Braxiatel 101

[lizbee]

(Alternate titles for this post: Braxiatel: The Owner's Manual; The Complete Idiot's Guide to Irving Braxiatel; The Care And Feeding of Your Braxiatel; Braxiatel for Dummies.)

The problem with fangirling an obscure tertiary supporting character is that only a handful of other people know who you're talking about.  Which obviously makes your wee corner of fandom that much more exclusive and fabulous, but you run the risk of boring and oppressing everyone else.  So this is a post to explain the who, what, when and why of Braxiatel, and just why the hell I like him so much.  It comes complete with audio clips!  Which are uploaded to my box.net, so you can just stream them instead of downloading and stuff.  Used, obviously, purely for demonstrating awesomeness and why you should buy Big Finish audios and stuff.

Anyway.

Just Who Is This Braxiatel Person Anyway?

Braxiatel, who claims the human monicker "Irving" for reasons best known to the Virgin writers, is a Time Lord.  Like the Doctor, he is interested in aliens; unlike the Doctor, he's more concerned with saving their cultural artefacts than the actual people.  He turns up in various spin-off media, and is usually portrayed as a shadowy, semi-ambiguous figure with fingers in many pies and agendas of his own.  He has particular ties to the Doctor, Romana, and Bernice Summerfield.

Also, he is like Chuck Norris, in a way.  Braxiatel first appears in Theatre of War by Justin Richards, a Virgin New Adventure featuring the Seventh Doctor with Benny and Ace.  Like most NAs, it's quite difficult to get ahold of, and I haven't read it.  But there's a rather good summary here.  Braxiatel's debut highlights some of his more significant features: his Collection, a repository of cultural artefacts and documents from across the universe, and his ability to out-manipulate even the Seventh Doctor.

He later appears in the Missing Adventure Empire of Glass, featuring the First Doctor with Stephen and Vicki.  Even at this early stage in the Doctor's life, he knows Braxiatel well.  In this novel, which the BBC has thoughtfully made available on their website (presumably because they love me and want to make me squirm with joy), Brax is organising an interstellar political conference.  In Renaissance Venice.  I know, subtle, right?  I particularly love his introduction, from chapter three:

Irving Braxiatel stood in the centre of the room and gazed around with some pleasure at the books that lined the walls, their spines facing inward as was the custom. The collection was complete. In this room he had every single book that was on the Index of the Catholic Church. They were banned knowledge, books considered too dangerous to read, but such books were, in the end, the most precious. Censorship illuminated perfectly the directions in which any civilization would advance. And knowledge was power, of course.

He smiled to himself. Knowledge was his speciality. He collected it assiduously. It was his most profound desire to have all of the knowledge in the Universe in one place at one time: a huge Library that any member of any intelligent race could consult without let or hindrance. A dream, of course, but an achievable one. His own race collected knowledge, but as an end in itself, and they never shared it, not even if by doing so they could avert catastrophe and save lives.

Braxiatel believed that perfect knowledge led to peace, and so he had left his people and travelled, seeking out obscure facts to add to his vast and comprehensive database. His presence on Earth, in Venice, was on other business, but he hoped to make a small start here by collecting together works of fact and fiction that would otherwise be burned. Perhaps, at some stage in the planet's future, he might return and see what had become of the Braxiatel Collection.

He took off his bifocal spectacles and polished them with a handkerchief. What was it that Friar Sarpi had called the Index earlier that evening, when he brought the last of the books along? "The first secret device religion ever invented to make men stupid." Sarpi didn't agree with the existence of the Index, but he was a Friar when all was said and done, and couldn't be seen to disagree with the Pope's edicts. That was why Sarpi obtained the books in secret and passed them to Braxiatel. To preserve them. To keep their knowledge alive.

When Virgin lost their license to do Doctor Who novels, they created a series that focused exclusively on Bernice Summerfield.  Braxiatel became a significant supporting character, providing Benny with resources, and joining her in hijinks.  A few years later, when the Benny license was passed on to Big Finish, the Braxiatel Collection became Benny's base of operations, and Brax -- now voiced by Miles Richardson -- became a significant recurring character.  A fixer of situations, a supplier of information, an arranger of things.  Later still, he became a regular in the Gallifrey series for a season and a half, although timeline-wise--

Wait.

