The Trial of a Time Lord Part Fourteen

The one where the Doctor tries to prevent the catharsis of spurious morality...

So here we are, the grand finale of both the story and the season. The Trial Inquiry of a Time Lord was the first time Doctor Who tried making an entire series all one story (although it's actually four stories), but it wouldn't be the last. The problem with trying to have one continuing story is that you have to keep it varied, which is why Season 23 was made up of disparate parts, and Series 13's Flux was such a jumbled menagerie of ideas. Doctor Who has yet to prove it can do one series-long narrative story well - you know, like most other television series do! - but I admire the ambition.

Before delving into the episode, I'd like to praise Dominic Glynn's version of the theme one last time. It's not my favourite - that's been and gone - but I can't help liking the ethereal mystery conjured by the Season 23 theme. I like its synthy beat, which puts me in mind of certain 1980s songs like Limahl's Never-Ending Story, Bucks Fizz's The Land of Make Believe, and Oakey and Moroder's Together in Electric Dreams. In fact, I think that's the key to why I like it so much: it sounds like something Giorgio Moroder might have produced.

Back to the story: the Doctor's being sucked beneath the surface of a sandy beach, grasping hands pulling him down. "Noooooooooooooo!" screams the Doctor, but director Chris Clough fails to cut Baker's caterwaul before it fizzles into a half-hearted whimper. He really should have cut that tighter.

Of course, the Doctor's not really dead as this is a world of illusion - a Land of Make Believe! - and he's soon back on his ankle-armoured feet. The Valeyard pops up - here, there and everywhere - to explain exactly why he wants the Doctor dead. The Valeyard, being the Doctor's evil side condensed into one being, wants to be free of the Doctor's goodness and morality in order to be evil 24/7, although I can't quite get my head around how killing the Doctor in his sixth body will enable the Valeyard to carry on living. The Valeyard = the Doctor, so killing the Doctor in his own past would surely wipe him out too? Oof. I really shouldn't think about this too much, and just enjoy the ride!

The Doctor and Glitz flee from encroaching nerve gas into an unassuming beach hut on the shingle, which looks like film director Derek Jarman's famous Prospect Cottage home in Dungeness! The hut turns out to be the Master's TARDIS, painted in 'Evil Black', the go-to shade for every self-respecting megalomaniac. The Sixth Doctor pops like a firework against the flat black walls of the Master's TARDIS.

The Master wants the Valeyard eliminated, for the simple reason that he wants the pleasure of destroying the Doctor himself. The Valeyard is just too evil for the Master's liking. Why the Master doesn't just kill the Doctor where he stands is a mystery, but buried somewhere in the unexpressed subtext, maybe the Master is afraid of the Valeyard, and lacks the balls to kill him himself? Getting the Doctor to kill his own dark side will make it easier for the Master to kill the Doctor. I think. Yeah? OK, I'm gonna go with that and move on...

The Master uses some disco lights to switch the Doctor's brain off and place him in a catatonic state so that he can manoeuvre him into the courtyard of the Fantasy Factory to lure the Valeyard out, at which point he will use his Tissue Compression Eliminator to kill him (are you keeping up?). This ploy fails because the Valeyard's not that stupid, then throws a load of explosive quill pens at the Master, who runs away. All of this is prime evidence that the Master shouldn't have been in this story at all, he's just getting in the way and muddying things. Is the Valeyard not a great enough enemy on his own?

The zombified Doctor is nudged out of his comatose state by the shadowy figure of Mel, who beckons him into her gloomy alley, in what is both a creepy and comforting scene (creepy because there's obviously something not quite right, and comforting because she's here to rescue the Doctor).

This is where the story really starts to get knotted up - you can tell it was written in a hurry by Pip and Jane Baker, who had little idea where original writer the late Robert Holmes was heading. On June 1st, 1986 script editor Eric Saward withdrew permission to use his version of Holmes's part 14, and the Bakers were hastily commissioned to provide a new part 14 just five days later. All this took place less than three weeks before filming was due to start on part 14 at Camber Sands. I can only imagine the chaos and stress behind the scenes of Doctor Who in the summer of '86!

