Jim Sangster makes a good point:
‘When the Doctor leaves the Randomiser behind on Argolis, Romana is concerned that it means they’ll never know where they’re going next – which is surely the point of the Randomiser…’
Jim Sangster, Escape to Danger, escapetodanger.net/2021/06/
And, just to prove he's not stretching a point, here's the relevant bit:
‘“We can't leave the Randomizer here.” “Why not?” “We'll never know where the TARDIS is going to turn up next.” “Good,” replied the Doctor. “Neither will the Black Guardian.” “Apart from Randomizers, he went on, I am getting sick and tired of bogeymen with ideas above their station. The cosmos is full of them.”’
David Fisher, Doctor Who and the Leisure Hive
And here, just to make clear this isn't a carry-over of any confusion in the scripts, is the very clear opposite being said in the TV episodes:
ROMANA: The Randomiser.
DOCTOR: What about it?
ROMANA: Well, we can't just leave it here.
DOCTOR: Why not? I don't like not knowing where we're going to turn up next.
ROMANA: Neither does the Black Guardian. That is the point of the thing. The Black Guardian's a real threat.
DOCTOR: Some galactic hobo with ideas above his station. The cosmos is full of them. Anyway, there's been enough randomising on this job.
What I find difficult is trying to work out exactly what David Fisher thought the Randomiser was. If you look at the picture above, there's no visual clues whatsoever, so there is only the name to go on and that name, if it means anything, means to make things random.
My first instinct was that he thought it was how the Doctor and Romana made their journeys appear random, scrambling their navigation somehow. Or perhaps, the Doctor and Romana would decide on a destination and then the Randomiser would take them there as if by random chance. That would make sense considering their journey to Argolis at the start of the story.
The problem with that is that Romana isn't concerned with the Black Guardian finding them, she's concerned about their being unable to plan their journeys.
Which means that Fisher thinks the Randomiser is specifically the thing that allows purposeful navigation. Why?
Also, now I spell it out, if that's what Fisher thinks the Randomiser is, why would he think the Doctor's sick and tired of it. Is he staking out a position that what the Doctor wants is random meanderings and he's fed up of being able to go where he wants to go?
That, at least, would vaguely tie in with this look at Doctor Who and the Leisure Hive, which unconvincingly argues Fisher was laying out a foundation for an alternative 1980s to the one we got...
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