Review: Doctor Who Classic: The Ultimate Foe

The Doctor talks with himself.

“There’s nothing you can do to prevent the catharsis of spurious morality!”

At the end of the day, the Trial season was a failure, and that was clear even as production neared completion. This final story was a production nightmare, and led to the resignation of Eric Saward and contributed to the death of Robert Holmes. The Ultimate Foe  is, above all other things, messy and ungainly, its various twists and revelations flashing one after the other like a badly written plot synopsis.

     The two part story was due to be written by Robert Holmes, a veteran writer of the series and the writer of The Mysterious Planet. He unfortunately died of cancer after having only written the first draft of the first half and only a few notes about the second. Script Editor Eric Saward took up the job, handing in a complete rewrite of the script with a harsh, downbeat ending so typical of Sawards’ scripts. John Nathan-Turner, trying to keep things optimistic, asked him to change the ending – a decision that angered Saward so much that he resigned as Script Editor. Now left with one half-finished script and no last episode for the series, the task fell on Pip and Jane Baker, the writers of Vervoids, to finish off. You can see where this is going.

      The Doctor is about to sentenced, now with the charge of Genocide included. His last defence is the tampering of the Matrix, and despite the fact that he cannot provide witnesses, someone has done so for him. Mel and Glitz appear before the court, and The Master appears from The Matrix supporting The Doctor’s story. He reveals that the people who moved Earth in The Mysterious Planet and renamed it Ravalox were the Time Lords, trying to prevent their technological secrets from being stolen. The Doctor gives a great monologue (the story’s real saving grace) about how the Time Lords, as the oldest civilisations, are the most corrupt of them all.

The Master of Light Entertainment

    The Master then reveals the Valeyard’s identity – he is the dark side of The Doctor’s personality, and had made a deal with the High Council to cover up the Ravalox affair in exchange for The Doctor’s remaining regenerations. His identity discovered, he flees into the Matrix, and The Doctor and Glitz follow. Valeyard’s illusions bring them to a Victorian Square. There they enter a waiting room run by an incredibly bureaucratic Mr. Popplewick  (Keeping Up Appearances’ Geoffrey Hughes), who leads them to another of the Valeyard’s illusions. On a beach, on his own, The Doctor is dragged into the sand and the cliffhanger music chimes.

     When we come back, Glitz is mourning The Doctor, who reappears and reveals that his death was another illusion. The Valeyard makes an appearance and explains who his is – a darker side of the Doctor, a concentration of all of his evil. Escaping some random toxic nerve gas, Six and Glitz enter The Master’s Tardis. The Master explains that he is helping because The Doctor is a less threatening enemy, and then puts him into a zombie-like state and uses him as bait for the Valeyard. It doesn’t work; Glitz and The Master escape. Meanwhile, The Valeyard’s illusions appear to convince The Doctor that he has been tried for his crimes and sent for execution.

     Mel, watching this, storms into the Matrix and “saves” him. He reveals that the illusion was obvious and that he was trying to get close to the Valeyard, who they then go after. While The Master suffered a malfunction in his Tardis, The Doctor and Mel (who really don’t work well together at all) track down The Valeyard and his machine, designed to kill everyone in the Trial room once he had the Doctor’s lives. Mel evacuates the room and The Doctor destroys the machine, and both escape with The Valeyard apparently dead. The Inquisitor frees The Doctor of all charges, and he flies off into space to be fired by the BBC.

"Do you have an appointment?"

     Because of the reworking, the plot appears to fly off in random directions. One moment The Doctor’s standing on a beach, the next he’s incapacitated and a zombie, and then he’s at the trial, but it’s not really the trial and so on and so on. That really only applies to the second episode though, because the first is one long exposition dump using the formulaic setup that we tired of eight episodes ago. The different writers are very, very obvious, especially after the cliffhanger where it appears that all of the characters have swallowed a dictionary – the most egregious example being the quote at the top of this article.

     A heavy rewrite in the script meant that The Master and Glitz felt very wasted – a fact not lost on their actors, who were very upset about the ordeal. Really, The Master didn’t need to be there at all, and as Anthony Ainley’s penultimate performance it doesn’t really do him any justice at all. Even Colin Baker didn’t survive this story, being fired by execs – the same execs who allowed Bonnie Langford’s performance of all things.
     What the serial does do is link together the series as a whole. Robert Holmes' script touches upon the events of The Mysterious Planet and uses it as a large plot device - a means to reveal The Valeyard's plans and identity. Pip and Jane use their episode as an excuse to create another illusion regarding Vervoids, and both writers mention the most manipulated segment, Mindwarp - where it turns out that Peri is living happily with Yrcanos.

Colin gets a sinking feeling.

     The Trial of a Timelord ended on a messy note which didn't do justice to the ambition of the series' premise. The Ultimate Foe was let down by its troubled production and the script editor's spurious morality, a state of affairs that made the result just salvageable enough to keep the series on air. Despite this, the lead was fired and the script editor had left, leaving Doctor Who with a very uncertain future. Luckily Sylvester McCoy would take up the reins and after a series of mediocre bombs he would return Doctor Who to the brilliant television that it could be. 

Thanks. 

IN TWO WEEKS: My Classics season starts, with Spearhead From Space!