The Trial of a Time Lord/Season 23
Story 143, Episodes 640-653, Season 23 Episodes 1-14
Doctor: Sixth Doctor
Companions: Peri Brown, Mel Bush
The Doctor is put on trial by his own people, creating a frame narrative that sometimes does more than good. Colin Baker is much improved from Season 22, putting on a performance indicating there was much he still had to offer.
The Review
Literally on trial with the BBC, Doctor Who got meta with an ambitious full-season length story, the longest in history, where the Doctor was brought into a courtroom and put on trial by the Valeyard. In a meta-sense, the Doctor gets to watch his own show. I must say, the whole idea does not quite work because the trial butting in gets old after a while. I wonder how many times they had to film all turning around to continue to watch on the Matrix? In addition to the Doctor, the main characters in the trial scene are the Valeyard played by Michael Jayston and the Inquisitor played by Lynda Bellingham. They’re both good performances, with Jayston’s Valeyard being the best when he revels in his evil. It’s an interesting idea for a story, and probably worked better watching week-to-week but it does impede on the stories.
The Mysterious Planet is the weakest of the first three interludes, taking place on Earth which has been mysteriously relocated in the universe two billion years in the future. It’s all pretty generic, there was some cataclysm, humans are kept in the dark underground thinking the surface is still uninhabitable, the works. The highlight is that Peri and the Doctor’s relationship has matured greatly. Peri sports longer hair in this story, and the cringe-inducing insults the Doctor doled out previously are gone. This story also introduces Sabalom Glitz played by Tony Selby, a delightfully charismatic bounty hunter who is my favorite performance. There’s a big robot named Drathro and the Doctor saves the universe, the usual. One of the funniest bits is actually from the trial segment where something Glitz says is bleeped to the Doctor’s indignation.
Mindwarp is the best interlude, the Doctor and Peri arriving on the shores of Thoros Beta, home to the gross Sil from Vengeance on Varos. Nabil Shaban is perfect as Sil, but we also get the dry evil scientist Crozier, and notorious super-ham Brian Blessed as the simple-minded war and honor obsessed captured King Ycarnos. I also want to shoutout Alibe Parsons as Matron Rani, who I think is the most notable role by a Black woman in all of the classic series. The story turns on Sil and Crozier trying to transfer them mind of Kiv, Sil’s boss as his body is dying. Sil and Kiv saying being poor is worse than death while being disgusting reptile people is a lot of fun, as well as Ycarnos’ absurdity. The Doctor is taken away by the Time Lords and we shockingly see Peri with head shaved as the voice of Kiv getting killed by Ycarnos. It’s a shocking moment, and finally Nicola Bryant got some good material.
The third interlude takes us into the future, with the Doctor and companion Mel who is already traveling with him. That initial first episode is a lot of fun, like getting a glimpse of what the next season could look like. I have mixed thoughts about Mel, I’m not sure Bonnie Langford is giving entirely the best performance but I like how independent and fierce Mel is. Terror of the Vervoids is a bit too confusing murder mystery aboard a space liner 1000 years in the future. The Commodore of the ship has met the Doctor before, adding to the sense that we’re glimpsing the show’s future. Ultimately there is a hijacking of the ship unrelated to the real problem: a genetically grown plant slave race called Vervoids who leads the Doctor no choice but to kill them. Naturally, the Valeyard accuses the Doctor of genocide.
Unfortunately, things don’t really land perfectly in the final two episodes. The Master shows up out of nowhere and outs the Valeyard as a dark future version of the Doctor. Potentially if the dynamic had been set up of the Doctor loathing himself this would’ve felt more earned. The Doctor trails the Valeyard into the Matrix, a world where you can do almost anything, and so we get a weirdly empty industrial-era London and then some scenes out on a beach? Glitz returns which is fun, as well as Mel, brought as witnesses by the Master, who wants to save the Doctor as he refuses to allow the Valeyard to steal his thunder. Really, it’s all kind of mess, and we are more than tired of the courtroom by this point. The Master’s scheme predictably backfires on him, and the Valeyard manages to survive impersonating the Keeper of the Matrix. In a surprise, Peri went and married Ycarnos. Peri getting killed felt too brutal, especially after how underserved her character was, but marrying Ycarnos doesn’t make much sense either.
The big takeaway from this Season 23 is confirming what was clear in bits and spurts in Season 22: Colin Baker has all the makings of a great Doctor. He’s much more settled down and restrained from his constant insults, and is properly angry when necessary, highlighted by his dressing down of Time Lord society as being corrupt. I really enjoyed him, and it’s a shame that he was fired because there was so much more he had to offer. The overall story doesn’t entirely fit together, but many of the individual episodes in the middle of it are fun and above-average. It leaves me with a tough story to judge, but I think overall it’s a good one, for Baker’s performance alone. Thankfully Big Finish has given him more than ample opportunity to prove that with better directing, the Sixth Doctor would’ve been among the greats.
The trial story is uneven but has some great interweaving parts, all held together by Colin Baker’s excellent showing.
8/10 Probably a fair score, some sections are worse, some are better, leaving us with an 8. Can Season 24 break the classic series from its mid-80s slump?
Reviewing Doctor Who from Start to Finish 