Gallifrey round-up

[lizbee]

I'm on the verge of being done with my Gallifrey re-listen.  Which makes me a bit sad, because there's a whole world of Big Finish audios out there, but I've already listened to all the ones with Romana and/or Brax.  (Miles Richardson is apparently playing Iris Wildthyme's ex-husband in an upcoming audio, but ... look, there are depths to which I refuse to stoop.  This week, anyway.)



Here are some random thoughts, covering mostly "Appropriation" and "Mindbomb":

- Genartis, in addition to being the only Time Lord on Gallifrey with a regional UK accent, is a delightful worm.  Former allies are invading the planet?  He'll just give them Romana, no one here wants her.  The plan is delightfully slimy, not to mention rather clever.  I will be very sad when he's exiled to the Outlands and has to spend his days mooching around Romana's family House and threatening passing ex-presidents with rape.  Even sadder when he is zombified, not least because then I have to hear John Leeson and Lalla Ward use the word "zombified" multiple times.
- In retrospect, it's Really Quite Obvious that Matthias is working for Braxiatel.  Nevertheless, it's lovely to see all Brax's scheming-by-proxy.
- Soooo, Romana has been imprisoned for at least a couple of days, and thinks she's on her way to being executed, and instead gets to sit and have a chat with Narvin.  Which is lovely, and I'd be a lot more cheery about it than she is, but then he's all, "So what would you do, if you could walk out of here?"  And she answers, "Break into Braxiatel's office."

And I'm like, WHAT?  Because in that situation, "Oh, go through Brax's stuff" is what I'd answer, but there's no in-story reason for Romana to be thinking of him, except that the plot requires Leela and K9 to be in his space.

Ideally, Romana's proper answer should be, "Take Leela and K9, steal a TARDIS and hit the beach AND NEVER COME BACK", but she's a bit too crazy for that. 

- Seriously, it makes me a bit sad that Romana ends the series even crazier than when she started.  At the beginning she was just restless and constantly putting herself in situations where she kept ending up nearly dead/tortured/humiliated.  By the end, she's ... well, a bit power-mad and broken, possibly from all the time she's spent hosting at least one incorporeal lunatic in her head.  She was totally planning to sacrifice herself to destroy Pandora, and since Leela saved her she's been a bit lost.
- Concentrating on Romana's INSANITY makes it easier to overlook all the times when they write her like Gallifrey's own Sarah Palin. 
- I don't know why it's apparently so hard to write Romana and Leela in-character, since girl!fandom does it all the time, but in pro-fandom, only Gareth Roberts and Chris Boucher seem to manage it with any consistency.
- Every now and then I get this urge to write fic where Narvin survives the Time War and ends up working for Torchwood in Cardiff.  'Cos, they need someone competent, and Narvin could be sarcastic when they stuff up and endanger the world every week.  Also, Torchwood is pretty fail in general, and having a former xenophobic-secret-police-type-commander in their midst might actually improve their moral standing.
- I have this problem where all the chancellery guards sound the same to me.  I tell them apart by remembering that Wynter is dead, Hallam has a slightly deeper voice, and Annos is the nice one who is secretly in love with Romana.
- It makes me a bit sad that we don't find out what happens right after Brax declares Matthias his successor, because there were probably shenanigans.  At the very least, we know that Romana was exiled from the Capitol.  STUFF HAPPENED AND I WANT TO KNOW HOW IT WENT DOWN AND THEY CHEAT ME, DAMMIT!
- Equally sad is the unlikelihood that BF will ever do anymore of these.  *weeps*

Comments

[audio-time-team.livejournal.com]

Remember they also licensed Jason Kane from Dave Stone so I there's precedence for that happening.

[garpu.livejournal.com]

Oh poop, they did. Well, then there's always fanfic. :)

[audio-time-team.livejournal.com]

See, and this is where fandom fails me. I know there's Benny fans out there. But there's like no Benny circa Braxiatel Collection stuff out there. At least I can't find any. What little Benny fic there is, outside of Lizbee's, is all NA centered and very rarely is she an actual driving force in the piece.

[lizbee.livejournal.com]

I've been looking for that sort of thing too, and it doesn't seem to exist. I guess the people who are buying the series are not, for the most part, the fic-writing types.

[audio-time-team.livejournal.com]

Or what might be the case, the ones most likely to write fanfic like Simon Guerrier and Eddie Robson, now get paid to write Benny stories.

I do fanfic in other fandoms but I've never given Benny a try. I'm too afraid I'd make her a caricature and not live up to what Cornell and the gang have laid down. It's very intimidating, at least for me.

I would even live with a good Benny NA era story, just something with her that's more than a "oh we need snark so we'll have Benny say it" moment.