The Trial of a Time Lord Part Six

The one where the Doctor's mind is addled by Crozier's machine...

The Doctor is rescued from Crozier's mind-altering machine when Yrcanos breaks free of his bonds and starts trashing the laboratory. The release of Brian Blessed means the tone ramps up by roughly 1,000% from hereon in, thanks to his predictably over-the-top performance. Scattered with ridiculous affectations, whistles, and buzzwords like "Rombrom ssssss sabaluma", Blessed's portrayal of King Yrcanos, King of the Krontep, Lord of the Vingten and Conqueror of the Tonkonp Empire, is about as subtle as an anvil in the face. Blessed wasn't always like this, as anybody who saw his portrayal of Augustus in I, Claudius will know. I think it was his international success as Vultan in 1980's Flash Gordon which changed him as a performer, sadly.

Unfortunately, Blessed at full-throttle seems to give Colin Baker - never the subtlest of actors to begin with - free rein to push his boat out too. His mind adversely affected by Crozier's cerebral transfer machine, the Doctor tips first of all into a childish stupor, and then regresses to a version of himself all too familiar to those, like me, trying to forget the horrors of The Twin Dilemma. Yes, he's back: the original Sixth Doctor, the one who tried to murder his companion, throttle an aged friend, and acted both cowardly and mercilessly throughout his earliest adventures. Back then he claimed to be affected by post-regenerative trauma, while here he's reportedly addled by Crozier's machine. Either way, it's concerning just how close to the surface this version of Sixie is.

Equally as concerned by the behaviour he's seeing on the screen, the Doctor in the courtroom claims what they're watching didn't actually happen and is not an accurate reflection of the truth. The amnesia he suffered as a result of being taken out of time at the end of this adventure has now gone, but he claims he still cannot remember anything after his mind was flooded with power at the end of part 5. Has the evidence been tampered with? We're told not, as the Matrix cannot lie, so what we're left with is that this really is how the Doctor acted. Rather ominously, the Valeyard warns of "an exceedingly nasty" surprise to come...

Escaping the lab, Yrcanos, Peri and the Doctor come upon an induction centre where slaves from Thoros Alpha are being implanted with something. Intent on capturing the guards' weapons, Yrcanos launches an attack on the induction centre, but is betrayed by a self-serving Doctor who warns the guards of the Warlord's presence. Yrcanos escapes, leaving a terrified Peri at the mercy of her worst nightmare - Sil. She really is scared of the repugnant little worm, as demonstrated later when she tells Matrona Kani she's afraid to enter the Mentors' control centre.

A terrified Peri gets no help from the turncoat Doctor, who appears to have sided with Sil. "Why should I risk my life for a savage and a stupid girl?" he tells Sil, evoking those shuddersome early episodes when this was prima facie Sixth Doctor. "I'm no hero."

I'm really disappointed this has happened, when progress had been made with characterising this most polarising of Doctors. The last thing you should do when you've been taken off air for 18 months and told to rethink your entire approach to making Doctor Who is to present a story where the Doctor's mind is altered and he goes all self-serving and smug, where the Doctor is the antithesis of what the character stands for. Viewers were already struggling to give Colin Baker's Doctor a warm welcome, but this feels like it's unravelling any headway made, like a big two-fingers to the audience.

And because Baker puts so much energy into things, it makes the Doctor's repellent attitude all the more convincing, and disappointing. Where are the Doctor's morals, the standards all previous Doctors led their lives by? While it's difficult to believe these words coming from the mouth of a girl who's been so poorly treated by the Doctor, Peri's accusations ring true: "I used to think that you were different, that you cared for justice and truth and good. I can't bear to look at what you are now."

The scene where the Doctor is interrogating Peri, chained up with the tide lapping at her feet on the Rock of Sorrows, is as distasteful as anything from this Doctor's pre-Trial era. The poor girl is in great distress, demeaned yet again by being tied up like a feeble damsel shackled to a railway line. The Doctor brusquely quizzes her, calling her an Alphan spy and demanding answers. And then he appears to quietly confide in her - "It's alright, we're alone now. We can talk. I'm your friend, you know that" -  but it's all a conceited ploy to get Peri to confess.

The Doctor has no interest in his friend or her safety, only himself and his own. "You must help the Mentors, Peri, you must help me," he growls in her ear like a psychopathic bully boy. "I see my own interests, I place myself first. You are expendable, you have no value. Tomorrow they intend to take the brain of the Lord Kiv and transplant it into my body. He will possess my body! To prevent that, I must please the Mentors, Peri. If that means sacrificing you in my place, then that is the way it must be."

Horrible, isn't it? And while I know this is all part of "the story", and it's interesting to have a story where the Doctor turns bad so that we can explore the consequences blah blah blah... I just don't think the Sixth Doctor is the right Doctor to do that with, not after everything we've been through. Defenders of this story might call it brave story-telling. I just think it's stupid.

Aside from the intolerable pairing of Blessed and Baker, this episode sees the rise of the wonderful Matrona Kani, played with Foxy Brown flintiness by Alibe Parsons, dressed like RuPaul doing Boney M on Stars in Their Eyes. She's a shady queen who knows what's what, and what she wants, and is ready with a stony retort when patronised by Sil. Her handmaiden slave girls are dressed in gorgeous pink and yellow saris and veils by costume designer John Hearne, giving this group of characters a distinctive look (just as distinctive as the Mentors' muscled black bearers, complete with studded chest harnesses).

The end of the episode sees a vengeful King Yrcanos leap from the shadows threatening to kill the Doctor, and I'm thinking: "Yeah, please just get on with it."

First broadcast: October 11th, 1986

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: Alibe Parsons as the formidable Matrona.
The Bad: Colin Baker.
Overall score for episode: ★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

Word repetition: 7

NEXT TIME: Part Seven...

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

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