just in case anyone was curious....
Jul. 1st, 2008 02:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivendellroseI sat down to write last night and got a little... ermm... distracted. All your fault, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
minerva_fan. ;) I apologize for the length and any unintentional incoherence... it was a bit late by the time I finished, and I was trying to work on a big old Ace/Romana fic at the same time.
When we first meet Romana, she’s fresh out of the academy on Gallifrey - she got a triple first (equivalent, as I understand it, to something between valedictorian and phi beta kappa), and was hand-picked by the Gallifreyan high council for what she seems to believe is a high-profile assignment. Unfortunately for her, that high profile assignment... turns out to be more or less babysitting the Doctor.
Right from the get-go, she’s arrogant, superior, vain and thinks she knows how to do everything. She thinks that book-learning will answer any questions that she might not have covered in her coursework, and even digs out the old Tardis Operator’s Manual that the Doctor pretends doesn’t exist. She even reads it. And barely two minutes into her acquaintance with him, she’s correcting the Doctor and questioning him on every damned thing that passes her attention.
In short, she’s obnoxious. But in a really good way.
Picture Hermione in the Harry Potter books. Hell, picture Sarah Jane Smith, when she was in school. You know she was the girl in front with her arm waving above her head, just dying to correct the teacher when he said something old-fashioned, out of date, or just plain wrong. Inveterate rule-follower and bookworm - that’s Romana I. She’s practically bursting with flaws, so green she almost glows in the dark, and so confident of herself that you half expect her to trip for not being able to see the ground under her feet. But she’s also compassionate, extravagently intelligent, and, just like Sarah Jane, she absolutely never lets the Doctor get away with anything without being questioned. She demands answers, catches him in lies, challenges his assumptions, and always trusts her instincts and intellect over his vague and bombastic pronouncements.
Unfortunately, she also falls short - mostly through the fault of the writers. Although the original intent of the character was explicitly stated in interviews as creating a companion equal in every way to the Doctor (meaning one who comes from the same background as him and thus isn’t the slightest intimidated or confused by time travel and so on), the writers seem almost immediately to have panicked and backed off of the full implications of that. Romana I fades pretty quickly into the classic damsel roles... although one could never say that she does it with good humor (most pictures of Mary Tamm feature either her impressive (and, I have to admit, beautiful) scowl, or an expression (even while chained to a wall awaiting certain death) of outright boredom. And to her credit the actress, Mary Tamm, refused to put up with that crap and left after one season. She was supposed to come back for one last episode to transition the character into a new incarnation, but she got pregnant over hiatus, causing the strangest, most problematic (and to my mind, the most deeply misunderstood) regeneration sequence in the history of Doctor Who. It’s often played as a whim, a fancy that takes Romana’s mind for no apparent reason, but... let me spin it another way for you, if you don’t mind.
At the end of the Key to Time series with Mary Tamm, Romana is tortured by the Black Guardian, but refuses to give up the Key. Eventually, with the Doctor’s help, she escapes, and there’s a moral dilemma - the last piece of the key that they’ve spent the whole season seeking in service of the Time Lords is actually a living woman. Even bad writing can’t disguise Romana’s empathy for this girl, and (at least as I recall it - I hope someone will correct me if I’m wrong) Romana convinces the Doctor that they absolutely can’t ‘revert’ her to a lifeless piece of this key, even if it is supposedly one of the most powerful things in the universe. They end up returning the woman to her proper place, and going on about their business - without ever bringing the Time Lords the key, which presumably puts Romana in a good bit of hot water with the council.
That young woman, the one who would have died for the key if Romana hadn’t stepped in? Was played by Lalla Ward. It wasn’t a brilliant performance by a long stretch (and I say this with love and a silly crush on the actress, so you know I’m being honest here!), but it (combined with the fact that apparently she was the first actress since Liz Sladen who could really ‘handle’ Tom and his increasingly impressive ego) was enough for the directors and so on to be impressed, and so they brought her in as the next regeneration of Romana. So at the beginning of “Destiny of the Daleks,” Romana just steps out into the Tardis control room wearing the face of the woman they’ve just left behind.
