Hmmm, this was a step down from the opening for me. The murder mystery and time loop aspects are nice hooks, and the Leela/Romana interplay is nice, but I didn’t quite connect with this one. I like how it continues the Free Time threads and political stuff, even if it’s still a bit muddled.
I somehow didn’t pick up on the Leela stuff, but now that you mention it, it does come across as a bit naff.
I give it a 6/10
Feel free to read and like my review:
Even more boring than the first story, now with added misogyny. Romana is so arrogant & condescending. I do not like a single character apart from Leela who is treated terribly. Sorry I’m done. This isn’t my cup of tea at all.
You don’t often get “fun” out of a political conspiracy thriller but I certainly get it out of this one. Everything about it moves like solid clockwork and the end twist is just the cherry on top. Not my favorite story in the series but a very enjoyable one all the same.
You know what? That’s totally fair. I obviously love the series, but I also appreciate that people telling you “just push through it’ll get better” doesn’t help if you’re gritting your teeth listening to something.
Yeah, its my bête noire. Someone saying about an audio/tv show, just get through the first season & you’ll enjoy it!
I must admit I just asked the forum AI what that phrase means 
here it is for everyone else’s benefit:
The term “bête noire” is a French phrase that has been adopted into English. It literally translates to “black beast”. In English usage, it refers to a person or thing that someone particularly dislikes or dreads; essentially, a pet peeve or a nemesis of sorts.
I’d never heard of it!
Haha, must be my posh grammer school education lol
Pretty sure that should be ‘grammar’ school.
Also, I know what a bete noir is (and I went to grammar school too).
Shocking standard of education in this country.
I was literally just about to edit that lol
Oh that’s a great word, I’m using that from now on
If you edit it now, you’ll make the teacher look stupid… 
But let’s not do that!
Yeah this is an interesting one.
On the one hand, the time loop stuff is really interesting, I like the motivations of the main antagonist being wanting to do the right thing but for all the wrong reasons, I like the murder mystery aspect of it, especially with there being so many different things going on all with different explanations so it’s one red herring after another. I like the reveal of what’s really going on with this conference in the end.
And then there’s the misogyny. On the one hand, (at least most of) the explicit misogyny is from explicitly vile characters, and is never treated as a good thing which, you know, it shouldn’t be. If you’re going to have ex-o-tic dancers being called sluts and bitches in a story like this, it should be shown as a bad thing. But then there’s the implicit misogyny. Leela is forced into this role as an exotic dancer against her will, forced to perform for the whims of others, and while she feels uncomfortable doing so and the misogyny directed towards her as she does is explicitly bad, it’s still framed in an almost tantalizing way. If this were on TV, you can tell they’d be using Leela in this story as, to paraphrase a well known JNT quote, something the dads will enjoy.
I really want to like this story, and I think without all that it’d be an 8/10, but with it, I have to give it a 6.
This one was good, the twists and turns of time alteration. 7/10
Yeah I had more fun with it than the first episode. 7/10
Just relistened to this one! Hoping to get a full Gallifrey marathon in full swing after this. (Ignore the fact that I’m already halfway through a 7/Ace/Hex marathon… and a Benny marathon… and–)
Anyway. I love Gallifrey so much, and I get more out of the show on every relisten. This time I appreciated how Square One does so much to set up Romana and Leela’s relationship– far more than Weapon of Choice, actually. Steve Cole is already setting down the themes he’ll use to great effect in Spirit, and even though they don’t share very many scenes, it’s so interesting Romana and Leela are to each other the most important person at that conference. I love seeing the seeds of their relationship in this one.
The twists and turns are also really fun and interesting– I love a story where you have to move quickly to keep pace with developments. Even though the actual pieces on the board aren’t too compelling– I don’t think either Flinkstab or Hossak are great villains– the plot itself is brisk and sharp, and gives us a better feeling for the other temporal powers.
I really like the conversation between Romana and Leela at the end. They’re not quite equals, yet, but they’re working on it.
