The Last Days of Freme

Gallifrey: War Room #1.1

Released: 23 August 2022

Listened: 7/4/23

Oh, Big Finish. Despite the Gallifrey series having a perfectly suitable wrap-up in the last story, they can’t leave it alone. Bounce forward to 2022, and the War Room series was released, which I assume is going to run for several boxed sets. The good news is this isn’t really a prequel anymore; we’re smack in the middle of the war. Strangely Sexy Rassilon (Richard Armitage) is completely bonkers by this point, and has an iron grip on Time Lord society. But he’s too focused on his “Ascension” plan, and basically leaves the running of the war to others. The bad news is that Romana is off the board, both K-9’s are dead, and Narvin is who-knows-where, so that leaves poor Leela imprisoned by characters you’d rather she wasn’t hanging around with. The Time Lords think Leela has some uses, either as a scout, or as a guinea pig for some mad scientist to mess around with her DNA. They go the “scout” route first, sending her off on a mission with Veklin and the General, and when those two are the sympathetic characters, we’re not in a good place. Incidentally, the Carolyn Pickles version of Ollistra is around, somehow resurrected from the Matrix. The Jacqueline Pearce version is mentioned to be out there as well, but as Jacqueline Pearce is no longer around, they need to write around that. (I think her Ollistra wouldn’t put up with Rassilon’s crap, anyway.) It’s possible we’re up to the War Doctor in his personal timeline; hard to tell. Anyway, Leela’s mission is to make sure a planet is destroyed with no survivors, so the Daleks can’t force them to ally later in the timestream. You can imagine what Leela thinks of that, and the mission goes sideways almost immediately, so credit to Lou Morgan for not dragging that out. The leader of the Fremians is an oddly trusting sort, willing to spend a lot of time expositioning to Leela while he’s supposed to be planning a planetary evacuation, but maybe that’s just what his people are like. It seems like this is going to be an awfully dark and grim story, but it does lighten up once Leela starts to get some agency of her own. Plus, y’know, Beth Chalmers as Veklin is rarely a bad thing.