#etra prime

[presidentdisastraofgallifrey]

Romana is Not Ok

[the-worms-in-your-bones]

One of my favorite parts of the wilderness years has got to be the fact that the writers looked at the time lords and went ‘they could be weirder and worse’ and then proceeded to come up with some insane concepts, most of which sadly did not make their way into new who

[natequarter]

Some poor sod on the High Council: Madam President, you were one hundred and twenty years old when last we saw you. How old are you now? One thousand, two thousand?

Romana: Six hundred next century.

Brax, sighing: Wishing your life away again, my lady? She's three hundred.

Romana: But it's true! I'll be four hundred later this decade and five hundred next century, at which time I shall enter my sixth hundredth year and…

The entire High Council: Oh, Rassilon. The president is a Time Tot.

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

it's insane to me how you can listen to The Apocalypse Element for the first time and just come away thinking "oh that's terrible for Classic Who fan-favorite former companion Romana. interesting story!" and move on and unless you go on to listen to every single season of the Gallifrey audio spinoff you can go through life never realizing how pivotal the storyline of Etra Prime is to the entire Doctor Who universe

[gallifreyborn]

𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐄𝐌𝐎𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 𝐃𝐎 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐂𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐓�� 𝐅𝐑𝐎𝐌 ?

discontent.

You create from discontent. Most of your life has been spent being uncomfortable in your own skin. This body is just another house that's never felt like home. You don't know how to be at ease in this world or this life. Art is a way of running away, of forgetting yourself and escaping to a more comfortable place. To cope with an unhospitable reality, you create more welcoming worlds to consume your work and your waking hours. But the foundation of your art has always been your discontent with the real world and your life within it. Lurking behind the inviting scenery you dream of is the desperate desire to be anywhere but here. It is a world constructed as a respite from this one. Such vivid fantasies are the dream of one who considers reality a prison.

tagged by: stolen tagging: anyone who wants to do it!

[gallifreyrelisten]

Pre-Gallifrey

So, what does that mean? These next two weeks, before we start Gallifrey proper on April 11th, we will be experiencing a handful of stories to set the scene. There are four stories I have in mind here, though if you have any others feel free to add your thoughts on those as well! Since this is a lot more stories than usual, we are taking two weeks for it. Again, none of these stories are essential for listening to Gallifrey if it's your first time, but they do help to set the scene.

The Invasion of Time: This is the sixth serial of season 15. It's Leela's exit story and explains how she ended up on Gallifrey. It also introduces the character of Andred (if this is your first time listening, but you don't have time to watch this story, feel free to read the wiki on this story but not Andred's article itself if you want to be unspoiled)

The Apocalypse Element: Personally, I adore this story. It's the first audio story featuring Lalla Ward as Romana after her time on TV. Her experiences in this story are referenced throughout Gallifrey, and even when they aren't, inform her character greatly. Also good if you've been asking yourself why so many Romana fics reference something called Etra Prime. here on spotify

Neverland: features Romana and the Eighth Doctor with his companion Charley and sets up Zagreus. has some interesting hints at future stories. here on spotify

Zagreus: Without Zagreus, Gallifrey would never have existed. It was during the recording of this story that the idea for the series was born. At nearly 4 hours, this anniversary story is quite long and can be a bit confusing, but it is a very good story in my opinion. This has Leela's first appearance in Big Finish, as well as Romana and Leela's first meeting. Also features Braxiatel. here on spotify

Feel free to tag your thoughts, fic, art, lists, whatever, #gallifrey relisten or tag this blog directly for any older posts!!

Wishing you a wonderful time listening and watching!

[daughterofheartshaven]

I officially have gallifrey brainrot I just saw the phrase "it's been twenty years" and my brain went straight to Romana on Etra Prime

[gallifreyinstituteforlearning]

How did the Time War start?

How did the Time War start?

Now there is a hot-diggity question, and you won't be surprised to learn it's complicated. The Last Great Time War didn't just start—it brewed, simmered, and exploded.

🔮 A War Foretold

The Time Lords knew a Time War was coming long before it actually began. Legends, prophecies, and ominous stories circulated for centuries. Most dismissed the idea as impossible. After all, meddling in the affairs of other species? Surely not!

