The Laws of Time

And the Rules Governing Time Lords from the Worshipful and Ancient Law of Gallifrey

   The Laws of Time give the Time Lords the divine purpose of serving Time itself by maintaining the continuity/history of the fabric of the space-time continuum and the causality of the Universe.  They claim that this service is their right because they were first humanoid culture to naturally evolve and see this as providing justice to all species.  The Time Lords consider their Constitution to be the Mother of Democracy.  

I. No being shall distort History as he knows it.  You can't alter the Past.  This is the most important Law of the Time Lords.  This is a moral as well as legal law.

    A. No being shall interact with his own personal history or causal nexus by traversing their time streams. 

       1. No being shall murder their past self.  This is the ultimate violation of the Laws of Time.  

       2. No being may come into contact with his past self.  The Temporal Disturbances caused when this occurs require tremendous amounts of temporal energy to repair.  

       3. No Gallifreyan shall meet another Time Lord whose incarnations is out of sync with there own timestream.  This prevents damage to space time.

       4.  Investing vast sums money in the past and collecting the profit in the future is a minor violation of the first law of time.  

       5.  Sending notes to your past self to give them advice (even if you remember receiving the note) is forbidden.  

          *Note: Interacting with a person who knows your future isn’t technically breaking the law as long as you don’t take advantage of the person’s knowledge.  Limited communications with another Time Lord out of sequence is also not specifically prohibited.

    B. (Also known as the Doctrine of Non-Intervention or the "Golden Rule") No being on Gallifrey or on any other planet shall interfere with the Web of Time (intergalactic history), as it is currently known, no violations of established and predicted quantal events.  Observation from within the micro-universe of a TT Capsule or Gallifrey is all that is permitted.

        1. The History of any person or planet, as it recorded or predicted in the Matrix, can not be chronoformed (the deliberate rewriting/distorting of history) to alter its destiny.  This is defined as changing any part of the Web of Time by not less then fifty-three millistates.  (this is also covered under Timeline Interference Resolution 861) 

        2. All Time Lords shall follow a Doctrine of Non-Interference with Time Unaware races. 

        3. All Time Lords shall work to prevent Time Aware Races from acquiring Gallifreyan Technology. No alien shall be allowed to spy on Time Lord activities (this is also known as the Golden Rule:).

        4. All Time Lords shall work to prevent Time Active Races from damaging the Web of Time.  Disturbances of .4 or higher on the Bocca Scale must be prevented.

        5. It is forbidden for Gallifreyans and Lesser Species to interbreed.    

        6. All Time Lords are pledged to prevent alien aggression by Time Active Races, but only when such aggression is deemed to threaten the indigenous population of a particular time zone.   This includes preventing the Reapers from destroying an entire world because of a temporal paradox.  

        7. A Time Lord who destroys an entire species forfeits his remaining lives - and thus his title of Time Lord.   

            *Note: Article 7 was created not to preserve life but to prevent the massive damage to History that genocide would cause.  

II.  No being shall participate in the creation of a Temporal Paradox 

    A. No Time Lord shall use the Power of Creation 

        1. No Time Lords shall use the Power on a scale that would corrupt Time.  

    B. No being shall create us a TARDIS to create a Vortex Crisis

    C. No being shall create a Grandfather Paradox 

    D. No being shall cause a Dimensional Paradox by transporting sentient beings from one version of History to another.

    E. Timelooping planets is forbidden.

III. The Protocols of Linearity: No Time Lord shall travel into Gallifrey's past. 

           *Note: This prevents anyone from traveling into Gallifrey’s past, and ensures that a Time Lord's personal time is always synchronized with Gallifrey’s time.  It also ensures that the Time Lords who encounter each other outside of Gallifrey always meet each other in a linear progression along their relative time-streams.  Though impossible to travel into the past, it is possible to collect and transport objects from the past to the present.  These protocols are not physical laws per say, but rather engineered by powerful Temporal Baffels, Backtime Field Buffers, Temporal Locks and Governing Circuits built into all their time travel technology.  A side effect of this law is that other time zones observed by a traveling Time Lord becomes linked with Gallifrey’s time.  It should be noted that in Lungbarrow the Doctor took a 3 day side trip from events and returned minutes later.  This might be a power all Lord Presidents have.  Robert Scarrit will also do this during the war but he has to keep it a secret to avoid punishment.  

IV. No Time Lord shall travel into Gallifrey’s future.  To do so would be a theoretical absurdity.  

V.  Whilst there are any number of Futures beyond the Time Lord Time Parameters (defined by their noosphere) none maybe deliberately shaped by a Time Lord.  Travel beyond the Time Parameters is forbidden - due to psychological affect of watching the heat death of the universe and to avoid the temptation of studying the next universe.   The Time Parameters reach from around 3500 years after Event 0 (the Big Bang) to10,000,000 AD and cover most of Space.

VI. Unauthorized use of a TARDIS carries a mandatory Death Penalty (This might mean they only take one life).

     A. It is forbidden to allow non-Time Lords into a TARDIS.

VII. Protocols of Observation: No Time Lord shall interact with his own future. 

    A. No being may come into contact with his future self.

         *Note:  It is impossible for a being to see his own future in his own biodata.  An attempt to do so will cause the observation to collapse, making the knowledge useless.  Losing one's virginity makes it much more difficult (if not impossible) for Gallifreyan technology to read ancestral memories from the subject's biodata. 

VIII.  No Time Lord shall use time travel for their personal convenience. 

         *Note: This law of time isn't really enforced and most renegades view it as a trivial. 

    A. No use of Short-Hops to shorten his personal perception of time. (the Blinovitch Limitation Effect helps prevent violations of this law)

    B. No use of Temporal Orbits or “Vortex Drifting” to elongating his personal perception of time. 

    C. It is forbidden to use time travel to live the same day twice.  

    D. No using time travel to win at the lottery. 

        1-6.  various etiquettes.

??   There are articles of emergency power that govern possible alien activity on Gallifrey.  They allow the investigation of even the President.

??    Performing TARDIS Interlock (one TARDIS inside another) violates 15,473 different Laws of Time.

??    A “Sex Change Regeneration” is forbidden and is considered to be a worse crime then stealing a TARDIS and interfering in other time zones.  The standard punishment is for the Time Lord to be locked inside their TARDIS forever.  Their only escape is to activate the de-materialization switch with will remove them from History turning them into a Neverperson.  

??  Article 17. No Time Lord shall be barred from offering himself as a candidate during a Presidential Election.

    Article ??   Elections must be held within 48 hours if a President dies without naming a sucessor

           *Note: Inaugurations usually take years to organized.  

    Article 28 Oblique 12, Clause 3.  Upon a vote of no confidence being a leveled against a president, that president in his or her current regeneration shall be obliged to stand down from office and legislative power shall past temporarily to the incumbent of the Vice-Presidency, to the incumbent of the Chancellorship, or jointly to the members of the High Council in that hierarchical order - which ever is deemed appropriate until an election is called.

           *Amendment made by Emergency High Council Session: A President who has been impeached for high treason against Gallifrey can not every stand for office. 

XCIII. ?

    2. After a journey of 400 years and 12 parsecs a Time Lord is allowed 50 years of rest.