Chapter 1:
Why has a TARDIS only got a day's air supply left, at most. This isn't Planet of the bloody Daleks, y'know.
Colonel Trey of the Fifth Battalion? Isn't 'Trey' that stupid name Romana's future self gives herself? SHE'S the one who murders Ace?
The Time Lords can execute you for high treason if your actions lead to an unforeseen war even if your actions were entirely innocent? Why didn't they execute the Doctor for causing the Time War in Genesis, then?
Romana's excuse for going on a suicide mission is rather on the flimsy side. Does she WANT to die? (I wouldn't blame her, ANYTHING to get away from the Gallifrey audios...)
'And of all the friends I have met on all my travels, I'm glad to face this [suicide mission] with you' Leela tells Romana. Is this a backhanded way of saying 'DIE, •••••'? Cos it's not really feeling amusing and ironic as it did when Four said something similar to Jago and Litefoot.
What DID Leela do that was so undiplomatic? And did we hear it?
Romana's suicide mission would be a lot more moving if we hadn't just seen her future self murdering Ace. (And Narvin but my objection in THAT case is not murdering him a few centuries ago.)
Why does Romana assume that there'll be a war between Gallifrey and the Monan Host? They've no evidence that the Time Lords were the ones to sabotage their ship. And why is she bothered about it, given that she thinks the black hole will engulf Gallifrey anyway?
Oh, how lucky, Brax has just popped up after an absence of a few centuries and persuades Romana to rewrite an undesirable future (and, let's face it, the Juliet Landau Romana is a a VERY undesirable future) by not doing the noble self-sacrifice thing after all. To hell with the Monan/Time Lord War or Gallifrey being engulfed in a black hole! Let's just chillax about such minor quibbles!
And, of course, all those tears I shed for poor executed Ace were a waste of time...Oh wait! I didn't shed any tears for executed Ace! Cos I was quite sure she'd be resurrected by the end of the story! (How foolishly pessimistic of me not to expect it to be by the end of the FIRST EPISODE...)
Why didn't they execute the Doctor for causing the Time War in Genesis, then?
Because that was really THEIR fault and they didn't want that little bit of information to come out.
True, but since when have Time Lords been REASONABLE about such things? And given how much Our Hero screwed up that mission - putting his own stupid conscience above the future of the universe - there are times I feel like putting him up against the wall myself. (Him AND Sarah. Stop ARGUING with him and just GRAB THOSE WIRES, woman!)
Chapter 2:
'She's unerringly loyal' - ACE? To the TIME LORDS? WHY, for heaven's sake!
Why would the Monans suspect Gallifrey of engineering a virus to blow their ship up into a black hole that'll swallow Gallifrey? The Time Lords are thick but they're not THAT thick.
'If she was sent far from Gallifrey, she could never be sent to Earth' - yeah, cos it's not as if Ace would have a TARDIS that could get her back to Gallifrey OR Earth in a heartbeat...oh, wait...
'If the High Council had a different President, perhaps -' 'I have fought long and hard to maintain this presidency' - well, QUITE. There must be a million other ways to alter the timeline, there's no WAY Romana's gonna fall for Brax's unsubtle attempts to unseat her -
- oh.
If you want to stop the Monans feeling that Gallifrey is responsible for blowing up their ship, possibly the Gallifreyan President announcing that she's responsible for their ship blowing up isn't the way to go...
Who the hell is Lady Livia? Apart from someone helicoptered in to replace Darkel when Lynda Bellingham inconsiderately died, one assumes. And she and Romana have 'known each other far too long' since WHEN!
Since when has an outgoing President naming her successor been subject to the agreement of the High Council?
'If I appointed an ally, the process would have dragged on interminably and we can't afford that' is Romana's excuse for handing Gallifrey over to an enemy. It's not AMERICA, y'know. You don't need Congress and Senate and High Courts and all the rest of it to approve if you so much as want to scratch your nose.
'We may have foiled one plot against Gallifrey but I fear there will be others.' 'Others?' - Leela somehow contrives to sound SURPRISED. Where has she BEEN for the past eight series?
'How do we know he is telling the truth' - maybe you should have thought of that BEFORE resigning on Brax's say-so, you moron.
