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Life has calmed down on Gallifrey. Well, apart from President
Romana opening up the Academy to aliens. Unfortunately, deep
below the Capitol, Leela, confused and morose over the truth
about her husband Andred, disturbs a malevolent power - a
force that wants to be reborn by any and every means available,
including Romana's past life...
It's only the first instalment of the new series of Gallifrey,
but already I am more enthused by it than I was by the previous
series. Mysterious connections between President Romana (Lalla
Ward) and a long-dead tyrant variously called Pandora and
the Imperiatrix promise much intrigue over the remaining four
chapters. No, I'm not psychic, but the titles of the forthcoming
seventh and ninth chapters, respectively Pandora and
Imperiatrix, offer some small clues!
It's
also good to know that Inquisitor Darkel (Lynda Bellingham)
will have a continuing role to play, since she is deliciously
cynical in this instalment, thanks to Gary Russell's script
and Bellingham's performance. Darkel has made it her goal
to rid Gallifrey of its interfering president. Meanwhile,
Ian Hallard is endearingly wet as the new castellan, Wynter,
while Ward's Romana is as wittily pedantic as she ever was.
Most
exciting of all is the guest-starring role played by Mary
Tamm in flashbacks to Romana's previous incarnation. Russell
offers an explanation for the Time Lady's apparently frivolous
regeneration at the beginning of Destiny of the Daleks.
I'm not sure that this was necessary, since it has already
been explained by the short story The Lying Old Witch in
the Wardrobe in Big Finish's own collection Short Trips:
Companions, but I suppose the two stories don't necessarily
cancel each other out.
Romana's
controversial decision to allow students from other time-sensitive
races to attend Gallifrey's Academy could be interpreted as
a foreshadowing of events in the novel Lungbarrow,
in which the president has established alien embassies on
the planet that once forbade off-world visitors. Furthermore,
Flavia is confirmed as being Romana's predecessor, just as
she was in the New Adventures novels, while the possibility
of the regenerated Andred's (Andy Coleman) rehabilitation
offers me hope that he and Leela (Louise Jameson) might some
day have their baby. On the other hand, Russell gives Andred's
familial House a different name (Deeptree) to the one that
Marc Platt gave it in Lungbarrow (RedLooms), so maybe
I should resign myself to the fact that these narratives will
never truly co-exist.
Despite
various mispronunciations of the name Romanadvoratrelundar,
great entertainment value lies in Lies - and that's
the truth!
Richard
McGinlay
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