Harry -
As the Trial of a Time Lord continues, we reach "Mindwarp", a dark, sinister, runaway train of a story. From start to finish, the action is driven by circumstances out of the Doctor's control. It leads to treachery, confusion, chaos, and the death of the Doctor's companion.
Sarah -
"Mindwarp" is my favorite story in the Trial of a Time Lord season. It's the most memorable for me for so many reasons, but especially for Peri's fate.
Harry -
Peri's demise is a moment of true horror. Seeing it again for the first time in a few years, it remains a staggering moment in Doctor Who.
Sarah -
It's so shocking because it happens while the Doctor is trying to save her -- only to be taken out of time by the Time Lords. It's absolutely brutal.
Harry -
Apparently, Nicola Bryant wouldn't have had it any other way.
Sarah -
It was a bold choice.
Harry -
Peri's death is the devastating final moment in a story filled with extremes. It starts with the wild neon colours of the sea and skies of Thoros Beta, so powerful that they impact our perception of the Doctor and Peri. Everything outside takes on an overblown shade of pink.
Sarah -
David Bowie walking by in his Pierrot costume...
Harry -
On this planet we meet another mad scientist -- one brilliantly twisted enough to be on the precipice of altering the very nature of life in the universe. One of his brain analysis gizmos is used on the Doctor, causing him to undergo an extreme personality change. For the longest time, we can't be sure if this unhinged, self-interested Doctor is faking it or not.
Sarah -
Young Crozier is certainly up to no good.
Colin Baker's performance in Mindwarp is spectacular. I watched it twice and I'm still not sure if he's faking it or not.
Harry -
He shouts a lot. So do a lot of other characters, including the shoutiest shouting shouter to ever shout in Doctor Who: KING YRCANOS!
Sarah -
Ah, King Yrcanos. Has there ever been a more fulsome performance in Doctor Who than that bestowed upon us by Brian Blessed? Has any actor ever committed so fully to his performance? I think not!
Harry -
Hot off his performance as shouty King Richard in Black Adder, he dominates his scenes like no one else before or since. Along the way, he strikes up an unlikely friendship with Peri.
Sarah -
And somehow manages to be the least creepy of all of Peri's many admirers over the past season.
Harry -
She seemed amused by him. But before they meet, Peri accompanies the Doctor on a looksee around some caves near the rocky beach where the TARDIS landed. They find some highly advanced technology being guarded by a kind of claw monster. It wasn't a very good claw monster as it dies almost immediately. Eluding security, our friends take off down a dark underground corridor where they find another bizarre creature: a human-wolf hybrid cowering in the shadows. There's some kind of Island of Dr. Moreau madness going on here, and who else should be involved but the Mentors, the native rulers of the planet -- one of whom is none other than Sil.
Sarah -
Ah, Sil. It cracks me up that his first reaction to seeing the Doctor and Peri again is to complain about how repulsive looking she is. At least there's one being in the universe not trying to get it off with her.
Harry -
I liked the rapid barrage of nasty characters we get introduced to right away.
Sarah -
There are a lot of them.
Harry -
There's a lot of cave creeping in part one, and the Doctor and Peri finally find themselves inside Crozier's laboratory. There, Crozier has been conducting tests on Yrcanos to determine his suitability for an operation. Sil's boss Kiv, another Mentor, is experiencing intense pain because his brain is growing beyond the capacity of his cranial shell. The pain is making him shout a lot. There's an awful lot of shouting in this story. Crozier's proposed solution is to transfer Kiv's brain into another body.
Sarah -
Patrick Ryecart's Crozier reminds me of the Rani -- a scientist who is so caught up in his work that he's never stopped to consider the ethics of what he's doing.
Harry -
The way he spoke was interesting. Not sure if it was the inflection or if Patrick Ryecart was trying on some kind of accent, but listening to him I kept thinking "Yep, he sounds like a self-absorbed mad scientist." The best (and I suppose cheapest) part of his performance was that all he did was stare at some screens with a cocked eyebrow, then immediately provide his analysis and decide which course of action to take. Barely any hands-on work required.
Sarah -
I appreciated his take on a mad scientist as Shakespearean actor. I can't recall another mad scientist who enunciated so well!
And then there's Kiv, played by the almost unrecognizable Christopher Ryan (aka Mike the Cool Person in The Young Ones), and devoted to the singular pursuit of making money. Like Sil, and seemingly all Mentors, his only concern is the bottom line.
I'm not quite sure what to make of Matrona Kani. She serves as Crozier's assistant, but also seems to be responsible for running the mentors' household, supervising staff and misting the mentors.
Harry -
Did an actor drop out at the last minute, forcing Alibe Parsons' role to be doubled? She pulled it off, as Kani moved between the lab and the lounge with ease.
Sarah -
She's a true Renaissance woman, with an awesome sense of fashion to boot!
Harry -
I liked her sci fi hair. Anyway, cornered in the lab and confronted by Sil, the Doctor is held down on a stretcher and one of Crozier's analytical devices is slammed onto his head. The Doctor spasms in pain and the episode ends with yet another extreme close up!
Sarah -
Colin's cliffhanger closeups are the glue that hold Trial of a Time Lord together!
Harry -
I love the fact that the cliffhanger closeups are an entrenched part of the Sixth Doctor's era. There's even a website that tracks them all:
Sarah -
Back in the courtroom, things are getting curiouser and curiouser. The deleted information from the matrix in "The Mysterious Planet" was suspicious enough, but now it seems that someone is playing with the Doctor's memory. His behavior becomes more erratic as the story progresses.
