I get the impression that that's the story Holmes wanted to tell. The Sontarans were forced on him and he really didn't want to include them.
Rank & Rate: The Colin Baker Era
- Thread starter Emperor-Tiberius
- Start date
Both Wilder and Depp, actually.
Six has the toned-down arrogance of the Wilder Wonka as well as the dark-tinged vulnerability and chaotic loneliness of the Depp Wonka, and the combination is what has made him my favorite Doctor.
I've now finished Colin's first year as the Doctor, so here are reviews of Timelash and Revelation of the Daleks.
Timelash
As I have been for pretty much all of Colin's run, I'm pretty solidly in the minority because I really enjoyed Timelash; the concept of telling a story that is a sequel to an earlier unseen adventure is a decidedly 21st Century one, and so seeing it underpin a story written in the 80s felt pleasantly prescient.
I also enjoyed the various "anticlimaxes" of the story's conclusion because structuring the narrative to go from one seeming climax to another calls back to mythic storytelling and things like Star Wars where the story and characters all get pushed right up to the point of no return before there's a last-second reversal of fortune and the good guys ultimately win the day.
I also loved the inclusion of H.G. Wells in the story; the narrative conceit of actual events being dramatically and exaggeratingly fictionalized is something that I absolutely love but that I'm not sure gets tackled as much as it ought to, so seeing it done here was a lot of fun.
I also liked seeing the Doctor get genuinely annoyed by somebody and have to struggle not to blow up at said person (I say "genuinely annoyed" because while he and Peri verbally spar with each other, there's pretty clearly no true malice behind it from either of them and it's just something they do); it gave him some additional depth, and gave Colin a chance to do some excellent non-verbal acting.
The story's villains were also once again great, with Paul Darrow providing a perfectly and deliciously slimy foil for Six and pawn/puppet for the largely unseen Borad, who came across as both malevolent and pathetic in a way that Sharaz Jek, the character to whom he has the most similarities, didn't.
The only real complaint I have is that the story reduced Peri to as much of a helpless damsel in distress as it was possible for her to be, but Nicola still sold things really well and managed to convey Peri's internal strength even through the screaming and cringing.
Revelation of the Daleks
Trying to review this story represents an interesting exercise for me because I don't really like the design of the Daleks or find them particularly menacing, and so having them at the center of a narrative makes things tricky in determining if said narrative was a good story.
Ultimately, I do think Revelation can be considered a standout story because of its thematic elements and the standout performances of Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant, Terry Molloy, and especially guest actress Jenny Tomasin, whose performance as Tasambeker and interactions with Davros really helped sell the latter's megalomania.
I've made no secret of how much I love the cantankerous nature of the Doctor and Peri's relationship and why I think it works, and so the big thing that bothered me about this episode is that the pair started out more adversarially contentious than they had been in any story since Attack of the Cybermen without any narrative justification for the discrepancy, which can only be laid at Saward's feet here because he's the credited writer of the story.
Revelation of the Daleks didn't do a whole lot in terms of changing how I feel about the Daleks themselves, but nevertheless ended Colin's first year as the Doctor on a high note for me because of the performances of the cast and the themes the story dealt with.
I'm really enjoying your reviews of the Sixth Doctor's era. It's reminded me that it's an exceptionally underrated era. The stories are largely better than many people seem to give credit. I suspect that much of the issue towards Colin's era is the negative reaction to both the costume and his first appearance. And that first appearance wasn't helped by being the season finale with a long break before people getting to see how the character developed, so by the time his first full season came around, many people had already solidified their opinion. The other issue (in my opinion) was that this was the era that the show's budget really became an issue. With many competing shows providing significantly better special effects and sets, the ongoing budget cuts meant that this show really looked poor compared to many other shows targeted at similar audiences.
11. Timelash
10-2. Everything else.
1. Vengeance on Varos
10-2. Everything else.
1. Vengeance on Varos
Due to some technical issues and a lack of time, I've sadly had to postpone the continuation of my watch-through of Colin's era, but intend to resume it at some point.
Do you intend to try out some audios over time?
Especially the unmade now-made original season 23, the official final adventure, another Valeyard story, and others... "The Ultimate Evil" was a great novelization and is finally coming out on audio next month.
I finally have the time to get back to my watch-through of Colin's era, and so I figured I'd cross-post my thoughts on the start of Season 23 ("Trial of a Time Lord").
Trial of a Time Lord, Part 1 (AKA "The Mysterious Planet, Part 1")
Since I won't be reviewing this season's arcs as a cohesive whole but instead as individualized installments, I wanted to start with some general thoughts on the framing device of the entire story - the Trial - as well as some observations derived from having spoiled myself for the future, both of the 23rd season and of the Doctor Who franchise as a whole up to and including the recently completed "NuWho" Series 12.
There have been many TV series over the years that have used the framing device as a narrative story tool, but there is something about the way that this particular iteration of Doctor Who used it that make it feel very 21st Century, especially looking back at the overall story of "Trial of a Time Lord" with modern knowledge about where the Doctor Who franchise has gone.