Why would the character do that? Why then? Why that particular body and face? Personally, I like to read it as a statement.
Although there’s no actual hint that she was seriously injured by the Guardian, Romana definitely went through torture at his hands protecting the key. And the Guardian (the White one, not the Black one who tortured her, although at the end of the episode there’s some degree of hinting that I personally take to mean they’re one and the same) was the one who got her assigned to this job to begin with, by the High Council. Refusing to follow orders and give the Key to the Guardian no doubt was a big change for this rule-following, by-the-book young Time Lord, and I can easily see her wanting to make a big break of it, turning it into a milestone and a rite of passage even if she didn’t actually need to regenerate (although, again, I think that’s up for debate - there could easily have been injuries that weren’t obvious, and Romana is the type who would have too much dignity to just blow up in a burst of energy and change face and body in front of the Doctor). Wearing the face of the woman she refused to consider an object is really a rather profound sort of choice, and one that speaks volumes for her newfound contempt for the society she’s been learning over time didn’t really provide her with as much of a full view of the universe as she’d originally thought when she left the academy. Taking the face of this other woman is owning up to the mistakes of her people, and to the sacrifice that she nearly allowed them to force her to make. Rather than bloodying her hands with an innocent life, Romana takes on that life, and chooses to step up to a whole new path in life, turning her back on the council and the safe little life-plan she no doubt had prepared back on Gallifrey.
Take that as you will, since it’s all speculation on my part... but I hope it provides some kind of counterpoint to the standard interpretation of a bored young woman who just decides to change her face on a whim.
In whatever event, the Doctor disapproves of her taking another woman’s face, so Romana tries on several other forms, taunting him with increasingly inappropriate choices (and showing off an impressive control over the regeneration process, to boot!), until at last she makes a play on his vanity by reappearing wearing a copy of his own outfit, her face hidden by his hat. He gives a rousing approval... and Romana grins and removes the hat, revealing exactly the body that she had first chosen.
I would never once in a million years say this scene isn’t problematic (and for God’s sake, don’t read it in the novelization by Terrance Dicks... I nearly threw the thing across the room, it had such a horridly sexist take on the scene), but it is possible to interpret it in other ways, without even too many lit crit tricks. ;)
After that, it’s all Romana II... and she’s my girl, my favorite of all the companions I’ve seen and the one that I at once identify most with, and most wish to become more like. She’s still supremely confident and intelligent, but compared to Romana I she’s also relaxed and grown into herself, opened up into the maturity that had been growing steadily in her while she traveled. She doesn’t take most things so seriously anymore, and she has a lot more fun with her adventures from here on out. Right from her first episode, she shows a knack for getting herself out of trouble rather than just waiting around for the Doctor. She also shows a lot more initiative than Romana I. While she and the Doctor are being interrogated by aliens, she picks up and happily solves a complicated puzzle-box. She borrows implements and tools from a lab and figures out that there’s a missing room behind a staircase, and opens it up, all without the slightest assistance or input from the Doctor. She’s playful, even whimsical, and sometimes downright silly - a perfect match to Tom Baker, particularly as he began to show his age and some health problems, and Romana is allowed to take center stage a few times and save the day more or less on her own. She ignores him when she wants to, humors him when she feels like it, and always seems to do exactly as she pleases. This, in my mind, is the equal partnership that there originally headed toward. They tease each other, fight on occasion, and even pretty openly flirt from time to time... and it doesn’t hurt that her episodes take up the high point of Douglas Adams’ involvement in the series, so there’s no shortage of good humor going around. When she leaves, like Sarah Jane, it’s her decision... and, like Sarah Jane, she’s not gone forever. She goes off and explores E-Space on her own, and then, in the audio adventures, returns to Gallifrey and becomes president. In my mind, at least (and Russell Davies’ show notes published in one of the magazines several years ago actually back this up), she runs it during the Time War.