Braxiatel, chronologically speaking.

In his youth, Braxiatel was a Prydonian.  Little is known about his early years, except that it has been hinted that he is the Doctor's brother.  He was a serious student, not particularly popular, nicknamed "the icicle" by his classmates.

As a young adult, he was ... well, it's difficult to judge from one single flashback, but Gallifrey 1.3 "The Inquiry" suggests that he was not taken all together seriously by the establishment.  He objected strenuously to the creation and testing of a weapon of mass temporal destruction, to the point of threatening to leave Gallifrey forever if the test went ahead.  In the end, the test concluded with a near-miss (sort of), and Braxiatel, horrified by the potential for pointless destruction, began to collect cultural artefacts from around the universe, ensuring that they would outlive the extinction of their creators.  All well, good and noble, but he's also pretty keen on the aquisition and possession themselves.  Violating the laws of time, Braxiatel begins to contact his future selves (or, possibly the other way around) in order to facilitate the Collection's development.

Fast forward a few centuries, and Braxiatel is established as a tutor at Prydon Academy.  Among his students is the young Romanadvoratrelundar, who is as brilliant and lonely as he was.  Braxiatel is the closest thing she has to a friend; his relationship to her is both paternal and flirtatious.  (Look, I never said I was here for a normal, healthy relationship.)  This arrangement comes to a screeching halt when Romana comes into contact with Pandora, an ancient Time Lord dictatrix whose consciousness survives in the Matrix.  Romana has genetic ties to Pandora, including the Pandora Imprimatur, which would make it possible for the "ghost" to possess her, if she were willing.  Pandora feeds on a person's ambition, of which Romana has plenty.  To save Romana, and Gallifrey, Braxiatel contacts a future self, more adept at manipulation, and between them they wipe Romana's memory of the encounter.  In doing so, they also remove or suppress her memories of knowing Braxiatel, which doesn't really work for me, as you'd think it'd leave a pretty vast gap in her brain, but there you go.  Braxiatel intends to keep Romana close, under his control guidance, but a year later, the White Guardian selects her to accompany the Doctor on his search for the Key to Time, and she leaves Gallifrey.  Hey, what can you do?  Here, listen to the scene where Narvin learns about this.  I do love this scene rather a lot; Narvin sounds as squeeful as a thirteen-year-old girl with a sparkly vampire romance. 

Skip a few more years -- at one point, Gallifrey tries to tell us it's been less than twenty-five, but I'm sure they were just drunk, or suffering Rowling's Mathematical Incompetence Syndrome -- and Romana returns to Gallifrey.  God only knows why.  Blame Pandora, whatevs.  Braxiatel seeks her out, and offers to assist with her presidential campaign.  By the time the series actually opens, he is Romana's most senior advisor, and aside from an unfortunate tendency to indulge in flattery, he's her closest Gallifreyan friend.  He also administers Prydon Academy, and is agitating for the title of Chancellor, which has been unused for some years.  He argues that he's already doing the work of a chancellor; Romana worries that she'll be seen as centralising power among her friends.

Braxiatel eventually persuades her, but within hours of his inauguration, Pandora is released from the Matrix.  Braxiatel uses his mind to contain her past and present incarnations, and (Pandora feeds on ambition, remember?) Romana learns that he aspired to replace her in the presidency.  But there's no chance of that anymore; to protect Gallifrey (and Romana), Brax leaves, apparently forever.  You can listen to their final goodbye here.  At the last minute, his heroic, sacrificial departure becomes a rather sordid exile, when Narvin "accidentally" reveals that Brax has been violating the laws of time.  This was, presumably, right before he let slip to his Slytherins that Lupin is a werewolf.  Bless.  Anyway, Brax is stripped of his title, poor love.

So Brax heads out into the universe, and it's at this point in his timeline that he meets Benny and all of that.  Eventually, he offers her the position of Head of Archaeology on the Braxiatel Collection -- which has grown to become a sort of dedicated research facility/university.  He has a circle of friends, or at least, acquaintances and associates who regard him in the light of a particularly eccentric and distant uncle.  He and Benny have a lot of all-night drinking sessions, which is as good an indicator of friendship as any.