The Valeyard, as a narrative concept and overarching "Big Bad", is an interesting aspect of Doctor Who's overall mythos, especially with what Chris Chibnall just revealed about the Doctor's history via "The Timeless Child", and being aware of those revelations can't hep but cast the character and his intentions - which are still a mystery to the other characters at this point in the story - in a new light.
It is also interesting to watch the "Trial" unfold knowing that it is being undertaken via the Matrix and is ultimately going to be exploited by The Master while also possessing the knowledge that yet another future incarnation of The Master will use the Matrix in a similar fashion against the Thirteenth Doctor in order to reveal things about her in an effort to gain an advantage over her, just as is the ultimate purpose of the "Trial" as a whole.
Now, with discussion of the larger framing device out of the way, let's talk about the rest of the story of this particular episode.
I've been recently playing the video game Horizon Zero Dawn, and so I couldn't help but see a lot of interesting similarities in the primitive society inhabiting the surface of Ravalox and the people who inhabit the world of that game.
I continue to enjoy the cantakerously affectionate relationship that Peri has with the Sixth Doctor, and it was nice to see that it had by this point settled into a kind of holding pattern where they both jab at each other but can still manage to be tender and considerate with each other at the drop of a hat, as evidenced by the Doctor trying to comfort her after they discovered that Ravalox may in fact have been Earth.
I also got a kick out of how similar the predicament in which both Peri and the Doctor find themselves in this episode is to their misadventures on Karfel and Necros, not only because it's humorous to think that they keep finding themselves in similar situations instead of learning from their past in order to avoid said situations, but also because it creates a kind of thematic continuity that is fun to track.
Beyond the Doctor and Peri and their respective misadventures, I found myself really getting a kick out of Sabalom Glitz and Dibber, both because they represent a take on the classic "slapstick comedy duo"/"buddy comedy pairing" trope and also because Sabalom comes off as a kind of "heroic rogue" in the vein of characters like Han Solo, Wolverine, Cable, Harley Quinn, and Catwoman. I also found Glitz's banter with the primitive tribal leader Katryca very funny, especially given his overconfidence about being able to best her and get her to do what he wanted.
The Trial of a Time Lord, Part 2 (AKA "The Mysterious Planet, Part 2")
Picking up pretty much were we left off the previous episode with the larger "Trial" framing story, this episode quickly gets us right back into the 'action', as it were, by also picking up the Doctor and Peri's storylines and having them quickly intersect with that of Sabalom Glitz and Dibber.
The Doctor's encounter with the "Immortal" was very reminiscent to me of his interactions with characters such as the Borad and Sil (from Vengeance on Varos), and it was fun to see him 'think on the fly' in order to get himself away from the Immortal and his 'assistants'. It was also interesting to see Merdeen show his true colors and enlist both the Doctor and Balazar in a plan to free people from the Immortal's control without any real setup of that particular idea, particularly since dropping such a monumental shift in character motivation can often be a hit-or-miss proposition.
On the Peri/Sabalom Glitz/Dibber side of the equation, there was surprisingly not a lot of narrative progression happening with their characters, but I still found myself really liking what we were shown, largely because of the banter between Peri and Glitz; his reaction to Peri being thrown into their cell and her letting slip that Katryca wanted to set her up with several husbands was delivered with such deadpan seriousness that I couldn't help but chuckle.
Pivoting back to the framing story for a second, I really liked the Doctor's frequent jabs against the Valeyard, most of which felt to me like improvisations on the part of Colin Baker, as well as his cleverly insincere apologies to the Inquisitor after she kept calling him on said jabs and on his interruptions and asides more generally.
The cliffhanger ending to the episode was also "classic melodrama", which made me smile, and also very typical of the Doctor and Peri's overall adventuring, albeit with a few more 'hangers-on' than might be customary for them.
***
Overall, I really enjoyed the start to the "Trial of a Time Lord" mega-arc that these two particular episodes represent, and found them very engaging both on their own and as part of said larger mega-arc, with the cliffhanger of Part 2 packing just enough 'implied peril' to keep me wanting to watch and discover what happens next while also not feeling too high-stakes and anomalous to the overall tone of "classic Doctor Who" in general and the Sixth Doctor era in specific.
Trial of a Time Lord, Part 1 (AKA "The Mysterious Planet, Part 1")
Since I won't be reviewing this season's arcs as a cohesive whole but instead as individualized installments, I wanted to start with some general thoughts on the framing device of the entire story - the Trial - as well as some observations derived from having spoiled myself for the future, both of the 23rd season and of the Doctor Who franchise as a whole up to and including the recently completed "NuWho" Series 12.
There have been many TV series over the years that have used the framing device as a narrative story tool, but there is something about the way that this particular iteration of Doctor Who used it that make it feel very 21st Century, especially looking back at the overall story of "Trial of a Time Lord" with modern knowledge about where the Doctor Who franchise has gone.
The Valeyard, as a narrative concept and overarching "Big Bad", is an interesting aspect of Doctor Who's overall mythos, especially with what Chris Chibnall just revealed about the Doctor's history via "The Timeless Child", and being aware of those revelations can't hep but cast the character and his intentions - which are still a mystery to the other characters at this point in the story - in a new light.
