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| Above: The Blu-ray booklet’s dramatic artwork |
As its DVD range was so exhaustive, making
Doctor Who probably the best-documented series in the history of television, opportunities for the new
Blu-ray collections to expound upon the existing bonus material seemed to be limited. However, whilst BBC Studios have seized the opportunity to plug the occasional gap with new and dynamic ‘making of’ features for serials like
Castrovalva and
Black Orchid (though not
Meglos, obviously – nobody wants to watch
Meglos, let alone
The Making of Meglos), the preponderance of the new material has been reality-based, reflecting the cultural change in general viewing habits since the DVD range was launched twenty years ago next month. Even if you can’t stand most reality TV, rest assured that the
Doctor Who spin on it is instantly loveable as its innocent charm supplants the cynical greed often engendered by the genre. These new features don’t focus on shallow, wannabe superstars but rather people who, after hundreds of hours’ worth of featurettes and commentaries, feel like old friends.
Season 23 is the most entertaining release yet on this front, topping even the incredibly immersive Season 19. Not only are we treated to four hefty editions of Behind the Sofa and further instalments in The Writers’ Room and In Conversation series, but we are also served up a couple of unique offerings: The Doctor’s Table and The Doctor Who Cookbook Revisited. The former is a highlight of the set as Colin Baker (the Doctor), Nicola Bryant (Peri), Bonnie Langford (Mel) and Michael Jayston (the Valeyard) share a meal and their memories of working together on The Trial of a Time Lord.
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| Above: Two of the guests at The Doctor’s Table |
I’ve seen this sort of setup before in other franchises, but rarely does it work as well as it does here. Rather than present the highlights of the diners’ free-flowing conversation, a structure of sorts is imposed as each participant is armed with a set of purposely preposterous questions loosely based on one of the season’s sub-stories which they have to put to their companions. These range from the likes of, “Have you ever been in trouble with the law?” to a cripplingly embarrassing version of Snog Marry Avoid? with a Whoniverse twist. Watching Michael Jayston squirm as he contemplates marriage to the Master or a moment of passion with Mr Popplewick is almost as hilarious as the delirious look on Colin Baker’s face when his pudding arrives.
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| Above: Toby Hadoke challenges Sarah Sutton to prepare her creator’s signature Kipper of Traken |
Inspired by an apparently off-the-cuff idea in the Season 18 set’s
A Weekend with Waterhouse, The Doctor Who Cookbook Revisited sees range veteran Toby Hadoke visit a number of the series’ former stars whom he tasks with recreating their respective recipes from Gary Downie’s infamous 1985 cookbook. Presented in the style of shows like
Come Dine with Me and
The Great British Bake Off, the piece could easily pass for one of them were it not for its firm grounding in irreverent fun. In an especially lovely touch, erstwhile eighth Doctor companion and incumbent voice of
Masterchef India Fisher lends her honeyed tones to the programme for its obligatory voiceover segments. However, even Fisher has trouble making Johnny Byrne’s “Kipper of Traken” sound appetising, which may be why it finds itself relegated to the status of “bonus recipe” alongside Patrick Troughton’s “Vegetable Soup with Dalek Krotons” and Sarah Sutton’s less imaginative (but altogether more sumptuous-looking) lasagne.
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| “As we know from future stuff on Big Finish, it’s a load of baloney anyway.” – Colin Baker |
The format of Behind the Sofa took me a while to warm to, as I had preconceptions about it just being an inverted in-picture commentary of the type popular for all of ten minutes back in the mid to late noughties. Behind the Sofa is much more engaging, though, in two key respects: first and foremost, it’s been edited, which is of particular importance when the story being commented on is a fourteen-part behemoth like The Trial of a Time Lord. Only moments that are insightful or amusing are preserved; all those languorous lulls in between are cut. Further pace is injected by the programme’s incisive cutting between two different sets of viewers – in this case the season’s serving TARDIS crew and a crew of an altogether motlier sort comprised of Frazer Hines (Jamie), Matthew Waterhouse (Adric) and Mark Strickston (Turlough). In contrast to the playful bonhomie between Colin Baker and his two trusty companions, the dynamic between the three blokes is very different as Strickson sets himself up as a moderator of sorts, forcing the gushing Waterhouse and generally quite diplomatic Hines to discuss what he sees as some of the serial’s glaring faults. This enlivens this season’s editions quite considerably, taking what on previous releases has been a pleasant wallow in nostalgia and balancing it with some focused discussion.
