Talk:Romana

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Guys

About the regeneration business - please state the story that was given as the source of information for the bit just removed. If it is some untelevised story or any medium other than the TV series and TV movie, then it should , in my firm view, be discounted.

Well, it's a well-established bit of fan speculation (based on [some rather large extrapolations from] the regen scene in Destiny and also the end of The War Games) but you were probably right to delete it. (Indeed, the fact that Romana's regeneration scene admits of such possibilities is one reason why a lot of people don't like it). --Bth

it's true that at the end of Troughton, the Time Lords (though I don't think named as such) offer him a choice of bodies, which he refuses, and then choose Pertwee for him. However, they say "your appearance has changed before, it can change again" -- always seemed to me to imply that regeneration is not something innate. Because the TL mythos wasn't established then, the whole Troughton regeneration is maybe up for retconning, if anyone really cares that much. -- Tarquin

Tarquin watch Episode 10 of The War Games again - they are definately identified as Time Lords - as for "your appearance has changed before, it can change again" - it is just another way of describing the regeneration process - and i hardly think that all Time Lord regenerations would be as random as the Doctor's - specially on Gallifrey itself.

whoa! steady on there! I may remember this sort of stuff (inaccurately, as you can see), but I don't actually have any of them on tape! The last episode of DW I watched was the final Sylvester McCoy one. Yes, "your appearance has changed before, it can change again" does describe regen, but it implies that on this occasion they are forcing it. That's if I remember the line correctly. -- Tarquin

If the Time Lords can chose the next incarnation's appearance when they force a regeneration they they may be able to do the same when its voluntary - but all the Doctor's regenerations (except for his second) have been where there has been no time for all that malarky - just survival.

In the 2005 Season 27, they've started a plot thread saying that "The War" (as yet undescribed in any detail) turned Gallifrey into a burned-out husk and that The Doctor is "the last Timelord". This doesn't seem to be the same thing as the novels' erasing them from history, because other alien characters remember that there were Timelords, implying that they weren't erased from history altogether. I would assume he's "the last Timelord" because being isolationist all the Timelords live on Gallifrey, and if you destroy Gallifrey you kill them all...but Romana wasn't on Gallifrey. She's in the parallel dimension E-space. Does this mean she survived or died? If she died, they'd have to explain how she got out of E-space and returned to Gallifrey. This is quite perplexing and should be addressed (of course, the Fall of Gallifrey in The War seems to be a major subplot starting with Season 27).

Something that we'll just have to wait and see. This level of speculation is really beyond the scope of an encyclopedia article. --khaosworks 22:22, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Contents 1 Too many links 2 Lalla Ward info: relevant? 3 Tamm's Departure 4 Romana's regeneration and The Christmas Invasion

[edit] Too many links

Does this entry really need so many dead links? It seems like there's a link for every individual episode mentioned, but none of them are live. If there are other Doctor Who episodes that have separate entries then this is okay, but if not the dead links should be removed until someone creates them.

[edit] Lalla Ward info: relevant?

I removed these sentences from the article:

Ward, who in real life married and divorced her co-star Tom Baker, is now married to the scientist Richard Dawkins.

Ward herself has been very active in Doctor Who fandom.

I think these comments about the actor aren't relevant to an article on the character. —Josiah Rowe 00:32, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

That's fine. A metacomment which I don't think is wholly appropriate for the article so I'm not going to add it, merely mention, is the interesting concidence between Romana's reasons for regenerating in the Gallifrey audios and the fact that Louise Brooks's (i.e. Romana III) most famous film is Pandora's Box, i.e. is this a sly way by Big Finish of trying to avert Romana III's creation and further put the BFAs and the EDAs into separate universes.

I'm not sure if we should also mention that Pandora first appeared in fan fiction. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 01:20, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Actually, I didn't know that. (This is what I get for skipping out on OG's forum!) Where exactly did she first appear? — Josiah Rowe 02:46, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Well, Pandora first appeared as the character Pengallia, in the fanzine Apocrypha #2 (1993), as the Silver Queen, the first Time Lady President who was deposed because she was tyrannical, tried to take over everything - the usual. She was created by Adrian Middle. Pengallia made her way into licensed spin-offs when she was mentioned in The Infiniity Doctors. The background for Imperiatrix Pandora is almost the same as Pengallia's except for the name change. Adrian's working on a new fanfic which postulates that Romana is Pengallia's reincarnation much as the Doctor is the Other's.

