Gallifrey: Time War - Volume One

 

Gallifrey: Time War - Volume One

Gallifrey has long been a Big Finish range with a reputation of high tier excellence, which doesn't necessarily vibe with my feelings of Gallifreyan stories previously. I don't really love the overly political take that certain classic who stories chose to use with it. That's of course, when it's bad. I don't know how to describe it, because It's somewhat odd how good Gallifrey Time War is despite this. That's because it has a clear vision and a goal of a story arc, and even if the rest of the series doesn't turn out well, I'd still reccomend Gallifrey Time War Volume One as one of the best boxsets Big Finish have put out, as it's got a four-story arc that works excellently. It's got structure, each story intersects with the larger whole really beautifully. Gallifrey Time War One is the story of the fall of Romana and the rise of Rassilon and how that happened. And I'll be blunt - it's genius. 

I wasn't expecting that, necessarily. The series was an impulse buy. I love Romana, I love Leela, I love Ace, I like what I've seen of Braxiatel and Narvin in other Big Finish ranges, and Intervention Earth and Enemy Lines were just two random Big Finish stories I happened to listen to at a Big Finish event online, I'd never really thought much of grabbing Gallifrey, and I didn't expect it to be good. I expected it to be rather in the vein of Missy, The Paternoster Gang or UNIT, series that I grab because I enjoy the characters within it rather than the quality of the ultimate output. But Gallifrey Time War is more comparable to something like the better areas of Doom Coalition or Aliens Among Us. While each episode is individual, it systematically improves each next one, because they're all working on the same thing with a consistent creative vision. Let me just explain...

Celestial Intervention by David Llewellyn 

Celestial Intervention, as an introduction into the world and stakes of Gallifrey during the Time War, works quite well. It is ostensibly a political story, but I find that this is the literal worst way to describe what Gallifrey's doing. It implies that it's boring as hell. It may be technically political, but for the most part there's this visceral focus on drama and conflict. No one gets along. The plot winds up to the Time War slowly with the story's plot revolving around Romana, the head of the Celestial Intervention Agency, butting heads with Trave, the head of the War Council. There's a lot of slimy backstabbing and headbutting involved here. It doesn't feel like a civil political thing going on with a lot of niceties, which I think makes the story work all the better. It's really just incredibly good drama from a standalone point - Gallifrey Time War makes the smart move to stay away from the front lines of the Time War as much as possible, because either 1. That'd be impossible to show or 2. It'd be boring BLAM BLAM BLAM scenes. It focuses on the people behind organizing the war and how Romana tries to get behind people's backs by sending Leela on a clandestine mission. The whole story has this sense of danger to it, and you feel like Romana sending Leela on this mission is incredibly dangerous. This sets up one of the central themes of the boxset - consequences. Everything in the series is about consequences of our various main character's actions. Doctor Who isn't running from location to location in the time war. Just like say, Deep Space Nine from Star Trek, when Romana makes a decision, it can come and bite her back a bunch of episodes later. Celestial Intervention may be setup, but it is really good set up. A very appealing start: 8/10

Soldier Obscura by Tim Foley

Soldier Obscura is the clear high point of the set, setting up the boxset's deal as an anthology series. While Romana, Leela and Narvin were all in the first episode, Soldier Obscura is a four-actor piece, featuring Ace, Braxiatel, The Daleks and a guest star time lord, Danna. That's it. It's a single one episode deal, getting away from the political side and taking us to a secret operation, something else that the series focuses on regularly. Soldier Obscura focuses on a high concept time war nonsense thing that could only ever exist on audio - an abandoned region of spacetime so infected by paradoxes and time damage that it drives mad whatever looks at it. It's ostensibly a horror story, with Ace boarding a near abandoned boarded up space station where a single dot of light from the outside vortex of madness cannot get in. Ace is wondering whether she can trust Brax, and then the Daleks show up. The Daleks are almost the best thing about this individual story. There's something to be said about the level of danger and menace demonstrated by just a few of them here. It's very much not a SHOOT SHOOT BLAM BLAM nonsense story like I've been scathing of previously. Ace is trying to survive, and she's stuck for the first time with a mentor who might just be more dysfunctional than the Seventh Doctor. It's an interesting way to do this, and it's astonishing how reinvigorated Ace is without The Seventh Doctor weighing her down. They've had so many stories together they sort of ran out of things to do with that relationship, so it's exciting to see her on her own terms, and this is certainly Ace at her best. I really like her as an agent like this, and the result of the tale is just mystifyingly good, with Miles Richardson giving a performance that any Doctor or Master actor would be proud of. Braxiatel and Ace are a combination that work almost unrealistically well. In addition, forwarding the themes of the set very well by leaving the whole thing in a magnificent state of disrepair. The final moments are jaw-dropping. Utterly blew me away: 10/10

The Devil You Know by Scott Handcock

As if to say, "yeah, I know the previous story is hard to top," Scott Handcock just decides to give us what's essentially literally just Louise Jameson and Sir Derek Jacobi for an hour. It's a testament to Louise Jameson's skill as an actress that she may deliver the stronger performance of the two, although that's not to say that Jacobi isn't on top form. The story is similar in structure to Soldier Obscura, with Romana appearing only briefly at the start to send our two protagonists, one trustworthy and one not, on a dangerous time mission with a pretty fascinating high concept that is doomed to end in disaster. The Devil You Know differs itself by the main focus of the story being the relationship between Leela and The Master, and it's far more of an adversarial game of cat and mouse that leaves you constantly wondering which of them is in control. The other character in the series is the interesting guest star Finnian Valentine, as played by Torchwood's own Adam, Bryan Dick. The deal with Finnian Valentine is that a time war weapon breached his life between two parallel individuals who cannot coexist, causing a paradox. A lot of the story is just Leela and The Master interchangably talking to the Finnians, trying to manipulate both them, and each other.  It's really good. The Devil You Know is also in addition, designed to be slotted between Beneath The Viscoid and The Good Master from set one of Only the Good. As a matter of fact, it works so well that as soon as it ended, I immediately turned The Good Master on for a relisten. That's a compliment I could give very few stories, so I cannot deny that this one utterly and completely works - 9/10

Desperate Measures by Matt Fitton

Desperate Measures is a title that evokes so much, especially considering the already desperate nature of the majority of this set. It's also completely accurate, because Desperate Measures is where shit gets real. An isolated Romana and Narvin move back towards politics, as a tired President Livia attempts to enact a scheme to remove herself from the war itself. This leads towards a political game that I could not see coming. Everyone in this story is REALLY playing some 5D chess. The viciousness of the story really works, and the political aspect isn't annoying, but in actuality, incredibly engaging. This is a very good episode, and it has a lot to do in it's runtime, but it also suffers from the Big Finish "time bloat," where a story that could be told in around fifty minutes is this time spent in sixty-five. While this is still stronger than most episodes that suffer from time-bloat, I can't deny that a tighter result would have made the jaw-dropping cliffhanger (if you haven't seen the Gallifrey Time War Two cover) even better with it's sense of crushing inevitability and doom. That being said, by the end of this story, you will definitely understand the brilliance of what this set has been going towards. I guess you can consider me a Gallifrey convert now. Goddamn it, my paycheck. 8/10