Mindwarp

Chapter The 133rd, which features lots of people just watching stuff on a big screen.

Plot:

The Doctor is on trial for his life. He has been taken out of time by the Time Lords to face charges of meddling in the affairs of other planets, conduct unbecoming a Time Lord, and wearing a really terrible outfit (they have him bang to rights on the last one). Prosecutor the Valeyard presents a Matrix recording of events from around the period when the Doctor was taken out of time; the problem is, the Doctor can't remember any of these events very clearly. He and Peri had landed on Thoros Beta, home world of Sil and his kind, the Mentors. Crozier, a scientist working for the Mentors' leader Lord Kiv, is doing experiments in brain alteration. Also, they are holding captive a warrior king, Yrcanos, who SHOUTS a LOT BECAUSE he's PLAYED by BRIAN BLESSED!!! On the Matrix screen, the Time Lords in the trial room witness the Doctor being plugged into Crozier's mind-warping machine, and from then on he starts to behave out of character, siding with the bad guys, and turning against Peri and Yrcanos.

Is the evidence presented being falsified by the Valeyard? Did the Doctor's brain get scrambled by Crozier's machine? Is he pretending to be bad, just to outwit Sil and Kiv? Nobody knows. (Seriously, nobody does, to this day - it's not made clear to viewer, and the writer and script editor never really made up their mind.) Whatever caused it, the Doctor's behaviour changes back to normal towards the end, and he races to save Peri from having the Lord Kiv's mind transplanted into her body. He doesn't get there in time, though, as that's the moment the Time Lords choose to scoop him up and drag him off to the trial. Instead, Yrcanos arrives, but he's also too late - Peri's consciousness is gone, and Kiv inhabits her body. Yrcanos, who wanted to get married to Peri when all this was over, as improbable as that might seem, kills Kiv/Peri in a fit of rage - these events all being manipulated remotely by the Time Lords in order to destroy Crozier's research, as it would have had far-reaching consequences for the universe. This is a hell of an example of extrajudicial "meddling in the affairs of other planets", but the Doctor is too stunned by the death of Peri on-screen to make the point in his defence. The trial continues...

Context:

I have finished my first full season of Doctor Who for the blog! Obviously, if one watches Doctor in order from the beginning, this is not such a big deal; but when jumping about randomly, it's a reasonably important milestone. I have been blogging Season 23 AKA The Trial of a Time Lord since 2015, when I covered the finale story, The Ultimate Foe. Then, a few years later in 2018, Terror of the Vervoids and The Mysterious Planet came along within a few months of one another. Nicely, I did them all in completely the wrong order. The whole season is coming out soon on Blu-ray, the next in a series of very nice box sets that I have tried, with decreasing fortitude, to resist the temptation of buying. Needless to say, season 23, for which I have a particular soft spot, is pre-ordered! As with all the box sets so far, a story was chosen for a screening at the BFI to tie in. Luckily, it was the only one of the four that I hadn't blogged. I attended with all the friends that I have watched these BFI screenings with before over the last few years - David, Trevor and Chris -  the first time we've all four been able to attend at the same time for a while.  More details of the screening below...

First time round:

Every time I look back to the 1980s and watching Doctor Who, I see more and more ineptitude on my part regarding the operation of video recorders. Was it really that difficult? If I want to record something now, I just click a box on the screen display of an electronic programme guide, and forget about it. I hardly ever want to, though, and that's the clue. I record The Great British Bake Off for the family so that they don't have to deal with adverts using channel 4's catch-up service (you can skip them if you record it with the PVR). That's it. If anything else is on, even Doctor Who, I don't have to be that bothered: It Takes You Way, as demonstrated when I covered it for the blog last time, is still available on the BBC iPlayer nearly a year after it was broadcast. It's only possible to miss something these days if you try very hard. (An aside on that topic: it describes perfectly the Better Half's attitude to Russell T Davies's Years and Years - she cannot bring herself to watch it - far too traumatising - so she's running out the clock until it disappears from availability.)

In 1986, taping Trial of a Time Lord, the first story broadcast after my family obtained their own VCR, I very much was bothered. The episodes were unlikely ever to be repeated again, and the idea of the whole of the existing Doctor Who TV canon being released on VHS to buy was a pipe dream at the time. Maybe the urgency caused the ineptitude, but that first E180 tape on which I collected all the episodes of Trial was blemished early on. I somehow cut off the last minute and a bit of episode 5 (Mindwarp's episode 1). I remember - and, yes, I am ashamed at the obsessiveness of this - watching back and timing the length of the recaps of episodes 2,3 and 4 and taking an average, to see how much I was likely not to see the following week. Luckily, the recap on episode 6 (Mindwarp's episode 2) was on the lengthy side, I missed only a few seconds of dialogue, and could follow what was going on. That's how much it mattered to me. Familiarity breeds contempt, it's said, but maybe availability does too. Once everything can be gained at the touch of a button, is anything special? Or maybe this is the smokescreen of an old duffer, excusing why he couldn't bloody program the video. Anyway, the rest of the story was taped without incident, and then watched and re-watched over the next few years. I caught up with those missing few seconds in 1993, when the whole of the Trial season was released in a tin shaped like the TARDIS for some unknown reason.

Reaction:

The BFI showed the Blu-ray extended cuts of all four episodes of Mindwarp, with the first two episodes in 5:1 surround, but the last two only in stereo because of a fault that occurred halfway through. The sound and music were excellent throughout, but the visual quality of the initial scenes of the first episode was a little off to my eyes, fuzzy rather than pin sharp. This may have been something to do with the projection at the BFI, though, so I will be interested to see how it looks on a smaller screen at home. Starting with the few differences: most of the episodes have additional scenes, often ones in the Trial room: nothing earth-shattering, but it'll be nice to have them to view as an alternative. These versions aren't all about re-inserting cut material, though; as Mark Ayres explained on the day, the second 'extended' episode of Mindwarp is actually shorter than the broadcast version by two seconds: the discrepancy is caused by a different take being used for the scene of Yrcanos trashing the laboratory. Additionally, the incidental music has been re-recorded from scratch, as well as remixed, as it was the only post 1980-score that didn't exist as a separate recording. It's very faithful to the original, but I could definitely tell the difference (I'm a very big fan of this score, so know it quite well).