'There was nothing that could be done to stop the engine exploding?' 'Nothing, on my word' - ouch. I thought it was only the Doctor who was always lying through his teeth when he gave his word, but I'm starting to suspect it's a Time Lord trait.
Whatever happened to Brax having something (Pandora?) in his head that would be disastrously triggered by him returning to Gallifrey?
Ace has her own sonic screwdriver?
Chapter 3:
The transduction barrier is weakened, ergo Gallifrey is defenceless? Did they learn NOTHING from that time the tin dog (you know, the one Our Hero compared unfavourably to a hamster with a blunt penknife) put said transduction barrier out of action so every Tom, Vardan and Sontaran could come pouring through?
Gosh, Narvin's really DEAD? Well, if he STAYS dead I might even feel a bit guilty for suggesting that someone should have murdered him years ago.
'One friend coming to the assistance of another' - gods, I HATE seeing Gallifrey so weak and pathetic even though I'm always slagging it off for being weak and pathetic.
'You may have a point Plutus' - it REALLY didn't occur to PRESIDENT Livia until it was pointed out in words of one syllable that forming an alliance with the Warpwrights while Gallifrey still had something to bargain with was a better idea than waiting until AFTER the transduction barrier had failed?
'The latest battle-TARDISes' - Gallifrey has battle-TARDISes? So what was it with the 'entirely defenceless' stuff, then?
'How is that even possible' - that a hostile and newly-emptied Embassy building could leave a teleport open/have a teleport reopened to let a BLOODY BIG BOMB through to kill thousands at a new Gallifreyan President's inauguration? YOU TELL ME, Sunshine. This really IS a pathetic planet that for reasons of Darwinian principle (and also so we can stop wasting our time and money) should be put out of its misery (again. But permanently this time).
Chapter 4:
Colonel Trey of the Fifth Battalion? Isn't 'Trey' that stupid name Romana's future self gives herself? SHE'S the one who murders Ace?
Ah. Actually it's a completely different person called Trave. Did it REALLY not occur to ANYONE not to give AUDIO CHARACTERS near-identical names?
The Head of the Celestial Intervention Agency outranks the CASTELLAN? And can shut down his (presumably Presidentially-ordered) Inquiry into a devastating attack on Gallifrey?
I know that a) the Doctor regards the Castellan as a jumped-up guard and b) the Gallifrey audios have implied that there are several Castellans, but isn't he basically head of security for the entire planet and on the High Council? While the CIA should be concerning themselves merely about external affairs?
'You mean we're stuck here?' 'Unless you believe in miracles, yes' - because believing in miracles TOTALLY means there'll be a miracle popping up any minute, right?
'Time Lords would not do such a thing but I am not a Time Lord' – Leela while threatening to chuck someone off a roof. The Doctor obviously never told her about the torture he suffered at the hands of Time Lords as part of their STANDARD interrogation techniques just before he met her.
There's something fundamentally wrong about Ace as a Time Lord agent. And its not just all those terrible memories of Death Comes to Time...OR the fact that the Sarah Jane Adventures said she was running A Charitable Earth ON Earth. And deep down Big Finish knows it - even when they adapted the Lost Story where Ace was SUPPOSED to go off to the Time Lord Academy they chickened out of her ACTUALLY doing so (Thin Ice).
Plus she's still saying 'Wicked!' all the time. I don't exactly want Big Finish to go through another attempt to stop Ace being so childish cos I'm scarred for life from 'It's time to grow up - CALL ME MCSHANE!' but not saying 'Wicked!' might be...nice.
Chapter 5:
Ace is DEAD? Yeah, like you haven't played THAT card before.
'Should hold long enough for you to investigate' – how dare Brax inform Romana that SHE'S the one who's gonna risk her neck investigating...whatever-this-is (I've already forgotten)? Who does he think he IS?
Chapter 6:
So Leela in the alternative timeline/universe whatever goes to Legion (WHY?!) and also lives to a ripe old age, totally contradicting the Companion Chronicles which claimed she'd age a year a day if she was away from Gallifrey.
So, Leela and Romana have to give up their lives to wipe out the wrong universe and save this one but, um, hey, they're fine.
