Reborn is a spectacular start to Gallifrey IV!

This story almost reminds me of some of BF's later output, specifically Stranded and The Dimension Cannon, though with the focus here being on alternate Gallifreys rather than alternate earths, it's done in a way that, despite being older than the aforementioned series', feels so much more fresh and unique.

This alternate Gallifrey where futures are used as currency, and the high council is selling Time Travel for profit is beautifully bleak. There's many a dystopian story featuring an Earth that's fallen to a similar fate, but seeing it here happening to one of the most powerful peoples in the universe is something else. We don't need to hear the consequences this would have on the world, we know it from how we've seen the Time Lords avoid doing just that in the previous three seasons.

The heart of Gallifrey however is, and continues to be, our core cast: Narvin, Leela, Romana, Brax, and, of course, K9. Each and every one of them get something to do here and it's all brilliant. Leela becoming this world's leader, though more so she can be used as a scapegoat than for anything else, with K9 as Castallan (which was absolutely hilarious). Romana and Brax visiting this world's Romana, an excellent chance for exposition and character exploration, and even more than that a beautiful excuse to get Mary Tam back. And Narvin, poor Narvin, seemingly having his future regenerations stolen from him. You really feel for him, especially the way his story ends, the others not knowing what's happened and mocking him as usual, things being different this time, but he can't bring himself to tell them.

The villian here, Antonin, is the unfortunate weak point of this story for me personally, his links to Romana are interesting and bring about some great character moments for her, both of her, but overall I was personally much less interested in him, and more in everything that was going on in the rest of that Gallifrey. Still, his motivations, what he'd sacrificed for his place on that world, was interesting to hear.

Overall, sure I've got a minor gripe, but even then I overall enjoyed that bit, and even with it, this season has started off with a bang!

I wonder if anyone was upset by how this Series of Gallifrey begins. After the cliffhanger of the last Series (literally stopping mid-sentence), it does feel a bit of a cheat to start this series not only with a small time jump away from that cliffhanger sentence, but in fact we begin with a dream sequence.

I must confess that I’m not the biggest fan of dream sequences in storytelling. Too often they feel cheap and don’t really mean anything. At least this one is somewhat fun. It’s a bizarre but not unenjoyable change of pace, from the high stakes that we left series 3 with, to the tranquil happiness that everyone is experiencing in Brax’s dream here. But honestly it doesn’t really achieve much besides telling us that Braxiatel is in love with Romana I guess.

But then we get to the actual story here. Braxiatel managed to scoop all of our heroes off to the Axis, an inter-dimensional gateway of sorts, which allows people to cross into different parallel worlds that were split off from the main timeline. If I’m being totally honest I don’t fully understand why they do this. I assume they’re trying to find a cure for the Dogma Virus in one of these worlds, but in terms of the larger storyline, our heroes little misadventure on a different Gallifrey didn’t really achieve anything. But I can forgive the episode not doing much to further the main plotline of the series for 2 reasons.

1. It appears that Series 4 is going to be focused around our heroes hopping between universes. If that is the case then this episode does a great job of establishing this and setting a tone for the rest of the series.
2. The adventure is pretty fun.

I must also confess that I’m not crazy about multiverse stories either. Too often I feel like multiverses create stories that pretend to have stakes, but because nothing (or at least very little) that happens in the multiverse ever really affects what happens on the stories original world, there’s rarely any real consequences, and therefore the stakes can wind up feeling illusory at best.

Despite my worries about this being a multiverse story however, I had a lot of fun here. Our heroes arrive in an alternate Gallifrey where the Time Lords have become more capitalistic, selling their time technology and even their regenerations. The Chancellor has even become something of a war profiteer, loaning out Gallifreyan weaponry to the other cosmic powers to use in their own interplanetary wars (for a hefty price of course). There isn’t a huge amount of plot; our heroes sort of accidentally assist in the overthrow of this chancellor before going back to the Axis. But that feels like the show felt the need to have a dramatic conclusion, more than anything else. It’s not all that interested in this plotline, it’s more interested in having our heroes split off and having their own little adventures.

The most fun of these adventures is Leela and K-9 being some kind of heroes from this Gallifrey’s folklore. This allows Leela to become President (although in part this is so the evil chancellor can effectively remain in control, using Leela’s popularity to shield her) and K-9 becomes her Castellan of the Chancellory Guard. I sometimes get tired of seeing the Time Lords in the main universe continually underestimate Leela and treat her like dirt. So it’s such a pleasure to see Leela in a world where most of the Time Lords revere her. K-9 as a Castellan on the other hand is just comedic gold.

