I will not comment as to what I think of TW3 and 4 yet, but I am very interested to see your thoughts - please update us as you go along!! I am glad you enjoyed TW2 though, I think it’s a very solid boxset that really knows what it’s about. Romana and Narvin working as a team is just perfection
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Well I just listened to the first two stories of Time War 3.
Is this entire season just the quest to find Leela with a new side quest every time?
Romana and Narvin together are a great team, and the strength of these stories so far are the character moments between them.
Not blown away by Time War 3 so far, but there have been good bits here and there.
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Don’t worry, you get Leela back in the next one haha but yes. TW3 is very side quest-y. And that means you’re coming up on Unity which is one of my fav ever ever episodes. I’m not saying it’s good, but I do love it.
But for sure Romana and Narvin are the highlight of all of TW. That, and Narvin’s endless losing battle against farm animals 
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I just listened to Mother Tongue (Time War 3: 3).
It didn’t really have the feel of a “Gallifrey” story. But it made me look forward to getting Leela back soon I hope that when Leela and Narvin get back together it will live up to what I imagine in my mind 
A decent enough story, but not a favourite by any measure - a 3,5/5 
I would say.
Looking forward to Unity then, we seem to have very similar tastes when it comes to Gallifrey 
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I go inactive for a bit and immediately miss these news?!? You just made my entire day!!!
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Mother Tongue is soooo frustrating to me because as a story about a character, it’s great - it’s constructed very interestingly and told very compellingly.
Rant below
But it’s not Leela.
I mean, obviously it is, and to a degree I do get it but I just can’t believe Leela would be a cruel mother. I flop back and forth how I feel about this one all the time - maybe it’s because she is living someone else’s life, maybe it’s because of a couple of misplaced words, but I feel like the episode overall makes her out to be a very cold person and I don’t like that.
And then especially after Unity… do NOT read this spoiler until you’ve listened but you are telling me that Leela spends 18 or so years on Unity with Veega and Rayo for Rayo to be like ‘oh you’re kind of like a mother to me’ and for Leela to be surprised by it, even though she’s been in his life since he was a baby, but Sholan who she only kind of knew through time jumping through his life is a son she mourns??? Yeah. No.
So yeah. I think actually listening to more Gallifrey makes Mother Tongue more frustrating. As you say, it has an odd feel and I don’t hate that, but it feels very disjointed and out of place, and I think I like it less every time I listen.
Louise Jameson knocks it out of the park with her performance though. As usual. She’s brilliant
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Finished Time War 3 with Unity.
Like the rest of Time War 3 it is a perfectly cromulent story, and I enjoyed it. But, it isn’t quite “Gallifrey”.
Because of Narvin feeding chickens I have bumped this from a 3,5/5 to a 4/5
The performances of Leela, Romana and Narvin are as good as ever, and that is really what carries the story. It just feels like it lacks an overarching plot that fits in with the setting of the time war, like the team at Big Finish didn’t quite have a clear direction in which to take our beloved Gallifrey crew.
The cliffhanger is good, but come on if they were going to kill off Romana or have her regenerate then it would have happened with 20-30 minutes left of the story ala the Giggle. I haven’t checked but I am absolutely certain that Romana II returns somewhere in Time War 4
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That “rant” made perfect sense! 
And you are quite right: That is not Leela 
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Oh boy. Are you ready for the Unity thoughts and feelings post? 
Many thoughts and feelings
As I said. I LOVE Unity. I have listened to it so do many times. I was there to wait for that cliffhanger. I am way too obsessed with Veega considering she gets like seven lines. Narvin fights chickens and loses. Romana goes all gooey over Leela fighting people in the market. There’s a lot of good stuff. As far as reunions go, there have been worse.
But there is also a lot of stuff that makes NO SENSE.
1 - Leela’s insistence that she’s not an important figure in Veega and Rayo’s lives??? It’s never said exactly how long she’s lived there but Rayo is probably about 18 and she’s been there since he was a baby. There is no way she hasn’t been utterly influential to him. And yet she still acts surprised to learn this? In the bts, they discuss how Veega and Leela were originally going to be a ‘‘real’’ relationship, but that was changed. And I get the sense that a bunch of things were changed in this one because it’s very choppy.
Which as you say is a main issue with TW3. There is no real direction and it gives it a very strange vibe which unfortunately carries on to TW4. Plus, Leela’s ‘if you go off Gallifrey you’ll age and die’ thing is totally forgotten, and I guess she must have learned the language pretty quickly too ¯_ (ツ)_/¯
2 - Narvin’s character assassination. You are telling me that this guy, who started a war for Romana, who only just gave up his entire regeneration cycle again for Romana is going to hear an insane plan about a chameleon arch and Daleks and just go ‘yeah cool sounds fine’??? Yes, he and the chickens are brilliant, but very little else about his decisions in this make sense.
