1. Celestial Intervention by David Llewellyn
The Temporal Powers are under threat. It is only a matter of time before the Daleks attack.
Now CIA Coordinator, Romana must protect the interests of Gallifrey, while dealing with demands from President Livia and an increasingly powerful War Council.
As allies are whittled away, the Time Lords are drawn into a conflict they can no longer avoid…
2. Soldier Obscura by Tim Foley
Braxiatel has always planned for contingencies. As hostilities escalate, he takes Ace into a deadly region of spacetime – The Obscura – to locate an ancient research station.
But Ace is about to learn more about Irving Braxiatel than anyone should know.
Some soldiers are ready for this fight, but some will not make it through the first round.
3. The Devil You Know by Scott Handcock
The Time War has begun in earnest, and Romana must think the unthinkable. For a most dangerous mission, she selects the most dangerous warrior – the Master.
But he will not be alone. Leela accompanies her old enemy as they begin an unusual interrogation.
What does Finnian Valentine know? And can Leela and the Master ever truly be on the same side?
4. Desperate Measures by Matt Fitton
The Dalek Emperor attacks a vital Time Lord outpost. Victory would be a devastating blow to Gallifrey.
Romana is caught in the machinations of a President who sees control slipping away. Is it time to bargain with the War Council, or perhaps to parlay with even more dangerous parties?
The Time War has barely begun, and for Gallifrey, desperate times are already here…
GALLIFREY: TIME WAR: CELESTIAL INTERVENTION
My biggest complaint about both the Gallifrey and the Time War ranges from Big Finish relates to their relative lack of ambition: one deals with the most ancient and powerful race in the universe, the other deals with the largest conflict in history (multiple histories, in fact), and both represent their subject matter as relatively ordinary. And now they’re finally joining forces in “Gallifrey: Time War,” a prospect that admittedly did not fill me with confidence. While the first story in the set, “Celestial Intervention” by David Llewellyn, confirms some of my fears, it’s good enough to overcome the limitation.
There’s a theme running through “Celestial Intervention” about the importance of accepting refugees held against the possibility of damaging security. This is a political debate happening in the real world, and here it comes up when the Daleks destroy an entire civilization, leaving only five thousand survivors out of billions. These survivors implore the Time Lords to give them asylum lest the Daleks hunt them down. Llewellyn’s script addresses this with appropriate seriousness, but one argument troubled me: several characters contend quite seriously that Gallifrey does not have the infrastructure to support these refugees, and that admitting them would cause social upheaval when the food ran out. This took me straight out of the story: we are expected to believe that the ancient, powerful society of Time Lords, capable of manipulating the course of history itself, and that importantly is not yet at war with the Daleks, does not have sufficient resources to take care of an extra five thousand people? I’m not sure they understand how small a number that is: most countries on Earth could support an extra 5000 people right this moment, yet the entire Time Lord society cannot? This seems like a small point, and in isolation it is, but it’s reflective of how the Gallifrey range has long since stripped any feeling of grandeur from Time Lord society. Remember, this is the same society that will soon prosecute a war so large and so terrible that they will be hated throughout the universe for being just as bad as the Daleks… and the food has run out before the war even starts?
All that aside, though, “Celestial Intervention” is a good political drama. The government has been divided into three equal parts: the High Council, the War Council, and the CIA, and all must agree on major courses of action. The President (Pippa Bennett-Warner), however, is clearly in cahoots with the War Council and its leader, General Trave (Paul Marc Davis), which leaves Romana, Narvin, and the rest of the CIA on the outside looking in. The plot is small-scale – it basically involves Romana, Narvin, and Leela discovering s secret War Council plan – but it expertly captures the increased feelings of paranoia swirling around Gallifrey as war grows inexorably closer. It’s a very good series opener that lays the groundwork for something that could grow much more significant in rapid fashion, and I enjoyed it.