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| L-R: Christopher H Bidmead, Philip Martin, Eric Saward, Wally K Daly (with his tail at the back) |
This season’s edition of
The Writers’ Room is every bit as analytical as the Strickson-steered
Behind the Sofa, though strictly speaking it isn’t really this season’s edition at all. Rather than discuss
The Trial of a Time Lord in any great depth, many of the writers involved with its aborted forebearer gather in a London pub to discuss – and often brutally dissect – one another’s abandoned scripts. Whilst this inevitably covers much of the same ground that
The Lost Season featurette did on the DVD, it does so in a much more informal and challenging way as each writer has to defend his work from his peers. Better still, it does so with the benefit of the hindsight offered by Big Finish’s marvellous audio adaptations, allowing audio clips to be presented against colourful CG artwork and simple animation, much of which is photo-real.
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| Above: Still lost in time - Robert Holmes’ Yellow Fever and How to Cure It |
The half-hour instalment isn’t without merriment, though. Former script editor Christopher H Bidmead’s accusatory greeting to his successor, Eric Saward, really made me chuckle, while the admission from Wally K Daly that he’s never even watched
Doctor Who goes a long way towards explaining
The Ultimate Evil. For his part, Philip Martin, the only writer amongst the quartet to receive a writing credit on
The Trial of a Time Lord, could not be with his peers in person but FaceTimes it in regardless, his remoteness perhaps allowing him a greater degree of harshness when damning Bidmead’s
Hollows of Time with the faintest praise ever heard in a special feature.
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| Above: An example of Rob Hammond’s fine artwork for The Lost Season featurette (2008) |
Completists will be pleased to hear that The Lost Season is carried over from the DVD release, doubling down this set’s exploration of that now well-traversed lost year. The Writers’ Room roundtable may now have surpassed this eleven-year-old piece, but it still remains of interest thanks to Colin Baker’s narration and some stunning artwork from graphic designer Rob Hammond.
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| Above: Bonnie Langford In Conversation with Matthew Sweet |
Indeed, with almost all of the DVD’s bonus material included on this Blu-ray set’s six discs (the only omissions so far as I can tell are a Season 22-themed Lenny Henry sketch; the “Doctor in Distress” music video; and a couple of media clips concerning the series’ hiatus, all of which will probably sit better on the eventual Season 22 release), the only thing that this collection is really wanting for is Matthew Sweet sitting down with Colin Baker for a conversation about the actor’s turbulent time as the Doctor on screen. No doubt this will also appear on a future release (both Tom Baker and Peter Davison’s sit-downs are to be found on their respective first seasons’ Blu-rays, so Old Sixy’s will probably show up on Season 21’s or 22’s), but for now we are treated to an hour with Bonnie Langford. Resisting the temptation to dwell on Langford’s colossal career outside Who, Sweet conducts another well-planned interview that really drills down into the actress’s subjective experiences working on the series. As well as revealing a couple of new titbits – being asked to scream in a particular key to segue into the cliffhanger’s howl-out, not speaking to Colin Baker after his departure simply because she didn’t have his telephone number – this feature also boasts an innovate yet apposite finale in which Sweet breaks out his long-since closeted tap shoes for a surprisingly theatrical finish.
