The first release of the second series of Gallifrey or Chapter Five depending on your point of view starts off with a scene with Mary Tamm who played the first incarnation of Romana from 1978 to 1979 during the Key to Time series. The first thing that I noticed is that there is a distinct improvement in quality. The opening scene is set when Romana was in the academy and it’s immediate that her intelligence is greater than other Timelords. It’s a lovely little scene. What more, we get another outing from Lynda Bellingham has the Inquisitor who is totally different from her stint in ‘The Trial of a Timelord’ where is trying to oust Romana after she orders the transduction barrier to be lowered. It’s good that this new liberal view is starting to grate other Timelords.
The story is highly enjoyable even though I wasn’t totally sure what was going on some of the time. What I quite liked was the explanation as to how Romana went from being in E-Space to becoming President of Gallifrey and that is what I have been waiting for since this Weapon of Choice. If I did have an issue it’s that we are expected to believe that Romana did that joke regeneration in ‘Destiny in the Daleks’ was a desperate attempt to purge the Imperiatrix influence from her mind. It seems just a tad bit too much.
Of the performances I thought that Mary Tamm gives a good performance despite not playing the proper Romana. It would have been a bit disappointing if it were a blink and you’ll miss it outing but we got our moneys worth. Lalla Ward was on good form as usual. She worked well with Mary Tamm and it was nice for me as a fan to see both Romana’s talking to each other. It was another version of a multi-Doctor adventure. Lynda Bellingham is brilliant, she has a wonderful voice and it’s a delight whenever she’s around. Louise Jameson gets a bit more emotional stuff to deal with and I think that Leela has grown quite a lot since the first story and is almost unrecognisable from her time on TV but that’s a Big Finish trait.
Credit to Gary Russell (Writer and Director), he has done a good job in getting quite a lot of stuff in a story that lasted just over an hour. Actually that leads me to my biggest issue with this story and that there seems to be a lot of exposition and not enough drama. The thing with the previous story (A Blind Eye) was that there was quite a bit of action but there wasn’t so much here. At the end of the story I did find myself thinking about this story in a positive light. Granted there are flaws with this story but on the whole it’s a good story and a good start to what has potential to be a very good season.
The story is highly enjoyable even though I wasn’t totally sure what was going on some of the time. What I quite liked was the explanation as to how Romana went from being in E-Space to becoming President of Gallifrey and that is what I have been waiting for since this Weapon of Choice. If I did have an issue it’s that we are expected to believe that Romana did that joke regeneration in ‘Destiny in the Daleks’ was a desperate attempt to purge the Imperiatrix influence from her mind. It seems just a tad bit too much.
Of the performances I thought that Mary Tamm gives a good performance despite not playing the proper Romana. It would have been a bit disappointing if it were a blink and you’ll miss it outing but we got our moneys worth. Lalla Ward was on good form as usual. She worked well with Mary Tamm and it was nice for me as a fan to see both Romana’s talking to each other. It was another version of a multi-Doctor adventure. Lynda Bellingham is brilliant, she has a wonderful voice and it’s a delight whenever she’s around. Louise Jameson gets a bit more emotional stuff to deal with and I think that Leela has grown quite a lot since the first story and is almost unrecognisable from her time on TV but that’s a Big Finish trait.
Credit to Gary Russell (Writer and Director), he has done a good job in getting quite a lot of stuff in a story that lasted just over an hour. Actually that leads me to my biggest issue with this story and that there seems to be a lot of exposition and not enough drama. The thing with the previous story (A Blind Eye) was that there was quite a bit of action but there wasn’t so much here. At the end of the story I did find myself thinking about this story in a positive light. Granted there are flaws with this story but on the whole it’s a good story and a good start to what has potential to be a very good season.
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