Tit For Tat

Strange, isn’t it, how something insignificant can snowball? Does the Gallifreyan Celestial Intervention Agency appear in any other tv story? Not by name as far as I can recall. (By now you’ll all be shooting off notes to the BBCi Who forum.) But when the CIA got mentioned in Deadly Assassin, I’m sure it was just one of Robert Holmes’ throwaway line jokes. Yet it’s ballooned into the all purpose, undercover, machinating power that lurks behind the pomp of the High Council. It’s answerable only to itself and is responsible for all those times when the Doctor starts shouting threats at the empty air.

If the smug, serpentine interrogator of Leela seems familiar, it’s because he appeared memorably in one of the tv stories. He’s an historian, his statements are all couched in legalese and he seems to have nothing but contempt for anything that rocks the stately circular dance of Gallifrey. For purposes of suspense, his identity will not be revealed until much later on in the story. Meanwhile President Romana, representing the radical forces of liberal innovation, is already playing the forces of Gallifreyan conservatism at their own game.