Did we REALLY just have ANOTHER traitor-Castellan? What's the MATTER with these people!
and also lives to a ripe old age, totally contradicting the Companion Chronicles which claimed she'd age a year a day if she was away from Gallifrey.
Why would they expect that to happen?
Cos Big Finish were stupid enough to let Nigel Fairs write loads of Leela audios, and he claimed that there was something on Gallifrey that had stopped Leela ageing (he naturally didn't bother to specify WHAT) and now time's catching her up, only her alien captors have put her in a torture-machine that'll keep her going for another few years of anguish till she dies and gets reincarnated as a Victorian-style little girl called Emily who hears Leela's voice in her head and OH GODS I SWEAR I'M NOT MAKING THIS •••• UP.
Part 1:
Enemy Lines marks the eighth season of Gallifrey from Big Finish Productions.
Written by David Llewellyn.
Quite intriguing that whilst Romana II and Leela were investigating here they meet up with an old friend especially of where he came from.
Quite intriguing that whilst Romana II and Leela were investigating here they meet up with an old friend especially of where he came from.
Are we talking about Braxiatel? Where DID he come from? I'm in a state of abject confusion (mitigated only slightly by also being in a state of not-really-giving-a-••••) about which of Benny's Braxiatels is the one from the Gallifrey audios...assuming all the Gallifrey audios stick with the same one, of course...
Yes I was talking about Brax.
Chapter 1:
Why has a TARDIS only got a day's air supply left, at most. This isn't Planet of the bloody Daleks, y'know.
OK, so it's a one-room TARDIS where everything else has been jettisoned - that's fair enough (even if expecting us to remember anything about the last Gallifrey audio isn't).
'I suppose it was only a mater of time before I was deemed surplus to requirements' - Narvin seems remarkably resigned to Romana not insisting on whoever-had-teleported-her-to-safety coming back to teleport him and Ace too...and after all they've been through in all those godawful alt-unis together, too!
'No TARDIS, no communications' - you people have really GOT to invent mobile phones.
If the computer killed its crew to become MORE efficient it's pretty weird it's reacting with lethal force to any attempt to stop it blowing up. Blowing up tends to seriously reduce one's efficiency levels.
'Come on Romana, you can do this...SUCCESS!' - this is even more embarrassing than the usual BF-characters-talking-aloud-to-themselves.
Leela thinks if the Doctor had never come to her world she would have become an elder of the tribe - or died in exile? Why the hell would she think the Sevateem would EVER let her back?
This is the second episode in a row where Brax materialises in the nick of time to save Romana's life. I wouldn't say Deus Ex Machina but definitely Git Ex Machina.
Boy the whole of Who is rendered entirely pointless by the ease with which Romana rewrites not just history but HER OWN •••• HISTORY, isn't it.
Chapter 2:
Why would the Monans suspect Gallifrey of engineering a virus to blow their ship up into a black hole that'll swallow Gallifrey? The Time Lords are thick but they're not THAT thick.
More to the point, why does ROMANA think 'there's still every chance the virus was created by one of our own'?
(And when everyone finally drops the 'Gallifrey must have done it!' theory they replace it with an equally stupid and equally untrue 'The Monan Host must have blown up their own ship!' theory. The relentless stupidity of EVERYONE in the Gallifrey audios (now they've disposed of BOTH our poor darling mildly-intelligent K9s) beggars belief.)
Sunlight is 'very different on Phaidon - binary star system, you see' says the Phaidon Ambassador, having apparently JUST NOT NOTICED that GALLIFREY ALSO HAS A BINARY STAR SYSTEM...('Oh, you should have seen it, that old planet. The second sun would rise in the south, and the mountains would shine...')
Romana says most of the High Council are overgrown schoolboys you can twist round your finger? If THAT'S the case you'd think her various presidencies would have been less...disastrous.
