Caleera, also known as the Sonomancer and the Red Lady, was a renegade Time Lord and enemy of the Eighth Doctor. Shunned by society for her phenomenal psychic powers, she found herself drawn to Cardinal Padrac. Padrac recruited her to the Doom Coalition, a cabal of Time Lords who sought to preserve Gallifrey by destroying everything around it, and sent her to further hone her powers.
Caleera took advantage of the chaos caused by the newly free Eleven to kidnap a trio of Time Lords she perceived as wronging her. She set up residence inside the Time Vortex and with her captives' help, built a machine that would amplify her powers. She exploited Helen's empathy to escape the machine and the Doctor's technical know-how to achieve her potential. Driven mad with power, she dubbed herself the Sonomancer and attempted to destroy Earth and more successfully, Syra.
The Sonomancer uploaded herself to the Matrix to search for the plans to the Resonance Engine, acting as an instrument of Padrac's vengeance along the way. She reluctantly entered the Engine to power the Doom Coalition's sought-after destruction. Convinced by the Doctor that Padrac did not love her, she transferred her powers to Helen Sinclair and asked her to pilot a Battle TARDIS into the Engine. Scattered across time by the resulting explosion, she became the Red Lady, a figure infamous across human history for baiting into a painful death those who first saw her in a given artwork.
History[]
Life on Gallifrey[]
Caleera studied at the Time Lord Academy. She was a talented student who was prone to daydreaming. Sepulchra admonished Caleera for this during one of her classes, leading to the discovery of Caleera's psychic powers. Caleera was denied the opportunity to hone her powers by a psychosurgeon, who gave her suppressants and surgery to ostensibly reintegrate her into Gallifreyan society. (AUDIO: Scenes From Her Life) In fact, he was following orders from Cardinal Padrac. (AUDIO: Stop the Clock)
Caleera graduated from the Academy with exceptional marks. For this reason, she was greatly upset when Sternbar, Chief Archivist at the Archives, assigned her to be an assistant to a junior archivist for "a regeneration or two". (AUDIO: Scenes From Her Life) One day, she was summoned to Padrac's office and was charmed by him due to the low self-worth he had ensured she had. (AUDIO: Stop the Clock) She visited the Eleven in the Capitol prison facility and on the day that he escaped, stole an antique TARDIS and kidnapped Sepulchra, Sternbrar, and her psychosurgeon. (AUDIO: Scenes From Her Life)
As the Sonomancer[]
Anchoring the TARDIS in the Time Vortex, Caleera sealed herself in a neural amplifier. Employing her captives - now insane and calling themselves Lord Stormblood, Lady Sepulchra and Swordfish - as her servants, she tested her powers on various prisoners. She used her powers to destroy the homeworld of the Voord, attracting the Eighth Doctor's attention. When he, Liv Chenka and Helen Sinclair arrived in the TARDIS, she exploited Helen's empathy to bait the Doctor into freeing her from the amplifier. She used her newly bolstered powers to throw her captives into the Vortex and split the antique TARDIS in two. (AUDIO: Scenes From Her Life)
Caleera travelled to the High Sierra in 1905 and gave her Gift to Sam Sonora. The Gift was transferred from Sonora to Pepé Gonzalez, who in turn transferred it to Charles Virgin McLean. Caleera forced McLean to transfer it to the Doctor so that the Doctor could magnify the 1906 San Francisco earthquake enough to destroy Earth. The Doctor thwarted her by powering his moribund TARDIS with the Gift instead. (AUDIO: The Gift)
Now calling herself the Sonomancer, Caleera travelled to Syra with the intent of destroying it. She encountered the Doctor and offered him the chance to join the Doom Coalition. He escaped using the remainder of the Gift in his mind, after which she destroyed the planet. She rescued the Eleven by teleporting him into his TARDIS. (AUDIO: The Sonomancer)
The Sonomancer and the Doctor. (AUDIO: Doom Coalition 4)
The Sonomancer uploaded herself to the Matrix and searched for the plans for the Resonance Engine, distorting her tracks to mislead the High Council. She discovered that the Doctor, Liv and Helen had safely escaped their imprisonment inside the Time Vortex by Padrac. She informed Padrac that Chancellor Jerasta had made contact with the President, after which he ordered her to destroy the Presidential TARDIS. She also wiped out the councillors who opposed Padrac's plans and tortured River Song in the Matrix.
At the Eleven's request, the Sonomancer traced the Doctor so that the Eleven could find him and kill him. (AUDIO: Songs of Love) She assisted the Eleven by negotiating with the Weeping Angels and causing a power cut in New York City. (AUDIO: The Side of the Angels)
The Sonomancer located the plans for the Resonance Engine, which Padrac then built and sealed her inside with Ladonne's help. However, she learnt of how Padrac had manipulated her life and how he did not love her after the Doctor convinced her to look into the Matrix, leading her to send a message to Liv to lower the Capitol shields and to transfer her powers to Helen, having her pilot a Battle TARDIS into the machine. Whilst the TARDIS was thrown into the Vortex, the Sonomancer was scattered across time. (AUDIO: Stop the Clock)
As the Red Lady[]
Fractured across time and searching for Padrac, the Sonomancer became known as the Red Lady, inhabiting artwork and killing the first to look upon her unless they created more art. (AUDIO: The Red Lady, Stop the Clock) Dr Francis McCallum assembled a collection of all such art after the Red Lady killed his mother and and father which Albert Kennedy donated to the National Gallery after his death.