Romana’s not Sarah Jane. She’s also not perfect, and she’s definitely not always written in the way I’d like to see her. But the very fact that she’s got some warts to work with - that she’s occasionally arrogant, that she always thinks she knows best, that she can be a know-it-all and a pedant (at one point a human they encounter asks her, “You know what I don’t understand?” Romana, bless her, replies quite primly but without the slightest bit of malice, “I expect so.”) makes her character a joy to play with. There’s layers, and a lot of growth, particularly after her main run on the series - lots of different places to take her to. She’s also endearingly enthusiastic (in the same adventure, in Paris, the Doctor tells Romana not to look around because someone is sketching her... and she automatically turns right around, craning her neck and exclaiming “Really?” in a tone of completely unselfconscious curiousity), witty, and charmingly forthright. She loves the Doctor (very clearly, although as with Sarah Jane one could go either way in terms of friendship or romance), but (again, like Sarah) she puts up with absolutely none of his bombastic self-importance. She’s been where he came from, after all... and she looked up his grades before she came out. She did better than him, and doesn’t hesitate to remind him of that.
So, there’s my two cents or so. If you find you still don’t like her after you’ve done your exploration, I totally understand, but I’m thrilled to death that you’re giving her a chance. She’s a very fun character, and it’d be a thrill to see you write her a little if you do end up liking her enough to do so!
minerva_fan. ;) I apologize for the length and any unintentional incoherence... it was a bit late by the time I finished, and I was trying to work on a big old Ace/Romana fic at the same time. When we first meet Romana, she’s fresh out of the academy on Gallifrey - she got a triple first (equivalent, as I understand it, to something between valedictorian and phi beta kappa), and was hand-picked by the Gallifreyan high council for what she seems to believe is a high-profile assignment. Unfortunately for her, that high profile assignment... turns out to be more or less babysitting the Doctor.
Right from the get-go, she’s arrogant, superior, vain and thinks she knows how to do everything. She thinks that book-learning will answer any questions that she might not have covered in her coursework, and even digs out the old Tardis Operator’s Manual that the Doctor pretends doesn’t exist. She even reads it. And barely two minutes into her acquaintance with him, she’s correcting the Doctor and questioning him on every damned thing that passes her attention.
In short, she’s obnoxious. But in a really good way.
Picture Hermione in the Harry Potter books. Hell, picture Sarah Jane Smith, when she was in school. You know she was the girl in front with her arm waving above her head, just dying to correct the teacher when he said something old-fashioned, out of date, or just plain wrong. Inveterate rule-follower and bookworm - that’s Romana I. She’s practically bursting with flaws, so green she almost glows in the dark, and so confident of herself that you half expect her to trip for not being able to see the ground under her feet. But she’s also compassionate, extravagently intelligent, and, just like Sarah Jane, she absolutely never lets the Doctor get away with anything without being questioned. She demands answers, catches him in lies, challenges his assumptions, and always trusts her instincts and intellect over his vague and bombastic pronouncements.
Unfortunately, she also falls short - mostly through the fault of the writers. Although the original intent of the character was explicitly stated in interviews as creating a companion equal in every way to the Doctor (meaning one who comes from the same background as him and thus isn’t the slightest intimidated or confused by time travel and so on), the writers seem almost immediately to have panicked and backed off of the full implications of that. Romana I fades pretty quickly into the classic damsel roles... although one could never say that she does it with good humor (most pictures of Mary Tamm feature either her impressive (and, I have to admit, beautiful) scowl, or an expression (even while chained to a wall awaiting certain death) of outright boredom. And to her credit the actress, Mary Tamm, refused to put up with that crap and left after one season. She was supposed to come back for one last episode to transition the character into a new incarnation, but she got pregnant over hiatus, causing the strangest, most problematic (and to my mind, the most deeply misunderstood) regeneration sequence in the history of Doctor Who. It’s often played as a whim, a fancy that takes Romana’s mind for no apparent reason, but... let me spin it another way for you, if you don’t mind.