It is also interesting to watch the "Trial" unfold knowing that it is being undertaken via the Matrix and is ultimately going to be exploited by The Master while also possessing the knowledge that yet another future incarnation of The Master will use the Matrix in a similar fashion against the Thirteenth Doctor in order to reveal things about her in an effort to gain an advantage over her, just as is the ultimate purpose of the "Trial" as a whole.
Now, with discussion of the larger framing device out of the way, let's talk about the rest of the story of this particular episode.
I've been recently playing the video game Horizon Zero Dawn, and so I couldn't help but see a lot of interesting similarities in the primitive society inhabiting the surface of Ravalox and the people who inhabit the world of that game.
I continue to enjoy the cantakerously affectionate relationship that Peri has with the Sixth Doctor, and it was nice to see that it had by this point settled into a kind of holding pattern where they both jab at each other but can still manage to be tender and considerate with each other at the drop of a hat, as evidenced by the Doctor trying to comfort her after they discovered that Ravalox may in fact have been Earth.
I also got a kick out of how similar the predicament in which both Peri and the Doctor find themselves in this episode is to their misadventures on Karfel and Necros, not only because it's humorous to think that they keep finding themselves in similar situations instead of learning from their past in order to avoid said situations, but also because it creates a kind of thematic continuity that is fun to track.
Beyond the Doctor and Peri and their respective misadventures, I found myself really getting a kick out of Sabalom Glitz and Dibber, both because they represent a take on the classic "slapstick comedy duo"/"buddy comedy pairing" trope and also because Sabalom comes off as a kind of "heroic rogue" in the vein of characters like Han Solo, Wolverine, Cable, Harley Quinn, and Catwoman. I also found Glitz's banter with the primitive tribal leader Katryca very funny, especially given his overconfidence about being able to best her and get her to do what he wanted.
The Trial of a Time Lord, Part 2 (AKA "The Mysterious Planet, Part 2")
Picking up pretty much were we left off the previous episode with the larger "Trial" framing story, this episode quickly gets us right back into the 'action', as it were, by also picking up the Doctor and Peri's storylines and having them quickly intersect with that of Sabalom Glitz and Dibber.
The Doctor's encounter with the "Immortal" was very reminiscent to me of his interactions with characters such as the Borad and Sil (from Vengeance on Varos), and it was fun to see him 'think on the fly' in order to get himself away from the Immortal and his 'assistants'. It was also interesting to see Merdeen show his true colors and enlist both the Doctor and Balazar in a plan to free people from the Immortal's control without any real setup of that particular idea, particularly since dropping such a monumental shift in character motivation can often be a hit-or-miss proposition.
On the Peri/Sabalom Glitz/Dibber side of the equation, there was surprisingly not a lot of narrative progression happening with their characters, but I still found myself really liking what we were shown, largely because of the banter between Peri and Glitz; his reaction to Peri being thrown into their cell and her letting slip that Katryca wanted to set her up with several husbands was delivered with such deadpan seriousness that I couldn't help but chuckle.
Pivoting back to the framing story for a second, I really liked the Doctor's frequent jabs against the Valeyard, most of which felt to me like improvisations on the part of Colin Baker, as well as his cleverly insincere apologies to the Inquisitor after she kept calling him on said jabs and on his interruptions and asides more generally.
The cliffhanger ending to the episode was also "classic melodrama", which made me smile, and also very typical of the Doctor and Peri's overall adventuring, albeit with a few more 'hangers-on' than might be customary for them.
***
Overall, I really enjoyed the start to the "Trial of a Time Lord" mega-arc that these two particular episodes represent, and found them very engaging both on their own and as part of said larger mega-arc, with the cliffhanger of Part 2 packing just enough 'implied peril' to keep me wanting to watch and discover what happens next while also not feeling too high-stakes and anomalous to the overall tone of "classic Doctor Who" in general and the Sixth Doctor era in specific.
Woohoo!
Fascinating. I had thought of some parallels regarding a length of time between seasons and audience share, but 80s WHO was placed opposite the highest rated program whereas NuWHO wasn't.
I'm keeping each era in its own encapsulated realm; there are so many continuity problems even before Chibnall that it's easier to do, and post-Chibnall will see changes at some point too.
I'd rather see Ruth get her own show; she was given such a better background and backstory and feels so much more like conventional Doctors (and Classic WHO had Doctors with guns and violence!), and well-acted... Chibnall seems to know what he's doing, to some extent anyway.
And yet the Valeyard felt like a bigger (and more interesting) revelation at the time. Which made more sense at the time, the Valeyard being a distillation of his 12th and final incarnations' evil sides, that would be Smith and Capaldi based on War Doctor and partial regenerations where he doesn't change his appearance, etc...
But it all doesn't help NuWHO's cause either way. Every time the Master appears and mustache-twirls and says it's all a lie or that the Matrix can be altered... diminishing returns only compounds the problem.
Like season 8 and 9 having the Master in almost every story sparring against Pertwee, it held up only because of Delgado.
One platform can be an influence for another.
The Earth revelation at the time didn't shock me, though the Doctor and Peri both had a few great lines. (So the NuWHO story pulling the same stunt wouldn't begin to be any better. Even if it wasn't done before, the story is such a muddy bog.)
Peri and Six did finally get more than sparring, thankfully!
Peri also said in every episode how all the _____ looked the same to her. An early example of a metatextual in-joke?
