Forever

Gallifrey #4.4

Released: March 2011

Listened: 4/24/21

And we’ve got yet another alternative Gallifrey, once again unpleasant. This version is fairly similar to the “mainline” Gallifrey, except everyone is slightly more vicious, so Rassilon was assassinated before he finished discovering time travel, and therefore these Gallifreyans don’t have it. They’ve got a bunch of slaves, too, in case we weren’t clear that they’re bad guys. Unfortunately, the way back to the Axis is unstable, so Romana is willing to risk giving these people time travel so that her friends can get home. It’s part of the theme that Romana’s self-doubt and shame is leading her to be more and more reckless. The pointless cameos this time are a one-liner from Colin Baker, because the Doctor is apparently a video commentator in this world, and a longer, but equally unimportant, role for Carole Ann Ford as a kindly slave, but she doesn’t really do anything. Leela stages a revolt, and Narvin seems to be reaching levels of near friendliness with the other two, but he’s still got a pragmatic streak when it comes to morality. It turns out that Rassilon had a very good reason to deny these people time travel, and that reason ends with the three main characters sealing themselves off from the Axis permanently, ending the episode and the series itself on either a cliffhanger or a serious down note, depending on how you view it. Given that Series 3 ended in nearly universal destruction, this series didn’t add much of anything except to write out some characters, and keep the rest stuck in a rather depressing cycle. It’s a poor return after five years of silence, and it would be another couple of years before there was any more of it.