Here's a series of flashbacks of Benny's relationship with Braxiatel, from "The Wake".

The problem is that he still has his head!Pandora, and over the seasons, she sort of ... comes to the fore.  Certainly, Brax has always been a bit shady -- he has sent research teams to their deaths, started a couple of civil wars -- but it becomes a lot starker in "The Mirror Effect".  Of the four characters who encounter darker versions of each other through a strange alien mirror, Braxiatel is the only one who doesn't seem to have an evil twin.  This leads Benny's ex-husband, Jason, to wonder what he's hiding -- and Braxiatel promptly wipes his mind, and programs him to suffer crippling migraines if he thinks too long or too hard about motives.  Nice, eh?

Shortly after, the Collection is invaded and occupied by the Fifth Axis, a human fascist movement whose tactical abilities and technology are not right for the era.  Not to mention that Brax knows the history of this sector, and he built his Collection there precisely because it was peaceful.  Clearly, something is amiss.  The Fifth Axis believe that Braxiatel has time travel technology, and he is placed under house arrest and subjected to various interrogations.  None of which are precisely what you'd call torture, but ... still.  At one point, Braxiatel becomes convinced that he -- or rather, his future self -- is the power behind the Fifth Axis, and sets out to murder the Axis commandant and then commit suicide.  Later, something residing within him -- Pandora, his Watcher, something else -- seeks a new host, and Brax arranges for Benny to shoot him and incapacitate it.  I think.  (It's not really very clear.)

The point is, Brax was a bit sketchy to start with, and the Fifth Axis didn't help.  And then it turns out that the Axis are the pawns of the Daleks -- that's not precisely a spoiler; the audio in question is called "Death and the Daleks" -- and the Collection only narrowly survives the following invasion.

After this, Braxiatel becomes very focussed on ensuring the survival of his Collection.  Maybe a little too focussed, because once you find yourself running your own Cyberman army, you probably want to step back and take a long hard look at your situation, before you start stomping around saying things like "FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE!!!!" 

...What happened is that Braxiatel went back, contacted his past self on Gallifrey and essentially nicked a piece out of the Coronet of Rassilon.  God only knows what Romana thought had happened to it.  Anyway, then he found himself a nice, bored twenty-first century human in a dead-end job and showed him the universe, messed with his heart and head then dumped him in another universe to babysit his evil self then used the Gallifreyan bling to make him a Cybercontroller, ensuring that the Cyber-army would protect the Collection from peril.

Problem was, the human-Cybercontrollers don't have a very long lifespan, and Braxiatel decided to replace the first one with Jason, Benny's ex.  This turned out to be a spectacularly bad idea, because Benny doesn't really appreciate it when you mess with her family.  In the end, the Cybermen were destroyed, and Braxiatel made a hasty departure from the Collection (though not before messing with a few more memories, because a man ought to have a hobby).  As Ronin, the first Cybercontroller died, he told Braxiatel, "That thing in your head ... it's still there".  Meaning, presumably, Pandora.

He returns to the Collection -- ostensibly against his will -- about a year later.  In his absence, it has been caught in the crossfire of an interstellar war between the Draconians and the Mim.  And here's where he gets really creepy.  In order to re-establish his powerbase on the Collection, Braxiatel undertakes the following:

- Gives the occupying Draconian commandant evidence against Bev Tarrant, leading to her faking her death in order to escape Draconian retribution.  Bev has begun to suspect that someone is pulling Draconian strings, but her final message to Benny is intercepted by Brax, the puppetmaster.
- He destroys the Mimsphere, ending the war via genocide.  The Draconians, a bit spooked by the sudden destruction of the Mim but unwilling to admit they had nothing to do with it, offer their protection to the Collection, while allowing it to remain a sovereign, independent entity.
- He refuses to take any official position on the Collection, but remains the power behind the newly-created constitution and parliamentary body.  Not to mention the security force, which includes Gallifreyan weapons.

Nice.  Very nice.

