Overview: Doctor Who Classic: Season 23

See here for my reviews of Season 23.

Trial of a Timelord did some damn strange things. The structure, harkening back to arcs like The Key To Time and The Black Guardian Trilogy, ultimately did nought to save the series. Upon its return, the peak of viewing figures dropped from nine million to six million, and Doctor Who was never the same again. Here are the characters.

Colin was sacked for no good reason.

Six (Colin Baker) - I should have stayed here!
(All Season, unfortunately has to leave at the end.)

Colin's character hadn't been well-looked-upon in Season 22. His brashness wasn't liked by the public, and after this season he got the sack. In response to the public's anger, Six's personality was much, much more toned down for the Trial Season, and it shows. This was a necessary change, but only because the trial itself seemed to be against the initial personality. The writers had to make the change obvious, otherwise the season wouldn't work.
      The character, for the first time, shows real honest-to-god concern for Peri. Of course, it would have helped had he not then near-instantly revealed his future companion, Mel. The Trial, plus his firing, makes Six's timeline a little absent of meaning. I would have so much prefered to have seen the original Season 23, and to have watched Six's more gradual progression into a loveable Doctor rather than the swift culling of characterisation that we saw here.
       Unfortunately, Six's final lines are "Carrot Juice," a tragic sign of the show's problems still to come. If Colin Baker had stayed... well, we'll never know now. Suffice to say that I thought that it was a tragic loss, and at the end of this unfortunatley silly season I'm still sad to see him go.

Peri grows up.

Peri (Nicola Bryant) - Wife of Yrcanos
(Until Mindwarp)

I'm not all that sure how I feel about Peri's departure. It depends upon my mood. When I'm cheerful, it's a potent, gutting move that stays in the mind and makes her one of the most tragic companions in the show's history. When I'm not so cheerful, it's a stupid waste of time that wastes a character that could have been used brilliantly. Bryant expressed no desire to leave; the series could have gone on with her.
     In Season 23, Peri finally puts some proper clothes on and stops being the cover-photo of Letch's Choice Monthly. She's a great deal more mature, and this improves the character immensely. By the beginning of The Mysterious Planet, we could see that the buxom beach babe from Planet of Fire had developed into an independant woman.
      It's such a shame then that she doesn't get much to do in that story. She only really stands out in her final story, Mindwarp, where she grows up and attempts to civilise Brian Blessed's Yrcanos. This is easily one of Bryant's best performances, and the only one that manages to truly use the character well. Then she dies. I suppose having your mind wiped and then being shot by a slow-motion Brian Blessed is a good way to go.
      Peri could have been so much more, and so very nearly accomplished it. Season 23 at least saw her off without much fuss.

The face of all evil.

Mel (Bonnie Langford) - Now you're getting at the dirt!
(Terror of the Vervoids onwards)

Mel (in Season 23) is abhorrant. Her entire character. The concept behind her character. I hate it. There's not a lot about the Eighties that I really dislike on the level I do Mel; Adric was irritatingly presumptious but he also had an interesting backstory and a death that kept the program alive. Mel is useless 101 - her breathtaking optimism in the face of mediocrity is the most irritating thing in this series.
     It certainy does not help that she appears with only one line of dialogue to explain who she is. Terror of the Vervoids is fundamentally well-structured, but the three elements that make it nigh-unbearable are the villains, the script and Mel. Her screams are the soundtrack to my personal hell and her ridiculously unreal dialogue is matched only by her hideous dress sense.
      Ok, maybe I'm sliding into a bit of hyperbole about dear Mel. But like Vervoids, there's nothing redeeming to Mel at all. She just appears - we're not invested into her as a character. We don't care about who she is, what she has to say and why she wants to say it. And that's bad storytelling. Mel is bad storytelling. At least until the next season.

Thanks.

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!

Review: Doctor Who Classic: Terror of the Vervoids

Vervoids. Oh dear.

"Last time we met, I became caught up in a web of mayhem and intrigue!"

