Rassilon: The Myth, the Legend, and the Time Lord Power Play

Justin Coleman: 00:01:10

Foreign.

Joshua Noel: 00:01:14

Who is the Lord of the Time Lords? We're going to be discussing the one and only Rassilon, the, the, the Time Lord President supreme, other adjectives here.

We're excited to get some Doctor who, Time Lord lore, the power dynamics that take place on Gallifrey in the show and much more. It's going to be a great episode. We are the priest of the geeks. I am here with the one and only Reverend Justin Coleman.

And I being of course Joshua Noel. There might be others. Joshua's a pretty common name. I don't know about Noel, but we're excited to jump into this though.

Of course we have to start off. Justin, I need to know what you're geeking out on lately. What's been your geek of choice?

Justin Coleman: 00:01:58

Yeah, well, this geek of choice this time around has been a show called the Pit. Now this is so it's, it's, you know, not my usual sci fi comic, that kind of thing. This is a show about the Pittsburgh er.

It's in its first season and the whole premise is they go through a 15 hour shift. So you have 15 episodes, each episode encompassing an hour of a shift on one day or part of one day in the er.

And I just, I came to the show a little bit late so I've been catching up. But man, I cannot get enough of this show. One of the most well written, I think on, on TV right now. Very well written.

Joshua Noel: 00:02:49

I have not seen that at all actually, so I had to check that one out. I'll have to check that one out. I have been going to say probably surprising to absolutely no one.

I've been highly anticipating they're re releasing the graphic novels for Dead Space. So I've been into volume one. This will come back after he receives it, so I'll go ahead and let you know.

I've also sent volume one to our good friend Pastor Will Rose. I read it and I have to wait till June for the them to re release Volume two. But man, it's good stuff.

Just getting kind of like the background history of what happened in the dead space video game universe and comic book form just fleshes it out a little bit more. You don't get to experience it as fully, but kind of having that world fleshed out is. It's been great. I really enjoy it.

It's probably one of my favorite sci fi worlds and it's just hard to actually get hold of the content of it, which kind of makes it more fun. I don't know, I'm weird, but listeners thank you so much for listening.

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So thank you guys so much and without further ado, we're going to jump right into the main topic.

Justin Coleman: 00:05:06

Anyway.

Joshua Noel: 00:05:07

Come on, how long, Z. We're talking Rassilon. First thing first, just so people know who they're listening to. Ramble on.

Because, like, why should we care what you guys think? I want to talk some about our own history with Rassilon. I'm just too curious to wait.

So Justin's going to have to go first because I need to hear the wisdom exude from this band.

Justin Coleman: 00:05:30

Well, I've always been fascinated by Rassilon because of my watching classic Doctor who as I was a kid. And we meet, you hear about Rassilon, but then we meet Rassilon in an episode called the Five Doctors.

That technically is the Five Doctors, but Tom Baker didn't want to be in it. So you don't quite. You only get a glimpse of him and they create a little storyline to talk about why we don't see much of him.

But we encounter Rassilon, the myth in this ghostly form and he just Seems so wise and interesting and really more clever than just about everybody except for the Doctors combined. And so I've been fascinated with who this Rassilon is, and it's been really interesting to see how.

How Doctor who has treated this character in its modern iteration. How about you? How did you connect with Rassilon first?

Joshua Noel: 00:06:48

Man, I have such a weird history with Doctor who, and I mentioned some of this on the show before. My first episodes I ever watched were Satan's Pit or Devil's Pit or whatever it's called with David Tennant.

And then, like, I went back a little ways. I didn't go back all the ways. I don't know how this happened. I found a place to start watching Doctor who.

I was just watching the David Tennant episode, basically, but I. I don't know how. I just grew up in a bubble, so I didn't know things about life or anything. I mean, I watched this thing.

I had no idea that the Doctor regenerated. Like, I just thought David Tennant was the Doctor, like, that's it.

And like, I run through you get to the end of the time, and I'm like, who the heck are these guys? And then all of a sudden, the Doctor dies and comes back with a new face. I'm like, who the heck is he?

And I was infuriated, which is probably unfair to Matt Smith. It's probably why I don't like him that much. I like, just really biased because I was like, what? Who are you?

But then once I realized what the show was, I started digging back and back then you couldn't find the original series streaming places, really. So I was going to like, books a million and old video stores and finding like these old DVDs and stuff.

@ one point I had to change my PlayStation to think that it was in the UK because I got a DVD that wouldn't play on American players so I could watch some of these. So, like, then that's when I got the. I got the DVD of the Five Doctors and I was like, oh, this is cool.

And it was until literally today, preparing for this episode, that I was like, wait a minute. Wrestling wasn't even like a big thing until the Five Doctors. He was just like a legend. And.

Yeah, so I'm excited to get into this because it's just been mind blowing. The whole experience of Doctor who just continues to be mind blowing.

Justin Coleman: 00:08:33

Well, let me just say I think that's really cool, the journey you've had, because one, you got to experience what so few of us ever have is that it's like the transition from the first to the second Doctor. Like, you got to experience that emotionally in the move between David's.