Not only is he like basically fine with Romana’s insane suicide plot but then he lies to Leela about it? Leela who just lost Veega and Romana in quick succession? Hmm… And in fact the way Leela barely gets a chance to say goodbye to Veega irritates me too, but this is already too long…
3 - The chameleon arch. I think it would have actually been better had they gone through with it, and I knowww the reason they did all that was because Lalla moved to Hong Kong and they wanted to leave their bases open in case she could or couldn’t do more. But still. This was a pretty daft scheme. Her giving herself up to the Daleks - and calling herself Unit 117!! - is heartwrenching and I like that scene, I just don’t follow the logic of everyone else letting her do it. And I think it’s a boring choice to have done the fakeout because now we know obviously she’s not really dead, so all we can think is ‘oh when and how is she coming back?’
I just think actually arching her would have been a more interesting thing to do purely because it would have been more novel as a story. But what do I know?
Anyway. I do love TW3, promise, and I love most of Unity except the bits that annoy me. I have much more to say about TW4 too, but I’m trying not to bias you before you start it.
As you can see, I think way too much about Gallifrey
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Again everything you say makes perfect sense
But Leela is back!
Now give me some more Brax cameos and bring Ace back and I will be as pleased as punch (That is the expression right? And in that case, what does punch have to be so pleased about? 
)
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Leela is back!!! 
Just you wait for the rest of it
That said, I am still waiting for my post-Enemy Lines but pre-TW the CIA Adventures of Ace and Narvin boxset… it’s ripe territory to be used… where is it!!
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I just had to roll straight into Time War 4 with “Deception”.
Leela might be back, but Romana is sorely missed.
New Rassilon sounds super ominous, and, probably by design, he feels like a mix of Terrance Hardiman and Timothy Dalton. There is a clear megalomaniacal descent in Rassilon’s sanity with each resurrected incarnation.
The Deception Fields are a cool concept, and the story seems to bring the overarching plot of the Time War seasons forward.
Lisa McMullin has a really good grasp on audio storytelling and what can be done with the medium, I look forward to the stories with her name attached to them
Rating: 4/5
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Leela and Eris are such a fun team. I really love the first two eps of TW4, they’re both pretty solid stories and do some good character work. Plus who doesn’t love Leela with claws 
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Started the morning by listening to Time War 4: 2 “Dissolution”.
BRAX!! Brax is back baby!
Narvin really shone in this one, he is just the best original character Big Finish has ever made! (Sorry Lucie, Valarie and Evelyn - I still love you too )
Taking his regenerations away from him was such a fantastic choice of storytelling - it brings so much to his character, has done so for many seasons and just doesn’t gets old when it is brought up.
Halfway through Time War 4 and I really enjoy it, the “insecurities” of Time War 3 are mostly gone.
And Brax is back!!! 
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I listened to the first three series. Loved it a lot.
Even if it was a bit painful to listen to, because I’ve seen a lot of parallels with what is happening in my home country right now (I’m Russian)
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Parallel between what’s happening (politically?) in Russia and Gallifrey series 1? 
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I’m excited to see what you make of Beyond then 
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Well Beyond was fine, a good plot and Romana and Brax together is always fun. Like when is Brax going to screw everyone over with questionable morality? And he didn’t let me down on that front And double the Brax, double the fun
But that’s it? No more Brax for the foreseeable future? 
I love Brax…
Still a 4/5 I would say
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Aha see I absolutely HATED Beyond on my first listen, and it’s grown on me a little since then but I still think another Brax ex machina is the boringest possible way to have saved Romana. The plot is just way too thin and nonsensical for me, and then Brax gets eaten by a clown 
And yes, unfortunately that is the last of Brax for a while 
A fun fact about Beyond though, when it came out there was a massive screw up with the files in the app and several tracks of the episode were missing meaning all the important bits at the end were missing so it sounded like Brax just walked through a door and got instantly eaten to death lmao
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[quote=“sircarolyn, post:122, topic:399”] Brax ex machina [/quote]
Love that phrase
I think maybe my expectations are a bit low after Time War 3, and that I didn’t have to wait for a long time between these releases.
But yes the ending with Brax wasn’t the best.
Only one story left in the Time War seasons, then I’ll probably take a break and listen to other stuff before going into War Room
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