At the end of the Key to Time series with Mary Tamm, Romana is tortured by the Black Guardian, but refuses to give up the Key. Eventually, with the Doctor’s help, she escapes, and there’s a moral dilemma - the last piece of the key that they’ve spent the whole season seeking in service of the Time Lords is actually a living woman. Even bad writing can’t disguise Romana’s empathy for this girl, and (at least as I recall it - I hope someone will correct me if I’m wrong) Romana convinces the Doctor that they absolutely can’t ‘revert’ her to a lifeless piece of this key, even if it is supposedly one of the most powerful things in the universe. They end up returning the woman to her proper place, and going on about their business - without ever bringing the Time Lords the key, which presumably puts Romana in a good bit of hot water with the council.
That young woman, the one who would have died for the key if Romana hadn’t stepped in? Was played by Lalla Ward. It wasn’t a brilliant performance by a long stretch (and I say this with love and a silly crush on the actress, so you know I’m being honest here!), but it (combined with the fact that apparently she was the first actress since Liz Sladen who could really ‘handle’ Tom and his increasingly impressive ego) was enough for the directors and so on to be impressed, and so they brought her in as the next regeneration of Romana. So at the beginning of “Destiny of the Daleks,” Romana just steps out into the Tardis control room wearing the face of the woman they’ve just left behind.
Why would the character do that? Why then? Why that particular body and face? Personally, I like to read it as a statement.
Although there’s no actual hint that she was seriously injured by the Guardian, Romana definitely went through torture at his hands protecting the key. And the Guardian (the White one, not the Black one who tortured her, although at the end of the episode there’s some degree of hinting that I personally take to mean they’re one and the same) was the one who got her assigned to this job to begin with, by the High Council. Refusing to follow orders and give the Key to the Guardian no doubt was a big change for this rule-following, by-the-book young Time Lord, and I can easily see her wanting to make a big break of it, turning it into a milestone and a rite of passage even if she didn’t actually need to regenerate (although, again, I think that’s up for debate - there could easily have been injuries that weren’t obvious, and Romana is the type who would have too much dignity to just blow up in a burst of energy and change face and body in front of the Doctor). Wearing the face of the woman she refused to consider an object is really a rather profound sort of choice, and one that speaks volumes for her newfound contempt for the society she’s been learning over time didn’t really provide her with as much of a full view of the universe as she’d originally thought when she left the academy. Taking the face of this other woman is owning up to the mistakes of her people, and to the sacrifice that she nearly allowed them to force her to make. Rather than bloodying her hands with an innocent life, Romana takes on that life, and chooses to step up to a whole new path in life, turning her back on the council and the safe little life-plan she no doubt had prepared back on Gallifrey.
Take that as you will, since it’s all speculation on my part... but I hope it provides some kind of counterpoint to the standard interpretation of a bored young woman who just decides to change her face on a whim.
In whatever event, the Doctor disapproves of her taking another woman’s face, so Romana tries on several other forms, taunting him with increasingly inappropriate choices (and showing off an impressive control over the regeneration process, to boot!), until at last she makes a play on his vanity by reappearing wearing a copy of his own outfit, her face hidden by his hat. He gives a rousing approval... and Romana grins and removes the hat, revealing exactly the body that she had first chosen.
I would never once in a million years say this scene isn’t problematic (and for God’s sake, don’t read it in the novelization by Terrance Dicks... I nearly threw the thing across the room, it had such a horridly sexist take on the scene), but it is possible to interpret it in other ways, without even too many lit crit tricks. ;)
After that, it’s all Romana II... and she’s my girl, my favorite of all the companions I’ve seen and the one that I at once identify most with, and most wish to become more like. She’s still supremely confident and intelligent, but compared to Romana I she’s also relaxed and grown into herself, opened up into the maturity that had been growing steadily in her while she traveled. She doesn’t take most things so seriously anymore, and she has a lot more fun with her adventures from here on out. Right from her first episode, she shows a knack for getting herself out of trouble rather than just waiting around for the Doctor. She also shows a lot more initiative than Romana I. While she and the Doctor are being interrogated by aliens, she picks up and happily solves a complicated puzzle-box. She borrows implements and tools from a lab and figures out that there’s a missing room behind a staircase, and opens it up, all without the slightest assistance or input from the Doctor. She’s playful, even whimsical, and sometimes downright silly - a perfect match to Tom Baker, particularly as he began to show his age and some health problems, and Romana is allowed to take center stage a few times and save the day more or less on her own. She ignores him when she wants to, humors him when she feels like it, and always seems to do exactly as she pleases. This, in my mind, is the equal partnership that there originally headed toward. They tease each other, fight on occasion, and even pretty openly flirt from time to time... and it doesn’t hurt that her episodes take up the high point of Douglas Adams’ involvement in the series, so there’s no shortage of good humor going around. When she leaves, like Sarah Jane, it’s her decision... and, like Sarah Jane, she’s not gone forever. She goes off and explores E-Space on her own, and then, in the audio adventures, returns to Gallifrey and becomes president. In my mind, at least (and Russell Davies’ show notes published in one of the magazines several years ago actually back this up), she runs it during the Time War.