I like Trial of a Timelord. I really do, and it's not many people that can say that. Where it's good, it's the camp and satirical eighties Who I love. Where it's bad, however... it's Terror of the Vervoids. There isn't a saving grace in Vervoids, there's nothing really entertaining or different to make it a decent watch. Perhaps it's damning that the Doctor's defence is not only the most paradoxical part of this series, but is also one of the most cliche ridden hundred minutes of television I've ever suffered through. And I watched a Survivors marathon.
    Before I start, I'd just like to comment on this story's setting. Following a Christmas Carol-style structure, this story is set in The Doctor's future with new companion Mel (Bonnie Langford). This makes little to no sense, and the story doesn't really cover it in much detail. Firstly, why would The Doctor choose evidence from the future when there's a perfectly reasonably sized collection of brilliant and heroic deeds to go from in his past? How can they allow him to use said evidence when it implies directly that The Doctor isn't killed by the Trial? Why oh why did they hire Bonnie Langford?
     The Doctor uses evidence from his Future for the trial, having searched the Matrix beforehand. He focuses on his visit to the Hyperion III, where The Doctor's narration inmtroduces someone as a murderer (in a really quite Poirot sense). The Doctor is being... forced to exercise by Mel, who insists on providing him with Carrot juice. Responding to a red alert, they arrive on the Hyperion and run into the Captain, who's met the Doctor before.

Carrot Juice?!

     Three scientists on the ship are transporting large plants in pods, but find that someone has broken into their secure compound and stolen the seeds. It then appears that someone has been killed - the same person who appraently called The Doctor to his room. The evidence then appears to show The Doctor sending Mel down to the compound without thought - something which the Trial!Doc contests as a further manipulation of the Matrix. Mel and a guard head down; The guard dies, the pods activate and she screams into cliffhanger. Something climbs out of the pods, and the Trial clams that The Doctor is responsible for the guard's death. In-story, The Doctor and Mel are cleared of the death and the scientists return to find the pods empty.
     The Doctor shows one of the scientists the seeds he found in the cabin of the man who died, and she's grateful. The ship alters course to avoid a black hole, and The Doctor notices that one of the Mogarians (gas-masked aliens forced to use translators) is speaking English without a translator. They complain about political issues and land rights. Captivating. Even the Valeyard isn't impressed. The Mogarian without the translator dies afte drinking a Mogarian drink, and it's revealed that it was the man who "died" in disguise. Then, in case the audience were ignorant of this scenario, we're made to watch it again. The pod creatures roam the ship killing people. The Doctor and Mel investigate into the scientists' isolation room, and discover a half-plant half-woman mutation. Cue cliffhanger. The scientists explain it as an accident, and as at the beginning of every episode of Terror of the Vervoids, The Doctor is arrested.
     We finally meet the epoynmous villains, the Vervoids. And. Well. Hmm. Many comparisons have been made, and I am not the first to make them, but the costume design for the Vervoids resembles a plant-based fusion of both sets of human sexual organs. It's not pretty, and their hissing voices and strangely northern accents just make them more ridiculous. The Mogarians talk with the guard captain and more guards are killed. One of the scientists wants to scrap their work because of what the experiment has created.

The Doctor's evidence lands him in hot water.

