Day 341 — December 7th 2021
The Trial of a Time Lord Parts Thirteen and Fourteen
The Trial of a Time Lord — Part Thirteen
I have a general sense of how the Matrix operates because I’ve seen The Deadly Assassin and the film The Matrix, but I find it strange that they make zero attempt to actually explain any of it in this episode, simply treating it as something the audience should know and understand. I seem to recall that it was pretty undeveloped as an idea when Tom Baker went in, too, but here I’ve completely lost track of how it works, and I suspect a number of viewers watching at home will have had the same reaction. It doesn’t help that Robert Holmes doesn’t seem sure, either.
Doctor Who: ‘We’re not in the real world any longer, Sabalom Glitz.’
Glitz: ‘How can we be in a different world? We just stepped through a door!’
Doctor Who: ‘Into the Matrix, where the only logic is that there isn’t any logic.’
I quite like the idea of setting a story in a world where anything and everything could happen, and you’ve not idea what’s real and what isn’t. They played with that a lot in The Deadly Assassin, but I don’t think they get quite the same milage out of it here, where it’s largely presented as being just Victorian Earth.
It’s a shame because I think the most effective parts of this episode are the ones where they do play up the horrors of the Matrix. The hands reaching out of the barrel to grab Doctor Who is genuinely scary stuff, and the cliffhanger’s pretty decent too, as hands emerge from the sand to drag our hero down. I think it’s perhaps let down a little by Colin going more over the top than ever before, but the idea itself is strong enough. It’s just that these account for about a minute of screen time in the whole episode, and the rest is taken up with chatting in the court room or doing the traditional Robert Holmes jabs at bureaucracy.
That’s not to say that those scenes are completely without merit — no one does this sort of stuff quite as well as Robert Holmes, and I love some of the dialogue in there (‘The very junior Mister Popplewick isn’t permitted to expect anyone…’) but I want something a bit… more. This is the climax to the longest Doctor Who story ever made, with our hero fighting for his life against a evil future incarnation of himself! It should be an incredible battle to the death, but instead it’s just a bit dull.
Ah yes. We can’t let this episode pass without discussing the big twist — the Valeyard’s identity.
The Master: ‘They made a deal with the Valeyard, or as I’ve always known him, the Doctor, to adjust the evidence, in return for which he was promised the remainder of the Doctor’s regenerations.’
Doctor Who: ‘Just a minute! Did you call him the Doctor?’
The Master: ‘There is some evil in all of us, Doctor, even you. The Valeyard is an amalgamation of the darker sides of your nature, somewhere between your twelfth and final incarnation. And I may say, you do not improve with age.’
I mean the idea is pretty much bobbins, isn’t it? I’ve always been a bit baffled by how desperate people are to see the Valeyard come back any time they think we’ve reached that point in the timeline (it’s hard to work out these days, with the addition of various ‘forgotten’ incarnations and extended regeneration cycles). I think the idea in the original script was that he wasn’t from some vague ‘between’ incarnations but rather a future incarnation who was simply evil, and I think I buy that idea far easier.
What I do enjoy is how casually it gets thrown into the proceedings here. It’s great fun when the Master shows up to start joining in with the trial, and I love the idea of him kicking back in his TARDIS and watching Terror of the Vervoids with us all. It’s played really nicely that he’s the one who gets to drop the bombshell, and he delights in doing it with so little fanfare.
Overall, this one’s only a 3/10 for me.
The Trial of a Time Lord — Part Fourteen
I don’t know if there’s any other episode of Doctor Who which went through as traumatic a pre-production as this one did. The original version of Part Fourteen was planned out by Robert Holmes in discussion with Eric Saward. Holmes died before he could start work on the script, which left Saward to finish it. In the process of writing, the relationship between him and John Nathan-Turner broke down and he resigned from his regular role as Script Editor. Discussions were held and it was agreed that Saward would finish off the script, which he did, but then the relationship deteriorated even further during a disagreement about the ending, which led to Saward refusing to let them use the story. No contracts had been signed for his work as a freelancer following his departure, so the BBC had absolutely no way around the problem, leaving Nathan-Turner to pull something together at the last minute.
Pip and Jane Baker were asked to step in, having recently finished work on Terror of the Vervoids, and had to sit in a meeting with lawyers to make sure they weren’t given any details about Saward’s scripts which he could then claim had been plagerised. All things considered, it’s not the easiest gestation for an episode. Especially not one which has to tie up the threads of the longest Doctor Who story ever.
On top of that, the locations and guest cast had already been booked, so there was a limit to what the Bakers could do with the story. I think it’s often forgotten just how quickly everything had to move at this stage, too. Robert Holmes died on May 24th. Saward withdrew permission to use his script on June 4th. Pip and Jane are commissioned to provide a replacement two days later, and recording for the scenes at the beath take place on June 23rd. Frankly it’s a miracle we ended up with anything on screen to round out the season, and it might go some way towards explaining why this final episode is a bit of a mess.
I think the most annoying thing is that there’s lots of really nice moments in this one which make it feel like it should be more entertaining than it is. The exploding quills are a nice idea. The cutting as the Valeyard jumps around the beach taunting his prey is incredibly well done for the most part. Glitz continues to be great value (especially when paired opposite the Master). The idea of Gallifrey falling into chaos off-screen as a result of the High Council’s lies being exposed is incredibly exciting.
And yet… this episode does almost nothing for me, and it’s a 2/10, I’m afraid.
It’s a weak ending for the Trial season and for Colin Baker’s time in the TARDIS as a whole, although perhaps it’s a fitting one for the programme’s most troubled era. As ever I went into this hoping to find lots to champion and enjoy, but in the end it’s been a bit of a washout for the last month. Colin’s era is certainly the weakest run of any Doctor Who so far, and I think that’s a terrible shame. It’s the only era of the show to not receive a single 10/10 for any episode, and perhaps damningly his highest rated story only managed a 6/10 on average. The low scores for these final two episodes bringing The Trial of a Time Lord in with a score of 5.86, putting it in second place.
