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Romana
(1978 - 1979) |
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| Mary Tamm |
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Mary Tamm was born in 1950,
in Dewsbury, Yorkshire. She trained at RADA before
starting her career with the Birmingham Repertory
Company in 1971. In 1972 she moved to London to
appear in a rock musical called Mother Earth.
Her film credits include The Odessa File in
1974 and Three Kinds of Heat (with also starred Sylvester
McCoy). Her television roles included Coronation
Street, as well as Casualty, The Bill, Bergerac and Brookside.
She was originally reluctant to audition for the
part of Romana but after being told that it would
be a departure from the traditional companion she
decided to accept the role. However, it was not
as much of a departure as she had been led to believe,
and so after only a single season she decided to
leave. Soon after, in 1978, she married businessman
Marcus Ringrose. In the mid-eighties, she appeared
in John Nathan-Turner's pantomime production of Cinderella as
Prince Charming, along with Colin
Baker, Nicola
Bryant, and Anthony Ainley. Her most recent
television role was a guest appearance in the BBC1
drama Doctors in Apr 2000.
Unfortunately Mary Tamm died in July 2012 at the
age of 62.
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 The
Doctor rarely seems to choose his companions - they seem to
arrive on board either by accident or thanks to their own determined
efforts when the do not realise fully the journey they are about
to embark upon. Romana's arrival however was a bit different.
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| The Ribos Operation |
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Travelling
alone after the departure of Leela and K9 Mk I, The Doctor's TARDIS was
stopped in mid-flight by the enormously powerful White Guardian,
who wanted The Doctor to help locate the six segments of
the Key to Time that had been scattered throughout the universe.
To assist The Doctor in his quest to gather the pieces of
the Key to Time together successfully it was felt that he
needed a new travelling companion: A young, proud and aristocratic
female Time Lord named Romanadvoratrelundar, (or "Romana" for
short) was chosen.
Romana
was a recent graduate from the Time Lord academy on The Doctor's
home planet of Gallifrey. She had gained a much higher level of achievement
than The Doctor and revelled in showing her superior knowledge. She
was also initially proud of her full name but she had to get use
to its shortened version while with The Doctor. She is at first furious
at his insistences on the diminutive 'Romana' - his reasoning being
that by the time he’d called out her full name to warn her
of danger she would already be dead - and even more furious at his
sometimes mischievous further foreshortening to 'Romy', although
their greatest disagreement occurred when she was forced to pander
to the hormone-induced affections of genetically-engineered permanent
teen Huvan, who had become the new conduit for the telepathic energies
of the powerful being known as Valdemar and had to be kept distracted
while The Doctor looked for information about his change ("Tomb
of Valdemar ").
Despite
The Doctor's insistence that he worked better alone and
that, from his point of view, Romana was just another imposition
on his much treasured independence the decision had already
been made and so there was little he could do about it.
To make matters worse it was obvious that Romana lacked
experience and there was a possibility that she could have
been put on board to spy on him. And so when Romana made
her debut in the opening story of Season
Sixteen, when she turned up unannounced in the TARDIS console room
and made a hole in the console for the Tracer for the Key’s
segments, it was left to The Doctor to make the best of
things.
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| The Pirate Planet |
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Her
lack of practical experience outside the confines of the
Capitol on Gallifrey often led her into trouble, which required
The Doctor's help to extricate her on numerous occasions.
Although intelligent and sophisticated, Romana was a little
haughty, and her naivety often tried The Doctor's patience.
Romana shows her naivety and lack of practical experience
by the rashness of her actions and her normal cool-headedness
- as demonstrated by her habit of adopting a casual attitude
when talking with the villains they encountered even as
they threatened to kill her - was at first offset by a dangerous
desire to compete with The Doctor for the limelight. It
also irked him that she was somewhat more qualified than
he was and that she often proved that she was more than
an equal of The Doctor, on one occasion managing to pilot
the TARDIS into a discontinuous space containing another
version of itself ("Heart
of TARDIS").
She
is, at first, horrified at The Doctor's dismissal of the
Codes of Practice, especially when it came to operating
the TARDIS, which had been instilled into her education.
However, as their quest for the Key to Time continued, she
came to appreciate that The Doctor's unorthodox methods
had their advantages. Her original haughty tolerance towards
The Doctor rapidly changed to respect, although his often
irreverent attitude and apparent inability to admit when
he was wrong - such as when he attempted to sing an opera
intended for a race with three larynxes despite being physiologically
incapable of properly doing so ("Tomb of Valdemar")
- continued to frustrate her.
