probable status: amnesiac

Leela and Romana commission for @whoteacheswho 

1. in cahoots (interrogating that guy in the science fair one, their fake fight, running the cia together, uhhhhhh unity.)

2. president and her cia working dog (whenever he comes up with a solution to a problem for her and she praises him for being clever)

comedy:

1. “BUT ROMANA”

2. narvin hearing about his demotion on the news

3. “this is narvin, my…. narvin.” [4 seconds of silence]

4. romana’s face when evil alternate narvin claims they’re married

5. narvin’s coughing fit in square one

acting:

1. “SHE’S MY WIFE!!”

2. “when… IF i ever tell you what i’ve lost”

3. trey wailing “it didn’t happen like this!” when romana was regenerating

4. “i am becoming a liar like you and it disgusts me!”

5. leela and narvin getting caught by that bomb. “get back, narvin!” and the physical acting

visuals:

1. the daleks in soldier obscura

2. matthias describing the view of the citadel from his office (“a toy town dwarfed by the hulk of mount cadon” etc)

3. eris sending leela into the deception field

4. the dream sequence in spirit

5. the creepy farm in nevernor

sexy:

1. leela threatening torvald with her knife on the train

2. annos threatening janartis in his cell

3. leela veklin ollistra shock collar

4. narvin whimpering. obviously. doesn’t matter which scene. but maybe when he’s shivering right after the jump scene in hostiles

@whovianbutatwhatcost thank youuuuuuu

So, I go back and forth on how their first body works, but I do think that their regenerated bodies remain more or less ageless for the first 300 or so years, and then for the next 200-300 that that body can naturally live, they do age but very slowly. It’s why Four, the first one to really last that long (Two is limited by being with Jamie almost the whole time and Three by being with UNIT), does look a bit older at the end of his run. It’s why Seven looks noticeably more worn and gray in the movie than his run. Don’t worry about Eight and Eleven—I’ll get to them in a minute. Notably, although they visibly age a bit and their health may decline some, they’ll still eventually collapse and regenerate regardless of how young they look or feel.

Except that to Time Lords, aging is also a stress response. A Time Lord in a constant state of panic, stress, or pain for several years will age noticeably and relatively rapidly—still slowly to a human, and more based on level of the stress than time passing. Also, it has an effect on their health, but once relieved of that stress makes them not much more likely to regenerate young.

I have…good Rassilon, I have at least four separate examples of this. We’ll start with the Doctor because they’re half of them. In my headcanons, Eight lives about 450 years. Enough to age a bit, but I think it was exacerbated by 200 of those years being during the Time War when he was desperately trying to help people while refusing to fight. Hence the looking a fair bit older by the time he regenerated. And Eleven, of course, has Trenzalore. He was there a long-ass time. Longer than a single regeneration should last, although by my estimation a last regeneration can be a bit longer with the last dredges of artron energy. But even with that, his body—a young body, looking in his 20’s—should really only have seemed to reach middle age. It was the stress and fear and exhaustion that aged him into a tottering old man.

My other two examples, of course, are Romana and Narvin. I think that everyone else thinks that she’s 1500 or so when she becomes President—rumor being she could easily be on her third or fourth regeneration—but really she’s barely 400. When she arrives back on Gallifrey, when she becomes President, she looks exactly like she did on the show.

But at the end of tae, she looks more like Lalla Ward’s actual age—to be fair, Romana probably looks a lot rougher than the real Lalla after all that torture—and the constant stress of politics on her damaged Psyche continues to age her, though much slower than on Etra Prime. Hence Leela’s startled note about Trey looking so much younger—she’s only ever known a Romana who looked over 50.

And then there’s Narvin. No matter how you stretch it, not that much time—not to a Time Lord—can have passed between the beginning of Gallifrey the series and Time War. A very few centuries at most. But he’s always complaining about being too old and not fit for this anymore, and I think that while he would have aged a bit anyway, the constant mental and physical stress added to it enough to impact his health (as well as naturally-acquired disabilities).