Unfortunately, evidence of his tampering with the timelines comes to light, and Jason confronts him with it.  Braxiatel denies nothing, except that he is in love with Benny -- Benny, he says, is merely useful to him, as a person who understands history, with a role to play in unfolding events.  And then, to keep Jason quiet, Brax murders him.  Or rather, he arranges for Peter, Benny's half-Killoran eight-year-old son, to kill him.  This is arguably an accident, but it's a fortuitous one for Brax.  You can listen to the scene here; in the interests of length and not freaking people out with scenes of audio violence, I cut it off right before Peter's entrance.

Finally, when a grieving Benny uncovers the evidence of Braxiatel's role in the Mim genocide, Brax arranges for Doggles, his new head of security, to attempt to rape her.  Or something.  This is where Brax sort of tipped from "creepy" to "evil" for me.  His intent is to discredit Benny, but it's all very squicksome.  Benny, with the help of her friends, escapes from the Collection with Peter, and that's the end of his presence in the Bernice Summerfield series so far.

Later (in Brax's timeline, not the actual chronological order of audio releases), Braxiatel turns his attention back to Gallifrey.  In the wake of the Pandora-led civil war, he briefly assumed the position of president, to the unspeakable surprise and dismay of Romana.  She is particularly unhappy when, on stepping down from the position (which he only holds briefly) he doesn't hand the presidency back to her.   Disgraced and exiled from the Citadel, Romana agrees to assist Narvin in uncovering the conspiracy behind the Free Time terrorists who have been dogging Gallifrey since the beginning of the series.  She is, after all, an embarrassment to Gallifrey, and quite expendable. 

The conspiracy, however, turns out to be Braxiatel.  In his exile, he's heard rumours of a threat against Gallifrey -- some "metal gentlemen" are alluded to -- and he's decided that he and Romana are just the people to rebuild Gallifrey after its inevitable destruction.  Here's an extremely cut down version of that scene.  So he's sold off his entire collection but for the planetoid that held it, and used the proceeds to buy Pandora's weapons stocks.  Now he's only gone and stolen the entire Time Lord bio-data archive, and Leela, Narvin and K9 along with it.  The plan has gone somewhat awry, though, and the weapons are going to end up in Dalek (probably) hands, while Romana, Brax and the others are trapped in the empty Collection with no obvious means of escape.

And thus the Gallifrey series ends.

Now, that's just my guess at the timeline, and Simon Guerrier has said on the DWF that Braxiatel thinks he's the last of his kind.  On the other hand, one thinks that Benny would probably notice if the Collection was suddenly sold off.  More likely, we just have two groups of writers who weren't really talking to each other, but what's fandom for if not to facilitate ridiculously convoluted theories?

By this point you're probably thinking, "Liz, Braxiatel is a horrible, terrible person who is not deserving of the ridiculous amounts of affection you lavish upon him".  And you would be quite right.  But I love the idea of a character who does unconscionable things for what he believes are the right reasons.  Also, I'm a sucker for a mentor/apprentice relationship, and Brax/Romana is one of the more twisted iterations thereof.  I really love the shifts in their balance of power -- from student and tutor to president and courtier, to friends who are constantly manipulating and hurting each other.  Even before he had Pandora living in his head, Brax was a little bit obsessed with Romana, and afterwards -- well, if not for the coincidence of Leela, Narvin and K9 being in the bio-data archives at the moment he time-scooped them, the series would have ended with Romana and Brax trapped alone together on the Collection.  Wait, no, K9 was secretly working for Brax. 

Also, I really do believe that Braxiatel is being driven in his evil by Pandora.  You simply can't go from "hesitant to kill a man" to "mass genocide" in a couple of years otherwise.  Again, there's the twisted mentor/apprentice relationship -- did I mention that Pandora looks like Romana I? 

And it does not hurt that Brax is suave and articulate, shameless in his pursuit of creature comforts, and frequently gets the best lines.  He's like the Master, had the Master not descended into camp and bad Delgado impressions in the eighties.  Although Brax is also quite camp, but then, most Time Lords are.