The story is a little slow to get going; the wash-up from the previous four-episode segment goes on too long, when one just wants the new plot to get underway. This four-parter integrates the overarching structure better than any of the others in the season, creating some moments of actual drama and intrigue in the trial room regarding the veracity or otherwise of the evidence being presented; it still, though, feels like it interrupts the flow of the Thoros Beta plot too often. This is the major flaw of the trial structure - it just gets in the way, and not just to insert any old innocuous scenes, but scenes where the viewer is told repeatedly that their hero is bad. Thank goodness then that the early material of the Doctor and Peri is so good, Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant playing their relationship with warmth and humour. It's just a shame that they only have an episode together before the plot separates them. Putting aside the unreliable narrator stuff that we only find out about fully later, and taking the scenes as presented, the last interaction they have is the Doctor torturing Peri. She then, almost despite herself, stops Yrcanos from killing him, and the Doctor flees, never to see her again. It's not the ending the two actors deserved, though Nicola's final scenes, and striking performance, are a great gift for her to play. I can't really criticise the decision to have the Doctor appearing to turn traitor, it does create the engine that propels the narrative, but someone should have decided what was the true version of events. As it was, it got left to the actors to find some sort of sense to proceedings, and the audience to make up their own minds about what was real and what wasn't.

Director Ron Jones continues his renaissance; after having started with some clunkers, his last two stories before this, Frontios and Vengeance on Varos, were good, and this surpasses them to my mind.  A diverse and interesting cast, all giving good performances, great sets and - a rarity on this era of Doctor Who - sympathetic lighting. I'd remembered the story's tonal shifts being a bit more jarring, but on this watch it seemed much more smooth. I'd recalled it veering from comic to dramatic all the way through. Watching with an audience, though, always highlights more comedy in a piece than one might notice when watching alone or in a smaller group at home. The laughs elicited from the BFI crowd by the blackly comic dialogue started early on, and they are all intentional. It doesn't veer at all, it's a black comedy from the very start ("Dirty old warlord", "I think it winked at Peri" "The skedaddle test"), with an ending that drops into dramatic territory, but that still finds time for funny lines until very close to the end (Sil's line during the tense final scenes  "If only you could have found a more attractive one" is expertly delivered by Nabil Shaban and got the biggest laugh of the day, but it's only seconds before Peri gets obliterated).

It is a real ensemble piece. Patrick Ryecart's restrained amoral villainy is very cool, and he's ace at deploying a withering look. Christopher Ryan and Nabil Shaban are excellent as the two chief Mentors; they inhabit their suits well, disappearing into the characters to the point where you forget they are acting at all. Bigger than all of them, though, bigger and louder than anyone or anything else is Brian Blessed. There is nothing small about the performance, but would anyone want it any other way?  The first episode, which his character spends lying on a bench, is good enough, but the energy rises up once Yrcanos does, and thereafter the narrative rushes to keep up with Blessed's insanely OTT creation as he rips through the scenes and devours the scenery. If you need someone to match Colin Baker for bombast, who else are you going to call? That this very powerful character doesn't sideline the regulars in any way, unlike what happened in some earlier Colin Baker stories, is testament to a nice balance achieved in Philip Martin's script - everyone gets a chance to shine.

Towards the end of the screening, I stopped taking notes as I was just getting caught up in the action; but one aspect of the ending proved problematic for me on this watch. The Inquisitor takes over the 'narration' during the scenes of Yrcanos caught in a bubble of time, being manoeuvred to kill Peri. It works dramatically - it has much more force coming from the supposedly neutral arbiter rather than the villainous Valeyard - but how does she know all this stuff? It's the Valeyard's presentation to her, and - we later find out - the bits she's reporting on never actually happened. So, who told her they did, to the extent that she could talk of them with such authority? The corrupt high council that's framing the Doctor perhaps? But, then, isn't she showing signs of prejudicial insight into the wider politics of what's going on by admitting it? Why not leave all the explaining to the Valeyard, as it's got to be less suspicious coming from him, being his evidence and all? And isn't she later revealed to be a goodie, and not involved in any of the plotting anyway? Like most of Mindwarp, we'll never know the exact truth.

Connectivity: 

It Takes You Away's Ribbons, a blackly comic grotesque, with an acquisitive nature and odd speech patterns, is not a million miles away from the character of Sil in Mindwarp. Additionally, both stories have at least one character forcibly removed from a space/time location by powerful forces. 

Deeper Thoughts:

 Matrix evidence for the Prosecution: BFI Mindwarp Screening and Q&A, 14th September 2019. It was a very pleasant September day, with the sun shining down as I made my way across the bridge from Embankment and walked along past the Royal Festival Hall. There followed a pleasant brunch in the BFI café bar with my fellow fans; the usual group of us has got larger, as we're regularly meeting up at these events with Dave and Tim too, lovely people and Doctor Who production royalty too, having worked on the show for many years of the post-2005 run. After rushing to get the waiter's attention to fetch the bill just in time to get our seats, the four hours of entertainment began. I am amazed at the love and care that goes into these events, making them very good value for money - you wouldn't get a 4-hour matinee for 15 quid anywhere else in London. In fact, my brunch came to just about as much as my ticket.

As our hosts Justin Johnson and Dick Fiddy walked on to stage, I took a glance around to check for anyone recognisable: Steve Ricks was in the same row as us, wearing his immaculate replica Sixth Doctor costume, and I spotted about four other people who were cosplaying old Sixie elsewhere; plus, I spotted Mark Ayres, Nev Fountain and Nicola Bryant nearby too. Justin introduced this as a celebration of Trial of a Time Lord, and it was indeed a wonderfully good-natured and positive event throughout. Things kicked off with a minute's applause for the late, great Terrance Dicks, followed by the usual quiz, with giveaways and many Dick jokes. The first two episodes were then shown.

L to R: Fiddy, Hartley, Ayres

After these, the first mini-panel concentrated on sound, with composer of Mindwarp's incidentals Richard Hartley, and composer, remixer, sound guy for the Blu-ray range and all-round maestro Mark Ayres interviewed by Dick. Richard reminisced about his first chat with 80s Who producer John Nathan-Turner, in JNT's office, which was camp and 'just like a set'. Richard was a great friend of 60s Who producer Verity Lambert, who laughed when she found out what he was working on, and told him horror stories about how difficult it had been to get the show off the ground in the early days. He'd taken the gig initially so he could record in the BBC's studio in Maida Vale, but then didn't get to use it (probably as Who was not thought of well enough to book the prestige places back then). Mark had approached Richard recently to see if he could re-record the music. The written scores still existed in the archives, so Mark dug them out, and Richard sourced the original equipment and sounds, trying to avoid the temptation to improve things. In the end, it probably took four times as long as it did originally, as "the BBC were very mean" back then, and only allowed him a week to write, and two days to record. This work allows all 14 episodes of the Trial season - and the extended versions of each of those 14 - to have 5.1 surround remixes. The box set also includes edits of the four Terror of the Vervoids episodes with the trial framing device removed, and these are also in 5.1. Mark, somewhat wearily, remarked that what had started off seeming like an easy job had ballooned, as in the end he remastered 32 episodes rather than 14.

