Harry -
I'm angry.
Sarah -
I'm angry, sad, and disappointed. Just as it was finally hitting its stride, the Colin Baker Era is over. What a wasted opportunity.
Harry -
Don't get me wrong, I love the Trial of a Time Lord season, for a whole list of reasons why (posted in our discussion of "The Mysterious Planet"). The ending is weak. It's confusing, infuriating and ultimately unsatisfying.
Behind the scenes reports indicate that the show was almost literally being held together by duct tape by this point. Eric Saward had resigned, Bob Holmes had passed away, and Pip and Jane Baker were hustled back to finish writing the concluding story over a weekend.
Sarah -
Saward had agreed to write the final episode after Holmes' death, but grabbed his script and stormed out the door for good after JN-T rejected what he had written. Saward's script had the Doctor and Valeyard falling into the Matrix, battling to the death.
Harry -
A nice bit of work by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle too.
Sarah -
JN-T was concerned that the BBC would treat the ending as a finale to end the series. All things considered, I can't argue with his reasoning. He went on to recruit the Bakers, but couldn't tell them anything about Saward's script. Say what you will about Pip and Jane's other scripts, I don't think they should get too much blame for the quality of this episode when everything was falling apart around them.
Harry -
Pip and Jane unfortunately became one of those bogeys that fanhood likes to swarm and kick at every opportunity. They were not the most stellar of writers, but the situation behind the scenes made their task incredibly difficult.
Sarah -
It's impressive they got anything done in that atmosphere.
Harry -
The 14-episode structure that had been mandated by the BBC left us with a truncated two-parter in which to wrap up the entire season. On top of it all, poor Colin hasn't had a chance to visit a barber and by the time we get to "The Ultimate Foe", he looks like a vexed sheepdog standing in the accused's box.
Sarah -
Is his ever-expanding hair on the list of reasons to love Trial of a Time Lord? It's one of my favorite aspects of the story.
Harry -
It is!
Sarah -
Of course!
Harry -
As the story picks up, the prosecution and defence presentations have been concluded and the Doctor continues to dispute the evidence of the Matrix. The Inquisitor has summoned the Keeper of the Matrix to respond to the suggestions of tampering.
Sarah -
And who should show up -- from inside the Matrix -- but our old pal the Master! I love the moment when Anthony Ainley appears on the screen in the courtroom. He's so smooth in this story, with a bit less of the mustache-twirling we've seen in the past.
And look who else is here -- Mel and Sabalom!
Harry -
I love a dramatic courtroom entrance. Glitz drops the first bombshell, revealing that the theft of the Matrix contents by the Sleepers from Andromeda resulted in the annihilation of planet Earth, an action orchestrated and covered up by the High Council. The Master drops the second bombshell, revealing that the Valeyard is a future incarnation of the Doctor, one whose good impulses have been stripped away.
Sarah -
Damn Time Lords and their intrigue! This Bob Holmes-penned episode does a nice job of tying all the previous episodes together.
Harry -
The Valeyard flees the courtroom, the Doctor chases him into the Matrix, and the trial collapses.
Inside the Matrix, it is hard to separate reality from illusion. The Doctor finds himself in a shabby looking courtyard in Victorian London, at night. Voices and laughter ring out of the darkness, and a pair of hands attack him from inside a barrel of water. Glitz arrives shortly after, and together they search for the Valeyard.
Meanwhile, the Master continues to enjoy himself enormously, revealing that he has been watching the trial all along. He is delighted to have turned the Doctor on himself and coordinated the disintegration of the High Council. He also casually mentions that Peri somehow escaped her death on Thoros Beta and is now King Yrcanos' queen. WHAT THE WHAT?
Sarah -
Seriously!
If I recall, it was JN-T's decision to resurrect Peri -- and it was a crap decision. Peri's death was horribly shocking and I hate that it's undermined by this scene. That said, my Peri-Yrcanos head cannon is kind of awesome.
Harry -
There are few things I hate -- HATE -- in Doctor Who and this is one of them. Bringing Peri back from the dead, I hate it. Not that I hated Peri, but you can point to that happy resolution as the first in a chain of deaths-that-are-not-really-deaths that littered Doctor Who for years to come. In fact, it has gotten worse over time. No one ever dies on Doctor Who anymore, despite dying right before our eyes. I hate that shit and this was the moment it all began.
*pauses for breath*
Sarah -
Preach it, Brother!
Harry -
Now, if Peri and Yrcanos lived happily ever after, it's a delightful outcome and how could we be anything but happy for them? The folks at Big Finish took it a step further in Peri and the Piscon Paradox, offering up several happy endings for Perpugiliam Brown.
Sarah -
Peri and the Piscon Paradox is a must-listen for every fan of Trial of a Time Lord!
Harry -
She's fine. Let's move on.
Sarah -
Moving along...
Harry -
Back in the Matrix, the Doctor and Glitz have followed the Valeyard's trail into a small office in a building labeled The Fantasy Factory. Seated behind a desk is a clerk named Mr. Popplewick, played by the wonderful Geoffrey Hughes from Keeping Up Appearances.
