Genesis: The Dawn of the Time Lords

Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who. It belongs to the BBC.
Author’s Note: Okay, the events in this story use the tale of the Timeless Child with a few small changes. I don’t have a problem with a female Doctor as long there is a story need for it and not just a case of do it because we can. I quite like the idea that some Time Lords we met in the series switching gender. The Rani is a good example because I can see the type of amoral scientist she is when female is very different to how it would be when male. Missy and the Master are another example. Some Time Lords however, I could see taking steps to avoid changing gender, going so far as to force regeneration to get back to what they believe is their true form.
 

Dawn of the Time Lords

Universe Zero, Prime Reality.
The Fifth Age of Existence.

The Celestials completed their assigned task to finish the rough shaping
of existence that had been accomplished by the Power at the will of The One.
Their mission complete, they prepared to
return to their creator for an assessment of their collective efforts and new
instructions. But, before they left they realised that some of their work would
continue to evolve in their absence and that some of the more volatile planes
such as the physical plane, could even collapse if left without their guidance.
They had expanded a great deal of their time and efforts to the physical plane,
the so-called Mortal Realm to make it  suitable for the vulnerable forms of
life that they knew would exist there. They had gone so far as to implant worlds
with the means to support life in what they admitted was a harsh and unsuitable
environment. But their time had expired and they needed to move on. They needed
a solution.

They decided to use the life-forms that had started to emerge, as
their agents to preserve the work they had completed. They selected races that
possessed the traits they needed and gifted them with the means to evolve and
become masters of their environment. They provided them with the tools and
knowledge they could use if they had the intelligence and will to do so. And if
they reached the level The Celestials expected of them, they would possess
everything needed to maintain the fragile universe and even make changes.

The Celestials did not give their aid freely and they did not opt for the
simple approach. If their chosen races were to achieve the level of evolution
that The Celestials desired, they would need to reach that level on their own.
It was not a case of wave an almighty hand and watch as their test subjects
advanced overnight. The Celestials wanted their chosen races to prove themselves
worthy. And so aside from a few hints and odd pieces of technology, the
constructs remained hands-off.

Of course, self-preservation prevented them from simply elevating their chosen races to the level of
The Celestials.
Despite their desire to preserve their work, a small part of them balked at the
idea of providing their creator with an easy alternative if he was disappointed
with their efforts. Instead they gave them the means to develop and left the
rest up to evolution. Some would rise and succeed, taking on the roles The
Celestials wished of them. Others would fail and be forgotten as time moved on.
They would grow, compete, struggle and thrive, proving The Celestials correct
and preserving their work for inspection.

And after they had completed that small task, The Celestials departed.

The Celestials had been careful when select those races that showed potential. They had sought out those they considered capable of the growth they needed with a limited time frame. They had looked for the ambition and drive to place themselves as the dominant species while seeking an aversion to seeking complete control – they wanted leaders not dictators. And they wanted those that would continue to push at the boundaries of their existence, elevating those around them as they did so. It was therefore no surprise that the planet of Gallifrey drew their attention.

Gallifrey was inhabited by a race known as the Shobogans. The Shobogans held the appearance of being humanoid, an appearance they would later attempt to make the default shape for all intelligent life in the cosmos. They had started out as a
very primitive race, but following the intervention of The Celestials, they had shown all the attributes that The Celestials considered essential. To accelerate their growth, The Celestial looped the history of Gallifrey, linking the moment of its creation to the moment of its destruction through a tear in the fabric of space and time – the Gallifreyans would come to call it the Untempered Schism. The
influence of the tear radically altered the Shobogans’ minds, allowing them to learn and consume knowledge at an amazing rate.
Such rapid evolution made them perfect for The Celestials’
purposes.

