Mother Tongue

Gallifrey: Time War #3.3

Released: 20 February 2020

Listened: 5/22/21

So where has Leela been this whole time? Glad you asked, because this story is Leela-centric. It uses the trope where Leela wakes up in a strange place, where she’s a wife and mother, and everybody seems to know her, except she has no memory of this life. But in a twist from the usual trope, the people here are accustomed to “visitors,” and worse, the visitors bounce around to different points in time. (What exactly happens to the “hosts” when the visitor isn’t having a vision is unexplained. The hosts don’t seem to exist as separate people.) Despite the natives knowing about visitors, they’re awfully slow to spot one, even when a person they’ve known for years starts acting strangely. And as usual with these sorts of timey-wimey stories, because Leela is experiencing events out of order, she makes some assumptions about what’s going on in the future, and how to use that knowledge in the past, and that turns out to be disastrously wrong. Writer Helen Goldwyn isn’t so concerned about the plot details, but she is concerned about what happens to a mother who abruptly sees her son’s life at different points, and tries to prepare him for what’s to come. Leela isn’t a parent, but Louise Jameson brilliantly plays her getting over her initial reluctance and quick bonding with her son. Like all the stories in this set so far, it doesn’t seem to connect to anything else, but with Jameson’s acting to appreciate, I don’t mind.