Harry -
You'd think the Inquisitor might be a little more, I don't know, INQUISITIVE about these peculiarities. Instead, she grants the Valeyard permission to plow ahead with his prosecution despite the Doctor's protests.
Sarah -
She hardly seems an impartial jurist. Still, she's got awesome headgear, so I'll cut her some slack.
Harry -
After Yrcanos goes on a rampage and escapes the laboratory, he goes back undergound to foment rebellion -- or just seek out loud and glorious ways to die in battle. He, Peri and his equerry Dorff make an unlikely team, but what else can they do, now that the Doctor has lost his marbles.
Sarah -
Poor Dorff. Such a tragic character.
Harry -
Some fantastic physical acting by Thomas Branch.
Sarah -
I love how Yrcanos won't let Dorff give up and rallies him for one last fight. It's easy to see why he's a warlord -- and probably a successful one.
Harry -
Meanwhile, look at this weird anti-Doctor coseying up to Sil and Crozier, helping along with the experiments as Kiv's life hangs in the balance. A transplant into the retrieved body of a deceased Mentor is failing. Kiv has ordered Sil and Crozier to be killed if he should not survive.
The pressure is growing, as is the size of Yrcanos' rebellion. The unlikely trio have met up with some Thoros Alphans down in the tunnels. Despite being terribly unremarkable, the Alphans grow the size of the rebellion force, as Yrcanos prepares to lead them into battle against the Mentors.
Not so fast! Our friends all get zapped in a sudden battle with the security forces. Yrcanos is imprisoned, while Peri is brought to Crozier for examination. The wheels of fate are taking a dark turn.
Sarah -
This is where my dread starts to grow. Crozier is desperate to transplant Kiv into another host and decides Peri is the best candidate. In an attempt to save Peri, the Doctor leaves the lab in search of another body. While he's gone, Crozier starts to prepare Peri for surgery.
The Doctor manages to free Yrcanos, Dorff, and other resistance fighters. He's trying to get back to the lab when he's suddenly returned to his TARDIS and taken out of time by the Time Lords. Those bastards!
Oh Peri! This is so hard to watch!
Harry -
This really is some of the hardest classic Who to watch. It's infuriating to see the Doctor being pulled out of time for reasons not very clear. The Valeyard and the Inquisitor stumble through an explanation, claiming that events had simply gotten out of control. It's hard to argue.
Sarah -
I'm on the Doctor's side here. They're both big jerky jerks!
Harry -
Jerks! Scum! He should have been given the chance to make things right, but the Time Lords are up to something.
As Yrcanos and the rebels run rampant, Crozier gives the order to shave Peri's head so that he can make a direct transfer of Kiv's mind and personality into her brain. Tragically, the operation works. Peri is deleted from her own body, and Kiv takes control of her mind and motor functions. Shocked into action by the implications of Crozier's success, the Time Lords manoeuvre Yrcanos to the lab so that he can become their assassin. So much brazen manipulation going on. It's astonishing.
Yrcanos bursts into the lab, and is horrified to find Peri -- whom he pledged to make his queen -- now a bald corpse, moving and speaking with Kiv's voice. Overcome with grief, he opens fire on everyone in the room, and the Valeyard's presentation ends.
Wow.
Sarah -
Just devastating. The Doctor knows he was taken out of time for another reason and he's determined to get to the bottom of it.
As we discussed in "Planet of Fire", I was not a Peri fan the first time around. Part of it was that I wasn't over Tegan's departure, but mostly Peri just didn't appeal to me. Her hostile relationship with the Doctor just wasn't fun to watch. It wasn't enough to make me stop watching, but it wasn't the most joyful time to be a Doctor Who viewer. Then came Trial of a Time Lord and Peri started to grow on me.
Nicola Bryant and Colin Baker were certainly playing their relationship differently for this season. The dialogue was still spiky, but they delivered it like two dear friends teasing each other. Their entire relationship changed for Season 23 and then it ended in tragedy. I remember the shock of watching Peri's death for the first time.
I'm grateful that Big Finish has given us more Doctor-Peri stories.
Harry -
Big Finish has given us so much for which to be grateful!
Sarah -
I feel I should respond with "Praise the Company!"
Harry -
Some thought went into creating the character Perpugiliam Brown, but most writers were content to treat her as Template Companion with zero character development. There was a much improved chemistry between Peri and the Doctor in this season, but as has happened so many times in Doctor Who, just when we start to really know a character, they get written out.
Sarah -
Isn't that the truth. Every era of Doctor Who suffers from the Template Companion issue, but somehow it seems more amplified in the JN-T/Saward era. Maybe it's because there were so many companions.
Harry -
It's too bad, but as mentioned above, Nicola was happy to go out with a bang. "Mindwarp" is a black, haunting little tale, harkening back to Hinchcliffe Horror days and I love it. As a stand alone, it's amazing. As part of the Trial of a Time Lord arc, it casts a brighter light on the murky goings on between the Valeyard, the Inquisitor and the entire prosecution against the Doctor. Hopefully our hero will get to the bottom of things soon.
Sarah -
Farewell (for now), Perpugiliam Brown.
Best Line: "Gentlemen, may I remind you this is a court of law, not a debating society for maladjusted, psychotic sociopaths."
Favorite Moment: King Yrcanos' war cry.
Lasting Image: Bald Peri.
8/10
Harry -
Best Line: "Scum." (Yrcanos' quick-and-to-the-point summation of Crozier.)
Favourite Moment: Yrcanos amuses Peri with his unceasing talk of battle.
Lasting Image: the seas and skies of Thoros Beta.
9/10
Our marathon continues with Story #143C - The Trial of a Time Lord: Terror of the Vervoids...
No comments:
Post a Comment