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Post by merrythemad on Feb 6, 2011 19:10:12 GMT
Last night, during a fantastic DWlive we were discussing the chapter houses and what traits went to what house and so on and so forth, here is a link to the page over at TARDISwiki, with links to each specific house page as well. tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Chapter_House |
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leamichelle
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Of the Cult of the Chicken of Rassilon (thanks LL!)
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Post by leamichelle on Feb 6, 2011 21:24:11 GMT
Ooh, thank you, I was looking at that a month or so ago and couldn't remember the link trail which led to it! So very Potter ... xD Or would it be more appropriate to say that Potter was so very Who?
Continuity obviously boggles me, yet I still obsess ... ;P
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Post by jjpor on Feb 6, 2011 21:37:21 GMT
The Prydonians will always be the cool kids, though - and the most devious, obviously. Their deviousness knows no bounds... ;D
How do you get to be "artists and aesthetes" on Gallifrey, considering how boring it apparently is? Plus computers can draw, or so Romana says.
Love the other three chapters name-checked in the novels - they're sort of the also-rans or Sir Not Appearing in This Film or whatever. Poor old Scendles... ;D
The most important question, of course, is where do the LOOMS fit into all this?!
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Post by johne on Feb 6, 2011 22:41:48 GMT
Love the other three chapters name-checked in the novels - they're sort of the also-rans or Sir Not Appearing in This Film or whatever. Poor old Scendles... ;D That was explained in the Author's Notes on the BBC Lungbarrow e-book; Marc Platt was annoyed that everyone just used the three names from The Deadly Assassin and invented three more of his own. One to each Great House, according to Lungbarrow. |
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Post by jjpor on Feb 6, 2011 23:02:25 GMT
I'm sure I must have read the notes when I read the Lungbarrow e-book, but it seems like a good plan, anyway. Six chapters make sense in the context of six-sided TARDIS consoles and so forth. Hmm, maybe those six-person TARDIS crews RTD was burbling about had one memeber from each chapter, just to keep an eye on each other...?
Alas poor BBC e-books - gone now, gone forever... ;D
Ah, good old LOOMS - a concept I kind of like despite (or maybe because of) its strangeness and out-of-leftfield quality. I definitely admire Platt's take on Gallifrey even if was probably a bit recherche, shall we say, for TV.
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Post by johne on Feb 7, 2011 1:20:16 GMT
I'm sure I must have read the notes when I read the Lungbarrow e-book, but it seems like a good plan, anyway. Six chapters make sense in the context of six-sided TARDIS consoles and so forth. Hmm, maybe those six-person TARDIS crews RTD was burbling about had one memeber from each chapter, just to keep an eye on each other...? Marc Platt also touched on that subject; the first Gallifreyan timeship shown with a crew of six is one of Rassilon's prototypes in Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible. Its six crewmembers are: Regulator, Battery, Captain, Second Officer, Quantum Theorist and Pilot. "Pilot", certainly, still applies to TARDISes, because the Doctor describes himself as such when controlling it with voice commands. (The Pilot of the other ship is a 4-year-old red-headed boy called Shonnzi, who I've seen speculated is a Rassilon-era incarnation of the Doctor.) |
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Post by clocketpatch on Feb 7, 2011 1:37:27 GMT
I'm reading that file on the Great Houses... so... if the houses are alive are they like non-mobile TARDISes?
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leamichelle
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Of the Cult of the Chicken of Rassilon (thanks LL!)
