More languages
More actions
The events of the PDAs, the Short Trips and comics featuring Leela need to be added.
These omissions are so great that the article's factual accuracy has been compromised. Check out the discussion page and revision history for further clues about what needs to be updated in this article.
Leela, later known as Leelandredloomsagwinaechegesima, (PROSE: Lungbarrow) was a companion of the Fourth Doctor.
She was a warrior of the "savage" Sevateem, a tribe of regressed humans. She met the Doctor during his visit to Mordee and aided him against Xoanon. The two became friends and, despite being offered the possibility of becoming leader of her world's new society, she left to follow the Doctor. Although he initially rejected her request to go with him, she ran into the TARDIS and became his companion.
Leela's origins meant she had little understanding of the technological wonders to which her travels exposed her. She was educated by the Doctor, who attempted to instruct her on the nature of societies beyond her own. During one such trip, she met Henry Gordon Jago and George Litefoot, whom she would revisit a number of times thereafter. Despite the Doctor's misgivings, she remained quick to violence and her primitive edge never dissipated.
They were joined on their travels by K9. Having fallen in love with Andred, a member of the Chancellery Guard, Leela chose to leave the Doctor and live on Gallifrey. K9 decided to remain with her.
She married Andred and, taking the name Leelandredloomsagwinaechegesima, became embroiled in Gallifreyan politics as the bodyguard of Romana II. The Time Lords allowed her to retain her youth for an unnaturally long time.
In the course of her time on Gallifrey, Leela became involved in a civil war and was blinded. Following Andred's death, she explored a number of alternate Gallifreys in other dimensions and restored her sight in one of them by drinking blood. During the Last Great Time War, she met the Doctor again.
After the war, Leela became a prisoner of the Z'nai and died in their dungeon. Her soul was reborn as Emily.
Biography
Early life
Leela was a member of the Sevateem, descended from the human survey team of the Mordee expedition that followed the Great Breakout of the year 5000. (TV: The Invisible Enemy) She was the daughter of Sole and Neela. (TV: The Face of Evil, PROSE: Eye of Heaven, AUDIO: The Revisionists) Leela was named after Leela, the greatest warrior in Sevateem history, who sacrificed her life to save the tribe. (AUDIO: The Catalyst, Arbitration, The Abandoned) In 60, she told Boudica that the name had no meaning. (AUDIO: The Wrath of the Iceni)
She had a sister, Ennia, who died before she was born. Neela failed to save Ennia, and used her knife to kill the Horda who killed Ennia. After her death, Neela's knife was passed on to Leela. (PROSE: Eye of Heaven, AUDIO: The Revisionists)
As a child, Leela saw her mother struck down and killed by an animal on Mount Kremnon while protecting her. She stayed with her body until sunrise in order to protect her soul from evil spirits.
During her childhood, she and her friend Tomas often went hunting together. (AUDIO: Empathy Games) Her father taught her how to heal animals' wounds with moss. (AUDIO: Zygon Hunt)
Meeting with the Doctor
Leela argued against the tribe's shaman, Neeva, in his decision to attack the rival Tesh tribe - a purpose he claimed came from the Sevateem's god, Xoanon. Leela's blaspheming against this deity secured her banishment. Sole undertook the ritual Test of the Horda on her behalf and was killed.
While attempting to leave Sevateem land, Leela came into conflict with two men, sent by Neeva to kill her. She used a crossbow to slay one of her assailants while Tomas, her friend, killed the other. Leela instructed him to return to the tribe and, before going far, met with the Fourth Doctor. She believed him to be the Evil One — a figure from Sevateem religion who supposedly held Xoanon captive — due to the resemblance between him and the carved face on a cliff nearby.
The Doctor saved Leela from the psychic projections of Xoanon that resided in the jungle, earning her trust. After the Doctor was captured, she returned to the Sevateem village and helped him escape. Her use of janis thorns to paralyse and kill was criticised by the Doctor.
Calib used a janis thorn against Leela, and only through the Doctor's use of a bioanalyser was she restored from paralysis and saved from death. Leela then went with the Doctor to the base of the Tesh - in fact the spacecraft used by the expedition. There, the Doctor found the supercomputer Xoanon and set about trying to cure him of his insanity while Leela fended off the attacking Tesh, killing several. The Doctor was able to unify the mind of Xoanon, slipping into unconsciousness as he did so.
Leela cared for the Doctor for two days until he came to his senses. She followed him back to his TARDIS and requested that he take her with him. The Doctor protested, admitting that he liked Leela, but saying he could not take everyone he liked with him as they were too numerous. Leela ran past him into the TARDIS, the Doctor followed, calling to her to come out; and Leela's use of the console led to dematerialisation. (TV: The Face of Evil)
Travels with the Fourth Doctor
Info from Last Man Running, Psi-ence Fiction, The Orb, The Revisionists, Drift, Corpse Marker, Match of the Day, It's a Lovely Day Tomorrow, The Bushranger's Story, The Prodigal Sun, The Ghost Trap, Black Dog, Eye of Heaven, The Brain of Socrates, Red Planet, Sound the Siren And I'll Come To You Comrade, Rest and Re-Creation, Night of the Stormcrow, Famine on Planet X, The Planet of Dust, Terror on Tantalogus, The Power, Flashback, Emsone's Castle, The Crocodiles from the Mist, The Catalyst, Empathy Games, Shamans, The Sooner the Better, The Smallest Battle, The Living Wax, Stanley, Death-Dealer, String Theory, The Destroyers, The Very Last Picture Show, The Mutants, The World Traders, The Day of the Comet, The Tribulations of Thadeus Nook, The Primeval Design, The Devil's Mouth, The Aqua-City, Dear Great Uncle Peter, The Child, The Changeling Years, One Bad Apple and A Ghost of Alchemy needs to be added.
Remembering an old adventure in his second incarnation, the Doctor sent Leela back to fulfil her part in it. She didn't realise that she had gone back in time and thought that people had invaded the TARDIS. She attacked Jamie McCrimmon thinking he had done something to the Doctor. Jamie took her to the Doctor and she found a garden full of Janis thorns. Appearing at the party she could see both sides of it, the garden party and a place full of stones. She stabbed the Doctor in Jamie's perception. The Doctor told her that he was an earlier version of the one she knew and that she should keep his secret. (AUDIO: Dumb Waiter)
The Doctor took her to the Shetland Islands after a summoning by Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart. Joanna Renwick later asked her to row in an annual race. During the boat race she was attacked by Vikings and thought that the water would burn her. She was helped back to safety by the Doctor. She was later placed on the galley which was to be burned by Murdo Jamieson and left to be killed. She went back in time by accident with the Doctor. Before returning she saw Angus Renwick commit suicide and this affected her. She received a message from UNIT that they were sending a missile to the island to deal with the situation. (AUDIO: The Helm of Awe)
Leela and the Doctor visited Storm Mine 4. After Chub, one of the crew, was found dead, the pair were accused of murder by the commander, Kiy Uvanov. The Doctor suspected that the Sandminer robots were responsible and Leela and he were exonerated when this was proven. D84, a Dum class robot, approached Leela and revealed that it could talk. She agreed to keep it secret, but did tell the Doctor.
Leela became friends with Lish Toos, treating her injury and comforting her after she was attacked by V6. They hid inside a hopper together, narrowly avoiding detection by the robots. Taren Capel, who had inspired the robot revolution was on board. The Doctor had Leela hide inside a vent and release helium when Capel entered the room. It changed the tone of his voice so that SV7 did not recognise his commands and killed him. (TV: The Robots of Death)
As part of the Doctor's efforts to teach Leela about her ancestors, he brought her to Victorian London in 1889. She saved the Doctor from an assailant, a member of the Tong of the Black Scorpion, by killing him with a Janis thorn.
Leela found the hypnotised Teresa and took her clothes, allowing her to gain access to the 51st century war criminal Magnus Greel's laboratory. She attempted to prevent the death of a woman, but the catalytic extraction chamber Greel used had already drained her.
As she fled, the Doctor saved Leela from a giant rat by shooting it with a Chinese fowling gun. She then went to the home of George Litefoot where she was attired in clothes bought by her host on the basis that they were fashionable. Leela wore them to accompany the Doctor to the Palace Theatre.
Greel attacked Leela in Litefoot's home. She pulled off his mask and saw his disfigured face. The Doctor negotiated with Greel to have the unconscious Leela left behind while they went to the House of the Dragon. Leela infiltrated the building, killing one a member of the Tong as she did so. She attacked Greel, but was seized by his men. When Mr Sin turned on Greel, she used a firearm for the first time, destroying the dragon statue's weapon capabilities. Greel was killed by the chamber.
Litefoot gave Leela some instruction on how to drink tea before he and Jago said goodbye to the travellers. (TV: The Talons of Weng-Chiang) Back in the TARDIS, they were alerted by an interstellar distress signal emanating from an English manor house in 1895.
Keeping their Victorian clothes on, they journeyed there and discovered the aftermath of a pitched battle between Lord Jack Corrigan's troops and the peaceful alien Drellerans, the last survivor of whom warned them of the dire consequences should the humans escape with their spacecraft, the Aeolus. They chased the craft centuries into the future, to the newly constructed Space Dock Nerva, which was in orbit around Jupiter. Corrigan's man, Henry McMullan, boarded Nerva and infected members of the crew with a virus. Leela and the Doctor befriended Alison Foster and fled Nerva aboard the supply ship Chandler with her and Giles Moreau.
Moreau was infected so the Doctor, Leela and Foster left the craft in spacesuits. The Drellerans teleported them into their presence and revealed that they had infected Corrigan in order to destroy humanity after Lord Jack had subjugated their species. Leela joined Foster and the Doctor in pleading for humanity, arguing with the Drellerans that the species had progressed since Corrigan's time. Leela, the Doctor and Foster were teleported back to Nerva after being injected with an anti-viral. When they came into contact with the infected humans, the virus was destroyed. Those humans recently infected were freed, but Lord Jack and his crew died after their bodies became their actual age. The Doctor asked Leela where she would like to go next, and she requested that he educate her. (AUDIO: Destination: Nerva)
To fulfil this wish, the Doctor took Leela to the famous Morovanian Museum on Morovania Minor. They went to see the opening of the renaissance section, but found themselves instead surrounded by people who believed they were living on Earth. The Doctor discovered that they were former experts who had had their knowledge stolen by Reginald Harcourt. Harcourt's own knowledge had been stolen and he was being used for data-storage by Jephson. By collecting all this information, Jephson hoped to know everything. Leela lost her knowledge of hunting as it was assimilated by Harcourt.
The Doctor introduced incorrect information into the data base, causing the fictional world created in the museum to collapse. Leela thanked the Doctor for teaching her about learning - knowledge was something to aspire to, but not at the expense of others. (AUDIO: The Renaissance Man)
Deciding that interacting with history would be better for her education, the Doctor took Leela to ancient Norfolk at the height of Roman occupation. She saved a woman who was being attacked by two Roman soldiers and learnt that it was Boudica, queen of the Iceni. Knowing the queen's fate, the Doctor told Leela he wanted to leave. She refused, believing that the repressed Britons deserved help, regardless of the Doctor's warnings.