     Mel uses some jiggery pokery to listen to the Vervoids moving throughout the ship, but someone comes and throws her into another of the rubbish bins. The Doctor discovers her tape just in time and manages to save her, all for a single gag. Also... why are they incinerating towels? It turns out the initial murderer was the scientist that's been objecting, and he takes over the ship, intending to fly it into the Black Hole. After the cliffhanger, the Vervoids fill the control room with a poisonous gas to prevent their deaths, and the Mogarians (as the only ones with respirators) are sent in to take control. Then they mutinty as well. Luckily Mel is on hand to throw some Carrot Juice in their faces. The day is saved for now, but in secret the Vervoids kill more people.
     Turns out yet another scientist is yet another murderer. He's killed by Vervoids. The Doctor works out that the Vervoids, as plants, have decided that all animals are evil. He works out that they can use Vionesium (which they just happen to be transporting) to accelerate their lifecycle and kill them. While the amount of energy needed to do this would cause the ship to be incinerated, the Doctor does so anyway and the creatures are destroyed. The Valeyard uses this as an advantage, and claims genocide on the Doctor's part.
     When it's not being melodramatic and cliche, the episode tries its best to insert some comedy into preceedings. And it doesn't work, not one second of it, from the time-wasting arguments about whether someone's room key says 6 or 9 to the dreadful moment where the Doctor tells Mel that he can sense, "evil!". The 80s was capy and over the top, and that's what I like about it, but here it's done in a way which doesn;t stimulate me at all. That and the various double crossings make this feel rather farsical, only to then have that stifled as well by the serious nature of the trial.
     I really, really don't like Mel. Not a lot of people do. We never see her inital entrance and we only get base background information about her, and so for her six stories (two here, four with Sylvester McCoy) her defining feature is her scream, which rivals the Howler Monkey in pitch.
     Terror of the Vervoids is cliched in the extreme, and every turn an twist is signposted a mile off - and then explained. The villains are an absolute joke aesthetically and in concept, and there really is little to no salve to make this a more pleasant experience.As part of the Trial it could have been a positive examination of The Doctor's actions on the whole, but instead it became so much more focussed on a fusion between a monster horror and a cheesy who-dunnit. An abject failure.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: The Trial ends as the Master returns to form a triumvate of definite articles.

Review: Doctor Who Classic: Mindwarp

The Doctor and Peri arrive on Thoros Alpha

"Ok. Today prudence shall be out watchword; tomorrow we will soak the land in blood."

The second adventure in Season 23 doesn't exactly live yp to its predecessor. Despite bringing back a fun villain from an earlier serial and bringing in Brian Blessed of all people, the script's characterisations of many characters, especially the Doctor, is off-putting. However, this also a serial that uses the Unrealiable Narrator trope - something Doctor Who never done before - and that perhaps puts the episode into perspective. Regardless, cover your eardrums and prepare the sickbags as I venture into Mindwarp.
     The Valeyeard introduces the escapade that the Doctor was in prior to the previous serial, presenting it as "The Present". The Doctor and Peri arrive on Throros Beta, a weapons manufacturing planet. Throughout the inital introduction to the scenario the Valeyard keeps interupting it to point out really unimportant things as a case for the prosecution, and it kills the sense of wonderment dead. The pair venture into some caves and are attacked by a plastic suit, who they accidentally kill, and they're then arrested by the guards who rule the caves. Trying to escape from the guards, The Doctor and Peri inevitably make their way towards the laboratory of Mentor Sil. Sil, played by Neil Shaban, was the villain in the previous season's Vengeance on Varos (which I'll be reviewing in November) and here his costume is a lot more convincing. The first episode ends with The Doctor being stuck into one of the machines that Sil's scientist, Crozier, uses to "pacify" business partners.
     And here's where the serial gets weird. Mindwarp, for the first time in Who, uses the Unreliable narrator technique, and thus everything we see after this point is being manipulated in some way by The Valeyard. This provides food for thought, but it certainly doesn't make watching the core episodes any more bearable. As part of this, Colin Baker is forced to play the Sixth Doctor as a selfish, traitorous megalomaniac. I think one of the cleverest things about this issue is that with the public (and private) animosity towards the character at the time, the viewers were incredibly likely to accept that this was who Colin's Doctor was, and thus the idea of manipulation would be more of a shock.

"What is... love?"

      Luckily, The Doctor is saved from braindeath by a previous patient, the barbarian warlord Yrcanos (BRIAN BLESSED), who then escapes. The Doctor, however, betrays them and the other two are left to escape into the tunnels. As The Doctor helps Crozier with his experiments, Yrcanos and Peri run into his former squire, Dorf, who through Crozier had been cursed with Lycanthropy. Crozier, meanwhile, is working on Sil's orders to help save his superior Lord Kiv (long-time Doctor Who monster actor Christopher Ryan, who played some Sontarans in Series Four), whose expanding brain was threatening him with death.
      The Doctor manages to capture Peri, and just as it appears that his betrayel has been a ploy of some kind (as the Trial!Doc suggests) The Doctor reaffirms to Peri his selfish motives. Trial!Doc works out that the situation is being manipulated, but both The Inquisitor and The Valeyard insist that The Matrix cannot lie. As I say, to me this made the manipulation all the more obvious when I first watched it, but Colin one of my favourite Doctors. On original broadcast I suppose it was much more likely for us to perhaps believe the Valeyard in this case.

