The Ultimate Foe (Trial of a Time Lord parts 13-14)

"I'm as honest, truthful and about as boring as they come."

You could sum up this story simply as "Deadly Assasin goes pantomime." I don't mind the pantomime feel of the next season after this, but Trial of a Time Lord was a story arc that cried out for a dramatic conclusion. What we get is a rushed and half thought out mess.

Offscreen circumstances can largely be blamed for the failure of this story. Robert Holmes wrote the first episode of this, but his illness and subsequent death prevented it's completion. Eric Saward wrote a concluding episode in his absence, but then resigned and kept the copyright to it. Pip and Jane Baker were hastily called in to write a conclusion to a story that they had not written, without knowing how it was all supposed to end. Hence, what we are left with.

The idea that the Valeyard is the 'dark side of the Doctor' is a bit bonkers. Of course, he never really admits this himself and we find out this from the Master, who might just as well have made it all up for a laugh. Onscreen evidence actually suggests that the Valeyard may have been the Keeper of the Matrix all along.

We find out that the Time Lords have been up to some pretty shady stuff, though we pretty much knew this already. As I said before, the whole backstory about the earth being moved by the Time Lords is a bit of a continuity nightmare.

Despite the poor script, Colin Baker put's everything into it. He is stunning in his condemnation of the Time Lords and his apparent surrender to fate. The real tragedy is his becoming a scapegoat for the failings of his two seasons and his dismissal as a result. Bonnie Langford's Mel is less effective. I like her, but this story really does not suit her style. Anthony Ainley gives his worst ever performance as the Master. Michael Jayston is good as the Valeyard, but he does lose the chilling restraint of previous stories and become another gloating, cackling villain.

It is fun to see Sabalom Glitz again, though it is odd that he seems to be friends wiht the Doctor, despite being a cold-blooded killer. Perhaps Glitz met the Doctor a second time after The Mysterious Planet.

The pseudo-Victorian world of the Matrix and Mr. Popplewick are cool, though with the massive Steampunk obsession that has been goig since the 80s, perhaps too consciously cool. The problem with virtual reality stories is that they don't engage very well with the viewer. If the events depicted are not real, why get excited about them?

The Dallas-style reversal of Peri's horrifying fate is very disappointing. On the other hand, there is something delightfully surreal about Peri marrying Ycarnos and becoming a barbarian warrior queen. According to the novelisation, Ycarnos goes with Peri to California, where he comes a champion wrestler with Peri as his manager. This is amusing, but rather silly.

The really remarkable thing about The Trial of a Time Lord is that of it's segments, the two which are written, or in this case half-written, by Robert Holmes are the worst. Mysterious Planet was a derivative runaround, this conclusion was a confused piece of scripted chaos, while Mindwarp was very good and the nice-but-mediocre Pip and Jane Baker gave us a reasonably decent story in Terror of the Vervoids.

Terror of the Vervoids (Trial of a Time Lord parts 9-12)

"Your defence is that you improved? This I must see!"

Having witnessed in the Matrix the death of his companion, Peri, the Doctor has lost the arrogance and cockiness that he showed in the first story of the Trial series. He is now far more subdued and rather melancholy.

The Doctor is given the chance to make his defence. He does so by presenting an adventure that takes place in his future, involving a companion he has not met. His defence is that his conduct improved and that his intervention was requested by somebody in authority and that it was vital to the protection of countless human lives. I am not going to begin to discuss the complexities and anomalies involved in the Doctor knowing about a future adventure. Let us just say it is a bit of a mind-boggling notion. As I mentioned when reviewing The Mysterious Planet, if this was an American sci-fi show or made by an independent television company, this season would have included a story featuring stock footage of at least one older story. This would make sense as I can think of plenty of adventures that could have been forcefully used by the Doctor in his defence. He could have mentioned the many occasions in which his intervention was arranged or ordered by the Time Lords. He could have mentioned the stories of Season 16, when he was asked by the White Guardian to retrieve the Key to Time. He could have mentioned the Dominators and those dreaded Quarks- hang on, he already did that last time he was put on trial.