Bragnar and the Doctor escaped the Iceni camp and Boudica pursued. Leela stopped the queen from killing the Time Lord and told her of her coming defeat, saying the Doctor was a prophet. He was taken captive and Leela swore allegiance to Boudica, receiving assurances that the Doctor would not be tortured. Leela believed that Boudica wanted to end the suffering of her people, but was made uneasy by the queen's intent to slaughter the population of Camulodunon. She went to the captive Doctor and pretended to threaten him while secretly handing him a knife.
During the attack on Camulodunon, she was with Boudica and confronted her, saying she aught not to kill the remaining Romans as they were defeated and accused her of fighting for revenge, not her country. Leela told Boudica that she had freed the Doctor and that she could not serve a queen such as she, so the two fought. With the queen at her mercy, Leela chose not to kill her. She told Boudica that she had once been like her and then fled. On their way back to the TARDIS, the Doctor spoke to Leela of Boudica's eventual fate and admitted that he wanted a break from education, suggesting a visit to the 21st century. (AUDIO: The Wrath of the Iceni)
The Doctor and Leela arrived in London on 30 January 2025, after the Doctor detected some unusual power readings there. There they found that a huge satellite dish had been fitted on top of the National Gallery, along with a base and giant solar panels on the Moon. The GlobeSphere Corporation was making limitless supplies of energy available to the people of Britain — but at a price. Caught up in a demonstration in Trafalgar Square the Doctor and Leela were swiftly separated and, as the Doctor fell in with affable protester Jack Coulson, Leela found herself captured and at the mercy of the Daleks. They interrogated her using a mind probe and she accidentally revealed that the Doctor was near. She taunted the Daleks and they sent her to become a Roboman. The Doctor saved her before the process was completed. Leela then went with him to the Moon. She worked out that in order to distract Damien Stephens, they should use the friendship between him and Jack and get information from him. (AUDIO: Energy of the Daleks)
The Doctor and Leela then arrived in England in 1979, where they were put on the trail of the White Worm. It seemed that some kind of giant worm had been eating the local cattle, and had now eaten a girl. The legend of the White Worm dated back to Roman times, and said that a great White Worm, as wide as a man, slithered out of the rocks of the Dark Peak Gap to take animals, sometimes even children, for its food. They soon discovered that the legend of the Worm was very much alive — even in 1979. Leela used her huntress instincts to escape from a set of dogs but ended up trespassing onto Colonel Hugh Spindleton's land. After having to evade his guns, Spindleton was interested in the fact that she was tracking the worm. He took her to meet the Decayed Master who was living in his cellars. The Master offered her to the worm but it didn't want to eat her and allowed her to escape. She discovered that Demesne Furze was the worm. The Doctor gave her a message to get UNIT's attention. (AUDIO: Trail of the White Worm)
The Master was working with the Kraals, and he gave the Doctor over to them as a prisoner. Leela escaped but was close by. The Kraals also arrested the Master. Evading Spindleton, Leela rescued the Master so that he could pilot the TARDIS and rescue the Doctor. Instead she rode a horse through the wormhole. She rescued the Doctor but didn't know that it was an android duplicate. She helped the Doctor to then create a duplicate of the Master to find the real Master. She tried to stop Spindleton from destroying Oseidon by convincing him that he was hypnotised. This allowed the Doctor to complete his plans. (AUDIO: The Oseidon Adventure)
Leela and the Doctor visited Bob Dovie at 59A Barnsfield Crescent in Totton, Hampshire on 23 November 1963. (AUDIO: The Light at the End)
The Doctor and Leela made a return visit to Victorian England but this time in 1849. They visited a travelling circus and witnessed a miracle cure. She saw something amiss in the crowds and saved Abasi. She later felt something weird about the Gralstead estate. She later wanted to take the alien artefact from Gideon McDivett. Shortly afterwards she was attacked and stabbed through the heart. She was afraid of Mordrega. She became enraged when Abasi was killed. She ignored the Doctor's advice and went to Abasi. During an illusion she stabbed the Doctor with a Janis Thorn but she bought him back with the alien artefact, the Corona. Abasi asked her to marry her. On returning to London she was enticed by Mordrega and stabbed her with Janis Thorn but this didn't affect her. (AUDIO: The Ghosts of Gralstead)
Planning to visit Bexhill on Sea, the Doctor landed near Sissenden Village in 1588. Shortly afterwards Leela helped the Doctor to save the catholic priest D'Arcy. At the estate of Robert Harney she saw the Vituperon. She stayed behind to protect Pincham and Anne Harney from the villagers. After Pincham died from being possessed she left with Anne to go find the Doctor in London. She was later informed that the Doctor was to be executed and went to rescue him. She later informed the Doctor and Robert that Anna and Nicholas Harney had been arrested. (AUDIO: The Devil's Armada)
She helped to rescue Ana Janz and Loyyo from a crashed car. She was then taken by Shown and Dack. She showed Dack how to use a crossbow. She was mistrustful of Volor and this was confirmed when he invaded her mind. Dack later told her that he loved her and he wanted her to stay with him. When Grillo Clavik killed him she regretted saying no to staying with him and she vowed to take revenge. The Doctor was later informed that she was executed. She was in fact kidnapped. She was tasked with getting the foundation codes to start the terraforming machine. (AUDIO: The Genesis Chamber)
The Doctor was going to take Leela to Dashrah before the Time Lords sent them to Dowcra instead. She saved Vilhol as she didn't think it was fair for an unarmed soldier to be killed with arms. She was told by Vilhol of the Sontaran plans and of Strang's betrayal. She went to find the Doctor but was informed by Irving that he went to see Strang. She went to the armoury to find bombs to destroy the portal and the hatching vats. She told Reaver that Strang would not need her when his army of clones was activated. She blew up the portal which then caused the whole site to collapse. Because the Doctor wasn't certain that he could make the Sontaran clones good, she destroyed all the vats. This caused a rift between the two of them. (AUDIO: The King of Sontar)
She decided to educate herself and read a book of fairy tales. After she and the Doctor arrived on a dark planet, they were attacked by the local flora. However, Morandi saved Leela. She almost died when she removed her helmet. After the missile exploded, the flora grew quickly giving enough oxygen for her to breathe unaided. Leela used her huntress instincts to attack the roots of the plants and was distracted and was pulled away until she electrocuted the roots. Morandi then mutated into something else. She ran away from it. It turned out that they become vampiric and she was injected with the material. She was worried that she would become a vampire too. Leela explained to the Doctor that she knew what crop rotation was as the Sevateem used it. She was injected with a placebo. (AUDIO: White Ghosts)
They landed at Eastwold to investigate something unusual. She saw a policemen and thought they would get information from him. She noticed that the Doctor thought something was weird with the broken glass in the bookshop. When they went to Celia Turner's place, she offered him cake laced with cyanide. Afterwards, the Doctor told her to go after the Crooked Man. She helped to protect Laura Corbett and the Doctor from an ogre. In the Land of Fiction, she helped ward off different monsters to stop the Crooked Man. (AUDIO: The Crooked Man)
She had a nightmare in which her father Sole faced the Horda. Shortly afterwards, she and the Doctor arrived on a luxury space liner, the Moray Rose, and they investigated it because of its empty hold. Calvert captured them and thought they were pirates. She kept hearing strange noises and spotted the Salonu. She thought that she heard the Doctor say that Sole was dead. She was captured by the Salonu. Each time she heard that strange noise, her memory of her father changed. The Salonu took her to a new ship where she was told that she was under the employ of the Master and was known as the Evil One. The Master told her that she was to kill the Doctor. Leela then tried to assassinate the Doctor. The Master had implanted fake memories into her mind. She used a janis thorn on the Doctor. Because the Doctor had the antidote to the janis thorn, she managed to throw off the conditioning and helped the Doctor to defeat the Master. (AUDIO: The Evil One)
The Doctor took Leela to Colophos for a camping holiday, but she did not think that it was a place where they should holiday. She noticed that the rock was actually a destroyed building, and theorised that either the natives died out or it was attacked. She was interested in why Sutton, Hardwick and Kellaway were on the planet. Inside the building, they met with Astaroth Morax who told them of his people. She was used as a bargaining chip by Morax. She managed to escape from the clutches of Morax. On Kellaway's ship, she helped the Doctor to track Morax. (AUDIO: Last of the Colophon)
The Doctor took her to Delafoss to show her a successful human colony. When she realised that something was wrong, she thought that the Doctor was mistaken about it being successful. Noticing a ship being destroyed, she theorised that there was a war going on. She wanted to help Larivan but he was becoming an infinite warrior. After the Infinite Warriors attacked she was rescued by Davent who took her to the Doctor, but she had to leave him behind against her will. She was taken to the Earth Alliance ship and met with Moorson who she told not to destroy the infinite. She gave orders to save the Alliance fleet. She devised a plan to destroy the Infinite. After the Doctor had taken the Breath of forever, she was still determined that the Doctor would help her save the humans. Boarding the ship, she used a Janis thorn on Zarith to rescue the Doctor. (AUDIO: Destroy the Infinite)
The Doctor was teaching Leela mathematics before he decided to visit the Point of Stillness. She was intrigued about how the TARDIS had a soul. She saw cockroaches in the console room. In the library she started to read nursery rhymes before finding the Vincent van Gogh paintings. She thought that the TARDIS wanted her to paint. She heard screaming in the TARDIS library. When the cockroaches all died, Three laughed at her and her picture started laughing and she went back to the Doctor. She thought that there were invaders in the TARDIS. When Marianna appeared in the console room, Leela discovered that Marianna created the Horda. Later she realised that Three and his compatriots were feeding of their imaginations. This involved using an illusion of her father against her. (AUDIO: The Abandoned)
Arriving on the leisure planet of Gorros, the Doctor and Leela found that they were there at the same time as a hunting party from the Solar Knights. She used her medical knowledge to help heal an injured bird. When Mina Challis arrived, Leela told her that the way her commander had injured the bird wasn't in good sport. She was interrogated by Gregor Saraton and didn't like that he would attack animals who weren't able to attack back. She thought that the Doctor would want to stay and solve the mysteries on the planet rather than leave. Leela used her tracking instincts to get back to the hunting lodge when the Zygons attacked. She wanted to know why Mina-Zygon didn't kill her and the Doctor. She had a plan to capture the Mina-Zygon using a cage of vines. She then suggested that the Zygons settle on Gorros instead of invading Earth. (AUDIO: Zygon Hunt)
Whilst travelling through the Vortex, the Doctor and Leela came across a rip in time. They landed in Devon in 1977 where they met Charlotte Willis who told them about the mysterious grange. There they discovered a body of a priest who had died from exposure to the time rip. Finding the source of the rip, Leela and the Doctor travelled to the year 4000 where they found a dystopian earth ravaged by the Pantophagen who had been brought there by Jalnik, who was half human/half Pantoghagen. He had planned to evacuate all the remaining humans back in time not before he infected them so that they would all become like him. Leela fell through the time rip, and the Doctor thought that she was lost and would never be found. In fact, she had used the Doctor's scarf to climb on one of the Pantophagen and rode it back to 1977, where she helped to stop the invasion from the future. (AUDIO: The Foe from the Future)
While trying to get to Brighton, the Doctor and Leela found themselves on Fang Rock in the 1900s. They visited the lighthouse there. With reports of a "fireball" and Ben Travers dead, the Doctor suspected alien involvement. Leela sighted a creature in the waters and had to be persuaded that it wasn't the mythical Beast of Fang Rock.
