Doctor Who (16 page)

In
Doctor Who
's fifteenth year, the story “The Invisible Enemy” turned the TARDIS crew into the rather unorthodox trio of a Time Lord, a warrior, and a robot dog. K-9 was conceived of by writer Bob Baker, and introduced in “The Invisible Enemy” as the robotic creation of Professor Marius in the fifty-first century (a century that was also said to be the home of the Time Agency). Some fans found the robot a bit silly, while others celebrated it as another example of the kind of character that only
Doctor Who
could get away with. Jameson loved K-9, and during many interviews she recalled with laughter times when voice actor John Leeson would rehearse with them on all fours since the robot cost money every time it was in use.

By the end of the fifteenth season, Jameson decided to leave the program, having been offered the role of Portia in
The Merchant of Venice
at the Bristol Old Vic. The season ended with “The Invasion of Time,” in which the Doctor brings Leela to Gallifrey and declares himself president of the High Council of Time Lords (a title he actually did have some right to, due to the events of “The Deadly Assassin”). While the Doctor works a manipulative
plan inside the capitol, Leela explores the wild open plains of Gallifrey, which even many Time Lords had never done.

At the story's conclusion, the Doctor is ready to leave but finds that Leela has chosen to stay, having developed romantic feelings for another Time Lord named Andred. K-9 remains with her, and, as the TARDIS takes flight, Leela wonders if her friend will be lonely. But we see the Doctor grin as he pulls out a box labeled “K-9 MARK II.”

Hinchcliffe didn't know how Leela departed the show until his interview for this book. On hearing the details, he shook his head. “No, I don't like that. She should have had a noble warrior's death. Then her spirit could live on. How do we know what her thoughts were of an afterlife? Maybe her spirit could have lived on literally. How do we know what mysterious things there might have been where she came from? We never fully explored that.”

Jameson herself wasn't terribly satisfied with the ending and its reliance on sudden romance to remove a female character. When I asked her about it, she said she would have preferred for Leela to die while saving the Doctor's life. She is glad today, however, that her character survived. For several years now, she has starred in the Big Finish audio drama series
Gallifrey,
which takes place after she left the Doctor. On Leela's ultimate fate, Jameson said, “It would be wonderful to see her [in the modern
Doctor Who
] as a huge Mother Earth figure with a football team of children and grandchildren, who all revere her and her stories, half of which they believe are made up, although we know the truth.”

In 2012, Big Finish Productions released the first of several audio dramas in which Tom Baker and Louise Jameson reprise their roles as the Fourth Doctor and Leela, taking place just after “The Talons of Weng-Chiang,” the last story that Hinchcliffe produced. The stories continue with Hinchcliffe's theme of Leela being educated about the universe. “I absolutely adore working with Tom Baker now,” says Jameson. “He has apologized very sincerely and very publicly about the treatment I received back in the day and we have more [audio dramas] planned.” Jameson also considers her brief tenure on the TV show as time well spent. “To this day, the fact that a ten-month job in 1976 and '77 can still get me work is amazing. Because the fans who watched then are now running the business and remember and are very movingly loyal to that era.”

The Lady of Time

“My name is Romanadvoratrelundar.”

“Well, I'm terribly sorry about that. Is there anything we can do?”

—Romana I and the Fourth Doctor, from “The Ribos Operation” (1978)

 

Before
Doctor Who,
Mary Tamm worked onstage with the Birmingham Repertory Company and appeared in several films. When approached to play the Doctor's new traveling companion, she initially refused, but Graham Williams assured her she wouldn't be a damsel in distress. To counter Leela, the new companion would focus on scientific reason and intellect, a female Time Lord sent to the Doctor's side to help him protect the universe. Tamm accepted the role.

The show's sixteenth season tried something new. All six stories worked on their own but also served as parts of a season-long arc called “The Key to Time.” In the first story, the Doctor and K-9 Mark II have been traveling alone for some time when suddenly a cosmic being called the White Guardian halts the TARDIS. This avatar of cosmic order charges the Doctor with finding the Key to Time, a cube with power over reality that is divided into six segments scattered across space. The Doctor must assemble it before agents of the Black Guardian do so. The Doctor returns to the TARDIS and meets Romana, who has been sent to aid his quest.