So yes, there is my Braxiatel Manifesto.  Now you at least know who I'm talking about, even if you'll now roll your eyes every time I pop up to say, "And then he killed an entire planet and it was awesome!!!"  Hey, at least it's not Twilight...  If by chance you'd like to know more, you can find my individual episode reviews in my big finish tag, and here is a handy list of Braxiatel-heavy stories in Bernice Summerfield:

- "The Crystal of Cantus"
- "Death and the Daleks" (follows closely on the Life During Wartime book, which is available from Big Finish, I think.  The Dr Who Reference Guide has a good summary.)
- "The Crystal of Cantus"
- all of season 8

Comments

[sajee.livejournal.com]

I think Brax sounds cool.

Evilcool. But coooool.

OH HAI!

[lizbee.livejournal.com]

OH HAI. It's not like we just spent a day together! ...Wait, we didn't, because you were mad and went walking. OH WELL.

[audio-time-team.livejournal.com]

Ya..another Benny fan with love for Brax! Actually just ya another Benny fan.

Actually Simon's also put clues into place in the novel The Two Jasons where one is lead to believe that Benny may note be around to witness the selling off of the Collection. If you ever have the opportunity to meet Simon he's a pretty cool cat that's got it all mapped out in his noggin'.

Also when she meets Brax in The Theater of War it's in the 30th century or so and the majority of her adventures take place in the 24th and 25th centuries.

[lizbee.livejournal.com]

I only started listening to Benny for Brax, but I'm increasingly inclined to listen to her whole series. I blame people like you, for drawing my attention to their awesomeness.

Actually Simon's also put clues into place in the novel The Two Jasons where one is lead to believe that Benny may note be around to witness the selling off of the Collection. If you ever have the opportunity to meet Simon he's a pretty cool cat that's got it all mapped out in his noggin'.

Oh good, another incredibly expensive Big Finish book I absolutely must get. This is not a cheap hobby.

I'd quite happily stalk Simon if he ever came to Australia; as it is, I fangirl him from a safe distance. Although now I'm eager to ply him with drink and learn about his intended timeline, possibly while I take notes and create a PowerPoint presentation.

[audio-time-team.livejournal.com]

Well, I am egotistical enough to gloss myself The Unofficial Benny Pimp for a reason... ;)

If your opinion of Jason doesn't change by the time you reach that book in the Benny chronology you'd probably want to skip it. (Though it still amazes me just how many people genuinely dislike the character since Big Finish has done a great job of rehabbing the character ala' the Sixth Doctor and Mel.)

Nice bit with the PowerPoint presentation. That actually might be worth doing to explain the Benny timeline and all the inconsistencies up to the point of The Wake.

[lizbee.livejournal.com]

To be quite honest, Jason had grown on me a lot by the time he was killed, but I'm in the habit of happily slagging him off now, and actually liking him doesn't seem like a good enough reason to stop.

...We can just blame Braxiatel for all the inconsistencies, right?

[benbenberi.livejournal.com]

Wow! I've only met Brax in the first couple of Gallifrey stories -- looks like there's a LOT more to catch up on! Great summary.

[lizbee.livejournal.com]

Ooh yeah. I used to tell myself that the Benny stuff wasn't relevant, but then it started to sound increasingly intriguing, and I got sucked in.

[silly-cleo.livejournal.com]

See, this will be so useful when I eventual listen to Benny Summerfield and want to work out Braxiatel's timeline. Awesome. Thanks Liz!

[lizbee.livejournal.com]

Any time!

[biichan.livejournal.com]

Dude, this is an awesome summary. And obscure tertiary characters rule. (I have my irrational obsession when it comes to C'rizz, so I very much empathize with you and Brax.)

[lizbee.livejournal.com]

My own obsession would be much easier to justify if he didn't make me itch in my feminism. I tell myself it's the same as everyone else's obsession with Gene Hunt. *eyedart*

[biichan.livejournal.com]

Sounds good to me. (I think Brax is much moar awesome, but I'm not much of a LoM/A2A type person.)

[bewarethespork.livejournal.com]

Brax sounds epically awesome. Well, creepy and evil and epically awesome, anyway. And once I get home, I'll be listening to those audio snippets.

[kathyh]

Here from who_daily and just wanted to say that as someone just getting in to the Big Finish audios that was amazingly useful. Brax sounds completely fascinating in an evilly delicious way.

