The History of Omega, the Beginning and the End of the Time Lords

Gizmodo

27-05-2025

If we thought all Doctor Who was going to build its upcoming finale around was the return of one classic villain from its history in the Rani, 'Wish World' told us to think again in its final moments, as it invoked the name of an all-time terror in the history of the Time Lords: the dread Omega, not seen in the show properly in over 40 years. But Omega's history is, fitting for a key player in the origins of the Time Lords themselves, paradoxically much old and yet also much more recent than that.
The First History of Omega
A solar engineer and a prominent figure in early Gallifreyan society—and, as later audio stories would reveal, a close confidant and schoolfriend of Rassilon, another key player in the foundation of the Time Lords—Omega first appeared in Doctor Who's first anniversary special, 'The Three Doctors,' in late 1972. There it was revealed that it was Omega's research that unlocked the key to time travel that would radically overhaul Gallifreyan society and create the Time Lords as we'd come to know them. Deploying a powerful relic known as the Hand of Omega, Omega made a star go supernova before harnessing its energies to fuel the first acts of controlled temporal manipulation.
But while the Hand of Omega, and the research it bore, would be recovered by Gallifrey, Omega himself was seemingly lost in the destruction. Revered as a hero and made legend by his people as they used the Hand to become lords of Time, Omega had actually survived his experiment, flung into a black hole and deposited into a universe of pure antimatter. Not knowing that his people thought he was dead, Omega grew bitter as his acceptance at not being rescued turned to fury that he had been abandoned in his moment of triumph by the Gallifreyans. In time, Omega sought his own way out of the antimatter universe, experimenting on his power to manipulate it and even create his own life—at a cost that he failed to realize, as his own physical body broke down into nothingness.
By the time the Time Lords tasked the First, Second, and Third Doctors with attempting to stop Omega from destroying the universe in his attempts to acquire more energy to fuel his escape, all that sustained Omega's form was the original suit that he wore during his experiments with the Hand. After battling with the Third Doctor in an attempt to trade places in exile with him, Omega was left in the antimatter universe as it was seemingly destroyed. But his 'death' had not stopped diehard followers of his own arising on Gallifrey, creating a legion of cultists that swore to bring one of Time Lord society's foundational forces back to reality.
In the 1983 serial 'Arc of Infinity,' a member of Gallifrey's High Council, Hedin, secretly plotted to steal the Doctor's biological data to create a new physical form for Omega's will to inhabit. Although the plan was foiled, Omega managed to briefly escape his antimatter universe and emerge on Earth, only to find his form destabilizing until he was imprisoned in the antimatter universe for good… again.
Omega and the Timeless Child
It would take Omega almost 40 years to return to Doctor Who on-screen… technically speaking. Because while Omega's history as the creator of Gallifreyan time travel hasn't changed, his broader part in the creation of Time Lord society on a biological level did in Chris Chibnall's re-working of the Doctor's origins in the 2020 episode 'The Timeless Child', in which Omega makes a brief, uncredited appearance in flashbacks alongside Rassilon and Tecteun. Although the character is never explicitly named onscreen, the officially released production script for the episode names two Time Lord figures seen alongside Tecteun as to be assumed as Omega and Rassilon, making them aware of the true origins of Time Lord society as we come to know it in that story.
As established in 'The Timeless Child', Tecteun was the scientist who found, and then successfully exploited, the genetic material of the titular child—the mysterious being who would eventually become the Doctor—to give themselves the ability to regenerate their physical form upon mortal injury. In 'The Timeless Child''s brief explanation of Gallifrey's history, Omega's discovery of time travel occurs during a golden age of advancement for the Shobogans, the native peoples of Gallifrey, during the construction of the Citadel and even before Tecteun decides to offer up the genetic inheritance of regeneration to the Citadel's denizens, formally renaming their society as that of the Time Lords. But Omega is still considered a foundational member of this triumvirate that makes the Time Lords, even if, presumably, his loss in experimenting with the Hand of Omega now comes at a point separated from his discovery of time travel.
What Omega's Return Means for Doctor Who
Interestingly, what little we got to see—or rather hear about, Omega is namechecked but left pointedly offscreen—of Omega in 'Wish World' keeps vague about where exactly he has been kept since we last saw him. The Rani describes Omega has having been kept in an 'underverse,' access to which required a fracture in reality itself, rather than the black holes and matter/antimatter that were previously established in Omega's prior appearances. Whether or not the underverse is intended to be the same reality that Omega was trapped in in those original stories, or somewhere else he was potentially sent to after those events, remains to be seen.
But that detail aside, Omega's potential return to reality is largely irrelevant next to what the Rani intends to use him for: the resurrection of the Time Lords from their latest extinction. Again, just how remains to be seen, but if Doctor Who does once again bring the Time Lords back for a third time—after their apparent destruction during the Last Great Time War, undone during the events of 'The Day of the Doctor,' and then the Master's eradication of his own people a few years later. As far as we know, while Gallifrey the planet still exists in some form, unlike its prior fate in the Time War, the Time Lords themselves, save for the Rani, the Doctor, and the Master were seemingly all exterminated.
Just how Omega's power could restore the Time Lords, again, remains to be seen. But with the revelation of the Timeless Child, and the Doctor's understanding of their connection to Gallifrey, Omega is now even more important to the foundations of the Time Lords than he already was with the invention of time travel—'Wish World' even describes him as the first Time Lord, and creator of their society. If he really is the key to their return–or a continuation of their absence from Doctor Who's current mythology—we'll find out once and for all as the current season of Who comes to its end in 'The Reality War' this weekend, on May 31.