Monday, March 21, 2022

The Trial of a Time Lord Part Eight


The one where Peri dies...

"Is Peri dead?" the Doctor asks the Valeyard at the start of this episode. "No," the prosecutor replies, but he should have added: "Not yet." I'm glad Colin Baker manages to inject a modicum of emotion into this exchange, reflecting the fact he thought Peri was dead, and showing that he would actually care if this were the case. "You won't convict me by using shock tactics," the Doctor says, but as becomes clear, all the Valeyard requires is the truth. All very ominous...

In the lab, Crozier has managed to transfer Kiv's brain into the host body of a Mentor fisherman, but the transfer remains unstable and a new, larger-skulled donor will be needed very soon. Sil and Kiv do business with the simply magnificent Posikar delegate, a squeaky-voiced red-faced dragon imp played by Deep Roy (aka Mr Sin from The Talons of Weng-Chiang) who I think should get his own spin-off, perhaps teamed up with the Bandril Ambassador?

In her latest incarceration, Peri starts dreaming of home, claiming she is homesick, more for her time than a particular place. She pines for a time "with people I love". Uh-oh, this spells trouble, because whenever characters start going on about their hopes and aspirations, or get all emotional and poignant, it means something bad is going to happen. It's a basic tenet of scriptwriting.

It is written and performed rather nicely though, with Nicola Bryant given a rare chance to act, rather than just say lines. When Yrcanos asks Peri to explain what love is, her definition is touchingly spot on: "It's when you care for someone or something more than yourself." I find that definition rather more succinct than the dictionary definition of "an intense feeling of deep affection".

As Peri is taken off to the laboratory, and to a fate nobody sees coming, Yrcanos bids her farewell: "Die well, my lady." It's all very poignant. Crozier needs a fresh donor for Kiv, suggesting Peri would be ideal. The Doctor - who seems to have completely recovered, although it can be hard to tell - vows to find an alternative, and goes to the induction centre to release Yrcanos to help him defeat the Mentors.

But while the Doctor's away, Crozier does play, and an unsuspecting Peri is found to be an ideal choice to host Kiv. Crozier plans not to transplant Kiv's brain, but just his mind, his entire thoughts and memories placed into Peri's brain. As a viewer, I'm thinking the Doctor will rescue her from this situation, it's going to be fine, this sort of thing happens every other week in Doctor Who.

But this time, he doesn't. This time, she dies. When we see her with a shaven head, that's when alarm bells begin to ring, because that's a pretty major thing in itself to happen to a companion. Peri goes from Farrah Fawcett to Sinead O'Connor in a heartbeat, and the episode starts to take on a darker, more dangerous edge as the minutes tick by. Where is all this heading? Is she going to be in the next adventure with a bald head? But in the back of your mind you're always wondering where Peri's been during the courtroom sequences. The Valeyard said Peri was where the Doctor left her, and we're about to find out where that was...

It's disturbing. A truly horrific thing to happen to a very harmless character. Kiv's mind is transferred into Peri's head, and Peri's mind is "gone! Mentally she no longer exists!" insists the triumphant Crozier. When Nicola Bryant sits bolt upright, her flowing locks gone and her voice deep and unnatural, your heart sinks, you feel a little queasy, because you realise they've actually gone and done it, they've killed off a Doctor Who companion.

Bryant is fantastic in the short time she plays Kiv, selling the idea the Mentor is seeing and feeling new things for the first time in his new body: "Warm. Not cold. My body is warm. Wonderful. Legs. Toes. Toes wiggling. Trunk. A neck. Strong. A head free of pain. Eyesight. Colours. Warm blood inside. Oh, I like this. Now, I am she, alive within this oh so wonderful, wonderful frame, not that cold-blooded reptile thing. It must, must die!"

It's utterly chilling, and when Yrcanos storms in, weapon in hand, Bryant swings her legs round to sit up and booms: "Protect me! I am your lord and master!" It's a spine-tingling, very sobering sequence, and as Yrcanos blasts away at everyone in the room, the screen whites out, and we settle on the Doctor's stunned expression. "You... killed Peri..." he says, clearly rattled. And for once - thank god - Colin Baker judges the moment well and gives the Doctor the proper reaction. He's close to tears, a frog in his throat, as he comes to terms with what he's seen and vows to get to the bottom of what he deems some sort of conspiracy.

