10 Things Nobody Wants To Admit About Doctor Who

10. The Time Lords Are Really Really Boring

Famously, The Deadly Assassin was devised by Philip Hinchcliffe and Robert Holmes to prove that Tom Baker couldn't hold the show by himself. While that part of the plan backfired spectacularly, The Deadly Assassin did explain a fundamental truth about the Time Lords – they're highly ineffectual and really quite dull.

Despite this, countless novels, audio dramas, comic-books and TV episodes have been written about the Time Lords and their long, complicated history.

This obsession with the Doctor's people seems rooted in a desire to give Doctor Who its own convoluted, Star Wars-like mythology. But Doctor Who isn't really an epic myth of gods and monsters, it's a show about someone with a magic police box, passing through, helping out where they can. Hell, the Doctor left his home planet in the first place because he was fed up of the Time Lords and their boring machinations, and that's why the most exciting and interesting Time Lords are the ones that fled for the stars.

The Doctor, the Master, the Rani, and the Meddling Monk are all great because they use their gifts for good, evil, or personal profit, and they've also had their horizons opened by extensive intergalactic travel. The Time Lords that remain on the dullest planet in the universe are all petty politicians or fusty old academics that don't live long in the memory.

Quite frankly, the Master did us all a favour when he blew the place up.