Spirit

Gallifrey #2.2

Released: May 2005

Listened: 3/30/21

Because series 2 is longer than series 1, there’s room for a breather episode like this one, to develop characters and set up the rest of the story. The Pandora threat is temporarily contained (or the K-9s are containing it, which writes them out of the story), so Romana takes Leela for a bit of R&R, to a planet designed as a retreat for heads of state. Romana’s not dumb, so she chooses a place with lots of wilderness and natural beauty, as an olive branch to Leela. Unfortunately, she burns any goodwill she’d earned by stomping all over Leela’s religious beliefs -- not Xoanon, but a general indiginous-sounding belief in a guiding spirit, which is likely why she’s never mentioned it before. The vacation is interrupted by a Time Lord who’s so badly injured he’s unrecognizable and can’t communicate, but also won’t regenerate, and no one knows why. Leela and Romana get pulled into a psychic experience that swaps parts of their personas -- Leela gains Romana’s knowledge, while Romana gets Leela’s instincts (which come with heightened senses). It’s not a total body swap, but each actor gets to behave a bit like the other. In practice, that means Louise Jameson gets to say a lot of long words and be irritated, which is a lot better than Lalla Ward, who adopts Leela’s speech patterns in a way that sounds like a bad parody. A body swap is a cliche sci-fi way of getting two disparate characters to appreciate the other’s point of view, and really shouldn’t be necessary here, as both characters are smarter than that, but it serves the purpose. And it’s good to get away from the intrigue for a while.