For the first time since Susan, the Doctor is traveling with another of his own people. Rather than see him as a mystery, Romana's done some reading on the Doctor. She knows how old he is, when he stole his TARDIS, and that he barely passed his final academy exams on the second try with a 51 percent score, whereas she (as she's quick to point out) ranked third in her class. The two quickly develop a teasing friendship.

But while Romana quickly gained many fans, Mary Tamm thought her character regressed into unwanted female tropes as the season went on. She decided not to continue for a second year. In her final story, “The Armageddon Factor,” actor Lalla Ward appeared as a character named Princess Astra. The production team thought her quite good and decided that Ward would step in as a regenerated Romana for the seventeenth
season. Fans later dubbed Tamm's incarnation as Romana I and Ward's as Romana II.

Tamm has said that she stated her willingness to return for Romana's regeneration scene for the sake of giving fans a smooth transition but wasn't invited back to do so. She also said that rumors that she left due to pregnancy were invented by producer Graham Williams. Following her departure, Tamm made regular television appearances for years, later acting alongside Lalla Ward in the
Gallifrey
audio dramas released by Big Finish, allowing for a meeting of sorts between the two Romanas. In July 2012, at the age of sixty-two, Tamm died from cancer. Her husband, Marcus Ringrose, died of a heart attack—some say a broken heart—just hours after giving the eulogy at her funeral.

According to Big Finish producer David Richardson, Tamm “eagerly embraced the opportunity to return as Romana for this series. ‘Nothing will keep me away,' she told me when I first approached her, and she was true to her word. Even cancer and months spent enduring treatment didn't quell Mary's passion for the project. We, as colleagues and as fans, are indebted to her for seeing the series through under awful circumstances. She came to every studio recording full of enthusiasm, laughed endlessly, and—on the last day I saw her—told me that doing the recordings had helped her get through it. She was a fantastic lady, and this season is dedicated to her.”

A Female Counterpart

“Shall we take the lift or fly?”

“Let's not be ostentatious.”

“All right. Let's fly then.”

—Romana II and the Fourth Doctor, from “City of Death” (1979)

 

Season seventeen brought forth a new version of Romana and temporarily replaced K-9 voice actor John Leeson with David Brierly, explained as a side effect of the robot dog developing a mechanical version of laryngitis. The seventeenth season also brought writer Douglas Adams into the position of script editor. Adams had gained critical acclaim for his 1978 radio comedy
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,
which he later adapted into
books. He embraced the strange, alien attitudes of the Fourth Doctor and Romana, tweaking scripts to emphasize the humor between the two. Lalla Ward and Tom Baker both very much enjoyed Adams's sense of storytelling.

Lalla Ward (Romana II)

Photograph courtesy of Big Finish Productions

Lalla Ward's stage name came from how she had mispronounced her given name, Sarah, as a young child. She made her acting debut in the Hammer horror movie
Vampire Circus.
She had appeared on the BBC series
The Duchess of Duke Street,
and during her time on
Doctor Who
she also played Ophelia in the BBC TV production of
Hamlet
starring Derek Jacobi, her first Shakespearean performance. During the production, actor Patrick Stewart, who played King Claudius, asked Ward why she wanted to waste her time working on a science fiction show rather than legitimate theatre—an irony not lost on her years later.

When Ward appeared in “The Armageddon Factor,” she already knew director Michael Hayes, who had worked with her on
The Duchess of Duke Street.
But she was completely surprised when, in just a few weeks, she learned that Mary Tamm was leaving and she had been suggested to take her place. “I just couldn't be the same as Mary. It wouldn't have worked. I had to approach it differently. I kept thinking that I was in somebody else's shoes, and they didn't quite fit. So it was weird—but a challenge. Besides, when Time Lords regenerate, they don't stay the same, do they?”