Mel leads the Doctor out of the Matrix back to the courtroom to finish off his defence case, but the Inquisitor finds him guilty of genocide, and his life is forfeit. The Doctor accepts this sentence like a child accepts a lollipop, but things aren't what they seem. Clough cleverly pulls back the camera from the courtroom to reveal that it's all a fiction playing out on the real screen in the real courtroom. As Mel rather ripely points out, it is an illusion of the Valeyard's, who is playing on the Doctor's "romantic nature" (yes, being sentenced to death is oh so romantic). I like this clever little twist, and although it overcomplicates things, it adds to the unpredictability of the Matrix. At one point the viewers at home are watching characters on their TV screen watching imaginary versions of themselves on a Matrix screen watching Vervoids on a Matrix screen - it's like a Russian doll!

Mel asks the Inquisitor to help the Doctor, who she thinks is being taken to his death willingly, but the Inquisitor merely answers: "We cannot interfere." In her usual peppy fashion, Mel refuses to give in - "Well I can!" - and scarpers into the Matrix, giving the Keeper a good kicking on the way past! I don't get why the Inquisitor can't interfere, seeing as it's her trial inquiry that's been completely derailed. Interfering in the affairs of other worlds and races is one thing, but trying to get everybody back into a courtroom isn't really the same level of meddling!

The Doctor knows it's not real, because Mel said she was present when the Doctor refuted the charge of genocide, and she wasn't. The Doctor's quoting of Sydney Carton, from Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities, is an interesting moment. "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known," quotes the Doctor, but some literary scholars say these final words from Carton represent his last act being a selfish one, in that the focus is on him and his actions. In the last line, it's suggested Carton seeks rest in death from a world in which he has been a failure. Now, think on that...

Returning to the Fantasy Factory to track down J J Chambers aka the Valeyard, the Doctor and Mel waste time searching through Popplewick's desk and drawers, where they find a list of Time Lords attending the Doctor's trial inquiry. Unfortunately, it's difficult to make out any of the names - (Inquisitor? Dickens?) - but wouldn't it be great if one of them read "Maxil"? Mel also encounters a fire-breathing monster behind the waiting room door, something I find bizarrely amusing because of the way the Doctor says: "Don't open that..." - Mel screams, slams door on fire-breathing monster - "... door."

Flailing about now, the Bakers reintroduce the Andromedan Sleepers and their stolen Matrix secrets, in an effort to make the season arc feel more coherent and integrated, but it's just not needed. It increases the confusion rather than smooths out the bumps. This episode was given an extra five minutes to help explain everything properly, but to my mind, the Bakers are wasting that extra time faffing about with fire-breathing monsters and needless continuity.

The final 10 minutes is a parade of crackpot twists and desperation. We learn that Mr Popplewick is actually the Valeyard in disguise, something surely more suited to the Master? Glitz pinches the Matrix secrets, but then loses them to the Master, who retires to his TARDIS only to be caught in a limbo atrophier, which goes completely unexplained. We last see the Master pinned against the wall of his TARDIS in black and white, with no idea what's happening or why. It's just a quick way to write the Master and Glitz out of the story - throw some posh words together, that'll do.

Talking of posh words, the logorrhoeic Bakers (look it up!) throw their trusty dictionary at the final showdown in a last ditch attempt to make things sound cleverer than they are. Mel opens a cupboard and finds a megabyte modem (how does she know what one of them looks like?), which is loaded with a MASER - Microwave Amplification And Stimulated Emission of Radiation. The acronym doesn't help me an awful lot in understanding what a megabyte modem does, but the hurried dialogue suggests it is a particle disseminator, which redistributes even subatomic particles, gravitons, quarks and tau mesons. That's so much clearer...

While all this nonsense is going on, the Keeper of the Matrix reports to the Inquisitor that Gallifrey has collapsed into chaos, and the High Council has been deposed by an insurrection in the Capitol. I'm sorry, what-now? Why has this happened? What has the Doctor's trial inquiry, and events in the Matrix, got to do with the rule of order on Gallifrey? It isn't made clear why Gallifrey has descended into rebellion, but if I were to hazard my own guess, perhaps the people found out how corrupt the High Council was and decided to overthrow them? But that's just me extrapolating, none of that is in the episode. Rebellion on Gallifrey - and an unseen one at that - is yet another unnecessary ingredient thrown into the mix which confuses rather than solves.