L to R: Johnston, West

The plan was for the final two episodes to be shown next, but a few minutes in the picture froze. They've finally shut Brian Blessed up! They tried again, but then the audio sounded like it was emanating from underwater. They've finally made Brian Blessed quiet! While technical trouble-shooting ensued, Justin did an impromptu interview with Russell West, the actor that played the Raak (a top-heavy sea monster) in the first episode of the story, who was invited up from the audience. This was the most fun moment of the day for me, as West was so witty and energetic, and it's not someone who even a die-hard fan was likely to have seen interviewed before. He explained that he had a single day's rehearsal with the rest of the cast, he particularly enjoyed working with Nicola (who wouldn't?), that the costume was heavy but very fragile, and once he was down, it took three people to lift him up again. Best of all, he said, responding to the running gags thus far from anyone on stage about Brian Blessed's 'subtle' performance, that it really was toned down compared to what he did in rehearsals. The mind boggles. Reportedly, there was frequently a torrent of filth emanating from the booming bearded one, and he once introduced himself with "I'm Brian Blessed and I'll **** anything that moves!!!!". Lovely.

L to R: Johnston, Newman

The technical fault still continuing, Justin invited Phil Newman onto the stage, who unveiled another special guest - Lord Kiv. Phil had obtained the original foam latex costume at auction, and even got to wear it in Dimensions in Time, an anniversary skit from 1993 which involved a Doctor Who / Eastenders crossover and lots of old villains portrayed by costumed fans - "It's canon!" as Phil rightly exclaimed. The malleable Mentor stayed on stage  - Dick Fiddy remarked that he'd had a few people on that stage over the years that were harder to interview - as the remaining two episodes finally got going. Once the story was finished, there were some sneak peeks at some of the Value Added Material on the Blu-ray box set: the trailer starring Colin and Nicola, some very funny outtakes, Toby Hadoke getting to front a cookery show in documentary The Doctor Who Cookbook Revisited, and some clips of the latest Behind The Sofa edition, doing a Gogglebox on the Trial episodes. It all looks glorious.

The Lord Kiv

The main panel was next, with Doctor and companion actors Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant being their usual funny, self-facing, talented selves. The opening question was on how they felt when they found out that Doctor Who was going on hiatus in 1985 (the eighteen month period before Trial of a Time Lord was shown, when Doctor Who was off the air). Nicola's surprising answer was that she was relieved, but that was only because she found out from a journalist calling her to ask about "the death of the Doctor". Thinking this meant that Colin had died, she slammed the phone down then rang round everyone she could think of in a panic until she got hold of someone who put her straight, hence the relief. Colin was told by John Nathan-Turner, who tried to make him feel better by telling him that he'd signed his contract for the following year, so would still get paid. His eldest daughter had just been born, so Colin treated it as if the BBC had given him a year's paid paternity leave. He still got a call, however, from the "BBC Department of Not Giving You Money" who said to him that, if he were to find any work, he should inform them so they could stop paying him. Colin's answer, based on his training as a lawyer, was to say "I can arrange to call you every day, and ask you if you're making Doctor Who today, and if you're not, I'll go and do what I want, how's that?".

Talking of then Controller of the BBC Michael Grade's decision to take Doctor Who off the air in 1985, Colin outlined that it wasn't a financial decision at all (a lot of work already done for the following year had to be abandoned at much cost), and Doctor Who was just one of a raft of old shows Grade binned, just because he didn't like them; interestingly, another one was Come Dancing - another show, like Doctor Who, that's returned to prime time in the 21st century. Colin also recounted an anecdote that Grade, who after making these sweeping changes with the flick of a pen went on a skiing holiday, found himself haring down a slope alongside a man who turned to him and said "Oi, Michael Grade, I'm from the Sun - why do you want to kill Doctor 'Oo?". Both Nicola and Colin were shielded from the worst of the falling out between John Nathan-Turner and script editor Eric Saward; Colin knew they weren't getting on, but massively underestimated the size of the rift. Colin still seems a little bit miffed by Eric's comments (in an interview after he quit his job during the making of Trial when that rift went beyond mending) about disapproving of the casting and performances of Colin. From the comments Colin made, it seemed like Eric had been seen as a close colleague before that, invited to Colin's house and so on. Later, when asked about Slipback, a Saward-scripted radio Doctor Who story put on during the hiatus, Colin said "I'm so glad you asked me about that, I can't remember a thing about it". He did though have an inkling who wrote it: "Maybe that's why I elided it?!"

Nicola and Colin appear to be still very much the close-knit team after all these years; the only time they disagreed was talking about the very expensive opening model shot of the series. Colin thought it was a waste of money, and could have been replaced with a dialogue exchange along the lines of "Where am I?" "You're on a big space station". Nicola did not seem convinced by this: "It was state of the art" she said, and Colin replied without a beat, "So were we". They explained that the softening of the relationship of their screen alter-egos was down to the two of them; the script had the same hostile bickering as per the previous season. (Colin's theory was that incoming writers are mostly only interested in developing their own characters, so just look back at previous scripts or episodes to see what the regulars are like, and cut and paste that in to their scripts.) The two of them decided to play it as if their characters had got over all that, and were now gently joshing one another from a baseline of friendship and affection. After the first take doing it that way, they expected the director to tell them to go again, as it was supposed to be played as an argument, but that never happened. It breaks my heart that they didn't try this much earlier on. It was also revealed to be Colin's fault that Peri ended up "married to Brian Blessed". He had rationalised the Doctor's behaviour in Mindwarp the only way he could, that most of it didn't happen, but then asked the production team what had really happened to Peri if that was the case. The line added to the Trial finale marrying Peri off to Yrcanos was the hasty addition that resulted from that chat.