Aside from the lighthouse keepers, they were also joined by the crew of a steam yacht that crashed in the fog. One of the passengers, Adelaide Lessage, irritated Leela with her screams and swooning in the face of their alien aggressor. Leela hit Lessage across the face to silence her.
The creature was a Rutan and Leela helped the Doctor prepare a makeshift weapon to kill it. They put various items from their pockets into a telescope. Leela lit it and it fired the contents at the Rutan scout, killing it. She suggested that the Doctor modify the lighthouse and he did so, fitting it with a carbon oscillator, which he used to destroyed the Rutan mothership. (TV: Horror of Fang Rock)
She saved the Doctor from a fire within the console room. She didn't feel comfortable on Synchronis. She later thought the Doctor was dead. She took part in the empathy games as Vilor Angell's champion. (AUDIO: Empathy Games)
The Doctor was called back to Earth by UNIT to help on an expedition to the Amazon. When Leela and the Doctor became separated after a plane crash, she and Edward Perkins found the tribe of the Magor and their apparent god Godrin. She and the Doctor discovered that he was a Luron and took him back to London, where they were promptly knocked out. On recovering she found herself kidnapped and escaped through the ventilation shafts. After discovering that the Luron had duplicated her and the Doctor as well as many other humans, she helped to destroy their plans by tricking the Luron into thinking that they were their duplicates. They then shut down the sun with which the Luron were planning on killing the human race with. (AUDIO: The Valley of Death)
Adopting K9
Info from Crimson Dawn, People of the Trees, Christmas Every Day, The Dogs of War, The Roots of Evil, Endgame, The Sons of Kaldor, The Crowmarsh Experiment, The Mind Runners, The Demon Rises, The Shadow of London, The Bad Penny, Kill the Doctor!, The Age of Sutekh, Shadow of the Sun & The Dalek Protocol needs to be added.
In 5000, the Swarm brought the Doctor to the Bi-Al Foundation, which they took over. As the Doctor fell into a self-induced coma to fight off the influence of the Nucleus, he sent a shrunken clone of Leela and himself inside his brain to fight the infection. Absorbing Leela's clone unleashed her antibodies into the Doctor's system, saving him.
With the help of K9, Leela killed some of the Titan Base workers who were infected with the Swarm. She urged the Doctor to blow up the hatchling Swarm, to which the Doctor finally agreed. Leela begged him to accept Professor Marius' offer of K9 as a gift. K9 entered the TARDIS of his own accord, joining them on their journeys. (TV: The Invisible Enemy)
The Doctor and Leela went to Earth in search of the cause of a Relative Continuum Displacement Zone, knowing the time scanner being used could result in a direct continuum implosion. They landed in Fetchborough and came across Ted Moss, whom Leela held prisoner, believing him hostile. He told them about Dr Fendelman's work at Fetch Priory before they parted.
While circling the perimeter of the priory, Leela wandered from the Doctor and came across a cottage. Moss, who was within, fired a gun through the doorway, but Leela pressed herself against the outside wall and avoided harm. She overpowered Moss and threatened him with the gun, but surrendered the weapon to Jack Tyler, believing the cane he pressed against her back to be a firearm.
After Moss left, Martha Tyler came home, visibly shocked, and speaking of something "hungry for [her] soul". Leela left to seek the Doctor's assistance. At Fetch Priory, she found him in contact with the Fendahl core, Eustace, and broke the connection by toppling his chair. When the Doctor explained what the skull had been doing, using appropriate genetic material to recreate itself and draining his life, Leela told him what Martha had said about seeing something "huge and dark" and its hunger for souls. The Doctor asked Leela to take him to Martha. At the Tyler cottage, Leela and the Doctor revived Martha by appealing to the commonplace and she told them about the being she had seen in the woods. Martha gave Leela a charm before she left.
Using the TARDIS, the Doctor and Leela went in search of Planet 5 – the homeworld of the Fendahl. Leela fell asleep and, having dreamt she was being pursued, drew her knife on waking and almost attacked the Doctor. They found that Planet 5 had been placed in a time loop by the Time Lords, making it and its records permanently invisible.
Back at the priory, Leela recalled her dream and she, Martha and Jack found they could not move their legs – their muscles being controlled psychotelekinetically. The Doctor - unaffected - used Jack's shotgun, loaded with rock salt, to kill an approaching Fendahleen, breaking the Fendahl's hold on Leela and the Tylers.
The Doctor explained that the Fendahleen was created out of pure energy while the skull was restructuring Thea Ransome's brain, turning her into the Fendahl core. The Doctor and Leela went down to the cellars, where Maximillian Stael had conducted a ritual with his coven. There, they freed Adam Colby and the Doctor tasked Leela with getting him to safety, warning them not to look into the transformed Thea's eyes.
In Fendelman's lab, Leela suggested, as the Doctor had been able to kill one Fendahleen with rock salt, the rest could also be killed. As the creature was incomplete, it being comprised of twelve Fendahleen and a core, and there only being ten with one Fendahleen and Stael dead, the Doctor told her that there was a chance of defeating it. He asked Leela to go with Jack, who was armed with more cartridges filled with rock salt. Thea and a Fendahleen appeared before the pair in the corridor beyond the lab. Having already gazed upon it, Jack told Leela he couldn't shoot so she knocked him down and took the gun herself, firing and killing the creature.
The Doctor instructed the Tylers to return to their cottage and asked Colby to give him and Leela enough time to get down to the cellars, then set off the scanner beam, allowing them to take the skull in the confusion this would put the core into. He told Colby to allow it to run for two minutes and then to leave as he had rigged a controlled explosion that would destroy the priory after a further three minutes. Leela asked why they could not leave the skull to the inferno, but the Doctor told her it could reappear anywhere and begin the process again.
In the cellars, Leela and the Doctor came across the core and they threw vials of salt, collected by Martha Tyler, at it. The Doctor placed Eustace in a lead-lined box and they left, passing through an apparition of the core on the way out, avoiding its eyes as they did so. As they ran across the grounds, Fetch Priory was engulfed in flames. Leela asked what they were to do now, and the Doctor told her they would leave, assuring her that Colby and the Tylers would be fine. Back in the TARDIS, the Doctor told Leela he would find a supernova in order to destroy the skull. (TV: Image of the Fendahl)
On Pluto, Leela was captured by Megro guards and was sent to the steamer, but the Doctor rescued her. She then took part in the Citizens' Revolution that overthrew the Company. (TV: The Sun Makers)
The TARDIS landed on E9874 where Leela was delighted at it being a warm planet. She helped Trexa to escape from a Tarl. She was impressed by the Tarls' weapon. Leela asked the Exxilons what they were doing on the planet. She offered Ergu her knife as a sign of respect, and he gave it back out of honour. The Doctor asked her to find out more about the Exxilon beacon. She recognised the symbols on the beacon. She felt the power in the city and was attacked by it. She thought the city was evil and that the fight against the Tarl wasn't fair. Gethal used her as a hostage. (AUDIO: The Exxilons)
The Doctor and Leela landed on the coast of Britain near St Michael's Mount. They decided to visit the castle on the island. She was told the story of how Mannering Caversham died. She recognised the cause of death of one of the members of the Caversham Society. She went hunting for the beast that caused the death. She noticed that there was a quivering panel of glass. When the Shadow Demon attacked, she worked out that it wouldn't attack when it was dark so turned off all the lights. Joseph Holman asked her to help in his show, and presented the slides which screamed. When the Demon escaped, she helped the Doctor to clean the suits of armour so that they could defeat the Demon. Oliver Mortlake wanted to keep the demon free. Leela jumped from a balcony and pushed him out through the glass. (AUDIO: The Darkness of Glass)
She went with the Doctor to a shopping planet and noticed a wanted poster for the Doctor. After the Doctor was taken to the Asteroid, she pretended to be the bounty hunter who had captured him. She teased Marshall that she managed to do this and not him. She would reveal how when asked. When the Master arrived to interrogate her, she managed to escape. Marshall tracked her to a deserted area of the ship, which she had booby trapped to stop the security guards from getting her. She nearly fell out of the ship when there was a hull breach but Marshall saved her, and didn't turn her in. She admired that Marshall was questioning his loyalty to the Rocket Men, and how he reminded him of her when he killed without care. She found flying amazing and helped to stop the Rocket Men from killing the Doctor. She decided to leave the Doctor in order to teach Marshall a better way of life and change the rest of the Rocket Men to have the same views. She was then kidnapped by the Master. (AUDIO: Requiem for the Rocket Men)
She was taken to be the Master's champion in the Death Match. In the arena, she once again met Marshall when he came to find her and warned him about the fang wolves. Marshall told her that she had been missing for weeks. Without knowing that she was working for the Master, she had spent her time battling the visitors to the planet and tried to hold up the Doctor's moral code but she wasn't allowed to. She trusted Marshall with her life. Before the Red Knight could kill her, she managed to teleport away. This was done as the game was rigged in a way so that the champion of the owner would always be healed and stopped from being killed. When the Red Knight came after Leela and the Doctor again, she and Marshall made sure that the Doctor could finish his plans. When the Master mortally wounded Marshall, she attacked the Master and admitted that she loved Marshall. After Marshall died, she returned to travel with the Doctor. (AUDIO: Death Match)
The Doctor and Leela landed in 2017 where they experienced a phenomenon of Time Ruckage and lost the TARDIS. She didn't like the smell of a gin and tonic that Belinda served. She thought something was wrong when a fog descended. When she realised that the Doctor had gone missing, she had to devise a plan to protect the party guests. After time was reset, she could remember the original timeline. (AUDIO: Suburban Hell)
She went with the Fourth Doctor to St Matilda's College in 1977 to investigate a disappearance of Lynn Pickering. In the College, she helped to look after Megan Matthews. She went with her to the Old Chapel and saw three nuns without faces. Leela told Megan that they wanted her to follow them. She went with the Doctor and Emily Shaw into the crypt of the chapel. She was almost taken before the Doctor managed to stop it. She was the only one who could hear Megan as she was a young woman. To allow the Doctor to stop the explosion, he asked Leela to become one of the ship's pilots. With Leela's help, he rewrote the navigation computer to stop it from exploding. They then escaped the explosion in the TARDIS with Emily. (AUDIO: The Cloisters of Terror)
When the Doctor went to find fishing rods, she thought they were going to go fishing for food. After re-entering the console room, she noticed that it looked dirtier and different. On the console, she found a piece of Jamie McCrimmon's tartan kilt. After arriving on Krelos, she went fishing with the Doctor. She found the city view to have some noble beauty. When they landed on Krelos again, she witnessed what she thought to be Geralk's last words. K9 took her to Geralk's villa. She thought the burning of Krelos City to be a horrific sight. When they got to Geralk's villa, they were attacked by metal serpents. She wanted to defeat the invaders of Krelos but the Doctor said he couldn't because it would alter the Web of Time. (AUDIO: The Fate of Krelos)
She went with the Doctor to Telos after K9 had piloted the TARDIS there. She was delighted that they could save Geralk as the Cyberman had interfered with time. She wanted to cook the fish that Geralk's robot had caught but the implements he wanted to use had gone wrong. Shortly afterwards, she had to escape from the Cybermen after they started their invasion. After the Doctor realised that it was the dust from the TARDIS that had infected Krelos, Leela cleaned herself to get rid of the particles. When she heard the Doctor scream, she came to his aid. She tried to fight the Cybermen. After time was set back on its right course, she went fishing with the Doctor. (AUDIO: Return to Telos)
She and the Doctor later landed on the R1C, a Minyan spacecraft commanded by Jackson searching for the lost Minyan ship P7E. When they arrived on the P7E, Leela helped the Doctor and the "Trogs" defeat the Oracle and its guards. (TV: Underworld) A little later, while enmeshed in a temporal crisis affecting all his incarnations, the Doctor learned that Daleks from a future Time War would return to the Minyan ship to prevent or pervert the rebirth of the Minyan civilisation. To avert it, the two returned to the ship, which was possible despite the temporal crisis because it had turned into a space-time Waypoint. There, Leela managed to use a Minyan shield gun to reflect the two treacherous Dalek envoys' fire back at them, destroying them. (GAME: Lost in Time)
Complaining that they didn't want to get where they wanted to go, so she asked the Doctor to prove that he could pilot the TARDIS by asking to go the planet Exxilon. She met with Bellal who knew of the Doctor. She did not like the way that Gislen was being aggressive and thought that he was the reason the new beacon was activated. Leela and the Doctor were imprisoned by Bernard. She later tried to help Mark Seven before the Daleks invaded the ship. She rescued Anya Kingdom when she was injured. Anya asked Leela to keep her secret from the Doctor to keep history intact. (AUDIO: The Dalek Protocol)
When they visited the home of the Doctor's former companion Joshua Douglas and his family, Leela met the imprisoned emperor of the Z'nai, whom the Doctor had contained long before. He hoped to find an antidote for the plague which Douglas had released to destroy his people. Douglas' daughter freed the emperor, sparking a resurgence of the Z'nai empire. Leela became the virus' vector, infecting the Z'nai with it. She wiped out the Z'nai except for the emperor, whom the Doctor imprisoned again. (AUDIO: The Catalyst) She later visited the world where the Doctor had his final battle with the Z'nai and found out the Doctor's involvement. This event was effected by the presence of a Time Vampire created through the close contact of many different Leela's. (AUDIO: The Time Vampire)
The Doctor arrived on Agratis to see the Jewel of Fawton and eat a banquet. However, the Jewel had gone missing, and the Judoon had been called in to reclaim it. While the Doctor searched for the Jewel's thief, Leela and K9 distracted the Judoon out of the city so the Doctor could leave. Leela broke into a Judoon tank, so K9 could connect himself to it. Then, Leela knocked another Judoon from his motorbike, and took it.