Narvin is so cute when he’s this awful!
Well, this one was right up my alley. I love a timey-wimey story, and murder mysteries are always fun.
It’s a shame that this story is so misogynistic (even if it is the more repulsive characters who are the main cause of this) because otherwise I really could see this as one of my favourite stories. As it is, it’s one that I’d recommend, but not unconditionally.
The misogyny in the story is an interesting case because on the surface of it it is trying to refute Flinkstab’s gross sexism, given how his misogyny is equated with his evilness; but in order to do that is has to exist within a misogynistic framework.
Like, why are there “exotic dancers” at this conference? Why are they all (at least, those we are shown) women? These are hugely advanced races we’re dealing with, and yet this aspect of the story feels right out of the 70s or earlier. It’s an odd juxtaposition that I don’t think is justified by the narrative.
(Gallifrey the planet’s approach to sex and gender is a whole other conversation, too!)
Exactly, I think the episode is unintentionally trying to be too clever about its stance on sexism to the point where anything it’s saying about Leela and forcing her into the role of an exotic dancer or not automatically assuming it is the other dancers who are the villains wraps right back around into sexism again. I don’t think it was very well thought out and I think that makes whatever message it’s sending very muddled.
Disclaimer: There are 38 posts before mine, so I assume there has been quite a discussion. As a latecomer to the party, I have not read what others wrote. The following are just my standalone thoughts.
I did not like Gallifrey 1.2. The main reason is that my suspension of disbelief was broken around the midpoint of the story. At the end of the third (?) timeslip, as far as Leela is aware (there might have been more that she didn’t register; I think there’s a hint in that direction later on), Leela is confused. Leela, who time-traveled with the Doctor. Leela, who lived among the Time Lords. Leela, who attends a temporal summit of the great time-traveling powers, does not realize that her déjà vu is related to time travel.
In my opinion, this is a pure plot device for listeners not familiar with time travel shenanigans, and a bad one at that. They could have had Leela realize what’s going on and dictate a message to K9 for Romana, catching up listeners without insulting Leela’s intelligence.
But she’s a savage, you say? In the same story, later on, we get a demonstration of how to show this without insulting her intelligence: Leela realizes what’s going on but puts it in poetic descriptions of “the yesterday before” and “another yesterday.”
As always, as soon as the suspension of disbelief is lifted, flaws in the story become much more noticeable. For example: Aren’t these all time-sensitive beings? Shouldn’t other people also notice the timeslip?
If they wanted to show the decadence of the “great” time-traveling powers, where are the male and neither male nor female “entertainers”? (At least I think there where only female.)
And what’s up with this repugnant delegate who turns out to be a psycho killer but has nothing directly to do with the main plot? I did not like this story thread and also feel it took up too much space, so Romana had to give a synopsis of the genius (and I would argue over ambitious) plot of the story (real summit, …) at the end because there was no room to “show” us what’s going on. Instead, we get an info dump at the end.
I probably could go on, but in the end: If the writers had not written Leela as clueless as long as they did, my suspension of disbelief would have held up, and the flaws would not have dulled my enjoyment of the story as much as they did.
That said, later on (too late to sway my overall impression, but still), Leela has some really beautiful lines. Beginning with her speaking poetically about the previous yesterdays and later finishing with her thoughts about reality in the face of time travels changing history.
It’s a shame the story did not end there, and instead, there had to be a final line from Romana.
So, Gallifrey 1.2 was not for me - 2.5/5 and a 4 to 5 out or 10.
Unfortunately this is one of my great annoyances with Gallifrey - they often seem to forget or brush over the fact that Leela is fiercely intelligent and basically got rejected from the tribe for rational thought. Often they do this, like here, to try and show some dichotomy between the cruel coldness of the Time Lords and the ~magical mystical savage~ which I hate a lot. Sometimes it works better than other times, but Leela does get the short end of the stick because I think the writers get distracted by their big Gallifreyan bits and forget how sharp Leela is and how isolated she can be by her world