Sandra Cathcart
- You may wish to consult
Sandra (disambiguation)for other, similarly-named pages.
Lady Sandra Cathcart was a 19th century Londoner who became a companion to the Time Lady Leora, and by extension to her father the Colonel, with whom Leora sometimes travelled.
Biography[[edit] | [edit source]]
Early life[[edit] | [edit source]]
Lady Sandra was the eldest daughter of wealthy aristocrat the Duke of Marston, born in London in 1826. She had a brother, and, as she grew up, proved to be much more practical-minded than he was, cultivating an "unfeminine interest" in such subjects as farming, running an estate, and sports. When the Crimean War broke out, she enlisted as a volunteer nurse under Florence Nightingale, also contributing money to the cause.
There, she met the Time Lady Leora, whose TARDIS had disguised itself as a battlefield tent as Leora tailed a group of "time-hopping Daleks". Leora took off in pursuit of the Daleks before she noticed Sandra's presence on board, and the subsequent few adventures allowed Sandra to discover a "more liberated future" which made her decide against returning to the Victorian era. Quickly realising that her Victorian outfits were impractical for adventure, she took to borrowing 20th century clothing from fellow companion Lisa Drake, who had a similar build, although she found some of Lisa's modern clothes "shockingly revealing" and thus stuck to a somewhat more conservative style. She also found that she didn't tend to get along with Mikhyl Nevenskoi, another of Leora's companions, due to political disagreements.
As Leora often joined forces with her father and fellow renegade Time Lord the Colonel, she aditionally wound up becoming a companion to the older man on occasion. As a result of the two TARDIS crews' frequent mingling, she developed an "odd love-hate relationship" with Lieutenant Roderick Mitchell, one of the Colonel's own companions, with whom she gradually became outright romantically infatuated. (GAME: "Player Characters" [+]Part of The Legions of Death, Loading...{"namedpart":"Player Characters","1":"The Legions of Death (game)"})
Britain, 43 A.D.[[edit] | [edit source]]
At some point, with Sandra now 28 years old, (GAME: "Player Characters" [+]Part of The Legions of Death, Loading...{"namedpart":"Player Characters","1":"The Legions of Death (game)"}) a mysterious signal seemingly coming from a TARDIS stationed in 43 AD Britain drew any of the Colonel's TARDIS, Leora's TARDIS and the Third Doctor's TARDIS to investigate. Unable to pinpoint the exact location of the rogue TARDIS, they could only land within a few miles of the pulse-wave's source, in what turns out to be southwestern Roman Britain, somewhere between Londinium and Camulodunum, in an empty battlefield. (GAME: "Temporal Anomaly" [+]Part of The Legions of Death, Loading...{"namedep":"Temporal Anomaly","1":"The Legions of Death (game)"}) Lurking on the edges of the battlefield, a group of Roman soldiers who had survived the ahistorical skirmish — led by Marcus Cornelius Falco — witnessed the arrival of the TARDIS or TARDISes. (GAME: "Field of Battle" [+]Part of The Legions of Death, Loading...{"namedep":"Field of Battle","1":"The Legions of Death (game)"}) Taking them prisoner, Falco was willing to trust that they were not spies, (GAME: "Falco's Story" [+]Part of The Legions of Death, Loading...{"namedep":"Falco's Story","1":"The Legions of Death (game)"}, "Field of Battle" [+]Part of The Legions of Death, Loading...{"namedep":"Field of Battle","1":"The Legions of Death (game)"}) but insisted on having them accompany his men back to Emperor Claudius's main camp in an effort to warn him about the new, massing force of barbarians they had encountered — which the Time Lords and their companions knew should not have existed, and could only be the work of the other renegade Time Lord. (GAME: "Player Options" [+]Part of The Legions of Death, Loading...{"namedep":"Player Options","1":"The Legions of Death (game)"})
The journey was long and arduous, and may have involved some members of the party being captured by further barbarian ambushes; (GAME: "Player Options" [+]Part of The Legions of Death, Loading...{"namedep":"Player Options","1":"The Legions of Death (game)"}, "In the Briton camp" [+]Part of The Legions of Death, Loading...{"namedep":"In the Briton camp","1":"The Legions of Death (game)"}, "In the Roman camp" [+]Part of The Legions of Death, Loading...{"namedep":"In the Roman camp","1":"The Legions of Death (game)"}) the captured companions may have included Sandra (GAME: "In the Roman camp" [+]Part of The Legions of Death, Loading...{"namedep":"In the Roman camp","1":"The Legions of Death (game)"}) as well as [[[Roderick Mitchell|Rod Mitchell]] (GAME: "In the Roman camp" [+]Part of The Legions of Death, Loading...{"namedep":"In the Roman camp","1":"The Legions of Death (game)"}, "General Adventure Procedures" [+]Part of The Legions of Death, Loading...{"namedep":"General Adventure Procedures","1":"The Legions of Death (game)"}) and Mikhyl Nevenskoi. (GAME: "In the Briton camp" [+]Part of The Legions of Death, Loading...{"namedep":"In the Briton camp","1":"The Legions of Death (game)"}) Taken to the Briton camp, they would then have borne witness to internal politics within the camp, learning of Princess Branimandua's distrust for the "god of the Inner Mysteries" and the power struggle between Calagundus and Cunovellasus. Ultimately, after summary interrogation, the prisoners were taken to the Sacred Wood itself, (GAME: "In the Briton camp" [+]Part of The Legions of Death, Loading...{"namedep":"In the Briton camp","1":"The Legions of Death (game)"}) where they were taken into the War Chief's TARDIS and placed by him under a hypnotic compulsion which made them believe that they were in the middle of a completely different adventure and had been tasked by the Doctor with rescuing Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart from a Sontaran camp — actually a ploy to make them infiltrate the Roman camp and abduct Emperor Claudius for him. (GAME: "Under Compulsion" [+]Part of The Legions of Death, Loading...{"namedep":"Under Compulsion","1":"The Legions of Death (game)"})