Then the Master pops up, speaking to the courtroom from his space disco, claiming that the Time Lords should give in to him because he controls the Matrix (how?) and is the only one who can restore order. Then that limbo atrophier thing happens and the Gallifreyan rebellion is swept under the carpet.

Back in the Matrix the Doctor fiddles with the megabyte modem and induces an anti-phase signal into the telemetry unit (you still following?), but this has the side effect of triggering a ray phase shift, causing an explosive feedback. The Doctor and Mel escape the Matrix, leaving the Valeyard to his doom within. I'm not going to broach the subject of how the death of the Doctor's dark side - that bit between his twelfth and final incarnations - should directly affect the Doctor's existence, because nobody else has.

Back in the courtroom, the Inquisitor decides to drop all charges against the Doctor, seemingly on a whim, because he's been so damned heroic (never mind the interfering in the affairs of others, or the genocide etc). She also tells him that Peri isn't dead at all, but married to King Yrcanos as a Warrior Queen, which he seems very happy about. "Varoonik," he smiles, as if this should mean something to the audience.

The Inquisitor invites the Doctor to stand as a candidate for the Gallifreyan Presidency, which he very wisely turns down. That's right, he declines the offer of candidacy, which makes the Seventh Doctor's claim to be "President-Elect of the High Council of Time Lords" in Remembrance of the Daleks a complete lie!

Then Mel gets into the TARDIS with the Doctor and leaves, and my head implodes. No. No! NO! She can't do that! The Doctor - this Doctor - hasn't met Mel yet, they can't just swan off together as if they're carrying on where 'Terror of the Vervoids' left off! Mel was plucked out of her time stream to be there, and the Doctor too, so how can they just carry on from this point together? The Time Lords should return each of them to the point from which they were lifted (Glitz too), not just let them carry on their merry way. Mel knows how she met the Doctor, but the Doctor doesn't - and the way this pans out, he never will.

Oh god, my brain hurts.

And with the fading of the TARDIS, the Sixth Doctor's era is over. Fittingly - yet oh so unfittingly - his final words are: "Carrot juice, carrot juice, carrot juice", his first trademark repetition since Timelash. I have to admit I'm not sorry to see him go. The Sixth Doctor has been my least favourite incarnation so far. I couldn't connect to him, partly because he was written so badly that he did some truly terrible things I struggled to forgive, and partly because I don't think Colin Baker was right for the part. Baker isn't a bad actor, but I don't think he makes a good Doctor. I acknowledge that this is a controversial opinion, but it is based on what was on the TV. Forget the rehabilitation on audio by Big Finish, it's the television version I'm judging. Baker gave his all to the role, that much is clear. But sometimes his all was too much, or ill-judged, or ill-considered, and at a time in the programme's history when too many people cared too little.

The Trial of a Time Lord - and I'll say it again: at no point does the Doctor's inquiry become a trial, making the title a complete fallacy - is a damp squib of an end to a short-lived era full of poor decisions. Even if Baker had got more years in the part, and time to develop his version of the Doctor properly, I don't think I'd like the Sixth Doctor much more. He blotted his copy book in his very first episode by trying to murder his companion, and it kind of went downhill from there. As great as Baker is in his audio adventures, his time on telly was a sorry mis-step for the programme. I'm glad it's over, I'm glad script editor Eric Saward has gone, and I look forward to another fresh start in Season 24. Say farewell to the strangulations, poisonings and cannibalism - here's to the future!

First broadcast: December 6th, 1986

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: Mel screaming and slamming a door on a fire-breathing monster which is in the waiting room. It just makes me chuckle!
The Bad: The hot mess that is the plot. I know Pip and Jane Baker were really up against it - 17 days between being commissioned and the start of filming - but it's just a desperate car crash. After 13 weeks of build-up, it's a disappointing conclusion in every single way.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆ (The Ultimate Foe average: 4.5 out of 10; overall story average: 5.6 out of 10)

Word repetition: 8 - "Carrot juice, carrot juice, carrot juice."

NEXT TIME: Time and the Rani...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Part One; Part Two; Part Three; Part Four; Part Five; Part Six; Part Seven; Part Eight; Part Nine; Part Ten; Part Eleven; Part Twelve; Part Thirteen

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site.

The Trial of a Time Lord is available on BBC DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Trial-Time-Lord/dp/B001ARYYNG