Joshua Noel: 00:08:53

Just because I was ignorant. Yeah.

Justin Coleman: 00:08:56

I mean, I think that's cool. But also, like, you. You had to work for it like this, you know, growing understanding of the Doctor who universe.

I mean, going, getting DVDs, making PlayStation, things like that is working for Doctor who in ways that I've not had to. So kudos to you, man. That's pretty impressive.

Joshua Noel: 00:09:18

It was. Yeah, it was.

Well, you know, I was in college, and I could either study for school or do all this work to figure out what's going on in the world of Gallifrey and be hard.

Justin Coleman: 00:09:30

Hey, I'm not the right person to critique those choices. I think it's commendable. I'm like, way to go, man.

Joshua Noel: 00:09:37

I mean, I had a lot of fun with it. It was a good time. But no, we both mentioned the Five Doctors already. Right.

So you want to go ahead and unpack who Rassilon was in the classic Doctor who before this, and then what do we learn about him through this?

Justin Coleman: 00:09:53

Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about the myth and then go into the Five Doctors. I think that's a great way to do it.

So Rassilon as a character, I think, is one of the most erratically portrayed characters in all of the Doctor who universe. So let me just.

Joshua Noel: 00:10:14

Maybe fandom.

Justin Coleman: 00:10:16

Yeah.

Joshua Noel: 00:10:17

Yes.

Justin Coleman: 00:10:17

I mean, let's just start there and say this is crazy. You know, it's. It's really complex because you've got, you know, it's like. It's. Get the myth. You got, like, lowercase M, Messiah complex.

Dude, you got. You know, you got all kinds of stuff going on.

So the myth of Rassilon in early Doctor who, because he wasn't so much a character in classic Doctor who as he was a myth. So he's the. The founding father of Time Lord society.

Now we learn more recently a little bit more of a complex narrative around that founding of Time Lord society. But whatever came before Rassilon, Rassilon was the one who codified Time Lord society. He's like Gallifrey's Prometheus here. Right.

But far better wardrobe. So he codifies Time Lord society, and he's credited with creating the time vortex, these things like the Eye of Harmony or the Matrix.

The Time Lord Matrix. And he was credited with originally with creating the immortality technology.

We learned some other pieces around that, so that's a little bit fuzzy, but he's at least the one who, who made sure that this whole rhythm of regeneration, that kind of thing really was codified in Time Lord historical. So perhaps he created the history of the Time Lords, even if he didn't exactly create the technology. So the Time Lords venerate the guy.

He's got, there's statues, there's a tomb. In classic Doctor who, he's got a tomb with, with this ominous warning about his power.

Like it's, he is, he's larger than life, even larger than Time Lord life, as he is so central in the, in Gallifrey's origin story. So. And he's got like, you know, there's these belts and gauntlets, like he's got all kind of stuff.

Rassilon has, he's got the coolest, all the coolest of Time Lord toys and he created Time Lord toys. He, he creates the tardis. Yeah, right. So he's like, he's a genius on one hand.

He's like this like lowercase God in, in Time Lord life, kind of like Pharaoh, like Caesar, like. Right. You know, he's, he's a ghost. Even after he has willingly put himself into a tomb in some kind of stasis.

Like he decided to do that because, because Rassilon wasn't just going to die die, he was going to remain immortal in some kind of way. Like this is all of the stuff around Rassilon that we learn in bits and pieces in classic who.

And then, and then see in the Five Doctors as we see his disembodied head floating over his tomb with like all kinds of playful and judgmental energy. And because he's created this game of. I think it's called, just called the Game of Wrestle on something like that.

Joshua Noel: 00:14:06

The Death Games.

Justin Coleman: 00:14:07

Yeah, yeah. And it's in, it's this. And it's essentially this immortality trap for the over ambitious Time Lord.

So whereas he may have known that Time Lords could have this immortality, there's for some reason he decided to cap it and then he creates this like immortality trap for these folks who want to transcend the normal number of, of regenerations for a Time Lord. I mean, it's just like there's, and there's, and there's something like, there's something Tolkien esque about his, this, that version of him.

You know, it's like this, he's like a warning and a relic with mythic power. And you know, it's like, it's, it's is really cool. I mean he's cool, he's and he's dangerous in the, in the Five Doctors.

Joshua Noel: 00:15:09

Yeah. Yeah, well.

And what's, what's so interesting is seeing like the classic coup portrayal of him and like, like the lore that happened before we start seeing him more frequently. Right.

It's like, it's like he's talked about, like, he's benevolent, like he was this great ruler that saved them from all this different stuff and all this stuff, like, almost like, like you said Messiah, it would be like we had the tomb of Jesus, but for some reason on the tomb is written, beware. He might just kick. And you're like, what? You know, like. And it's just like, it's so random and so weird.

But like, the interesting thing to me is like, a lot of the stories about him back then that I've seen are a lot more like he was a ruler, he had all this power and he capped the amount of regenerations you could have. Because he didn't want us to get too power hungry. Right.