1980s TV was less serialized, though seeing two plot tropes in a row - even down to cloning but at least Davros had a better reason to do so than the Borad... Scripting nowadays is so different.
Robert Holmes and his double-acts... the actors brought in really helped what was largely good dialogue, though Trial's middle sections are easily the best, despite their problems...
A plus... And Glitz hates it when people get lucky.
The Sixth Doctor loved being confrontational, that's for sure!
Merdeen's plotting was decently handled too.
Hehe... nothing new to add on all points.
I liked those as well. And Colin did have some input into his role, even the cat badges (despite not having much of a say in the costume...) were introduced and it was a nice touch. He is underrated.
Pretty much.
In 1986, during part one, I instantly thought "Master is behind this" and I was right - though the Valeyard was a complete mindblower. Part two was still low key, but the best was yet to come...
IMO, when you look at what the Valeyard is supposed to represent with the knowledge of the existence of the War Doctor, the fact that that the Doctor got a second set of regenerations, and the revelations about the Doctor being the "Timeless Child", it becomes even more interesting that the character of the Valeyard is meant to be an encapsulation of the Doctor's dark side because the fact that the character has had far more regenerations than even they are aware means that the Valeyard wanted to take down the Doctor based on an incomplete knowledge of his/her own history, which makes the Trial even more of a farce than it already was and actually means that, ultimately, it would probably have been a futile effort even if the Valeyard had been successful... and I find that extremely fascinating.
But if the Valeyard is a distillation of the Doctor, who has unlimited regenerations now, why take "remaining lives" - which seems like a paradox in of itself long before 2020's revelation? Seems even stranger, but after a certain point little about DW will ever make sense.
The Valeyard is an 'imperfect' distillation of the Doctor's dark side, and, when looking at what we now know, also seems to be from an alternate future where two of the biggest changes to the Doctor's personal history - getting a second regeneration cycle and learning about his/her origin as the Timeless Child - never happened, which I personally find really interesting and cool.
In Season 23, we're dealing with a Doctor who isn't aware of the full extent of his/her true history who is put on trial by an imperfect distillation of his/her own dark side who, based on what we now know, apparently comes from an alternate future in which two of the biggest changes to the Doctor's personal history - getting a second regeneration cycle and learning about his/her origin as the Timeless Child - never happened.
As originally conceived, the Inquisitor, Valeyard, jury and (swiftly dismissed) defence counsel were Matrix projections of future Time Lords, the reason being that any contemporary of the Doctor was biased. But someone had interfered with the projection so the Valeyard was the most biased individual there could possibly be.
None of which came close to reaching the screen, of course.
None of which came close to reaching the screen, of course.
Please do not blame me, I didn't write the script in a way that allows that perception - which is hardly a rare or esoteric one.
It even goes back to 1969 (The War Games with a one-off sentence about "we can live forever barring accidents", which was semi-cringing too - especially in hindsight to what followed). It was upended in 1976 (The Deadly Assassin) with a limitation imposed (so don't run out of them!), and then ran around in 2013 when Smith got a new set of lives... it will never end. It's the ultimate in ambivalence.
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New reviews, crossposted:
Trial of a Time Lord, Part 3 ("The Mysterious Planet, Part 3")
One of the things that I have found rather charmingly fun about the "classic Who" stories I've watched has been the repetition of pivotal or critical scenes from the ending of one episode at the beginning of the next episode, even if said scenes resolve a cliffhanger in a way that doesn't quite live up to or justify having said scenes function as a cliffhanger, and while this doesn't always work, I do think it worked fairly well here, especially since it got us back to Katryca's village and provided some fun banter between her and the Doctor, as well as the further intersection of heretofore separated storylines.
I also liked the way that the Doctor being in peril and threatened by Katryca's tribe led to some fun banter between Peri and Sabalom Glitz and a reference to the Third and Fourth Doctors and Sarah Jane, which I got a kick out of because I'm somewhat of a 'continuity fiend' and therefore love it when we get to see or hear references to Doctor Who's broader history.
Merdeen showing back up at the end of the episode and pointing his weapon at the Doctor and Peri didn't quite make sense given that there seemed to be nothing wrong with him the last time we saw him when he was face-to-face with Grell, which kind of deflated the 'oomph' of using said scene as a cliffhanger, but we'll see what happens with the resolution.
Pivoting to the framing device "Trial" scenes, they're kind of becoming less and less interesting and important as we go, although I do continue to like it when the Doctor is able to be snarky and flippant towards the Valeyard, so they've at least got that going for them.
We'll see if their importance level ramps up going forward or if it continues to decline.
All in all, this was yet another fun episode, and I can't wait to see the conclusion of this particular bit of the "Trial" mega-arc and what ends up happening in the next portion.
Trial of a Time Lord, Part 4 (AKA "The Mysterious Planet, Part 4")
And everything I typed about Merdeen in the first review turns out to have been a complete misdirect (but I'm not going to change it because I like the misdirect).
I know that there were a lot of complaints about the Colin Baker Era ushering in an escalation in the violence level of Doctor Who, but, for me, that's honestly part of the charm, and so it was kind of satisfying, in a weird way, to see Katryca and Broken-Tooth die as gruesomely as they did. It also helped turn the Immortal from simply a malfunctioning machine into a more immediate threat, setting things up nicely for the intellectual confrontation between him and the Doctor.