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Post by leamichelle on Feb 7, 2011 2:32:27 GMT
I'm reading that file on the Great Houses... so... if the houses are alive are they like non-mobile TARDISes? That's an interesting thought ... I noticed in Lungbarrow that time seemed to pass a bit differently, and there were definitely perception-altering elements going on (psychic as well as dimensional); I'm not sure whether the live-ness would qualify the Houses as TARDISes, although I was constantly reminded of Stephen King's Rose Red ... xD What I get out of it is: 1 Loom per House 16 known Houses Varied number of Cousins allotted per House (~45) 6 Academy Chapter Houses That's approximately 720 students per "generation" (here I'm going to assume that a generation is around 200-400 years, give or take) from all Houses, divided into 120 students per Chapter House (give or take a few - I don't know if families tend to produce inclinations toward certain Chapters or not). I guess there're around 1500 students at the Academy at any given time? Since Gallifrey's population is obviously very controlled, I don't think this number would fluctuate. Of course, that doesn't compensate for drop-outs, what-have-you. Then again, I could be all wrong. ;P |
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Post by jjpor on Feb 8, 2011 22:22:36 GMT
Thanks for the info on the six-person crews, johne - another thing RTD took from the NAs! I know I read that one back in the day, but for the life of me can't remember much about it apart from thinking it was cool that the time machines were called "time scaphes" iirc, as in bathyscaphes which I kind of remembered from doing a project about Jacques Cousteau and people like him back in junior school... I've got read that one again anyway, if only to find out about the red-headed kid maybe-Doctor. Anyway... I think the technology underpinning the Houses and the TARDISes might be very similar, logically thinking. I like your number-crunching there, lea - I thought I was the only person who worried about stuff like that! ;D I honestly don't know - 1500 seems small, but on the other hand Time Lord society seems strangely small (although that could be something to do with BBC production values!) - certainly, apart from the Citadel Gallifrey seems extremely sparsely populated. Unless there are vast unknown armies of Outsiders lurking in the wilderness like the Fremen in Dune or something (Dune and The Invasion of Time - compare and contrast)...  I don't know who decided who goes in what Chapter - I would assume that the Great Houses were affiliated to one Chapter or another. Maybe the more important chapters have more houses attached to them (presumably the Prydonians would have the most of all). Another thing - how many Academies are there? I've always just kind of assumed in my fic that there's this big building somewhere in or near the Citadel called the Academy, but thinking about some of the TV stories, in Deadly Assassin the Doctor is said to have attended "Prydon Academy", and if I remember correctly now that johne's got me thinking about the NAs in books like Timewyrm:Revelation academy-era Doctor is explicity depicted living in some quasi-monastery halfway up a mountain (the same mountain that's behind his house a la the Time Monster and in Lungbarrow, iirc) that seems to be Prydonian-only. So...do we like the idea of there being just one Academy through which all Time Lords pass (which seems to be the suggestion in things like the Romana stories), or do we prefer the idea of each chapter maintaining its own training school? In that case, any Time Lords we might want to have sharing school daze with the Doctor would be definition be Prydonians too, which puts the other five (apart from whichever one Romana might belong to, assuming she isn't Prydonian too) even further out of the picture. Do we, in fact, like the idea of LOOMS or do we prefer the way the new series seems to Joss the idea completely? And, if there is just one Academy, are we to think that the chapters exist as different "houses" within it in the style of British public schools and Harry Potter? Or do we fudge it and take the middle road where there is an overarching institution called "The Academy", but within it there are in effect separate mini-academies, I suppose a bit like Oxford or Cambridge colleges? Which would make the Prydonians, I don't know, whatever one's the most prestigious college at Oxford. As you can see from the amount I've typed above, this is something I've thought about more than I probably should. ;D |
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leamichelle
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Post by leamichelle on Feb 9, 2011 2:02:02 GMT