[lizbee.livejournal.com]

He is, he totally is!

[prof-pangaea.livejournal.com]

i want to know how much communication there was between the writers for the gallifrey audios and the writers for the benny audios. i mean, i am all for fanwank but if they were effeectively writing two different characters then i would want to know. weren't a lot of the benny audios produced before gallifrey? did the writers working on benny even know about pandora? and if so, when? these are the questions i have!

you posted my favourite clip of brax from the gallifrey audios, which is when romana is starting to become hugo chavez and think that *only she* knows how to rule gallifrey properly in order to bring it to an enlightened state, and she is all "YOU BETRAYED ME BY HAVING AMBITIONS TO BE PRESIDENT AT SOME POINT," (while that plan sort of seemed sensible to me, and also the only way to build a sustainable political movement, but what do i know?) and he says, "sometimes it isn't what you want want that's most important, but why you want it."

and that's why i always loved brax, because he was making plans but they were always for gallifrey first. they may have been occasionally shady, (but NOTHING compared to the stuff from the benny audios) and also they were usually focused on helping gallifrey become more progressive, stopping gallifrey from constructing weapons of mass destruction, and also saving pieces of art. awesome!

it would be interesting to see how he could get from that to the things he does in the benny audios, but not nearly as much if it was just because the writers didn't ever talk to each other, so they weren't really writing about the same guy. then i would sort of see benny!brax and gallifrey!brax as as alternate braxiatels (sort of like how i see the minister for chance in "death comes to time" as an alternate brax. or NA seven, audio seven, "death comes to time" seven, other book seven, etc. as alternate sevens who i all like for different reasons. yeah, i even like NA seven, because he is sad when ace leaves and becomes human because he is so sad about it. although i haven't read many NA's, so...).

i don't even mind if braxiatel becomes evil if there is a point to it! or at least the writers know that they're doing it. although i'm not sure if they noticed that they made romana an insane dictator. "only i can be president of gallifrey! so instead of stepping down i will destroy the repository of all time lord knowledge! after getting us into a devastating civil war, of course." hmmmm.

[lizbee.livejournal.com]

weren't a lot of the benny audios produced before gallifrey? did the writers working on benny even know about pandora? and if so, when? these are the questions i have!

I just checked -- the early set up for Brax's ambiguity was done concurrently with Gallifrey, and season eight was made after. So they certainly knew what Gallifrey was doing/had done with the character. How much that influenced them, I don't know, but the line "That thing in your head ... it's still there" seems to point conclusively to Pandora.

and she is all "YOU BETRAYED ME BY HAVING AMBITIONS TO BE PRESIDENT AT SOME POINT," (while that plan sort of seemed sensible to me, and also the only way to build a sustainable political movement, but what do i know?) and he says, "sometimes it isn't what you want want that's most important, but why you want it."

I think, and remember I'm the queen of over-identifying with Romana, that what has upset her is that he never let on that this was his master plan. And if he actively lied about it, then one begins to wonder how he was planning to succeed her.

i don't even mind if braxiatel becomes evil if there is a point to it!

His stated goal is to make the universe a better, safer place. Which is rather brilliant, in a way, and seeing all the people being crushed under the tracks of history, or wiped out of time all together, as so much collateral damage is very Time Lordy.

or at least the writers know that they're doing it.

Oh, it was quite explicitly their goal. I, er, think that Benny's writers are of a higher caliber than Gallifrey.

[prof-pangaea.livejournal.com]

but the line "That thing in your head ... it's still there" seems to point conclusively to Pandora.

or at least to... vaguely implying something later if we feel like it.

I think, and remember I'm the queen of over-identifying with Romana, that what has upset her is that he never let on that this was his master plan.

I JUST DON'T GET IT. what, was she planning on being president FOREVER? to me, it always seemed like his master plan was to try and set up a sustainable political force that would continue the progess they were currently pushing forward. thus, the emphasis on opening up the educational system, so that it would be much, much harder for any political backlash to permanently change things back to the status quo. this was not politically popular, so it's not like she had a lot of allies she could depend upon to carry on her work when/if she was voted out of office, or even if her political power just waned to some extent. i remember listening to that scene and being like, "HOW IS THIS A SURPRISE TO YOU? you have been working on it this entire series, how could you have not noticed!" it was as if bill clinton had turned to al gore in 2000 and said, "i can't believe you wanted to be president this whole time!" right after they spent the past eight years setting the whole thing up.

