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[doyle]

I'm now six episodes into the Gallifrey spinoff audio series which, after three episodes of fairly predictable political shenanigans with the odd bit of undercover strip bar work for Leela thrown in, suddenly goes mental. Multi-Romana team-ups! Bodyswitching! Charley's Nazi sister! A disembodied evil Time Lord who wants to possess Romana! A whole episode with Romana and Leela on holiday!

"You'll have a place here with me. For always, no matter what face I wear." Romana II/Leela=audio!canon. Spirit, for god's sake: in the previous story Leela meets Romana I (or as she likes to call her, false-Romana) and freaks out a bit at Romana not being the first one, because her husband's regenerated and she's having trouble wrapping her head around the whole concept. She's prepared to leave Gallifrey over it. So Romana kidnaps her and takes her to a pleasure planet for a week. She even agrees to go camping if it means she gets a day when Leela has to do whatever she wants. The femslash writes itself! And there are some lovely bits - like Romana throwing a chair through a window because Leela feels stifled in the closed-in rooms (telling Leela that she's a 'breath of fresh air' on Gallifrey, and giggling like schoolkids when the Castellan turns up to find out what the hell they're playing at- "a bird crashed into the window. It must have carried the chair away. In its beak.") I love them. I do. With a nice side-OTP of either Romana/Charley or Romana/Charley/Eight because she gets to be beautifully protective: she says Charley Pollard may not matter to history but she matters to her. Dammit, I wish Charley had moved over to this series after Zagreus, except that might be too much subtext for one series to contain.

There's been a running theme in the last few stories about Time Lord/human romantic or sexual relationships - obviously meant to be paralleling and exploring Leela's relationship with Andred, except I keep forgetting he exists (to be fair he's a pretty forgettable guy) and assuming they mean her relationship with Romana. "These Time Lords, they can bewitch you with a single glance". They'd need to, given that that's all about she and Andred got in the series before he agreed to be a beard so she could stay with Rodan they were married off.

Let's see, stuff I love about the series aside from the obvious Romana/Leela love: I'm a Time Lord groupie so I love the details about Gallifrey, the flashbacks to Romana at uni, the stuff about Pandora, even the massive fanwank over Romana's regeneration. Oh, and Braxiatel, he of the collection mentioned in City of Death (and later of the Benny series, though I haven't read or listened to those yet.)



Between the rest of this series and the new Short Trips book I got today, I am happy with my lovely new Who tonight. Oh, I bought the three new series novels too, but am in no rush to read them: I still haven't read two from the last batch, or one of Justin Richards' Nine ones. I want the PDAs back, plz. (Given the new companion in the Eight audios, I'm convinced that if they ever bring out a line of new EDAs it'll be with a brand new companion with Fitz and co never to be mentioned again. Which I'd be fine with, provided the books were aimed at adults. I just want more new stuff. I have a scant 200 or so books still to read! Then what will I do?!)

Comments

[silly-dan.livejournal.com]

even the massive fanwank over Romana's regeneration.

Despite being a casual Doctor Who fan who didn't even see the episodes with Romana I, I've wondered how that worked for some time. What did they say happened?

[doyle_sb4.livejournal.com]

*deep breath* Thousands of years ago a bonkers Time Lord president called Pandora was executed for trying to take over the universe, but she survived in the matrix - or something - and engineered one particular family line so that an eventual daughter could be her host. Years later, said host - Romana, then a young student - stumbled across an entrance to the matrix while exploring the vaults beneath the university and Pandora took over her mind. Her tutor realised what was going on and hypnotised her to shove Pandora into her subconscious. He resolved to keep an eye on her to stop any ideas she might get about universal domination: unfortunately the Black Guardian lifted her from Gallifrey and sent her off with the Doctor. Whoops. While looking for the last segment of the Key to Time, Romana was tortured, and the mental block in her brain broke down. Trusting that the trauma of regenerating would push her subconscious back into place, Romana I committed suicide - only it worked, and she therefore promptly forgot why she'd regenerated, so assumed it was out of vanity.

The Short Trips explanation of "the TARDIS did it in an elaborate attempt to hijack Romana's body and shag the Doctor" is no less insane but much simpler...

[silly-dan.livejournal.com]

...wow. Thanks.