Except ... that's exactly what they did.

⚡ The Catalyst: The Doctor and Skaro

The Time Lords foresaw a future where the Daleks would dominate the universe, so they decided to act. They sent the Fourth Doctor to Skaro during the Daleks' creation with three specific objectives:

Prevent the Daleks' creation (if possible).

Alter their development to make them less aggressive.

Discover a weakness to exploit in the future.

But the Doctor, being the Doctor, hesitated when faced with the chance to destroy the Daleks entirely. This act of compassion—or maybe indecision—was viewed by the Daleks as a pre-emptive strike by the Time Lords.

🔥 Escalations Over Time

The tension only grew from there. The Daleks attempted retaliation in increasingly ambitious ways:

Sending a duplicate Doctor to assassinate the High Council (spoiler: it failed).

Davros using the Hand of Omega to gain mastery over time—only for the Seventh Doctor to trick him into destroying Skaro instead. (Davros was not amused.)

Attempts at diplomacy didn't fare much better. Peace talks didn't work. The final breaking point was when the Dalek invaded Gallifrey during the Etra Prime Incident, which shattered any remaining chance of peace.

🎇 The Unavoidable Beginning (Or middle? End?)

By the time the first official shots of the Time War were fired, both sides had been poking each other for centuries. The Time Lords began forming the War Council and resurrecting Rassilon, while the Daleks isolated Gallifrey by attacking its allies and forming the Cult of Skaro.

🏫 So ...

The Last Great Time War didn't begin with a single moment—it was a cascade of events, misunderstandings, and deliberate acts of aggression that lasted millennia.

If you ask the Daleks, it started with the Time Lords meddling in their creation.

If you ask the Time Lords, it started with the Daleks' endless quest for domination.

And if you ask the Doctor, they'll probably just mutter something about having the right, sigh deeply, and stare into the middle distance for an uncomfortably long time.

Related:

💬|⚔️🔒How does the Time War time lock work?: The extent of the time lock and its current status.

🤔|⚔️🧬Could post-War Time Lords have biological hangups from the conflict?

📺|⚔️🪖The Could’ve Been King with his army of … etc.

Hope that helped! 😃

Any orange text is educated guesswork or theoretical. More content ... →📫Got a question? | 📚Complete list of Q+A and factoids →📢Announcements |🩻Biology |🗨️Language |🕰️Throwbacks |🤓Facts → Features: ⭐Guest Posts | 🍜Chomp Chomp with Myishu →🫀Gallifreyan Anatomy and Physiology Guide (pending) →⚕️Gallifreyan Emergency Medicine Guides →📝Source list (WIP) →📜Masterpost If you're finding your happy place in this part of the internet, feel free to buy a coffee to help keep our exhausted human conscious. She works full-time in medicine and is so very tired 😴

[presidentdisastraofgallifrey]

They should’ve come across an axis world where Pandora was in charge. She never needed to possess Romana (who is on that world but not in a position of power, which gives our Romana an existential crisis) and found some other way to survive. I just. It would be a nice way to torment her in a different way

[the-worms-in-your-bones]

Hello people of gallifrey tumblr, have we considered romana with narcolepsy on this fine day?

[natequarter]

feel free to ignore if you’re not doing gallifrey prompts anymore, but for the whump prompts: romana + gallifrey character of choice for ! or ✓

✓: waking up either adorably confused or painfully scared

The nightmares never ended the same way twice, but they always started the same way.

Cold. Hungry. Dark.

President of Gallifrey.

It was something to cling onto. It had been one of the only things left to her, in the end. Sometimes, they had even managed to take her name; but they could never make her forget the reason they hadn’t killed her yet.

I am President of Gallifrey.

She did not have the luxury of giving into the pain.

Shivering. Wet stone. What liquid?

Blood?

The Daleks liked their torture old school. That didn't stop them from using mental interrogation, of course, but they took a very human pleasure in physically abusing their captives. Anything went: starvation, slave labour, wound upon wound…

Silence.

That was the worst part. Nobody ever understood it—no, Leela did, a little, but then Leela might as well have been nobody—but even the agony of torture was still more bearable than solitary confinement.

