I’ve been watching the old Tom Baker epsiodes of Doctor Who. Baker was the Doctor I was first introduced to and still is my favorite. I did like Christopher Eccleston and I really do enjoy David Tennant, but I love Tom Baker (‘all teeth and curls’).

In the new stories, the Doctor is now the last of his kind due to a vicious war of annihilation between the Daleks and the Time Lords of Gallifrey. The Master is dead as well. There was a final scene with a hint that maybe he isn’t quite gone, so who knows. It is Doctor Who, after all and the Master has always been very resourceful.

So, last night I was watching The Armageddon Factor, the culmination of the six episode epic in the Key to Time series. This series introduced us to Romanaovratrelundar a recent graduate of the Time Lord academy who is smarter than the Doctor and has more subtle training in the art of regeneration than has the Doctor. The Doctor can only regenerate when his life is in peril.

Romana travelled in the TARDIS with the Doctor for eleven episodes before she said goodbye in the episode Warrior’s Gate.

At a null point in space and time on the interface between our universe (n-space) and E-space (exo-space), a slaver cargo vessel becomes trapped. It manoeuvres the timelines using members of the leonine Tharil race as navigators – and they too are the cargo of the grim vessel, held in cryogenic storage in its hold. A Tharil named Biroc flees the craft on the time winds, leaving it moored and trapped, and ventures to the TARDIS, which has also become trapped in a time rift in this strange dimension. The creature manifests itself in the TARDIS console room and imparts to the occupants the warning that he is a shadow of his own past — and of their future; and that the others that are following him should not be trusted. The Tharil then disappears, with the Doctor in pursuit. Romana, and Adric are left worried about K-9, whose memory wafers have been shredded by the time winds.

Warrior’s Gate is part of a trilogy of stories known as the E-Space Trilogy. The upshot of all this is that Romana chooses to stay behind in the null void to help the Tharils rebuild their civilization. The Doctor’s last word to her, via K-9, is that she’ll never be able to return to normal space and he reluctantly leaves her behind.

So, back to the title of my post: Have they forgotten Romana? “They” being the producers and writers of the current Doctor Who. The Doctor can hardly be the last since, more than likely, Romana is still alive beyond the Mirror in E-Space.

I think it’s time to bring back Romana, don’t you think? Hm, together they could repopulate the race of the Time Lords.