I feel if I had finished the Gallifrey series this would've made more sense to me and hit harder. Without that, it's just a fine little story with Sean Carlsen's great performance as Marvin.

I’m not a short trip person but this was quite good love ar narvin i do wonder if gallifrey should have a companion chronicles range for stories like this

I found this story to be a rather neat little opener for the whole set of anthology tales of Gallifrey’s history, and it’s certainly an interesting taster for what will inevitably be playing out in the final story.

So, the story opens up in the Capitol on Gallifrey. CIA Coordinator Narvin is overlooking a dark, stormy night that’s lashing out across the Wildlands outside the dome. He’s stood outside of Inquisitor Darkel’s office, where he’s eventually greeted once more by the Lord Matthias who’s just returned from an audience with her. Darkel has reminded them that they must act in Lady President Romana’s favour, but the looming threat of the Free Time Movement still unsettles the Coordinator. He’s reminded by the Lord Matthias that it’s entirely his problem though, and nothing to do with anybody outside the CIA, as he walks away.

Narvin then receives a communication from Cadet Kransa, one of his junior Time Lords of the Patrex Chapter. She annoys Narvin quite a lot, though he’s reluctant to show it. She informs him that Chancellor Valyes wants them both to enter Sector 72 immediately, though Narvin is aware that it’s only him that that Valyes wants to investigate. He agrees to her request, and soon they are both down there.

Narvin then meets Valyes down in Sector 72, along with Cadet Kransa, who Valyes is surprised to see. He convinces the Chancellor that she is meant to be down here with him, and he reluctantly decides not to challenge him. Narvin is then informed that children from the Academy have been going missing somewhere down here, after investigating the Untempered Schism. Most have been found, though there are still missing children.

Valyes directs them into the catacombs, where these students have allegedly disappeared. Kransa breaks the perception filter on the gateway, and then they both enter, where Narvin sets up a homing beacon in this ghostly realm to guide them all back when they both find the children.

Narvin eventually learns that Kransa comes from East Gallifrey, in the Red Forest Conurbations. She is not actually from any Great House, though still managed to earn a place in the Time Lord Academy. After an accident at her father’s manufactory mill, she moved to the Capitol.

Narvin soon begins to doubt how real his surroundings are, unconvinced by the walls and such, and recalls tales of conceptual environments that felt real but didn’t actually exist. As he continues to think through all of these thoughts, theorising that this could very realistically be an extension of the APC Net, Kransa pulls him from his train of thought. At the foot of the steps, five children stood motionless.

A seemingly disembodied voice tells both Narvin and Kransa that the children are all frozen in time, and that they should not be here. They make out a headless figure in the dark, of somebody in a golden uniform, that was absorbing the light around it. Then it freezes Kransa.

This creature then addresses itself as the Shade of Portent, which Narvin acknowledges as one of the legendary Time Shades of fhe Rassilonian Era. It informs Narvin that it’s been awaiting his arrival for many years, telling him that he is a pivotal figure in Gallifrey’s time. He is drawn into the Shade’s presence because of the future, and now it is here in order to feed him information of this future so that he will take the correct, predetermined path.

Narvin is then shown images of his future, parallel universes, planets being burned, thousands of Daleks, himself in a leather jacket, a destroyed Gallifrey, and him being blamed for the destruction of the planet.

The Shade of Portent then tells him that there is a price for all of this knowledge, but when Narvin is pulled from the trance, he no longer acknowledges the Shade. Instead, he rushes all the children back to the entrance of the catacombs, and back into the corridor of Sector 72. He forgets Kransa however, deliberately for whatever reason, and is then made to completely forget everything that occurred down there, except for the glimpse of a burning world, his future now all subconsciously laid out for him.

Pretty decent story overall.