They could leave her starving there. They could leave her bleeding out all over the floor. They could compound her torment without doing a thing. Her own mind would fill in the blanks for them.

They would leave her there for hours, battered and bruising, and then drag her out to drill her information. They would leave her there for days, and then switch it out for days of back-breaking work. They might have left her trapped in her cell for weeks at a time; she didn’t know. On Etra Prime, so badly hurt, she had lost control of her time sense completely.

Even now, it flickered, it flared. Even now, the seconds stretched out into eternities.

And that was how the nightmares always started. Alone, in the dark. Always waiting for the next blow to land, sooner of later.

Something would interrupt it, usually. She would escape, wander down a dreamland corridor. She would be stuck—but someone else would arrive. She would be dragged bodily to the interrogation chamber—

On the way, mazelike passageways would shift around her like so much Saharan sand—and how long ago that had been! A lifetime had passed since she had last set foot in that desert.

More than twenty years.

This nightmare, like all of them, fit somewhere into those twenty years.

Her cell, first.

I am Romana. Romana…

Romanadvoratna—

Romanatre—

I am President of Gallifrey.

In this night terror they came after not an hour’s rest. She staggered to her feet—they dug into her back—and then it was damp something-like-concrete against her bare feet for countless minutes, an endlessness of corners that seemed to twist of their own volition, walls that sprang up from nowhere.

And then the interrogation.

The voices—if they could be called that—grated against her mind.

WHAT DO YOU KNOW?

She sometimes thought those screeching commands must be to blame for the chronic headaches.

WHAT ARE GALLIFREY’S SECRETS?

Too many and too heavy to be revealed in one go. Even the Titan Atlas would hesitate to shoulder that weight.

MADAM PRESIDENT?

She shivered. That was not their usual line of questioning. Whither Unit 117?

MADAM PRESIDENT, ARE YOU QUITE ALRIGHT?

The dream shattered. She startled awake.

And as always, she woke up screaming her head off. It had never mattered if she screamed on Etra Prime; no one had ever heard, anyway.

She had learnt to hold back tears centuries ago. That was basic psychic training—the type the Doctor had casually and carelessly flunked. She had learnt to get around the spells of dizziness rapidly—when to sit, when to stand. She had never learnt to wake up quietly.

“Madam President,” Braxiatel repeated, standing a measured distance from her side, lightly concerned. Perhaps there was more worry to him than he was letting on; or perhaps he truly didn’t care. “Ah, you’re awake. Are you well?”

“Yes,” she said, as her voice came back to her. She used to scream so much, those twenty years. “I’m perfectly well.”

He nodded curtly, giving away nothing. “Your wish is my command, Lady President.”

“Thank you,” she said. “But I’m fine as I am.”

“Of course,” he said.

She almost asked him to stay. The weeks on end without contact with anything, even her blasted captors, came flooding back unbidden.

But no.

She would survive.

Alone, as usual.

(link)

[the-oracle-of-the-lost]

wip ask/tag game, i would like to know about your "Pure Trash" wip. for fun:3

from this wip ask game

okay so idk why i called the doc "Pure Trash" because it's actually a pretty solid concept even if it would take so long to write that it'll probably never come into fruition but the idea is a re-write of new who where Romana was the last of the Time Lords instead of the Doctor (not an original concept by far but still fun to think about).

i only really outlined s1 but essentially the conceit is that Romana (still Romana II), much like Nine, is convinced that she didn't deserve to live through the end of the War but ends up finding the Doctor's TARDIS and starts to play as the Doctor to remember how to be a hero and get away from all of her War-related guilt but the lies she's told to both herself and Rose start to unfurl around The End of the World where she's recognized as the former President of Gallifrey and really crumble during Dalek and The Parting of Ways where it's revealed that she helped start this horrific War she's always alluding to.

i don't have much properly written (and what i do have written isn't the best quality because it's a few years old), so it's mostly just vague planning and a few pieces of dialogue, but i'd imagine her relationship to Rose would be a little different – playing into Romana's tendency to emotionally shut down and be a lot more numb to death and more willing to make hard calls than the Doctor while Rose is a lot less willing to trust her after finding out how much of Romana's heroism comes down to pretending to be someone else.