And speaking of the Immortal and the Doctor's intellectual confrontation, the way the scene was shot and the issues being discussed put me very much in mind of the attitudes of the Cybermen while simultaneously making me wonder why the Doctor -in any of his/her incarnations - never tried to have the same kind of intellectual dialogue with them.
I should've expected that going through a vent shaft into a "food production system" would be a bad idea, but I did get a kick out of how cheesily melodramatic the peril caused by the Immortal activating said system turned out to be, as it reminded me of the best bits of movies like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
Sabalom Glitz and Dibber became a little less relevant to the overall story in Part 3 and for a good chunk of this episode, but I really enjoyed the way that their scheming and desire to profit off of secret information and knowledge ended up being the thing that allowed the Doctor to, as he put it, "do his best" to save the day. I also thought it was clever that they both ended up walking away with something to serve their own agenda, thus ensuring that their involvement in the story, such as it was, didn't end up being a waste of time.
It kind of got glossed over for being the central mystery that got the Doctor and Peri into this misadventure in the first place, but I did like the confirmation that Ravalox was in fact Earth, although a little bit more info as to how it ended up in its new location would've been nice, if only from a lore standpoint.
And now we get to the stuff that didn't work here.
I didn't buy the "Trial" stuff with the Valeyard having sonically withheld information, and, despite having enjoyed the Doctor's snarky responses and insults towards the Valeyard in the previous episodes, it became a little bit repetitive here, especially since I didn't buy the Doctor not being allowed to respond while the Valeyard was still "presenting his case".
I did like the Doctor's snarky comment about the tediousness of the Valeyard's case, but other than that, the "Trial" stuff kind of failed here.
Hopefully it'll become more relevant and riveting as we go forward.
***
When looked at as a complete whole, I really enjoyed the "The Mysterious Planet" portion of the "Trial of a Time Lord" mega-arc, as it introduced some really fascinating and interesting characters in Sabalom Glitz and Dibber and continued to deepen and strengthen the best parts of the Sixth Doctor's characterization across the board and his relationship with Peri, but without losing the things that made said relationship so fun in the first place.
There were definitely some parts of the "Trial" framing device that didn't work and were problematic, particularly in Part 4 of the story, but we'll see what ends up happening next as we move into the second portion of the season and the "Mindwarp" mini-arc.
Trial of a Time Lord, Part 3 ("The Mysterious Planet, Part 3")
One of the things that I have found rather charmingly fun about the "classic Who" stories I've watched has been the repetition of pivotal or critical scenes from the ending of one episode at the beginning of the next episode, even if said scenes resolve a cliffhanger in a way that doesn't quite live up to or justify having said scenes function as a cliffhanger, and while this doesn't always work, I do think it worked fairly well here, especially since it got us back to Katryca's village and provided some fun banter between her and the Doctor, as well as the further intersection of heretofore separated storylines.
I also liked the way that the Doctor being in peril and threatened by Katryca's tribe led to some fun banter between Peri and Sabalom Glitz and a reference to the Third and Fourth Doctors and Sarah Jane, which I got a kick out of because I'm somewhat of a 'continuity fiend' and therefore love it when we get to see or hear references to Doctor Who's broader history.
Merdeen showing back up at the end of the episode and pointing his weapon at the Doctor and Peri didn't quite make sense given that there seemed to be nothing wrong with him the last time we saw him when he was face-to-face with Grell, which kind of deflated the 'oomph' of using said scene as a cliffhanger, but we'll see what happens with the resolution.
Pivoting to the framing device "Trial" scenes, they're kind of becoming less and less interesting and important as we go, although I do continue to like it when the Doctor is able to be snarky and flippant towards the Valeyard, so they've at least got that going for them.
We'll see if their importance level ramps up going forward or if it continues to decline.
All in all, this was yet another fun episode, and I can't wait to see the conclusion of this particular bit of the "Trial" mega-arc and what ends up happening in the next portion.
Trial of a Time Lord, Part 4 (AKA "The Mysterious Planet, Part 4")
And everything I typed about Merdeen in the first review turns out to have been a complete misdirect (but I'm not going to change it because I like the misdirect).
I know that there were a lot of complaints about the Colin Baker Era ushering in an escalation in the violence level of Doctor Who, but, for me, that's honestly part of the charm, and so it was kind of satisfying, in a weird way, to see Katryca and Broken-Tooth die as gruesomely as they did. It also helped turn the Immortal from simply a malfunctioning machine into a more immediate threat, setting things up nicely for the intellectual confrontation between him and the Doctor.
And speaking of the Immortal and the Doctor's intellectual confrontation, the way the scene was shot and the issues being discussed put me very much in mind of the attitudes of the Cybermen while simultaneously making me wonder why the Doctor -in any of his/her incarnations - never tried to have the same kind of intellectual dialogue with them.
