I’ve just got around to reading this and can I just say ‘Eh?’. No actually, the ‘second and third’ timelines bit makes sense on the whole to me but where do they explain the IE never happens because of Brax rescuing Romana. Maybe I wasn’t paying attention for the relevant bit of dialogue but it just felt like EL ignored IE.
6 Likes
It’s a little blink and you miss it but Brax does explain it in part 1:
(transcript below cut)
ROMANA: Who sent you? I mean it’s been centuries since we last saw one another and-
BRAXIATEL: You did, Romana.
ROMANA: I beg your pardon.
BRAXIATEL: Though a very different Romana from the one I see before me.
ROMANA: You mean that-
BRAXIATEL: A future incarnation of you, yes. Your next unless I’m mistaken.
ROMANA: But why would she… why would I send you back here knowing how important this mission was?
BRAXIATEL: I come from a future where a War has begun. A War that you and those closest to you helped begin. Many year from now, a secret sect operating on Gallifrey will steal the Hand of Omega and take it to Earth. There they will help bring about Omega’s return and the imminent destruction of the universe.
ROMANA: And this begins a war?
BRAXIATEL: Quite the opposite. It’s your mission to stop Omega that leads to the conflict. And when the High Council discover this, they turn on you. All of you.
ROMANA: Meaning?
BRAXIATEL: Coordinator Narvin and the young Agent Ace both executed for treason. And you face a similar fate. It was only my intervention that saved you from certain death.
ROMANA: But how am I supposed to stop these events from happening if they take place so far in my future?
BRAXIATEL: The only way is to permanently alter the timeline. So you see, you cannot die. Not here. Instead we must return to Gallifrey immediately and prevent the followers of Omega from ever hatching their little plot.
8 Likes
The Legacy of Gallifrey
Well that was huge fun. A silly little exercise in tying together what we knew of the Time Lords up until Season 22 courtesy of fanwanker extraordinaire, Gary Russell. Alongside the references to The Three Doctors and Arc of Infinity, Russell also manages to wrangle The Two Doctors, Image of the Fendahl, The Deadly Assassin, The Invasion of Time, the Black and White Guardians and the Key to Time, Terror of the Autons, The Mark of the Rani, The Web of Feat, The War Games AND Shada!
There are some lovely bits of tying things together and then there’s Rassilon creating the Black and White Guardians (seems fandom collectively forgot/ignored that little gem)! There’s some fun additions too such as more details about why Morbius was executed and the revelation that Thalia and Zorac, High Council members in Arc of Infinity, got sent to investigate the Death Zone ahead of the events of The Five Doctors and ended up getting killed by some of those zappy lightning bolts which nearly did for the Master.
This is very much the approach to ‘lore’ that Russell, and others like Craig Hinton, would apply to their novels when the Missing and Past Doctor Adventures arrived on the scene - abundant references to any and every story and character that takes their fancy and fits, however tortuously, into the narrative (it’s quite something to have one paragraph start with the events of The Two Doctors and end with a reference to Image of the Fendahl).
One can only imagine the fun Russell would have had tying in Hell Bent, The Timeless Children, The Power of the Doctor and The Reality War into his narrative machinations.
Eeek! Why am I emerging from the Master’s mouth!?!?
Oh and I almost forgot - the Time Lords invented cats. Do with that information what you will!
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I was mistaken last night! You’re not Omega, you’re The Rani! And The Master is Omega!
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One of my favourite obscure Doctor Who facts 
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Anti-Matter with Fries
That was rubbish! @DarthGallifrey sums up my thoughts in his review:
Not funny with some really clunky prose. I hate sentences like this in sci-fi:
Strips of some organic compound, surrounded by a flimsy container of processed plant fibre.
(That’s fries in a bag from KFC people - look how witty Gareth Roberts is. And then he does a ‘sodium chloride’ gag where he has Omega say that instead of ‘salt’ - saints preserve me!).
Some of DWM’s Brief Encounters were lovely little vignettes. This is embarrassing.
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Think this has been mentioned in the Reality War thread, but to bring it over here, given who it’s about
Would’ve been nice if that were at all even alluded to in the episode
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RTD says ‘tweak’, I say ‘the Skull bears no resemblance to Omega at all’
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RTD says “I used”, I say “wished fans would headcanon it to be explained away by the time war”
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