i'd also think Romana, like the Doctor, is still exasperated with Jack but more because he treats temporal intervention so cavalierly and less because of the romantic jealously (Romana and Rose still have the kiss in The Parting of Ways but their relationship in general is much less romantic than Rose & the Doctor). but they end up both gaining mutual respect for each other more than Jack & the Doctor ever really did (and Romana does not abandon him at the end of the season! though i have yet to work out the implications of that.)

anyways the one bit i have worked out that i'm still happy with is Romana confronting the Dalek Emperor at the end of The Parting of Ways because it's such a wonderful pairing with Romana's character all throughout Gallifrey and would be a wonderful way for Romana II's story to end:

EMPEROR: BECOME A DALEK. THE LAST OF THE TIME LORDS IS TO BECOME THE GREAT EXTERMINATOR. ROMANA: [quietly] The Destroyer of Worlds. EMPEROR: SO WHAT TO YOU DECIDE? COWARD OR KILLER? MADAM PRESIDENT. ROMANA: [grips the device and still speaks quietly] If I press this button, it will be far from the worst thing I have done in the name of peace. You speak of godhood… I’ve killed so many others who have claimed that title. I’ve also killed innocent people and innocent worlds to bring peace. And I’ve seen what the Daleks are capable of first hand. I think one planet is such a small cost to end you forever. EMPEROR: YOU HAVE CHOSEN DEATH. ROMANA: Oh so many times. I’ve tried to sacrifice my life in the name of peace more than I can remember. But… I think it was chosen for me. It was chosen by you when you claimed me as your prisoner and death has haunted me ever since. You really would be getting the fate you deserve because you pushed me to do this. Before Etra Prime, or even before the war, I would never have done this – this cold blooded murder.  EMPEROR: EVEN YOU ADMIT DALEK SUPREMACY. I MADE YOU WHAT YOU ARE. ROMANA: And that is why I would never press that button again. [drops the device] You did make me a killer. You made me the person who ended the Time War. But I will deny you ownership of me. I am not Unit 117. I am not a killer. I am Romanadvoratrelundar and I say no. I make my own future.

[gracefelldownaflightofstairs]

Currently listening to The thief who stole time and thinking about how when romana is at the academy the people who she thinks are her friends actually hate her and the only one who actually seems to care about romana’s well being is Brax. Who also has ulterior motives and then also has to wip himself from her memory to protect her.

Also the fact that nobody bothered to actually figure out what happened to her when she disappeared from the academy to help the doctor and how that also sort of mirrors how no one really tries to find out what happened to her when she disappeared on etra Prime.

Lastly I’ve seen a lot of people talk about how romana and the doctor are similar in a lot of ways. But I think one of the biggest differences between them is that when the doctor feels like they are alone there not. They have so many people who care about them. But for Romana when she feels like she’s alone she almost always is. Or if she’s isn’t alone the people around her don’t really care about her they just want something for her.

When the Doctor disappears everyone freaks out. But when Romana disappears nobody bats an eye not even the Doctor

[triple1st]

my favorite aspect of trey & romana iii whom i portray is how genuinely cold she is underneath her otherwise very warm & charming exterior

when the unvossi ambassador reminds romana ii of the flowers he left her & says to leave them in her office for they will bloom for one hundred years & she'll have something to remember him by, she obliges, more specifically because it is her failure to adjust gallifrey's transduction barriers that result in his death (he isn't real, of course, but she doesn't know that at the time). romana iii pointedly tells narvin to get rid of those flowers the second that office becomes her own

her second incarnation is an inverse of her third, with a very cold, calculated & potentially ruthless exterior whose emotional core is quite untreated, she dares not show anybody how she feels for fear that it may be used against her, as it was on etra prime, as it is on gallifrey, she is always guarding herself. with leela & narvin being the very few exceptions to the rule. romana iii is more honest with her feelings, more open to embrace the people she cares for, the people she considers friends, but it's a manufactured sense of closeness & understanding to be used against them whenever it suits her

she is a product of gallifrey, born neither out of recklessness or vanity but as a concession to the high council, of a promise to regenerate should she be elected president when her second self couldn't any longer. someone suited to lead gallifrey into a golden age of progress, apt at playing the time lords at their own game where her prior self struggled to hold onto power

[unbekanntespferd]

OK so.

