What happened to the Time Lords in Doctor Who?

Not for the first time, Doctor Who has established its lead character to be the last surviving member of their (adoptive) race – but how did this set of circumstances come to be, and what happened to the Time Lords? Well, it's all rather complicated...

The first time that the Doctor (then played by Christopher Eccleston) was referred to as "the last of the Time Lords" was in 2005 episode The End of the World, in which it was revealed that, at some point between the classic series of Doctor Who wrapping up in 1989 and the show's relaunch in 2005, the denizens of Gallifrey had all been eradicated off-screen.

Further details were drip-fed in stories that followed, with episodes including Dalek and The Parting of the Ways gradually revealing that the Doctor themself had been responsible for the the extermination of their people, detonating a device known as The Moment to end the Last Great Time War by wiping out both sides, the Daleks and the Time Lords.

Simple enough? Stick with us...

2013 episode The Day of the Doctor later ret-conned this genocidal reveal, explaining that while the Doctor had indeed believed Gallifrey to be destroyed, the planet was in fact frozen in time and survived in a pocket universe.

By the time of 2015's Hell Bent, the status quo had changed again – the Time Lords had somehow returned from banishment, with Gallifrey re-materialising at the end of our universe.

This resurrection lasted all of five minutes, though – alright, five years – as 2020 episode Spyfall revealed that the Master (Sacha Dhawan) had launched a devastating attack on Gallifrey, leaving it in ruins.

It was unclear if any of the Time Lords in residence might have survived the assault, but the same year's The Timeless Children clarified the matter – to stop the Master from using the corpses of dead Time Lords to build an army of Cybermen with the power of regeneration, the warrior Ko Sharmus (Ian McElhinney) activated a weapon known as the Death Particle, wiping out all organic life on Gallifrey.

This all chimes with what the Doctor (now Ncuti Gatwa) tells new companion Ruby in Space Babies, the first episode of the show's new season: "My world is called Gallifrey [...] Ruby, it’s gone. They died. There was a genocide and they died. So the one that was adopted was the only one left."

Surely, though, there might be some Time Lords who – like the Doctor – had left Gallifrey, and so escaped the effects of the Death Particle?

Perhaps not. In the season's second episode, The Devil's Chord, the Doctor admits to Ruby that they don't know if their granddaughter Susan (played on the show between 1963 and 1964 by Carole Ann Ford) is still alive.

"The Time Lords were murdered," they explain. "Genocide rolled across time and space like a great big cellular explosion – maybe it killed her too."

Now, this doesn't quite fit with what was previously established on-screen. Why would Susan – who was last seen on Earth in the 22nd century – have been killed by the Death Particle?

Of course, it's possible that she might have returned to Gallifrey at some point since she was last seen on-screen, but even so, the Doctor's description of a wave of killer energy that "rolled across time and space like a great big cellular explosion" obliterating all Time Lords in existence, wherever they might reside, is different to what we were told the Death Particle had achieved.

Whatever the explanation (some off-screen cataclysm, or something related to the Flux?), it's another shift in the status quo, putting back into place the Doctor's status as last of the Time Lords which was originally introduced by Russell T Davies during his first stint as showrunner.

Though it's not absolute, the strong possibility exists that – at least as far as the Doctor's concerned – no other Time Lords survive (with the possible exception of the Master, currently experiencing a kind of living death trapped inside the Toymaker's golden tooth).

Who's to say how long that'll last, though? The Time Lords didn't let a little thing like total extinction stop them before, and we suspect this time will be no different...

Doctor Who continues next Saturday (18th May) – the first two episodes of the new season are available now on BBC iPlayer and will air on BBC One from 6:20pm. Previous seasons are available to stream on BBC iPlayer.

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