A most curious assortment of travelers boards a train bound from Munich to Switzerland in 1939. Romana and Leela are traveling incognito, but so is swindler and arms dealer Mephistopheles Arkadian, who Romana interrogated during the Gryben crisis. He promises to give her vital information regarding that incident if she and the Time Lords turn the other cheek for only three hours and let him have his way with history. Arkadian’s specific historical interest revolves around a young woman on the train, a Nazi sympathizer named Cecilia Pollard – the sister of Charlotte Pollard, the Doctor’s traveling companion when he was last seen before vanishing into the divergent universe. While Romana uneasily agrees to Arkadian’s terms, she can’t speak for the Time Lords’ Celestial Intervention Agency, and no sooner do Narvin and Torvald appear then things start to go disastrously wrong. Time itself jumps the tracks, creating two parallel timelines – and somehow Leela and Cecilia Pollard have become stranded in the newly created alternate history, along with a Time Lord who has his own murderous intentions. Romana and Narvin are left to wring information out of Arkadian – and hope that Leela can gain enough of an awareness of what’s happened to help them heal the timeline. But Leela is preoccupied with a problem of her own: she has found the man she believes to be responsible for her husband’s death, but at a point in his own timeline before he committed the murder. And if killing him now will prevent that from happening, Leela is prepared to do it – and history be damned.
written by Alan Barnes
directed by Gary Russell
music by David DarlingtonCast: Lalla Ward (President Romana), Louise Jameson (Leela), John Leeson (K9), Miles Richardson (Cardinal Braxiatel), Sean Carlsen (Coordinator Narvin), Andy Coleman (Commander Torvald), Hugo Myatt (Arkadian), India Fisher (Cecelia Pollard), Susan Engel (Ms. Joy), David Warwick (Erich), Daniel Hogarth (Waiter)
Notes: Guest star Susan Engel has met Romana before – well, sort of. As Vivien Fay, Engel appeared alongside the first Romana, played by Mary Tamm, in the 1978 story The Stones Of Blood. The events and explanations in this story lean heavily upon the Doctor Who audio stories Storm Warning, Neverland and Zagreus. The Doctor has apparently told Leela a great deal about Earth history where Hitler is concerned, as she recognizes the name immediately; she also recounts the history of her tribe, the Sevateem, and their mortal enemies the Tesh, as established on TV in her debut story, The Face Of Evil. The Celestial Intervention Agency, a sly satirical nod toward another secretive group whose acronym is CIA, was established in The Deadly Assassin, as were many other aspects of Time Lord society mentioned throughout the Gallifrey series.
LogBook entry by Earl Green