#etra prime

[presidentdisastraofgallifrey]

Romana is Not Ok

[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.

[the-worms-in-your-bones]

Do you think someone ever gets too close to romana or tries to touch her and she just on instinct elbows or kicks or punches them because she’s used to touch being a bad thing

[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

[triple1st]

thinking about rassilon's (lack of) characterization in gallifrey time war

[gallifreyborn]

𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐄𝐌𝐎𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 𝐃𝐎 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐂𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐄 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!

[the-oracle-of-the-lost]

something something, Maris's line in Evolution that "slaves don't have friends" vs Romana's repeated insistence earlier in the series that "presidents don't have the luxury of friends" and that Romana's self isolation from others isn't a product of her rank but the continued trauma of her imprisonment on Etra Prime and that Romana still views her duty to Gallifrey as a kind of enslavement.

[toaasted-bread]

I'm sorry, Romana was just stuck on Etra Prime all those years and they barely even bothered doing anything about it at all? No wonder she's like... that.. now

[cosmik-homo]

Etra Prime told as. Like the moment of the actual dalek capture that lead to the 20 years Depicted As a horror movie where the people Romana is with die one by one by means beciming less and less mysterious until she's just Finalgirling against the daleks. And Then she loses and gets captured

[presidentromana]

<YOU WILL OBEY>

There are children in front of her, flanked by Daleks. A fierce Killoran girl, with the silver fur and yellow eyes of a wolf, her fingers ending in vicious-looking claws that won’t save her. A sobbing human boy with cracked glasses and clothes that remind her of something she once wore on Brighton beach. A Gardezzan child, born for the water, with scales and fins on a humanoid body, and a bow tied in their kelp-like hair by someone who loved them. 

They’ve never travelled in time so their timelines are small, simple things that betray how so very young they are, how short their lives have been. It isn’t fair that it’s all going to end in senseless violence.

<YOU WILL OBEY OR THEY WILL BE EXTERMINATED>

The above is an extract from my fic, Break the Storm, which will be in the @galliversary zine!

Summary: After her escape from Etra Prime, Romana sets herself to rebuilding Gallifrey, determined to shake off the two decades as if it were any other adventure. When she visits the Matrix with all the powers of the Presidency for the first time, all her feelings flood out and there, her feelings become physics, become law. In the midst of the chaos enters a mysterious stranger- Cardinal Braxiatel.

It also comes with an amazing illustration by @narvin!

[gotyouanyway]

the regenerators in forever using the same slave numbering system as the daleks did on etra prime.... sick and twisted

[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

[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-worms-in-your-bones]

Thinking about skin of the sleek and thief who stole time again……………… romana I would have been your friend

[intuitive-revelations]

You know, I was originally a bit sceptical on the "War in Heaven = Post Intervention Earth War" idea, but after thinking a bit about it, I think I'm all in now.

What's more, I think it actually works really well in my personal interpretation of the Books/Comics/Big Finish timeline for Eight!

As a reminder, I always like using the actual 'Rassilon Era' dates we get in stories, even if they don't quite seem right based on what you might assume. This leads to some weird conclusions like Eight's early adventures with Lucie taking place before his adventures with Charley, and his S4 reunion taking place afterwards.

This leads to a pretty clear Book -> Comics -> Audios timeline, in broad terms anyway since stuff like the Radio Times comics pretty explicitly fit into the gaps between EDAs. To summarise some key points:

c. 5716 RE - Happy Endings: Romana is elected President in the original timeline. (The Doctor is 1000.) 5725.2 RE - The TV Movie 5734 RE - The Ancestor Cell (The Doctor's Perspective. He is 1018) 5844 RE - The Gallifrey Chronicles (The Doctor's Perspective. It's been 114.75 Earth years since the Ancestor Cell, corresponding to about 110 Gallifreyan Years). 5916 RE - The Dying Days (The Doctor is 1200). 5939 RE? - The Doctor travels with Izzy and Fey (estimated based on them accidentally ending up on a future 10639.5 RE Gallifrey in The Final Chapter, based on a possible mix up of DI and RE dates). c. 6100 RE - 6790 RE - The Doctor is stuck on Orbis for centuries. 6776 RE - Romana is elected President in the new timeline. The Etra Prime incident occurs. 6798 RE - The Doctor rescues Charley from the R101. c. 6800 RE - 6812 - Gallifrey S1-S6. c. 7000 RE? - The Doctor regenerates on Karn.

Obviously this gives Eight a very long lifespan, but nothing that unusual for Time Lords, who can live for about 10,000 with a single well-taken-care-of incarnation. It's roughly as long as Eleven's, which may seem odd given how much the latter ages on Trenzalore, but Time Lord aging has never been consistent. Just look at Narvin, who has seemingly been in the same incarnation all the way from at least Four's era up to the Time War.

The War in Heaven, meanwhile, takes place on a future Gallifrey which the Eighth Doctor accidentally gets involved with early, starting when Romana reaches the end of a 150 year term. My original assumption was that this would then be either in 5866 RE or in the near future, with the Great Grey Eminence delaying her presidency until after The Eight Doctors, where Flavia is still president.

