Romana I Romanadvoratrelundar ( or Romana for short ) was a Time Lady who was forced to be the Fourth Doctor ' s assistant in the search for the Key to Time during her first incarnation . During the course of their search for the Key , the two became friends . Biography . Early life . Romana was born in the House of Heartshaven , a sub - branch of the House of Lungbarrow on Gallifrey . ( AUDIO : " Panacea " ) As a Time Tot , she had a copy of the Gallifreyan nursery book , " Our Planet Story " . ( AUDIO : " Shada " , PROSE : " Shada " ) Like all Time Lord s , Romana was taken from her family at the age of eight for the selection process in the Drylands . Staring into the Untempered Schism as part of a Time Lord initiation rite , Romana reacted by running away from what she saw in the Schism . ( PROSE : " A Brief History of Time Lords " ) When she was sixty years old , Romana used to swim in Lake Abydos , home of the singing fish . She gathered zinc hawthorns from the molten rushes at the water ' s edge with her friends Taris and Rorvan , an orphaned brother and sister . ( AUDIO : " Neverland " ) Romana was given an air car for her seventieth birthday , and she told the story later to a guard on Zanak in nostalgia . ( TV : " The Pirate Planet " ) Romana attended the Time Lord Academy when Braxiatel was a tutor there . She hated it . Her classmates were jealous of her effortless academic superiority , nicknaming her " the Ice Maiden " . While there , she was contacted by the spirit of Pandora , who told her she had manipulated Romana ' s genetic make - up through the centuries with the Imperiatrix Imprimatur to create the perfect vessel for her to rule Gallifrey again . Romana told Braxiatel , who hypnotised her to forget not only Pandora , but also him . She recalled only having heard of him through his art collection before her return to Gallifrey from her travels . ( AUDIO : " Lies " ) Quest for the Key to Time . The White Guardian assigned Romana to assist the Fourth Doctor in the quest for the Key to Time , appearing to her as the Lord President of Gallifrey . Though she was much younger than the Doctor , she considered him an academic inferior . The Doctor was initially unwilling to take Romana along and somewhat hostile to her . They found the first segment on the planet Ribos in the form of a lump of jethrik . They had to recover it against the will of Graff Vynda - K . During this time the two bonded . Romana came to respect the Doctor for his experience despite his academic failings . ( TV : " The Ribos Operation " ) While the Doctor and a rat searched for the Key , they were twice interrupted by chronometric radiation , disrupting the tracer ' s operation : a chronometric pulse caused by a breach in the higher dimensions ( PROSE : " Tomb of Valdemar " ) and a network of spatial Teleportation paths created by a malfunctioning time cabinet intersected with Earth ' s ley lines . ( PROSE : " The Shadow of Weng - Chiang " ) Romana and the Doctor arrived on the planet Zanak in their search for the second segment of the Key to Time . Here they met the Captain , who used Zanak to materialise around and mine other planets . They discovered that the segment they sought was the planet Calufrax , which had recently fallen victim to Zanak . They retrieved the remaining components of Calufrax , which had been shrunk by the Captain as a trophy , also disabling in the process Zanak ' s ability to materialise around and destroy other planets . ( TV : " The Pirate Planet " ) On her first visit to the planet Earth in 1978 , while looking for the third segment , Romana befriended Professor Amelia Rumford and Vivian Fay . Vivian was really Cessair of Diplos . She kidnapped Romana , taking her to a ship in hyperspace . Upon their escape , the Doctor and Romana found the segment was the Great Seal of Diplos . ( TV : " The Stones of Blood " ) The search for the fourth segment brought them back to Earth , specifically Norfolk in 2011 . They faced Millicent Ferril , a woman with the ability to control ferrous metal . The segment was disguised as a meteoroid which Romana destroyed to stop Ferril ' s plan . It eventually reformed as a statue on Tara . ( AUDIO : " Ferril ' s Folly " ) On Tara , Romana immediately found the segment was a statue . However , while fleeing a Taran wood beast , she met Count Grendel , who decided to take Romana prisoner . He introduced her to Princess Strella , whose appearance was identical to Romana ' s . Taking advantage of this likeness , the Count decided Prince Reynart would marry Romana , pretending she was a dancer from Gallifrey . Reynart would be killed and the Count would marry his widow . He would then rule as King . However , the Doctor interrupted the wedding and defeated the Count . ( TV : " The Androids of Tara " ) It was during this time she was interviewed by UNIT . Ruth Matheson wanted to know the Doctor ' s involvement in a mysterious painting that foretold the death of the beholder . She was annoyed at being going to Kensington instead of searching for the fifth piece of the Key to Time . ( AUDIO : " Tales from the Vault " ) On Delta III , Romana was captured by Swampie s and offered as a sacrifice to Kroll . The Doctor freed her , but they were quickly recaptured . This time both the Doctor and Romana were offered in sacrifice in the last of the Seven Holy Rituals of the Swampies . This involved them being stretched by vines , known as creepers , until their backbones broke . The Doctor freed them by resonating his voice and breaking a window so rain water loosened the creepers . The segment was within Kroll himself and the Doctor recovered it . ( TV : " The Power of Kroll " ) When seeking the Sixth Segment and landed on Earth , again , and by this time she was starting to think the Doctor was deliberately landing them there . This time they landed in Rome . She explored the temple of Luna whilst leaving the Doctor to watch the play Luna Romana . Inside the temple she encountered Stoyn and felt pity for him and wanted to help him become whole again . She found that the segment in Rome was in fact the fifth segment not the sixth segment . Stoyn had tricked her and used the TARDIS to fulfil his aims . ( AUDIO : " Luna Romana " ) The Doctor and Romana went to Atrios for the final segment . Romana was captured by the Shadow and tortured . She was freed with the Doctor ' s help and the segment was Princess Astra of Atrios herself . The Doctor and Romana assembled the Key in the TARDIS , then disassembled it to escape the wrath of the White Guardian ' s foe , the Black Guardian . The Doctor fitted a randomiser to the TARDIS ' controls to prevent the Black Guardian from hunting them down . ( TV : " The Armageddon Factor " ) Travelling freely . After the completion of the Key to Time mission , Romana chose not to return immediately to Gallifrey ; she and the Doctor shared a few more adventures . She thought that she should finish her thesis on the Doctor and continued to observe him . When the Doctor took her to Antibes she used it as a chance to start an Annex on his favourite species . Near the hotel there was a cave which contained paintings of creatures from another world , which the Doctor found fascinating . On going to visit the cave she encountered a psychovore who attacked people , which also stole peoples ' possessions and later possessed them . She discovered that the Saiph was trying to breed in the Mediterranean Sea . ( AUDIO : " The Stealers from Saiph " ) During the first of these adventures , Romana and the Doctor lived as Lady and Lord in London in 1929 while K9 led the Black Guardian on a wild goose chase . She was a bit worried that they could be detected by the Black Guardian in the interim . She considered Earth in the 1920s to be " harmless , if a bit primitive " considering that human s had only recently discovered the theory of relativity . The Doctor told her to enjoy herself in this era , so she went searching for scientific and mathematical developments . In a book shop , she met Reginald " Reggie " Bassett who invited her to see his aunt Lady Florence Bassett in Hampshire . He then proposed to her . Florence wanted Romana to be possessed by the alien entity that controlled her , as Romana had centuries to live . She then went searching for the spaceship , not knowing that the Doctor had deactivated them . Mabel Dobbs took her to the spaceship . She manipulated the controls on the spaceship so that its defence system attacked Grenville and then used his power cells to destroy the ship . She then returned to London before the Doctor knew she was missing . ( AUDIO : " The Auntie Matter " ) Whilst doing some repairs in the bowels of the TARDIS , she started to hear some voices which turned out to be a parrot . When time phasing occurred , she tried to follow the manual by letter and use the Helmic regulator which didn ' t work . Shortly afterwards , the Laan made contact with her . When they landed in the Sahara Desert , she was dragged in the sand by one of the Laan , but when the Earth ' s security forces arrived the Laan disappeared . She was taken to be interrogated by General Vincent about the Laan invasion . Vincent wanted to use her as an interpreter to find out what the Laan wanted . She grew concerned when the humans attacked the Laan without provocation . She could feel the Time Phasing . She was involved in a helicopter crash and was buried underneath the sand . ( AUDIO : " The Sands of Life " ) She tried to get the Laan to understand that they didn ' t mean any harm . She was then transported to see President Sheridan Moorkurk . When Tallister started his vivisection of the eldest Laan , Romana felt her pain . She wanted to get the Laan away from the Conglomerate . Before the death of a Laan , she tried to get to the laboratory in time to stop it . The Doctor asked Romana to try and negotiate with the Laan . She recognised that the second eldest Laan was going to give birth and warned the humans to get away . She told the Laan that it was Cuthbert who was the cause of the attacks on their people . She warned the Doctor that the Laan was on their way to him . She