Rassilon

Rassilon is a fictional character in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. In the backstory of the programme, he was the founder of Time Lord society on the planet Gallifrey. After the original television series ended in 1989, Rassilon's character and history were further developed in books and other media.

Character history

There are many contradictory legends about Rassilon. It is known that he developed the technology for time travel that made his people lords of time in the distant past together with his colleague Omega. Omega, a solar engineer, was presumed killed by the supernova that created the black hole later known as the Eye of Harmony, and Rassilon harnessed the nucleus of the black hole to provide the energy that powers time travel. Rassilon then took control of Gallifrey and became the first Lord President. The official history is that he was a benevolent ruler who ruled his people wisely. However, there are other accounts which paint Rassilon as an opportunistic, ambitious and cruel dictator who seized power in the wake of his friend's death (for which some suggest he may have been deliberately responsible).

Rassilon's contributions to Time Lord culture and society were immense, and his name both reverberates and is honoured throughout Time Lord history. The Rassilon Imprimatur is the name given to the symbiotic nucleus that allows Time Lords to withstand the molecular stresses of time travel and grant them a link to their TARDIS time machines.

Several other Time Lord artifacts named after him have a technological function, in addition to their ceremonial roles:

• The Sash of Rassilon allows the wearer to control the Eye of Harmony, protecting them from the Eye's gravitational and energy forces.
• The Crown of Rassilon gives full access to the Matrix, the computer network that serves as the repository of all Time Lord knowledge.
• The Key of Rassilon also allows access to the Matrix. Confusingly, a separate artifact called the Great Key of Rassilon is part of the demat gun (a weapon of mass destruction), and the Rod of Rassilon (also called "the Great Key") allows the user to control and drain power from the Eye of Harmony.
• The Coronet of Rassilon gives the user the ability to dominate another's will.
• The Harp of Rassilon is a musical key that unlocks a secret room within the High Council chambers.
• The Ring of Rassilon ostensibly grants the wearer immortality, but at the price of being turned to stone.

Rassilon is also given credit, variously, for TARDIS technology; the living metal and superweapon validium; and the transduction barriers that protect Gallifrey. How much of this is true and how much of it is propaganda and good public relations is not certain. In The Two Doctors (1985), the Sixth Doctor claims that Rassilon enjoyed fishing and advocated its practice by Time Lords, but on questioning by Peri, admits he may have just made it up.

The Tomb or Tower of Rassilon, also known as the Dark Tower, stands in the middle of the Death Zone — a blasted, barren plain — on Gallifrey. The Death Zone was used, in a period of Gallifrey's history known as the Dark Time, as an arena that pitted warriors of various alien species and times (captured by the use of a device called the Time Scoop) against each other in gladiatorial games, although the Second Doctor tells the Brigadier that Rassilon put a stop to the games (The Five Doctors, 1983). It was rumored that Rassilon, who lived during this time, had been deposed by Time Lords rebelling against his rule. It was also claimed Rassilon had discovered the secret of immortality and was still alive in the Tower, sleeping. The quest to reach Rassilon's tomb and the secret, blocked by a series of deadly obstacles, is referred to as "The Game of Rassilon".

In The Five Doctors, Time Lord President Borusa wants Rassilon's secret for himself, describing Rassilon's immortality as "perpetual bodily regeneration". Borusa uses the Time Scoop to transport the Doctor in all his regenerations (along with various companions) to the Death Zone, using them to clear the way to the Tower. However, Rassilon's promise to share immortality with whoever overcomes the obstacles in the Tower and solves the Game of Rassilon is actually a trap designed for would-be dictators. Borusa is granted immortality by being transformed into a living statue. In that story, Rassilon (played by Richard Mathews) appears as a disembodied image floating above his own sepulchre, but whether this is a telepathic projection or an interactive recording of some sort is unclear.

If Rassilon continued to exist in some form after his apparent death, the recent destruction of Gallifrey in the Time War renders his current status even more uncertain.

Other appearances

Rassilon's rise to power was explored in the Virgin New Adventures novel Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible. It is revealed in the novel that Ancient Gallifrey was ruled by the Pythia. Rassilon led a revolution against the Pythia, eventually causing her to kill herself and send her followers to the planet Karn. However, before she died she cursed Rassilon and all future Time Lords to sterility. In later New Adventures we are introduced to the concept of the genetic Looms, from which new Time Lords were created.

In the last three stories of Alan Moore's run on Doctor Who Monthly we see the first Time War in Time Lord history, where the Order of the Black Sun make a pre-emptive strike on the Gallifreyans' experiments with time travel. In the first story, "Star Death" (Doctor Who Magazine #47), we see Rassilon gaining the equipment to control time travel thanks to the failed initial attack. In the DWM comic strips, Rassilon is shown existing in the Matrix as part of a council of "Higher Evolutionaries" acting as the guardians of Time (The Tides of Time Part 2, DWM #62, among others).

In the Doctor Who audio plays produced by Big Finish Productions, Rassilon is voiced by Don Warrington in Seasons of Fear, Neverland, and Zagreus. In those plays, he was also shown to continue to exist in the Matrix. He is also portrayed, not as a benevolent figure, but a master manipulator willing to preserve Time Lord history and society as he knew it at all costs.

At the end of Zagreus, the Doctor was exiled to the Divergents' universe. He eventually tracked down Rassilon in that universe, and discovered that he had been manipulating an entity called the Kro'Ka to observe and control the Doctor and Charley's actions. At the end of the events of The Next Life, the Doctor and his companions escaped the timeless Divergent universe, but Rassilon and the Kro'Ka remained trapped.

In the spin-off novels, the partnership of Rassilon and Omega in Time Lord history is rounded off by the shadowy figure of the Other. The continuity of other media in relation to the TV episodes are to date, uncertain.

See also

• Time Lord - History