Appropriation

Gallifrey #3.3

Released: July 2006

Listened: 4/7/21

With the war nominally over, we have to get back to what Gallifrey supposedly does best: scheming! As a result of “Warfare,” the Matrix is destroyed, and Romana is too injured to carry out her duties as President. (Except she declared herself Imperiatrix a while back? Or was that just a ruse?) Darkel, still the Worst Ever, is trying to maneuver her way into the Presidency despite the fact that she’s actually under arrest for sedition. And thanks to Chancellor Valyes being under Darkel’s thumb and pulling some constitutional shenanigans, she actually succeeds for a bit. This whole back-and-forth about who’s really the president is a lot less comfortable after the American 2020 election; there’s even a question raised about whether a President can self-pardon. In the background of all of this, several other temporal powers are on the verge of declaring war on Gallifrey, because those races had students at the Academy who haven’t been returned yet (because there was no way to get them off-planet safely during a civil war). Matthias is charged with negotiating with them, and he fails miserably, but basically keeps failing upwards as everybody else sticks more responsibilities on him, to the point where he declares himself Vice President, and therefore President, on the strangest of technicalities. And it’s still not clear exactly whose side he’s on, or whether all of this happened to him by accident. At least Narvin finally declares his loyalty to Romana, but only because the alternatives are much worse. For a bonus bit of fun, Colin Baker has an uncredited cameo as Commander Maxil, but that’s not actually important to the plot. Leela has almost nothing to do this time around, unfortunately. I’ve completely lost the thread of what’s going on in this series. Although I guess it’s realistic that the Time Lords would squabble rather than unite in the face of a new war, that doesn’t make it interesting.