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| Above: Janet Fielding gives a convincing performance on Breakfast Time (20th October 1986) |
This release also makes room for a few other features that I don’t recall ever having seen on DVD, including the complete 1986 Christmas Quiz edition of
Tomorrow’s World (which saw Colin Baker make his final appearance in costume as the Doctor, competing in an almost absurdly tame version of
Would I Lie to You?) and excerpts from a late 1986 edition of
Breakfast Time. The latter makes for hilarious viewing today, particularly if you watch it straight after
The Doctor Who Cookbook Revisited, as it highlights the outrageous accent that Janet Fielding put on for the interview - her natural Aussie brogue is actually much closer to her character’s than the plums-in-gob RP that she adopted for
Breakfast Time. Also included is the range’s first foreign language feature, duly subtitled, in the form of a complete episode of the popular French science show
Temps X which delves behind the scenes of the “Mindwarp” section of
The Trial of a Time Lord.
Another new feature exclusive to this release is raw studio and location footage – almost five hours’ worth of the stuff. The DVD range offered us its fair share of studio and location snippets, but these were generally edited to make them fit the DVD-9 format, as well as palatable - take the short-but-sweet
Jurassic Larks on the
Time-Flight DVD, for instance. Only the most dedicated fan is going to be able to make it all the way through this avalanche of ephemera, but it’s nice to own all the same, really tapping into the clever marketing idea of these collections building up one’s personal “
Doctor Who archive”.
Rounding out the new supplements are Old Sixy’s edition of The Doctors Revisited (a twenty-five minute précis of the Colin Baker era aimed squarely at Americans who’ve started watching since 2005), a 2013 interview with Colin Baker (which is especially fascinating today, given his early championing of a female Doctor – I wish I’d had his foresight); an eye-opening twenty-minute interview with Brian Blessed recorded in 2007 (in which he discusses his love for the show, being in the frame to play the second Doctor, and a nasty confrontation with the man who’d eventually be cast in his place); and the 1993 Colin Baker / Nicola Bryant Panopticon panel (in which Bryant recalls working on Blackadder’s Christmas Carol and Baker describes the ridiculous realities of working on a George Lucas production).
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| Above: Brian Blessed on his favourite TV programme... Doctor Who |
It would be unwise to discount the classic special features, though, the sheer amount and high standard of which is overwhelming, even by today’s standards. Each of
The Trial of a Time Lord’s four segments has its own talking-heads production featurette together with deleted and extended scenes, trailers and continuities, commentaries and production subtitles. The ‘making of’ documentaries are still as informative and entertaining as they were more than a decade ago, and the quality of the hour’s worth of deleted and extended material is surprisingly well-presented – there’s not a timecode in sight. Even the continuities feel a little bit more special than usual as they have been expanded to include pages of interest from mid-1980s’ Ceefax.
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| “The key to how you play [the Doctor] is you at parties.” - John Nathan-Turner |
Trials and Tribulations is just shy of being an hour long and it remains the definitive documentary on Colin Baker’s tenure. All the big players are on hand to share their thoughts and memories about the most tumultuous time in the series’ history, and the result is as shocking as it is comprehensive. Of course, the piece does focus just as much on the good times as it does on the bad, and it is as uplifting to hear Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant talk about their happy memories of the 1985 season as it is painful to see script editor Eric Saward and producer John Nathan-Turner’s feud endure beyond the grave.
Inevitably, the documentary takes an especially detailed look at the show’s hiatus, focusing on the reasoning behind Michael Grade’s decision to axe Doctor Who (or lack thereof) and Britain’s surprisingly intense reaction as its people demanded the programme’s return. Saward’s Slipback radio serial and the charity single “Doctor in Distress” (“A lot of talent making a crap record” - Ian Levine) are both explored too, as is the show’s profuse media coverage through shows as diverse as Wogan; Blue Peter; and Points of View, including certain appearances by a bearded, but otherwise fully costumed, Colin Baker. All the Season 23 media appearances are still available to watch separately in this set, and thanks to the detail provided in the accompanying booklet we now know exactly when they were each transmitted. It used to irritate me no end when the DVD booklets would often omit such a straightforward but relevant piece of information.
