Neverland

Main Range #33

Released: 12 July 2002

Listened: 8/7/21

After quite some time, the issue of Charley’s temporal anomaly status finally comes to a head. The Time Lords, led by Romana with Coordinator Vansel along, shanghai the Doctor and Charley to Gallifrey. The Doctor is still denying the severity of the problem, but they show him a Matrix projection of time going sideways, including Romana as the Imperiatrix of Gallifrey (see the Gallifrey series), so he agrees to their plan. It turns out that Charley is some kind of living dimensional nexus, and they use her to travel to a universe of anti-time, where time doesn’t run in order and cause and effect don’t exist...sort of. Because it’s really hard to tell a story without cause and effect, there’s an oasis of regular time hiding in the “antiverse,” which turns out to be Rassilon’s TARDIS. Rassilon, played here by Don Warrington (who would later play the President in “Rise of the Cybermen” on TV) came to the antiverse aeons ago to fight Zagreus, a mythical being that destroys time. Having Rassilon actually appear in a story as a character was probably more stunning in 2002, before he’d turned up on TV multiple times, but there you are. As usual, though, things aren’t what they seem to be. The second half of the story seems a bit over-long, as all the characters spend the whole time in a state of high peril, with lots of shouting. When it’s over, Gallifrey is safe, and so is the universe, but Charley and the Doctor are definitely not. In real time, it would be nearly 18 months before listeners found out what happened. The story is intended to be a blockbuster, but like a lot of early Big Finish stories that are intended to be “significant,” this one is just louder, without really being better.