Or he said Time Lords would be chosen at random genetically, so it wasn't like just a purebred. You know, we won't, we don't end up becoming racist on, on Gallifrey.

Like, he did all this, like, power checks and, you know, as an American, I can't help but think of similar things, but I'm gonna leave that alone for, for a second. But it's interesting because it's like he does all this power checks, but then when we actually see him later on, we're gonna get to it.

He's the power hungry one. You know, it's like, wait a minute. What?

Justin Coleman: 00:16:21

Yeah, I mean that. So that's, that's why I think he, he is a more. I think he's a more complex character than even Hoodam has given him credit for being.

When you think about the myth and the legend now, yes, he, you know, so on the one hand, he creates Time Lord society such that he is the pinnacle of it, but also the safeguards. So I mean, so we could say like, yeah, the safeguards are to safeguard his own power. Maybe.

Joshua Noel: 00:16:55

Yeah, maybe he just knew himself that well.

Justin Coleman: 00:16:57

Right.

And so, yeah, I mean, that could be part of it, but there's also that he helps to establish these rules for time that maybe it was through trial and error, but in certain ways did create protections that were healthy, protections from, you know, the chaos that these powers could hold. And so I just, I think that, I like to think that he's got more dimensions than we see in the power hungry version.

And also you know, if he truly was a part of the inventing, I mean, if this myth has any truth to it, if he was a part of the inventing of all these different things in Time Lord society, he really is a person whose intellect really ought to rival the Doctor. Oh, yeah. And maybe even exceed the Doctor other than the Doctor.

If Rasselon is so determined to have this power, maybe the Doctor acts as a mirror and a kind of an accountability from the Doctor for Rassilon. I don't know.

Joshua Noel: 00:18:23

Yeah, yeah. No, it's crazy, man. It's all crazy. And you could really dig into a lot of this, like, who is it that creates power caps in our world?

You know, all this kind of stuff. And maybe we'll do, like, a primarily political episode. We'll go back over Rasselon one day. But, yes, I want to talk about the great vampires.

This is the wildest thing that I learned. Getting ready for this. It's so random.

At some point, apparently they were the Djinn, like, from, like, Muslim tradition, and at some point they're like, all these different. There's one theory that there's actually only one of them, and he's just so powerful, he splits himself into, like, a billion. And I'm like, what?

Like, this is so random.

One of the theories is actually that Rassilon's testing with time actually allowed them to enter in from another dimension because they're actually like a demonic force from another dimension or something. But because of the great vampires. I hate. This is just so weird. This is like Doctor who comics from classic era, I think, but because of them.

That's actually why Rassilon got a lot of the power that he did.

He was accumulating stuff, inventing new stuff, because they were in a war, the Eternity War, which basically he became president during that, so that the Time Lord were able to defeat the great vampires, which, again, demonic forces from another dimension. I want them defeated. Like, yeah, cool. He defeated them. That's great. Like, the guy feels like a hero to me when you hear this part of the story.

Right, yes.

Justin Coleman: 00:19:47

Yeah. Well, again, this is. And so I only know bits and pieces about this as well. But, yeah, this eternity or eternal war thing, you know, the.

So Rassilon in this. In this iteration really is like our current Doctor in this iteration, you know?

So rather than fighting other beings from other planets who are amassing great power, we've got these, like, mythic creatures that come from elsewhere.

And Rassilon is like the doctrine being one to go toe to toe with these Creatures and play a significant role in leading the Time Lords to victory over these, These vampires who can.

Joshua Noel: 00:20:36

I could tell you tried not to say vampire, like.

Justin Coleman: 00:20:39

I know, I know. I mean, these, these vampires who. I mean, but they're like. So they're slightly. They, they, they reanimate the dead right into.

Yeah, you know, vampire, like, you know, servants. And so that's, that's the whole, that's the whole thing.

And so, so, yeah, like, Rassilon is leading the way in this and, you know, the Doctor becomes a hero and. And I think killing the King of the. But Rassilon essentially wins the war against these. What a. It's just. Yeah, it's strange.

Joshua Noel: 00:21:16

Yeah.

What's strange to me too, this is just like a side note how much they look like the comics portrayal in Marvel of the scroll, the shape shifting aliens, because they also are shapeshifters. I'm like. I feel like a little bit. Am I the police pulled from that? Maybe.

Justin Coleman: 00:21:33

Yeah.

Joshua Noel: 00:21:33

Seriously? Yeah. Don't know. Oh, man.

But the reason that I still bring it up, even though it's silly and ridiculous and neither of us know a ton about it, it seems like the thing that, that is interesting is going to tie us into the new Doctor. Well, the second. The first new Doctor who before we get to the new new Doctor who.

Because what happens is Gallifrey, you know, Rasson's either in a deep sleep or he's actually dead. There's actually.

Showrunners have argued about this on different podcasts and recordings of different stuff, so it seems like not even the showrunners know if he was just asleep or, like, dead dead. They don't know. But. But since Rassilon was either asleep or dead, Gallifrey was in an era of peace. They stopped preparing for war.

They've just been in peace for so long, you know, in part thanks to what Rassilon did to stop the Eternity War with the great vampires.