The Q&A turned at one point, inevitably, to Colin's sacking (after Trial, he was told that his services were no longer required). He retold the tale of being bold and insisting on seeing head of drama Jonathan Powell once he was told the news, and in that meeting Powell telling him that it was nothing about him or his performance per se, it was just that it was generally thought best to change the lead actor every three years. He was offered four episodes more at the start of the following year's batch, but Colin - wary of committing himself for months before getting only a small amount of work - asked for one more full year and then he'd bow out. Both men left the interview saying they'd think about it, and Colin never heard another thing, and hasn't seen Powell since. Colin said "I was being selfish in that moment, and I forgot about you" meaning the fans in the audience. He felt he had so much more to offer (and he was right). "Thank God for Big Finish" he added. The Radio Times picked up on the selfish line in a rather unfair online headline the following day, but I don't think anyone in the audience that day begrudged Colin thinking about his career in that moment.

One final Brian Blessed story to end on. Colin bemoaned the sort of thing he would get into trouble for in the studio, but which Brian seemed to get away with: it was nearing 10 'o clock on one shooting day, the time in the evening when recording stopped, and there was one scene to get in the can. Colin and Brian had to walk round a corner, and then Brian was to deliver the line "Right, let's find the Mentors". Brian could not remember the word 'Mentors' when it came to it. Mindful of some youngsters in the room, Colin let us imagine that the second most rude word in the English language was 'red', and the most rude one was 'blue'. What Brian ended up saying was "RIGHT, LET'S GET THE RED-ING BLUE-A-RONS!!" Wearily, as the clock struck ten, the production manager said, "Ok, we'll have to get that one tomorrow then".

In Summary:

This story is massively undervalued to my mind, and everyone should give it a re-watch when it comes out on Blu-ray. In other words: Let's. Do. The. Mind. Warp. Again!

The Mysterious Planet

Chapter The 103rd, which can literally be said to be a bit of a trial.

Plot: 
The Doctor and TARDIS are forced to land on a Space Station where he is put on trial by his people, the Time Lords. Or, maybe it's an enquiry not a trial. Or an enquiry that turns into a trial. Anyway, none of that matters as proceedings essentially take the form of a fan group marathon watch of Colin Baker episodes: a lot of people with an interest in the Doctor watch several stories one after the other on a TV screen, and the most opinionated pair in the room have a big argument about whether the Doctor's good in them or not. The first story that prosecutor the Valeyard presents is about the Doctor's trip to Ravolox, a very Earth-like planet that turns out to be Earth. So, not that mysterious, really.

The Doctor investigates with help from Peri, and a pair of intergalactic dodgy dealers, Sabalom Glitz and his minder Dibber. It turns out some hackers from Andromeda had retreated to Earth with a lot of high-tech data that they'd stolen from the biggest net of information in the universe. They went into suspended animation awaiting their pick-up ship to arrive, but then Earth was somehow moved across space, meaning they were never rescued. This caused a fireball which almost destroyed the planet. Their robot, Drathro, is left with instructions to keep an underground survival chamber going, with a slave population - the only humans left alive. Over 500 years, during which time the Andromedan sleepers have died, Drathro has culled many humans to keep the underground population stable; some have been released secretly by the human guards to live as primitives outside the underground complex. The Doctor saves the humans, avoiding a explosion from Drathro's failing power system. The trial continues...

Context:

I watched on my own from the from the DVD, a couple of episodes one weekend, then a gap before finishing off the second pair of episodes a week later. Members of the family dropped in and out of the living room as I watched, but nobody was engaged enough to sit down for long. The Better Half managed ten minutes of the first episode before bailing.

First-time round:

One of the clichés voiced in interviews with Doctor Who viewers of a certain age (repeated again by Bradley Walsh in this month's Doctor Who Magazine) is the interviewee, after having followed Doctor Who diligently when younger, drifting away from regular watching as they hit their teenage years. This was happening to me too by 1985, with a few episodes of Colin Baker's first full year clashing with other things I was doing on a Saturday. In the longer than usual break between that season and the Trial of a Time Lord, though, my family got its first ever VCR. Like many fans during this decade, I suddenly had the agony of choice edited out of my life. I could go out and do my teenage Saturday thing without having to put aside childish things to do so (or at least, I only had to put them aside for a couple of hours, then I could come home and catch up on a recording of childish things from earlier). Two E180 tapes were enough - with LP-mode doubling the storage capacity - for the whole 14 episode season. But I wonder if all those spools of tape were strangling the life out of me. What would have happened had I had to make that choice? Would I have been forced to grow up? What could I have become? I'll never know.

The Trial story, with its plot arcing over three and a bit months, was a perfect candidate for re-watching. Alas, my previously reported ineptitude with programming the VCR meant that I missed certain episodes or sections of them, so my home recording of Trial was never complete. These first four episodes were intact though, and I did view them many many times in a short period of time. As such, this story has a certain place in my heart. Despite this, I did not see what Glitz was mouthing in the bleeped-out excised evidence section in episode 4, even though it should have been screamingly obvious from which information store the sleepers swiped the story's MacGuffin. A couple of weeks later, my schoolfriend Dominic clued me in; I then went back and watched that section multiple times too, making sure he was right. This was a sort of anti-spoiler: rather than give anything away, it created some much needed intrigue for how things were going to pan out.

Reaction

Watching in a random order is hard on closely linked sets of stories. For example: early on, I watched the big finale of Tom Baker's Key to Time season before any of its other parts, and found it even more lacking without the half-decent preceding stories to bolster it. I was watching The Mysterious Planet this time only a few months on from watching the third part of the Trial. That third part, the Vervoids story, is usually the point when watching sequentially one gets sick of all the cutting back to the courtroom; this time, I was being annoyed by that in episode 1 (when previously watching in the right order, it was still early enough for me to be more forgiving). It makes me more sure than ever that the framing structure of the trial is a wrong-headed idea, and nothing could ever have been done to make it work. You can only tolerate it, never enjoy it. Plus, the device relegates what would have been each main story to a B subplot, and robs it of all immediacy by having it shown as reported past tense action.

Episodes 2 and 3 both have great, traditional "how are they going to get out of that?" cliffhangers within the Ravolox plotline, but they are undermined. We always know at some level the Doctor's going to survive to next week, I know, but we're not usually explicitly told he's already survived and is looking back on these events from a safe distance. Each segment of the overall trial tale is therefore two completely different stories fighting against one another. The more interesting one is happening in the past; the one happening in the present is static and dull. Nothing happens in the trial sections over the course of these four episodes. That plot does not move much at all, in fact, for the first 12 episodes; there are only three or four beats in total: the Doctor's on trial for his life, he's lost his memory, the evidence is being tampered with, he's inadvertently made himself look guilty of genocide. That's it.