Fishy business

      We go into cliffhanger with Yrcanos preparing to kill The Doctor, but Peri saves him, insisting that he wasn't always that way. Here the episode splits into two unbalanced subplots; The Doctor watches over as Crozier transfers Kiv's brain into a different body temporily and Yrcanos, Peri and Dorf wander through the tunnels trying to build the resistance movement from Thoros Alpha. Despite how comparatively little happens in that latter subplot, the characterisations are just so enjoyable that they more than make up for it. In fact, the storyline for The Doctor feels very much like padding which, while mildly entertaining, contributes little to the story. The Cliffhanger sees one of the guards appear to kill Peri.
      The last episode feels rather like an enigma, as The Doctor's personality reasserts itself. At the Trial, The Valeyard admits that Peri was only stunned - another hint towards his manipulation of the evidence. The Doctor springs out Yrcanos from his prison, and stirs up the Alphan resistance once again. But alas, all is too late - he is removed from Time by the Trial and Peri is used as Kiv's next host. The Time Lords reveal that because of The Doctor's (supposed) manipulation, Crozier had changed the rules of Life and thus they manipulated events to stop it. Yrcanos kills everyone and the episode ends on the Trial!Doc's slightly tearful, slightly angry proclamation that he will see justice done.
      Mindwarp is stuffed full of good and bad performances. Sil is played wonderfully by Nabil Shaban but unlike in his original story he doesn't get much to do besides padding. Brian Blessed is over the top, as usual, but also strangely sentimental and despite his penchent for death is far more easy to support than this episode's interpretation of The Doctor in the core episode. And again, it worked at the time. What better way to disprove the interpretation of this Doctor's selfishness by letting the audience believe that they're right and then proving them wrong? I'd also just like to mention Peri's death, which is perhaps one of the worst handled final companion moments in the show's history. The villains were eventually pointless, and the story's only survivors are The Doctor and Yrcanos, so any of that fun character developmentis rendered worthless.

Bye bye, Peri.

      I like Mindwarp for its undertones rather than what's overtly on the screen. On its own it's a confusinly jumbled serial which lags in the middle and commits characterisation suicide, but with the Trial underlaying it the serial becomes a deep examination of our main lead and his public persona. It's a shame that so many good performanmces and performers went to waste, but the episode is an entertaining watch if you've seen the whole Trial and know all of what's to come.

Thanks.

NEXT TIME: Mutated Petunias and misshaped human sexual organs in Terror of the Vervoids.

Review: Doctor Who Classic: The Mysterious Planet

Drathro and the Twins

Doctor Who, Season 23, Story One - The Mysterious Planet

Michael Grade didn't like Doctor Who. He really, really didnt like it. After several complaints about Colin Baker's tenure on the show in 1985, Grade put the show on an 18 month hiatus and the production team had to come up with something to keep the show alive. In keeping with the public mood surrounding the show at the time, JNT decided to have an entire season of interlinked stories where The Doctor would be put on trial for the crimes that he had committed. Composed of four single stories with the plotline running through them, the 14-part Trial of a Timelord arc is a strange period in the show's history.
     The first story, written by verteran writer Robert Holmes, introduces the main Trial storyline. The Doctor, taken away from Peri, has been called here to face trial by a mysterious figure called the Valeyard, who acts as the prosecution and uses video evidence from The Matrix (from the previous Gallifrey stories) to claim that The Doctor is guilty of various crimes ranging from interferance to Genocide. He's played interestingly by the former Emmerdale actor, Michael Jayston, and for this serial at least the Trial aren't annoying yet.
     The "video evidence" in this serial is taken from The Doctor's past - an adventure from after Revelation of the Daleks but before Season 23. Peri and The Doctor arrive on the planet Ravalox, which the Doctor is visiting because it's eerily similar to Earth and, despite the Gallifreyan database's claims, is teeming with life. The Doctor and Peri are notably more friendly to one another here, another part of the show's attempt to regain viewers. Watching them are two weapons traders, Glitz and Dibber. I love Glitz; he's easily one of the best supporting characters in the Eighties. They're here to scavenge a robot called the L3, which has taken control of an underground city run by human slaves. They need to take down a Light Converter, which is being used by a local tribe (led by Joan Sims) as a totem pole. The Doctor and Peri discover the underground tunnels - the entrance appears to be the entrance to the London Underground. This disturbs The Doctor, and he intends to find out why Earth has been so changed.