As time passed, the ancient Shobogans discovered more and more of the secrets of the universe. And through their discoveries they learned about the existence of
a vast pool of energy that existed in another dimension. They used it to light their early cities and cool their homes.
There were even some among them who could channel that energy and use it to perform incredible feats that could not be explained by their
conventional understanding of science. Indeed the knowledge that some acts of mysticism could not be tested, measured, dissected – if necessary, and then replicated using technology was a cause of distress to the young race.

Their forced evolution made the Shobogans fast learners. They developed technology that allowed them to reach the stars and beyond. They used the energy they had barely begun to understand to power their ships as they sent out fleets to learn more about the universe and to secure their place within it. The colonies they established would remain long after the race discovered its greatest secrets and due to their use of magic, would become an embarrassing secret that they tried to cover up.

Eons later, civil war on Gallifrey had seen the planet divided between those that could use
the strange energies they referred to as magic (and were willing to do so
regardless of what their peers believed), and those that either could not access the energy in that way
and favoured the highly praised arts of science. The balance of power between
the two factions had shifted countless times as they struggled to determine the
direction of their race. Neither side had yet to gain the power to completely subjugate the other. Although they were more powerful at the time, the magic users lacked the desire to slay their enemies, preferring to be merciful. Sadly that meant further uprisings and more bloodshed as those favouring science and logic continued to seek the
complete removal of magic first from Gallifrey and then rest of the universe, by any means…

However, some did not involve themselves in the war and chose to continue exploring the cosmos,
leaving the petty infighting behind them. Tecteun was a true pioneer for her people. She had been a part of the group that had solved the Theory of Relativity and used it to unlock the secrets of fater than light travel. Through her actions, space flight had evolved to the point of being about to cross
multiple galaxies in a matter of months.Tecteun as one of the planet’s greatest explorers had already gone further than many of her peers, mapping out the cosmos in her own admittedly primitive spaceship. She was an ambitious woman, always seeking to go further and achieve more than
those around her. It was said that if she ever managed to see the entire universe she would start looking for ways to
reach what lay beyond its walls.

On her journey, she created and devised files on the life forms she encountered, and during her voyage she encountered many temporal rifts which she believed would be of great interest to her people. When she returned, Tecteun had immediately returned to her workshop and built a new type of craft capable of crossing galaxies in a much shorter time, without the need for deep sleep. It was her latest flight that would attempt to reach the limits of known space as observed from her homeworld. The flight was a success, crossing known space in a matter of hours.

At her destination, she landed upon a seemingly uninhabited world to refuel. After detecting anomalous energy readings, Tecteun discovered a wormhole. According to her initial scans, the wormhole led to another universe with the entrance being centred upon a temple of some kind. Her later probes would determine the wormhole more about the wormhole and what lay on the other side, but something else piqued her interest underneath the wormhole. Beneath these ruins was a small child wearing yellow robes.

The child was abandoned, alone, and frightened. Tecteun took the child and they began exploring the cosmos together. The two formed a strong bond as they explored the ever-expanding universe, with both teaching each other something new all the time over the years. Tecteun helped to teach the child a great deal about mathematics, and science in many fields, while the child in turn helped Tecteun understand more about the nature of time and space, possessing uncanny instincts and knowledge, although neither of them was aware that later Tecteun would take that instinctive knowledge from the Child.

However, showing strong scientific interest in the child, Tecteun began examining her adoptive child to learn more about him, but she wasn’t able to discover too much. Something in the child’s biology shielded it from the deep level cellular research that Tecteun desired.

After travelling the cosmos for decades – for it would not occur to Tectuen until much later that although decades had passed, the child had not aged physically, the duo finally returned to Gallifrey, and the planet’s scientific and technological prowess began to grow following Tecteun’s discoveries, and many fleets of ships left the planet to finish what Tecteun had begun. Tecteun was welcomed back and treated as a figure of authority. She became the planet’s lead scientist, the mentor of those that would follow. While the child flourished among its new peers, being declared a prodigy in science and engineering.

That changed on a fateful day when the child suffered an accident. The child was not as physically strong at the natives as was demonstrated when he fell from a cliff while playing.