Eventually, the remainder of the group made it to the camp, where, if Falco had not been among those captured, he was able to confirm that the strange travellers were not spies, and secure them an interview with the Emperor. However, due to internal politics of the camp, Claudius was not sure whether to believe their claims of a new army. He agreed to stay the advance for a day or two, however. (GAME: "In the Roman camp" [+]Part of The Legions of Death, Loading...{"namedep":"In the Roman camp","1":"The Legions of Death (game)"}) In the night, the camp was infiltrated by the group of would-be kidnappers under hypnotic control. Recognising some of his men among them, Falco realised the truth of the time-travellers' claim that the locus of the mystery was in the Sacred Wood, and helped them sneak away from the camp. (GAME: "Shadows in the Night" [+]Part of The Legions of Death, Loading...{"namedep":"Shadows in the Night","1":"The Legions of Death (game)"})
Though ambushed by the Britons, they did end up back at the Sacred Wood when the hypnotised barbarians opted to drop the prisoners there as tributes for their god — who turned out to be none other than a regenerated form of the War Chief. Upon realising that there were members of his own kind among the party, the War Chief was eager to gloat, and explained the nature of his scheme, whose ultimate aim was to take control of the entire Roman Empire by capturing and hypnotising Claudius, then outfitting the brainwashed Roman army with laser pistols. (GAME: "In the Briton camp" [+]Part of The Legions of Death, Loading...{"namedep":"In the Briton camp","1":"The Legions of Death (game)"}, "The Sacred Wood" [+]Part of The Legions of Death, Loading...{"namedep":"The Sacred Wood","1":"The Legions of Death (game)"}, "The War Chief" [+]Part of The Legions of Death, Loading...{"namedep":"The War Chief","1":"The Legions of Death (game)"}) Dumped in a containment cell within the War Chief's TARDIS until it was time to brainwash them, the time-travellers managed to escape, possibly with the use of the non-brainwashed Briton Branimandua, (GAME: "Escape" [+]Part of The Legions of Death, Loading...{"namedep":"Escape","1":"The Legions of Death (game)"}) and the War Chief's plan was foiled when his hypnotic machines were destroyed, though he himself managed to escape. Vespasian was then safely returned to the Roman camp, allowing history to go back on track. (GAME: "Ending the Adventure" [+]Part of The Legions of Death, Loading...{"namedep":"Ending the Adventure","1":"The Legions of Death (game)"})
Later events[[edit] | [edit source]]
It was noted that "should Lady Sandra ever find a time and place where she fit comfortably, she would probably abandon the TARDIS crew and strike out on her own". (GAME: "Player Character" [+]Part of The Legions of Death, Loading...{"namedep":"Player Character","1":"The Legions of Death (game)"})
Personality[[edit] | [edit source]]
Sandra had a "restless and active" nature which made her chafe against the passive life expected of her. Her primary goal was to "live a useful life", and sometimes worried that she was less capable than she hoped to be — an insecurity which fueled a vivid, compensating dislike of anyone who mocked her abilities openly. She was "compassionate, warm, and friendly, but reserved rather than outgoing", coming across as having a natural charm which were a great help whenever she was called upon to engage in diplomacy and negotiations, despite her lack of practical experience with such things. From the Victorian upbringing which she had renounced, she retained what was described as "an almost indefinable snobbishness, almost a reverse snobbishness", being "just a little too eager to deny any ill feeling toward anyone from a lower social class". (GAME: "Player Characters" [+]Part of The Legions of Death, Loading...{"namedep":"Player Characters","1":"The Legions of Death (game)"})
Physical appearance[[edit] | [edit source]]
At 28, Sandra appeared as "a young lady of aristocratic features and regal bearing", with auburn hair and grey-green eyes. She was short and slim, being described as "petite and slender". After joining the crew of Leora's TARDIS, she discarded her original Victorian wardrobe and took to dressing in more practical clothes provided by fellow time-traveller Lisa Drake, a 20th century historian, although she dressed "more conservatively" than Lisa, as she still found some of her clothes "shockingly revealing". (GAME: "Player Characters" [+]Part of The Legions of Death, Loading...{"namedep":"Player Characters","1":"The Legions of Death (game)"})