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| “It’s metatextual... Here is a cliffhanger for no other reason except that the story now demands one.” - Rob Shearman |
Another highlight is the thirty-minute
Now, Get Out of That which, as you’ll probably infer, examines
Doctor Who’s renowned cliffhangers. Something of an ironic choice for inclusion alongside a serial remarkably light on proper cliffhangers, this programme is an absolute delight. It’s a real pleasure to hear three of my favourite
Doctor Who writers (
Nev Fountain, Joseph Lidster and Rob Shearman) discuss the best and worst in the series’ history, including the famous “metatextual” cliffhanger in Dragonfire which leaves the Doctor literally hanging off a cliff simply because his weekly twenty-five minutes are up.
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| Above: Old Sixy gets Stripped for Action in a graphic novel that he wrote himself, The Age of Chaos |
The beefed-up twenty-two-minute edition of
Now and Then also survives the change of medium, though given its age it might have been prudent to rename it
Then and Then, or at least consider updating it where appropriate. The box set also imports a few special features from other old media, including the untransmitted
French & Saunders parody shot using the trial courtroom set (first released on
The Curse of Fatal Death VHS) together with the sixth Doctor’s instalments of
Stripped for Action and
Tomorrow’s Times (borrowed from
The Twin Dilemma and special edition
Vengeance on Varos DVDs, respectively). As the title suggests,
Stripped for Action examines the Time Lord’s comic strip adventures, and Old Sixy’s days in ink seem to have been every bit as tumultuous as his time on television. They appear to have proven fruitful all the same, spawning enduring companion Frobisher and even seeing Colin Baker pen his own graphic novel,
The Age of Chaos.
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| “It certainly made me able to cope with the likes of Michael Grade." - Colin Baker |
Tomorrow’s Times, meanwhile, examines the media’s reaction to
Doctor Who during what was arguably its most chaotic period. By far the most interesting instalment in the series, here Sarah Sutton paints a picture of a programme literally roasted to death by fickle, self-serving naysayers. Baker’s first season as the Doctor attracted some of the most vitriolic reviews that the series had ever received by that point, only for those writing the reviews to suddenly switch horses and launch a ‘Bring Back
Doctor Who’ campaign when news of the series’ cancellation broke. Such preposterous media vacillation is brought into sharp focus by the dignified Baker, who puts the whole circus into context as he speaks to the broadsheets of the loss of his son to cot death syndrome, and the precious time that the hiatus would allow him to spend with his new baby daughter.
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| Above: Unboxing Doctor Who: The Collection - Season 23 [CLICK TO ENLARGE] |
With only fourteen episodes to work with for this release, BBC Studios elected to keep the same six-BD-50 format (and price bracket) and use the additional space to present not just extended and alternate edits of every episode, but also a stand-alone version of the “Terror of the Vervoids” section of the serial which omits the courtroom material and boasts updated special effects. Ever since the rise of the DVD format, I’ve had a niggling issue with deleted scenes: it’s incredibly rare to see them integrated into the work from which they were cut. Viewed in isolation they are no more than curiosities, their worth limited to the light that they can shed post-humously. Here, though, we get to see that hour’s worth of excised material that was originally peppered across four DVDs brought to life in context. Even the shape of the story is altered in parts as the new and replacement scenes subtly influence those around them in the running order, greatly improving the season’s final two episodes in particular.
Terror of the Vervoids is an even more interesting offering, in many ways. Whilst I’m no fan of this sub-story, I’ve always been intrigued by the Dickens-like idea that it’s a ghost of the Doctor’s future – an adventure that hasn’t happened yet, but is nonetheless influential in the here and now. This special edition takes a firm hold of the opportunity afforded to it to create a brand new serial for some imaginary long-lost season, even going so far as to adopt the unused alternate Season 23 title sequence (a clean copy of which is also included) to set it apart. For those of us who’ve followed Old Sixy and Mel into their Big Finish audio adventures, we now have a complete TV serial to slot in there amongst them – one buoyed by some decent CG effects and a newfound sense of pace, if still marred by, well, pretty much everything else from Vervoids to Bushes.
