A Double Romana

It's always strange seeing the two Romanas together. The first time I was watching through Doctor Who, of course, it was strange seeing Princess Astra replacing the original Romana. Last night I finished watching through The Armageddon Factor again, the last serial to feature Mary Tamm as the Doctor's companion, Romana, before the character regenerates at the beginning of the next serial, from which point she was played by Lalla Ward, who confusingly played the character of Princess Astra in The Armageddon Factor.

It always seems to me they could have more artfully explained the change. In The Armageddon Factor, Princess Astra turns out to be a missing, final segment of the Key to Time, a powerful object the Doctor (Tom Baker) and Romana had been assembling over the course of the season (Armageddon Factor is the season finale). They could have worked in some explanation about how Astra's physical form, no longer being of use to Astra herself, was passed on to a critically injured Romana.

Steven Moffat worked in an explanation for why the Twelfth Doctor resembled a character previously played by Peter Capaldi in the Tenth Doctor's run, hinting it was a subconscious choice on the Doctor's part. In Destiny of the Daleks, Romana seems to choose the Lalla Ward shape based purely on personal taste. I'm amused by the scene in which she tries on various shapes, including a bodacious barbarian woman to which the Doctor has an amusingly stunned, almost shaken reply of, "No thank you. Not to-day."

It's hard for me not to read that as him picturing himself going to bed with each model. The scene is also slightly reminiscent of Tom Baker's first episode as the Doctor, when he humorously tried on a variety of costumes before settling on his familiar frock coat and scarf.

A lot of fans have tried to rationalise Romana casually trying out different bodies. My headcanon tends to be that she was using a holographic projection of some kind before finally regenerating for real, that being an aristocrat among aristocrats, Romana's family had more flexible regeneration capacity than riffraff like the Doctor.

Anyway, it's hard for me to see Lalla Ward as anyone but Romana. Even when I saw her playing Ophelia in Hamlet. Both she and Tom Baker put so much of themselves into those roles.

No-One Ages Like the Doctor or Vampires

It was Tom Baker's birthday to-day so I thought I'd listen to one of his recent Doctor Who audio plays for Big Finish. Well, relatively recent--I listened to The Labyrinth of Buda Castle from 2016, an entertaining short vampire adventure.

Vampires have appeared on Doctor Who in various forms, most memorably in the Fourth Doctor television story State of Decay. The villain of Labyrinth of Buda Castle, set in 1980 Budapest, has nothing to do with those vampires. Zoltan (Mark Bonnar) seems to think he's charming and sits down with Romana (Lalla Ward) in a cafe without being invited and orders wine. Romana was never one to be so easily seduced but particularly not now when Lalla Ward is playing her as permanently cross. When I heard Tom Baker and Lalla Ward were teaming up on audio plays, I was excited, hoping they'd recapture some of their wonderful chemistry from their two television seasons together. But so far, no such luck. With every line she delivers, I can sort of imagine how the writer may have meant it to sound before she put her angry spin on it. The Doctor borrows her sonic screwdriver at one point--eventually she asks for it back, "May I please have my sonic screwdriver?" It could have been petulant, a little teasing, but she delivers it like she's talking to a disobedient student who's stolen the chalk.

2016 was the year Lalla Ward divorced Richard Dawkins so maybe she warms up in the audio plays after that. Tom Baker, by contrast, sounds like he hasn't aged a day since Logopolis in 1981, he might even sound happier. He's delightful, in any case. He tries to warn a soldier about the vampire threat with some cautious language to which the soldier replies, "I don't like what you're implying," and Baker hits just the right mixture of bemusement and urgency when he then says, "I don't like what I'm implying but if I stop implying it it won't go away!"

By the climax, Zoltan manages to come off as a real threat and there's real tension as well as a bit of horror in the way he psychologically manipulates and tortures his victims. It's a good show.

Twitter Sonnet #1197

Matter forms to make a tablecloth.
A meal begins with solid parts in place.
The tiny marching food creates the sloth.
A friendly neck supports the moving face.
A grocer dallied 'mongst the sporty lads.
No idle shorts were bleached to take a loss.
A staining orb repelled betwixt the pads.
Tomato tennis always ends in sauce.
Assorted shapes were metal men in planes.
A chomping cloud resembled wheels of cheese.
Ellipses eaten strengthen steady gains.
The dots're white but taste a bit like peas.
The shop was selling level seven spells.
A lighting bolt is cast in seven rels.