When the species that originally owned the Jewel were discovered, the Judoon's search was called off. Becoming much less aggressive, Leela invited them to dine at the banquet. Then, the Doctor joined them, and offered jelly babies to the Judoon. While feasting with the Judoon, Adam Mitchell appeared and kidnapped both Leela and K9. (COMIC: A Rare Gem)
At some point during her travels with the Doctor, they encountered the Tzun on Mimoza II. (PROSE: First Frontier)
Parting with the Doctor
As part of the Doctor's attempt to double-cross the Vardans, the Doctor was inducted as Lord President of the Supreme Council of Time Lords on Gallifrey. After the Doctor had been attacked by the Matrix, he banished Leela to Outer Gallifrey. She left with the Time Lord Rodan as the Vardans invaded Gallifrey. Out in Outer Gallifrey, Leela persuaded the Outsiders, led by Nesbin, to help fight against the Vardans. They managed to make their way to the President's office where the Doctor used K9 to send the Vardans back to their planet and time loop the planet.
The Sontarans followed the Vardans to invade Gallifrey after the force field had been opened in order to trap the Vardans, and the Sontarans gained access to the TARDIS. Leela and the Outsiders attacked and killed the soldiers, leaving only Stor, whom the Doctor erased from time with the De-mat Gun. Leela decided to stay on Gallifrey, having fallen in love with Andred. When the Doctor was ready to leave, he indicated his intent to Leela. She told him she wanted to remain and when he asked why, Andred took her hand. The Doctor assured Andred that Leela would look after him, saying she was "terribly good with a knife". K9 chose to stay too, in order to look after "the mistress". (TV: The Invasion of Time)
She spent the next decades in the Capitol, and eventually, Andred and Leela married. (TV: Arc of Infinity)
Both Leela and K9 regularly socialised with the Gallifreyans by almost daily attending functions; they had become, of sorts, celebrities due their origins off-world which was something unusual to the Gallifreyans. K9 considered them "sheltered". However, Leela did find trouble in acclimatising to her life in the Capitol, so she continued to wear her buckskins and often drew her knife at the slightest thing. According to K9, when she told stories of her adventures they were often stunted, noting that that they weren't "exactly Tolstoy". When K9 attended a reception at the Panopticon for the unveiling of a statute of himself erected in the honour of his contributions against the invasion of the Sontarans, Leela decided not to attend, feeling that it was "stupid", and K9 noted that they had been frosty with each other recently.
Leela also became pregnant at this time, which K9 thought had made Andred unhappy. The news of the Fourth Doctor's fall and subsequent regeneration reached Gallifrey. (PROSE: Jealous, Possessive)
When Leela's child was born, the child was the very first naturally born child on Gallifrey for millennia, since Pythia had long ago made the Gallifreyans a sterile race. (PROSE: Lungbarrow)
Encounters with the Fifth Doctor
When the Dominators attempted to conquer Gallifrey, Leela fought alongside K9 against the invading Quarks which had "flooded" the Capitol, destroying 39 between them. Leela also participated in the clean up of the Death Zone, where she confronted the Raston Warrior Robot. Regarding it as a "worthy opponent", Leela ultimately terminated the robot and mounted its head on the wall of her kitchen.
During his brief presidency of the Time Lords, Leela advised the Fifth Doctor after she helped his companion Tegan escape deportation. She accompanied him on a diplomatic mission, which was complicated by her and the Doctor’s past with the other party, and on his visit to the Academy. Finally she joined him on his tour of the new Capitol building when it was affected by dimensional anomalies, forcing Chancellor Vorena to confess it was actually a giant TARDIS built by Time Lords who were sympathetic to the Doctor and believed the Time Lords should be more proactive in the universe. Leela helped persuade him to reject the offer and they escaped before the TARDIS dematerialised. The Doctor took the opportunity to leave Gallifrey again, with Leela staying behind. (AUDIO: Time in Office)
She was sent by Lowri to find the Doctor in order to deal with the problem that Abby and Zara had become. She became the centre of attention at a festival as she was older than 40. She sensed the Smoke behind Brody. She didn't like the colony culling people over 40, but understood the cultural aspects of it. The Smoke tried to use the memories of her mother's and father's deaths against her but focused to stop them. She used her age to get captured and sent to the main termination centre with Zara. They discovered that the Smoke were eating the remains of the dead. (AUDIO: The Garden of Storms)
Leela helped Abby to escape the Smoke and piloted the TARDIS to find the Doctor and Zara. She showed Abby the damage she had done to the timelines. She was intrigued by what the Sontarans were doing on the Moon and knew that she didn't have the advantage to defeat them. She eventually found the Doctor in the Sontaran base and persuaded him to stop the tracer sisters after Zara manipulated him. (AUDIO: The Moonrakers)
She didn't like this version of the future, and debating with the Doctor about how to destroy the tracer twins. She learnt that the Smoke came from Abby and Zara's manipulation. She remained calm to try and stop the Smoke from attacking. She didn't like the sisters using their powers by didn't argue about curing Zerbert Condoleezza Wingscampion. She tried to stop people from being emotional to stop the smoke gaining power. The smoke started feeding on her but this allowed her to communicate with the Doctor to find a plan. She then went with Zara to activate the wind turbines. She learnt that Abby and Zara restored the Doctor from death, and then asked him to take her back to Gallifrey. (AUDIO: The People Made of Smoke)
Captured by the Rani
When the Seventh Doctor and Ace became caught in a web of time distortions in Albert Square during the First Rani's plot to create a menagerie of every creature and machine in the universe, a "glitch" caused the Doctor to shift with his past incarnations and Ace to be replaced by other companions, with Leela being superimposed over Romana II after the Rani had scanned her into the menagerie, having planned to use one of the Doctor's companions as the human template in her collection. Managing to escape the Rani's TARDIS, Leela found the Doctor's TARDIS as the Seventh Doctor was exiting the ship and updated him on the Rani's machinations nearing completion. She also recalled that she "was" Romana when the Rani scanned her, allowing the Doctor to devise a way to overload the Rani's computer by taking advantage of the fact that its collection now contained two scanned Time Lord brains, but Leela glitched back to her proper place in time before she could help further. (TV: Dimensions in Time [+]Loading...["Dimensions in Time (TV story)"])
Meeting Romana
Info from Jealous, Possessive, Affirmative & Lungbarrow needs to be added.
