 |
The Shadows
of Avalon
(Paul Cornell) |
|
 Name: Romanadvoratrelundar, or 'Romana', third incarnation; has been known as ‘Trey’ when interacting with her past self.
Format:
Book and Audio
Time of Origin: Gallifrey, far future.
Appearances: "The Shadows of Avalon" and "The Ancestor Cell"
Doctor: Eighth
Doctor.
Companions: Fitz Kreiner and Compassion met one version of Romana's third incarnation (The Brigadier was involved in an encounter with this Romana but didn't face her directly); Leela, and K9 have met with Trey.
History:
The history of Romana's third incarnation is exceptionally complex, as there are at least two known cases where this incarnation of Romana took action to change her past in a manner that would erase her own existence. While even at her more extreme this incarnation is still fundamentally Romana, she has been shown using far more ruthless actions than the second Romana or any incarnation of The Doctor would have ever resorted to if they were in such situations.
 |
Gallifrey: Renaissance
(James Goss) |
|
The first appearance of Romana's third incarnation occurred after Romana and her allies, Leela, K9 and Narvin, had spent some time travelling alternate universes to find a way to cure the Time Lords of the Free Time virus that would essentially revert those infected to a zombiefied state. Having found a way to cure the virus using DNA samples acquired from an alternate Gallifrey that never developed time travel, Romana and the others returned to their universe, only to meet with a strange woman who called herself 'Trey', later identifying herself as Romana's future self ("Gallifrey:
Renaissance"). According to Trey, it would take Romana and her allies centuries to rebuild Gallifrey after the devastation of the Free Time virus and everything else that had happened while they were away, so Trey essentially came back in time from a point where that work had been completed and 'gave' them the future she had rebuilt. Trey initially apparently manipulated Romana into making a mistake that caused the death of an alien ambassador so that she would go into exile, but this was actually to put her past self in a position where Trey could direct Romana into a subsection of the Matrix. This allowed the Time Lords to trap a new Dalek invasion in that pocket of the Matrix while Romana returned to the true Gallifrey, Trey ultimately revealing that she was just a projection of herself from her future ("Gallifrey:
Ascension").
After Gallifrey had been reconstructed, the Time Lords became aware of the Future War, a conflict between Gallifrey and an unknown, unnamed Enemy, which would dehumanise the Time Lords to the point of becoming monsters. In order to prepare for this war, Romana regenerated into a third incarnation that the Eighth
Doctor noted looked worryingly like his mother (the writers who created her have stated that this incarnation is physically based on silent movie actress Louise Brooks). Compared to Romana's past willingness to acknowledge alternatives, this new Romana became fixated with planning for the Future War, this focus leading her into conflict with The Doctor when Romana dispatched two Time Lord intervention agents, Cavis and Gandar, to ensure the creation of the Type-102 TARDIS, a sentient TARDIS that would give birth to the Type-103 TARDISes which, Romana and her people believed, would give them an advantage in the War. Eventually, despite the attempts of The Doctor, they managed to trigger the creation of the Type-102 - specifically, The Doctor's companion Compassion, who had been wired into the TARDIS some while back via a receiver wired into her brain as The Doctor attempted to prevent her being affected by random signals from her surrounding environment. The Doctor had failed to realise that her receiver would process the signals sent by the TARDIS into block transfer computations, thus turning her into a TARDIS herself... and now wanted by Romana as breeding stock. Horrified by what Romana had become, and with his own TARDIS having been destroyed after being caught in a dimensional rip, The Doctor and his other companion Fitz Kreiner dived into Compassion and took off, The Doctor casually informing Romana that she could 'kiss his TARDIS'.
 |
The Banquo Legacy
(Andy Lane & Justin
Richards) |
|
During their attempts to escape Romana, The Doctor was forced to install a randomiser in Compassion's systems despite her belief that she could escape the Time Lords on her own, prompting further conflict between her and The Doctor before Compassion recognised that he was only trying to help her remain free ("The Fall of Yquatine"). Although The Doctor implied on some occasions that he acknowledged Romana's need to try and protect Gallifrey, he objected to her coldness towards the rights of the individual, stating on one occasion that he fought to protect Compassion because Romana no longer recognised that a race could only be as moral as its least moral member, and her actions would lead to Gallifrey become as monstrous as their enemies unless she was stopped. On one occasion a Time Lord agent - referred to only as 'Simpson' - managed to immobilise Compassion by trapping her in an Arton inhibitor field, The Doctor speculating that Simpson was at least partly driven by love for Romana given that he refused to turn the field off unless The Doctor gave Compassion to the Time Lords even when he himself was fatally injured by a reanimated corpse, although The Doctor eventually managed to escape the trap ("The Banquo Legacy").
