Intervention Earth

Gallifrey #7

Released: 2 February 2015

Listened: 5/2/21

At the end of the last series, it seemed that all concerned considered the series to be finished, and certainly Gary Russell did. But two years later, in 2015, a new and different version of Gallifrey appeared, by Scott Handcock and David Llewellyn. There’s no sign of Leela, K-9, or Romana II; instead, we’ve got Ace and Trey, but Narvin is still around. This is obviously set later in Gallifrey’s history, as Romana is on her last term in office, and Ace has been a CIA agent for some time, entrusted to work solo, although the story is deliberately vague on how Ace arrived on Gallifrey or rose up the ranks. It’s also a single four-part story encompassing a bit less than two hours (and no extras), the length of a single Main Range story. The parts are split fairly evenly, with Part 1 featuring Ace and the sort of adventure/exploration you’d expect she gets up to, Part 2 focused on Romana and a “lite” version of the intrigue that Gallifrey was known for, Part 3 with Narvin stumbling rather poorly through a rescue mission, and Part 4 supposedly tying it all together. Stephen Thorne features as Omega, but doesn’t really have all that many lines, as Omega is mostly inhabiting other bodies in this story. Still, the lines he has are properly booming and impressive. Unfortunately, the big threat is never really contextualized, and the confrontation with Omega seems fairly by-the-numbers, featuring both a psychic battle of wills, and dramatic TARDIS piloting, two tropes that rarely come off well on audio. Worst of all, it ends on a cliffhanger, with an absurd deus ex machina escape for one character. If this was intended as a launch for a new era of the Gallifrey series, it comes off rather half-baked.