In order to justify hiring the actors and building the set, though, the action has to keep jerking us back to the courtroom, interrupting the flow. With no plot to work through and an average of three courtroom scenes per episode, there's only so much they can do to fill: a smidgen of exposition, the odd meta gag about the real world of show ("I would appreciate it if these brutal and repetitious scenes are reduced to a minimum") but mostly all that's left for anyone to do is bluster. Colin Baker does his best with the material, but he has no room for manoeuvre: he's reduced to shouting, waving his arms, and calling his opponent a series of increasingly unfunny names.


On Ravolox, meanwhile, things are much better. Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant are playing against the tiresome bickering that marred their first full series together. With line readings and small actions alone, they override the script to create an warmly affectionate but teasing friendship. It's just a shame that they can't do anything about the lines where Peri moans on about wanting to get back to the TARDIS: why did it take most of the 1980s for someone to realise that the audience identification figure shouldn't act like they don't want to be part of the series?! The guest cast are all good: Joan Sims playing it straight, Tony Selby and Glen Murphy memorably performing the last of writer Robert Holmes's comic double acts.  The sets and robot costumes are good, the use of the Butser Ancient Farm location - a living historical recreation - as the Tribe of the Free's village is clever. The running gag about the post-apocalyptic future's misunderstanding of salvaged texts ("UK Habitats of the Canadian Goose by HM Stationary Office") is witty.

Whatever the production's resources, though, nothing is enough to break out of the restrictive structure imposed upon the story by the trial idea. The first few minutes of episode 1 epitomise this: the credits give way to the magnificent opening model shot of the space station accompanied by Dominic Glynn's majestic surging score, the screen whites out: it looks like it's going to be the best thing ever! Then we cut to a drab looking set, and Colin in his costume - which we've had extra months since last season to forget but instantly realise was every bit as bad as we remembered. He walks into another drab set and exchanges lines of dull bafflegab with people in silly hats about Time Lord nonsense. It's not much of a reboot. In almost the words of The (not Doctor) Who: "Here comes the new toss, same as the old toss..."

Connectivity: 

The Mysterious Planet, like The Woman Who Fell to Earth, is a Autumn relaunch episode following on from the end of the previous Doctor Who series a year and a bit before; both stories have a new theme tune arrangement that's heavy on the synth drums.

Deeper Thoughts:
Did Michael Grade have a point? In 1989, when the original run of Doctor Who as an ongoing series ended, the powers that Beeb didn't really want to cancel it, they just wanted it to break for a rethink. In 1985, Controller of BBC1 Michael Grade did want to cancel Doctor Who; but, because of a public outcry, he ended up only making it have a break for a rethink. Oddly, this inadvertent action was probably the right one: the show did need changes to keep up with the times. The 50-minute episodes established in Colin's first full year were a good first step, but maybe Doctor Who should have been making episodes all on film like many other dramas of the time, maybe even making fewer 90-minute stand-alone film episodes (a format that the first ever Inspector Morse, filmed around the same time as Trial, was about to showcase). The action-oriented approach of previous years was good, but the tone and content of the stories needed looking at.

None of this happened when Doctor Who returned in 1986, and - apart from backward steps - nothing changed at all. Grade wasn't interested enough in rebooting the show to give detailed guidance (it wasn't his job anyway), and he certainly wasn't going to give the production any more money. The 1980s producer John Nathan-Turner and his script editor Eric Saward only really had the option of doing less of the same. Or did they? What Grade could control, he did, and somewhat to Doctor Who's benefit. On the Special Features section of the Trial DVD are compiled the contemporary trails and continuity from The Mysterious Planet's debut broadcast. Watching them, I was struck that the 1986 Saturday night line-up is nicely structured. Doctor Who comes after a lead-in from a programme for slightly younger kids and is then followed by shiny-floored quiz and entertainment shows. It's very similar to the schedules that had served it well in the 1970s and 2000s. The problem is that the quality of each of those 1986 Saturday night shows is, well, a bit mid-Eighties. Instead of Basil Brush, you've got Roland Rat; instead of Brucie, Paul Daniels. It might seem horribly unfair, but Doctor Who's slightly lacklustre content fits neatly in to such a line-up.

Did Nathan-Turner and Saward do enough with what they had? They didn't even ditch Colin Baker's costume. After all, a year after Trial, incoming script editor Andrew Cartmel brought in a lot of changes to the approach without an increase in budget and without any opportunity to make fundamental structural changes. This feeds in a little to my work-in-progress theory about how the post 2005 stories are loosely following the classic series pattern but with time condensed. Christopher Eccleston is the equivalent of the black and white era: still somewhat embryonic, trying things out, several Dalek stories, massively popular at the beginning, with the popularity tailing off a bit at the end. Tennant is the big mass audience popularity phase, the equivalent of Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker: big audiences, propelling the series into the top ten programmes of the week. Matt Smith is Peter Davison, a younger Doctor, with stories getting a bit more involved and giving lots of fan service; domestic ratings decreasing a bit, but the show becoming increasingly popular as a cult offering for international audiences. Capaldi is Colin Baker: both had been fans, and wanted to play the Doctor, but thought they'd lost the chance when they played another guest character before being cast later in the main role, both played the Doctor grumpy at first, and the ratings reduced again slightly, possibly because the show was becoming too obsessed with its own continuity.

So, that would mean Jodie Whittaker is Sylvester McCoy?! It works to a certain extent: new Doctor, new title sequence and music; a big effort behind the scenes to use new writers, and increase diversity in content / be politically 'right on' (delete according to prejudice). Comparing and contrasting the results that made it to screen from those two eras, though, one can only be grateful of the latitude and budget allowed to incoming 21st century showrunners to put their stamp on the series. One of the biggest 'What Ifs' in Doctor Who's history is what would have happened after that 1980s crisis period if the production team or the BBC management had found the will to do something properly different with the show. We'll never know. But fans can at least console themselves with the programme as it is on our screens right now.

In Summary:
Less of a trial if you ignore the trial bits.

Terror of the Vervoids

Chapter The 80th, where Agatha Christie meets John Wyndham meets a Thesaurus.

