Doctor Who Companion Chronicles: Luna Romana
Starring: the fourth Doctor (narrated), the first Romana (narrated), Lalla Ward as the second Romana, and Juliet Landau as Romana
Format: Two narrated CDs (or download) containing four half-CD episodes, with three actors total
Silly? Frequently, but also with moments of outright tragedy.
Standalone? Not really. The Beginning is a prerequisite for full enjoyment, and events from The Dying Light are also relevant.
Recommended? Yes, after you've heard The Beginning.
My thoughts on this story contain spoilers for the Companion Chronicles trilogy consisting of itself, The Beginning, and The Dying Light. There are also spoilers for Romana's post-TV continuity as told in Big Finish audios.
Before listening
This is the final part of the Quadrigger Stoyn trilogy, which started with the First Doctor chronicle The Beginning and continued in the Second Doctor chronicle The Dying Light. The stories are loosely enough linked that I don't feel compelled to blog about them in order; from what I recall, all that really matters here is that Quadrigger Stoyn is a stranded Time Lord who is murderously angry at the Doctor. Like the Time Lord Omega, the reasons for Stoyn's anger are understandable, but he's nonetheless a deadly enemy the Doctor has to do something about.Unlike most Companion Chronicles, this is a two-disc story. I remember it has two distinct plot threads, and I seem to recall that each thread was on a separate disc. One thread involves Romana's first incarnation, who was played on television by Mary Tamm, and the other involves her second, played on TV and audio by Lalla Ward.
There is not quite a full "frame tale", but there is some framing involving the third Romana, created for audio and played by Juliet Landau (and possibly no longer a part of the main timeline; I don't follow the Gallifrey audios but I understand they are full of altered future timelines). This release was recorded a few months after Mary Tamm's death, and the third Romana is looking back on her life and recalling the first Romana's story, so that Landau and Ward each narrate half of the release. From the timetable of the release, I assume the script started with Tamm in mind and was turned into an homage to her partly out of necessity.
I remember the two plot threads intersecting in an entertaining way, with the two Romanas sometimes being in nearly the same place at the same time to amusing Back to the Future-like effect. I also remember the Rome of the story being an interesting setting, with a lot of attention paid to the nature of its state religion. I wouldn't know whether the religion was depicted accurately, I just remember it being interesting as a setting for a Doctor Who. I forget what the story was actually about, other than one of the Romanas being taken for a goddess and Quadrigger Stoyn meeting his probably-final end.
I remember enjoying this story. Compared to the rest of the trilogy, I liked it less than The Beginning but more than The Dying Light. I think I got it during a sale in which the special two-disc Companion Chronicles weren't priced higher than the more common one-disc ones and liked the extra listening value I got for the money.
After listening to part 1 of 4
I had misremembered the format. Each disc is itself divided into two episodes. The first episode is told by Romana's third incarnation remembering her first incarnation. I peeked ahead slightly and it seems the second episode starts with Romana's second incarnation, so we won't come back to resolve the first incarnation's plot until later.I had also misremembered the nature of the episode's Roman cultural focus: the Roman religion is only addressed briefly, while Roman theater is a major focus of the first episode. The Doctor spends much of the episode watching a play titled Luna Romana, and multiple parallels exist between the fictional Roman play and the audio.
The Doctor explains to Romana that Roman plays began with a prologue so the audience knows what to expect. The audio itself begins with a prologue in which Romana is reactivating old maintenance bays to use them for battle TARDISes and recalls that one bay in particular was Quadrigger Stoyn's, then starts reminiscing about her first incarnation.
In the play, a slave tricks a cruel general by selling him the reflection of the moon in a bucket, a ruse which is transparent to the audience. In the audio, someone has tricked Romana into following a signal she believes is that of the sixth segment of the Key to Time (giving this Companion Chronicle a very specific chronological placement), while we the audience know the sixth segment won't be found in ancient Rome.
The stage the Doctor is watching and the temple Romana is investigating both feature a secret passage.
Not every detail of the play-within-a-play is a reflection of the larger story like this, but the parallels are noteworthy.
The fact that Roman actors wore masks is very important, and when they unmask in front of Romana, the surprise she sees makes an excellent cliffhanger.
I am looking forward to hearing what follows from the cliffhanger, but I think it stays hanging until the third episode. I hope the second episode's plot is equally intriguing.