I think the technology underpinning the Houses and the TARDISes might be very similar, logically thinking. I like your number-crunching there, lea - I thought I was the only person who worried about stuff like that! ;D I imagine Gallifrey as having an ecosystem which courts a number of psychically sentient species/animate objects, some native and some "imported" (I was reading about the TARDIS origins, and if the novels are to be taken as canon - which, well, you know where I stand, right in front of the buffet ;D - half the TARDIS is cannibalised Validium from the Vampire Wars and half of it's tied to the Matrix. If the influence from the Matrix is as great as it's portrayed (and THERE we venture into the rabbit hole), then it isn't too difficult to believe that everything - the world itself, all its inhabitants, and the creature/objects that surround them - is tied into a sort of tangible psychic projection. (And I'm going to go completely off-topic here and mention the Ultimate Sanction, despite my feelings toward it in general - with such ethereal ties, would it be too great a task anyway?) I'll mention again the whole Eight-downloading-everything-into-his-head saga, because I think it's both wonderful and ridiculous. Also, I analyse everything to death. Does this club have bumper stickers? xD I honestly don't know - 1500 seems small, but on the other hand Time Lord society seems strangely small (although that could be something to do with BBC production values!) - certainly, apart from the Citadel Gallifrey seems extremely sparsely populated. Unless there are vast unknown armies of Outsiders lurking in the wilderness like the Fremen in Dune or something (Dune and The Invasion of Time - compare and contrast)... My opinion (note: opinion - I'm most likely grasping at nothing here but I can't help the grey matter from going on without me at times) is that the Time Lord society is only a tiny portion of Gallifrey's population. We know how controlled their "breeding" procedures get, and how rigorous (sp?) the Academy seems - it'd be an aristocracy, with people like the Outsiders, Outsider-Shobogans, Time-Lords-What-Never-Were, what-have-you, hanging out in places like Low Town and outside the Citadel itself. They'd be vaguely controlled with your typical laws, but I don't see them as having birthing restrictions (unless you apply the Pythia's curse to all of Gallifrey, wherein they likely relied on those loomed misfits from the Academy dropping by to make it seem like they weren't dying out). Then again, this whole thing could get extremely pedantic, and I'm not sure if I'm awake enough.  edit: And there's also the matter that, at least during the war with the Enemy, they were able to breed an enormous wartime population very quickly and constantly, so I guess it depends on how you look at it. I don't know who decided who goes in what Chapter - I would assume that the Great Houses were affiliated to one Chapter or another. Maybe the more important chapters have more houses attached to them (presumably the Prydonians would have the most of all). That's an interesting idea - you know, though, I wonder if (like the strict number of cousins each Loom is supposed to produce) the specific Chapter each would-be Time Lord/Lady would enter is encoded into their biodata as preemptive selection, just to ensure that the correct number of students are in each Chapter (depending on the need for certain talents at any given time). So...do we like the idea of there being just one Academy through which all Time Lords pass (which seems to be the suggestion in things like the Romana stories), or do we prefer the idea of each chapter maintaining its own training school? In that case, any Time Lords we might want to have sharing school daze with the Doctor would be definition be Prydonians too, which puts the other five (apart from whichever one Romana might belong to, assuming she isn't Prydonian too) even further out of the picture. Do we, in fact, like the idea of LOOMS or do we prefer the way the new series seems to Joss the idea completely? And, if there is just one Academy, are we to think that the chapters exist as different "houses" within it in the style of British public schools and Harry Potter? Or do we fudge it and take the middle road where there is an overarching institution called "The Academy", but within it there are in effect separate mini-academies, I suppose a bit like Oxford or Cambridge colleges? Which would make the Prydonians, I don't know, whatever one's the most prestigious college at Oxford. I was thinking along the lines of, like you said, the colleges - Prydon would be like Trinity at Cambridge, Patrex would be, idk, King's College.  Regarding Looms, I actually like the idea, and I'm willing to bet that some overly complicated explanation about lovers sneaking away to dump genetic material into the Loom of Lungbarrow (my, how kinky that sounds!) would "make it all better," as it were. (Also, it doesn't completely tear the concept - after all, there's always Jenny.) |
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Post by clocketpatch on Feb 9, 2011 3:59:19 GMT
Regarding Gallifrey's population and speculation there on -
I'm definitely of the opinion that they had some kind of intricate and terribly bureaucratic system in place to control the exact number of the population at any given time. Well, within the "civilized" part of Gallifreyan society anyways.
