Pop Culture Questions

Why Doesn't The Doctor Change History More?

I was there the day my world burned. I can still recall the smell of smoke and burnt fleshy bits. Sometimes I am the one lighting the match. Other times I am putting it out.

I am getting ahead myself, though.

My name is the Doctor. I am a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey. A long time ago, at least from my perspective, that is, I stole a Time And Relative Dimension In Space machine, or TARDIS. It's a spaceship that allows me to travel through time and, well, space.

I know what you are thinking — silly name — I'll be sure to pass your recommendation off to the Gallifrian Naming Committee once they recover from being terribly dead.

My people were never supposed to die. We are Time Lords; after all, rewriting time is sort of our thing. When we lost the war against the Umar, squid-like creatures the size of whales, we simply altered the course of history so that we won.

The Umar are a bit stubborn, though, and so my people kept getting into universe-spanning conflicts with them over and over again. It was quite tedious, and that's why the Gallifrian Naming Committee decided to erase them from existence.

Then there was the Illius.

And the Gee.

The Still'rum.

I don't remember the next fifteen or so other civilizations we ended, but the last one I remember quite well. They are the Daleks, nasty robotic beings that want to EXTERMINATE everything, and unlike the others, they also have time travel.

The Time Lord-Dalek war, known unoriginally as the Time War, was a confusing time to be alive. We lost. We won. We stopped existing for a couple of terrifying seconds. Planets, empires, and even entire galaxies blinked in and out of existence on an almost hourly basis (well, Time Lords don't count in hours, but you get my drift). These changes to the time stream made cartography impossible, and don't even get me started on current events.

One day we would be allied with the Olmecian Confederacy. The next time shift, they would be our dreaded enemies as the Olmecian Kingdom, and then the Olmecian Solar System Alliance, and then that guy Olmec chilling on a planet no one cares about.

The Umar came back for a bit. They were not happy.

The Greek Pantheon attacked us, and we made peace just in time for them never to exist.

Eventually, the time stream got so cluttered that all of it was almost completely filled with war. In practically every single second, Time Lords were fighting Daleks fighting Time Lords trying to stop Daleks from Time Lords changing history that Daleks had rewritten to halt the advance of Time Lords, and on it went.

And so, I did the one thing no one else had tried. The only thing I could think to do in reality's few remaining moments of free time — I erased the Time Lords and Daleks from existence.

The editors became the edited. The universe reset, and suddenly there was more to existence than just war.

The timey-wimey nonsense I used to massacre my people let me survive, and selfishly I took it. I am not going to lie; I was a mess after everyone I had ever known stopped existing, even the naming committee. You would think the first hundred or so temporal genocides would have prepared me, but it gets a little personal when you are the one pressing the button.

I knew all of these people. We are a race of immortal super beings who have been around for a limitless amount of time. I say I'm a thousand years old, but that's really a number I pull out to make you all feel a little less awkward. I could be ten thousand flippity floppy's for all I know. My lifespan is so vast, and the timeline so convoluted that I have had at least one uncomfortable conversation with every Gallefrian in the multiverse.