The Trial of a Time Lord Part Four

The one where the Doctor loses an argument with a robot...

Ah, so Merdeen actually shot Grell, not the Doctor. Grell was standing behind the Doctor, about to shoot him, so Merdeen shot Grell instead. The resolution to the cliffhanger is about as riveting as the lead-up. We then get a scene where we're supposed to feel Merdeen's sorrow at having killed Grell, but despite Dominic Glynn's rather nice 'sad music', it all falls flat because there's such a lack of conviction. Tom Chadbon is a capable actor, worthy of better than this, but struggles to imbue his lines with any true emotion. Maybe if we'd been allowed to get to know Grell better earlier in the story, or if Robert Holmes had given him some personality, his loss would be felt more, but no. He's just a bloke in a crash helmet who was good at bickering (everybody's good at bickering in this era).

And before we reach even the third minute, two more characters meet their maker when Drathro fries Queen Katryca and Broken Tooth. Their bloody-faced demise is rather gruesome, and we're spared a Season 22-style close-up, but their deaths are pointless, and render the characters' agency in the story pointless too. It's as if Katryca and Broken Tooth existed only in order to die, as they achieve very little else.

The Trial of a Time Lord Part Three

The one where the Tribe of the Free invade Marb Station...

I love Dibber, he's by far the best character in these episodes, and played so charmingly by Glen Murphy (MBE!). I'd be quite happy if it were Dibber who made return appearances in later episodes, rather than Tony Selby's Glitz, but sadly we never see Dibber again after these four episodes (in one spin-off book he's reported as dead, but in others he's apparently alive and still teamed with Glitz).

Here, Dibber stands up to Broken Tooth, expressing disappointment at his poor aim with the gun in trying to destroy the L1 robot. "Squeeze the trigger, don't pull it!" he advises, before ducking and allowing Broken Tooth his revised shot. There's something very charming about the way Murphy plays Dibber, who's definitely not as thick as Glitz likes to make out.

The Trial of a Time Lord Part Two

The one where the Doctor meets Drathro the L3 Robot, and an L1 Robot too...

After pausing the evidence and trying desperately to get the inquiry into the Doctor's behaviour turned into a trial, the Valeyard is roundly put in his place by the officious Inquisitor, who stops short of elevating it from an inquiry. "What the Valeyard wants and what the court decides are two entirely different things," she says. So it remains an inquiry, for now, it seems. The Inquiry of a Time Lord doesn't have quite the same ring to it.

Returning to the evidence, we see that the L3 Robot wishes to question the Doctor, who is taken to the entrance to his "castle" by Merdeen and Balazar. It's wonderful just how better written and portrayed the Sixth Doctor is this time. Robert Holmes seems to be channelling the light-hearted flippancy of Tom Baker's Fourth Doctor, but it works really well with Colin Baker's tempered Sixth. It feels like Colin is having a really fun time recording this story, as if he feels freer now that his Doctor can develop.

The Trial of a Time Lord Part One

The one where the Doctor is put on trial by the Time Lords for a second time...

"I intend to adumbrate two typical instances from separate epistopic interfaces of the spectrum..."

Almost 18 months after we saw Colin Baker struggle to say "Blackpool", Season 23 brought Doctor Who back to Saturday teatime with a brand spanking new theme tune. Same graphics, different sound. And I really, really like the new theme tune. Dominic Glynn's synthier version has a lovely, strummy beat, almost like a gallop. The theme needed updating after five years, and while I know many people find the Season 23 theme quite thin and screechy, I really like it. I wish this had been the Sixth Doctor's theme all along.

The opening scene is rightly celebrated as one of the greatest in Doctor Who history. In truth, nothing else in the entire season tops this masterful, eye-boggling trip around a giant space station, into which the TARDIS is beamed (docking bay three), a fly caught in amber. Glynn's incidental score is beautifully doom-laden and funereal, evoking a ticking clock or a tolling bell, all signposting that something's amiss. The new theme and the opening model shot make these 75 seconds some of the most exhilarating in the canon.