I realise the canon…icity(? fuck it, it's English, who cares) of the Shada webcast to the Gallifrey series is, let's say dubious at best. however

I choose to believe that it happened exactly as presented, because it gives me, as a mild-to-moderate tragedy enjoyer, two (and a half) very neat headcanons

1. a good explanation for why the Doctor did not flip his lid and go rescue his friend the second he heard about the Etra Prime incident (I mean, come on, I know he doesn't talk to the folks back home, but really? really? you're telling me Eight wouldn't have turned multiple galaxies inside-out, even if he never actually found her?), which is: he already knew exactly how she was going to get out, and that it wasn't him who helped her do it.

1b. just a very funny context for "you're wearing the wrong body"

2. and this is completely outside of what I believe is writerly intent, but I choose to believe that Eight dropped in on Romana a few months before the Incident to just. have a bit of fun before her life goes so horribly downhill

Does this actually change anything about either character? nah. but I still like to think it's true.

[daughterofheartshaven]

A quick Timeline of Romana

I was rebloging something by a mutual and I realized that I have a very specific order of Romana's different stories in different mediums in my head and that might actually be relevant to share here given how many of my mutuals are Romana fans. As usual, I assume Last Great Time War is the same as The War In Heaven. So here we go. I'm starting with Romana's return from E-Space. Anything in bullet points is a headcanon I made to reconcile different stories

Blood Harvest / Goth Opera: Romana II returns from E-Space and takes a place on the Gallifreyan High Council

The Chaos Pool: takes place while Romana is on the High Council, but before her Acencion to Presidency

Happy Endings: Romana becomes President

The Apocalypse Element: Romana's Presidency is interrupted by the Etra Prime incident and the disaster that followed

Neverland / Zagreus: Romana meets Leela, and is forced to watch the Doctor remove himself from the universe

Lungbarrow: Romana has a run-in with a Doctor from the past, from before he left the universe, and has to be very carful to avoid letting either the Doctor or the CIA know that she knows the Doctor's future

The Gallifrey Series (and a couple misc. audios that have Romana II as president): Lots of things happen, but the big one is that the Time War starts

following the end of the Gallifrey series, Romana escapes the Time War and flees into Gallifrey's past at the cost of her current incarnation's life. Now in her third incarnation, she Spearheads the Nine Gallifreys project to give herself a different Gallifrey to work with - avoiding a paradox - and begins preparing her Gallifrey for the war she knows is coming

Luna Romana framing narrative: Romana III prepping her Gallifrey for war

The Shadows of Avalon / The Ancestor Cell: Romana comes into conflict with the Doctor (still from before he left the universe), and her plans end in disaster as her Gallifrey is destroyed before it can even reach the war

The Gallifrey Chronicles: The Doctor is implied to resurrect Romana and the other citizens of her Gallifrey

Now that she has lost any chance she had at making a difference in Gallifrey's stand in the War, Romana flees Gallifrey and reconnects with the Tharils before the war starts.

The Little Book of Fate: Romana, now running refugee support from the Time War, meets the Doctor from before they came into conflict (and before he left the universe). They are able to work together, but Romana still has to conceal all she knows about his future.

Romana eventually gives up on Gallifrey and the Time War and, with her third body dying, flees to the end of the universe (much like the Master did, but without a chameleon arch).

Tomb of Valdemar framing narrative: Romana III dies at the end of the universe and we meet her fourth incarnation - a dark skinned woman

Gallifrey returns and Romana finds her way back to it. At some point, she regenerates again into someone with freckles and ginger hair

Cwej: Down the Middle: Romana is implied to be actively trying to help Chris behind the scenes, and appears at the very end to negotiate with him regarding the end of the Cwejen Uprising against Gallifrey

Notes:

Does Romana ever find out that the Doctor returned from the Divergent Universe? It seems likely, but from the Doctor's perspective, Zagreus appears to be the last time they met.

If you want me to elaborate on any of this, I'd be happy to! Just let me know.