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| Above: Unboxing Doctor Who: The Collection - Season 23 [CLICK TO ENLARGE] |
For me, the greatest pleasure of these
Doctor Who Collection releases is that they give me an excuse to watch classic stories with my now eight-year-old daughter, who wouldn’t have looked twice at
The Trial of a Time Lord had it not just arrived at our door clad in
Lee Binding’s staggeringly beautiful artwork. I can’t stress enough how damned dazzling these sets are – I normally try to limit myself to steelbooks these days, but these lush, open-out troves really are a collector’s item in of themselves. Previous release’s discs may have suffered from quality control issues (Seasons 12 and 18 both had to issue replacement discs), but the same cannot be said of their packaging which has always been exquisite in every respect. I love that the new artwork starts from a near-white canvas, instead of the more obvious starscape; that the glossy and heavyweight booklets are housed in fold-out compartments adorned with even more magnificent artwork; I even love the contentious adoption of the Jodie Whittaker-era logo. It might infuriate those whose classic
Who collections are abounding with the once ubiquitous TV Movie-era logo, but surely slick design has to take precedence over precedent?
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| Above: Unboxing Doctor Who: The Collection - Season 23 [CLICK TO ENLARGE] |
My only slight disappointment with this release, and indeed its predecessors in the range, is the lack of a downloadable digital copy to accompany the discs. Admittedly this isn’t a small ask following UltraViolet’s demise at the end of July and the unmitigated failure of the stand-alone Season 12 digital release, but it’s maddening given that the technology and infrastructure is there to deliver this to consumers. Had the Season 12 digital release been made available in HD (which I gather red tape prevents, given that much of the “main feature” is upscaled), at a reasonable price (instead of a tenner or so more than the physical edition), and tagged with the same level of care that went into producing the Blu-ray booklet (which could have also been included as a PDF), then many collectors might not have had to shell out hundreds of pounds for the second-hand set on eBay.
Of course, there will be some foolish folk out there who buy this box set primarily to watch the season of television that all of the content above is, technically, supplementary to. Needless to say, I’m not one of them, though I do welcome the upgrade in quality. As you might expect, on Blu-ray
Trial looks better than it has ever done, though it has to be said that any gain in resolution is countered by the increase in new televisions’ sizes over the past eleven years. As with the classic
Red Dwarf Blu-rays that I looked at earlier this year, these episodes look absolutely stunning on the 26” TV upstairs, but on our big 4K model the overall impression is similar to watching the DVDs on the little upstairs telly. Some moments sparkle of course – the opening shot, culled from the original film elements, looks absolutely fabulous, and the title sequences with their recreated credits are incredibly sharp even when blown up well beyond their intended proportions. As ever though, you can’t invent resolution. You can’t create fidelity. This upscale provides us with the best possible means to carry these episodes into the next era of television, looking much as they always did – just a lot bigger.
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“And when I have finished, this
court will demand your life!” |
The story of
The Trial of a Time Lord has always confounded me, forcing my features through the sort of grotesque contortions usually reserved for those who eat one of Dave Lister’s triple-fried egg, chilli and mango chutney sandwiches. Conceptually, it’s ingenious – you really have to admire the gumption of the production team taking an under-fire show and literally putting it on trial in the first place, but to then take that trial and use it as a springboard to deliver some of the series’ most devastating and controversial moments is nothing short of inspirational. Peri’s fate as it is shown at the end of Part 8 got much more of a visceral reaction from my eight-year-old than either “Face the Raven” or “World Enough and Time” did, while the revelation of the Valeyard’s true identity made her leap to her feet as she did when John Hurt’s Warrior first revealed himself at the end of “The Name of the Doctor”.
Another great strength of
Trial is its unique structure, which by its nature eschews the principal problem faced by the series’ other long-running serials. Though linked together by the courtroom drama of the Doctor’s trial, this is a fourteen-part serial in name only - twelve of its fourteen parts comprise separate four-part stories by different writers that are presented as evidence in the over-arching trial, with the concluding two parts resolving the season-long arc in a two-parter that’s more focused on action than legality. Most imaginatively of all, though, the three four-part stories are gathered from Old Sixy’s relative past, present and future, serving as a lovely homage to Charles Dickens’
A Christmas Carol while also allowing the production team to push the envelope even further, exploring the ramifications of pulling the Doctor out of a yet-to-be-resolved adventure or even offering us a window into his personal future.
