Revived Series
Rassilon appears as the villainous mastermind of "The End of Time", the two-part finale of the series' 2009 Specials.
On the last day of the Last Great Time War, Rassilon intended to spare the Time Lords from death by invoking "The Final Sanction", which was designed to destroy the time vortex and elevate the Time Lords into beings of pure consciousness at the cost of the rest of creation. Implicitly, his plan was defeated by the Doctor, who ended the war using a device called "the Moment", which resulted in the destruction of Gallifrey and the other combatants, and subsequently placed the events of the Time War within a "time-lock", preventing them from being altered with time-travel technology. Rassilon (portrayed by Timothy Dalton) was ruthless and determined to avoid death at any cost, even going so far as to kill one of his advisors who suggested it might be a good thing to allow The Doctor to end the War, and cause the final death of the Daleks and Time Lords.
Before the Doctor destroyed Gallifrey, however, Rassilon attempted to break Gallifrey out of the time lock that blocked the Last Great Time War from temporal manipulation, placing a drumming beat in the mind of the Master when the Master gazed into the Time Vortex through the Untempered Schism as a child (and thus making Rassilon ultimately responsible for the Master's evil). When the Master turned all of humanity into copies of himself, the now-amplified drum beat, existing outside the Time Lock, acted as a signal, allowing Rassilon and his Council to escape the Time Lock. Rassilon was confronted by the Tenth Doctor who was left with the choice of killing either the Master or Rassilon with a gun he had been given by his companion Wilfred Mott to sever the link. Rassilon taunted him about his hesitation, but after seeing a mysterious woman among Rassilon's entourage, the Doctor shot the diamond Rassilon sent to the Master to act as an anchor for the link, severing it. Rassilon went to kill the Doctor in revenge, but was badly hurt by a vengeful Master, learning the truth that his life was manipulated by the president, as Rassilon, the other Time Lords, and Gallifrey were all sent directly back into the Time Lock and the last day of the Last Great Time War.
The Doctor at one point addresses the Lord President as "Rassilon", the name of the founder of Time Lord society from the classic series, although the character is only identified in the credits as 'The Narrator / Lord President'. In the accompanying episode of Doctor Who Confidential, Russell T Davies stated that the character's name was indeed Rassilon.
Read more about this topic: Rassilon, Character History
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