So when the Time War starts with the Daleks, it happens between the classic Doctor who and the new Doctor who, we don't actually see most of it until later on. We see some, but the Daleks caught the Time wars by surprise. They weren't ready for war.

And that's why they bring Rassilon back, is because they weren't ready for war. And they knew this was the guy who defeated the great vampires. We need him back now.

And that's when I think you start seeing kind of a shift in his character a little bit. But we don't learn a lot of it.

Until you get more into the new Doctor who and we get to like the End of Time, we learn what Rassilan did to the Bastor and some of Rassilon's plans. Do you want to unpack, like what happens in the End of Time? What part does Rassilon play in all this?

Justin Coleman: 00:23:09

So, okay, I mean, so okay, looking at Rassilon, his return, and he's played by Timothy Dalton. This is in the Russell T. Davis Davies era.

So Rassilon comes back as like the Doctor who version of Rachel Ghoul since he's been reincarnated, but he's got this like mad tyrant, you know, like whatever the pool they put him in or whatever the stuff they put him in to reincarnate him or revive him or whatever he. In the, in the Peter Capaldi era, he calls himself Rassilon, the Resurrected. Right.

So whatever they did to resurrect the guy, he is, he's war Rassilon and he is all, he's just bent on winning and he can vaporize people with his, his gauntlet and, and his, in his way of wanting to win the war is by ending all, ending reality right, as we know it, and then like ascending to some non physical form of something, you know, and so, but it's going to wipe everything out. It's going to wipe out everything that he has formerly created a whole society to protect.

So I mean, even, even if, so I'll, I'll, I'll concede that perhaps Rassilon was most concerned with Time Lords themselves. So if it's Time Lords against the rest of reality, he's all in for the, the Time Lords. Okay, I mean, I'll, I can see that.

But you know, so much of the society that he built around the Time Lords and the protections of these and having rules for time travel was meant to protect reality. And so for him to just be like, you know, if I can't, if I can't live in this reality as I wanted, I'm just going to burn it to the ground.

I mean, I just, I do think that's a really interesting choice for, for this, for this character, you know, ambitious, power hungry, power drunk, even without any kind of limit.

Joshua Noel: 00:25:52

Yeah, well, one thing I saw that was interesting for, for this to think about, I saw somewhere that it said that apparently before Rassilon put himself in the eternal sleep or whatever, he had a theory which is part of why he did the capstone in the first place, that if you regenerated enough, you would stop being recognizable to yourself. Like you actually lose part of yourself after a certain amount of time. Another Batman reference. It's that whole, you either live long enough to self.

Long enough to see yourself become the villain or die the hero. And I think that's what we see kind of here.

Justin Coleman: 00:27:11

Interesting. Yes. Yeah. I mean, it's really, it's, it's. That's a really, really fascinating theory. And it. In it.

And, and you see, you even see the Doctor wonder about whether you can. You can actually live too long. I mean, in his low. Not his. In there. I guess you use the name in their low moments.

There's this question about, you know, like, have I. Have I lived too long? And so, yeah, I mean, Rassilon may have been thinking about this as well. That's an interesting question.

So you get Rassilon, mad tyrant here, and then that goes south. Right. So the Doctor foils Rassilon.

Joshua Noel: 00:28:06

Foils Rassilon.

Justin Coleman: 00:28:08

That's right. Sorry. That's right. The Master foils Rassilon and. And then, you know, it's. It's like back to the. To the Time Ward Time War with. With. With Rassilon.

So, so, you know, Gallifrey, you know, begins to start to fall in this.

But then we find in the Peter Capaldi era, so this is part of the Moffat era, an actor by the name of Donald Sumter, I think is his name, plays Rassilon. And so we're in, you know, hellbent episode Rassilon Returns. He is quieter, he's older, he's powerful still, but he's a little bit different.

So the Time War has been lost. Gallifrey had been lost in this kind of bubble pocket universe thing that the Doctor contrived.

Joshua Noel: 00:29:14

Timey wimey stuff.

Justin Coleman: 00:29:16

The timey wimey stuff. Well, the Doctor and all of the Doctor's incarnations didn't work their TARDIS together to create that. And so it's a Rassilon.

If he ever had the Doctor's respect, which we don't know, I mean, from classic era, if the Rasselon ever had the Doctor's respect, this is totally gone here. And so the twelfth Doctor, Peter Capaldi's Doctor, walks into Gallifrey and Rassilon, and he's just not having any Erassilon stuff.

Like, the Doctor has at this point taken billions of years to break into Gallifrey. After this, another messy test that Rassilon and the High Council has put the Doctor into to try to figure out who the hybrid was.

And the Doctor in Rassilon wants to bring the forces of Gallifrey against the Doctor. Like, exterminate this guy. He's not giving us what we want. I can kill you as many times as necessary. We're gonna run out your regeneration.

And the Doctor got nothing but his presence, you know, so, no, no violence, but. But with his just refusal to engage Rassilon and his shaming Rassilon in that, in this way he went his way.

And then Rassilon is exiled from Gallifrey. So, I mean, you got this. Like this.