Indeed, the ideas driving this fourteen-part behemoth are every bit as bold and alluring as those propping up many a modern arc. Their implementation, however, is patchy at best. Few
Doctor Who stories start more impressively than this one does - the opening shot of the TARDIS being brought aboard Space Station Zenobia was, at eight grand, the single most expensive shot in the show’s history at that point, and to this day that investment continues to pay off. Dominic Glynn’s new, darker arrangement of the theme music (which was cobbled together in a week, apparently) segues beautifully into his just as illustrious “Trial Theme” and a shot reminiscent of the first
Star Wars movie in how it boldly proclaims, “We mean business now.” From there, though, the proceedings take something of a nosedive.
To me, the story’s greatest selling point is the trial itself. I’ve always been profoundly disappointed with the end of
The War Games, in which the second Doctor’s trial on Gallifrey struggles to fill a single episode, and so the prospect of a more detailed examination of Gallifreyan jurisprudence is a salivating one. Yet the Gallifreyan legal system is riddled with absurdities that can’t simply be explained away as alien, particularly when its court is so clearly modelled on a British courtroom which brings with it a number of unshakeable expectations.
There is no indictment. The prosecution can thrown in fresh charges on a whim (“Genocide!”) and even speak for the judge on sentencing matters, evidently just because it makes for a good cliffhanger. For his part, the defendant interjects with more regularity than the prosecution does - and more often than not it’s to complain about the violent content of the evidence presented. It may be sublime satire, but it makes a mockery of the supposed setup and erodes any sense of veracity. Even the captivating performances of Colin Baker, Michael Jayston and Lynda Bellingham don’t quite manage to obscure the farcical fluidity and procedural injustices of Gallifreyan law.
Away from Zenobia, things don’t improve much. As Mark Strickson points out from upon the sofa (as opposed to behind it, tellingly), “The Mysterious Planet” limb of the narrative is a visual washout. The location is drab and uninspiring to match the personalities of Joan Sims’ savages, while those dwelling underground look like walking condoms. Even the L1 robot is a spectacular failure; perhaps the most utterly feeble and unthreatening creation ever seen in
Doctor Who. Fortunately Robert Holmes’ scripts are ultimately saved by their wry humour, which blends Douglas Adams-style gags with Peri wisecracks that are unexpectedly funny (I love the one about multiple husbands – “We tend to have them one at a time...”) and the season-stealing double act of Glitz (Tony Selby) and Dibber (Glen Murphy). Dastardly and selfish, these two men really make “The Mysterious Planet” episodes worth watching. Intelligent, verbose and comfortable in his own crooked skin, Glitz’s “Arthur Daley in space” is possibly the greatest recurring character of the 1980s, and Holmes’ script is littered with razor sharp dialogue for the actor to relish.
Philip Martin’s contribution to the season marks a definite change in tone. The autumnal daylight of “The Mysterious Planet” gives way to blacks, pinks and dirty greens as a remarkably effective little bit of Paintbox magic brings the colourful skies of Thoros Beta to life. But even these the vivid images of ocean and sky are short-lived as Martin’s dark tale takes place predominantly underground, where the sonorous voice of Brian Blessed’s warrior King Yrcanos echoes around the Mentors’ chambers in six channels.
Every variant of every episode of
Trial included in this box set can be viewed either with their original mono soundtrack or a new 5.1 surround sound mix, but these “Mindwarp” episodes are where the surround sound really comes into its own, and not just because of Old Grampy Rabbit’s booming vocals. The crashing of an alien sea, the cacophonous cackling of Nabil Shaban’s inimitable Sil – the surround really does add an extra layer here. We should be particularly grateful for it too, as, due to the loss of the original incidental music elements, to produce it BBC Studios had to commission an all-new score from Richard Hartley, whose music can also be enjoyed in isolation on a separate track (as can the original composers’ on the other eight episodes). Purists need not fret, though – Hartley’s original score remains inviolate in the original mono mix.