Romana
is a very attractive young woman who possessed the virtue
of youthful impetuousness, courage and an agility not only
of body - although she reflected that a more compact form
would be more useful in her time with The Doctor, resolving
to regenerate once a suitable template was found ("Heart
of TARDIS") - but also of mind. Strong-minded, burning
with a curiosity, super-intelligent and sophisticated she
slowly overcomes her upbringing and eventually adapts to
new patterns of thought and behaviour and so learns a great
deal about life away from the stuffy confines of Gallifrey
as her self-important 'know-it-all' stance mellowed, resulting
in her taking the initiative to a greater extent, such as
when she once posed as a nightclub singer in 1930s China
while investigating a temporal anomaly ("The
Shadow of Weng-Chiang"). For example, she eventually
sees the sense in The Doctor's biting criticisms of her
wearing
a full-length dress as being somewhat impractical and so,
to his astonishment, cuts it off above the knee to give
herself more freedom of movement. Her originally low opinion
of Earth’s people and their technological abilities
also improved over time, aided in no small part by her brief
period of captivity where she shared a cell with The Doctor’s
old friend The
Brigadier and received a first-hand
look at the humanity whom The Doctor had come to care for
("Heart
of TARDIS").
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| The Androids of Tara |
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The
Doctor, though initially piqued by her uninvited presence
aboard his TARDIS, soon warmed to his intelligent Time Lady
companion. As he grew to know and respect her he made full
use of Romana's latent talents of logic and deduction combined
with his own formidable powers. As time went on they became
the team that they were meant to be from the start. Their
caustic banter and mutual put-downs became a sign of respect,
even fondness, although The Doctor never became as close
to Romana as he had been with previous companions. As their
quest to assemble the Key to Time came to a conclusion,
Romana was able to finally prove her worth to The Doctor
when she faced off the White Guardian's opposing force,
The
Black Guardian, when he tried to trick The Doctor into
handing over the completed Key at the season's conclusion.
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| The Armageddon Factor |
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By
the end of the sixteenth season the strength of both The Doctor's
and Romana's personalities made for an excellent on-screen tension
and despite the fact that she seemed so much a part of the Key
to Time season the character was popular, and it was obvious
that she had not outlived her usefulness as a companion over
just one season. However, as Mary Tamm, the actress who played
her, was keen to leave the show a solution had to be found for
her character to continue. The logical answer was obvious -
Romana was a Time Lord so she could simply regenerate just like
The Doctor. Although the precise reasons for her regeneration
vary - there is some evidence that the TARDIS may have triggered
the regeneration, although recent events reveal that it was
actually caused by a combination of Romana subconsciously attempting
to escape the mental control of an ancient Gallifreyian ruler
called Pandora and her being infused with the essence of the
sixth segment of the Key following Astra’s restoration
as a person - by her next televised appearance Romana had assumed,
much to the horror of The Doctor, the likeness of the Princess
Astra of Atrios, the woman who had been the final segment to
the Key to Time. And so the character of Romana lived on despite
being slightly different.
Unlike The Doctor, Romana has never experienced
a meeting between multiple incarnations of herself, with her
various forms all remaining in their proper places in time.
However, Romana’s memories of her first incarnation have
physically manifested themselves at a later point in her life,
when she was investigating the existence of the ancient Gallifreyian
leader Pandora. After entering the Matrix unintentionally, Romana
and Leela encountered Romana’s first incarnation, learning
that she had taken on the ‘Imperatrix Imprimatur’ when
she discovered the remnants of Pandora in the Matrix while at
the Academy, only to be hypnotised into forgetting this encounter
by Cardinal Braxiatel - a Time Lord who was in constant contact
with his past and future selves to assemble artefacts for his
future self’s collection, rumoured by some to be The Doctor’s
brother - her regeneration being forced when the damage done
by the Shadow threatened to break her conditioning. Although
Pandora was able to eventually manifest a new form based on
the first Romana, having already used Romana’s past self
to manipulate Inquisitor Darkel’s attempts to discredit
Romana’s liberal policies through the creation of terrorist
threats, Romana was able to defeat Pandora by drawing her back
into the Matrix, although this resulted in both the destruction
of the Matrix and the loss of the mental manifestation of Roman’s
first incarnation to prevent Pandora from ever returning.
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