Romana’s not Sarah Jane. She’s also not perfect, and she’s definitely not always written in the way I’d like to see her. But the very fact that she’s got some warts to work with - that she’s occasionally arrogant, that she always thinks she knows best, that she can be a know-it-all and a pedant (at one point a human they encounter asks her, “You know what I don’t understand?” Romana, bless her, replies quite primly but without the slightest bit of malice, “I expect so.”) makes her character a joy to play with. There’s layers, and a lot of growth, particularly after her main run on the series - lots of different places to take her to. She’s also endearingly enthusiastic (in the same adventure, in Paris, the Doctor tells Romana not to look around because someone is sketching her... and she automatically turns right around, craning her neck and exclaiming “Really?” in a tone of completely unselfconscious curiousity), witty, and charmingly forthright. She loves the Doctor (very clearly, although as with Sarah Jane one could go either way in terms of friendship or romance), but (again, like Sarah) she puts up with absolutely none of his bombastic self-importance. She’s been where he came from, after all... and she looked up his grades before she came out. She did better than him, and doesn’t hesitate to remind him of that.
So, there’s my two cents or so. If you find you still don’t like her after you’ve done your exploration, I totally understand, but I’m thrilled to death that you’re giving her a chance. She’s a very fun character, and it’d be a thrill to see you write her a little if you do end up liking her enough to do so!
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no subject
Date: 2008-07-01 10:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-01 11:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-02 01:39 am (UTC)Exactly! She's like a mix of Hermione/Sarah Jane/Agent Scully, and yet completely her own character.
(combined with the fact that apparently she was the first actress since Liz Sladen who could really ‘handle’ Tom and his increasingly impressive ego)
Is it just me, or was he totally giving her Looks?
While she and the Doctor are being interrogated by aliens, she picks up and happily solves a complicated puzzle-box.
That's one of my most favourite Romana-moments of all time. Her wry little giggle as she opens the box just perfects it.
She ignores him when she wants to, humors him when she feels like it, and always seems to do exactly as she pleases.
She plays him like a yoyo. Which is kind of hawt, if you ask me.;)
As for the regeneration, the best theory I've come across so far was in
Threads (I can't rec that story enough. It's so perfect, I practically consider it canon). The why that is. As for taking on Astra's body, I like to think it was some sort of statement as well.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-02 10:30 am (UTC)I love that she's meant to be an equal, it just creates a beter dynamic IMO
no subject
Date: 2008-07-02 02:54 pm (UTC)(I'm all in favor of actually getting my butt over to that side of the Cascades next year and having a marathon - my roommate this next semester is from Snowqualmie and loves Dr. Who, too, so maybe she would want to join us? I don't know. But it should happen.)
no subject
Date: 2008-07-02 03:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-02 04:02 pm (UTC)It really, really does.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-03 02:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-30 04:02 am (UTC)She plays him like a yoyo. Which is kind of hawt, if you ask me.;)
Damn straight it's hawt! I adore that about their relationship - the Doctor so totally thinks he's in charge, but in reality she's calling all the shots and just leading him along.
Thanks for the rec! I'd run across that one ages ago and lost my link to it - such a beautiful piece.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-30 06:54 pm (UTC)And you're welcome! It's sort of canon in my brain.:P