This all annoys Narvin, who gets frozen out of power and is jealous that 2 non-Time Lords are being given far more power than him. He then sneaks around until he’s accused of spying, and in a rather harrowing sequence, has most of his regenerations cruelly ripped away from him. I love this for a couple of reasons. Firstly I simply enjoy hearing Narvin suffer. Secondly and most importantly, it does in fact mean that this little multiversal adventure does indeed have tangible stakes for the series. It’s not made clear just how many regenerations Narvin now has remaining. The end of the episode, where Leela & K-9 tease him (as has often happened), unaware of the trauma he’s suffered, causing Narvin to storms off and grieve the future lives he’s lost, is really rather sad.

I probably had the least fun with Romana & Braxiatel’s journey to visit Romana’s ancestral home, where they talk with this universe’s Romana (a great excuse to bring Mary Tamm back) and her son Antonin. Antonin works out who Romana really is, and that they’ve travelled from a parallel world. He then decides that he’s had enough of this world, fearing that it is on the brink of a large war that will kill millions. So he wants to travel back to our hero’s world, even contemplating bringing civilians with him where they would be safe.

This makes Antonin the primary antagonist of the episode, and honestly he’s not a very interesting one. He mostly seems to exist to demonstrate some of the dangers of all this universe jumping, and to establish some rules for the rest of the series. For example our heroes will now be leaving someone behind (Braxiatel for the time being at least) to manually open and close the portals to these other worlds, removing the possibility of someone jumping through to our universe.

So this plotline wasn’t a waste of time or anything. It may have been the least compelling section of the story for me, but there was some good stuff here. Seeing an alternative version of herself, who never travelled, but instead settled down with a family, does lead Romana to reflect on her life. This does add some drama to proceedings. Couple this with the fun from the Leela/K-9 sections and the tragedy of Narvin’s story, and this episode ends up giving you a rather satisfying and well-balanced meal by the end.

This is an enjoyable story. It doesn't have much Gallifreyan politics, which is what I love the Gallifrey series for, but it's still good. It had been a long time for me between listening to series 3 and listening to this and, while it did recap slightly, I still found myself slightly lost and I had to refresh my memory with Tardis Wiki. I also feel that the story didn't conclude in a particuarly interesting way, and I don't think the way that the portal works was consistent. (If it stays in a fixed position, how come it sweeps the same path every planetary rotation? Would the movement of e.g. the entire galaxy not have an affect?) This is a nitpick.

In an attempt to standardize my reviews, I've defined a score of 3/5 as "the divide between good and bad. A story with nothing bringing it down, but simultaneously nothing bringing it up"

The original three Gallifrey series are some of my favorite Who out there. And for me this alternate universe hopping revival marks a drastic low point in the series that will last (at least) until we get back to our Gallifrey.

I can understand the position Big Finish was in. After having wildly developed Gallifrey to the point of its destruction, the revival comes along and says the planet must go on and fight the Time War. However I know that this was not the way to address that.

If feels out of character for literally everybody involved to just give up and go to some alternate universe (where they chastise people for wanting to give up and go to some alternate universe). It is unsatisfying to just abandon the Pandorica story (yes I know we get back to it in a few series), and it is uninteresting to appear to (and eventually to actually do) go down the path of "well lets just put the Gallifrey cast in some other Gallifrey where we don't have to worry about continuity). All of the above runs contrary to everything the series was and should be.

This story itself is... fine I guess. But there's very little substance. Narvin's plotline is about the only thing that has promise or weight. But the very nature of this season's structure means that practically anything and everything which happens won't have any baring on future stories. Which again, is the opposite of what Gallifrey should be. It's got many of the failings of a multiverse story, where anything can happen but nothing really matters.

And finally while this story feels it the least, the entire season gives off an extremely gimmicky vibe, with every story featuring a Doctor Who actor playing the role of some character other than their primary role (in this case an alternate Romanna I). Why are Marry Tamm, Colin Baker, Katy Manning, and Carol Ann Ford all in this season if it's not a gimmick?

Soooo, the play completely dodged the issue of the cliffhanger of the last play; it took me quite a while to cobble together that they are both fleeing as well as keeping an eye out for the Free Time virus. Hmmm.

The alternate Gallifrey they explore is interesting, however, with a nice role for Romana I, an utterly corrupt and kind of shocking high council and some harrowing moments for Narvin.

The whole thing never really builds up momentum, however, as the orig-Gallifrey Gang (yes) just sort of sticks around, really. At some point Romana's son wants to come along, but is denied, but the whole thing is fairly casual, except for a grisly murder or torture here and there.

So yeh, fun enough, but a bit disorienting and not particularly immediate.