I should've expected that going through a vent shaft into a "food production system" would be a bad idea, but I did get a kick out of how cheesily melodramatic the peril caused by the Immortal activating said system turned out to be, as it reminded me of the best bits of movies like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
Sabalom Glitz and Dibber became a little less relevant to the overall story in Part 3 and for a good chunk of this episode, but I really enjoyed the way that their scheming and desire to profit off of secret information and knowledge ended up being the thing that allowed the Doctor to, as he put it, "do his best" to save the day. I also thought it was clever that they both ended up walking away with something to serve their own agenda, thus ensuring that their involvement in the story, such as it was, didn't end up being a waste of time.
It kind of got glossed over for being the central mystery that got the Doctor and Peri into this misadventure in the first place, but I did like the confirmation that Ravalox was in fact Earth, although a little bit more info as to how it ended up in its new location would've been nice, if only from a lore standpoint.
And now we get to the stuff that didn't work here.
I didn't buy the "Trial" stuff with the Valeyard having sonically withheld information, and, despite having enjoyed the Doctor's snarky responses and insults towards the Valeyard in the previous episodes, it became a little bit repetitive here, especially since I didn't buy the Doctor not being allowed to respond while the Valeyard was still "presenting his case".
I did like the Doctor's snarky comment about the tediousness of the Valeyard's case, but other than that, the "Trial" stuff kind of failed here.
Hopefully it'll become more relevant and riveting as we go forward.
***
When looked at as a complete whole, I really enjoyed the "The Mysterious Planet" portion of the "Trial of a Time Lord" mega-arc, as it introduced some really fascinating and interesting characters in Sabalom Glitz and Dibber and continued to deepen and strengthen the best parts of the Sixth Doctor's characterization across the board and his relationship with Peri, but without losing the things that made said relationship so fun in the first place.
There were definitely some parts of the "Trial" framing device that didn't work and were problematic, particularly in Part 4 of the story, but we'll see what ends up happening next as we move into the second portion of the season and the "Mindwarp" mini-arc.
I cringe at the implications of The Timeless Children, not the idea that the Doctor can and always survives.
But see, the regeneration limit does have a benefit. It means that no matter how beneficial it is, its an excruciating process, equal to death. And furthermore, the limit itself is a finite process. Fans have speculated, and I get it, that the Morbius Doctors were introduced to imply the idea that Tom's Doctor was the last one, adding to a sense of suspence that he could be the last Doctor. Of course, Holmes and Hinchcliffe left the show and as such, that idea left the show as well. But the limit itself implies firmly at the idea that the Doctor can, at all times, die.
As a matter of fact, he did die, at the end of The Planet of Spiders. If it hadn't been for his old mentor, he probably would've strayed dead, his regenerations expanged.
My reviews of "Trial of a Time Lord, Parts 5 and 6" (AKA "Mindwarp, Parts 1 and 2)".
Trial of a Time Lord, Part 5 (AKA Mindwarp, Part 1)
I found it interesting that Part 5 of the Trial of a Time Lord mega-arc started, as Part 1 did, with an introductory 'framing story' of the Doctor's trial, but I guess it works if you're looking for these episodes to stand on their own as much as they form part of an ongoing meta-narrative arc, although I could've done without the frivolous objection of starting this part of the story with the Doctor and Peri having a conversation about the sea color on Thoros Beta, as it felt unnecessarily fourth-wall-breaking. I also didn't really buy the Inquisitor's sternness towards the Doctor or the Valeyard's contriteness.
Moving beyond the 'framing device' elements of this episode, I found it interesting how similar the shot of the Doctor and Peri walking alone was to their initial 'conversation stroll' in Revelation of the Daleks, and how both ended up with the Doctor and Peri in similar perilous situations. The one issue I did have was how choppy and fake the Roc attacking them looked and how we didn't actually see it show up, as it kind of detracted from what otherwise should've been a pretty grave and perilous situation.
I got a kick out of the Doctor sticking his foot in his mouth by calling Crozier "old" and then having improvise an escape from the people who'd apprehended him and Peri, and it was interesting to see them run into what was essentially a werewolf, especially because there was little context as to where such a creature came from. I did like Peri trying to take pity on it, as it put me in mind of Rose taking pity on and trying to reach out in compassion to the Dalek that she and Nine run into in the episode Dalek.
I wish we'd had more context for what was going on when we're first introduced to Crozier, although I did like the fact that it didn't take too much longer for us to see that he and his assistant were working for Sil and his race, which I appreciated since that's something that I could easily see them having held off as a reveal until later episodes. I also appreciated that Peri got mad at the Doctor for 'forgetting' to mention that Thoros Beta is Sil's home planet, although I also wish she'd reacted more strongly to his flippant comment about birdseed, since there was a missed opportunity there to put additional emphasis on just how much they do care about each other even as they're arguing and bickering with one another, particularly given what I know about how this story ultimately ends as far as Peri is concerned.
The concluding moments of the episode where the Doctor gets strapped to a gurney and subjected to mind torture were a bit overdone and cheesy, which did detract from what would've otherwise been an interesting and intriguing cliffhanger, but I'm not quite sure who to blame for that and so I'm trying to not let it detract from the episode overall.
This first installment of the Mindwarp mini-arc didn't quite get off to as strong a start as The Mysterious Planet mini-arc did, but things like the initial introductory banter between the Doctor and Peri, the compassion she showed to the wolf-man that she and the Doctor stumbled across, and the return of Sil stand out for me and make the lesser/weaker parts less egregious.