The Valeyard (Michael Jayston)

     He heads underground while Peri is intercepted by the tribespeople. Joan Sims locks up Glitz and Dibber together with her. The Doctor is arrested as a "water theif" but is eventually saved and goes to see the L3, who calls himself "The Immortal". Glitz reveals that he's here for Time Lord knowledge being kept here. The L3, called Drathro, forces The Doctor to work on his power system. He manages to escape and is followed by Drathro's L1 robot. Along the way he finds the leader of the L3's guards, Merdeen, who has been secretly escorting people to the surface. He meets up with Glitz and Dibber, but they find themselves trapped by tribesmen on one side and the L1 on the other. The L1 is disabled temporarily but they're taken to the tribe and locked up. The L1 breaks in, disabling The Doctor and allowing the others to escape. The tribe luckily destroys the L1, but they believe that this is the Immortal and thus go storming into the underground. The Doctor and Peri follow, but are collared by Merdeen who shoots them into a cliffhanger. Turns out he was shooting another guy, who had tried to rat him out to The Immortal. The tribe discover the L3 and he kills Joan Sims.
     The Doctor goes in and faces the L3. They have an interesting conversation about what makes organic life more important than mechanical life. Glitz and Dibber accompany Peri through a hatch into the chamber, but they're trapped there by the L3. As Peri and The Doctor are tied up, Glitz bluffs his way into getting the information by claiming that they can save him; they kill him and The Doctor finally stops his machine from exploding. Everyone lives happily ever after, and The Valeyard moves onto the next stage of the trial.
     I like The Mysterious Planet more than common sense says I should. It's shoddy, the villain's design is ridiculous and the acting is melodramatic and over the top. But because of Joan Sims and the way that Glitz' joke-a-sec personality takes over, it has a feeling very similar to a Carry-On film. Robert Holmes, as we'll see when I look at The Caves of Androzani, is excellent at characterisation and satire, and that's why these two side-characters are in ways better than the main characters. Colin's wit and exuberance comes off much better here than in other areas and thus the character is more empathizable; Peri too, although she's a little absent in what would become her penultimate story. I'll comment more upon the Valeyard at the end of the Trial, but I will admit that the strong performance soon does become tedious by the third episode of the story. However, it does produce some of the season's best lines and monologues, and the best one in this serial is the one in Episode Four in which The Doctor claims that The Valeyard should, based on the tired decadence of his arguments, change his name to The Knackers' Yard.

The Time Lord is on Trial.

    The Trial dynamic is interesting in this serial, despite how tiring it gets later on. Unlike previous arcs, where it was either a string of serials following on from one another or completely different serials connected by a common theme, this instead tries to do both. Here, at least, it's successful - the trial scenes enhance the story rather than slow it down. Some scenes are in fact censored the Valeyard, and this makes the core concepts that bit more intriguing.
     The Mysterious Planet is a great start for the Trial of a Timelord Arc, with satirical side-characters and a comedy aesthetic that I love. The villain is a little shoddy, perhaps, and overall the ideas are not that innovative or interesting, but the key arc behind it all more than makes up for it. I love the core story and I love the rambles on Ravalox, where character is king.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: Brian Blessed, A character I've met but you haven't and another craaazy scientist.