However, it really does make sense that it could be in 6926 RE instead (or possibly later, depending on if Romana's term restarted with the civil war / travelling in the axis etc.), roughly around the date of Intervention Earth, where Romana is also approaching the end of her term in office, making the War in Heaven almost simultaneous with the outbreak of the Last Great Time War.

BUT, to go one step further, I think this also solves the 'restored Gallifrey' problem... if you assume the "Post-War universe" is still in Gallifrey/the Doctor's relative future.

I always assumed the Doctor was back in his own present time track after The Ancestor Cell, but it really does make sense that he's still in the future Gallifrey's time track, and thus a different 'version' of history. This may even explain why it's so ambiguous whether Gallifrey has been erased or not, because he's still stuck oscillating back and forth between his own time and this future state of history.

This is why, for example, the Master can be both stuck in the Eye of Harmony and the Man with the Rosette / the War King: because the latter are from his future in the Intervention Earth timeline, after the Time Lords resurrected him as the MacQueen!Master. Hell, this might even make the MwtR/War King Jacobi, which fits perfectly if you, like me, interpret Scream of the Shalka as being in some way in the future of the post-War universe.

In fact, from Eight's perspective, we get multiple Time Lords who seem to be in multiple states at once, one being from his time (~5800 RE) and one being from the War/post-War universe (~6930 RE):

The Master, as mentioned, both in the Eye of Harmony (~5800 RE) and as the War King / Man with the Rosette / Magistrate (~6930 RE).

Romana, both still in E-Space (~5854 RE, as she is 487 during BBV's Adventures in a Pocket Universe) and as the War Queen / Trey (~6930 RE).

The Doctor himself, both experiencing the EDAs (~5800 RE) and as the Infinity Doctor (~7000 RE?), plus possibly Grandfather Paradox and/or Grandfather Halfling.

This also means that the Doctor's "present day" Gallifrey, back in ~5800 RE is probably completely fine from its own perspective (even if it has been technically erased in the post-War time track)! Hence why no-one has ever acknowledged Gallifrey being restored or the War in Heaven post-EDAs.

Instead, Gallifrey's possible restoration, if it does happen, probably takes place within the post-War time track that is eventually subverted by Enemy Lines, again possibly linked with the Shalka!Doctor's intended backstory, as well as the Chris Cwej series.

In the latter, the "Superiors" (who I interpret as descended Celestis who have lost their 'true' identity as Time Lords due to Gallifrey's erasure), outright acknowledge that the war is in a sense still going on in the present day, suggesting the post-War universe is set simultaneously with the War in Heaven's progression.

Indeed there seem to be many different threads referring to the timeline being split post-War and attempts to undo this (The Council of Eight, the Tomorrow Windows, V-Time, the Watchmaker and Brax), which seems all the more relevant when these events are also all set during the same time as the build up to the Time War.

I'd love to make a full timeline of the 292 years of the War and how it overlaps both with the post-War universe, assuming Eight continues to progress down that timeline during and after the Earth arc, and the "post-post-War" universe of Enemy Lines onwards.

Really, the big question is how/when the Eighth Doctor is able to get back into his own relative time and restore linearity protocols, after spending all this time in his own personal future? I suspect the answer lies somewhere in the changing timelines, if all of the different stories during this time period can be placed.

