Big Finish: The War Doctor reunites with Leela!

[The Nth Doctor]

For the fourth boxset of The War Doctor saga, John Hurt joins forces with Louisa Jameson reprising her role as Leela!

‘I’d often wondered what became of Leela during the Time War,’ says producer David Richardson, ‘and working on these War Doctor tales has given us a wonderful opportunity to explore that. And it’s irresistible territory - the Warrior of the Sevateem reunited with an old friend, who has become a Warrior in the Time War.’

‘Over the many years of working with us, Louise has brought so much extra depth to the character of Leela,' says Big Finish executive producer Nicholas Briggs, 'and given the nature of her backstory and involvement in the affairs of Gallifrey it was a natural choice to have her involved in the Time War. And like John Hurt, she’s a genuinely uplifting person to work with.'

Aside from the framing scenes of the Companion Chronicles Leela trilogy (and its follow-up), this is the latest we'll have seen Leela, set well after the Gallifrey series. Casualties of War comes out February 2017.

 

[StCoop]

Huh, to be honest I was expecting Timothy Dalton to appear in the last set.

 

[The Wormhole]

Would Leela even still be alive during the Time War? Even if she didn't die of old age before the Time War even started, wasn't the Time War supposedly already ongoing for centuries before the Doctor regenerated and began fighting in it?

 

[Guy Gardener]

It's a time war.

Fought in different eras.

Hundreds of years before Leela married Andred, photobombing the wedding and hundreds of years after they got divorced.

Although they said that Gallifrey, while she was on Gallifrey, kept her young.

Nanites in the water probably.

 

[Marc]

Boy Leela gets around - all those Gallifrey adventures with Romana, back to 19th century London with Jago & Litefoot, now forward to the War Doctor.

 

[Mr Light]

Dumb question, are these things canon?

 

[Marc]

Dumb question, are these things canon?

lets just say the caononicty of the audios is subject to debate and leave it at that

 

[Guy Gardener]

When the 8th doctor showed up in The Night of the Doctor, just before the Day of the Doctor made it's big splash...

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...Eight rattled off a list of his companions over the years, who were from prose, comics and audio stories, which did not canonize audio or comics so much as admit that these characters exist off camera in TV, and might have had identical TV adventures off camera as their audio adventures were on mic.

 

[The Wormhole]

Doctor Who doesn't do canon as strictly as certain other franchises out there. For Doctor Who, canon really can be whatever individual fans want it to be, and as long as the relationship between show and tie-in material doesn't violate the license fee, no one cares.

 

[StCoop]

Dumb question, are these things canon?

The expressed opinion of the people who make the series is that it's something they never think about. So basically whatever you want to be your personal Canon is just as valid as anyone elses.

 

[Guy Gardener]

The audio people do not have script approval over the TV people.

TV is real.

Internally canon, audio is unto itself very well, but if Audio tries to disrespect the telly, the lads get their cricket bats and arm up for a Barney Rubble.

 

[Christopher]

Would Leela even still be alive during the Time War? Even if she didn't die of old age before the Time War even started, wasn't the Time War supposedly already ongoing for centuries before the Doctor regenerated and began fighting in it?

It is a Time War. A war waged through time travel. So it would be impossible to define how long it took or in what order things happened. If the Doctor can visit far-future Mechanus one week and 1066 England the next, or meet Martha Jones in 2008 and take her to visit Shakespeare, then he could visit whatever era of the Time War he wanted once he finally decided to get involved.

True, the series has generally used the conceit that Time Lords and other time travellers always seem to encounter each other in linear sequence (River Song and the Doctor aside), but even if there was some reason that normally happened with Time Lords, I doubt it would hold in a context that was all about the warring factions constantly jumping backward and forward in time to try to alter each other's histories.

 

[Guy Gardener]

There was a comic book that showed us a little bit of the Time War.

A dozen Daleks, all who looked radically different in aesthetic design, which undoudtedly extended to the bone, from different collapsed timelines working together in one locus to win out against all other life in the universe before they eventually turn on each other.

Which would infer that there had been SEVERAL failed attempts by the CIA to kill Davros or corrupt the genesis of the Daleks that didn't work out completely to plan, that Daleks wind up with the wrong software or the wrong hard ware, and then somehow protect themselves from being paradoxed out with clever technology.

A time war where you are constantly killing your opponent's grand parents or blowing up worlds a billion years before they become a threat, would seem a lot like a game of Othello (or Go).

 

[Mr Light]

the CIA?

 

[NightJim]

Celestial Intervention Agency. AKA Who makes fun of the real CIA. Introduced during the Baker-era to palm off all the dodgy stuff the Time Lords had done to a secret subsect.

 

[Mr Light]

That was in an aired episode? I don't remember that

 

[Christopher]

That was in an aired episode? I don't remember that

According to the Tardis Wiki:

http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Celestial_Intervention_Agency

Doctor Who writer and Script Editor Robert Holmes introduced the CIA in the "revisionist" story The Deadly Assassin, in order to address the contradiction between the Time Lord's non-interference policy and the Doctor having gone on missions for them. According to Holmes, then, all of the Doctor's previous missions took place on behalf of the CIA.

 

[Turbo]

Y'all are all missing the thrust of this. War Doctor + classic companion + tie-in to Gallifrey = me going EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

 

[publiusr]

Leela and the War Doctor are exactly what you need to fight Daleks

 

[Guy Gardener]

Everytime he regenerates, I can see the Doctor going back to Leela's homeworld and touching up that face of Evil to reflect his new good looks.