Judging from the DVD commentary, Pip and Jane Baker are absolutely lovely, kind people who one would just love to meet. Unfortunately, they seemed unable to write convincing dialogue. The script for this story is really bad in places. On the other hand, they have created a really effective Agatha Christie style murder mystery. I would argue that this story works much more effectively as a murder mystery than the dreadfully overhyped Robots of Death. In Robots of Death, you knew a robot did it (if the title did not give you the clue), so it is not difficult to work out which member of the crew is most likely to be the culprit. The detective element works better in this less well regarded serial.




With vicious monsters on board a spaceship, we know we are in Alien territory. Doctor Who knows this territory well, after all, it got there first with Ark in Space. The production team certainly don't let us down with the Vervoid costumes, bar the odd moment when you can see what the actors are wearing underneath. I am a bit puzzled by their intelligence, knowlege of human technology and their command of English (or whatever language the crew and passengers speak). Some fans have raised the question of how the Vervoids have come to be armed with stings when they are bred as servants. Probably, they are crossbreeds of various plants, one variation of which must have possessed a poison sting. On the other hand, it could be that they have really been bred for military purposes. The mutated woman is very well created, though she is rather superfluous to the plot.

I struggle a little with the notion that the arrival of the Vervoids spells the extinction of animal life on earth. There is hardly an army of them on board. I am sure they would not stand up to a sustained bombardment of weed killer. One also wonders why the Doctor does not mention, when charged with genocide, that the Time Lords ordered him to commit genocide against the Daleks and that the Time Lords committed genocide against both the Vampires and the Fendahl. For all people complain about the excessive continuity of mid-80s Dr Who, it all get's forgotten in the Trial of the Time Lord.




It really does seem in this story that the Sixth Doctor has changed and improved. Colin Baker plays him as a much more affectionate and likeable character than before. I also think his new waistcoat and tie are an improvement, though I am sure a lot of fans will hate both versions of his costume. Baker has a real chemistry with Bonnie Langford. Mel is a companion who is tailor made for the Sixth Doctor. Her cheerful disposition counterbalances his tendency to moodiness. I am not quite sure how she manages to get him to exercise against his will. It is impossible to imagine Peri forcing the Doctor to do anything against his will.

Mel is a rival to Adric for being the most hated companion, but I really like her. As much as I like Tegan and Peri, it is refreshing to have a companion who enjoys being with the Doctor. I have said before that I cannot stand Jo Grant. I find it hard to reconcile in my mind how I can like Mel, but hate Jo Grant when both characters share a number of qualities. I think perhaps it is because at this period of the show, it was all being taken less seriously. There was room for a larger than life character like Mel. Pertwee played his part absolutely straight and his stories were written to be taken seriously, hence the presence of the childish Jo Grant was an irritation. Bonnie Langford gives her best performance here in Terror of the Vervoids.

The guest cast in this story are decent enough, though none of them particularly stand out. It is nice to see Honor Blackman doing her turn in Doctor Who. The spacecraft set is very well designed, even though it wobbles once or twice. The black hole special effect really is awful.

This is truly an enjoyable story in the good old-fashioned Doctor Who style. Quite a switch from the rather 'Rad' second part of ths series.

Mindwarp (Trial of a Time Lord parts 5-8)

The Sixth Doctor's relationship with Peri becomes abusive (again).

The Mysterious Planet was full of running around and getting captured. Mindwarp is also full of running around and getting captured; the difference is that Mindwarp has real quality, while Mysterious Planet was a derivative mess.

Right from the start of the story in the trial scene, we learn that something has happened to Peri and we are left waiting to find out what this is. This adds an immense sense of tension and foreboding to this story. We start to see the Doctor lose his cockiness and become desperate to make sense of what he sees in the evidence.




Despite it's many camp elements and despite it looking in many place like a video for a multi-racial 80s pop band, Mindwarp is one very bleak story. Mindwarp is the ultimate elaboration of Eric Saward's vision of the cosmos. Throughout the Saward era, we were given a glimpse of a dark future filled with violence and carnage. Yet Mindwarp is the darkest of all these stories. Caves of Androzani was bleak. There were no nice people in that story; only a lunatic with a deformity and a massive grudge, brutal mercenaries and self-serving capitalists. Nevertheless, for all it's darkness, in the midst of Caves of Androzani, we had the faithful and compassionate Doctor, steady as a rock. Mindwarp takes away that last security. In Caves of Androzani, Peri could depend on the Doctor in an hostile universe, here he has finally succumbed to the sheer monstrosity of the cosmos and given in to it. The Doctor who gave his life for her has become a coward, a traitor and a perversion of what he was before. This makes this the darkest of Dr. Who stories. This is a story about how the Doctor who once saved Peri comes to betray and fail her.




