6.12: The Ultimate Foe

In which it turns out genocide was actually fine.

Broadcast: November-December 1986

Watched: January 2021

The Trial of a Time Lord, Part Thirteen

“Surely even Gallifreyan law must acknowledge that the same person cannot be both prosecutor and defendant.” Just as we’re about to get to the meat the Valeyard legs it – even though the Inquisitor is refusing to stop the trial. Obviously it’s ridiculous that the Valeyard would use the Ravalox as evidence, since it’s the thing the High Council is trying to hush up, unless the Valeyard is secretly on the Doctor’s side which he isn’t. [Apparently in Robert Holmes’ drafts he was! The Master was the final villain.]. But more irritatingly: we never find out who the sleepers were, do we? I know it’s a waste of time looking for sense, but still.

The annoying thing is, this is actually quite a fun episode in itself – far more fun than a lot of other Colin. The Victoriana of the Matrix. The multiple Mr Popplewicks (a bit I’ve never spotted before: Popplewick flinches because he thinks the Doctor is about to hit him). The cliffhanger is genuinely freaky, and also oh that’s where Moffat got handmines from.

The one thing I was disappointed by that I expected to be good was the Doctor’s big speech. That’s meant to be Colin’s big moment and it just... isn’t. It’s sold entirely by the incidental music, not Colin’s performance. He’s playing the same note he always does.

Huh, just realised this is Colin’s final story. Doesn’t feel like it somehow. I suspect he’d have said the same. Anyway. Other things:

The key to the Matrix is hilarious, but in keeping with Invasion of Time. Oh look, it’s that model shot again. Love to know how the Master persuaded Mel to get into a space coffin and then forget about him.

“Melanie – known as Mel” oh piss off. I know she has some good bits in season 24 but she’s bloody infuriating here.

Peri’s survival of part eight is thrown out almost as an aside, which is weird. [Last minute addition because Colin asked if she was dead.] One of the voices laughing in the Matrix sounds unnervingly like her.

The Trial of a Time Lord, Part Four

“Only by releasing myself from the misguided maxims that you nurture can I be free.” So the Valeyard isn’t a future Doctor, he’s his evil id? I don’t know why I’m looking for logic that isn’t there.

It’s fine. It isn’t fine, it’s rubbish, but it’s mildly entertaining rubbish that only falls to bits if you think about it (e.g. the Valeyard’s actions here just don’t fit at all with anything he did in the first 12 episodes). It could have been worse but it’s frustratingly easy to see how it could have been better, which is why fans have been rewriting it for decades. It is completely impossible to watch without thinking about the meta-context, though: all the other versions that might have been or would have worked better. Fitting that it includes the first canonical missing episodes joke (“The primitive phases 1 and 2 have been relegated to the archives”).

My one suggested easy fix: “Tell them you had no choice.” “There’s always a choice.” In the Moffat version of this story, this would be the moment the Doctor did a big, inspiring speech about who he was and what he stood for. Give him that and you can draw out the difference between him and the Valeyard. But they just skate over the moment. The fake trial is a nice touch, though.

Oh, an off screen revolution, how irritating. Not even explained why or how. Pip and Jane do like chucking out plot twists and then moving past them in two scenes don’t they? Worked quite well in Vervoids, here not so much. And at the end the Doctor STILL committed genocide and is released, and invited to stand as president, because he saved the Time Lords – THAT is corruption, and it goes entirely un-discussed.

The Doctor’s face when he learns Peri is alive is a genuinely good moment though.

Other things: the way the Doctor starts quoting Shakespeare and Dickens the moment Pip & Jane are in charge is a bit irritating. So is the fact Mel’s amazing memory turns out to be a plot point.

The Keeper tripping Mel up is a bit sick. I’m almost relieved by the way she later twats him. Turning the Doctor into a zombie even momentarily feels wrong for the protagonist, somehow, too.

There’s a monster in the waiting room Mel almost goes into. Never spotted that before.

Why doesn’t handwriting change with regeneration?

Love how in 1986 “a megabyte modem” sounded really impressive and futuristic.

****

One last thought about something I’ve not really considered before this watch: there is a break in approach at the hiatus. Season 23 is made in crisis, but it’s a big shift from what went before. Seasons 21 & 22 are broadly episodic, grimdark; season 23 is more interconnected, attempts to think about the meaning of the Doctor’s adventures even if it doesn’t hang together, and is sort of more colourful than the last two seasons of High Saward. 

So... even though it doesn’t work, I think Trial is influential in a positive way, not just a negative one. There are periods where most Doctor Who stories are about something (Hartnell, Bidmead), and periods where most Doctor Who stories are about nothing (Troughton, Hinchcliffe). There’s a correlation between this and how much I like an era, but probably not with how popular it is or objectively quality or anything. 

However – the only period before the mid-80s where the show as a whole begins to be about something is Letts/Pertwee: then you get shared concerns, topics turned over and examined from different angles, etc. Trial, I would posit, is a shift towards the idea that the show as a *whole* should be about something, even if that something is the morality of the show itself. They muck it up – it doesn’t work. But it’s a shift in that direction, and that’s going to keep having an impact under Cartmel, the NAs and the new show.

[Incidentally, James Cooray-Smith’s Black Archive on this story runs through each of the multiple unused drafts – by Robert Holmes and Eric Saward – to explain what went wrong with the Trial... story as a whole. It’s excellent.]