Plot: 
The Doctor's on trial for his life because of something or other - best to skip over all that, really - and is presenting his defence, a precognitive projection of an event in his future. This is a bit tricky, legally-speaking: how can one defend against a capital punishment with a potential future which won't happen if one gets executed for one's previous crimes? Is it even a defence if the good behaviour hasn't happened yet, so can't refute any accusations made about one's past? Anyway, this is all admissible, because everything seems to be permitted according to Gallifreyan law, it's bonkers - anything goes. Also, it's mandatory in a Time Lord courtroom to use myriad polysyllabic verbiage, which can make it difficult to follow what's being adumbrated.

The defence concerns an incident aboard a spaceship, the Hyperion III, with a murder mystery or three, an attempted hijack, espionage, and a minor conspiracy to cover-up some dubious scientific experiments. These experiments created walking vegetable creatures, the Vervoids, who escape from the hold and kill pretty much everyone in the ship that hasn't been killed already. It sounds exciting doesn't it? And it is, except when it gets interrupted to bang on about the Doctor's trial. In this future tale, the Doctor and Mel (a friend he hasn't met yet) solve the mystery and destroy the Vervoids. This lands the Doctor in even more trouble in the courtroom, as he's committed genocide, which makes it even more likely that he'll get executed. Except, he hasn't done the genocide yet, that's in his future; and, if he gets executed for the genocide, he won't actually commit the genocide. My brain hurts.

Context:

Watched with the whole family (the Better Half and three kids, two boys aged 11 and 8 and a girl aged 5) from the DVD over a brace of nights, two episodes by two. It went down well, with mostly hushed viewing, and each cliffhanger garnered excited cries of "Next ep, next ep". Both the middle child and the B.H. separately moaned about the frequency (both in terms of pitch and number of instances) of Mel's screaming. The eldest described the Vervoids, amusingly and I suppose somewhat aptly, as being "made of food" (the Vervoids have been victims of worse visual comparisons over the years).

First-time round:
The one thing that leapt to mind about watching this for the first time (on its debut BBC1 broadcast in November 1986) was that my sister saw the final episode before me. This did not happen very often, as she usually didn't watch Doctor Who at all. I'd been out somewhere for Saturday afternoon, probably to do DJ or fund-raising duties at Worthing Hospital Radio, which I was involved with around this time; she was at home, and must have been bored. When I got back, she told me it was the guy from Brookside who done it before I could even cue up the video recording. Luckily, I remained unspoilered despite this slightly unkind divulgence. This was due to a misunderstanding on behalf of myself or Doctor Who Magazine's previewer: the preview for the third part of the Trial narrative (in DWM 118, fact fans) covered all the final six episodes as if they were one lump.

This is not as surprising as it might seem: the numbering of the Trial episodes suggests it's all one story, so there's no rule as to how and where or even if you split it up; the now standard division into four, and their unofficial titles, had not quite been established then. The final six episodes were made as one block, identified with a single production code, with the same director. The action between the fourth and fifth episodes of the six is continuous. Why wouldn't someone think they were all one piece? Unless one had actually seen them, of course, but it's very possible the previewer hadn't. Anyway, the only clue in the magazine (from memory - all the back issues of that vintage are in a cupboard somewhere that I'm not going to search through just to check) was a comment that the story took a different turn towards the end, and the last two episodes included Anthony Ainley's Master. I was expecting six episodes set on the Hyperion III, with a big reveal of the true villain two thirds of the way through. As such, I brushed off my sibling's comments as only part of the picture: I knew it was Beard-Face who was really behind it all. It only dawned on me what was actually going on at the point when it was supposed to dawn on me. Sometimes two wrongs do make a right.

Reaction:

In 1986, the twenty-third production run of Doctor Who episodes was presented as one story of fourteen episodes. This has made a lot of people very angry and was widely seen as a bad move. The show had almost been cancelled altogether the previous year before getting at least one more series as a reprieve; coming back with the biggest ever story in Doctor Who's history, a story where the character - like the show - was being put on trial, must have seemed like a good idea. It is the sort of momentarily seductive brainstorming session idea that everyone rapidly drops. Only they didn't drop it. Drawing attention to the show's dicey position was a risky move indeed, and the biggest ever story in Doctor Who's history doesn't sound so hot if you call it the longest ever story in Doctor Who's history. Anyway, it's not really one story - it's three tales with a framing narrative, followed by a two episode wrap-up. It could so easily have been rewritten, even at a late moment, to lose the over-arching plotting, and re-titled with individual headings (it's nearly universally referred to by four different titles as it is), and it might have seemed like less of a slog. Only, they didn't do this.

Luckily, this didn't kill off the series, but it felt at the time like it was a close thing.  With some distance from the pain of those bad old days (and I know it's not much to be proud of that it meant so much at the time that Doctor Who survived, but it did to me and many others) it's easier to see the positive points. To start with: Bonnie Langford. I mean it. The character of Mel as written and performed is a breath of fresh air after a number of years of more adversarial and bickering companion / Doctor relationships; the Doctor and Mel get on well with one another, and have a natural rapport. Mel also gets enthusiastically involved in the adventure throughout rather than whinging about wanting to get back to the TARDIS. It's a shame the characterisation is one note: this was the first time a companion actor needed a more defined role to put distance between the character and existing audience perception, but alas she didn't get more than "keep fit enthusiast" with which to work. Also, Bonnie is encouraged to scream all the time. Hers is a wonderful scream, the best in the business, but it does get overused very quickly.

Everyone is giving their all in the cast, in true Agatha Christie gang show fashion. Honor Blackman is the big star name, but her two assistants as played by Malcolm Tierney and David Allister are also good value; my personal favourite guest character, though, is Denys Hawthorne as Rudge, the weak man gone rogue. Colin Baker is as restrained and nuanced as he can be acting from inside a technicolour eyesore (they add a new waistcoat and cravat for this story that are even more garish than usual, if you can believe such a thing possible). And it's easy to overlook the sterling work put in by Lynda Bellingham and Michael Jayston, because whenever they appear the story grinds to a shuddering halt; poor things, it's hard not to associate them with the annoyance this causes. The trial framing device of which they are part works against the drama, as scenes set in the courtroom need to be inserted every so often to remind the viewer that what they're watching is actually not what they think they are watching, but is in fact some other people watching that stuff.

