The Girl Who Grew Up In The TARDIS (Wattys2014)

"I walk in eternity."

 So the Doctor went it alone for a little while and got caught up in political intrigue on his home planet, with the Master manipulating from the shadows whilst slowly decaying, a sight you don’t get over in a hurry and it made me wonder about the Doctor’s future… But it’s never long before the Doctor finds himself with another companion. The TARDIS looks upon them as waifs and strays, I see misfits and troubled souls, looking for adventure. Leela, the warrior woman of the Sevateem tribe, had to be the most unlikely companion for the Doctor to invite on board the TARDIS as she really had a nasty habit of killing people when they first met but I guess he liked a challenge and Leela became his knife welding Eliza Doolittle dressed in a very tiny but precariously draped leather leotard and believe me the Doctor tried to civilise Leela and also get her to cover up with varying degrees of success but I liked Leela a lot, she was tough and straight talking, she didn’t need rescuing by the Doctor, if anything she would rescue him instead. And during that time the Doctor picked up a Robot dog called K-9 and a handy little friend he was too, though bumpy outdoor terrain wasn’t his thing but at least the Doctor had found someone to finally beat him at chess. I suppose the little savage and the robot dog made an unusual team but it worked for a time and Leela learnt a thing or two, though after helping the Doctor to successfully defeat a Sontaran invasion on his home planet I had to say I didn’t see it coming when she decided to stay behind on Gallifrey because she had gone and fallen in love but Leela wasn’t the first companion to do an unexpected thing out of the blue and she wouldn’t be the last. K-9 also decided to stay behind as well, was it something the Doctor said?! So the Doctor went and built a new K-9, there was to be many replacements over the years and other mechanical friends. So Leela did kind of become a lady in the end but the Doctor ended up with a proper lady as his next companion, a Time Lady called Romanadvoratrelundar, thankfully shortened by the Doctor to Romana or sometimes Fred… 

 It was interesting to see the Doctor with a contemporary from his world, you could say he was a little prejudiced and suspicious though it was hilarious to see that he had finally met his match, a sophisticated, precocious young genius who was more than a little stuck up, I had to laugh as Romana had been forced upon the Doctor and it was an uneasy partnership at first, hadn’t a clue what they were talking about when they got down to the nitty, gritty science stuff but despite their initial hostility, they rather warmed to each other, Romana who wafted around like a beautiful, frosty princess in an array of white floating dresses was secretly at heart a rebel. And together they found the segments to the key to time and restored balance and harmony to the Universe for the White Guardian and in the process the Doctor made another enemy with the Black Guardian, white good, black bad, the Universe isn’t exactly a subtle place... Anyhow Romana didn’t want to go back home afterwards, so I swear she actually changed, regenerated into the kind of person who would fit in more with the Doctor’s hectic, exciting lifestyle. So Romana became quirky, pretty and a brilliant sidekick, everything the Doctor wanted in a companion at that time, they made a magnificent team, in a flirty world of their own. (I think the Doctor was a little in love with this version of Romana, which was kind of strange to see) And I swear they actually had their own “Time Lord” short code so I still hadn’t a clue what they were going on about most of the time but I watched on the side lines as they had the time of their lives, swept away by adventures involving the stolen Mona Lisa (an alien fractured across time had actually forced Leonardo Di Vinci to paint a dozen copies of his masterpiece and then sell them on to fund his dodgy experiments in time, audacious!) and then there was the one with a minotaur known as the Nimon… 

 It was all going rather well until the Doctor and Romana found themselves in E-space, a smaller, pocket Universe than our own, unable to escape from it and in all kinds of trouble with evolution gone bonkers, vampires and slavery, they picked up a stowaway called Adric, a young lad and mathematical genius, a bit of know it all but lacking in any common sense whatsoever, initially I thought Adric was a bit shifty though it turned out his heart was in the right place, he really looked up to the Doctor even though he criticised him frequently, I think he was waiting for praise and approval from the Doctor, I could relate to Adric but I was simply waiting for the Doctor to see me. But it was an uneasy relationship, that got off on the wrong foot as I think the Doctor resented having a moody, adolescent orphan to look after (so he would have loved me as well wouldn’t he!) especially when Romana and K-9 (again) decided to leave the Doctor and stay behind in E-space and help the imprisoned Tharil race. There had been so many goodbyes for the Doctor and I had watched a growing number of companions come and go, some were right to go but there were always those ones like Romana where I couldn’t understand why they ever wanted to leave, it made me sad but in the end I had to toughen up because goodbye was inevitable except the Doctor never really did goodbyes… But it doesn’t change the fact that there will always be some companions that get under your skin and I wish Romana and Sarah Jane before her had known me but they never will now. Anyway I guess Romana wanted to spread her wings and have adventures of her own, again I think the Doctor was rather cut up about it even though he’d never show it. The first trace of "Universe" weariness had set in and even though it’s impossible to keep track of time this incarnation of the Doctor had been around the longest of them all.