The founder of the Time Lords, the man, the myth, the legend, literally, in Time Lord society is just cast out by the Time Lord that never wanted. Well, the Time Lord that never wanted the throne.

Like, he never wanted to be president of the Time Lords, though he was made president multiple times, you know, so.

So Rassilon, who we've learned to be some kind of tyrant and a resurrected low key Messiah, he thinks of himself as a messiah to the Time Lord society. He's cast out by the person who never wanted to be the leader. There's a power to that.

But again, I still think it's like the character Rassilon's all over the place.

Joshua Noel: 00:32:14

Yeah.

Well, one of the things too, though, that's interesting to me, going through like the Time War stuff that I'm like, it is all weird and there's still more to go that we have to talk about because we haven't seen them after that. But there's some implications to stuff that happened.

So during the Time War, they isolate Gallifrey in a time bubble so that what happens doesn't affect the entire rest of the universe, because Time War, that's scary, right? And I think that's actually Rassilon who does that initially, but I think the Doctor just kind of seals it off. But I'm not 100% sure on that.

It's a little blurry. But what Raxlon does is he sends the Doctor into the Doctor, he sends the Master into the vortex with the beat of the Time Lords. The bum bum bum bum.

1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, four. You guys have probably heard of the Bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum. And that's like. So the Master has that stuck in his head.

And this whole time we thought the Master was gone crazy. Just has this rhythm in his head for no reason. And then we're like, oh, wait, someone place it. Someone did this to him. Yeah, so that's what's crazy.

When the Master takes over the world. And all this stuff in Doctor who and you're like, oh, what a bad guy. And you realize, oh, actually, someone was behind that.

Justin Coleman: 00:33:22

That's right.

Joshua Noel: 00:33:22

And then he ruins Rasselon's plan. And you're like, but Rassilon was the head of the Council. Shouldn't we be cheered for him? Like, I'm like, huh? Then. Which really stands out.

So the day of the Doctor is the 50th anniversary where all the Doctors get together and we see. We learn more about the Time War. I think here's the big difference between the Doctor and Rassilon.

I think the Rassilon was better than the Doctor up until the Time War. And what happened was because just like the Doctor had the War Doctor, he didn't even count that as one of his regenerations.

Like, he changed so fundamentally by war, but he chose to regenerate into someone new. Rassilon. I think he stayed War. Rassilon. You know, it would have been like if the Doctor stayed War Doctor as opposed to moving on.

I think that's kind of what happened.

Justin Coleman: 00:34:06

I agree with you. Yeah. I mean, it's. Because it's. It's. He becomes. He becomes something that's different than at least we.

From the character of wrestling that we know, or we think we know, at least he becomes something fundamentally different. You're right. And he. And he creates the Master. You're right. He absolutely crazy. Creates the Master from.

He puts something in the Master when the Master is a little child, that just creates a madness in him that makes him, you know, this constant, wayward child of Gallifrey who can go toe to toe with the Doctor so many times, but is just bent on kind of evil domination, is what we think.

So that's really interesting to think about the Rassilon as the legend moving to this, like, you know, God King character in order to win and never being able to let that iteration go even as he regenerates.

Joshua Noel: 00:35:24

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm gonna make two analogies. A silly one and then a serious one with that, then we can move on to the other stuff, because I just. I got.

I want to sit on this for a minute because. So.

So the silly one you mentioned, Raison Ghoul, I feel like it would be as if Batman somehow discovered that his teacher, Raison Ghoul, actually is the one that made Joker crazy. Like, I feel like that. That's like the equivalent of this. Yeah. The Master. It's like, wait a minute. But that's. I'm supposed to hate that guy. You know?

Like, it's like, wait. Wait a minute. So it's very similar to, like, if that would have happened. The real life thing that I think actually does scare me.

And I want to address it because, like, you know, we say that we're going to address the questions that our IPs are addressing, and I don't want to, like, just pass it by without actually looking at this. I think this is a lot of what the Church in America is doing right now.

It's like we've changed ourselves to be like, okay, we're going to be okay, and turn our eyes to Donald Trump, to, you know, all these political leaders, because we need power right now so that we can combat whatever social wars we think are so important. And I'm wondering if the Church is going to ever, like, because, you know, everyone thinks they're going to be like, the Doctor.

I'm just going to stop being the War Doctor once I get. Once this is over, we'll move on to the next thing.

But I think in reality, most of us are Rassilon and we just stay the War Doctor, you know, like, we just stay in that mentality. And I think that's what I'm seeing happening. That's scary, man.

Justin Coleman: 00:36:44

Dude. Okay, so I'm. You're. I'm loving it.

Joshua Noel: 00:36:48

This is for you to.

Justin Coleman: 00:36:49

Cooking up, buddy. Loving what you're cooking up because. Okay, so let's. So we're going to just keep on throwing out some analogies here.

So if we think of Rassilon like a mirror. So let's think about both the Doctor and Rassilon as certain kinds of. In a relationship to a mirror. Right? So I think about.