There's apparently also another Time Lady Pandora mentioned somewhere in the NAs, full name Pandorastrumnelliahanfloriana. Not sure where, or if she's connected, though. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 03:19, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

I don't know Adrian Middle (don't read much fanfic, except what gets published in those charity anthologies). Did Gary Russell transplant Pengallia into the Gallifrey series with his permission, or was it a "tip of the hat", or just theft plain & simple? —Josiah Rowe 05:29, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

That one I don't know. :) --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 05:49, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

A bit of digging uncovered this, which helps to explain Pengallia/Pandora. Middle seems to be saying that the concept was in the zeitgeist (a bit like Neil Gaiman's attitude about Tim Hunter and Harry Potter, I suppose). —Josiah Rowe 06:15, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

As a bit of a note, Pandorastrumnelliahanfloriana is mentioned in Tragedy Day by Gareth Roberts. How do people feel about a Pandora entry in minor Doctor Who villains? Or should we just stick to televised villains in that one? Or do we have enough for a separate entry, given the conceptual history of the character? --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 02:14, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind putting Pandora in the minor villains list. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 15:15, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Tamm's Departure

The page makes claims I've never really heard before about why Tamm left. I've always heard that she was never going to do more than one season[1], not this thing about her leaving because the role wasn't going the way she wanted. Can we cite that or remove it, please?CzechOut 06:21, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

I'll check my general references when I get back home. If anyone wants to remove it in the interim go ahead. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 06:41, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Romana's regeneration and The Christmas Invasion

Despite user:khaosworks editing note in the history section, I'm still not so clear why this bit of current speculation is really so much more egregious than the speculation involved with the other two theories advanced in this section. I'm therefore reverting it and inviting discussion. Still, I'll reword to avoid the two words to which he specifically objects, even though they are used in exactly the same way in the first paragraph of the section.CzechOut 07:03, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

The difference is that this seems to come from nowhere - the female Gallifreyans are different theory has been around for a long, long time. The other ones advanced both derive from written sources. On top of that, the regeneration of the Doctor's hand in The Christmas Invasion is not really comparable to Romana's body switching in Destiny of the Daleks - the Doctor doesn't grow a different hand, he grows the same one; nobody chopped Romana's body off, either. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 07:32, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

It's REALLY stretching things to suggest that "Mark of the Rani" is a better source than TCI, but if you want "some fans", here they are. In support of the idea.[2] [3]. Treating the idea seriously enough to debate it from several different viewpoints. [4] And it's peppered throughout the threads that generally discuss the episode (but are hundreds of posts long). I don't know what to tell you other than that the episode is the most current episode available as of today. It hasn't had time to accrue these "years" of debate that Rani has, but it's also almost certainly been viewed by more people since December 25, 2005, than Rani has since its release in the mid-80s. You can't just pretend that it doesn't speak to the point being made just because it's not old. The section deals with speculation, and this has just as much right to be there as either of the other two mouldy, next-to-no-one-outside-hardcore-fandom-knows-about-them chestnuts do. This is an obvious link between two of the most-watched serials in the show's history. It deserves to be mentioned, perhaps like this:

The Christmas Invasion sparked fan debate about Romana's regeneration once again in the winter of 2006. Some fans suggested that the Doctor's regrowth of a hand in the episode, along with the revelation of a heretofore unknown 15 hour window during which the regenerative process could be fine-tuned, at last explained Romana's regeneration in "Destiny of the Daleks". Others countered by saying that regrowing a limb was not on the same order of complexity as changing one's physical appearance as capriciously as Romana had done. Still others advanced the theory that the 15-hour regeneration cycle could have been more precisely controlled by Romana, as she was voluntarily changing her form in the confines of a TARDIS with an on-board Zero Room. No consensus has yet been reached, but it seems clear that the manner of Mary Tamm's real-life departure has had a lingering effect upon one of the cornerstones of Doctor Who's mythology.CzechOut 08:39, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

I still think it isn't good enough - the OG forums spout off on all sorts of speculation all the time; it doesn't make them notable. That amount of speculative detail would rapidly devolve the article into fancruft, which some might accuse of it being already. Statements like "it seems clear" are also POV. I'd like to hear other thoughts on this. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 08:53, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

I've tried a much pared down version that hopefully keeps the cruftiness to a minimum. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 09:06, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, that version is indeed much better, but I think you make a valid point with respect to cruft. Truth of the matter is that the whole damn section is pretty un-encyclopediac. The only reason I even brokered my initial edit was because it seemed unbalanced somehow to maintain thie "Rani" connection in the face of the new theory being rapidly advanced consequent to TCI. But, in truth, an even better edit is probably just to say 'Romana's tongue-in-cheek regeneration scene has been controversial in fandom since its airing. The controversy arises from the fact that the Doctor's own regenerations have usually been traumatic events over which he has little control. Romana's, by contrast, shows regeneration as a voluntary act more akin to shopping for clothes than recovering from a near-fatal accident. The two approaches to regeneration have never been addressed in detail by any subsequent televised adventure, leading to a variety of competing fan theories. It's when you get into the specifics of those fan theories that the article practically begs for a kind of "point/counterpoint" expansion.CzechOut 10:08, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree that without any published source, we're best staying away from all the theories. If any reference books like The Discontinuity Guide present theories on Romana's regeneration, we could probably cite them, but fan theories that are merely discussed here and there (whether they're of long standing or no) probably aren't encyclopedic, unless they made their way into print or were referred to in one of the licensed spin-offs. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 15:53, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

For what it's worth, The Discontinuity Guide opts for the "these are projections ala the Watcher and Cho-Je" theory. About Time 4 also mentions that, and in addition speculates that perhaps Romana simply has better control of her regenerations, possibly because she is of a later generation and the biological mechanisms have been refined. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 16:13, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps I'm giving too much deference to print, but I'd say that we should mention and cite those two and leave the rest as "other theories" or something like that. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 17:02, 30 March 2006 (UTC)