Professor Chronotis - Dirk Gently

The Dirk Gently version of the character is almost identical to the Shada version, though the novel contains no references to Time Lords. Here Chronotis is so old and forgetful that he has no idea who or what he originally was, though he has vague memories of Cleopatra (who he claims wore outrageous earrings and reeked of cat food and death), and believes that he achieved his position after his retirement from "something pretty good". He is known as "Reg", short for Regius Professor Chronotis.

His Chair of Chronology was created by mad king George III who was terrified that if time were to start flowing backwards, all the bad experiences of his life might recur. In fact, central to the book's theme are the three questions the King asked Reg upon his appointment; if one could travel through time, if there was a reason one thing happened after another, and if there was any way of stopping it (The answers are, in order, yes, no and maybe, which leads to Dirk deducing the existence of the time machine as his associate, Richard, was only told about the second and third questions but given all three answers), Reg apparently promptly realising the answer to the three questions and concluding that he could then take time off in reasonable comfort. However, at the conclusion of the novel his time machine was burned out when the phone repair man fixed Reg's telephone so that it would never go wrong again; for some reason the phone always malfunctioned whenever Reg used the time machine due to there being something fundamentally inexplicable about the British telephone system, with the phone's repair causing the machine to burn out.

In 2007, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency was adapted to radio and Professor Chronotis was portrayed by Andrew Sachs (who had previously played Skagra in the Big Finish audio/BBC webcast version of Shada).