At one point she was contacted by Rassilon, who informed her of what the Eighth Doctor had done. She went to President Romana and they both went into the Matrix. She helped the Doctor to recover and used her wisdom to help Charlotte Pollard come to terms with what had happened. (AUDIO: Zagreus)
When Andred vanished, she no longer wished to live in the Capitol and went to the Outsiders. Romana asked Leela's K9 to collect her so that she could go on a mission for her. She wished on return to know more of why Andred was missing. Upon arriving, she accidentally started a fight. She found the human enclave on Gryben. She uncovered that Ba'aruk of the Monan Host had posed as a member of the Nepenthe's team. She was then used as a hostage when Nepenthe activated the Timonic Fusion Device. After the device was proven to be a contrivance, Leela was asked to serve as Romana's bodyguard and she became a confidante to Romana. (AUDIO: Weapon of Choice)
She was sent on a mission to a fake temporal summit as an undercover spy posing as an exotic dancer. Romana wished her to use her position to find information which Narvin didn't. She found the dead body of one of the exotic dancers and was accused of murdering her even though she blamed Flinkstab. Shortly afterwards she experienced time being rewritten. When searching Flinkstab's room she saw pictures of the murder. After Pule of Unvoss was killed and time was rewritten again, she remembered what had happened in both timelines. She saved Romana from being attacked by Baano. She discovered that it was Hossak who was rewriting time to make sure the conference was truly successful. (AUDIO: Square One)
She was called to give evidence into the actions on Gryben. She thought that Narvin was up to something. After K9 accessed the Matrix for Romana, she asked Braxiatel if it would hold information about Andred. She was asked to be the impartial observer for a Celestial Intervention Agency mission to Gryben. She searched through the Archives and found out that Andred's biodata extract was missing. She went to Narvin after K9 told her that it was one of his immediate staff was involved in Andred's disappearance, who told her about a clandestine meeting he had with Andred. Leela was then informed that Torvald had killed Andred. (AUDIO: The Inquiry)
She accompanied Romana to Earth in 1939. On a train, she encountered Cecelia Pollard, and Romana asked Leela to keep a close eye on Cecelia. When a second train collided with her train, both Leela and Cecelia were separated from Romana and the CIA agents. Exploring the train, she encountered Erich Kepler. Muriel Joy chased her through the train in her augmented form before returning to her human form. She discovered that Torvald was really a regenerated Andred. (AUDIO: A Blind Eye)
The Pandora virus and Civil War
She went into the catacombs so she could reflect on her experiences with Andred. She wished that she could forget her experiences. Learning of the effects of regeneration, she became confused as Andred had changed completely. She encountered Pandora when she walked into a Matrix partition. She decided to learn as much as she could about Pandora. When Romana arrived she informed Romana about what she had been doing. Learning of Pandora's story she became worried that Braxiatel and the High Council would betray her. She asked K9 as to why Romana didn't want to be Imperiatrix in her second incarnation but she did in her first. (AUDIO: Lies)
She accompanied Romana to Davidia taking her away from hunting Andred through the catacombs. It was by this time that she wanted to leave the planet. Romana wanted to talk to her about it and as part of that Romana agreed to experience a day exploring the jungles. Leela tried to explain to Romana her view that there was a spirit guide who helped fauna and flora to evolve which Romana tried to rebuke. She wanted Romana to feel out of place in her world. She explained that part of her unease about Gallifrey was that regeneration could change her friends to be her enemies. As part of her agreement with Romana they went into a sensory tank. In the tank she experienced the world through Romana's viewpoint. In the world she was intrigued on how the Charred Time Lord which had arrived from the planet came to be in his condition. Following this experience, she started to understand Romana's way of thinking. (AUDIO: Spirit)
When Narvin told Leela that the charred body was effectively dead, she mourned him and started to perform her tribe's funeral rites. Darkel manipulated her into getting Romana to reinstate the post of chancellor. She fought with Andred about his actions and wouldn't listen to his explanations. She was there when Wynter started to hear voices in the containment chamber and went to fetch help. Braxiatel appointed her to acting Castellan after the disappearance of Wynter; this angered Andred. She then tracked Wynter though the catacombs. (AUDIO: Pandora)
Braxiatel's last act as chancellor was to appoint her as a tutor at the Time Lord Academy, where she taught Neeloc, Taylor Addison, Galadina and B'arech about living in harmony with the Time Lords. She wasn't sure that she could cope with the job. She warned Romana not to ignore her dream. She was still antagonistic towards Andred. She was questioned about the Sontaran invasion of Gallifrey. She tried to assure the students not to take violent action against the Time Lords as this would play into her hands. (AUDIO: Insurgency)
Romana made her security adviser at the Academy and later informed her that Andred had been murdered. Shortly afterwards there was a terrorist bombing at the Academy. She found it interesting that the Time Lords covered the dead in sheets. Romana asked her to investigate the bombings. She bargained with Narvin for the CIA evidence. She informed Romana about the evidence she had found. During the troubled time that followed, Leela's most trusted friend, K9, was destroyed in an explosion aimed at off-world students in the Time Scaphes. Bitter at the loss of her last link with the Doctor, Leela refused a replacement. She discovered that Antimon was the terrorist and went to find him. She killed him but he had set off the bombs. She was told by Antimon that Romana killed Andred. (AUDIO: Imperiatrix)
In the Time Lord civil war, Leela fought on Romana's side. One of her acts was to set an explosion in the Artron Forum but was blinded by a bomb. She hoped that her eyes would change colour. She went to an outland medical station with Narvin. She didn't like being blind and longed to see again. She had to argue with Elbon about what happened at the Arton Forum, and learnt from him that her blindness would be permanent. Entering the Anomaly Vault she fought against Aesino to help Romana complete her plans. Leela helped Romana fight off infection from The Sentience. (AUDIO: Fractures) She thought it was wasteful to blame Romana for Andred's death now that she had a place on Gallifrey. She wanted to fight with Hallan against Darkel's guards and told him a plan of attack. Annos thought she was becoming a good strategist. She saved Narvin when Darkel placed a bomb on him. Leela was asked to create a strategy to capture the APC net. She protected Romana when she fought Pandora inside the Matrix. (AUDIO: Warfare)
She called Matthias a post boy for his communication solution following the loss of the Matrix. When the Sunari, Nekkistani and Warpsmiths of Phaidon invaded Gallifrey after the civil war, she helped in the defence of the Capitol. She was tasked in finding K9 Mark II so that he could fix the transduction barriers. She found it delightful that she could fight again. She found K9 and got him to Narvin. (AUDIO: Appropriation) When Romana was imprisoned by Darkel, Leela posed as part of Romana's legal counsel to talk to her. She followed Matthias to a secret rendez-vous and informed Romana of this. She also pursued Darkel's would be assassin into the catacombs. Leela was told by Narvin to go to Braxiatel's office to check his notes, and found Braxiatel there. She was worried that Pandora would escape from Braxiatel's mind. (AUDIO: Mindbomb) When Romana left the capitol, Leela, following K9's prediction, went to the House of Heartshaven to find her. She then smuggled Romana into Elbon's medical wing. After the destruction of the Matrix, Narvin presented her first hand evidence about the criminal activities of Mephistopheles Arkadian to the High Council. She followed Arkadian to the CIA tower to the biodata archive. She, with the archive, Narvin and Arkadian, was timescooped to the Braxiatel Collection. (AUDIO: Panacea)
Exploring other Gallifreys
When Braxiatel took her to the Axis she explored alternate Gallifreys. The first she visited was a Gallifrey where the alternate version of herself searched for the Key to Time. Chancellor Dondequest wanted to install her as a puppet President of this Gallifrey so she could have ultimate power. Leela used this role to help find the information Romana wanted. Antonin interrogated her about Romana. (AUDIO: Reborn)
In another Gallifrey she met an alternate version of herself where she was the interrogator General of Gallifrey. She was tortured by her alternate self and forced to relive her memories. She thought that her alternate was appalling due to her alternate beliefs that she would kill one person in order to save millions and the ends justified the means. (AUDIO: Disassembled)
She started to age being away from the prime Gallifrey. On a Gallifrey where the Vampire war still went on, Leela's sight and youth were restored by drinking vampire blood as part of Borusa's hound creation process. This enhanced her senses and she stole the key Borusa had to allow the transduction barriers to be taken down. (AUDIO: Annihilation)
On another Gallifrey where there were slaves, Romana told her not to judge the Time Lords on this Gallifrey so quickly. She found it funny that Narvin was scared of spiders. She was worried when Romana wasn't acting like her normal self. She freed the slaves and joined them in a revolt against the Regenerators of Gallifrey. (AUDIO: Forever)
She then set up many townships for the freed slaves with her as the head of one and Sura another. She had to constantly remind the regenerators that they were no longer slaves. She spoke with Allora about mining rights near her township. She was antagonistic against Leela because of losing K9. There was an assassination attempt on her, which Narvin was initially blamed for. Romana then used this attempt to find more information about her enemies. It was later discovered the assassin to be Valyes under Allora's orders. (AUDIO: Emancipation)
She wanted to help Sura set up more townships. A fellow outcast, Maris, led Leela to an abandoned research facility. Maris informed her that slaves were taken there and never seen again. She met Hector and Taine who were running the experimental side of Jonias' research. She became concerned at Hector's devotion to the whitelands and that the slaves needed something to live for. When Maris revealed that she was spying for Narvin, Leela got agitated and was more suspicious of the experiments here. (AUDIO: Evolution)
She captured Lord Zakar to put him on trial for the murder of 237 slaves, which would mean he would be sentenced to death. Narvin was sent to negotiate with her to release Zakar. She had to defend her people against the chancellery guards that were sent into her township. Romana told her of the situation they were in and how it was because the council overruled her that the soldiers were there. Leela let Zakar go and went to the capital to convince the inner council of his guilt. She went with Romana and Narvin to the Panopticon. (AUDIO: Arbitration)
Leela tried to defend this Gallifrey when the Daleks from the prime universe invaded. She escaped with Narvin from the Panopticon. She wanted to warn the Chancellery Guard about the Daleks. She knew all the secret passages through this Capitol which allowed Romana, Narvin, Lukas and herself to manoeuvre around without the Daleks knowing, taking them to the armoury. She then used the guns there to kill the Daleks on this version of Gallifrey. On returning to the Axis she killed the Dalek Overseer of the Axis. (AUDIO: Extermination)
Leela and Narvin were held in a Chronic Hysteresis and couldn't immediately get to Gallifrey from the Axis. After Romana agreed on a deal with her future incarnation, Leela escaped from the Hysteresis. She didn't like her new rooms and argued with Romana about it. Leela also could see Romana's watcher before anyone else could. Lady Tre still valued her friendship after thousands of years not seeing her. She wanted to leave Gallifrey when Romana was exiled by her future self. She could see a haze behind her. She was worried about Romana when the Eye of Harmony started to break down. (AUDIO: Renaissance)
When Romana mysteriously disappeared, she was anxious about what happened. She spotted Coordinator Tallan in the corridors and in the archives, and recognised he was like someone she met on one of the alternate Gallifreys. When Tallan turned out to be K9, she was excited. It turned out this Gallifrey on which she thought they were was a Matrix construct. She escaped the Matrix, but after doing so, Slyne released the Daleks from the Matrix. She tried to stop Romana from sealing herself in the Matrix with the Daleks. She watched the Data Pocket containing the artificial Gallifrey close and collapse. In fact Romana wasn't trapped in the Matrix, and Leela was amazed at this. (AUDIO: Ascension)
Living in Victorian London
Info from The Ruthven Inheritance needs to be added.
Romana sent her on a mission to the 19th century to track temporal seepage and to stop it from destroying the Earth, knowing that she had visited the time before. Romana told her how to track the breaks in time. She sought out Jago and Litefoot to aid her, and they attempted to teach her Cockney rhyming slang. She found a source of temporal seepage at the Jolly Rodger and decided to work there. With the help of Ellie Higson Leela learned the basics of being a barmaid and came up with a nickname; "Lil". Leela's suspicion was correct as the Wet Men came to the bar. They attempted to take Leela to their wreckage in the River Thames, but Johnny Skipton accepted his fate and went with them instead. This closed the break in time. (AUDIO: Dead Men's Tales) She later went round looking for an energy source. Her temporal seepage detector relayed the story which Eleanor Naismith told to her daughter Clara. (AUDIO: The Man at the End of the Garden) She tracked the energy source to the New Regency Theatre, much to Jago's dismay, and aided the pair in sealing the majority of the breaches. (AUDIO: Swan Song) Leela later found the source of the temporal seepage to be the experiments that Elliot Payne was performing. When Litefoot was trapped under a collapsed building, she worked out where he lay. As her job was done, she tried to use her Time Ring to return to Gallifrey, but found that she couldn't. (AUDIO: Chronoclasm)
Realising that her Time Ring wasn't working, she rejoined Jago and Litefoot and suggested they go on holiday to Brighton, as the Sixth Doctor had advised her to do. She thought that Abigail Woburn wouldn't make a good mate for Jago, and killed a lioness to save Litefoot. (AUDIO: Jago in Love) She did not like Oscar Wilde's play, and was more interested in the man with no smell. (AUDIO: Beautiful Things) She went to find Kempston and Hardwick with Ellie. They went with Winnie O'Connor to the train where Jago and Litefoot were trapped in a time loop. (AUDIO: The Lonely Clock) She helped the Doctor stop Kempston and Hardwick. After this, her Time Ring began to work again, and she used it to return to Gallifrey. (AUDIO: The Hourglass Killers)
Back on Gallifrey
Info from Emancipation needs to be added.
