or it was like one guy) (speaking from experience)

'everyone knew about the catacombs ..... but i couldn't recall any reports from people who'd explored beyond, but surely they must exist. all the stories of the creatures that dwelt here must come from somewhere, someone, so why couldn't i remember reading anything' -> the information is known but it does not exist, love this concept, a society that catalogues everything and yet things from right under their own feet go unwritten, i feel like to an extent this is probably a product of how their society is structured and what beliefs they deem acceptable, all their myths and monsters are real, but that's too close to magic so we won't write it down, on the other hand maybe they don't want to be written down, maybe its that there is information that can only be properly passed on through stories and not reports, also something something all time lords are connected to the matrix, the matrix is the repository of all time lord knowledge, there are something that you don't need to read about, that you don't need to learn, but you still know them

there are non humanoid students at the academy -> don't think there's actually any big lore implications with this one, just seemed like something to note

'their torch light appeared to unnaturally stop' -> narvin your planet is haunted i don't know what to tell you

'it was as if by standing there he, she, it somehow absorbed light, shadow, anything' -> like i said before the time lords may like to present themselves as a society that's above 'primitive' beliefs, but fundamentally gallifrey is a place of magic (now there's the argument to be made that magic and science are one and the same but i don't thing that negates my point)

'the head was a black globe .... it gave neither light nor reflection, again as if absorbing everything around it. a black hole'

'i don't know why but i knew this thing was not benign' -> has some sort of psychic aura?

the implication here that narvin considers like actual emotional responses to be below time lords (reminds me of homunculette crying about marie while going why am i crying i'm a time lord i don't care about things)

'its ability to create pockets of frozen isolated time meant it was more powerful than anything i could ever have imagined' -> very interesting to me knowing that the cia have put whole planets in stasis or time loops or whatever before, does it get more complex as you get to smaller spaces? actually maybe its that they need complex technology to do this and the time shade is just kind of doing it

also i've said it before and i'll say it again, gallifrey is a deeply haunted planet, and i don't just mean that as a joke, it has a long enough history and its technology works in such a way that its myths and gods and ghosts are all real

'i'm going to be destroyed by the living embodiment of sarcasm' -> i mean really narvin, how else would you go out if not that

'the time shades were legendary, reports of their existence going back to the days of rassilon' -> something something the time lords dared to mess with time so it forever changed how their world worked, like with the matrix dimensions being weird and that information just being Known i feel like that could be a product of accumulated time lord minds within it, but with the time shades i feel like its more a consequence of if you mess with time it will forever change everything, both in your past and future, these things have consequences on the fabric of the universe itself

'the shade of eternity, the shade of war, the shade of dreams, the shade of protection, the shade of.. i couldn't remember the entire pantheon at the moment' + the shade of portent -> i truly do love how time lords act like they're above religion and all that but they undeniably have gods and they still do treat them as gods

i feel like there's probably something to the fact that it's wearing gold, i just don't know what at the moment

'for a time lord of so low a rank' -> see here i think its talking about rank in terms of houses not like achievement of status, because in terms of job narvin is pretty high ranking, but as we've established he does not come from a particularly noble background

'you are a pivot around which so much of what is to come rotates' -> this kind of plays into an idea that i really like and its that gallifrey's future is largely fixed, the time lords can mess with the time lines of other species and planets all they want, but by the nature of them being the ones to wield that power over time, they can't actually alter their own time lines all that much, since they can change time they are also the center around which time changes, the eye of the storm if you will, and that means that they have very little control over what happens to them (maybe this is why they're so obsessed with controlling the narrative, because if they can't actually control the events themselves, they can at least control how everyone perceives them)

'shocking really but it has been decreed' -> time herself said it and we can't argue with that (at least that's how i'm choosing to interpret this)

'free will, change, alteration is not an option'

the way the time shade talks to narvin (i'm not writing it all out sorry) about how he's just a small bit of practically nothing in the scheme of existence -> the time lords see themselves as so important, but really they are just people like everyone else in the universe and the universe will largely treat them as such, a king may hold more power, but at the end of the day he's just as human as a farmer, and the dirt they're buried in won't be able to tell the difference

'a shard of the essence of the untempered schism, but wrapped around reality, my reality' -> this is very cool imagery to me, just the fact that for a moment the web of time is bent to wrap around narvin and his existence, that the time shade has the power to do that

'the high collared black of a magistrate' -> more info about how time lords dress is always good to have, if you're me at least, not that i particularly do anything with this information, i just like having it

narvin seeing that he's the one to start the war :(

narvin is actually linked with a tardis (i'm assuming its the one ace rigged), i love that we get confirmation that it's not just a tardis he is flying, but His tardis (also the 'linked eternally' bit -> the bond between a time lord and their tardis is forever then? interesting given how other things have implied that the bond can be severed, but maybe this is only the case in extreme cases, but otherwise it just stays? also maybe something something tardises exist in a relationship with the vortex that means they don't perceive time linearly and that applies to their bond with their time lords)

the encounter with the time shade is erased from his memory, he still has the impression of it, but of course just writes it off as shadows, what else are you going to do in a place like that where reality isn't quite real

knowledge comes with a price -> the price was kransa

i said this in another post, but i'm going to say it again because it's still funny to me, but i know narvins note to romana is probably through official channels, but i am just imagining him sending her anonymous hate mail

interesting how even if its been erased narvin seems to be able to know something is gone and even what is gone (something something time lords and their unique relationship and ability to perceive time)

he still dreams about it, the burning planet and kransa -> he needs that knowledge for time to happen as it should, as it must (the time war was always going to happen and he was always going to start it, it's unavoidable, it's what time has determined will happen so it has to happen, the story can change, but the ending will stay the same)

'saving gallifrey from its president' -> well he will be doing that in the future, but definitely not from the president he was expecting