7/10
GALLIFREY: TIME WAR: SOLDIER OBSCURA
The middle two stories in this set are the best, and it’s no coincidence that they follow a similar format: throwing two well-known characters together and seeing what happens. The first of these, and second in the set, is “Soldier Obscura” by Tim Foley. In this story, Braxiatel and Ace journey to a Time Lord research station in the Obscura, a warped region of space-time, on a CIA mission to recover a weapon for the war. The Obscura is so dangerous that merely looking upon it drives the viewer insane, something we see put horrifyingly to the test as the story progresses. Brax is at his most morally questionable in this story: from the beginning, he has his own agenda, and he’s so opaque in the face of Ace’s questioning that he rivals the seventh Doctor in his frustrating refusals to answer. One of his old Time Lord instructors, Danna (Zulema Dene), is the lone person on the station – and she’s taken to drawing nature murals on the shutters as she cannot look outside. She’s lost her edge over the years, and that means her usefulness to Brax’s scheme is reduced – but the Daleks are en route and all three of them must be prepared to fight. I won’t venture too far into spoiler territory, but Brax is utterly ruthless here. When Ace challenges him, calling him a coward, his response is terrifying. Furthermore, Ace’s fate really underscores how things have changed with the arrival of the Time War: we don’t know what happened to these characters during the war, and so Big Finish is free to show real, frightening consequences. Great stuff.
8/10
GALLIFREY: TIME WAR: THE DEVIL YOU KNOW
The third story in the set, and the second excellent one, is “The Devil You Know” by Scott Handcock, which once again takes us away from Gallifrey and into the company of two characters we know: the so-called War Master and Leela. This works for two reasons: first, these are two compelling characters, one that we know intimately and one that we’re still getting to know. Second, they are played by two exceptional actors, and Derek Jacobi and Louise Jameson are fantastic together. As with most other Time War stories, this yet again involves the search for a secret weapon, but Handcock has a fantastic conceit for the story. Finnian Valentine (Bryan Dick), the fighter whose secrets they seek, has been split into two people by the effects of the Time War, each with a different personality. And so Leela and the Master separate the two Valentines and interrogate them separately. Leela isn’t very good at it, of course: she’s too honest, too open, and too quick to anger. The Master, conversely, is almost too good – but then he’s not even there to complete Romana’s mission, he’s there to serve his own ends. As events spiral out of control and the Master gets his way, the story doesn’t pull any punches: under the genteel exterior, this Master is a ruthless killer like all of his fellow incarnations, and he does exactly what you’d expect him to in this situation. The ending is fantastic, too – you know where it’s heading but it’s still shocking when it gets there. This set is so unlike Big Finish: they’re taking pieces off the board and making consequential decisions, and as a result it feels like the most “important” new series material they’ve released.
9/10
GALLIFREY: TIME WAR: DESPERATE MEASURES
“Desperate Measures,” by Matt Fitton, is a disappointing end to the Gallifrey: Time War set, largely because it abandons the daring, dangerous feel of the other stories in lieu of much more standard Gallifrey-related intrigue. This story, more like any other, feels like an exercise in box-checking, designed to get everything to line up smoothly with the TV series. We all remember that Rassilon unexpectedly returned in “The End of Time,” but at least to me, “what political circumstances on Gallifrey led to them resurrecting him?” is not a question worthy of an hour-long dramatization. Once again we’re into the weeds of Time Lord electoral politics, and once again it’s not interesting because they’re making the rules up as they go along. It’s also a sledgehammer-obvious satire of the recent US presidential election, with a highly-qualified female candidate foiled at every turn by an inexplicably popular warmongering fanatic. This would perhaps have been more interesting had the election lasted longer than about ten minutes of the overall running time, but as it stands, it’s just eye-rolling. The lessons of the previous two stories – take interesting characters and put them in challenging situations – aren’t followed here, and therefore the finish feels rote and uninspired. There’s certainly nothing awful here; Fitton’s scripts are always competent. But he rarely produces truly inspired material, and this is another example of that trend.
5/10
Scott Handcock directs the set, and the sound design and music are handled throughout by Russell McGee and Ioan Morris respectively. The production is generally excellent – Big Finish is proud of this release and rightfully so.