Leela and Narvin sheltered from an earthquake in the House of Heartshaven, during which she was knocked unconscious. (AUDIO: Erasure)
Leela was kidnapped by the Nine when he sought to collect all the Doctor's companions. She was returned home after River Song, Liv Chenka, Helen Sinclair, Charley Pollard and Bliss rebelled and imprisoned him. (AUDIO: Companion Piece)
When a paradox created by the Sirens of Time was diminishing the Time Lords’ power, Leela and Romana reminisced together and realised they could now both remember travelling to Henlen with the Fourth Doctor and him perishing. From this Romana realised the source of the paradox was the first TARDIS flight on Henlen and took Leela with her back in time to correct history. With the aid of nine incarnations of the Doctor, including the Tenth Doctor who was delighted to see Leela again, they completed the flight and righted history. (AUDIO: Collision Course)
Shifting timelines
Leela disobeyed Romana's orders and followed her to the Monan ship Moros on the verge of destruction at the edge of Gallifrey's space, where she stopped some droids from attacking Romana. Romana sent Leela away to a random planet, in order for her plan to regenerate to save the ailing ship to be fulfilled. She ended up on Legion and came to believe Romana was punishing her for her actions against the Monon Host Ambassador. (AUDIO: Enemy Lines) During the ensuing presidency of Romana's third incarnation, Taurus recalled how Leela's betrayal broke her hearts. (AUDIO: Intervention Earth)
Braxiatel later travelled back in time to change events to stop Romana's regeneration and reunited her with Leela, though the Moros was now destroyed creating a dangerous singularity and causing a diplomatic incident. Back on Gallifrey, Leela was still hurt by Romana's actions and they both remained suspicious of Braxiatel's motives, though Romana had followed his advice to step down as President to change the future, becoming Coordinator of the Celestial Intervention Agency. Leela and Romana worked together to investigate after Narvin was found dead, finding a recording suggesting he'd been stalked by the Watchmaker of Gallifreyan myth. Investigating the Monans' embassy as their withdrawal coincided with Narvin's death, she discovered that one of their transmats was rigged to explode and managed to send warnings to evacuate people nearby whilst escaping herself. Despite her role in the evacuation, Castellan Plutus suspected she was involved and only dropped his interrogation when Romana pulled rank on him. As the diplomatic situation escalated towards war between Gallifrey and Monans after the bombing, Leela discovered that there was a Warpsmith plot against the Time Lords she contacted Ace find and dispose a bomb planted on the Gallifreyan outpost she was on. After Ace was fatally attacked during their communications by the same entity as Narvin, Leela reported this to Romana. She subsequently discovered Plutus was a part of the Warpsmith conspiracy and stopped him kidnapping President Livia after his exposure.
When Romana of the second timeline investigated a paradoxical pocket universe she found a version of Legion still home to the Leela of the original timeline, and they resolved their differences. They were met by the Watchmaker who offered them a choice of their timelines. Working together they found a third option, asking her to transport them to Moros moments after Braxiatel removed Romana to stop its destruction, creating a new timeline.
In the new timeline, Leela met with Romana after her resignation as President on Braxiatel's instructions and appointment as Coordinator of the Celestial Intervention Agency, discussing their recent dreams of alternative lives. (AUDIO: Enemy Lines)
The Last Great Time War
The war begins
In the lead-up to the outbreak of the Time War, Leela was the CIA’s liaison with the War Council. In a meeting with the War Council she got Earth placed in a Quantum shield. She was seconded to the War Council from the Agency. She was asked to inspect the Phaidon ship and upon seeing the conditions she wanted to take all of the Phaidons back to Gallifrey especially the children. Narvin sent her into the Death Zone to find a secret War Council facility but she was captured, forcing Romana and Narvin to follow her. They were shown Project Revenant and Leela thought that it was appalling that the War Council was resurrecting dead Time Lords. President Livia had them released in preparation for the declaration of war. (AUDIO: Celestial Intervention)
Leela was asked by Romana to travel with the War Master to gather information from Finnian Valentine about a weapon. She didn't like the Master's new body and how his attitude had changed. She used her tracking experience to help the Master to find the survivors on the planet they had landed on. She had to negotiate with both of the Finnians to try and get them back to Gallifrey. She interrogated one of them, the one whose family was killed by the Time Lord. She tried to convince him that the Time Lords weren't monsters. Finnian thought she was no longer a warrior. She was antagonised to attack Finn. They found out that Finnian had lied to him and the Master killed one of him. She learnt that there was an energy source on Arcking. On the way back to Gallifrey, the Master threw her into the Time Vortex. (AUDIO: The Devil You Know)
Lost in the Time War
Leela was saved by the Trell who took her into their dimension Nateus. Due to the way non-linear way time was perceived there, Leela encountered a possible future Sholan child of hers and the possibility of the War spreading into Nateus. She managed to expose a War Council agent who and infiltrated Nateus, preventing that future, and chose to depart Nateus. (AUDIO: Mother Tongue)
Narvin was unable to find Leela but was given a trace to follow by Cardinal Mantus, who was attempting to win Narvin over to Rassilon’s side. After being exiled from Gallifrey, Romana and Narvin decided to find Leela. (AUDIO: Assassins) They followed her trail to Njagilheim (AUDIO: Nevernor) and finally found her on Unity. There Leela was caring for Veega and her son Rayo, and was loath to leave them but reluctantly helped Romana and Narvin find their TARDIS after a local crimeboss took it. After Veega died from illness and with Daleks now hunting them Leela agreed to go with Narvin, whilst Romana stayed behind to delay the Daleks, pretending she had used a Chameleon Arch. (AUDIO: Unity)
Working with the resistance
Narvin took her and Rayo to the resistance, however they became split up. When the resistance base fell under attack, Leela boarded Eris’ TARDIS by mistake as he was leaving to rescue two double agents from a deception field. She convinced him to let her enter the field and managed to retrieve one of the agents. Afterwards Narvin contacted them and agreed to help the resistance’s plan to pollute the Time Vortex. (AUDIO: Deception)
Narvin and Leela flew the resistance’s stealth Battle TARDIS into Kasterborous, planning to detonate it beside the Untempered Schism. After hearing Romana being used as the Daleks’ spokesperson from the Emperor’s saucer which was over Gallifrey, Leela used a short range teleport to infiltrate the saucer to rescue her. She was followed by Narvin accompanied by Livia and Mantus. As they were pursued by the Daleks, Narvin and Livia decided to use the stealth TARDIS to destroy the null zone energy the Daleks were about to use to seize Gallifrey and sent Leela and Romana away to Romana’s TARDIS, believing they were more valuable to the war effort. Leela gave him the teleport and was disappointed when he seemed unable to escape the explosion with it. Their TARDIS was diverted to the Cloisters, where Rassilon confronted them. He had Leela conscripted whilst Romana was to be imprisoned in a pocket dimension, telling Leela her service would ensure Romana’s safety. Leela reluctantly agreed and was told by Romana to fight with the better Time Lords. Rassilon sent her to the War Council to meet the Eleventh General. (AUDIO: Homecoming)
Conscription by the Time Lords
Leela initially refused to comply with Rassilon's demands to fight, fighting every soldier sent to her, but was forced by a compliance collar fitted by Ollistra and threat of being given over to Lady Vibax for experimentation. She was sent to destroy Freme with the General and Veklin to prevent a future Dalek alliance, but sought a way to avoid destroying the people too. She convinced the leader of the Fremians that the General's control for her collar was actually for the planet-killer the General and Veklin had already planted, making it their decision to destroy Freme to prevent the Dalek occupation of the future she warned him about. She endured the pain of the active collar to achieve the trickery, but succeeded and laid the groundwork of an alliance with the Time Lords instead. The General removed the collar and decided to train Leela himself, (AUDIO: The Last Days of Freme) giving her the call sign "Epsilon 3".
Leela was sent to intercept an experimental Dalek ship piloted by a Time Lord, Cato Kelgroth. She formed a bond with Cato and was appalled by him arranging a bombing to kill a thousand Time Lords. He revealed why he had done it under her interrogation, believing the Time Lords had become as violent as Daleks and humans. She was furious for the comparison and told him if he had met when she was younger he would not have lived. (AUDIO: The Passenger)
Leela went with Cardinal Rasmus and Veklin to investigate the reappearance of a planet from an erased galaxy. During their investigation her instincts impressed Rasmus and eventually they discovered the planet was actually the TARDIS of the Time Lord, Bandar, sent to erase the galaxy, having preserved the galaxy instead within its interior dimension. Bandar's TARDIS proposed to merge with their TARDIS to stabilise itself and then repeat to cover the entire universe except the Daleks to end the Time War, which Leela believed was worth trying. She was furious when Rasmus pretended to go along with it but actually flew their TARDIS away, intending to let Bandar's TARDIS explode on top of an approaching Dalek fleet. She was given knowledge to control his TARDIS to turn it back by Bandor's TARDIS, but Rasmus stunned her with his staser. (AUDIO: Collateral Victim) She remained angry with Rasmus afterwards.
Leela was sent to investigate the Daleks' restoration of Phaidon to intercept a Time Lord artefact with the General, who admitted he preferred working with her as if she betrayed him she'd do it openly rather than in secret to Rassilon. She searched for the artefact whilst the General worked with the surviving Warpwrights, encountering Narvin who was working with the resistance to the same end. Together they found it and helped a Warpwright use it to fend off the Daleks attacking Phaidon. She told the General the artefact had been spent seeing off the Daleks, whilst in truth she and Narvin left it with the Warpwrights. As she parted ways with Narvin, they were interrupted by the General who revealed he knew she'd lied but indicated he wasn't going to say. Back on Gallifrey, the General publicly commended her for her service in the War Room. (AUDIO: The First Days of Phaidon)
With the aid of Clemantia, Leela began using a slice of the Matrix to secretly communicate with Narvin. She tipped him off about the War Council’s plan to ally with Orrison to obtain their bolt enabling Narvin to travel to Orrison earlier than the Time Lords. She accompanied the General to Orrison and used their discussions with ruling Prince Ferdi to empathise the threat of the Time Lords, which led to the General accusing her of deliberately undermining the negotiations. He apologised to her after Ferdi unexpectantly agreed to the deal, however she was suspicious and discovered from Narvin that Ferdi had also agreed to an entirely contradictory deal with the Resistance. As Time Lord forces began landing to take the bolt by force, Leela found Ferdi and talked him into standing up for his people, leading to him unleashing Time Winds on the invading TARDISes. Leela returned to Gallifrey with the retreating Time Lords, and was admonished by the General for her actions, though he publicly defended her to Ollistra and Rasmus. (AUDIO: Collaborators) Leela was subsequently confined to the Capitol by Ollistra for her disobedience. (AUDIO: Remnants)
Leela investigated the shooting of Helico whilst presenting his Matrix Transfer Slice to the War Council, tracing the attacker to Low Town. She discovered the shooter was his sister, Lenaris, and the siblings were cousins of Narvin intending to join him in the Resistance. Leela discovered the plan had gone awry however and Ollistra used the Transfer Device to kill the twins. Leela stopped Narvin from hurriedly seeking vengeance by knocking him out and setting his TARDIS to dematerialise, which she apologised to him for via the Matrix though he conceded she was right. (AUDIO: Transference)
Leela helped Rasmus and the General devise their alternative plan of attack on Dalek-occupied Orrison after they seized control of the War Room from Ollistra, offering use of her Matrix slice to infiltrate the planet to disabled the temporal shield around it and obtaining weaponry from Narvin. She was accompanied by Rasmus and Veklin and was horrified to discover Orrison was now a production line for Berserker Daleks. They lowered the shielding but was informed by the General their timing was wrong and hundreds of TARDISes primed to attack had been caught in the shielding, destroying Orrison. They escaped back to Gallifrey via the Matrix, where Ollistra revealed she’d orchestrated the disaster to reassert her control of the War Room. (AUDIO: Ambition’s Debt)
Learning of the War Doctor's mission to assassinate the Barber-Surgeon, Leela arranged for Narthex to be sent to assist him, giving him a pre-recorded message to show the Doctor. (AUDIO: The Abyss)
The Lady of Obsidian
Leela fought with the Time Lords until the Battle of the Pillars of Consequence. There she was in charge of the retaking of Destilation from the Daleks however was shot by a Disruptor Dalek, which displaced her in time and space.