The tragic nature of this story makes one feel that it would make a great opera. This is Peri's tragedy, a story of betrayal by the one man she could rely on. The story focuses on her, showing her growing realisation that she could die alone, away from everything she knows and loved. We see her finding solace and camaraderie in the only characters who come across as sympathetic, Ycarnos and Dorf. There is a sense of irony in this, in that they are bloodthirsty barbarians who delight in killing.

Practically everyone agrees that the best part of this story is the climax when we see Peri, her head shaved and her personality replaced with that of Lord Kiv. Nicola Bryant is quite chilling when she speaks in the deep voice of the new personality invading her body. Peri's shaved head may be an allusion to the holocaust, the ultimate scene of dehumanisation. Since the introduction of the Cybermen, Doctor Who has often dealt with the theme of dehumanisation. The destruction of the human personality seems to many people a fate worse than death. In the figure of the shaven-headed Peri speaking with Kiv's voice, we have a far more stark image of the destruction of the human personality than the Cybermen ever were. Many of us fans feel deeply disappointed that the decision was made to reverse Peri's fate and let her survive this story Dallas-style. It makes sense aesthetically that Peri whose life was saved by the Doctor should die in the end because of the Doctor's failure. It creates a much greater sense of tragic pathos.

A good deal of the unpopularity of this story is no doubt down to the agony for fans of watching the Doctor become so selfish and cowardly. When we see Peri chained up and alone with the Doctor, we are made to hope that the Doctor is going to explain his plan to her, but we become horrified when we find that he really has betrayed her. Of course, we are not helped by the fact that Colin Baker had absolutely no idea how to play this role; the scripts had not been clearly explained to him. There are in fact four possible explanations of why the Doctor is acts the way he does in this story. It may be that he is suffering the effects of Crozier's brain tampering. It may be that the Matrix has been altered to distort the record of the events (which we find out has occurred in some places, but not necessarily those relating to the Doctor's odd behaviour). It may be that this really is a trick and the Doctor is pretending to descend to evil; though this is difficult to believe when he could easily have proven his good faith when he was alone with Peri on the rocks by the sea. Most disturnbing of all, it could be that the Doctor realy has succombed to the cowardice and malice that he showed after his regeneration in The Twin Dilemma. To my mind, this is the most interesting possibility. The Doctor's fifth regeneration does seem to have been particularly traumatic and the unstable beahviour he showed in his first story can be seen throughout season 22. It seems to me that the Doctor was going through some sort of mental crisis throughout his sixth incarnation that reached it's climax in this story. No doubt this crisis intensified by Crozier, but it cannot be separated from the instability that he had shown prior to this. I understand that a lot of viewers find the uncertainty rather confusing, but I find it quite interesting. The fact that it is not explained leaves us room to think about it and puzzle out the Doctor's out of character behaviour.




Brian Blessed is hilariously over the top as Ycarnos. Some viewers might find his performance irritating, but he does inject some life into an otherwise rather bleak serial. Some people feel that Patrick Reycart (Crozier) is a bit wooden. I feel that this reflects the character. Crozier is a totally amoral figure. He has no politics, agenda or even cruelty. He simply wants to perfect the techniques he is researching. He is the cold face of science without ethical resraint. The moment when he sips tea from an old fashioned cup and saucer before carrying out his surgical procedure is beautiful. It just sums up the banality of the character.

It is fun to see Nabil Shaban again, as the slimy Sil. Some fans feel he is less effective here as a flunky and sycophant, rather than as the big villain. I think it is interesting to see him in a different position, and it allows us to see him in a double act with Kiv (who is ably played by Christopher Ryan and later Nicola Bryant). After all, we got to see Darth Vader twice as a flunky and only once as head honcho. The rest of the guest cast are pretty awful, the worst offender being Gordon Warnecke as Tuza. The monstrous Raak is unusually well filmed for a Dr Who monster. We only get brief glimpses of the creature, which is a lot better than the usual full frontal view.

