Gallifrey: Time War 2

A second volume in the series about the Time War from the Gallifreyan perspective. This time around, Leela is absent and so are the Daleks, with any fighting taking place entirely off-screen. Instead the focus is on the early days of Rassilon's new regime as Gallifrey slides towards an increasingly authoritarian dictatorship in the name of wartime security. The four stories form a single arc but each is distinct and has a separate writer.

• Havoc – The first story is primarily about the politics in the immediate aftermath of Rassilon's takeover; he's already entrenched in office and is seeking to enhance his grip on power. Rassilon himself (played by Terrence Hardiman in the obvious absence of Timothy Dalton) isn't in it all that much, mostly turning up to make brief and ominous announcements before fading into the background again. There's certainly no effort to develop his character or explain what he's doing beyond him just being a bad guy. Some of the other characters from the first volume aren't behaving very consistently, either, with Narvin, for instance, seeming a far less confident man than he used to be. There's an intriguing side-plot with a killer from the future hiding out in the Citadel, but it mostly seems to be going through the motions. 3 stars.

• Partisans – The focus here is more on Narvin, better written in this episode but still not in the sort of story that really suits him. Furthermore, there's an incredibly long info-dump of exposition at the beginning that means it takes quite a while for the story to get going. Once it does, it's not bad, featuring the War Council and Romana having different plans for how to turn a world war on an alien planet to their advantage in the larger Time War. Here, it helps that some of the story is told through the eyes of a local soldier for whom a world-spanning war is quite big – and terrible – enough on its own but has no idea of the brewing larger conflict. 4 stars.

• Collateral – Following on from the events of the previous episode, although set some years later, this is the strongest story of the collection. It has much the same theme as its predecessor, with Rassilon and Romana taking different views as to what the appropriate course of action is - and, in this case, what they're even trying to achieve. But it the theme of the futility of war is stronger, and we see Gallifrey actually using time travel to further its ends. There's a sense of ticking doom, and some effective use of nonlinear storytelling that doesn't fall into the trap of getting confusing (no more so than a typical flashback sequence, really). 4 stars.

• Assassins – The final story, however, suffers especially strongly from the problem that the collection as a whole does. Essentially, it's a prequel to events already played out in the TV stories, so we know how it all ends, robbing it of much of the tension. We know that we'll never see how the Time War ends, because we've seen that already, and we've also seen that Rassilon survives – and this particular episode is supposedly all about whether he will or not. We do get to see more of him than in the previous three offerings, but he basically turns out to be a gitt with little depth, wandering around confident that he can't be harmed. Which, since we know he won't be, doesn't help with the tension. Yes, there's some interest in seeing exactly how we get there, but the resolution at the end is a bit of a cop-out and for all of the semi-cliffhanger ending promising that Leela will be back in volume three, I don't feel especially inspired to listen to it. 3 stars.