ROMANA

Romanadvoratrelundar was a young--at 140, barely into her second century!--Time Lord freshly graduated from the Academy.  She had achieved a triple First--no mean feat--and was definitely feeling full of herself.  She was clearly from an ancient and wealthy family--her 70th birthday present was an aircar.  Though she took a number of practical courses for her various degrees, she also took some questionable ones.   Deciding to forego "Veteran and Vintage Vehicles" (including the Type 40), for example, she took a course on "The Lifestyle of the Gallifreyan Flutterwing."

During her period of studies, she worked for a while in the Bureau of Ancient Records.   Whilst working on her thesis, she was apparently contacted by the President of the Supreme Council, Borusa, and assigned to help the Doctor in his quest to find the Key to Time.  In fact, it had been the disguised White Guardian who had enrolled her, know that she would prove to be of invaluable help to the Doctor.

Her main failing was that she was filled with purely academic learning.  She had no travel experiences, and no practical knowledge of other worlds.  Though she stumbled frequently, she proved adaptable and intelligent enough to survive and to grow.   Not used at all to dealing with living creatures, her first encounter with a horse, for example, left her wondering how to start it.  The period of time she spent with the Doctor broadened her experiences considerably.  Her near-photographic memory and attention to details helped her greatly.

From the start, though, she had proven to be a very shrewd judge of the Doctor's character.  When he refused to allow her to help, she bullied him into taking her along, and skillfully manipulated his ego to force him to prove his abilities to her.   Fond of psychology, she practised it on him as often as it was possible, often wrapping him about her little finger and leaving him somewhat bewildered.  She was also a serious student of sociology, and was fond of showing off her learning in this field.

She had a very strong love of clothening and jewellery, and loved dressing up.   Unfortunately, due to her lack of practical experience, she frequently selected highly inappropriate outfits for her needs.  As she progressed, though, her costumes became more practical, if never any less garish and eye-catching.

As a Time Lord, she was very filled with her own self-importance, and this often manifested itself as arrogance with beings that she considered to be inferior to herself.   She could verbally whip them into line, and managed to take command of situations simply through imposing her will on others.  Again, as she spent time with the Doctor, the edges were knocked off her arrogant attitudes and she began to see that each person had his, her, or its own worth.  The pride she felt in the Time Lords began to erode from unquestioned superiority and turned into a desire to help others who were not as fortunate as herself.

She preferred to work according to the book--understandably, since she had never known any other way of dealing with life.  This often clashed with the Doctor's brash, off-the-cuff approach to life.  She would look up in the gazetteer worlds that they were planning to visit, while he would know all about them without apparently needing to check.  She would attempt to fly the TARDIS according to the manual; he would tear out the pages as being utter garbage.  With time, she began to see that the Doctor's methods were the result of his 523 years of travels, and that he really did know what he was doing--most of the time.

Together, the two of them managed to collect the first five segments of the Key to Time.  The first section was disguised as a piece of Jethrik, one of the rarest and most valuable elements in the Universe.  Used by the con-man Garron and his accomplice, Unstoffe, in a complex scam played on the homicidal Graff Vynda-K, the doctor and Romana had a great deal of difficulty in getting hold of the "Jethrik".   In the course of the adventure, Romana ran into a Shrivenzale--a ferocious animal used to guard the jewels of the planet Ribos.  Used to the sedentary life of Gallifrey and its harmless wildlife, she was stunned by this savage beast.  She queried the Doctor about it, wondering if there were many such animals on other worlds.   His reply of "lots" did little to comfort her.

The second segment turned out to be the entire planet of Callufrax.  To obtain this segment, she and the Doctor had to confront the Captain of the Pirate Planet, Zanak, and its mad, senile Queen, Xanxia.  Romana had also developed a skill of picking the Doctor's pocket for his jelly babies by this point.  With the help of the telepathic gestalt of the Mentiads, the Doctor and Romana stopped the Captain's insane attempts to raid and destroy other worlds.

The third segment was found on the Earth.  Romana made friends with Professor Rumford, an eccentric but amiable elderly historian.  She was also almost lured to her death by a person using the shape-shifting abilities of the segment to impersonate the Doctor.  Eventually, the culprit turned out to be an alien criminal, Cessair of Diplos.  With the aid of the silicon-based Ogri, Cessair had fled justice, but was eventually sealed up eternally as a stone.