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

something I threatened @fortes-fortuna-iogurtum I would write (romantic narvinromana) only way sadder than I planned (cw suicidal thoughts). also tagging @magicofthepen because she's the one who 1) sold me on this pairing as romantic and 2) brought up the concept of Them in season 5

~~~~~

All of Gallifrey knows that their Supreme Leader does not want to live. Romana's recording when she leaves them to believe she's died, and has in fact gone home, comes as little surprise; the calm in her voice as she speaks of her own death. The longing. She's long since stopped avoiding attempts on her life. The Chancellery Guard knows there's as much chance of coming upon her dead by her own hand as there is of it being an assassination. She has never been long for this world.

The first time — the only time, because the other was Trey, far too warm for a Time Lord and too solid for a Matrix projection — Narvin kisses her is the moment he, himself, realized this. She will not look him in the eye, only stares blankly down at her hands in her lap, burned and scraped from a thermal explosion she had knowingly walked into. She claimed that the safeguards in place were enough, that she could not hide herself away out of fear, but. But, but, but. Narvin knows better. He knows her well by now. He can see it all over her.

He sits down carefully beside her on the medical cot, haltingly reaches out to grab her hand to stop her picking at fresh scabs. If he simply... doesn't let go, after, there's no one who would dare comment on it. She still won't look at him. She barely even seems awake. Hardly seems alive, though he knows she is, sees her chest rise and fall as she breathes and feels the double-pulse in her wrist.

"Did you want to die?" He asks, quietly, when there's no one else in earshot. The Supreme Leader prefers to be left alone in these aftermaths, everyone knows it. They also know that her Chancellor is the one person who is exempt. Narvin, however, knows that her best friend would be, too, were that friend here. He thinks he is not enough for this; he tries anyway.

Romana sighs. "Narvin-"

"Not today," he adds, only after she's already spoken. "Not now. Did you want... did you wish to die, on Etra Prime?"

Romana's head whips up, turns to look at him with wide, icy eyes that he would describe as terrified, were he willing to admit to that in her. She looks suddenly stunned, overwhelmed and younger than he's ever seen her. By twenty years, he thinks bitterly.

Narvin has never known Romana aside from the Daleks. Very few, anymore, have. Brax had, of course, but Brax is gone. As is the version of Romanadvoratrelundar who had existed before the Daleks and twenty years imprisoned. He knows she'd been called the Ice Maiden at the Academy, but can't help thinking that she must be colder now than she was even then. There's a part of him that wishes for contrast, and another part that's terrified that he would not know her at all. Vansell had been Coordinator when she was freed, Narvin still stuck working his way up the ranks. He'd never met her before she was this. If Etra Prime had never happened, would they be here, now? Would a Romana without the Daleks be his Romana?

These are questions Narvin cannot answer and will not ask. The one he has hangs trembling in the air, even as Romana seems to go more still than he's ever seen her, except for times she was unconscious. On some kind of wild instinct perhaps learned from time spent with Leela, Narvin squeezes her hand. Romana blinks, finally, breathes again and Narvin feels like he can breathe again with her. They're both staunchly avoiding any kind of touch telepathy. This is a moment for words spoken and respect; there's a buzz where their skin touches, though maybe Narvin is imagining it.

Romana slumps further, already downtrodden posture falling into something sharply angled yet far too soft all at once, robes adding an uncanny contour that makes her look, overall, like something broken. Maybe she is. Maybe she always has been. It terrifies Narvin to follow that train of thinking. What, he has to ask then, is holding her together? What, if anything, is capable of mending her? He is afraid, though it's presumptuous even to conceive of, that in some way, the answer is him. He's afraid of the fact that he hopes it.

"Yes," Romana finally says, voice barely a whisper. She hasn't returned his grip on her hand, but she's folded up and leaning against him, weight barely noticeable. They're completely alone now. Everyone else has figured out that this is a private moment, even if one not intended for, and left them. Romana's hands are cold. "I wanted to die rather than stay there. I wanted to live, though, more. Live... free. Home. Being there was like being dead, itself, in a way." Her voice is unsteady, shaking slightly with how hard she is fighting to hold herself together. It was easier, with Leela to help. Now neither of them knows what they're doing.

Narvin nods, with enough force that even if she is not looking at him — he isn't looking at her, he will give her this dignity — she can feel it telegraphed through where they touch. "Is it like that here?" He asks next, his voice lowered as well. "Is this... like being dead?"

"It feels it," Romana whispers. "Sometimes."

"I can't claim to understand," Narvin tells her, "I can't imagine-" he sucks in a breath. "Romana," he says, her name gentle on his tongue. When she looks at him, eyes tired and hollow, he says, "I can help you suffer." He doesn't know what comes over him in that moment, only that it's overwhelming. Leela could name it, were she there, but now... but now it is only him, and Romana, and all that he knows is that neither of them can be alone and he would do anything to keep it this way.

Romana shakes her head sorrowfully. "No," she says.

"I can give you reasons not to die."

She scoffs, utterly humorless. "Like?"

Narvin looks into her face, at her mussed hair and residue from the explosion clinging to patches of her skin. In this moment, as in a great many that he is holding close to his chest, Romana is the most important thing — the only thing — in the world. This one, or any other. She may not wish to live but he can't conceive of her dying. He doesn't have or won't use a word for this.

Instead, in this moment of sorrow and vulnerability, without hope or plan, and with far more courage — perhaps simply far more need, in the end — than the kind of man he knows he is, Narvin leans over and, hand hovering just above her jaw but not quite touching, kisses her. The surprising part, the little bit of light where the grace is, is that she doesn't immediately recoil. That, in fact, after half a heartsbeat's hesitation, she actually kisses back. The faint buzz, of restrained touch telepathy and something that might be love, or the beginnings of both or either of those things, grows. It's only a few seconds, seconds that they count and compile on instinct, but it's enough.

"I'm sorry-" Narvin begins as soon as there's distance, though not much, between them, and Romana shakes her head. The ends of her hair swish in the small space between their bodies.

"That's a reason," she says softly in that quiet space.

"Is it?" He asks, barely breathing for wanting. What he wants, he isn't sure. There is nothing in his extensive training for this.

She nods. They are leaned so close together that their foreheads are almost touching. She has still not let him in her head. Narvin thinks that he would rather she doesn't. He doesn't need to know her pain that intimately. Not when he can know it out loud, when she has allowed him this. He doesn't think he wants to know a Romana he's never met.

"Narvin," she says eventually, when the only sound is their breathing. "...Chancellor," she begins again, the formality straightening her up, though there's still confusion and exhaustion unhidden in her eyes. This is how it has to be. "Will you walk me to my rooms?"

Narvin has still not, through this all, let go of her hand. He isn't even sure he knows how to let go of her anymore. "I will."