In the seventeenth season's first story, “Destiny of the Daleks,” the Doctor is relaxing after the Key to Time affair, his TARDIS now using a “randomizer” to make their trips unpredictable, ensuring that the Black Guardian can't track him down and exact revenge (although, one might
imagine that an avatar of chaos wouldn't be foiled by chaotic travel plans). As the TARDIS is in flight, the hero looks up and sees Princess Astra standing before him, only to realize that it's actually Romana in the process of regenerating. She rather liked the Princess's appearance and has decided to adopt it. Perhaps as a joke, she donned a feminine take on the Fourth Doctor's costume, complete with a pink overcoat and a very long white scarf. The Doctor now truly had a female counterpart aboard his ship.

Romana's regeneration scene, written by Douglas Adams, had her try different bodies before deciding on one. She also didn't seem to suffer any amnesia or physical stress as the Doctor usually did. Years later, the story “The Mark of the Rani” confirmed that women Time Lords (Romana often identified as a Time Lord rather than a Time Lady) had greater control over regeneration and could even determine what their next incarnation looked like. Since the Doctor was presented with choices for his next face in “The War Games,” males apparently only gain such control with the help of special equipment on Gallifrey. The modern program again indicated how women had better control over regeneration in the 2011 episode “Let's Kill Hitler,” when we saw a genetically engineered Time Lord/human hybrid regenerate with relative ease and remark that she was focusing on a specific dress size (though she was still a bit surprised by her new appearance).

Romana II was notably more effervescent and mischievous than her previous incarnation. Her fashion choices alone landed her many fans, and Ward took an active role with her costume designs in each story. This Romana was much more a kindred spirit to the Doctor and employed a similar sense of humor, such as when she explained that she had two hearts because one was “casual” and one was “best.” At the same time, she found the Doctor's over-the-top arrogance occasionally tiresome, and was happy to tell him so.

Some fans had seen a glimmer of a romantic undertone between the Doctor and Sarah Jane, but Romana II seemed a stronger possibility for a genuine romantic interest to the Doctor, even though on-screen they never did more than share smiles and sometimes hold hands when they ran together. As far as Tom Baker was concerned, the Doctor wasn't really a sexual creature, and the program was more innocent than that.

Both actors reprised their roles for TV commercials in Australia advertising the new Prime computer. These ads had more overt flirtation from Romana. One showed her being quite affectionate with the hero before he finally asks her to marry him—or attempts to ask since she accepts before he can finish the question. These commercials lay outside the official canon, of course, but it did make sense for the Doctor and Romana to have such strong chemistry, considering events off-screen. Tom Baker and Lalla Ward were dating. And then they weren't. And then they were again. It was a stormy relationship.

T
he Time Lords

“I renounced the society of the Time Lords. Now I'm simply a traveler.”

—The Fourth Doctor, from “Pyramids of Mars” (1975)

 

It's amazing how slowly the mythology of the Time Lords evolved. Their name and basic nature as guardians of reality were first revealed in “The War Games” at the close of the sixth year. Then they were largely unseen again until the tenth year anniversary when we met one of their founders, Omega, and learned that at least one faction would break the laws of time in certain cases. We also saw throughout the program that Time Lord society could create dangerous villains, such as the Monk, the War Chief, and the Master.

As writer Dan Abnett saw it, “In the early days, it was wonderful that there was mystery. When the phrase ‘Time Lord' itself was finally mentioned, it immediately made us wonder,
What does that title mean?
And when the Master shows up as a renegade Time Lord, you wonder,
Well, how does that work?
And his alias reminds you and makes you realize,
Wait, we still don't know the Doctor's name, either.
Why did the Time Lords only call him the Doctor during his trial instead of using an alien name? Why did they refer to the Master only by that title instead of using his name?”

Hinchcliffe saw the Master's introduction as an important step in characterizing the Doctor's people. “The Master added a new quality to the idea of the Time Lords. We'd seen them as these aliens who stood above us, almost like gods or angels, but then here's this one who's cast out like Lucifer. Was he always bad, or was he good like Lucifer and then fell from grace? And the Doctor is often the only one who can stop him, but he's not praised for his efforts. His people still treat him as a renegade. So what does that say about them?”