By this time, the Doctor was getting bored, and he sent Romana off alone after the fourth segment, located on the planet Tara.  Romana was captured by Count Grendel, and used as a pawn in his complex attempt to gain the throne of Tara.  It turned out that Romana was an exact double of the Princess Strella, second in line for the throne.   The Doctor fell into the company of the first in line, Prince Reynart.  Romana had become quite good at picking locks, and effected a temporary escape.  Finally, she and the Doctor saved Reynart and Strella, and Grendel fled into exile.

The fifth segment had accidentally been swallowed by a giant squid-like creature on one of the moons of Delta Magna.  It had then grown to immense proportions, which the native Swampies viewed as a god.  They attempted to offer up Romana as a sacrifice to it, but she and the Doctor stumbled into a plot by Thawn, the mining engineer of a methane plant, to wipe out the Swampies.  The Doctor deduced what the power of Kroll was, and managed to get it to revert to tiny form when he recovered the segment.

In the process of locating the sixth segment, Romana was captured by the Shadow.   An agent of the Black Guardian, the Shadow preferred direct and unsubtle methods of getting his information, and accordingly tortured Romana to get what he wanted from her.   The Doctor rescued her and together they defeated the Shadow.  Presumably because her body had been seriously damaged by the torture inflicted on her, Romana was forced to regenerate.

Since this was her first regeneration and she was still so young, she had a great degree of control over the change.  She was able to "design" her new form to be a duplicate of that of the Princess Astra of Atrios, the living being whose body had been the hidden sixth segment of the Key to Time.  Though the Doctor didn't approve of her borrowing the appearance of another person, he finally allowed her her choice.   As with all regenerations, Romana's brought on something of a change in personality as well.

She became a little more frivolous, even a little impish.  She still retained much of her previous traits, however, including a love of strange clothing, an imperious nature, and a quirky way of dealing with the Doctor.  Ultimately, the Time Lords discovered that she had left Gallifrey without proper authorization (the mission for a Guardian apparently not being considered "authorized"), and the Doctor was ordered to return her home.  By this time, however, Romana was a very changed person.   She had realized through her travels that her old life on Gallifrey had been narrow, unfulfilling, and boring.  She did not want to return home.  Though the Doctor sympathized with her problem, he had very little choice, but to obey the Time Lords.

However, before he could do this, the TARDIS accidently passed through a CVE (Charged Vacuum Emboitment) that took it out of normal space (N-space) into E-space, a smaller, seperate Universe.  Without knowing the way home, neither of them could do much about the summons to Gallifrey.  In E-space, they landed on the planet, Alzarius, which had the same coordinates as Gallifrey in our Universe.

The Doctor and Romana encountered a creature from the legends of Gallifrey when they next chanced on a small world in E-space.  Here, the Great Vampire had been sleeping, recovering from wounds inflicted upon it by the Time Lords aeons before.  Realizing that Romana was a Time Lord, the Three Lords of the world--vampires themselves--determined to sacrifice her to the Great Vampire on its arising.  The Doctor managed to stake the vampire and save Romana's life.

Still searching for the exit from E-space, the TARDIS was affected by the time winds, and came to rest close by the Gateway at the junction of the two Universes.  Romana was captured by Rorvik and his crew, whose time-traveling ship had also became stuck there.  She and the Doctor discovered that the ship was transporting a load of slaves--the time-sensitive Tharils.  Once the masters of most of space, the Tharils had been defeated by the Gundan robots, and then enslaved themselves.  Now, however, was the dawn of their freedom.  Having learned from their humble fate, the Tharils were a much-changed race.  The Doctor and Romana aided Biroc and Lazlo in freeing their trapped people from the slave ship.  While the time winds opened the passageway to return to our normal Universe, the Doctor and Adric alone returned.

Romana had elected to stay behind and to help the Tharils to trace and free the remnant of their people.  The Doctor left K9 with her, and he contained all the information needed for her to build another TARDIS that could operate in E-space.  With no regrets, Romana turned her back on her own people and normal space, to stay and aid where she was most needed.  It was a tremendous change from the Romana who had initially stepped into the TARDIS with the Doctor--but, as with most of his companions, the Doctor had proved most influential in shaping her life.