For me this is a step down from the first story.

This story is more focussed on Leela, which is something I wanted as she's a character I don't know all that well. Leela herself is portrayed well, I want to be clear I have no issue with the character. However, I fear there's a possibility that I'm going to grow tired of everyone talking down to her. I understand that it's part of her character that she's consistently underestimated and dismissed as just some sexy savage. But in this episode it's laid on a little too thick. I get that it's part of the plot, as she's sent to the peace summit in the guise of an exotic dancer. But did this have to be in the plot. I'm sure there were other cover stories she could've used instead of exotic dancer that might've made everyone elses reactions to Leela less infuriating. This means that I'm having a harder time enjoying many of the scenes with Leela here, even if I do enjoy Leela herself within these scenes.

The story itself is very intriguing. There's a peace summit with the Temporal Powers. Leela has been sent to see if there's any suspicious activity, possibly involving the Free Time, then investigate and report back to Romana. So obviously there is some suspicious activities. Twice someone gets murdered, but on both occasions time gets reset back and our characters return to the very start of the summit. It's a fun little murder mystery/Groundhog Day scenario, and it gives us some oppurtunity to learn more about the politics of the Temporal Powers.

I do think there's too much going on at the climax honestly. If this episode ended slightly earlier I'd probably like it more. There's a lot of reveals in the space of about 5 minutes. Firstly, it seems as though someone might be rewriting time to get away with murder or to do more dastardly murderous deeds. First we learn that the murderer (well technically she only did the second murder) is a member of Free Time who is also passing as an exotic dancer and dresses up as a Servitor (robots who are staffing the summit) to commit murders that should make Gallifrey look bad (thereby weakening it's political position). Initially we think she's working with Flinkstab of Nekkistan. The issue here is that Flinkstab is such an obvious red herring villain. I guess he kind of isn't a red herring, because he did actually commit the first murder, in fact he not only killed an exotic dancer before time rewound (undoing the event), but has (he claims) accidentally killed another dancer years ago. But he isn't the main reveal behind who's working with Free Time to disrupt the summit. But because Flinkstab feels too obvious as the main villain, that only really leaves one other possible character in V'rell of the Manon Host, and because we focus so much on Flinkstab, V'rell feels a little underdeveloped. So when V'rell was ulimately revealed to be working with Free Time, I found it a little underwhelming.

But it's ok, because there's more reveals and they're actually pretty great. So V'rell was responsible for the second murder and trying to sabotage the peace summit. But he wasn't responsible for time resetting. That was part of the Gallifreyan delegation. A character called Hossak, who is portrayed as something of a crusader for peace and she's been in charge of arranging the summit. Whenever something happens that might disrupt the peace summit she resets things (even though it's a violation of the very terms of her summit). She wants a successful summit, more specifically she wants the credit for a successful summit. We're then told that this was a pretend summit, that none of it's attendees were aware of, designed to draw out any potential sabotage whilst the real summit can secretly happen in peace. Romana and the leaders of the Temporal Powers secretly held a low-key summit of their own and have already passed a peace treaty. I must say that I do really like both of these reveals. I didn't see either coming, and they made sense in satisfying ways.

If this is how things wrapped up I'd be happy. That's still a lot of reveals at the end (maybe too many), with a number of characters from a number of races performing acts of varying villainy. But having members of the Temporal Powers being villainous, as well as having some duplicity happen from the Gallifreyans themselves does a good job of demonstrating that Romana has to navigate varying levels of political intrigue, both from outside and inside Gallifrey.

Unfortunately the episode feels like it needs to go out with a bigger more dramatic finale. So Hossak has to turn to full mad villainy and hit the reset switch again, which due to some timey wimeyness would erase Romana from the timeline. This would cause political chaos and give Hossak another chance to be a broker for peace. This firstly sounds like a ridiculous plan with no clear way to achieve it's intended goal. But it also makes Hossak a far less interesting character. Before this final act, she's a flawed character. But, she was attempting to do the right thing, just in the wrong way and for the wrong reasons. But this makes her look like a crazy villain, in a way that is a it boring and feels pretty unearned. It's also bad because it's resolved almost immediately and without our heroes having to really do anything.

So yeah the ending is a bit of a mess for me. It's a hat on a hat on a hat. I'd forgive it if it ended just a little earlier, because some of the twists I thought were really smart and incredibly satisfying (others less so). But my previous point about this story "demonstrating that Romana has to navigate varying levels of political intrigue, both from outside and inside Gallifrey" is still true, so I am still excited to continue with the series.