Hinchcliffe and Holmes decided to reveal more. In “Pyramids of Mars,” written by Holmes and Lewis Grefier, the Doctor says Gallifrey is located within a constellation called Kasterborous. The subsequent
story “The Invasion of Time” added that there were five other planets in Gallifrey's solar system. It later became a common belief that the constellation design on the Fourth Doctor's TARDIS key was, in fact, Kasterborous. The modern program added that Gallifrey was warmed by a binary star and was considered the “shining world of the seven systems,” which corresponds to the constellation of seven stars that decorated the Fourth Doctor's key. Two of those stars could have been Gallifrey's suns.

Weeks after “Pyramids of Mars,” Sarah Jane and the Doctor visited another planet in Gallifrey's solar system in “The Brain of Morbius,” a script by Terrance Dicks that was rewritten by Robert Holmes (under the pseudonym Robin Bland). The world was called Karn and inhabited by self-styled witches called the Sisterhood who evidently had a long history with the Time Lords. Though the Sisters did not trust the people of Gallifrey, they still occasionally provided them with an Elixir of Life that could ease difficult regenerations. The same story tells of an ancient Time Lord of legend named Morbius, who tried to conquer the universe and achieve immortality.

But the biggest revelations concerning the Doctor's people came in “The Deadly Assassin,” written entirely by Robert Holmes. The four-part story took place on Gallifrey and featured no companion, the Doctor having just left Sarah Jane behind. We learn just how mortal the Time Lords really are behind their ceremonies. The capitol is patrolled by Chancellory Guards who don gaudy and ineffective outfits, likely meant for show, and don't seem to have the experience of dealing with true criminals and threats. A Castellan serves as chief of police and the Celestial Intervention Agency handles secret operations. There's a lower class of some sort, while above them are the cardinals, chancellors, and a ruling High Council with a president at its head. A computer system known as the Matrix contains the encoded brainwave patterns of dead Time Lords, allowing it to predict the future and major events of the universe.

We also learn that Time Lords have different clans and houses. The Doctor belongs to the Prydonian clan, known for cunning and manipulation. The Master was evidently from this same clan, as was the villain known as the Rani. According to the tie-in media, Romana and the Time Lord founder Rassilon were both Prydonians as well.

The story shows that Gallifreyan society has become detached from its own history. Most know only legends of Lord Rassilon, whose seal became the official seal of the Time Lords and who harnessed the power of an object called the Eye of Harmony (also called Rassilon's Star), which ensured that the power of the Time Lords would “neither flux nor wither.” It just takes a little effort and curiosity from the Doctor to realize that the Eye of Harmony is the stabilized nucleus of a black hole hidden within the planet, the true power source of Gallifrey.

More of Rassilon's secrets could be deduced with a little research and thought, but the Time Lords had no motivation to do so. In “The Deadly Assassin,” the Doctor criticizes that Gallifreyan technology has lost innovation and would be considered primitive compared to some worlds he's visited. He also notes with a mixture of disappointment and cynical expectation that his people manipulate truth for the sake of public image and what they see as the greater good. Indeed, how the Time Lords see their place in the universe can be inferred from the name of their great ceremonial hall, the Panopticon, a word that means “all-seeing” and refers specifically to a prison in which all cells are viewable from a central vantage point.

“The Deadly Assassin” also established that Time Lords had a limit of twelve regenerations, giving them thirteen lives. This limit became a plot point in not only “The Deadly Assassin,” but several other stories in classic
Doctor Who,
as well as the TV movie. In these stories and others, different Time Lords said there was no way to extend this limit. The Master found a deadly loophole years later by stealing an alien's body, after which he was offered a new “set” of regenerations. It was unclear if this was possible because he possessed a body that had never been granted the ability before or if it was because of cosmic energies he'd absorbed.