Yeah, I think about what N.T. wright has said in that, like, the Church, what the Church is meant to do is reflect the glory of heaven.

The Church seems like the image he uses is the Church is a mirror in the midst of a doorway. So we're supposed to reflect the glory of God and all the fullness of heaven and new creation into the world. That's how it's supposed to work.

Joshua Noel: 00:37:35

Yeah.

Justin Coleman: 00:37:38

So to kind of keep on playing with this imagery of a mirror. So what Rassilon. What Rassilon does is in a way that is filled with the power, filled with the seduction of power, of empire.

Power and legacy of empire. Is. Rassilon reflects Gallifrey in multiple ways. Like as it's. He reflects its myth, he reflects its. In the. In the.

In the David Tennant era, it reflects the madness of Gallifrey. I mean, it's like a chaotic madness. Right in the Capaldi era. It's like Gallifrey becomes pathetic in a way. It's like it's a declining empire.

Rassilon reflects those things. What the Doctor does is. It's a different kind of a mirror. Or maybe.

Maybe what the Doctor does, which I will argue then I'm moving this a little bit away from what N.T. wright said. I mean, as far as it relates to the world. The Church is meant to be like the Doctor and it's meant to stand outside of that.

Rassilon mirror is meant to challenge what the Rassilon mirror stands for. You know, the power, legacy of the empire, the myths of the Empire, the madness of the Empire, the climb of the Empire.

The Church is meant to stand outside of that. So we're not reflecting empire, reflecting Kingdom of God, we're reflecting heaven, a new creation.

And so the Doctor acts as that kind of counterpoint to Rassilon. Rassilon just, you know, Rassilon wants to reflect the world and the Doctor wants to reflect heaven, if you will.

And, you know, the Church is meant to be like the Doctor in that. But as you say, it's so easy for us to, you know, reflect the power and legacy of empire. I mean, this is. This is Constantine.

One of my congregants was talking to me about Constantine, the Constantinian settlement, just this past weekend, after, After. After Easter worship, is sitting out on the lawn talking about these things, like you do, and. And, you know, so you get.

You get things from the Constantinian settlement or the Church becoming the official religion of the Holy Roman Empire. You get things like the Nicene Creed.

Joshua Noel: 00:40:38

Oh, yeah, right.

Justin Coleman: 00:40:39

I mean, which unifies all the historic branches of the Church. People have to actually sit down. Yeah, right.

People actually have to sit down and convene and agree and talk about, like, what's most central and core to the Christian life theologically. So that's. And we. So we think that is a good thing. So you get that. So let's. Let's call that, like, the creation of the tardis.

You know, you get some good things, but then you also get all this, like, imperial stuff. And so the Church reflects. Starts reflecting the Empire, the power and legacy of the Empire. What does it mean that we can have our own army now?

What does it mean that we can dominate, that we can create peace not just by turning the other cheek, but by turning other cheeks? What happens when you actually have power and, you know, we. We are in. In the life of.

Of this country, we wrestle with that seduction and give into it far too often.

Joshua Noel: 00:43:17

Yeah, yeah. Well, and then the thing that, that bugs me with that too, because I don't want to just come off as I don't want to both sides.

This, I do think Donald Trump is, is worse than any alternative for the most part. But at the same time, I don't want to let everybody off the hook who just didn't vote for Donald Trump. Like, oh, we're fine.

Because what happens is, and we see this in politics and in the church where like we go when our guys in power, it's like, well, we don't want the filibuster anymore. We want more judges added to the court, all this stuff. Then all of a sudden when the other guys and we're like, actually all that stuff is bad.

We got to stay to the constitution state of the original rules.

It's like, wait, but when you were in charge, you didn't want those rules, you know, And I think the church is doing the same thing where it's like, oh, separation of church and state when it's someone they don't like in office. And then all of a sudden when someone who maybe is doing stuff that gives them more power, it's, well, separate church of state.

That's not really a thing. And you know, it'd be better if more Christians were in office. And I'm like, hold up, you said the opposite thing just a couple years ago.

And my thing, it's not, it's not necessarily about consistency. It's more about like principles. Do you want the separation regardless of if your person's in power or not?

Justin Coleman: 00:44:24

Well, principles. Yeah, let's. I'm glad you used that word because it very nearly, nearly it does nearly relate to principalities.

So you know, I think that we, we do wrestle with powers and principalities as Paul talks about.

Joshua Noel: 00:44:44

Yeah.

Justin Coleman: 00:44:45

And the, this I mentioned it as a, as a seduction to power. But these powers, these principalities have a force.

And that force can be in one way to talk about is seductive, but another way to talk about is blinding.

Joshua Noel: 00:45:09

Yeah.

Justin Coleman: 00:45:10

You know this, I mean, or going to different fandoms here. This is like in the dark side of the force. Right. It you can't see like so, so in.

So when you're, if the balance is off in the force, you, the especially those who are practice trying, seeking to practice the light side of the force, you just can't see. You can't see the what's going to happen. You can't see like the, the out. The cause and effect. The outcomes are unclear. You. But here's.

Here's what's really. You can't see when you're participating in the growing darkness. And. And I. I want to.