Good on Doctor Who for daring to kill Peri off. It's a very brave, risky thing to do when you're trying to convince the BBC you've changed your previously violent ways and are now on a fresh path of rediscovery and renewal. Killing off a central character, and quite suddenly and shockingly too, suggests the darker edge of Season 22 has not gone away, only presented in a less graphic way. I was never particularly attached to Peri as a companion, but watching it all cold, with next to no idea what is going to happen, it's highly effective and affecting. So that's where Peri was all this time. She was dead!

Other thoughts:
  • Having Frax and Tuza exchange words, played by two of the worst actors in the story, is like watching two oak trees try to weave a wicker basket.
  • Despite Brian Blessed's performance cranking up even further (yes, that does seem possible), I do like his string of insults directed at the Doctor: "Cronixer! Screeterder!" and "His name is Dorf and you are scum!"
  • There's a nice little turn from Richard Henry as a Mentor offended by loud noise, and so is particularly repelled by King Yrcanos. "Just go... just go..." he says, holding his ears in pain.
  • The scene where the TARDIS beams in and abducts the Doctor, whisking him out of the adventure and back to part 1, is nicely done, showing us the police box arriving at the space station to allow us to connect the dots.
I'm not sure I follow the reasoning for the Time Lords taking the Doctor out of the adventure at the moment they did. The Inquisitor states: "You had released chaos and allowed your companion to take part in an experiment that would affect all future life in the universe. It was too late [to stop it], and therefore necessary, by the direct order of the High Council, to prevent the consequence of Crozier's experiment."

So what she's saying is that the Doctor was removed at that moment to prevent Crozier altering the course of natural evolution throughout the universe. They paused time, removed the Doctor, and pressed 'Play' again to allow an angered Yrcanos to become a mass executioner, the Time Lords' assassin, destroying Crozier, his sponsors (presumably including Sil) and his experiment (the Peri-Kiv creature). But if they hadn't removed the Doctor at this crucial point, he may well have been able to save Peri - the sequence goes that we see Crozier preparing Kiv before the procedure, then the Doctor is taken out of time, and we next see the procedure completed, and Peri gone. If he'd been allowed to stick around, the Doctor could well have saved her, even if the Inquisitor does insist it was too late.

The Inquisitor - who appears to lose all sense of impartiality here - is wrong. The Time Lords did choose to allow Peri to die. As the Doctor says at the end, there's something else going on here. What with the Matrix secrets and the High Council's censorship of parts 1-4, and now this direct interference in the Doctor's life, surely they are as guilty as anyone?

The 'Mindwarp' episodes are a depressing, sometimes shocking set of episodes which do Doctor Who (and Colin Baker) few favours. But the shocking denouement in which Peri is killed is courageous, and perhaps a little brilliant. This is the young American girl who, instead of a flight to Morocco with two British backpackers, got a trip round the universe with a psychopathic alien. Perpugilliam Brown may have been a Moaning Myrtle at times, but she really was put through the wringer during her time on the TARDIS. Demeaned, degraded, and finally lobotomised, her very essence wiped from existence. It's cruel, but her demise is just the latest, and last, debasement of a character who was always on a hiding to nothing.

The saddest thing of all is that the last time Peri saw the Doctor was when he was being a bastard to her, when he was affected by Crozier's mind-altering machinery and acting like a selfish wretch, happy to see her killed to save himself. That wasn't the "real" him, but it was a version of him she knew only too well, so she was under the lasting impression he'd abandoned her, turned his back on her in his own self-interest. And that is truly tragic.

First broadcast: October 25th, 1986

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: Nicola Bryant as the Peri-Kiv hybrid.
The Bad: It's clear that Tuza and the Alphan rebels were a pointless addition to the plot, there only to fill time.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★☆☆☆ (Mindwarp average: 4.3 out of 10)


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