Doctor Who/Romana

Romanadvoratrelundar
Doctor Who
Mary Tamm Lalla Ward
Actors	Mary Tamm Lalla Ward
First Appearance
Series Billing

Basic Information

Romanadvoratrelundar was a female Time Lord and a long-time companion of The Doctor.

Romana first met the Doctor during his fourth incarnation, during the quest for the Key to Time. Thinking her name impractically long, the Doctor gave her the ultimatum that he'd either call her "Romana" or "Fred". She claimed that she actually would have preferred Fred, but the Doctor insisted on calling her Romana. She initially got very angry whenever her name was shortened and demanded that in conversation she be referred to as "Romanadvoratrelundar", but eventually gave up. At the end of the quest for the Key to Time she regenerated into Romana II.

A Time Lord apprentice, Romana did not have her own TARDIS when she met the Doctor, but she was fresh out of the Academy so (unlike many of the Doctor's human companions) she fully understood how it worked, in some ways more than even the Doctor. She tended to be more by-the-book than the Doctor, whose approach to maintaining the technology of the TARDIS was much more disheveled and based on unconventional experience, which initially led to some friction. As Romana II, she continued to travel with the Doctor through time and space having many adventures. Eventually, she stayed behind in the alternate reality of E-Space to help the local Tharrils who had just escaped from slavery, and K-9 Mark II stayed behind with her.

Trivia

• Many fans speculate that Romana II and the Doctor had a more than platonic relationship, as in several episodes ("City of Death" in particular) they seem almost like a romantic couple. Also, she's the only member of the Doctor's own race that was a companion for a lengthy period. This impression is probably due to the fact that the actors who played the Doctor and Romana II were actually becoming romantically involved and later briefly married, but this was never explicitly reflected in the characters. Still, many fans consider Romana II to be the closest thing to a girlfriend or soulmate that the Doctor ever had.

• It's not entirely clear if Romana is alive or dead in the 2005 series ("Season 27"). The Ninth Doctor stated that the Time Lords were all dead, because their homeworld Gallifrey was destroyed. The Time Lords all live on only one planet, and thus destroying Gallifrey would wipe them out. However, Romana was an exception in that she wasn't even in the same universe as the other Time Lords when she was last seen staying behind in E-space. It's not clear if she came back to Gallifrey and was later killed there with the rest, or if she is somehow still alive.
  • Series runner Russell T. Davies has stated in the official Doctor Who magazine that offscreen, Romana returned to Gallifrey and became President of the Time Lords, and was the President in office during the last Time War. Thus if the Ninth Doctor was correct when he stated that none of the other Time Lords survived the fall of Gallifrey, then neither did Romana. However, the Doctor also thought that none of the Daleks survived the war, yet a lone Dalek (Dalek) and the Dalek Emperor (The Parting of the Ways) survived, so perhaps the Doctor was wrong.