Sarah -
Mr. Popplewick! I love Mr. Popplewick. He's so wonderfully officious. The Doctor signs the paperwork proffered by Mr. Popplewick, promising his future incarnations to the Valeyard should the Doctor be vanquished.
The paperwork complete, the Doctor passes through a door and finds himself on a beach, where hands from below start to pull him below the surface. And here we have the official end of Robert Holmes work on Doctor Who. I feel like we should pour out a gin and tonic for Dear Bob.
Harry -
To Bob.
Sarah -
To Bob.
Harry -
The Doctor being pulled under the sand is a nice bit of production work, and bravery on Colin's part. His re-emergence was not as spectacular, even though it was a challenge to pull it off.
Sarah -
And here ends our Colin cliffhanger closeup count.
Harry -
What a run!
After some more cat and mouse, the Valeyard unleashes a cloud of nerve gas. The Doctor and Glitz flee into a cottage, which happens to be the Master's TARDIS. The Master zombifies the Doctor and leaves him on the Valeyard's doorstep, but Mel -- plucky Mel! -- pulls him out of there, back to the courtroom. From there, we have a lot of running around. The Doctor tries to bluff the Valeyard, but ends up bluffing Mel and she interferes with the bluff.
Sarah -
The Doctor heading to the gallows, quoting, "It's a far, far better thing that I do..." only to be "saved" by Mel is always a favorite moment.
Harry -
That was very dramatic and well-played by Colin. Back to square one. They corner Popplewick inside an engine room and tie him up. Lo and behold, it was the Valeyard all along, wearing a Geoffrey Hughes mask.
Sarah -
The Valeyard is cosplaying Geoffrey Hughes!
How great is Mel in this story? She's pulled out of time and deposited in the middle of a bunch of over-stuffed Time Lords and she's having none of their nonsense. She also makes a good double act with Glitz:
Mel: How utterly evil.
Glitz: Thank you.
Harry -
Meanwhile, Glitz has gotten his hands on the Matrix memory bank again. The Master has sown chaos on Gallifrey. The High Council is deposed, the court has been abolished, and the Master and Glitz make to depart in his TARDIS. But something goes wrong, the memory bank triggers a malfunction and the Master's TARDIS gets warped in space (for lack of a better term). That's the last we see of those two.
Sarah -
Oh Glitz! Such a classic, lovable Bob Holmes rogue. Did I ever tell you about the time I had to gently correct someone on LiveJournal back in the day, when he said Brian Blessed had played Glitz? I still cringe at my own pedantry.
Harry -
Mel discovers a megabyte modem (ooh!), which the Doctor identifies as a particle disseminator (yikes!). The Valeyard is plotting a mass assassination on Gallifrey, but the Doctor throws the contraption into disarray and it blows only itself up.
Sarah -
Hooray!
Harry -
In gratitude, the Time Lords change their tune and drop all charges against the Doctor (so malleable, that Gallifreyan justice system). The Inquisitor also confirms to the Doctor that Peri is alive and with Yrcanos. It was odd that Peri's situation was sorted out by two different characters. What we didn't get was any resolution of what happened to the Master and Glitz, but that's more a typical villains-get-their-comeuppance kind of ending. The Valeyard mysteriously reappears in place of the Matrix Keeper at the end, but that's the last we ever see of him to this day. In all this time, no show runner has wanted to bring him back or resolve his story.
Sarah -
The Valeyard's story is said to take place sometime after the Doctor's 12th regeneration. We'll have to suss out Chris Chibnall's position on Trial of a Time Lord. For all we know the Valeyard is still biding his time on Gallifrey.
Harry -
Imagine if Peter Capaldi regenerated into Michael Jayston... Whoa!
Sarah -
Can you even imagine? Fandom would explode.
Harry -
And with that, the Trial of a Time Lord comes to... nothing. The Doctor lost a companion, gained another, met his future self and at the end of it all, it's back to the exercise bike and the carrot juice. The show survived, but not everyone made it to the other side.
Sarah -
Still, it was a fun ride and I have no regrets!
Harry -
I still love it though.
Best Line: "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known." (I think it says something that my favourite line came from a different source.)
Favourite Moment: The Master appearing on the courtroom screen.
Lasting Image: Mr. Popplewick and his quills of death.
5/10
Sarah -
Best Line: "In all my travelings throughout the universe I have battled against evil, against power-mad conspirators. I should have stayed here. The oldest civilization, decadent, degenerate and rotten to the core. Ha! Power-mad conspirators, Daleks, Sontarans, Cybermen, they're still in the nursery compared to us. Ten million years of absolute power, that's what it takes to be really corrupt."
Favorite Moment: The Master appearing on the courtroom screen.
Lasting Image: I have to give it to the final Colin cliffhanger closeup.
6/10
Our marathon continues with Story #144: Time and the Rani...
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