Let me get this straight. There are NO LIMITS to what Romana has done to hang onto the Gallifreyan Presidency, whether it's commit identity-theft in alt-unis or abolish democracy and declare herself Imperiatrix despite knowing this would unleash the Morbius-like Pandora - causing an almost-as-foreseeable civil war and the destruction of the Matrix. But Braxiatel - a man Romana (in common with everyone else in ze universe) doesn't trust - hints that maybe her stepping down may help prevent a possible undesirable timeline (even though not regenerating into Juliet Landau should have already dealt with that issue) and...ROMANA JUST STEPS DOWN! AND NOMINATES AN ENEMY AS HER SUCCESSOR! ARE YOU ••••••• KIDDING ME!
Chapter 3:
'The latest battle-TARDISes' - Gallifrey has battle-TARDISes? So what was it with the 'entirely defenceless' stuff, then?
And what's with battle-TARDISes when you haven't foreseen the Time War yet? (Unless they're those evil mad resurrected War-TARDISes from the Krikkitmen novel...?)
This really IS a pathetic planet that for reasons of Darwinian principle (and also so we can stop wasting our time and money) should be put out of its misery (again. But permanently this time).
*Wince* Someone tell me to keep my gob shut in future. (Not that I believe for a moment that SPOILERS FOR SPYFALL 2 Chibbers is actually reading Nitcentral and doing what I tell him but this blatantly obvious fact doesn't stop me feeling...ACCURSED.)
The Monans are leaving Gallifrey, perhaps as some sort of revenge for what happened to their ship - shouldn't Gallifrey be more upset about what happened to that stupid Monan ship? THEY'RE the ones being threatened by the black hole it turned into, after all.
Chapter 4:
Has Trave just regenerated from female to male? Without making any witty comments about it?
Is Ace...UNARMED??
Braxiatel materialises in the nick of time to save some poor pathetic women (Leela, Romana AND Livia, in this case) for the umpteenth time this season alone? Gimme a BREAK.
And since when do you nip round the Capitol via TARDIS anyway?
Chapter 5:
The Eye of Harmony has been growing stronger (WHY?) for the last few hours (still sticking with Intervention Earth's bizarre switching-from-microspans-to-Earth-time-measurements, then?) and no one has bothered to mention to Brax that CIVILISATION IS SAVED!?
Why is Romana so reluctant to believe in the Watchmaker when every OTHER Gallifreyan fairy-story has come true?
Chapter 6:
So did the Watchmaker or Romana create this world?
So is the Watchmaker here to undo Romana's mistakes or watch her courage?
'I'm so sorry I abandoned you, forgive me' Romana tells Leela. But you DIDN'T abandon her, moron!
Romana STILL RESIGNS for her failure to stop a sabotaged alien ship that's nothing to do with her blowing up - even though it didn't cause a black hole this time? Frankly her resigning when it DID cause a Gallifrey-threatening black hole was impossible to swallow, THIS is just RIDICULOUS. And why nominate her enemy Livia AGAIN? That was equally impossible-to-believe when there was a black-hole-emergency situation and she just wanted to stop her enemies holding up the hand-over indefinitely but now they DO have time for a long wrangle over the next president (leaving aside the fact she a) has the right to decide her successor and b) have I mentioned there's NO REASON TO RESIGN!! Well, obviously she has several thousand reasons to resign, including presiding over numerous Gallifreyan civil wars, invasions, dictatorships, plagues, etc etc but is she resigning over THOSE...??)
Um, is this 'creature of paradox, wreathed in anomaly, borne off by the Watchmaker and told to choose which Irving Braxiatel he would be' gibberish an attempt to resolve the numerous different Irvings? Cos I'd like a diagram of said Irvings FIRST.
they've disposed of BOTH our poor darling mildly-intelligent K9s
Though how this fits in with one of said K9s being walled up in Sexy in The Gallifrey Chronicles is anyone's guess...
'No TARDIS, no communications' - you people have really GOT to invent mobile phones.
To be fair, this is addressed in Krikkitmen:
'Gallifreyans, more than any other civilisation in the universe, don't like change. The mobile telephone has never taken off on Gallifrey because the entire population thought it a step too far.'
Still, when you're fighting a war for the sake of all creation, you maybe ought to consider the cell phone before, say, resurrecting the Master or Deception Fields or poisoning the Vortex or blowing up other people's planets...
Awww, obviously every iota of Who is loved by SOMEONE, even Gallifrey: Enemy Lines...