Gallifrey: 5 reasons why you should listen to the Doctor Who spinoff
By James Aggas
Big Finish
With ‘Gallifrey: Time War’ due for release very, very soon, here are five key reasons to listen to the audio spinoff series from Big Finish.
Gallifrey is a very unique spinoff series. Primarily set on the Doctor’s home planet, an entire series focusing on the Time Lords seems like quite a risky move. After all, one of the reasons why the Doctor left his homeworld was that he “was bored”. And Time Lords are so different to humans in both attitude as well as biology. How can a series focused on such a radically different society work?
Surprisingly well, as it turns out. Gallifrey is a spinoff series unlike any other. Not just on audio, but even the TV spinoffs, too. An ambitious series, filled with many complex characters, dirty politics, and serialized storytelling, Gallifrey was a mature and different take on the Doctor Who universe. Ever since it was first released in 2004, it’s always been a popular series for Big Finish. Let me give you more detail on why that is.
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Romana and Leela
One thing that helps make Gallifrey so successful is how much the series takes from the original depictions in the TV series. Not simply in terms of continuity, either. Stories like The Deadly Assassin, The Five Doctors and The Trial of a Time Lord all gave us key glimpses of Time Lord society. Their politics, their justice system, and their general attitudes.
And of course, Big Finish takes a nice amount of history from both its own stories and other expanded media. In the continuity of the New Adventures novels, Fourth Doctor companion and Time Lady Romana became President of Gallifrey. The Doctor Who audios The Apocalypse Element, Neverland and Zagreus all continued this particular development.
Since I mentioned Zagreus, I should also point out that it’s key to Gallifrey in one major way. Specifically, it re-introduced another Fourth Doctor companion: Leela. A warrior woman that the Doctor tried to teach and become more civilized, she chose to stay behind on Gallifrey in the TV story The Invasion of Time. Zagreus told the story of how she and Romana met.
You couldn’t imagine such different characters. Romana is incredibly intelligent, logical, and scientific. Leela is instinctual, emotional and spiritual. When they first meet in Zagreus, they understandably don’t get on well at all.
But over the course of both that story and Gallifrey, a strong bond of mutual respect forms between the two. Their differences not only contrast but at times even compliment each other. As such, the friendship of these two former companions on the home planet of the Time Lords is a key aspect of the series.
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Braxiatel and Narvin
However, it’s not just these two TV characters, or even their two individual K9s, that get focused on in the series. Gallifrey also features Irving Braxiatel, a Time Lord cardinal who always has his own agenda. While outwardly charming and helpful, he also has difficulty giving straightforward answers to simple questions. He isn’t afraid of using other people to his advantage, either. Out of all the characters, he comes across as the most directly political. He’s also a lot of fun to hear.
Braxiatel’s a very popular character in the expanded universe. Originally introduced in New Adventures novel Theatre of War (which Big Finish have adapted), he was also a major character in the Bernice Summerfield range. (Twice. Like everything else about Braxiatel, it’s complicated.)
But perhaps the most popular character on Gallifrey, for many fans of the series, at least, is Narvin. Ironically, he’s the only original major character that’s introduced in the series. The coordinator of the Celestial Intervention Agency, he initially starts out as a very shady character who clearly isn’t a fan of his president. Like Braxiatel, you can never be sure what he’s up to.
But over time, he has a great deal of character development. You also start to see things from his point of view. While initially, he seems to be a man that’s only out for himself, you also begin to see that he’s far more complex than that.
From everything I’ve seen of the Gallifrey fandom, Narvin has consistently proved himself to be one of the most popular characters. When you hear both the strong writing and Seán Carlsen’s wonderfully dry and sardonic performance, you’ll know why.
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Dirty politics and tricky time travel
What also helps Gallifrey to stand out compared to other Doctor Who spinoffs is its focus on politics. Ordinarily, a political series isn’t the first thing that leaps to mind in terms of Doctor Who spinoff ideas.
But the home planet of the Time Lords is perfect for that story. Focusing on one of the oldest and most powerful races in the universe, it’s unsurprising that many on Gallifrey are ambitious. Over the course of the series, there are a number of devious and manipulative characters who would do anything to become more powerful. In fact, not even the regular characters are innocent of this. Lies and deceit are almost second nature for many Time Lords at this point.
But of course, on Gallifrey, it’s not just the politics that the Time Lords have to be careful of. There is a lot of tricky time travel, too. Usually in a very clever, but also very natural way. Across the series, there are a number of paradoxes and multiple timelines that crop up.
Like the great deal of political maneuvering over the series, this could lead to things getting confusing fast. However, thanks to the many fleshed out and intriguing characters, Gallifrey itself comes across as an easy and compelling listen.
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Serial storytelling
I also need to mention just how ambitious Gallifrey has always been. Unlike many other Doctor Who spinoffs, both on TV and audio, Gallifrey had a heavily serialized nature. In particular, multiple arcs and storylines were spread out across the course of the first six seasons.
And those seasons weren’t even released on a yearly basis. While seasons one, two and three were released from 2004 to 2006, season four wasn’t released until 2011. And while it continued directly from where season three ended, it took a bit of a radically different direction for the series.
In some ways, season four moved away from the complicated politics and ongoing arcs of the first three seasons. Instead, four gave the characters a break from that, having radically different adventures in each episode.
Seasons five and six, the final two seasons of the original arc, were released in 2013. Five brought back some of the politics and ongoing threads of the original series, but in a very different setting.
Season six, meanwhile, resolved all of the major storylines that had been ongoing since season one. And in a very exciting way, too, as the Daleks were brought into the series. While it doesn’t lead directly to the Time War, there’s more than a little foreshadowing towards it…
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Fresh starts and reinventions
After the original epic arc was resolved, Gallifrey has seen one or two reinventions since then.
2015 saw the release of Intervention Earth, the seventh season of the series. A single story told across four half-hour episodes, Intervention Earth took place a long time after the original six seasons.
There were a couple of changes, too. Seventh Doctor companion Ace is a major regular now (although we don’t know exactly how or when she arrived on Gallifrey).
We’re also introduced to a new Romana, too, as played by Juliet Landau. (Well, I say “introduced”. Her incarnation had appeared in a couple of Big Finish audios already.) Her performance in the role was brilliant. Separate from both Mary Tamm’s and Lalla Ward’s performances, but still distinctly the same character.
However, the eighth series, Enemy Lines, shook things up once more. While set earlier than Intervention Earth, it’s definitely wiser to listen to the seventh series before the eighth. As I’ve mentioned before, Gallifrey is a series with a lot of time travel, so perhaps it’s unsurprising to know that it’s used in a very direct way with this story.
While these stories are connected, both of them also work well as fresh starting points, too. While there is some carry-over from the first six seasons, seasons seven and eight are also not quite as intensely arc heavy as the earlier ones.
However, season nine looks set to be the most exciting jumping-on point yet. With Gallifrey: Time War due to be released very soon, it looks set to be both continue the stories that long-time fans have loved, while also representing a new beginning for newcomers to enjoy.