Artwork of the Red Lady. (AUDIO: The Red Lady)
The Red Lady killed Kennedy and Professor Walter Pritchett before coming for the Doctor and Liv. The two were able to trap her by drawing a stick figure and writing a poem respectively, after which the Doctor removed the collection. (AUDIO: The Red Lady) Some works featuring the Lady remained, one of the last being kept a sealed vault in the Relic Room. (AUDIO: The Web of Time)
Eventually, the Red Lady found Padrac in the Capitol as a discolouration on his cell wall which grew. She spoke to him before he was frozen, telling him that they would be together forever. (AUDIO: Stop the Clock)
Psychological profile[]
Personality[]
At the Academy, Caleera was prone to getting lost in her head. She was frustrated by the social consequences of her powers, despairing when she was told that they would have to be removed and angrily reacting to a humble job assignment that would ostensibly protect against future flare-ups. (AUDIO: Scenes From Her Life)
Caleera grew into a cold-hearted, devious woman. She enjoyed sharing Jerasta's pain with River (AUDIO: Songs of Love) and saw nothing wrong with destroying planets with the Gift, telling the Doctor that Syra would be the "first of many". (AUDIO: The Sonomancer) She was a skilled manipulator, freeing herself from the neural amplifier by targeting Helen's shared frustration at being held back in life and the Doctor's willingness to help people he met on his travels. (AUDIO: Scenes From Her Life) She valued transactional relationships above all else, disposing of people when they had served her purposes (AUDIO: Scenes From Her Life, Songs of Love) and taunting them when they complained. (AUDIO: Scenes From Her Life, The Gift) To this end, she made the Doctor swear an oath before giving him the Gift. (AUDIO: The Gift)
Caleera emerged from her misery with a massive, fragile ego. She angrily reacted to Padrac's implication that River had deceived her into believing that she wanted to join the Doom Coalition. (AUDIO: Songs of Love) She nurtured passionate grudges against Sepulchra, Sternbar, and the Psychosurgeon, kidnapping them during the chaos caused by the Eleven, bitterly quoting them as she psychically manhandled them, allowing the Time Vortex to warp their minds on the assumption that nobody would miss them, and gleefully killing them by throwing them into the Vortex. She developed something of a god complex after exiting the amplifier, mocking her kidnappees for believing that they could suppress her strength and gloating about her newfound ability to command "every atom [and] every particle". (AUDIO: Scenes From Her Life) As the Sonomancer, she boasted about her skills with the Gift to the Doctor, calling herself "the blazing sun" to his firefly, and rescued the Eleven from Syra's destruction while noting her transcendence into sound, energy, and life. (AUDIO: The Sonomancer)
Caleera was fanatically devoted to Padrac, whom she constantly called "my love". (AUDIO: Scenes From Her Life, et al.) She expressed a desire to rule by his side. (AUDIO: Scenes From Her Life, Songs of Love) She gave up the opportunity to kill the Doctor so that he could have the pleasure, (AUDIO: Scenes From Her Life) killed the majority of the High Council to make him happy, tortured River for deceiving him, (AUDIO: Songs of Love) and was willing to undergo the pain of powering the Resonance Engine as long as Padrac was sure. (AUDIO: Stop the Clock) Her flashes of independence were stifled by his cycle of anger and compassion. She refused to admit to River that he was abusive, leading River to remark that she was rationalising his behaviour as the by-product of stress. (AUDIO: Songs of Love)
Helen empathised with Caleera's experiences of being denied the opportunities that others easily received. (AUDIO: Scenes From Her Life) The Doctor scoffed at the idea of Caleera being of sound body and mind, declaring her a poor judge of such in others. (AUDIO: The Gift) Padrac found Caleera charming, albeit a bad enough rambler that he shut off his Matrix access point to shut her up. (AUDIO: Songs of Love) The Eleven was pleased by Caleera's powers, proclaiming as he rescued her from Syra that she had exceeded her potential as the Doom Coalition's "ultimate weapon". (AUDIO: The Sonomancer) He considered her an imbecile as a person, though he concealed his contempt with a convenient cough. (AUDIO: Songs of Love)
Skills[]
Caleera's psychic powers were such that they concerned most segments of Gallifreyan society. Even before she amplified them, she was able to damage her classroom using telekinesis. As the Sonomancer, she could destroy planets, (AUDIO: Scenes From Her Life, The Sonomancer) transfer her powers to others, (AUDIO: The Gift) and psychically cause others pain. (AUDIO: The Gift, The Sonomancer)
Being uploaded to the Matrix further augmented the Sonomancer's abilities. She could upload others into the Matrix, broadcast pain that she had never personally experienced, and reach outside the Matrix to destroy Time Lords and TARDISes alike. (AUDIO: Songs of Love)
Appearance[]
Caleera was beautiful and had red hair. (AUDIO: The Red Lady, Stop the Clock) She wore green, which River Song thought complemented her hair rather well. (AUDIO: Songs of Love)
.jpg){kind=link}