After this, Leela gained "all her memories", being capable of remembering not only what happened to her, but also everything she could have done, and its consequences. Trying to remember what actually did happen to her caused her pain. She spent her time defending the universe from the Unlived, which came from a breach in time caused by a Dalek Temporal shift who was damaged. Despite her conficting memories, she still trusted the Doctor enough to allowed him to close the breach. She then went with the Doctor to Grend to stop the Daleks. The Doctor managed to heal her using the TARDIS. She could see that the War Doctor was still her Doctor. She wanted to defend Gallifrey. (AUDIO: The Lady of Obsidian)
On the way back to Gallifrey, she felt a sadness. She started to observe this enigma and thought it was sad. She saw the shadows of Daleks in the Capitol. After Lintok was affected by the Enigma, Leela helped her. She later thought that the Enigma was drawn to her. The Enigma started to talk through Leela. She could sense the Doctor's sadness and it used that to communicate with her. (AUDIO: The Enigma Dimension)
Leela was still serving as a commander at the end of the Time War. She observed the Daleks attacking the Capitol from a nearby cliff and was delivered a wayfinder by a soldier, Axton, who told her it was from the Doctor and that he wanted her to escape. As Daleks closed in, exterminating Axton, Leela defiantly told them it was not the end and activated the device, transporting herself to the Fourth Doctor's TARDIS. (WC: The Final Battle [+]Loading...["The Final Battle (webcast)"])
After the Time War
Having survived the apparent destruction of Gallifrey, Leela ended up a prisoner of the Z'nai, who had returned to power. While Leela lived on Gallifrey, the Time Lords had allowed her to retain her youth for a greatly extended time. This was no longer so. While the Z'nai tortured Leela for information about Gallifrey and the Time Lords, she aged physically, one year for each day.
The Z'nai had abandoned their ancient custom of leaving their chests bare. Just before the Z'nai interrogating her was to kill her, she gave him a choice — stop the killing or be killed. He laughed, but she infected him with the plague that had wiped out the Z'nai originally. The entire race died, leaving Leela and the other prisoners at first joyful, then terrified as they realised they were trapped and abandoned. Leela remained bound, without the strength to free herself, reminiscing about her days with the Doctor as she waited to die. (AUDIO: The Catalyst)
After the Z'nai had all died and all torture had stopped, the machines used to torture Leela and her fellow prisoners kept them alive. Leela told a fellow prisoner who was crying a story about when she saw the Doctor being afraid. (AUDIO: Empathy Games) Leela eventually died in the Z'nai prison. (AUDIO: The Time Vampire)
Leela's soul was reborn as a young girl named Emily. Leela recounted many of her adventures with the Doctor to Emily. (AUDIO: The Child)
Legacy
Summoned to Gallifrey because of the Omega plots, the Fifth Doctor asked about Leela and was told by Damon that she was "well and very happy". He was sorry to have missed her wedding. (TV: Arc of Infinity)
The Doctor commented on the fact that Leela's child would be half-Gallifreyan and half-human. He told Leela to name the child after him. (PROSE: Lungbarrow)
After seeing Richard Harries' experiments with rats, the Eighth Doctor recalled the episode in the London sewers when Leela had been attacked by a giant rat. (PROSE: The Banquo Legacy)
At some point, Leela was taken to the Black Archive by UNIT to have her record as a companion of the Doctor taken, she met Sergeant John Benton there. Leela's memories of the visit were subsequently erased and she was sent on her way. (TV: The Day of the Doctor)
After the Time War, the Tenth Doctor remembered Leela being the Lady of Obsidian and being lost in the conflict. Together with K9 Mark II, he encountered an alternative Leela created by the Spriggan, a malevolent version of himself from another universe. This Leela, who had believed herself to be the original, helped the Doctor to defeat the Spriggan. Leaving Leela with the Spriggan's TARDIS, the Doctor suggested that she could chose to rejoin the war and become one with her other self, among other possibilities. (AUDIO: Splinters)
Leela had a Bookface account and was friends with the Eleventh Doctor. She commented on one of the photos River Song tagged him in and asked if it was taken on Riftan Five, where she and the Doctor once got lost for three days. (COMIC: Timeliney Wimey)
When he first saw the comic book Amazonia, the Twelfth Doctor opined that Leela would have eaten the title character alive. (COMIC: The Fourth Wall)
Character
Personality
Leela told the Doctor it was clear to her he could not control the TARDIS. When he objected, she told him "don't cry about it". When the TARDIS and its occupants were endangered by a Relative Continuum Displacement Zone, Leela was quick to assert that she "meant no disrespect" and that she may have been wrong in suggesting the Doctor was unable to control the "old machine", as she had labelled it. When it righted itself, she asked if it could understand her. The Doctor replied "she just generates a low intensity telepathic field, and obviously primitive thought patterns like [Leela]'s appeal to her". Initially cheered, Leela became somewhat dismayed when she understood the full meaning of this.
Leela had sympathy with the Doctor when he claimed to have been frightened by a "mythological horror" in his childhood. (TV: Image of the Fendahl)
Leela retained the mindset that life among the primitive and superstitious Sevateem had imprinted upon her. She took the noises of a ship on the River Thames for the attack sound of a swamp creature. When a Chinese man she had implicated in a crime refused to talk, Leela insisted that he be tortured into speaking. While in the home of George Litefoot, Leela displayed her savagery to the host, tearing meat off the bone with her teeth. (TV: The Talons of Weng-Chiang)
The Doctor described Leela as "a huntress, a creature of instinct". She felt better suited to the wastelands of Gallifrey than the Capitol. Nevertheless, Leela was confident she could "survive anywhere". Her single-mindedness convinced the Doctor that she would be susceptible to Vardan telepathy, so he ordered that she be banished from the Capitol. (TV: The Invasion of Time)
The sociology of the tribe instilled Leela with the belief that the only way to learn was by listening to the wisdom of elders. Leela maintained that the "fate of the old and crippled" was to be slain and asked the Doctor to kill her when she thought she was blind. She did not consider herself to be a lady. To this end, she had no umbrage with stripping down to change clothes in the presence of others. (TV: Horror of Fang Rock)
Leela rejected the belief that Xoanon was a god. She referred to the phantoms that supposedly resided in the lands beyond Sevateem territory as "feast fire stories". (TV: The Face of Evil) She abandoned her belief in magic, telling Adelaide Lessage "I too used to believe in magic, but the Doctor has taught me about science. It is better to believe in science". (TV: Horror of Fang Rock)
Leela quizzed the Doctor on how the Fendahl came to Earth. She compared the method of passage the Doctor described the way in which lightning travelled, a simile the Doctor partly approved of. She thought that the use of a time loop to make Planet 5 and its records invisible was "very clever"; the Doctor considered it criminal. (TV: Image of the Fendahl)
Leela did not hesitate to use the weapons she kept about her person, despite the Doctor's disapproval. (TV: The Robots of Death) He didn't berate her for saving his life through violence. (TV: The Talons of Weng-Chiang) Leela boasted over the wounded Rutan scout on Fang Rock, telling it "[she] enjoyed killing [it]". She believed it was "fitting to celebrate the death of an enemy", a point the Doctor disagreed with her on. (TV: Horror of Fang Rock)
Henry Gordon Jago believed that Leela was the "bravest creature" that he had ever met. (AUDIO: The Night of 1000 Stars) She claimed to have no fear of death. (TV: The Talons of Weng-Chiang)
Leela admired Boudica. She doubted her knowledge of the Doctor's character after he refused to help the Iceni, saying "[she] thought [he was] a man of honour". Having ignored his warnings about altering history, she told Boudica of her coming defeat, and swore fealty to her. The slaughter at Camulodunon convinced Leela that she had misjudged the queen's character. She recognised her former self in Boudica and chose not to kill her when she had the chance. (AUDIO: The Wrath of the Iceni)
Leela was concerned for K9 when he was dysfunctional, asking the Doctor if "he would be okay" and insisting, when he used the pronoun "it", that his use of "she" to describe the TARDIS gave her the right to use "he". After the destruction of Fetch Priory, the Doctor commented that he should return to "repairing him", with the use of the word greatly pleasing Leela. (TV: Image of the Fendahl) Leela became angry with K9 after he failed to provide her with information, telling him to "shut up". When K9 started to sulk, she apologised, saying she was sorry and assuring him that she "didn't mean to shout". K9 chose to stay on Gallifrey with Leela to look after her.
On Gallifrey, Leela met Rodan. The Time Lady advised her to put her knife away, lest she hurt herself, which Leela said was something the Doctor often remarked. When Rodan allowed a fleet to pass and told Leela it was probably going to "blast some part of the galaxy to dust", Leela told her she ought to have stopped them, but Rodan explained that the non-interference policy forbade such action. Leela mocked Rodan's manner of speaking, saying "one must, one must, yes". Rodan only replied "I knew I'd like you" and turned off the force field that separated the pair.
At their parting, Leela told the Doctor she would miss him. He made an admission in kind only when alone in his TARDIS, saying "I'll miss you too, savage". Leela left him in order to be with Andred, whom she fell in love with. (TV: The Invasion of Time)
Romana considered Leela to be her best friend. (AUDIO: Extermination)
Leela considered Jago and Litefoot to be like family to her. (AUDIO: Chronoclasm)
Appearance
Leela was tall and strong with long, reddish-brown hair (PROSE: Doctor Who and the Invasion of Time) and dark eyes, a broad, clear forehead and a firm chin. Her skin was tanned and smoothly muscular. (PROSE: Doctor Who and the Face of Evil) Due to pigmentation dispersal, her eyes became blue. (TV: Horror of Fang Rock)
Leela usually dressed in animal skins and armed herself with a knife and janis thorns. (TV: The Face of Evil) She once accompanied this outfit with the Doctor's hat. (TV: The Invisible Enemy)
While in London in 1889, the Doctor had Leela wear a less conspicuous outfit, befitting the time. Leela thought these alternate clothes were ridiculous. In order to affect a disguise, she took and dressed in Teresa's clothes.