After listening to part 2 of 4
One thing I am noticing is that this is an extremely visual story. If it had been done as a full-cast audio with no narrator, quite a lot of it would have had to be done differently.The second episode has no frame tale, just a straightforwardly narrated story told by Romana's second incarnation. It briefly teases the premise that the Doctor and Romana have landed in the same place and time as in the first episode, then reveals that they are on a theme park on the moon, in the Luna Romana section (other sections including the wild-west High Moon and ninja-filled Land of the Rising Moon).
A group in Greco-Roman theatric masks appear once again, but these are robots with nothing but circuitry behind the masks. Where the Doctor was watching a play in the first episode, now he is the one being watched: Quadrigger Stoyn ended up on the moon after being blown into the Time Vortex the last time the Doctor defeated him, and he has built a device there that was supposed to let him view all of space and time but is only letting him watch the Doctor's adventures, apparently due to having used a part from the Doctor's TARDIS. Romana's narration of what Stoyn is watching includes specific shots of specific Doctor Who episodes, meaning Stoyn has basically been stranded on the moon for two thousand years watching Doctor Who. The device is more than a television set, however, as it turns out....
The episode ends very excitingly: Romana's first incarnation suddenly shows up on the moon, evidently knowing a lot more about what's going on than she did at the end of the first episode. I'm guessing the third episode is going to start where the first episode left off and follow the first Romana from there up to this moment.
I noticed that, while not stated quite as baldly as giving a count of Key to Time segments, this episode goes out of its way to give enough context to give it a specific placement relative to the TV show. Romana has been to both the Louvre and Cambridge, but the TARDIS still has its randomizer installed, meaning Luna Romana falls after City of Death, after whatever portion of Shada you choose to consider canonical, and before The Leisure Hive. Not all Companion Chronicles place themselves so specifically, but I don't think there's any necessarily any particular significance in this one doing so.
I am definitely looking forward to my next listen. I expect that the story of how the first Romana ended up on the moon will be twisty and fun.
After listening to part 3 of 4
Since there are no episode recaps, I listened to the tail end of episode 2 as a lead-in, and I realized my interpretation of it was mistaken. It's not the first Romana who shows up suddenly on the moon, it's a slightly later second Romana. It's a good thing I caught that or I'd have gotten increasingly confused until realizing my mistake.This episode begins with the third Romana narrating her first incarnation's story, picking up from the end of the first episode. A few tracks in, however, the story starts to cut back and forth between the two narrators to keep events in sync as both Romanas are getting involved in the same events. A Greco-Roman theater mask lets one Romana pass herself off as the other briefly to avoid making things even more paradoxical than they already are.
While the Luna Romana on the Roman stage is a comedy, a large portion of this episode is devoted to tragedy: multiple horrible things have happened to Quadrigger Stoyn, and while listeners of The Beginning and The Dying Light will be aware he's not as blameless as he'd like Romana to believe, that fact doesn't really make them less horrible. Without having heard at least The Beginning, a lot of nuance in Luna Romana is missable, particularly concerning Stoyn's feelings about the moon.
This part doesn't quite lead directly into the twist Romana appearance at the end of part 2, but it does bring the second Romana to within what might be just a few moments before that point, and it seems clear now how the loop's going to close. Of course, with the level of twistiness going on in this story, I don't expect it to actually take that clear route, and I'm looking forward to find out what actually does happen.
After listening to part 4 of 4
The first Romana's part in the story ends early in this episode, with the third Romana coming back as narrator for the very end to close out the framing device and end on a note that was presumably written as a salute to Mary Tamm.The path Romana's second incarnation took from the end of episode 3 to the end of episode 2 was exactly the path it seemed like it was going to be... but then that Romana ends up fleeing the moon to Rome again, this time accompanied by the Doctor and pursued by the robots with Greco-Roman theatric masks for faces.
Between the loopiness of Romana's timeline and the way Stoyn managed to set up a decoy segment of the Key to Time, this story rivals The Curse of Fatal Death for ludicrous timeline criss-crossery, and yet while there are winks it's never played as outright comedy.
The final confrontation with Stoyn makes a lot more sense in the context of The Beginning. The mechanics of who's doing what when are made clear within Luna Romana, but Stoyn's motivations aren't (beyond him just being obviously insane). Because of that, this audio does not stand separately as well as I'd remembered it doing, and I can't really recommend it as a standalone purchase. Unless I'm completely misremembering which parts of the Stoyn story are told where, The Dying Light seems to be an utterly optional piece of the trilogy, so I'd recommend Luna Romana after you've heard The Beginning, without the middle part necessary. I do highly recommend the Stoyn arc, and if what I've written about this story sounds interesting to you, you should try The Beginning.
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