What’s interesting about the “Mindwarp” section of
Trial is that even now, decades later, it’s unclear exactly what was intended and by whom. In this collection, Colin Baker takes the credit – or blame, as the case may be – for questioning the Doctor’s behaviour (and by extension Peri’s fate) as it’s depicted, leading to the afterthought retcon in Part 14 which sits painfully at odds with both what’s shown on screen and any sense of drama. On its own, “Mindwarp” is fascinating; even provocative. Many of the Valeyard’s allegations are clearly made out here, albeit with mitigating circumstances. As viewers, we know that the Doctor could never be cruel or cowardly... yet, he did try to kill Peri in a post-regenerative fit, so he’s got form. Worse, as he has no memory of these events he can’t convincingly repudiate the charges levelled against him. It gives the viewer pause – pause that is crucial in sustaining the momentum as the season enters its second half.
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| “As a matter of interest, where is Peri?” - The Doctor |
Unfortunately, the resolution – such as it is – is unsatisfactory in every sense, as the Merseyside Branch of the
Doctor Who Appreciation Society were keen to point out in the notorious 8th December 1986 edition of
Open Air that's included in full in this collection. As the very young
Chris Chibnall and his buddies were keen to point out, none of the issues raised in “Mindwarp” are paid off or even explained. To this day we still don’t know for certain whether the Doctor’s mind was addled by Crozier’s machine, whether the Doctor’s behaviour was all part of a big rouse, or whether the evidence presented had simply been tampered with. Eric Saward and Colin Baker maintain the latter, whereas I favour the clever gambit option, but in the commentary Philip Martin goes on record and states that in his view everything shown here actually happened and that the Doctor’s mind had indeed been affected by Crozier's machine (it seems “Mindwarp” was something of a clue...) so we are no further forward. Whatever was supposed to have happened, it just goes to show what a complete hash was made of things by the production team when the script editor and writer had very different views as to what the story was fundamentally about. It’s a miracle, frankly, that the “Mindwarp” episodes make for the compulsive viewing that they do. In part, I think that this is down to these events leaving viewers focusing on consequence rather than mechanics. In another of the serial’s defining moments, the Time Lords pull the Doctor out of time before he has the opportunity to put things right.
 |
| “Alive within this oh so wonderful, wonderful frame!” - Kiv |
Seeing Kiv awaken inside Peri’s body, one can really empathise with the Doctor. Yes, he was meddling in affairs that didn’t necessarily concern him, but I believe that he could have made things right were it not for the Time Lords’ interference. And what really stings is that his lofty peers didn’t pull him out of time because at that specific moment he had finally crossed over a line in the sand or broken the camel’s back (the final straw came just after Synthespians™, according to Craig Hinton’s 2004 novel) - they intervened when they did because Crozier’s experiments had gone far enough to threaten their universal hegemony. Peri’s apparent death is made all the more tragic by the fact that it could have been prevented so easily.
On the 2008 DVD, as I watched Pip and Jane Baker being crucified on Open Air by Chibnall and company, I really felt sorry for the two writers. I almost felt bad for giving a lot of their work such a hard time myself. And then I watched their “Terror of the Vervoids” episodes again, and any feelings of guilt were swiftly expunged.
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“I’m truthful, honest, and about as boring
as they come.” You said it, Mel. |
This time around though, I also saw their story through my daughter’s eyes, and to my astonishment she was transfixed by the bright and colourful Agatha Christie for kiddies, if not the eponymous Vervoids, whose terror wasn’t particularly obvious even thirty-odd years ago. More importantly though, she found herself a new character to identify with in Bonnie Langford’s Melanie Bush - the energetic and exuberant do-gooder that has utterly failed to ever make any sort of positive impression on me. After finishing our viewing marathon, I watched in disbelief as my eldest child replaced our
LEGO Clara’s hairpiece with Princess Merida’s (the closest she could get to Mel’s ginger curls, see) and then at bedtime asked if I had any “listen tos” (audiobooks) with Mel in. As I write this, she’s lay in bed, happily kept awake by
The Wrong Doctors. It seems that there was merit in JNT’s madness after all.