And if he actively lied about it, then one begins to wonder how he was planning to succeed her.

i haven't listened to most of these since last summer, so i should probably refresh my memory. i never got the impression of malevolent, or even very dodgy intent from brax in any gallifrey audio. which is why the benny audios are making me O___O!! but you know my biases: i am very much for disabling timeonic fusion devices, reforming education, and saving art galleries, and very against dictatorships and heads of secret government organisations that give their loyalty to whomever happens to be in power at the time.

His stated goal is to make the universe a better, safer place. Which is rather brilliant, in a way, and seeing all the people being crushed under the tracks of history, or wiped out of time all together, as so much collateral damage is very Time Lordy.

i am all for exploring such things, because i like when stories are about the exchange of ideas from different philosophies and why we make certain things important and how we can get to doing and believing things we never would have expected -- which is why i'm still interested in romana, even though she went totally batshit throughout the run of gallifrey. but there's losing a bit of perspective, and then there's commiting genocide and arranging for your BFF's to get raped. i kind of requite a higher level of explanation and exploration of the latter than the former.


Oh, it was quite explicitly their goal. I, er, think that Benny's writers are of a higher caliber than Gallifrey.

i'm going to have to question gary russell at every big finish panel at chicago TARDIS, aren't i? unless he's all fancy now and won't be doing the BF panels...! and lisa bowerman. according to ian richardson, apparently i will find her at the bar.

[prof-pangaea.livejournal.com]

um. miles richardson. *facepalms*

[elyssadc.livejournal.com]

This is a thing of glorious perfection. And wonderful clip selections as well. Bravo. As for Brax's influence on Doggles in The Wake, I shall quote the response from the writer of that audio when I asked about it on OG:

And, in The Wake, it's suggested that the Axis actually killed Doggles, only Brax brought him back to life and is using him like a puppet. Certainly Doggles doesn't always seem in control of himself. I wish I'd made that clearly in his final scene with Adrian. I think now it would have been better if we had a moment where Doggles knows he's not in control, but he can't stop. He can't help but torture Adrian...

So, my understanding is that quite a lot of what Doggles has done in the audios was actually Brax. I'm not sure if that makes the rape attempt set-up more or less evil.

[lizbee.livejournal.com]

Sexual-assault-by-proxy? I'm going with more. I mean, it's the exercise of power that rape represents, and he doesn't even have to sully himself with that tedious sex business.

I think my problem with the whole rape thing was that, unlike genocide and wiping people out of history, rape is a present, real-world problem that's statistically likely to affect some of Benny's audience. That's why I'm having so much trouble dealing with it, when I'm really quite okay with everything else Brax does.

[prof-pangaea.livejournal.com]

i don't know if this rape business is a genuine attempt to go, "guys, this guy is evil", or a misguided attempt to make things more "real", or if it's just that thing where most men seriously don't understand how rape or the possibility of rape is a thing that most women have to deal with every single day, and how fucked up and scary that actually is.

also, it takes things from a somewhat theoretical ground (i.e., brax may have caused the deaths of... millions? but he did go and stab or strangle each one individually) and makes it much more personal, and thus much harder to handwave as "it's bad, but somebody's got to do it."

[prof-pangaea.livejournal.com]

So, my understanding is that quite a lot of what Doggles has done in the audios was actually Brax.

AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

[notfromvenus.livejournal.com]

I skipped most of this, since I've only heard the first two Gallifrey audios and I'm trying to avoid being completely spoiled. But from what little I've heard/read of him, he's pretty cool, in a shadowy mysterious kind of way.

And don't worry about Theater of War. I bought it just cuz it was his introduction, and he's only in it for two or three scenes. The only memorable thing IMO was his saying he's known the Doctor "forever", which I guess forshadows or inspires the idea that he's the Doctor's brother.