In the previous sub-stories it hasn't mattered quite so much as it does in episodes 9 to 12: in the first four episodes, the device was still a novelty; in the four after that, the script goes to the greatest lengths to integrate the action on the screen with the action of the court: Mindwarp is all about the veracity of the evidence, and without the Doctor, Inquisitor and Valeyard's final reactions, it doesn't really have an ending. The onboard action of the Hyperion III, though, stands on its own as a solid adventure, which makes the trial dull by comparison. The few call-back references to evidence tampering feel much more tacked on, and so aren't effective; they are just enough, though, to puncture and deflate at crucial moments. Without the trial sequences, I really think this would stand as Colin Baker's strongest individual adventure. Writers Pip and Jane Baker are terribly underrated and should be given a break. Their dialogue is not as awful as I remembered - although it is very wordy - and the plot and characters are all evidence of a fine job done within the constraints of this era.

Malcolm Clarke's music veers from beautiful, delicate melodies to noisy passages of percussive clunks and synth parps; this, however, is the challenge and genius of every Malcolm Clarke score, and I wouldn't want it any other way. The production design is day-glo, but there may not be any other option: as I understand the design thinking on this, Colin's coat would swamp any surrounding colour palettes if they were even slightly muted, so the saturation has to be turned up to 11 for other costumes, sets and props during his era. With the Olivia Newton-John style 'keep fit to music' action, and the idea that this floating hotel for the nouveau riche would throw towels into the waste disposal after only one use, it all adds up to a none-more-80s tale. Again, though, I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing.

Connectivity: 

Two stories on the trot featuring aggressive flora and a lead-in from the previous story.

Deeper Thoughts:
Who Knows. Even with the vast volume of Doctor Who reference works written over the years, there are still some questions that can never be answered even about the real world of the show's production (let alone the irreconcilable inconsistencies in the fictional universe of the Doctor, if you factor in those you'd be here until doomsday... or the end of time). These aren't just about obscure trivia either, but can be about the fundamentals, like how to refer to stuff. Until near the end of William Hartnell's time as the Doctor, each episode had an individual on-screen title, but the groups of episodes that formed a story - the one with the cavemen, say, or the first Dalek one, or the one where a switch breaks and all the clocks melt - didn't have any overall title, at least not one that was available to the viewers at home. There were various production documents which touched on group headings, and references in the Radio Times and programme synopses, but they were often inconsistent or plain wrong. This didn't matter too much until ten years or so later, when the first of those reference works was published, and it needed to include a story list. Doctor Who books do need to include story lists, it's a rule.

After that, and for many years to come, titles for those Hartnell stories were debated back and forth, suggestions were tried, countered, found favour, or fell out of use. Often, the name of the first episode was just used to refer to the lot, which only works if it is a vaguely representative handle. The worst candidate, you'd have thought, was that one about the cavemen. 'An Unearthly Child' doesn't have anything to do with three quarters of the story, but it's the name that's stuck. Doctor Who Magazine's style and content guides dictated for a while, though not sure whether they still do now, that it should be referred to by the never popular moniker '100,000 BC'; but, 'An Unearthly Child' is what's on the front of the video, the DVD, and the novelisation, and so I've followed that popular wisdom when covering it for the blog. The first Dalek story is known as The Daleks, which is appropriate if dull, but not a title that was ever used by the people making the thing. They may have called it 'The Mutants', but that's also now the name of a later Jon Pertwee story, so would be confusing. It may even have been called 'Beyond the Sun' at one point, but that twistily became applied to the following story too (the one with the melting clocks). That one has settled down more recently as 'The Edge of Destruction'  - it's opening episode title.

This chaos stops once the overall titles are on screen for all to see, until The Trial of a Time Lord. Trial has the opposite issue of those early Hartnell shows; the on-screen label is inadequate and the whole thing needs tags for its sub-segments. These quickly became established as 'The Mysterious Planet' (1-4), 'Mindwarp' (5-8), 'Terror of the Vervoids' (9-12) and 'The Ultimate Foe' (13-14). These are roughly based on working titles used in production, although 'The Ultimate Foe' was actually a working title for the Vervoids story, but somehow came to be associated with the final two-parter probably because it's a better description than 'Time Inc.' which was the other likely contender. Nobody ever calls it 'Time Inc.' even though 'The Ultimate Foe' is just as unofficial (sitting on the fence, BBC Worldwide labelled the DVD boxes just with the Trial title and episode numbers, but added a sticker to each box with the commonly used name).

We've come full circle since 2005, each episode has an individual title, no matter how many of those episodes form a wider story. As they are significantly less episodes than the Hartnell ones, two or at a push three parts only, it has been merely been necessary to have a slash. As in: The Sontaran Stratagem slash The Poison Sky, to pick a random example.

In Summary:

Terror of the Vervoids is great. The bits that are The Trial of a Time Lord episodes 9-12, not so much.

The Ultimate Foe

Chapter The Tenth, in which Sisyphus jumps out of the way of a catharsis of spurious morality. Eww!

Plot:

The Doctor is on trial for his lives. Accused of naughty meddling and also genocide, he faces prosecutor The Valeyard after having delivered the evidence for his defence. That evidence seems to have been tampered with, but luckily the Doctor's oldest and deadliest enemy The Master sends him two witnesses in Glitz and Mel. They reveal that, though the genocide thing was 100% accurate, the meddling charge is a bit trumped up. The Timelord High Council were covering up that Andromedean hackers had stolen secrets from big Timelord server, The Matrix. Their violent action dealing with these hackers resulted in some collateral damage, almost wiping out the people of Earth. Almost wiping them out, note: only attempted genocide was committed by the High Council bad guys.

The Valeyard turns out to be an amalgamation of the darker sides of The Doctor's nature, somewhere between his twelfth and final incarnation (so, between new series episodes Journey's End and The Eleventh Hour, fact fans). His plan is to blow up the jury of the Doctor's trial. So, you know, he'll kill twelve old guys. Not commit genocide, which his so-called nicer version has already done. The Doctor enters the dreamscape of the Matrix and tussles with The Valeyard. The Master and Glitz and Mel follow to help and/or hinder. Off-screen, the corrupt High Council is deposed, but whether that's part of anyone's plan or just a coincidence is never made clear. The Doctor defeats The Valeyard and saves the day. They let him off the genocide thing.

Context:

A watch of the DVD by the whole family in the early Sunday evening Songs of Praise zone. We all liked Dominic Glynn's version of the theme - the kids sang and danced along to it. The younger children (boy of 5 years old, girl of 3) were suitably chilled by the Matrix scenes, everyone jumping when the hands reached out of the water barrel to grab the Doctor. We all thought the cliffhanger of the Doctor sinking into Camber Sands was great (though I saw properly for the first time the T-shirt of one of the visual FX assistants sticking their arms out of the sand, which spoilt it a bit).