The revered Robert Holmes passed away after having only completed the first eleven minutes of
Trial’s thirteenth episode and some preliminary notes for the fourteenth. The story was originally planned to end a knife-edge cliffhanger, with the Doctor and the Valeyard locked in Holmes and Moriarty-style mortal combat, the series’ uncertain future reflected in its protagonist’s. Eric Saward eventually completed the serial from Holmes’s notes, but unfortunately he had a major disagreement with JNT that saw him leave the series, taking his script for Part 14 with him. And, just like that, the ending of
Trial sank into the quicksand quicker than Old Sixy at the end of Part 13.
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| “The Valeyard is an amalgamation of the darker sides of your nature, somewhere between your twelfth and final incarnation, and I must say you do not improve with age.” - The Master |
What should have been a suspenseful and climactic finale descends into a kitschy runaround inside the Matrix. Why on Earth the sickeningly bureaucratic Mr Popplewick was thrown into the mix I’ll never understand; after twelve episodes of verbal sparring, could the production team not see that we wanted to see more of Colin Baker and Michael Jayston’s Pertwee / Delgado anti-affinity, not a pen-pushing Valeyard wearing a rubber mask?
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| “I should have stayed here. The oldest civilization. Decadent. Degenerate. And rotten to the core. Ten million years of absolute power, that’s what it takes to be really corrupt.” - The Doctor |
Even the finale’s most exultant moments fall flat. The Doctor’s scathing speech on Gallifrey, which might mark Colin Baker’s most outstanding moment as the Doctor on TV, eventually leads to the deposition of the High Council... and the prompt election of a new one. The impact of “Mindwarp” is completely negated by the news of Peri’s survival. To undo her death but not bring her back into the series seems pointless in the extreme; just a knee-jerk reaction to a bit of bad press, or, as Colin Baker puts it, “Absolute schlock”. The finale is circular, neat and utterly devoid of any meaning. Only Anthony Ainley’s Master offers us anything new or remarkable, and that’s only because he realises that the Valeyard’s utter lack of scruples makes him much more of a threat to him than the Doctors that he knows.
Just after attending a publicity session with Bonnie Langford to promote
Trial, Colin Baker was inauspiciously fired. His Doctor’s parting words would not be, “It’s the end, but the moment has been prepared for...” or, “A tear, Sarah Jane?”, but rather “Carrot Juice! Carrot Juice! Carrot Juice!” For Old Sixy, I’m afraid, that says it all.
“It’s impossible. I hate it. It’s evil. It’s astonishing...
I want to kiss it to death.”
- The Doctor, “Under the Lake” (2015)
It’s hard to judge a serial as long and as varying in quality as this one is. Eric Saward’s courtroom drama, though legally spurious, still manages to captivate, but the quality of the evidence presented varies wildly. Were
Doctor Who a 1980s US sci-fi drama series, then
The Trial of a Time Lord would probably have taken the form of a twenty-six week clip show, the bulk of the evidence presented being lifted from previously broadcast stories. And with hindsight, that may have been a mercy.
It speaks volumes, then, that Season 23 is the highlight of the Who-ray range thus far. A murky and troubled serial is companion to a joyful and celebratory collection of all-new features and serious, insightful documentaries that help us to understand, and perhaps even come to terms with, The Trial of a Time Lord.
Doctor Who:
The Collection – Season 23 is available now on Blu-ray, with today’s cheapest retailers being Amazon and Zoom, who are each offering it for £38.99 with free delivery. If you are interested in this release, or any other in this range, I’d encourage you to place an order as soon as possible to avoid disappointment. Whilst I’m sure these box sets will get a repressing in the future in more standardised packaging, these sets with “limited edition packaging” have been selling out very quickly and then going on to change hands for a small fortune on eBay.
