Don't be lasagna

i still can't quite believe war room 3 is actually a real thing that exists. it's been delayed so many times that it feels weird thinking i've now actually listened to it. think it was worth the wait though - i went through all the episodes in an afternoon and had a great time with it, there was a lot of really interesting character work going on here and there were lots of moments that had me feeling some very intense emotions! my only real gripe atm is that there wasn't enough leela :( but overall a very good set of stories.

propaganda:

enjoyed this! i don't feel like i have as much to say on it as the other episodes in this set, but it was a solid story and had some cool ideas

really liked getting to see a slightly different side to ollistra in her scenes with rassilon. she's so in control in the war room and it was interesting to have her in a position where she's not the one on the front foot, to have her vulnerabilities on show that bit more. great character work.

i did enjoy the saw trap-esque plot, but have to agree with the reviews i've seen in that i think it could have gone further. it would've been cool to maybe see some of those elements pushed into slightly darker territory, or just for the setting to get explored a little more.

i also felt slightly underwhelmed in some ways by the reveal of who the signal disruptor actually was. i absolutely get why they wouldn't have wanted to have him be someone we already knew just for like. cheap shock value or whatever, but at the same time him being just Some Guy didn't quite work for me. it's a difficult one, because i don't think either solution would really be completely satisfying, and i do think they probably made the right choice, but yeah. didn't quite click with it

i am afraid for cresta. she did make it through this one but i fear she is too nice to survive in the long run :(

resistance:

was very excited for this one because i really enjoyed katharine armitage's episodes in wr2, and this definitely lived up to expectations! it's currently tied with "hope" as my favourite from the set, it just hit all the right buttons for me. great stuff.

the confrontation between veklin and ollistra at the start!!!! SUCH a good scene, i am going to be thinking about it forever 👍 genuinely had me stunned. it felt really satisfying after the gradual buildup of veklin's doubts over this ollistra in the last few episodes, and carried through brilliantly into the following stories too. sometimes some of bf's doctor who stuff tends towards feeling a bit too episodic/contained for my liking, so i'm really loving how much war room is allowing these kind of plots and character threads to gradually build and develop over the course of the series. it's brilliant. tbh i have even more to say about this but i can't get it into words.

in the same vein, the way that previous stories and plotlines from time war etc were threaded into this (the deception fields, knyla) was really nicely done. everything just builds up really nicely and it's great to see

honestly veklin was such a highlight of this episode. loved how you could never *quite* tell what side she was on, how her anger and frustration was clearly real but it was never quite enough to stop you (or the other characters) wondering if she wasn't going to end up siding back with ollistra in the end anyway.

i feel like a bit of a fraud saying this because i basically never post about them on here, but i genuinely love veklin and ollistra as characters so much and i'm really enjoying how much depth and development and attention they're getting right now! i remember when i first got really into the war doctor audios like 6 years ago, and it felt like i was the only person on earth interested in them, they didn't have nearly as many appearances and basically no one was talking about them lol. listening to all this material they're getting now, and seeing more and more people get invested in them (and producing some amazing analysis/art/etc. i am literally in awe), is genuinely so fucking cool :)

ANYWAY. felt great to have leela and narvin back interacting and playing a major role in this one, after a first episode that was pretty main trio-lite. as much as i do love the expanded cast of wr, i think ultimately gallifrey is always going to be about leela, romana and narvin to me and it's almost always going to be at its most compelling when they're front and centre. i think the fact that this and "hope" are my favourites from wr3 probably has something to do with that.

god narvin was so broken... again really loved seeing events of prior episodes continuing to have ramifications for the characters but like. this one hurt :(

and leela's reaction to the deception fields as well... ough.

something i'm really liking in these stories (and tbh in some other non-gallifrey time war stuff as well) is the way everything gets so blurry and grey. how even the nominal "good guys" can still be pushed too far, can still be willing to do things that normally nobody would even consider. it's just. yeah. war does make people fucked up. it does make them worse. and no, nobody is exempt from that. it feels real, and all the more compelling for that

eris :((((( i think i'd been lulled into a false sense of security by the fact no major/recurring characters had been killed off recently, this genuinely shocked me. and the fact that it was narvin who killed him. that it was an accident. and how he's going to be carrying that guilt too. god.