First-time round:

The Trial of a Timelord season was the first Doctor Who broadcast that I taped on home VHS (the family having purchased a VCR for Christmas 1985). As such, it has a special place in my affections because I watched it over and over. At least, I did for the first three of the four sub-stories within it. Episode 13 was set to record while I was visiting relatives who didn't have a recorder. I watched it live and thought it was very exciting, but either I mis-set the timer, or the schedule was changed, and I didn't get the episode on tape. I later dragged our VCR round to my friend Boyd's house as he had been more successful in recording it. We then tried to do the tape-to-tape copying that was the mainstay of distributing pirated Doctor Whos at the time and for many years thereafter. But we didn't have a vital cable, and I got the episode without any sound.

All this is to say that I had a pristine copy of the longest epic Doctor Who story ever made, but with the key revelatory episode mute. And it stayed that way for seven years until they released the story in a nice tin to buy. For a particular kind of Doctor Who fan (this kind) that's a living hell.

Reaction:

The long wait to see and hear this two-parter again probably enhanced its standing with me. Like one of those long-lost episodes returned to the archives, it gets points added just because it was finally available to experience in full. Due to the season's structure, though, these two episodes were always going to have more momentum: after three months of watching people watching stories on a big telly, this is the point where the plot actually moves into the here and now, and actually moves. In a nice bit of writing, this formal change happens simultaneously with a key story reversal (the Valeyard is the Doctor) and a major geographical shift - they finally leave the trial room.

It's this trial room set that hurts the stories, more than any script issues (not that there aren't those too). I can see the logic of creating something grand - particularly if you can spread the cost over 14 episodes - but what we end up with is an empty, echoing space where there are challenges capturing sound and interesting camera angles. It leaves the only real performance option to boom everything out to the back row, upping the stagey feel that the last few years of the programme have been trying to get away from in favour of a more cinematic feel (budget allowing, obviously). Recording location work on video doesn't help on that score either, but the night shoot takes the edge off, and the locations themselves are interesting.

It's not evident on screen that there are massive backstage shenanigans going on with the production of Who at this point; and this is in no small part because of the true heroes of 1986 Doctor Who, Pip and Jane Baker. They delivered a satisfying and dramatic final episode from a blank page over a long weekend, seamlessly linking to what went before, but without being able to ever know the planned plot for legal reasons. Script Editor Eric Saward - in the Trials and Tribulations documentary on the Foe DVD - is very sniffy about their contributions on his watch, while admitting that other writers he'd brought in, who he thought were more interesting, crashed and burned. Saward's successor is also very derogatory whenever he talks about the Bakers. But why? Their dialogue could be appalling, but rewrite it or let it go, because they're reliable, and could write solid Doctor Who to order. As every previous script editor of Doctor Who knew - you need pros like that, or you risk ending up with the test card on BBC1 for 25 minutes of a Saturday.

Connectivity:

Both stories start from a cliffhanger in the previous episode. Themes of justice and punishment feature heavily, and both are far too tied up in the show's ongoing mythology for their own good.
 
Deeper Thoughts:

Six's Hex: At the time of writing, the current Doctor Who Magazine has it's entire three-page letter section given over to discussion about Colin Baker; this is a reaction to last month's interview with that actor. In this, he revealed that he had declined to give the magazine an interview previously since their decision in 2009 to do a poll of all the stories broadcast to date and print the full results. Colin's problem was that in carrying the poll beyond the top 10 or 50 all the way to the bottom means some poor story has to be the loser. Which is tough on the people who have sweated to make that story. Which is The Twin Dilemma, Colin's debut. They did the same kind of poll last year, and - though Colin seems to have missed it - in 1998, too. The Twin Dilemma came bottom every time.

It would be easy to take this as the main reason why Colin is upset. But I can see his point, and see that he's making that point in general, rather than specifically about himself. It is a kick in the nuts to come last in anything, and making TV drama is not sport or politics, so there shouldn't actually have to be a loser at all. It's done now, though, three times over, and the people have spoken consistently. Colin shouldn't worry for himself, though, as he is the one Doctor who is immune from judgement regarding the quality of the show during his tenure. Completely immune. This is because his era was cursed never to be stable enough to take a reliable benchmark. There literally was no control.

Just look at the list of risky, questionable or downright wrong decisions made in the short period of time he had the title role: the decision to show his debut story tacked on to the end of the previous guy's final season, after a big swansong; the inappropriate costume; the decision to make the character unpredictable and even unlikeable, meaning to gradually soften him as time went by; the change of the programme's format to double the length of episodes only to change it back again; the script editor's pushing the programme into more explicitly violent and amoral territory, and his regular sidelining of the supposed hero of the show; incorporating an old Doctor so soon into Baker's tenure; the decision from the high-ups to take the show off air for an extended period after Baker had only done one season; the extensive publicity - correctly or incorrectly - telling the country that the threat of cancellation hung over the show at that point; the reduction in the length of the subsequent seasons; the lack of direction or additional budget from the high-ups when the show finally came back; the decision to make the comeback season one long story, and one that mirrored the real life situation of the show being on trial; the death of one and resignation of the other of the two main architects of that story before it was finished; the background of an increasingly hostile reaction to the producer from a vocal minority of the show's fans.

That's not even an exhaustive list. Yes, they've been thoroughly picked over for years, but it's worth listing them just to see the sheer number. Was there a week when the Colin Baker era could be said to have bedded in? Sometime around the point when they announced they were taking it off the air for 18 months, perhaps? It's amazing that the show managed to get made at all, let alone as the entertaining and fun adventure it more or less always was. None of what was happening was within Colin's influence; a lot of it was not controllable by anyone. It stemmed for the most part seemingly from the deteriorating working relationship between the producer and the script editor. It's just a shame that when that had resolved itself, in the most explosive way possible, Colin didn't get to enjoy any subsequent calm or stability, as he was promptly sacked. Cruel coincidence dictated that his was the name above the title for the exact duration of the shitstorm, and at the time and since he's taken the blame in a lot of people's eyes. He'd be forgiven for bitterness, but he has clearly managed to come through with but a little regret and a lot of compassion for all of life's last-placers. For that alone, he deserves our accolades.

In Summary:

It's a great little story with lots of nice moments, if you're into Gallifreyan mythology, Timelord conspiracies and the like, which - as a 14-year old, and now - I am. But, though it pains me to say it, and it's no single person's fault, certainly not Colin Baker's, it's also the end of an error.