Trial of a Time Lord, Part 6 (AKA Mindwarp, Part 2)
I appreciate that we picked up right where the previous episode left off, but going from the rather cheesy sequence of the Doctor being mind tortured to the equally cheesy sequence of the warrior king that Crozier and his assistant were experimenting on waking up and going on a crazed rampage while spouting nonsense didn't really help get this episode off to a very promising start, although I did get a kick out of Peri identifying herself as "Perpegillium of the Browns". Yrcanos trying to hit on Peri is something I could have definitely done without, but knowing how her story ultimately ends beyond what we're led to believe at the conclusion of this particular mini-arc probably helped mitigate the foulness of that ever so slightly.
The framing device sequences in Part 1 pretty clearly established that the Doctor did in fact have some amnesia, so the sequence in the trail where both the Inquisitor and the Valeyard act shocked by this and the Valeyard tries to pass it off as the Doctor lying made very little sense.
The scene where Kiv, Crozier, and Sil were talking about Kiv's objectives and what Crozier was doing reminded me very much of what Dastari wanted to do to the Second Doctor in The Two Doctors, which I appreciated because of my aforementioned love for continuity. I also got a kick out of Kiv yelling at Sil for talking too much, especially since it seemed pretty clear that pretty much everything Sil was saying was a complete falsehood, even if that wasn't expressly communicated by the scene itself.
And while we're on the subject of The Two Doctors, the Sixth Doctor seemingly going totally loopy after being mind-tortured reminded me very much of what happened to the Second Doctor after he was infused with Androgum DNA.
Yrcanos and Peri arguing about Yrcanos wanting to obtain weapons made me smile and him counting her in the plan to do so made me smile, since her snarkiness is one of the things that I love about her character, even if said plan didn't amount to much due to the Doctor's aforementioned supposed loopiness. I also got a kick out of his callous dismissal of both Yrcanos and Peri because it gave Colin a chance to play an even more amped-up version of his very earliest outing as the Sixth Doctor.
I didn't really understand the point of a lot of Peri's scenes after she ran away from Sil, Crozier, and the Doctor, as it seemed unnecessary for Peri to encounter a matron servant and end up disguised as a lesser servant just to get close to the Doctor and have him seemingly betray her yet again.
I probably should've seen through the Doctor's seemingly callous and devious behavior, especially after he himself defended it as being a ploy during one of the trial framing sequences, but pretty much all of his behavior up to the point where he got Peri alone and revealed the truth to her still caught me completely off-guard, which is a testament to Colin's skills as an actor, although the scene could've done with a better transition between him telling her what was really going on and continuing to behave like his post-regeneration self, especially since that particular story thread continued throughout the remainder of the episode.
Returning to the trial framing device, it's kind of hard to buy into all of this "the Matrix cannot lie" stuff when one is watching this particular season with knowledge of how the mega-arc ultimately resolves itself and what the point of the whole trial exercise actually is.
The episode cliffhanger with Yrcanos trying to kill the Doctor wasn't nearly as good as some of the cliffhangers from previous stories, but was at least effective for what it needed to do in the moment.
***
The first two parts of the Mindwarp mini-arc for the Trial season weren't quite as good as the first two parts of The Mysterious Planet portion of the story and it is here that a lot more problems with the overall trial framing device have started to make themselves manifest, but I still enjoyed the two episodes quite a bit, and am looking forward to seeing the resolution of the Mindwarp part of the story and what it apparently shows us of Peri's fate even though I'm anticipating that I'll have some problems with the way said resolution impacts the broader Trial mega-arc based on what I already know.
Trial of a Time Lord, Part 5 (AKA Mindwarp, Part 1)
I found it interesting that Part 5 of the Trial of a Time Lord mega-arc started, as Part 1 did, with an introductory 'framing story' of the Doctor's trial, but I guess it works if you're looking for these episodes to stand on their own as much as they form part of an ongoing meta-narrative arc, although I could've done without the frivolous objection of starting this part of the story with the Doctor and Peri having a conversation about the sea color on Thoros Beta, as it felt unnecessarily fourth-wall-breaking. I also didn't really buy the Inquisitor's sternness towards the Doctor or the Valeyard's contriteness.
Moving beyond the 'framing device' elements of this episode, I found it interesting how similar the shot of the Doctor and Peri walking alone was to their initial 'conversation stroll' in Revelation of the Daleks, and how both ended up with the Doctor and Peri in similar perilous situations. The one issue I did have was how choppy and fake the Roc attacking them looked and how we didn't actually see it show up, as it kind of detracted from what otherwise should've been a pretty grave and perilous situation.
I got a kick out of the Doctor sticking his foot in his mouth by calling Crozier "old" and then having improvise an escape from the people who'd apprehended him and Peri, and it was interesting to see them run into what was essentially a werewolf, especially because there was little context as to where such a creature came from. I did like Peri trying to take pity on it, as it put me in mind of Rose taking pity on and trying to reach out in compassion to the Dalek that she and Nine run into in the episode Dalek.
