Trial of a Time Lord: A most unusual S23

As I said in reviewing S22, Colin Baker grew on me after his dreadful debut, but not enough. Still, he did get a spectacular final season in Trial of a Time Lord,  an epic story taking up the entire season, a la The Key to Time. In this case, though, tied even tighter together: all the episodes are simply titled “Trial of a Time Lord” where the previous season was broken up into several stories. Practically speaking, though, the series does break into several separate arcs and I shall treat it accordingly. Fair warning, this review includes spoilers.In the opening of The Mysterious Planet the bemused Doctor finds himself on Gallifrey and on trial before a jury of Time Lords; the prosecutor, seen above, is the Valeyard (Michael Jayston). He accuses the Doctor of willfully meddling in the affairs of other worlds (a no-no for Time Lords, at least officially) and leaving them worse than he found them. To prove his point he shows the courtroom a recent adventure in which the Doctor and Peri land on a strange world that soon turns out to resemble a ruined Earth. The Doctor realizes it is Earth, somehow yanked millions of miles across the universe. There are barbarian tribes, an underground high-tech installation and conniving Glitz (Tony Selby), a rogue who senses profit in it all. But the serial wraps up leaving the Doctor with more questions than answers. “I believe the ancients used this device to watch the Canadian goose.”

Mindwarp reintroduces the Doctor and Peri to Sil, the conniving alien they met in the previous season’s Vengeance on Varos. His world’s leader needs a new body for a transplant; in the process of testing out the Doctor as a potential host, the treatment apparently turns the Doctor evil. Or is he shamming? Or, as he tells the court, has the Valeyard tampered with the supposedly infallible Matrix from which he’s drawing these images? It turns out the Doctor was abducted to the courtroom from late in the adventure, which also involves Brian Blessed as the rebel leader Yrcanos. To the Doctor’s horror it appears that after he left, Peri became the alien’s host (Bryant’s brief moment of playing evil is better than I expected) which the Valeyard says is all on him.

This one is kind of a mess, partly because creative conflicts backstage meant Baker never could learn whether he was faking being evil or what? And it’s remarkable now how much Sil’s people, the inhabitants of Thoros-Beta, come off like Ferengi. Overall this doesn’t quite work but Peri’s death — even if we’re not sure it’s real — is a shock. “This is a court of law, not a debating society for maladjusted sociopaths.”

Terror of the Vervoids is that old reliable Who-plotline, murder on an enclosed setting. In this case it turns out to involved mad scientist Honor Blackman’s efforts to create/raise (it’s unclear which it is) vervoids, plant-like creatures she sees as perfect docile laborers. The Vervoids, however, have their own ideas on this point; there are multiple other schemes going on and the ship’s commander has met the Doctor before — and isn’t a fan.

For much of the running time this reminds me of one of Tom Baker’s old stories such as Robots of Death. However as Blue Towel Productions says, the Doctor’s offering this story as a defense and it’s hard to see how “look, this person asked me for help” disproves that he’s meddled on other occasions. It’s also murky about whether the Doctor wipes out the Vervoids as a Krynoid-like threat to animal life or if that’s more Matrix manipulation. It appears he did do it — but even faced with the far more dangerous Krynoids, the Doctor didn’t see the need to wipe out every last one. What this story does do is introduce the Doctor’s next companion, Mel (Bonnie Langford), seen above on Colin Baker’s left. Mel’s already traveling with him when the story opens, driving him up the wall by insisting he eat healthier. I like Mel — she’s more comic relief than Peri but she’s more forceful which Baker badly needs. “I’m subject to whims, so I’m told.”

We wrap up with The Ultimate Foe, who turns out to be, as the Doctor told the court earlier, the Valeyard. The story opens with the Master crashing the party from inside the Matrix and revealing what’s been going on. The underground base on Earth was being used to steal Time Lord secrets so the Time Lords hurled it across space as a counter-measure. When the Doctor showed up on Earth it became necessary to cover up that they’d meddled way more than he ever does, hence the decision to put him on trial.

The Valeyard is an alt.Doctor, created by fusing together all of the Doctor’s dark sides from his first twelve regenerations. The Master considers a Doctor turned pure evil to be a deadly rival so he’s determined to put a stop to this; if he can shame the Time Lords in the process, so much better. Now the Doctor and the Valeyard go inside the Matrix to settle things once and for all …

It’s a spectacular finish though as Blue Towel notes it doesn’t make much sense. Why such a clumsy method of dealing with the snoopers on Earth? Why don’t the Time Lords in the court know any of this? If some other faction is responsible, shouldn’t we meet them and see them dealt with? There’s plenty of fun in the goings-on, especially when we get into the Matrix, but the story is a mess. As is Peri’s end: while I’m glad she’s not dead, marrying her off to Yrcanos makes as little sense as Leela’s ending in Invasion of Time.

In any case, Colin Baker’s time as the Doctor ends here; showrunner John Nathan-Turner tried luring him back for the regeneration sequence that opens the next season but Baker passed, annoyed it would be nothing but a brief cameo. “I knew this was a mistake — my grip on reality is weak at the best of times.”

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