Why is the doctor at every point he visits, the last and only timelord?
Shouldn't he be able to travel to the Gallifrey from before the timewar? Or meet some timelords for who the timewar has not happened yet?
Science Fiction & Fantasy Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for science fiction and fantasy enthusiasts. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this communityWhy is the doctor at every point he visits, the last and only timelord?
Shouldn't he be able to travel to the Gallifrey from before the timewar? Or meet some timelords for who the timewar has not happened yet?
First, the Doctor is not the only Time Lord. The Master, for instance, keeps appearing to still be alive in different faces.
Second, most other Time Lords, from a linear perspective of time, never existed. This is because of timey wimey effects that are more like a rug really but, oh, never mind.
The majority of Time Lords are no longer in our reality because they have been effectively erased (well removed) from time during the Time War. The Darleks too seem to have suffered this fate. Nevertheless, both appear regularly as writers create new ways for them to appear. There is no point in time when these Time Lords were still alive. However, the existence of time travel is itself paradoxical and seems to lead to weird aberrations. For ease, we can imagine that there is a metastable state of reality in which Time Lords and Darleks fought in the Time War. As both could time travel, this state is not truly stable and destroys itself.
Imagine a box exists that says it may create a time traveling remote and an immortal cat in year 2000, has a cancel creation button on the top, and may or may not contain that remote and an immortal cat. I find the box tomorrow and decide without opening it that it should not exist. I decide, therefore, that if it is empty I go about by business and if it is not, I leave the cat in the box, go back in time to 1999, and press that button. In the only stable timeline (assuming I am infallible), I go about my business because there never was a cat or remote. In the less stable reality, there is no self-destruct mechanism to remove me, my memories, or the remote from the universe after I destroy the future where I found the box full. In Dr. Who, the other Time Lords, like the cat, never existed. The TARDIS and Doctor, however, still exist as artifacts of the erasing process despite having no logical reason for how they appeared in a conventional understanding of time.
Except for those who experienced them directly, when a time lord is killed, he is removed from the timeline, not his past, but his continued existence. they just simply are no longer within the continuum. That doesn't mean they didn't exist, just that they don't anymore.