Many fans embraced “The Deadly Assassin,” while others said it ruined the concept of the Time Lords by sacrificing their mysticism. Hinchcliffe himself admitted that a few aspects of the story made the Time Lords too human. “Barry Letts saw the Time Lords as inscrutable mystics, and Bob Holmes hated that. I didn't quite realize how ironic he was going to be. I wasn't 100 percent happy with it. But as for the corruption you see on Gallifrey and the fact that their powers are almost
entirely technology-based, well, that makes sense to me, and that's what I wanted. The Doctor and the Master are Time Lords, and we see that, except for hypnosis, two hearts, and regeneration, any powers they have are based on technology, so that must be true of the Time Lords, too. The fact is, this is a society the Doctor turned away from, ran away from, even. He stole a TARDIS and ran off, and he hates it whenever they show up, and he's our hero. So there must have been something he found rotten with this society to give up his whole life and become a renegade . . . We called the Celestial Intervention Agency the CIA, but really, in their methods, I saw them as the KGB.”

Writer Dan Abnett thinks “The Deadly Assassin” came at the right time. “If you have any story that's ongoing, there comes a point where you either dig into your own background and start saying new things, or it just keeps floating on the surface. It probably would have been a mistake not to give us more about the Time Lords and Gallifrey—by that point, the Doctor had been around for more than a decade. Yes, we learned that there's this Eye of Harmony that gives them power, but we don't know exactly how it works, and we were told almost nothing about Rassilon. . . . Even when we learned more in later stories, we never got the whole picture, so there's still mystery, just like there's still mystery with the Doctor even after you see Gallifrey. Besides, realizing that Time Lords have human frailties isn't spoiling anything when we've already met the Doctor and others.”

“Societies go through changes,” added Hinchcliffe. “The Time Lords can be mystic for a while, and then more technological and pragmatic, and corrupt for a while, and then maybe be mystical and very Zen again later on.”

“The Deadly Assassin” greatly influenced all later stories concerning the Time Lords. Over the years, we learned that Rassilon had led Gallifrey in wars against the ancient vampire race, with battles so bloody that the Time Lords were inspired to turn away from violence afterward. The Doctor later told his companion Leela how long ago the Time Lords sought to improve and help other societies, sharing advanced knowledge. They helped the people of the planet Minyos, who then turned against the Time Lords before tearing their own planet apart with the new
nuclear weapons they had developed. The Minyans were also said to have developed machines that allowed for unlimited regenerations, though at the cost of intense pain and trauma.

Time Lords, despite their arrogance, seemed to want peace and made treaties with other time traveling societies. Yet we learned of a dark side too. Once, they'd used time scoops to kidnap random people from space and time to fight for survival in the Death Zone, an isolated place where the Tomb of Rassilon stood in the center. This was called the Game of Rassilon.

As we learned more about Rassilon, the first Gallifreyan to discover time travel (with help from Omega's experiments), it turned out he may have been a vicious tyrant who kept the workings of some of his seemingly magical technology secret from others. Tie-in media proposed the founder of the Time Lords was xenophobic, exiling the Sisterhood of Pythia to the planet Karn because he distrusted their magic. An audio drama said he was responsible for many races being humanoid in appearance, having used time travel and genetic mutation agents to alter evolution across the universe after concluding that the Gallifreyan physical form was superior.

In “The Five Doctors,” it was suggested that the Time Lords finally rose against the villain and defeated him, but some believed Rassilon found a way to survive through “perpetual bodily regeneration,” achieving what many of his people desired: immortality.

Tie-in media have made even more revelations about Time Lord society, particularly the Big Finish audio drama series
Gallifrey.
In the comics of
Doctor Who Magazine
and in the Eighth Doctor audio dramas produced by Big Finish, it was said that, before he died, Rassilon created a copy of himself to inhabit the Matrix of Gallifrey. This psychic echo of the first Lord of Time was a manipulative figure who occasionally influenced events from afar, desiring to one day return to power and extend his dominion. He saw the Doctor as a weapon, eventually earning the hero's hatred.

If the real Rassilon had been anything like his Matrix echo, then he must have been a madman; and Time Lord society was, in a way, corrupt at its foundation.