 |
The Ancestor Cell
(Peter Anghelides
and Stephen Cole) |
|
Despite their best efforts, The Doctor and Fitz were eventually surrounded by War-TARDISes when the Time Lords acquired the seed of Compassion's randomiser thanks to Simpson's efforts, allowing them to predict where Compassion would materialise next ("The Ancestor Cell"). Against The Doctor's wishes, Compassion destroyed two of the War-TARDISes before being forced to dematerialise, arriving in a mysterious bone structure that somehow froze her solid and forced her to expel The Doctor and Fitz from her. Walking through some doors in the structure, Fitz found himself in the middle of a seance being conducted by Time Lord students practising the forbidden rites of Faction Paradox, a group of voodooists that worshiped time paradoxes, while The Doctor was sent to Gallifrey, to be informed by a member of the Faction of a horrible truth; he would soon become an agent of the Faction himself, following the events of his third regeneration being altered by them ("Interference"), and they wished him to investigate the bone structure in question.
 |
Interference
Book One
(Lawrence Miles) |
|
Forced to make contact with Romana and ask for assistance, The Doctor was horrified to witness what Gallifrey had become, their focus on the war having already driven Romana to establish martial law and begin the mass development of WarTARDISes, and realised that, whatever Romana he knew and travelled with in the past, this new Romana was nothing like them, and his old friend was as good as dead. However, he agreed to help her investigate the Edifice - the bone structure Compassion had landed in - while trying to determine a cure for his infection with the virus - in exchange for being able to try and provide them with the material to make Type-103 TARDISes without making Compassion a slave. However, The Doctor was somehow transported onto it when a scan was being made, along with several other Time Lords, leaving Romana to just prepare for her reaffirmation ceremony as President and hope for the best. Then, just as she was beginning to relax, the ceremony was interrupted both by Grayjan - a former President who had committed suicide - and Fitz, who had managed to escape his Faction captors. Since Greyjan had a stronger claim to the presidency then Romana, she was deposed and sent away, although she managed to get Fitz - who had been recovered by a group of Faction initiates who had resurrected Greyjan - imprisoned with her so that she could question him about the situation.
Eventually, with aid from Compassion, Fitz and Romana managed to escape the prison, only to find themselves in the middle of Faction Paradox's invasion of Gallifrey, led by none other than Grandfather Paradox, the version of The Doctor who would be created by his infection with the virus. Having witnessed the present Doctor apparently surrender to the virus - although this was later revealed to be a deception to allow him to regain access to the Edifice - Fitz and Romana attempted to fight off the Faction with weapons salvaged from the Slaughterhouse - a storage facility created to prepare for the war - but in the end even this effort failed. As Gallifrey started to come down around their ears, Romana was forced to acknowledge that everything was hopeless and flee for her own TARDIS, although it is uncertain whether she managed to reach it before Gallifrey's destruction, The Doctor forced to release the full power of the Edifice to resolve the paradox of his third incarnation's altered regeneration and erase the Faction from history.
 |
Gallifrey: Intervention Earth
(Scott Handcock and David Llewellyn) |
|
Based on available evidence, it would appear that, some time after these events, The Doctor was able to restore Gallifrey after downloading the entirety of the Matrix into his subconscious ("The Gallifrey Chronicles"), with this specific third incarnation of Romana being erased from history when The Doctor restored Romana as her previous self. However, the incarnation of Romana known as Trey made an appearance in a timeline where Omega attempted to escape his anti-matter universe once again ("Gallifrey: Intervention Earth"), only for Trey to erase her timeline once again when she sent Irving Braxiatiel back in time to warn her previous self about the Adherents of Ohm, a cult of Time Lords who worshipped Omega and sought his release, allowing the second Romana to arrest the cult before they could release Omega ("Gallifrey: Enemy Lines"). As the Time War with the Daleks began, the second Romana was forced to leave Gallifrey due to her opposition to the policies of the resurrected Rassilon as he took charge of Gallifrey, with this Romana last seen having been reduced to an archivist on a distant outpost. However, a version of Trey was witnessed visiting an old Quadrigger station to prepare for it being decommissioned and used to construct new Battle TARDISes for the War ("Luna Romana"),
 |
Luna Romana
(Matt Fitton) |
|
suggesting that this version of the Third Romana would still manifest.
Following the Time War, The Doctor initially believed that he was the only Time Lord left, although a woman who may be another future version of Romana appeared at the conclusion of "Tomb
of Valdemar", initially looking like her old acquaintance Miranda Pelham before regenerating into a new form for unspecified reasons. Even with the discovery that The Doctor managed to save Gallifrey by freezing it in a moment in time in a pocket universe ("The Day of The Doctor"), fans continue to wonder whether Romana survived off-planet, particularly following the appearance of the chameleon arch - a device which rewrites a Time Lord's DNA to turn them into humans, with a complete alternate personality and memory ("Human Nature/The Family of Blood") - and the discovery that The Master escaped the war after his resurrection by turning into a human and hiding at the end of the universe ("Utopia"). As a result, various fans have speculated that Romana may have survived in a similar fashion in a new incarnation, although to date Romana's precise fate remains unknown even after the Doctors were able to save Gallifrey on the last day of the War by transferring the entire planet and its people to a pocket dimension ("The Time of The Doctor").
|
|