A Shobogan child would have survived the fall even though their injuries would require months of recover. The child did not have that level of resillience and lay still at the bottom of the cliff. Even as Tecteun, who had witnessed the whole thing, rushed to see if there was anything she could do… the child had started to glow with energy. And then the child had burst into flames, its entire body shifting from matter to energy and back again… changing into a new person.

It was an event that Tecteun worked to keep a secret, but which promised great things for the Shobogans if she could replicate it: the first regeneration on Gallifrey had occurred.

Tecteun was driven to unlock the secrets that had caused her son to heal his wounds and transform into an older child. Research proved that the child and the older boy that had replaced
it were the same despite the difference in appearance. Further, not only had changing healed its injuries, leaving him fit, healthy and alive, it made it seem that the inujuries had never occurred.

For decades Tecteun sought to unlock the mystery of what had happened to her adopted son and to replicate the results. She conducted experiments upon her child, sometimes forcing the change to occur to gain data. As time passed, Tecteun grew old and fragile while her child remained young and healthy. Desperation force Tecteun to use more and more brutal methods to trigger the regeneration. Mother and son grew distant each time that the child was murdered for the sake of Tecteun’s research.

It was only as her life was drawing to an end that Tecteun made the breakthrough needed to isolate the parts of her child’s DNA that caused the effect; coincidentally the removal of such genetic sequences from his blood led to his DNA resembling that of a Shobogan.

Having finally unlocked a serum that could duplicate the effects of her son’s ability, but knowing she did not have the time for formal testing, Tecteun injected herself with the spliced genes. The effect was an instant change of appearance as the genetic sequences altered the connection between her physical body and the life energy it contained. At the moment of change, the DNA triggered a cascade of spiritual energy to flow through the body, tearing it apart and then recreating it as a new temporal alternative of that being.

Years of research followed to perfect the method of splicing the DNA into the Shobogan body and making the changes genetic. Realising that immortality could prove a disadvantage, she altered the serum so that after a set number of changes it would break down allowing death to follow. At that point, she was satisfied with her efforts and shared the secret of her discovery with the rest of her people.
She didn’t realise that the cost of such alterations would be the eventual
sterility of her race.

Her discovery was welcomed by the enigmatic leader of the Shobogan’s anti-magic faction. He could see the benefit of an extended life to push their race onward. He was not made aware that she had changed the original nature of the serum, only that in its current form it would work twelve times. Tecteun was revered as a god by her former peers, the one with the ability to chose those that would continue to live and bring about the further glory of Gallifrey and those that would age and die.

Among those that would be chosen to benefit from her discovery were the scientist Rassilon and the engineer Omega. Under her guidance they would go on with the help and insight of the child to claim perfect the knowledge needed for the mastery of time, space and life.

More time passed. The Shobogans mastered the art of space travel and turned their attention to the mysteries of time. They used their discoveries to continue the war on magic, attacking magical societies throughout history and forcing the universe to become the logical place they desired. They had long since kicked the magic
users off their own world and rebuilt their cities to function on purely scientific principles. They proclaimed themselves the Time Lords and set out to record history in a way that would secure their importance and place
in the cosmic hierarchy. Eventually, they even went so far as to move their
world through time and space so that it appeared to have been one of the
earliest worlds to evolve, placing them as part of the elder races.

As for the child that had brought such fortune to the Time Lords. His
contribution to their society was concealed to enhance the Time Lords’ standing
in society. They did not want it known that their near-immortality came at the
expense of a child forced to die over and over so that they could unlock his
secrets. Nor did they want the population of Gallifrey to realise that the
mighty Time Lords were no longer Shobogans. Their DNA had been rewritten, improved in
many ways, but was still based upon the genetic coding of an alien being. And for a race that didn’t favour such changes,
it was something best forgotten. It was a shame that in a universe filled with
secrets, such things had a way of leaking out eventually.

End of Part