This is a really brilliant story that is often too quickly dismissed by fans who have no love for this troubled period in the history of the show. I think for those of us who have grown up with the New Adventures, Mindwarp is probably not so shocking. The New Adventures followed up Eric Saward's bleak vision of the universe and also occasionally bring ambiguity and doubt about the Doctor's workings.

The Mysterious Planet (Trial of a Time Lord Parts 1-4)

The Doctor is charged with conduct unbecoming a Time Lord.

Although I tend to think of the Trial of the Time Lord as four individual serials, they are united by such a tight story arc across Season 23, that it is quite a challenge to review them as such. The reason I prefer to review them as separate stories is the huge variety in quality between them.

The trial makes use of evidence in the form of three of the Doctor's adventures, one in the recent past, one which has just taken place at the time of the trial and one which, bizarrely, has not yet occurred. You can be sure that if this was an American science fiction show, this season would have included an adventure from the show's past. American sci-fi shows, and those made by Independent t.v. companies in the UK so often throw in an episode where old footage is used just to save the budget at the end of the season. Generally, those sort of episodes are very disappointing and a bit cheap. However, given the lack of repeats of Doctor Who in the UK, fans would have welcomed a story in which footage from a classic story, such as The Seeds of Doom was used. It would have been quite interesting to watch the Doctor and the Time Lords commenting on such an adventure.

The model shot of the space station in which the trial is held looks great. The problem is that it does not look in any sense Gallifreyan. The space station looks just like something from Star Wars or the Alien movies. A Time Lord space station (we are never told why this trial is not held on Gallifrey) would surely have an ethereal magnificence to it.

The trial room with its rather miniscule gathering of Time Lords looks a little pathetic when compared with the model shot of the space station. Nevertheless, as with most court scenes in television, there is plenty of room for effective drama. Colin Baker get's the chance to be rude, rebellious and arrogant. Michael Jayston is brilliant as the sinister Valeyard. The contrast between his angry restraint and the Doctor's brashness is delightful. I just love watching the way the Valeyard glares at the Doctor.

A lot of people find the periodic switch from the action of the story to the trial scenes rather intrusive. I find them rather fun, though it must be said that in the case of this first serial, this is not difficult because the Ravolox story is so dull. The plot of The Mysterious Planet is completely uninteresting; a dull runaround that is largely derived from other stories. One just feels a sense of deja vu on watching Mysterious Planet.

Sabalom Glitz and his young accomplice, Dibber help to keep the story from being unwatchable. They are a glorious Holmesian double-act. What is most hilarious is the way that Glitz takes pride in the way he is an object of speculation by criminologists and prison psychologists. He offers some biting satire of the field of criminology. It is a little hard to be sure how thick Dibber really is. At times, it seems that his wit is a little sharper than that of his boss. The rest of the guest cast are not terribly impressive. Joan Sims is especially disappointing as Katryca.

Colin Baker was clearly playing the Doctor in the Ravolox scenes as a nicer character than we experienced in Season 22. While it is nice to see him actually appearing to like Peri, it does jar a little with what we see in the courtroom, where he is as obnoxious as in Season 22. It also does not fit with what we see in the next story, Mindwarp.

The location work is quite good and the village is well designed and created. On the other hand, the suggestion that the London Underground would still be recognisable on a ruined earth a million years into the future is ludicrous. The robot is pretty good.

One thing that baffles me is that Katryca wants to give Peri some fine husbands, yet she locks her up with two scoundrels who might easily molest her. A rather perplexing decision.

Being a fan who obsesses over continuity; I really struggle with the issue of how to fit this story in with the future history of earth in other Dr. Who stories. I am not quite convinced by Tat Wood's view that the removal of Earth by the Time Lords is the same apparent destruction of earth in The Ark.

What is most interesting about the Trial of the Time Lord is the way it deconstructs the narration of Doctor Who. We are forced to ponder how accurate the reporting of these stories are. If crucial bits have been missed out of this story about Ravolox, how do we know crucial bits have not been left out of say, The Brain of Morbius?