I wish we'd had more context for what was going on when we're first introduced to Crozier, although I did like the fact that it didn't take too much longer for us to see that he and his assistant were working for Sil and his race, which I appreciated since that's something that I could easily see them having held off as a reveal until later episodes. I also appreciated that Peri got mad at the Doctor for 'forgetting' to mention that Thoros Beta is Sil's home planet, although I also wish she'd reacted more strongly to his flippant comment about birdseed, since there was a missed opportunity there to put additional emphasis on just how much they do care about each other even as they're arguing and bickering with one another, particularly given what I know about how this story ultimately ends as far as Peri is concerned.
The concluding moments of the episode where the Doctor gets strapped to a gurney and subjected to mind torture were a bit overdone and cheesy, which did detract from what would've otherwise been an interesting and intriguing cliffhanger, but I'm not quite sure who to blame for that and so I'm trying to not let it detract from the episode overall.
This first installment of the Mindwarp mini-arc didn't quite get off to as strong a start as The Mysterious Planet mini-arc did, but things like the initial introductory banter between the Doctor and Peri, the compassion she showed to the wolf-man that she and the Doctor stumbled across, and the return of Sil stand out for me and make the lesser/weaker parts less egregious.
Trial of a Time Lord, Part 6 (AKA Mindwarp, Part 2)
I appreciate that we picked up right where the previous episode left off, but going from the rather cheesy sequence of the Doctor being mind tortured to the equally cheesy sequence of the warrior king that Crozier and his assistant were experimenting on waking up and going on a crazed rampage while spouting nonsense didn't really help get this episode off to a very promising start, although I did get a kick out of Peri identifying herself as "Perpegillium of the Browns". Yrcanos trying to hit on Peri is something I could have definitely done without, but knowing how her story ultimately ends beyond what we're led to believe at the conclusion of this particular mini-arc probably helped mitigate the foulness of that ever so slightly.
The framing device sequences in Part 1 pretty clearly established that the Doctor did in fact have some amnesia, so the sequence in the trail where both the Inquisitor and the Valeyard act shocked by this and the Valeyard tries to pass it off as the Doctor lying made very little sense.
The scene where Kiv, Crozier, and Sil were talking about Kiv's objectives and what Crozier was doing reminded me very much of what Dastari wanted to do to the Second Doctor in The Two Doctors, which I appreciated because of my aforementioned love for continuity. I also got a kick out of Kiv yelling at Sil for talking too much, especially since it seemed pretty clear that pretty much everything Sil was saying was a complete falsehood, even if that wasn't expressly communicated by the scene itself.
And while we're on the subject of The Two Doctors, the Sixth Doctor seemingly going totally loopy after being mind-tortured reminded me very much of what happened to the Second Doctor after he was infused with Androgum DNA.
Yrcanos and Peri arguing about Yrcanos wanting to obtain weapons made me smile and him counting her in the plan to do so made me smile, since her snarkiness is one of the things that I love about her character, even if said plan didn't amount to much due to the Doctor's aforementioned supposed loopiness. I also got a kick out of his callous dismissal of both Yrcanos and Peri because it gave Colin a chance to play an even more amped-up version of his very earliest outing as the Sixth Doctor.
I didn't really understand the point of a lot of Peri's scenes after she ran away from Sil, Crozier, and the Doctor, as it seemed unnecessary for Peri to encounter a matron servant and end up disguised as a lesser servant just to get close to the Doctor and have him seemingly betray her yet again.
I probably should've seen through the Doctor's seemingly callous and devious behavior, especially after he himself defended it as being a ploy during one of the trial framing sequences, but pretty much all of his behavior up to the point where he got Peri alone and revealed the truth to her still caught me completely off-guard, which is a testament to Colin's skills as an actor, although the scene could've done with a better transition between him telling her what was really going on and continuing to behave like his post-regeneration self, especially since that particular story thread continued throughout the remainder of the episode.
Returning to the trial framing device, it's kind of hard to buy into all of this "the Matrix cannot lie" stuff when one is watching this particular season with knowledge of how the mega-arc ultimately resolves itself and what the point of the whole trial exercise actually is.
The episode cliffhanger with Yrcanos trying to kill the Doctor wasn't nearly as good as some of the cliffhangers from previous stories, but was at least effective for what it needed to do in the moment.
***
The first two parts of the Mindwarp mini-arc for the Trial season weren't quite as good as the first two parts of The Mysterious Planet portion of the story and it is here that a lot more problems with the overall trial framing device have started to make themselves manifest, but I still enjoyed the two episodes quite a bit, and am looking forward to seeing the resolution of the Mindwarp part of the story and what it apparently shows us of Peri's fate even though I'm anticipating that I'll have some problems with the way said resolution impacts the broader Trial mega-arc based on what I already know.
I would hope you might want to continue exploring and experiencing more of Old Sixie via Big Finish audios. I would highly recommend The Holy Terror and The One Doctor as tasters.
But, it's sort of a false narrative, given the idea that as long as the show is popular the powers that be aren't going to go, "welp, we'd keep the show going, but there was this limit put on this fictional character..." They would have always found a way around it.
Not that I think making the Doctor an alien from another universe is a great idea--it doesn't add much other than a "WTF?" and probably won't change the narrative. It was a silly thing to add to the Doctor's history.
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