overheard that Cuthbert was going to use a pathogen to destroy the Laan . She tried to convince Sheridan not to allow the Conglomerate ship to release the pathogen . ( AUDIO : " War Against the Laan " ) Soon afterwards , Romana was taken to London in 1899 , where she met Henry Gordon Jago and George Litefoot . While the Doctor believed that the aroma of Victorian London was " bracing , " she considered it " rancid . " They came in search of a source of ion emissions . She thought that Henry ' s manner of speaking was off - putting thinking that the TARDIS ' telepathic circuits were malfunctioning . She was nearly mugged by Johnny Stone , but " the Pugilist " arrived before she was killed . She worked out that the figure was the cab driver Bobby Stamford was it . She tracked him to a church on the end of a marsh . The Pugilist sentenced her to death for trespassing , but the Doctor arrived in time to stop the execution . Harvey Marsh kidnapped her and wanted to use her as his maid . She psychoanalysed Harvey whilst she was on the way to his pub . She managed to escape just at the time the Doctor arrived . The Doctor got her to take Mary away before the Pugilist killed her . ( AUDIO : " The Justice of Jalxar " ) She thought that it was because the Doctor built K9 that he was breaking down . She got annoyed that the Randomiser was always taking them to Earth . She thought that the submarine that they came aboard was magnificent given the technology level of the Earth in 2040 . By this time , she intended to write a thesis on the Doctor . When Terri McCulloch said that she heard something different to Romana on Chris Fleming ' s message , she became concerned . She couldn ' t see the creatures which both Chris and Terri saw . Romana was placed in the an airlock and the water from the trench was let in before K9 opened the outer door intending to make her drown . She didn ' t drown and was taken to a submersed spaceship . She worked out that the spaceship was making people super intelligent and telepathic . She helped to create a telepathic gestalt to destroy the goblins . Back on the submarine , she had to order K9 to obey her again when he came under the influence of the goblins . She had to revive the Doctor when he was stranded in the trench with the pressure increasing . ( AUDIO : " Phantoms of the Deep " ) When the Doctor travelled to the Proxima System , Romana got irate knowing that the Doctor has bypassed the Randomiser again . Learning that there was a potentially deadly amount of Zukadom ' s Haze , she agreed that this was a good reason to switch off the randomiser . When a missile was aimed at the TARDIS she hoped that her modifications of the TARDIS ' shell would protect them , unaware that the Doctor and cancelled them . She became concerned that the Dalek s were on Proxima Major . She was captured as a Dalek prisoner and was supposed to be taken to see Cuthbert and Mr Dorrick . Instead she was interrogated by the Daleks using their truth assessment techniques . ( AUDIO : " The Dalek Contract " ) She was used as a bargaining chip to get the Doctor ' s location . Cuthbert wanted to know why she and the Doctor were in the Proxima system . She tried to convince Cuthbert that what he was doing was dangerous . She worked out that the Daleks made Mr Dorrick nervous . Romana didn ' t know that K9 had a stealth mode . When Cuthbert showed her the Quantum Gateway she realised that it was originally a natural occurrence . He then revealed to her that he wanted to use it to travel through time . Mr Dorrick wanted to use her knowledge to help in their work . Romana revealed to Cuthbert that the Daleks wanted his Gateway . When the Doctor ' s Dalek ship was destroyed , she realised that the Doctor and her had become friends and was disheartened when the Doctor apparently died . She then helped to devise a plan to stop the Daleks . She was delighted when the Doctor wasn ' t dead . When the Daleks invaded the platform she piloted the TARDIS to the Gateway antechamber . She stayed in the TARDIS to activate the Relative Dimensional Stabiliser to stop the particles destroying the universe . On the Doctor ' s orders she shut down the stabiliser which released the particles but the Doctor had changed the settings on the gateway so they destroyed the Daleks . The Gateway then imploded . After this ordeal she decided that she no longer wanted to go back to Gallifrey in the foreseeable future . ( AUDIO : " The Final Phase " ) The Doctor , Romana , and K9 encountered a frog - like being named Bolog , who had a fleet of ships at his command hidden on the far side of the moon . The Doctor was able to stop him by sending his ships into orbit around the sun with a banana . ( COMIC : " Death to the Doctor ! " ) Regeneration . Romana voluntarily chose to regenerate to purge the malicious influence of Pandora , which had begun to resurface after her ordeal with the Shadow , ( AUDIO : " Lies " ) with the strain of the Key to Time being absorbed into her after leaving Princess Astra also contributing to her regeneration . ( AUDIO : " The Chaos