I like lifting that up, or I want to lift it up today because, you know, as I talked about on. On Sunday, you know, in this year when.

When Easter lined up across east and west, you know, in the Orthodox church, they don't read John 20 on Easter Sunday.

They read John chapter one, because it's about linking up with the cosmic mission of Christ to let you know that this whole resurrection thing started at the very beginning with the Word, before all of creation, like this. So this is. This is part of a movement.

The Resurrection is part of a movement that from the very beginning, and in this whole bit around darkness and light that John wants to talk about, that when there's a certain kind of darkness, you can bring God to the world. You can bring the Word to the world. The Word that created the world.

All that is created, all the created clarity of all that is in all of the created universe. This word that created you, you don't recognize when it's among you. I mean, that's what John one tries to say because of the darkness.

So you have an inability to recognize darkness for darkness, and you have an ability to recognize what actually represents the light. And I think that's part of the challenge that the church always has, is like, man, am I able to see here?

And Jesus, you got to help me to see, because I might be blinded by the darkness and I might be confusing that darkness for light.

Joshua Noel: 00:47:56

Yeah, yeah. I mean, we see that all throughout the history of the Church and doctor Who. And it's not just one kind of power. It's not just like, of darkness.

Right. It's not just, oh, political power. You know, we see through the Church. At one point, it was conquest, right? We.

We had this mindset of, like, we'll conquer these other countries.

You know, we had the Crusade, we had the Inquisition, all kinds of stuff that proves this, that we thought if we would just defeat people through violence, then we'll raise up the new people to be good Christians. And we kind of justified it that way. And we look back at it with our modern eyes going, wow, that was crazy. That was so evil.

How could they fall for that? And then, like, you look at Germany, how much the Church supported the Nazis. Why? Because he was, like, promising power.

And you guys are being belittled for all this stuff. And, you know, they fell for him. Like, how did they fall for that guy? And that's what I'm Saying, like, the darkness might look different.

It might be, okay, well, we're going to let these people lie to the other ones because they were the bad guys. And if we deceive the bad guys, then we'll get what we really want.

Or if we get our political power, it doesn't matter who gets us there, then we can really share about Jesus.

And the problem is, once you start, like you said, participating in the darkness, when the light comes, you're so engulfed in lies and power, hunger and violence, you can't see the thing. And that's why future generations will look back and go, how did they fall for that? That's going to happen to us, too. One day.

The future's going to look back. Like, how did they fall for that?

Justin Coleman: 00:49:12

Well, I mean, so this is. I mean, getting back to Rassilon here. Well, so it's just connected. So, like, there is. So Rassilon as a character is as a Time Lord fluid.

He regenerates, he reforms, he reinvents. You know, we think that as we look at the past, the sad and dangerous things that have happened in the past, we think of it as static.

Well, these kinds of ideas regenerate and reform and reinvent, just like good ideas do. Just like good ideas do. So you got Cerassilon is regenerating, and it just says, the Doctor is regenerating here. And so he's not just one man.

He's an idea that, you know, regeneration reforms and reinvents over time. In. In an idea a day, especially. A dangerous idea is dangerous. Ideas can be hard to kill. They can be hard to end.

And so, you know, part of the challenge, part of what it means to. To be in the light is Jesus is in the light, is to ask for this divine clarity, like, lord, help me to see a bad idea.

Help me to see a dangerous idea, and help me to recognize it across time in history, such that when a dangerous idea in its regenerated, Reformed, reinvented, you know, is so that when I.

When it's before me, I can recognize it as such, just as I try to recognize what is consistent with the God in Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. Just as I hope to also recognize that.

Joshua Noel: 00:51:33

Yeah, man, yeah, yeah. Being able to recognize not only the light and God's voice, but also what's not God's voice. Oh, man. Well, man, we got derailed with. With the.

With the important stuff. So let's get back to the silly stuff. The fandom stuff, maybe. Not silly fandom stuff, man. Yeah.

So Rassilon gets blindsided, he becomes this other thing. He gets kicked off Gallifrey. But there's still some. Some history with Gallifrey that maybe tells us something about Rassilon.

Perhaps there's the story of the day of the Doctor where we realize the Doctor has been around a lot longer than we thought.

And maybe a lot of what we thought, not of the day, the Endless Child, not the day of the Doctor, sorry, But maybe a lot of what we thought about Time Lords and, like, what Al Raslan invented, turns out they might have just stole from a baby that turned out to be the Doctor one day. It's a ridiculous plot. I actually don't like the story very much, but I think it has a lot of cool implications for overall Doctor who universe.

Justin Coleman: 00:52:29

Yeah.

Joshua Noel: 00:52:30

Justin, you want to unpack some of that? I don't know.

Justin Coleman: 00:52:33

Yeah. So this is a controversial bit of Doctor who canon, maybe canon that we're dealing with in that the idea of the timeless child.

And we don't know where the timeless child came from, but the timeless child is able to regenerate.

