Romana II
In her second incarnation, Romanadvoratrelundar (Romana for short), continued to travel with the Doctor until she decided to remain in E-Space. Later, she returned to the main universe and eventually assumed the office of Lady President.
Biography
Regeneration and early life
Exactly! Good heavens, that's exactly right! Ha! I never realized you had such a sense of style.
Romana decided to regenerate into a form just like of Princess Astra. Romana later hypothesised that the torture she endured at the hands of The Shadow had somehow resurected the influence of Pandora - memories repressed by Braxiatel through hypnotism - and that the only way to regain full control was to voluntarily regenerate. (BFG: Lies) The Doctor protested that she had no right to assume the likeness of another person, so she went briefly through other alternative forms, only to settle back on Astra's. (DW: Destiny of the Daleks) She also initially chose a style of dress that mimicked the Doctor's. The Doctor soon got accustomed to her new form. He found this new incarnation easier to get along with than the last, to the point where he implied that he considered her his best friend. Together, the Doctor, Romana and K-9 Mark II made an unbeatable team.
The Doctor, Romana and K-9 Mark II spent an indeterminate period of time together, potentially quite long given the Doctor and Romana's longevity as Time Lords.
E-Space
After forgetting all about the matter, the Doctor received a message from the Time Lords requesting (or rather, ordering) him to return her to their home planet of Gallifrey now that she had helped him find the segments to the Key to Time. Romana, having tasted the life of adventure with the Doctor, and having bonded with him, clearly made it known that she didn't want to go back, at one point going to her room to sulk about it. (DW: Full Circle) En route, the Doctor's TARDIS entered a Charged Vacuum Emboitment, left their own universe (N-Space) and entered another, smaller universe known as E-Space (DW: Full Circle). With K-9 damaged by the time winds, the regular universe remained inaccessible to him. Romana decided to stay with him in the new universe and to help the enslaved Tharils release themselves from captivity. (DW: Warriors' Gate)
President of the High Council
Romana and K-9 eventually did return to N-Space and to Gallifrey, where Romana ascended to the Presidency. (MA: Goth Opera, NA: Happy Endings) Soon after taking office, however, she was abducted by the Daleks and spent more than two decades in captivity before finally escaping with the aid of the Doctor, now in his sixth incarnation. (BFA: The Apocalypse Element). Upon returning to Gallifrey, she resumed her position as president.
- The manner of Romana's ascendency is unclear. One source claims Romana ran against Flavia in an election and won. (NA: Happy Endings) Romana recalled that she had invoked a 'right of challange' against her predecessor as President of the High Council, just as Darkel later challanged her. (BFG: Insurgency) However, Braxiatel stated that no-one had held the role of Lord Chancellor "for many years", not since Romana's "predecessor quelled his predecessor's less-than-stellar stewardship"; while Romana said she had been "asked to become President after the coup that overthrew Flavia's inauspicious reign", in spite of her lack of political experience - suggesting another President ruled in an interim. (BFG: Lies)
It seems Braxiatel supported and guided Romana's appointment partly because it was inevitable and he wanted to monitor her closely for any return of the Pandora influence. (BFG: Lies) Braxiatel was created High Chancellor and given responsability for Romana's experiments with the Time Lord Academy, allowing off-world students to enter the academy.
Romana and her bodyguard Leela later encountered Pandora again, this time taking the form of Romana's first incarnation. Pandora tells Romana that she engineered her return to Gallifrey from E-Space and her appointment as President, in order to fulfill her grand plan. As a result of the Pandora creature, Braxiatel had to leave Gallifrey for exile, and the Academy reforms fell apart under his successor Chancellor Valyes. Romana started to exhibit some symptoms of Pandora's influence - she apparently murdered Andred while possessed, and continued to consult Pandora for advice on her political moves. At Pandora's suggestion, Romana declared herself Imperiatrix of Gallifrey in response to Darkel's challange for the Presidency, but as she crowned herself with the coronet linking her to The Matrix, Pandora became corporeal in the form of the first Romana, declaring herself Imperiatrix. Freed by her chancellory guards, Romana destroyed much the city's infrastructure in the resultant civil war, in response to Pandora's psychic control of the Capitol. She was eventually able to contain Pandora within the Matrix once again, and to kill her by destroying the Matrix completely.
