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Romana is a Time Lord who accompanied the Fourth Doctor on many of his adventures.

Is Romana still the only Time Lord to be one of the Doctor's companions?

For the purposes of this question, I would set the bar for companion status as follows:

  • Must be a friend of the Doctor, even if there was a disagreement, divided loyalties (e.g Turlough), or they parted on bad terms
  • Must have travelled in the TARDIS along with the Doctor
  • Must have appeared in more than one episode if this is a TV series companion
  • Must not be the Doctor (as in multi-Doctor episodes)
  • Must not be the Master, even in a sympathetic guise*

EDIT: I will upvote high-quality answers where Time Lord status is debatable, but only accept answers where Time Lord status meets the following strong criteria:

FINAL EDIT:

*I will upvote, but not accept, a high-quality answer that explains why the Master (as Missy) counts as a companion. Thank you to those posters who pointed out that there was a reasonable argument for this.

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    Does Doctor Donna count as a Time Lord? And does Missy count as a companion?
    – Wiggo the Wookie
    Aug 10, 2022 at 14:27
  • @OrangeDog OK - I've tried to settle the matter in the question body with due fairness to some of the clever answers already received to this question.
    – EleventhDoctor
    Aug 10, 2022 at 18:18
  • Time Lord DNA = Ability to regenerate?
    – OrangeDog
    Aug 10, 2022 at 18:59
  • The Cosair seems to be the only other timelord the Doctor could stand. So I wouldn't be shocked if some expanded universe story would qualify him/her, though obviously that timelord had their own ship when killed.
    – lucasbachmann
    Aug 11, 2022 at 0:41
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    "Must have appeared in more than one episode if this is a TV series companion" By "Episode", do you mean story? Back in the era when stories were split into five half-hour episodes, would a single episode count? Also, is traveling in the TARDIS really necessary? Did the Brigadier travel in the TARDIS? If he, or a similar character, not travel in the TARDIS, would that make him not a "companion"?
    – Acccumulation
    Aug 13, 2022 at 3:36

3 Answers 3

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Going by the TV Series, only two Gallifreyans meet your definition of companion:

  • Romana(dvoratrelundar) - A Time Lord sent to help The Doctor find the Key to Time
  • Susan - The Doctor's granddaughter, possibly a Time Lord but evidence leans towards not

I personally would count Missy towards the end of her regeneration, but she fails at "must not be The Master". She appears to have genuinely reformed and is now trying to work for the good of others, travelling in the TARDIS with the Doctor for two stories.

Others have mentioned River Song and DoctorDonna as possible Time Lords, but they are not Gallifreyan (and DoctorDonna was only in one episode).

There are some remaining possibilities related to the Fugitive Doctor. However, they only appear on-screen in one episode each:

Beyond the TV series, we have another:

If "more than one episode" does not apply to novels, then there is one more:

In the comics there were two additional grandchildren, but they appear to have been born and raised on Earth, so even less likely to be Time Lords than Susan.

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31

Susan (or "Susan Foreman", as she was sometimes called) was likely a Timelord. It's not clear if she was, in fact, related to the Doctor (she was introduced as his "granddaughter"), but it is well established canon that she was from Gallifrey. She traveled with the First Doctor for quite some time, and demonstrated some of the Doctor's superhuman abilities.

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    Notice that the "Time Lords" didn't appear until the end of the Second (Patrick Troughton) Doctor's tenure in Season 6. I'm not sure you can apply all that backstory to Season 1.
    – Spencer
    Aug 10, 2022 at 17:01
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    I think there's been enough comments by 9,10,11 about having a family that we can safely have Susan be his granddaughter and consider looms thoroughly invalidated. Now we just need timeless child decanonized. Now being a timelord with a regeneration cycle installed - that's ambiguous- as now it needs to be easy enough to get for River to have one but hard enough low class gallifreys don't. Admittedly I didn't recall Susan having as many powers as the cartoon said, which imply to me she's probably a proper timelord.
    – lucasbachmann
    Aug 10, 2022 at 23:52
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    Susan Foreman is seen escaping from Gallifrey with the first Doctor in the 2013 episode "The Name of The Doctor".
    – Barrington
    Aug 11, 2022 at 2:08
  • Just as Moffat opined that "Doctor" was a Gallifreyan word that other cultures took to mean "helper" and "warrior", I've sometimes opined that "Grandfather" is a Gallifreyan word that means "teacher", or perhaps even "older companion".
    – VBartilucci
    Nov 21, 2022 at 19:13
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River Song is a Time Lord, in the sense that she can operate a TARDIS (as shown in Let's Kill Hitler) and can regenerate (same episode), two characteristics that are only seen in Time Lords (In The Two Doctors, the Doctor discusses symbiotic nuclei that apparently allow Time Lords to control TARDISs and to time travel). She appeared in many episodes of the new version of Doctor Who from Silence in the Library to The Husbands of River Song

In A Good Man Goes To War we have this explicit statement that River has both human and Time Lord DNA.

DORIUM: They've been scanning her since she was born, and I think they found what they were looking for.

DOCTOR: Human DNA.

VASTRA: Look closer. Human plus. Specifically, human plus Time Lord.

There may be debate about whether DNA and Time Lord powers are sufficient to qualify River as a Time Lord, but she's certainly a potential case of a non-Romana Time Lord companion.

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  • +1 Interesting. Can you say more about whether River Song counts as a Time Lord? The canon on this isn't clear to me.
    – EleventhDoctor
    Aug 10, 2022 at 14:26
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    She was born of human parents, but conceived in the Tardis during Rory and Amy's honeymoon. The Doctor hypothsized that this gave her enough exposure to the Time Vortex to give her regenerations, but she doesn't (as far as was revealed) have two hearts, so is neither Gallifreyan nor a proper Time Lord. IMO.
    – Zeiss Ikon
    Aug 10, 2022 at 14:59
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    You don't have to be a Time Lord to operate a TARDIS. Even humans can do it.
    – OrangeDog
    Aug 10, 2022 at 20:03
  • @ZeissIkon He hypothesized that in the (happy) days when proximity to the Time Vortex / Untempered Schism was said to give the ability to regenerate... instead of the Doctor's DNA spliced into the rest of them (shudder) - sadly that explanation is no longer possible. Regardless, you're right of course that River is neither.
    – BMWurm
    Aug 10, 2022 at 22:47
  • @BMWurm some of us remember the (happy) days before all that Untempered Schism nonsense, when regeneration was just some unspecified advanced technology
    – OrangeDog
    Aug 11, 2022 at 9:57

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