And so the Time Lords hack the DNA, the abilities of this timeless child who turns out to be the Doctor, and then through a lottery system, imbue various members of their society with this regeneration ability. And oh, my gosh, it is. So it shatters. So the Master figures this out and it shatters the Time Lord myth for the Master.

And then the Master can't help but think, my gosh, my BFF frenemy of all time, the Doctor is this timeless child. And so. And so if the.

If this is, you know, if this is the canon, it means that either Rassilon participated in this, you know, taking this child, experimenting on this child, hacking this child's DNA so that others could be given this power, including him himself. So either Rassilon was there for that, participated in that, or Rassilon came along and said. Or Rassilon was the. Or Rasalon. Steve Jobs.

Steve Jobs did and said, okay, this is cool. Let me make something really awesome and just said, I'm going to show you all how we can make a society out of this. And so, yeah. So it's just really.

It's not exactly clear how this worked, but it seems to be the genesis, the true genesis of Time Lord society, which drives the Master just crazy about it. I mean, Time War society is always messing with the Master. And.

And so the Master determines in Time Lord society because of this, because of learning the truth behind it all.

Joshua Noel: 00:55:28

Yeah.

Which not going to get into a side tangent, but also is kind of reminiscent for a lot of people who learn the truth about church or the churches they grew up in and were like, oh, let me go after it. And you. You do have used. You have. And this is what Will talks about, the difference of a hero and a villain. Right. Bad thing happens to you.

And do you either decide, I want this to happen to everyone else too, or do you decide, I'm not going to let this happen to anyone else? And again, that's a lot of the difference between the Doctor and the Master. Master says everyone has to go through this.

What's ironic about this for the story, Geeky stuff. The Master, the way it's sold, wipes out all life on Gallifrey.

But if you remember, from Heaven Sent, Rassilon was already kicked out of Gallifrey, so he might not have been wiped out. Rasselon might still be out there.

Justin Coleman: 00:56:14

Yep. Ready to recreate the society that was just, you know, just was. Was ended. Yeah. I mean, absolutely.

Joshua Noel: 00:56:28

Yeah. Yeah. A lot of crazy turns and shifts and twists and. Does this make sense? We really don't know.

Justin Coleman: 00:56:36

But, I mean, it's this.

It became Time Lord lore, became so chaotic at that point, because you get this, you know, in the end, toward the end of Matt Smith's era as the doctor, when the 11th doctor meets the Curator, who's, you know, a Tom Baker iteration of the Doctor. Doctor revisiting before. Before. David Tennant got to be the Doctor multiple times. Tom Baker got to be the Doctor multiple times here in that episode.

And it makes this whole thing about the Doctor finding Gallifrey again, and so may. But was that only for Gallifrey to exist for, like, a few episodes and then be wiped out?

Joshua Noel: 00:57:38

It's like, we just need the Doctor to be sad. We got to get him back there. Yeah. I don't know, man. That part, just from a story perspective, it's just kind of frustrating for me. But in Russell T.

Davies, we trust. We'll see what happens.

Justin Coleman: 00:57:53

That's right.

Joshua Noel: 00:57:53

See what happens. Yeah.

Justin Coleman: 00:57:54

Yeah. So they. They have. They've. They have muted that story a bit. I mean, they haven't dismissed it, but they muted it quite a bit.

Joshua Noel: 00:58:03

Yeah, yeah. And then, you know, with the. The timeless child, there's the questions of, like, was Raxlon ever benevolent? Did he steal from this child?

We don't know. But it seems like at one point, especially because Heaven said they talked about how he was a good guy at one point.

It seems like he was benevolent at one Point. He did a lot of the stuff to win the Eternity War.

He came back to try to win the Time War, trying to protect our universe from other dimensional demons or the Daleks that are just, you know, space Nazis or something. Right. Like. Like he did a lot of good, but then it's also like, what were the means ever good?

And then also, is he always power hungry or did the reason he had these cool rules because he was power. There's a lot of questions that are left unanswered, like what our bonus question is going to be.

We're going to tell you here in a minute, but first, Justin, I think I'm going to wrap up if you are.

Justin Coleman: 00:58:47

Yeah, absolutely.

Joshua Noel: 00:58:52

All right, so if you guys want to hear a little bit more after the episode, we're gonna ask a bonus question and it's just gonna be, how would we like to see Rassilon returned? Assuming that he didn't die in the Gallifrey massacre that the Master did, He was off planet, how would we like to see Rassilon return?

That's what we're gonna be asking after the episode. For now, though, we have to give everybody a recommendation. Justin, do you have any recommendations, Recommendations for the. For our listeners today?

Justin Coleman: 00:59:17

Oh, wow. Well, I'm gonna say again, like, go and watch the pit P I T T like Pittsburgh and it's great show. If you're interested in medicine.

Joshua Noel: 00:59:28

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm gonna recommend Ratchet and Clink Rift Apart. If you left the Ratchet Clink franchise because it's.

It got stale or got old or because they're just too long in between, it's worth comparing going back to those games because Rift Apart might be the best Ratchet and Link game. It's crazy. I'm just now getting to it. It's a couple years old now, but I'm like, man, I was missing out. It was great.

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