And I don't think it necessarily would have been confined to the Academy students either. I'm picturing a Brave New World type situation where everyone is bred straight into their roles. It seems like a Time Lord-y solution. Especially with the whole Gallifreyans are Time Lords but Time Lords are different thing.
As for Pythia's curse... I don't know a lot about it beyond the basics (evil queen cursed Time Lords with infertility giving them an excuse for looms and rampant sexism), but I can see the Time Lords sneakily using it to their advantage as a population control/propaganda tool. To the point where it doesn't matter if the curse happened or not. And the outsiders, who don't care, just bred like rabbits regardless of any so called curse.
...
I like the theory of a sentient Gallifrey, though that does make the planet's passing even more tragic. My own weird theories on Gallifrey are... well... when Four went to E-Space he said that Alzarius was at the same coordinates as Gallifrey, and Adric did have some rudimentary regenerative abilities... so yes, in my canon the Doctor is actually a highly evolved marsh lizard.
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Post by merrythemad on Feb 9, 2011 13:40:34 GMT
I imagine it's all sentient in some way, well, more accurately I like this idea so I accept it to be true, bad science, true, but so is all of The Big Bang so meh. I also know we already assume this but it seems I haven't seen any of us come right out and say Gallifrey is a clearly dystopian society. This could birth a school of thought in which the Doctor is more of a refugee than an outlaw, yeah?
The idea of a sentient Gallifrey full of living time-distorting inanimate structures could also be how/why they fell and became such myopic jerkbags, yeah? If you were constantly in a tug of war with your planet, your house, your school, your very people for control of your thoughts I think you'd go a bit mad too...
so long as we are delving into ancient Gallifrey and the like (odd though doing it the chapter house thread as opposed to the thread about ancient gallifrey lol) do we accept the Other or the Lungbarrow origins of the Doctor? Honestly, the looms I dunno, on one hand I totally accept them as part of this rigid, frigid dystopia in which honest emotion may threaten the control the rulers have on the rest of society (how hard would it be for a psychic race to send a low obey pulse amplified by all the living sentient inanimate anythings?). I mean an honest emotion not born of the thought control in which they are constantly surrounded would send brand new chemicals pouring into the mind, perhaps these chemicals temporarily block the signal the overTime Lords are sending hence the Time Lords negative view of emotion (although that could just be because it was created by englishmen as well, lol). I have more to ass but I've lost my train of thought somehow and will return to this in a bit, anyway, what say you friends?
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Post by primsong on Feb 9, 2011 14:58:24 GMT
... so yes, in my canon the Doctor is actually a highly evolved marsh lizard. Does this provide skientific proof of Puddleglum? Was Puddleglum his ancestor, then? This begs for a "Silver Chair"/Four crossover, you know. |
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Post by jjpor on Feb 9, 2011 22:23:11 GMT
Nice one, Clocket... I always had the Tharils down as the E-Space equivalent of the Time Lords, if such a thing exists (and you know, it maybe makes my liking of certain, ahem, certain fics a bit less...yeah), but...as you say, Adric's planet was at the right coordinates... So yes, a planet of Puddleglums. ;D Oh, I absolutely think of Gallifrey as a dystopia, Merry, to a grotesque extent that is probably unsupported by anything in any of the various canons. That's why I like the idea of LOOMS, really; they seem like the perfect horrifying cherry on top of the whole sick, twisted cake that is the Gallifrey of my fic-writing imagination. ;D I'd strongly recommend a fic on the Teaspoon called "Threads" if any of you haven't already read it. Maggadin first linked me to it a while back. Not only is it a fine slice of Four/Romana I, if like me you're into that kind of thing, but it really brings out that dystopian side of Gallifrey that maybe wasn't even deliberately hinted at in Who but which is so easy to extrapolate from what we do see of it. It also has LOOMS in slightly modified form, so that's something in its favour as far as I'm concerned too. ;D I like your ideas about the sentient environment, Lea - makes me think that far