Scrooge McDuck Wikia
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Time Lords are a powerful alien species which used to exist in the Prime Universe, and exist still on Earth-5556.

Description[]

The Time Lords are an extremely advanced species of time-traveling humanoids with the ability to change their appearances from time to time. The keepers of Time itself, and, at least in some universes, the builders of the Time Vortex, they can be found in numerous reality. While they are originally a species, it is possible for beings of other biological origins to learn the ways of a Time Lord, to gain time-based abilities, and to thereafter be considered a honorary Time Lord in their own right.

In the Prime Universe universe, the Time Lords where whittled down by some unknown catastrophe to just one last time-traveler, Psi — with the possible exception of a reclusive old sage who may or may not have been a Time Lord as well. Psi fought the intergalactic tyrant Darth Wayter, who, "a few eons" before the 20th century, managed to exile him to Earth. Psi disappeared in mysterious circumstances, leaving his prized Lightsaber buried in what would become Duckburg. In 1999, Donald Duck unearthed the Saber and was trained by the Old Sage to become the new Time Lord and defeat Wayter.

In Earth-5556, meanwhile, the Time Lords also briefly appeared to have gone out of existence due to fighting a massive, reality-bending Time War with the Daleks that ended with their disappearance; at which point the Doctor was the last Time Lord in existence. However, they were eventually revealed to have only been banished to a pocket universe, and they ended up returning.

Behind the scenes[]

The Time Lords originally appeared in the Doctor Who franchise. Its main character, the Doctor, who debuted in 1963, and made his first crossover into Disney lore in 1975 in Disney Time 1975, is a Time Lord.

It was only the 1999 story The Last Time Lord, however, which revealed the (past) existence of Time Lords in Donald's own universe.

Differences Between Time Lords[]

Due to The Last Time Lord functioning as a mash-up spoof of several science-fiction series at once, the Time Lords as depicted in that story also borrow a fair few elements from the Jedi of the Star Wars franchise. This includes, most notably, the wielding of seemingly-magical Lightsabers being a trademark of these "Time Lords", and the fact that a Time Lord needs to "clear his mind" to access his psychic abilities.

In The Last Time Lord, Darth Wayter appears to be under the impression that Time Lords change their appearance to fit the time and place they visit. In original Doctor Who continuity, however, a Time Lord's change of appearance or even species (termed "regeneration") is not the voluntary, temporary camouflage that Wayter makes it sound like, but rather an extraordinary event that happens when a Time Lord nears death in their current body, and something they can only do twelve times in their lifetime before dying for good. One should not be too hasty in pointing this out as a definite difference between the Prime Universe and Earth-5556 versions of Time Lords, however, as Wayter may well have been ill-informed on this point. Also, TARDISes, Earth-5556 Time Lord's time ships, do change their appearance to fit the time and place they visit.

The Last Time Lord’s revelation that the Prime Universe Time Lords are extinct, save but one who disappears after passing on his secret to an Earthling he makes a "honorary Time Lord", was interestingly prescient: the 2001 animated webcast Death Comes to Time, spun off from the official Doctor Who series, featured precisely this, as its plot concerned the extinction of the Time Lords, with the Doctor's human companion Earth initiated into the ways of the Time Lords just before the Doctor himself seemingly dies while battling his old enemy Tannis. Though Death Comes to Time was later retconned to take place in yet another, alternate continuity, the TV series' official 2005 revival also established the extinction of the Time Lords as a major plot point — down to a 2007 episode having the nearly-identical title, Last of the Time Lords. Of course, in the show's universe, the titular "Last Time Lord" is not Donald Duck but the Doctor himself.

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