Gallifrey: Intervention Earth

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15
JKRevell
Jamie RevellSupporter

Set an unspecified, but clearly very long, time after the events of the previous stories in the Gallifrey series this is a one-off story with little connection to its predecessors. It concerns a temporal anomaly that, as so many of them do, threatens the continued existence of the universe, and the Time Lords' efforts to prevent it. Of the original main actors in the series, only Sean Carlsen remains as Coordinator Narvin, with Ace replacing Leela in the action role, and Juliet Landau taking over from Lalla Ward as (the Third) Romana.

In fact, it's really Narvin who holds this together, thrust into an active investigation for which his usual scheming self isn't particularly suited. This results in him coming off as less effective than usual, falling relatively easy prey to the main villain. Of the other two main characters, Ace is absent for long stretches, as the others try to figure out where she's got to. Landau does a reasonable job as Romana, a gentler character than her previous selves, but not really explored in any depth.

As the title suggests, the story is set as much on Earth as on Gallifrey, and there's a fun detour to Late Neolithic Britain. While there is some political skullduggery at the Capitol, the story is more focused on the action of hunting down the villain, although the audio format does result in more of this being resolved by dialogue than might have been in the case in a book or visual medium. One of the weaknesses, however, is an unresolved ending that leaves things hanging without particularly going anywhere. That it has nothing much to do with the rest of the series, and deals with (mostly) different characters, doesn't help and the story, while decent in its own right, feels a little disjointed.

December 22, 2018Report this review