from being undeveloped as we might imagine, Outer Gallifrey is actually artificial, maybe? If the Time Lords really are the most powerful, or at least the most technologically and scientifically advanced, species in the universe (as they certainly seem to be unless you count beings like the Eternals and the Guardians too), then it seems to me that anything they do or any way they live is through choice. They have almost unlimited power to shape their environment however they see fit, so why not have most of the planet remade as a sort of nature reserve so that those members of Gallifreyan society who don't want to engage in the politicking and academic pursuits of the Citadel can "play" at being hunter-gatherers instead? And yes, the Time Lords are clearly the upper strata of Gallifreyan society, the aristocracy as people have said before. They come from the Great Houses, they graduate through the Academy - things like politics, academia, possibly law, are probably the only acceptable pursuits for members of that class, assuming they don't want to drop out and become Outsiders (or worse yet, renegades like the Doctor, Master and so forth!). They're in some sense artificial, in keeping with the idea of unbelievably high technology from above. Things like regeneration and the other special abilities Time Lords have, it is hinted at various points in different media, are not natural at all, but were rather in some sense "invented" by Rassilon when he created Time Lord society. Extra regenerations, after all, can supposedly be granted presumably by artificial means. That might involve genetic modification, but also likely all sorts of spooky ultra-tech like nanotechnology and probably stuff we can't even imagine like "technology" moulded from raw spacetime and things like that. So, in that sense, LOOMS if we want them could be seen as machines for making these highly modified enhanced beings, but I agree that being a Time Lord and being a Gallifreyan might well not be the same thing, and that not all of those Outsiders/Shobogans and so forth are dropouts from this ruling class. I could go on, but I think I've typed enough for the time being, and I'd only be going into scary fanficcy fanon that sort of contradicts and cherry-picks from the established canon(s), if indeed there is a canon... But basically, I sort of see Time Lord social mores as like a caricature of the rankest Victorian hypocrisy dialled up to eleven, and there's a reason why so many of them seem to wear gloves... |
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Post by jjpor on Feb 10, 2011 22:53:34 GMT
Additional random thoughts: Why are they called chapters? You know, as opposed to colleges or whatever? Well, in addition to just being a name for a local division of a club of society, a "chapter" is a body of clergymen, as in a cathedral chapter, which is the group of canons and other clerics attached to a cathedral to advise and assist the bishop. And of course, the Prydonians and other chapters appear to be headed up by Cardinals like Borusa. And I think the Prydonians might have been referred to at least one point as a "sect".
So, while the chapters aren't meant to be a religious body, I don't think (and you know, it doesn't seem to me from any of the sources that the Time Lords have an organised religion as such, despite the Cardinals and so forth), it seems that Holmes was certainly trying to tap into that sort of thing in Deadly Assassin. In fact, the Time Lords in Deadly Assassin and later Gallifrey stories seem to be perched somewhere between Oxbridge colleges, the British House of Lords and the Romana Catholic Church in the way they are organised. All institutions that are widely perceived as very conservative and rule-bound and generally creaky and antiquated. So, you know, you can see where Holmes is coming from there. ;D
Arguably all of this is a step down from the enigmatic demi-gods of The War Games, but you know, that's Who "canon" for you ;D
EDIT: Spot the Freudian typo in the above post! ;D
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Post by clocketpatch on Feb 10, 2011 23:37:00 GMT
Silly JJ, despite occasional claims otherwise, The Blessed St Lalla Ward is not officially recognised by the Catholic Church. Yet.
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Post by jjpor on Feb 11, 2011 19:27:51 GMT
Silly JJ, despite occasional claims otherwise, The Blessed St Lalla Ward is not officially recognised by the Catholic Church. Yet. Well, not if her (in)famously anti-religious husband has anything to do with it! ;D |
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