Day 338 — December 4th 2021
The Trial of a Time Lord Parts Seven and Eight
The Trial of a Time Lord — Part Seven
Something I’ve noticed watching through the Colin Baker stories so far is how many little recurring moments there are for the regular characters. In his first few stories Doctor Who would rub his cat badge for good luck before diving into something (I’ve never noticed that before, but he seems to have stopped doing that by this stage). Then there’s the prevalence of cliffhangers which are close ups on Doctor Who’s face — we get another one in this episode, which I make our sixth in seven episodes.
But even Peri has a recurring thing in almost every story — some variation on the phrase ‘all these [x] look the same to me’. In this episode it’s tunnels, and it was in Attack of the Cybermen as well. Corridors gets two outings, too, in both Vengeance on Varos and Timelash, while we get singular appearances for mines (in Mark of the Rani) and subways (The Mysterious Planet). In Slipback she doesn’t specify, but comments of the spaceship ‘it all looks the same’. I don’t have any particular point to make about that other than to say I can’t tell if it’s a fun recurring motif or a vaguely meta joke which only works the first time.
Either way, it’s fitting for this story because these corridors are familiar — they’re the ones from the last story redressed and lit differently! They do a really decent job of making them look distinct but I can’t help being surprised they’ve taken to reusing elements quite so swiftly. It’s a bit like Series Six of New Testament Who where the same three bits of set show up in almost every story. I liked to corridors well enough in The Mysterious Planet, but they look especially effective here when lit with a little more care.
There’s plenty of other things which are indisputably decent in this episode. The make up on Dorf is fantastic, and manages to look quite unlike any other creature the show has given us in a long time. Sil is used better here than he has been in the previous couple of episodes, and the moment when Kiv wakes up to find Sil’s face looming over him (and into the camera) is brilliantly disgusting. Brian Blessed tones down his performance in a few places and there’s some genuinely lovely moments between him and Nicola Bryant. And then there’s the cliffhanger in which Peri is shot down. I was going to say that it’s going to far and is a bit too dark, but actually it’s incredibly exciting. It reminds me of The Caves of Androzani, in that you’re left thinking that there is no way out, rather than wondering how.
And yet… oh, I’m sorry. Mindwarp just isn’t doing anything for me. There’s lots of good elements but the whole hting feels like less than the sum of its parts. It has a fairly distinct style — especially compared to the stories either side of it — which I think makes it more distinctly ‘not for me’. It’s not that the story is doing anything wrong, it’s just that it’s not working for me. I’m going for another 4/10.
The Trial of a Time Lord — Part Eight
Ooh, I’m torn about Peri’s death. And it is a death — even if it gets retconned later. The fact remains that for the audience watching at the time Peri was dead for a solid six weeks before we find out the truth. On the one had it’s some of the most exciting material the show has done in absolutely ages. The image of Peri sitting up — bald! — and screaming in an alien voice is brilliantly striking, and feels like the kind of thing that would really make you fall out of your seat watching as an eight year old.
But then… oh, it just feels so wrong for a Doctor Who companion to be treated like this, doesn’t it? It feels especially tone deaf in a series which follows the show being taken off air for the crime of being too violent in recent seasons. Peri is our way ‘in’ to these adventures, a character for the audience to latch on to and follow and love. Seeing her treated like this, and in a story where Doctor Who has been even more callous towards her than usual (even if it is the result of altered evidence) feels so incredibly wrong.
Eight year old me would have been shocked by all of this, but I think I’d have been utterly terrified, too, and not in the kind of fun ‘hide from the rubber monsters’ way, but a genuine terror. The idea that Doctor Who could both fail to save his companion and that it results in her death like this… it doesn’t sit right. As if the general idea isn’t horrifying enough, there’s something scarily clinical about the way Crozier describes what’s happened too, as though to make sure the audience really understands the horror of the situation;
Crozier: ‘I have transferred the contents of his mind into the brain of the woman.’
Sil: ‘And what of the Earth woman’s mind?’
Crozier: ‘Gone. Mentally, she no longer exists.’
I also think this isn’t as effective as Adric’s death because Peri dies not really doing very much. She helps to stir up the rebellion, but then she’s captured, tortured and killed. At least Adric died rushing back to try and save the day. It felt like there was some actual purpose to his death. On the plus side, Colin Baker gives a great performance when he discovers Peri’s fate, and it’s one of the most moving moments the series has done — it’s certainly got more weight than Peter Davison shrugging off Adric’s demise.
Overall, this final episode has continued to do very little for me, and the death of Peri just drags it down further. I’ve got to go with a 3/10. For those of you keeping track, that makes Mindwarp’s average score a 4.
