Disclaimer: All right's to their respective owners. I don't own Doctor Who.

A Day in the Life

It was, perhaps, a slightly stressful job.

Sure, it sounded fun, but being a Temporal Administrator wasn't exactly fun.

A scoff, hands worked as an overbearing hum rumbled throughout the console room. A click of the tongue, a flick of a switch. Eye of Harmony power levels increased to ensure a stable rate of Chronotron particles flowed through the Inhibitor Antennas. Ever tried constructing a Tachyon dam on the fly? One moment, he was relaxing, scrutinising a Chronograph[1] and having a nice lunch whilst his Time Capsule returned to Gallifrey, the next there was a message from the Bureau of Temporal Anomalies, and then he was at the scene, a slice of Arcadian bread[2] between his teeth as his hands worked frantically to fire controlled Tri-Artron Energy bursts at the breach through a Conductor Grid.

Well, one hand did that, the other hand was typing in input commands to re-boot the Temporal Manipulation and Construction systems[3] to build a Tachyon Dam that would help siphon of the area and stop the destabilisation. Holding a Chronovore at bay with one hand and trying to ensure the Web of Time didn't break with the other hand wasn't something anyone could do. In the entirety of Gallifrey, there were only a thousand Temporal Administrators, all of them assigned an area, both in space and then the epochs of that space, that they had to be the busybodies for all the other agencies and the High Council if necessary. Oh the problems he'd been sent to administrate.

New rift opening? Send a Temporal Administrator.

Supernova owing to some stupid stellar-poachers[4] star lifting illegally threatening to change the course of history in some backwater constellation? Send a Temporal Administrator.

Dimensional Collision threatening to plunge a Delta Class Galaxy Grouping into a world of hurt and possibly cause a massive paradox owing to the stupidity of a lower race having ideas above their station? Send a Temporal Administrator.

Amber eyes fell on the Chronograph, a swipe of the hand and the interface for the Temporal Scanner was brought up. It was activated and two picoseconds later the data was returned. The breach had been sealed, the wreckage of the craft that had attempted to engage a Quad-Core Tachyon drive engine without the relevant failsafe systems in the event of a possible particle collapse had been retrieved. A sigh, a hand was run through a mane of auburn and copper hair. He'd already contacted the High Council, who had promptly replied that an ambassador was on their way to the home planet of the race to whom the ship belonged to scold the idiots who had tried the stupid experiment. And then most likely hand them a bill. Probably to impress them into signing and abiding by the Treaty of Kasterborous[5]. Oh how they'd scrutinise it and try to find a loophole, but they all signed it eventually. Hard to argue with a treaty ratified only nine hundred million years after the creation of the universe. When a treaty is older than your planet, you tended to realise that you were in a deep quagmire of hurt if you refused to play nice.

A snort of laughter. Ninety million years of Non-intervention and counting his arse. Rassilon only knew what the Celestial Intervention Agency got up to. Manipulation of the demise of a dozen species was probably an average day for them. Chasm, they were probably already plotting what to do with the new species. And that was just the covert intervention, making races sign treaties binding them to the laws governing Temporal Mechanics didn't seem like "Non-Intervention" to him, but, he did agree with the Council on that matter. The lesser races needed to be reminded that some things were beyond them, they just needed to be told when to stop before they ended up causing someone a headache. Namely him.

A beep, the Time Lord moved around the console to the screen and opened the message. The event had been logged, the Eye of Time had been engaged to finish up the job and he could return home now. A small smile, and with a whistle, he did just that. His ship thrummed in accord with his feelings the power levels, and the sound levels, now restored to normal as he disengaged the handbrake and moved on through the web. In the web, a wave of Temporal energy pulsated through the section his ship had previously occupied, smoothing over the area and sealing all the cracks, and then, everything was as it should be. A chuckle at a thought as he entered the pass codes to enable his ship to pass through the transduction barrier.

Just another day in the life of a Dominus Temporis.

[1] – A Chronograph is an inbuilt map of the Web of Time, it enables a Time Lord to look at the Web of Time and the history of a certain section of the web, and in parallel, the history of the real space region that the web of time is layered over.

[2] – A delicious delicacy, humans would compare Arcadian Bread to Fougasse.

[3] – The toolbox of a Temporal Administrator, the Temporal Manipulation and Construction Systems allow an Administrator access to a variety of tools to help with their job in the Web of Time.

[4] – Stellar-Poachers is the terminology given to those who illegally harvest the energy of stars, as well as engaging in a variety of other illegal activities such as moon-shattering and Star Whale hunting.

[5] – The Treaty of Kasterborous is an Inter-Galactic Treaty concerning the usage of Temporal Mechanics, only the "Temporal Powers" are allowed to engage in Advanced Time Travel, the lower races have to make do with the basic Time Corridor as the pinnacle of their Temporal Capabilities. Currently in it's Fifth Revision.

Author's Note: The idea came to me after reading about the Indian Civil Service of the British Raj. Members of the Indian Civil Service were known as the "heaven-born" and were composed of around one thousand men who at any one time governed around 300 million people in British imperial India. Each Civil Service member had an average of 300,000 people to administrate.

So, I absorbed that tidbit of information, then watched a little Doctor Who, and the idea arose. We hear of the Time Lords being, Lords of Time, but what exactly was life like for a Time Lord who wasn't a renegade running around the Universe having one enormous holiday. How did they administrate the Laws and Realm of Time? So, here we are. I hope you enjoyed it. I intend to examine life on Gallifrey in closer detail. So keep an eye out for more in the future.