I’m not going to lie; this is going to get very weird, very quickly.
You see, the Time Lords chose never to interfere in the affairs of the lesser species. As we saw in the final episode of ‘The War Games’, the punishment for disobeying that rule was harsh: a telling-off, a new head, and an exile from the black & white era of Doctor Who into the terrifying new world of Technicolour.
Yet a quick glance at your TV guide and cinema listings will show you that The Doctor isn’t the only one of his species to hop a TARDIS to Earth in order to escape the silly hats and curtain-fabric robes of Gallifrey.
It’s time to follow me down the rabbit-hole of cross-genre fiction as we look at the many characters who are, clearly, secretly Time Lords. Deep breath…
James Bond
‘This never happened to the other fellow,’ a fresh-faced James Bond says after a spot of brawling on the beach (typical Aussie) at the opening of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. What other fellow? Why aren’t you Scottish anymore? Didn’t you used to advertise Big Fry Turkish Delight? A-ha! J’accuse, Time Lord!
With all his changing faces, James Bond is clearly a renegade Time Lord who has grown weary of not being able to shoot people on Gallifrey, and/or exhausted the number of the planet’s people he can have sex with.
Like The Doctor, he enjoys danger and flirting, and always has at least one hi-tech gadget to save his bow-tied neck. Yes, he changes back to a previous face at one point (Diamonds Are Forever), but obviously that’s because he’s just revisiting one of his old favourite faces, as The Curator mentions can be done in ‘The Day of The Doctor’. Duh.
Talking of familiar faces, hey Rassilon…
In fact, it seems that everyone in the secret services is a Time Lord. M did ‘a Missy’ long before it was called ‘doing a Missy’, by ditching the smoking pipe and turning into a Judi Dench lookalike. Yes, M dies in Skyfall, but that’s only because she’s run out of regenerations and Albert Finney didn’t think to have a chat with that crack in the wall.
Moneypenny has changed often but is yet to gender-swap into ‘Mannypenny’. Even Q’s done the typically Time Lord thing and regenerated from respected old gent into a younger, sexier form.
Felix Leiter has raced through seven faces, while 009 in Octopussy pays homage to the Sixth Doctor, by dressing as a clown and then dying unceremoniously. Bazinga.
The new face of Bond even steals the Sixth Doctor’s first words to introduce himself in the GoldenEye trailer: ‘You were expecting someone else?’
Sherlock Holmes
A mercurial genius with a trusty companion? An eccentric who likes the thrill of the chase and helping out those in need? I’m not saying Sherlock Holmes is The Doctor – though the parallels between current Who and Sherlock are striking – but at the very least he’s of Gallifreyan origin.
He’s now hiding out/exiled on Earth, passing the time and keeping his mind active by solving crimes and dabbling in trivial human affairs at various points between the 19th century and, er, 22nd century…
This Christmas, he’s even got the cheek to appear in a new time period with the same face.
Whatever face he takes, Sherlock Holmes (an anagram for ‘I am The Rani’, right?) is an immortal figure of justice, and carries with him the haughtiness towards humans that you’d expect from a Time Lord. He does have a habit of abusing his body with smokes and opium, but when you can regenerate out of the old tar-blackened lungs and get a brand new set, you can afford to play a little fast and loose.
More on Page 2…