Pool " ) The transformation itself was facilitated by the TARDIS , as the ship briefly assumed Romana ' s form in a fit of jealousy , trapping Romana in a force field before her regeneration and sharing an adventure with the Doctor in the form of Princess Astra , letting the Doctor believe he was with Romana theought the adventure . Realising the error of its ways after a single adventure with the Doctor , the TARDIS released Romana , but not before making her assume the form of Astra . ( PROSE : " The Lying Old Witch in the Wardrobe " ) For much of her life , Romana ' s new incarnation was unaware of the exact details of her regeneration , ( AUDIO : " The Chaos Pool " , " Lies " ) believing that she regenerated for the fun of it . ( PROSE : " City of Death " ) Post - mortem . The first Romana ' s form would later be used by the Pandora entity when she confronted Romana ' s second incarnation and Leela , and again when Pandora became corporeal after Romana declared herself Imperiatrix , letting it take control of part of Gallifrey to begin a civil war . ( AUDIO : " Imperiatrix " ) Undated events . At some point , Romana was taken to the Black Archive by UNIT to have her record as a companion of the Doctor taken . Her memories of the visit were subsequently erased and she was sent on her way . ( TV : " The Day of the Doctor " ) Personality . Though a young and relatively inexperienced Time Lady compared to the Doctor , Romana was extremely bright and capable . She had taken a triple first at the Academy . The Doctor had scraped through with the minimal passing score of 51 % on his second attempt , information Romana cited to put her achievement in perspective . ( TV : " The Ribos Operation " ) Romana was an exceptionally clever ( on par with the Doctor ) and slightly bossy person . She shared many of the Doctor ' s traits . She was haughtier than him and more " by the book " and was occasionally annoyed by the Doctor ' s eccentricities . However , she was naive about things outside her experience and occasionally made unwise clothing choices . Like the Doctor , Romana preferred to think her way out of situations , but was not opposed to force when necessary . She shot a guard to protect others , an act that momentarily saddened her . ( TV : " The Pirate Planet " ) The Doctor threatened to call her " Fred " if she didn ' t let him call her " just Romana " . She chose " Fred " , but the Doctor proceeded to call her " Romana . " ( TV : " The Ribos Operation " ) She considered Earth to be " harmless , if a bit primitive . " On a visit to London in 1929 , she commented that , having only recently discovered the theory of relativity , human s were only one step above banging each other on the head with rocks . ( AUDIO : " The Auntie Matter " ) After the Doctor was believed to have been killed in the Proxima System , Romana told Mr Dorrick that she and the Doctor initially had an adversarial relationship but that they had gradually become good friends without even noticing it . ( AUDIO : " The Final Phase " ) Appearance . This incarnation of Romana was particularly fashion conscious . She had access to a large variety of clothing in the TARDIS wardrobe and changed her clothing frequently . ( TV : " The Ribos Operation " , et al . ) While on Tara , Romana took special care in choosing her clothes . She eventually came across a specific dress for Tara , or at least in that style . ( TV : " The Androids of Tara " ) Romana I was considered particularly good - looking — enough for the Doctor to take notice . ( TV : " The Pirate Planet " ) In 1899 , Jago described Romana as " an exquisite exemplification of elegance " and " a superior example of the feminine gender . " ( AUDIO : " The Justice of Jalxar " ) In 1929 , both Tommy Creighton and Reggie Bassett found her extremely attractive . ( AUDIO : " The Stealers from Saiph " , " The Auntie Matter " ) Reggie asked her to marry him but she declined . ( AUDIO : " The Auntie Matter " ) Age . Romana told the Doctor that she was nearly one hundred and forty when they met , ( TV : " The Ribos Operation " ) although her second incarnation later gave her age as one hundred and twenty - five . ( TV : " City of Death " ) Alternative timeline . In an alternative timeline in which it was standard policy for the Time Lords to sell their temporal technology to the highest bidder and regeneration s could be extracted and sold , Romana never travelled with the Doctor . She remained on Gallifrey , married Andred and had a son named Antonin . After being widowed , she resided in her ancestral home , the House of Heartshaven . One of her servants , Vansell , was secretly in the employ of her son . Towards the end of her first incarnation , she met her counterpart from the proper timeline , who was in her second incarnation and had previously served as Lady President of Gallifrey . Although the other Romana used the pseudonym " Lady Astra , " she realised her identity almost immediately . After being shot and killed by Antonin , she regenerated into her second incarnation . ( AUDIO : " Reborn " )