ROMANA!!!! even though i knew she was going to turn up at some point in this set i still got so excited hearing her voice again! what a cliffhanger to end on as well

hope:

i remember listening to gallifrey: time war for the first time and thinking, when they mentioned ollistra, about how much she and romana would hate each other and how much i wished i could hear them interact. well, five years later i can now say that i have heard them interact and they do in fact hate each other, and it's great.

something especially painful about realising that romana's being kept in line through threats to leela in exactly the same way that leela's being coerced into cooperating by the threat of them hurting romana if she goes against rassilon's wishes. they're each others biggest source of strength in so many ways, but because of that they're both one of the other's biggest vulnerabilities, and the other time lords know that and can exploit it. ough.

considering how the episode ended i'm now not entirely sure whether the romana we hear in that opening scene was Real Romana or Fake Romana. hmm.

liked the chess scenes with rassilon. i'll be honest and say that for the most part i am considerably less interested in him than i am in most of the other characters, but he got some good material this time round. like in "propaganda", it was interesting seeing his dynamic with ollistra play out.

the exploration of the matrix was super cool. i love this kind of weird, uncanny, dreamscape-type stuff and it was done particularly well here i thought. it was fantastic as well to see the sliders being used as part of it, i don't think i've ever seen them appear outside of hell bent? they worked well on audio, there were some pretty nasty visuals at points that were properly disturbing. good stuff.

nice to see rasmus getting a bit more depth in this. i already knew about his daughter from listening to susan's war but i enjoyed seeing them dig into that further here. i feel like we see a lot of rasmus the politician but not so much of rasmus the person, and this worked well to develop his character that bit further.

"leela. you've lost everyone who's ever loved you. either they left you on purpose, they're dead to you, or you've failed them. you've failed as a bodyguard. you've failed as a spy. you've failed as a mother, and a partner. what use are you, if you're constantly failing them?" what the actual fuck 👍

the worst part is is that in some ways it's right? she is just constantly losing people. she can never keep hold of anyone she cares about, and ends up alone, again and again. god.

obviously it feels a little different with hindsight having finished the episode, but the leelaromana reunion got me so bad. i didn't realise quite how much i'd missed them together until they were reunited. they're the heart and soul of this whole series i love them so much 😭

a leelaromana "take my hand" in 2026... nature is healing <3

i need them to be back together for real in wr4 so badly it hurts

THAT ENDING?????? HELLO???????

there was a genuine moment where i thought they were going to kill romana off/have her regenerate. in hindsight seeing as she's a bbc copyright character i don't know if bf are even really allowed to do that but it's a credit to the writing of this episode that in the moment i honestly believed it. really cruel to have leela get that joy of having romana with her again only to lose it basically immediately. ollistra when i catch you >:(

eye for an eye:

i was kinda wary going into this one because i am very lukewarm on matt fitton's finales, but i was surprised by how much i enjoyed this? it definitely wasn't on the same level as the prior two episodes, and i think could've stood to have some more character moments and less action, but overall it was actually pretty solid and had some stuff in it i'm going to be thinking about for a while

LOVED hearing clemantia again. she's so fun!! very sad this is almost definitely the last we'll get of her though :(

great to see veklin's loyalty to this ollistra falter more and more as the episode went on. and i think it fits for me that it's the general she's latched onto as a sort of substitute to ally herself to. i don't think she'd ever trust rasmus, or that he'd ever trust her, but she and the general, for all their differences, do have common ground in their military background and growing distaste for a lot of what they're being asked to do, and it makes sense that she'd gravitate towards him out of any of the other senior figures in the war room.

on the other hand, i don't think he entirely knows how to handle her and it's lowkey quite funny lol

again very cool to see elements of earlier time war audios coming back and playing a role in the plot here! the interconnectedness of these stories has worked really well through this whole set, it adds a nice sense of cohesiveness that i'm really liking

narv going through it again :( free him. hasn't he been through enough

honestly fascinated by that whole sequence where narvin can't quite bring himself to kill clemantia, only for veklin to shoot her anyway. something about the way that they're sort of aligned, in that moment, but still not quite on the same side. i wonder if anyone else is ever going to find out about what really happened. i know ollistra was fully ready to throw clemantia under the bus but i think if she found out it was actually veklin who killed her, her reaction would be interesting.

again. not enough leela in this episode. with it being the finale as well, it felt especially weird that she was barely there. it made it feel like something was missing through basically the whole episode.

the final scenes definitely had the feeling of moving pieces into position for the big finale in the next volume. narvin back on gallifrey, romana clearly coming back (for real this time) at some point soon, veklin turning on ollistra... i'm excited to see how this all pans out.

the bigeneration mention took me out lol. feels illegal to hear rtd2 era stuff in gallifrey. not sure i like it.

that last scene was an insane way to leave things oh my god. she's actually turned on her!!! feels like a coup is incoming in the war room...

I love humans. Always seeing patterns in things that aren't there.