Romana was greatly weakened by her struggle with Pandora, and Chancellor Valyes became acting President. Valyes appointed Matthias as Lord Cardinal before resigning and naming Darkel as his successor. Romana and Matthias both made counter-claims to the Presidency. After Darkel and Matthias agreed to the arrest of Romana for high treason, Braxiatel turned up and made a superior claim for the Presidency, freeing Romana. He immediately resigned and named Matthias his successor, to the surprise of Romana. However, Braxiatel had hatched a scheme to preserve the Time Lord biodata archive, containing the genetic patterns of all Time Lords, past and present, in the hopes of reconstructing Gallifrey after its inevitable fall. As the Free Time Dogma Virus ravaged Gallifrey, Matthias nominated Romana to find the cure, then go into exile. Romana followed the trail, only to find Braxiatel. He had nominated Matthias knowing that whoever was President would be doomed to fall to the Dogma virus. He also noted that, ironically, Pandora would have had the ruthlessness to crush the 'great threat' facing Gallifrey, but Romana would not. The only cure for the virus was to end the regeneration capabilities of the Time Lords. With the help of K-9, Braxiatel used a Time Scoop to collect the biodata archive. He then asked Romana to decide whether to administer the cure, or to let Gallifrey die and then rebuild it using the biodata. Her decision is not known. (BFG: Panacea)
Romana boldly initiated diplomatic relations with the Time Lords enemy, the Daleks (NA: Lungbarrow) and a peace treaty was signed: the Act of Master Restitution. (DWA: Doctor Who Annual 2006)
Prior to the destruction of Gallifrey, Romana had regenerated into a third incarnation. (EDA: The Shadows of Avalon) Romana claimed that she needed to regenerate to become a more effective leader of Gallifrey as her third incarnation was noticably more ruthless than her second self. She was also less kind towards the Doctor. (EDA:The Ancestor Cell)
During the Last Great Time War, Romana was replaced as Lord President by Rassilon. (DW: The End of Time) Romana's ultimate fate is unknown, although the Doctor implied that she became involved in the Time War. (IDW: The Forgotten)
Key life events
- Romana regenerates into her second incarnation. (DW: Destiny of the Daleks)
- Romana and K-9 Mark II leave the Doctor for E-Space. (DW: Warriors' Gate)
- The Daleks capture Romana. She spends years of imprisonment at their hands. (BFA: The Apocalypse Element)
- Romana challenges Flavia for the Presidency.
- Romana assumes the role of Lady President of the Time Lords. (MA: Goth Opera)
- Romana regenerates into her third incarnation in order to prepare herself for The War (a separate event from the Last Great Time War).
Behind the scenes
- It is only assumed that this is Romana's second incarnation, as there is nothing in any televised episode to indicate this to be the case. She is never actually called "Romana II" in any story, televised or otherwise. The nomenclature comes from repetition across several non-fictional reference books, such as Companions of Doctor Who, that have been written throughout the years.
- BBV Productions released two original audio adventures which featured Lalla Ward as Romana II, with K-9. Since they had the rights to K-9 but not Romana or E-Space, she has no name other than "Mistress" in the audio plays, which the characters merely refers to E-Space as "the pocket universe".
- Although a relationship was never explicitly shown or intended by the writers, many fans have found the signs of a romantic relationship particularly evident in the story City of Death, perhaps reflecting the real-life romance between Tom Baker and Lalla Ward which reportedly blossomed during the production of that story and led to their brief marriage. In 1980, Ward and Baker made a series of television commercials in Australia for Prime Computers; performing as Romana and The Doctor, the advertisements feature a romance between the two characters, culminating in the Doctor proposing marriage to Romana. (These commercials are not considered canonical).
- In City of Death, Romana says she is 125 but in The Ribos Operation she claims to be nearly 140 so her age cannot be completely accurately placed without further information.
- The status of Romana during the events of The Five Doctors depends upon which version is viewed. In the original 1983 broadcast version (and four-episode rebroadcasts), she is trapped in the vortex with the Fourth Doctor when the Time Scoop malfunctioned (as evidenced by an image of the two of them that appears on Borusa's monitor). For the 1995 Special Edition, only the Fourth Doctor is visible in the vortex image. According to production notes on the 2008 DVD release, Romana is not trapped with the Doctor in the Special Edition version. However, in WC: Shada, Romana remembers being taken out of time along with the Doctor.
- Three alternative 'physical' forms of Romana seen in Part One of Destiny of the Daleks were played, uncredited, by Lee Richards, Maggy Armitage and Yvonne Gallagher.
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