In order to accompany the Doctor to the Palace Theatre, Leela wore a fashionable dress selected by George Litefoot. She was pleased by the comments the pair made, with Litefoot labelling it as "quite delightful" and the Doctor saying he would "be proud" to take her the theatre "looking like that". (TV: The Talons of Weng-Chiang)
Leela dressed in a skirt and wore a boater hat for a trip to Brighton. When she found herself on Fang Rock instead, she changed into men's clothes belonging to the lighthouse keepers. The explosion of a Rutan mothership resulted in pigmentation dispersal that caused Leela's eye colour to change permanently from brown to blue.
While on Fang Rock, James Skinsale commented that Leela was "not a bad looker", but Adelaide Lessage thought her "perfectly grotesque". Skinsale told her he had learnt to "appreciate nature" during his time in India. (TV: Horror of Fang Rock)
Leela had skins in various tones and occasionally wore her hair in a bun. (TV: Image of the Fendahl)
On Gallifrey, Andred helped Leela to choose an outfit. She went through many clothes, rejecting them all, much to Andred's annoyance. He asked her what outfit she would like and she replied: "a quiver, a bow, a pouch of Janis thorns and my knife back". While with the Outsiders, she wore a fur cloak over her other clothes. (TV: The Invasion of Time)
After she stopped travelling with the Doctor, one of her skins remained in the TARDIS wardrobe. The Fifth Doctor's companion Peri Brown considered wearing it on one occasion. (AUDIO: No Place Like Home) The Eighth Doctor's companion Izzy Sinclair tried it once. (COMIC: Ophidius)
When she was pulled to Albert Square by the First Rani's time distortions, Leela was wearing a loose yellow tunic going down to her knees, with red adornments that included a stripe across her chest, as well as a narrow headband and was barefooted. (TV: Dimensions in Time [+]Loading...["Dimensions in Time (TV story)"])
Abilities
Leela was skilled in combat, both armed and otherwise. She was particularly adept with knives, which she used as throwing weapons. (TV: The Robots of Death) Leela was able to hit a Sontaran's probic vent with a thrown knife and the Doctor congratulated her, calling the act "prodigious" and "amazing". (TV: The Invasion of Time) Leela was once found by a policeman to be strangling her opponent with his own pigtail. She had never used a handgun until her visit to London in 1889, but managed to utilise it effectively against Mr Sin. (TV: The Talons of Weng-Chiang) Leela told the Doctor that good marksmanship was not a matter of luck. After she knocked out Jack Tyler and used his shotgun to kill a Fendahleen, all the time being unable to look at her target lest it influence her, the Doctor agreed with her. (TV: Image of the Fendahl)
Leela was skilled with a bow and displayed her talent for archery to the Outsiders on Gallifrey. (TV: The Invasion of Time) The Doctor claimed that "Leela [was] an expert in armaments". (AUDIO: The Renaissance Man) Before his death, Andred showed her how to operate a staser. (AUDIO: Extermination)
Leela wrote with her left hand, but threw her knife and performed other actions with her right. (TV: The Invisible Enemy) During her travels with the Doctor, he taught her to read and write. (PROSE: People of the Trees; AUDIO: The Time Vampire, White Ghosts, TV: The Invisible Enemy) However, she could not read English. (AUDIO: Beautiful Things) She was able to swim and did so in the TARDIS swimming pool. (TV: The Invasion of Time)
The Fourth Doctor told James Skinsale that "Leela's senses [were] particularly acute" when explaining how she had sensed a change in temperature that eluded everyone else present. Leela also believed she had a keen sense of hearing. (TV: Horror of Fang Rock) She could sense an evil about the Swarm and was able to tell that a communique from Titan Base had a non-human source. (TV: The Invisible Enemy) Leela told the Doctor, after breaking the connection between him and Eustace, that she had felt something was wrong and had followed the feeling allowing her to find him. (TV: Image of the Fendahl)
In Jack Corrigan's house in Kent in 1895, she was able to "smell" death and correctly predicted that a battle had taken place there. She also recognised that Henry McMullan was "not what he [seemed]" by being in his presence and hearing him talk. (AUDIO: Destination: Nerva) The Doctor believed that her "tracking skills [were] peerless". (AUDIO: The Renaissance Man) On another occasion, he described her as "the greatest hunter who has ever lived". (AUDIO: Black Dog)
After taking Ted Moss prisoner, she told him that "your Council should choose its warriors more carefully. A child of the Sevateem could have taken you". Later, she was able to move swiftly to avoid harm when Moss fired a gun at her, pressing herself against the outside wall of the Tyler cottage when he fired through the doorway from within. She disarmed Moss and turned the weapon on him, telling him the shot would be his last, and only surrendering the weapon when she believed Jack Tyler had a gun to her back. Moss told Leela as he left that he would see her later, to which she replied that he should get some practice first. (TV: Image of the Fendahl)
Alternate timelines
In an alternate timeline created by the Sirens of Time’s meddling with the first TARDIS flight on Henlen, the Fourth Doctor and Leela travelled to Henlen investigating temporal disruption. They encountered remnants of the pilots who attacked them, killing the Doctor. Leela was distraught at his death and stood against the remnants alone. This was erased when Romana, Leela and nine incarnations of the Doctor completed the flight. (AUDIO: Collision Course)
In an alternate timeline accessible via the Axis in which it was standard policy for the Time Lords to sell their temporal technology to the highest bidder and regenerations could be extracted and sold, Leela and K9 Mark I accompanied the Doctor on his search for the Key to Time. She was the only human to hold the Key to Time in her hands. Consequently, when her counterpart from the proper timeline visited this alternate Gallifrey, she was appointed Lady President. (AUDIO: Reborn)
In another alternate timeline accessible via the Axis in which the Time Lords regularly altered history through the Temporal Intervention Agency, Leela was brought to Gallifrey to amuse the then Lord President. She subsequently murdered Interrogator General Narvin and assumed his position under Lady President Romana. When her blind counterpart from the proper timeline visited this alternate Gallifrey, she took great pleasure in torturing her. (AUDIO: Disassembled)
In an alternate timeline within the Beyond, Leela died during an alien attack on Gallifrey. Her death drove President Romana to order the destruction of an entire Cannavar system to strike back against the enemy. (AUDIO: Beyond)
Behind the scenes
Creation of the character
Leela was first conceived by producer Philip Hinchcliffe and script editor Robert Holmes. They wanted someone in the mould of Eliza Doolittle from George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion: a bright but unsophisticated primitive who would learn from the Doctor. Writer Chris Boucher had submitted a story proposal entitled The Mentor Conspiracy. It featured a character named Leela which fitted Hinchcliffe and Holmes's ideas.
Although The Mentor Conspiracy was not produced, Boucher reused the character of Leela for The Day God Went Mad (later renamed The Face of Evil), seeing her as a mixture of Emma Peel from The Avengers and Leila Khaled. Boucher was asked to write two endings to the story, in one, Leela left with the Doctor and in the other she stayed behind. The decision to have Leela become a companion was made soon after.
Initially, Leela was to have only appeared in three stories. It was decided later she would stay for the remainder of season 15. One consequence of this decision was a plot contrivance added to Horror of Fang Rock to allow the character's eye colour to change, so actress Louise Jameson would not have to wear uncomfortable coloured contact lenses.
Jameson felt that Doctor Who's writers sometimes neglected to write for Leela as an individual, instead writing her as a stereotypical "Doctor Who girl." For example, in Underworld, the script originally had Leela screaming when overwhelmed by poisonous gas. Jameson declined to do this, pointing out that it was not in character for the warrior Leela. (INFO: Underworld) In fact, Leela screamed in only one television story, The Talons of Weng-Chiang, when her leg was being gnawed by the giant rat — a scream which Jameson felt was justified. (DCOM: The Talons of Weng-Chiang)
Leela ranks as one of the most violent companions, regularly threatening or using deadly force against other humanoids (often to the Doctor's disgust as in The Invisible Enemy, but occasionally not as in Underworld). Although other companions sometimes killed (for example, Romana I shot a guard in The Pirate Planet), others have killed in spin-off productions (most notably Jack Harkness in Torchwood) and Ace racked up body counts in the New Adventures novels, Leela remains, to date, the only TV companion to be shown killing on a frequent basis.
Along with Irving Braxiatel, the Master and Jack Harkness, she is one of only four characters to play a major role in two audio spin-off series: Gallifrey and Jago & Litefoot. Leela and Braxiatel have both also appeared in the Main Range of Big Finish Doctor Who audio stories as a result of their guest roles in the audio story Zagreus. Leela also appeared in the main range story Time in Office.
Katarina - the first television companion who can be considered primitive - was axed almost immediately by the production team to avoid the exposition that would necessary with a character that knew nothing of modern society.
As the Doctor's mother
- At the end of Lungbarrow, the Seventh Doctor learns that Leela is carrying Andred's child. Noting that half-human, half-Gallifreyan is an "unusual pedigree", the Doctor tells her to "just call him after me". The implication is that the child will eventually travel back in time and become the Other, who ultimately dissolves himself in the Loom network to be reborn as the Doctor. Marc Platt later confirmed this: "I don't know whether anybody picked up on that little hint that this is actually a time loop! ... Yup! I'm very naughty! Leela and Andred are ... Oh, dear! Perhaps I shouldn't have mentioned it? The implications are far too horrific to contemplate!" (DWM 305)
Sexuality
- While working on the 2020 Time War: Volume Three story Unity, producer/director Scott Handcock and actress Louise Jameson discussed whether to make Leela's relationship with Veega, a woman with whom she lived for many years and raised a child, overtly romantic and depict both as bisexual. Ultimately, it was decided to leave the exact nature of Leela and Veega's relationship open for interpretation. This was largely due to the fact that, given Leela's long history and how well she knew her character, Jameson determined that such a side of Leela might have already been hinted at. Nonetheless, she described Leela as someone who was all-embracing and had learned to be non-judgemental of others through her long travels in time. (BFX: Unity)
Other matters
- She was originally supposed to die in The Invasion of Time defending the Doctor against the Sontarans. This was scrapped due to being too upsetting for children, though Louise Jameson would have preferred this exit.
- She was also going to be killed off in The Sun Makers when entering the large safe. However, the production team decided against killing Leela, in part because to have the Doctor shown grieving midway through a story would have been inappropriate both for the story and Tom Baker's version of the character. The scene was changed to her being stunned.
- Leela was intended to return in Logopolis but Louise Jameson was unavailable.[1]
- Louise Jameson was interested in reprising her role in The Five Doctors, but there wasn't room in the story for her.
- Twiggy was among those considered for the role back the character was conceived as a Victorian street urchin.
- Louise Jameson took inspiration from both a little girl who lived in her building, as well as her own dog, Bosie.
- Pamela Salem auditioned for the role.
- Louise Jameson reprised the role in a short scene for the Doctor Who Season 15 blu-ray trailer.