Serial 146: The Ultimate Foe - The Trial of a Time Lord Part IV

Doctor: Colin Baker (6th Doctor)
Companion: Mel

Written by: Robert Holmes & Pip and Jane Baker
Directed by: Chris Clough

Background & Significance: If you count The Trial of a Time Lord as one giant serial of fourteen parts and disregard the four-story structure of it, Trial of a Time Lord is the longest Doctor Who story of all time and this last two parter is the thing that puts it over the edge.

I don't want to talk too much about the actual dynamics behind this story here because they work a little bit better as we get into it, but I can't really talk about the finale of this epicness without going into the gritty details of the behind-the-scenes, which I find terribly fascinating.

So as we mentioned back in "The Mysterious Planet", Trial of a Time Lord was the last thing Robert Holmes ever worked on. The first episode of these final two parts is the last thing Robert Holmes ever completed, and it is a MASTERPIECE. Seriously, I think it's one of my favourite single episodes of Doctor Who of all time. It's dark, elegant, creepy, and amazingly Holmesian in the best of ways. And it's as good as anything we've seen him do so far if you ask me.

Unfortunately, Holmes got incredibly sick and passed away before he could get past more than a rough outline of episode two, meaning Holmes's climactic part two is lost to us forever and we'll never get it back.

For long-time script editor Eric Saward, Holmes's death was the last straw he could take under Jonathan Nathan-Turner. He quit Doctor Who after editing "Mindwarp", but offered to write the final episode based on Holmes's original outline on the condition Nathan-Turner not make him to change anything from Holmes's original outline, which included the planned cliffhanger ending where The Doctor and The Valeyard grappled with each other and over a Time Vent and fell in. The vent closed behind them and the story ended with the fate of The Doctor left up in the air.

So Saward wrote the script and turned it in and then production on the end of Trial started. Locations were scouted, sets were built, actors entered rehearsals...

Then Nathan-Turner, for some reason, decided that the ending was too much of a downer and asked Saward to change the ending. And really, JNT. Why did you do this? You know how much Saward isn't messing around, you had agreed to the ending with enthusiasm, and everything is going good. What did you THINK would happen? Spoilers! Saward told you!

But no. Nathan-Turner did it anyways, and Saward got pissed, walked off the show for a second time, took the copyrighted script and outline with him, and refused to let Nathan-Turner use either for the final product.

So now, they're about to enter production and they have neither script nor outline on the last episode. All they have is list of locations and actors. THAT'S IT. I can't even imagine that day for JNT. Musta been awful.

With no other options, JNT (who couldn't even give the new writers any details about the original part two because of Saward's copyright) turned to Pip and Jane Baker, gave them a list of sets and locations, and asked them to write the episode. He could give them part one because it was done and turned in, but all of part two had to be their own extrapolation.

They turned around a draft in three days.

Now, after all this, did they pull it off? I mean, at this point, you gotta know if they did or not, right? You just gotta know...

So let's get to it!

Serial 145: Terror of the Vervoids - The Trial of a Time Lord Part III

Doctor: Colin Baker (6th Doctor)
Companion: Melanie Bush

Written by: Pip and Jane Baker
Directed by: Chris Clough

Background & Significance: Oh god, Pip and Jane.

That was my first thought upon finding out who happened to write this third segment of "Trial of a Time Lord", especially since the last Doctor Who encounter with them turned out to be less than satisfactory. Apparently Script Editor Saward thought so too, because he wasn't exactly keen on working with this team again, but due to a bunch of delays and unsuitable scripts to constitute the second to last segment of the Trial, they really had no choice--apparently these two churned out work like nobody's business, which is important for a TV show with a rapidly approaching production deadline.

But also important for a TV show is not only the speed with which the work gets turned in, but the quality... Which, all things considered, turned out to be surprisingly good with this serial. But I'll get into that in a bit.

Also notable is the first appearance of Melanie "Mel" Bush, the Doctor's new companion. Created by JNT and portrayed by Bonnie Langford (a well-known actress and musical theater star), she's always had something of a bad rep among fans, but I think she'll surprise you in this.

Unfortunately for the behind the scenes aspect of the show in production at the time, the character as well as the actress chosen to portray her further deepened the rift between producer and script editor, finally culminating in Saward's departure from the show. (But he's kind of an asshole anyway, so his loss.)

Enough about that, though. Let's take a closer look, shall we?

Serial 144: Mindwarp - The Trial of a Time Lord Part II

Doctor: Colin Baker (6th Doctor)
Companion: Peri Brown

Written by: Phillip Martin
Directed by: Chris Clough

Background & Significance: "Mindwarp" is a bit of a hard thing to talk about. Thinking about it now, it's hard for me to elucidate on all the things I have to think about without going too much into them. Maybe that's because I've changed my mind on what, exactly, I think about it since my initial viewing.

The first time I watched Mindwarp, I checked out mentally halfway through episode one when we have the re-appearance of "supposedly fan-favourite" alien Sil. Really, once you add him, the story becomes something I'm not interested in. Sil, whom you might remember from the insanely controversial "Vengeance on Varos" back in the infamous Season 22 (Colin Baker's premiere season), was a little annoying slithering alien who laughed and was "funny" and gross and... yeah. I've decided that I don't like weird alien slugs. Just don't like them. I can think of ONE time when they were used well in Doctor Who, and even then, I didn't have to look at them.

"Mindwarp" is written by "Varos" writer Phillip Martin, who was asked to contribute a story to Colin Baker's second season to bring back Sil as a returning villain (because of the popularity?) for what would have been Colin Baker's second season had the hiatus and Trial not happened, but when that season was scrapped in the face of Trial of a Time Lord, that planned story got dead. But apparently Sil was so popular they brought Martin back in for Trial with the explicit request to bring Sil back.

Martin, I find, is interested in wholly different things than I'm interested in. By my count he's done only three Doctor Who stories (the third being a Big Finish audio called "Creed of the Kromon") and all three seem to share similar qualities and interests as they relate to Martin. Unfortunately, I can't say I tend to agree with them. All three stories share forced genetic mutation (and all three to a female companion no less), suffer from stories that feel overly long, weak dialogue, and weird alien characters who are obsessed with money and capitalism.

That was my problem with this in the initial. Now, it's not so much, but there's... a reason for that. Which I will explain as we go through it.


This serial is also significant for being the final work Eric Saward contributed to the series. After this story, he quit due to "creative differences" and "hatred of JNT" and Robert Holmes's recent illness which would prove to be fatal in just a short time. The interesting thing is that most people tend to look at this era and blame JNT and while I don't think JNT is without blame... But man. I don't think that's the case.

Know how I know? Eric Saward showed his hand here. And we're going to talk about it. I recently finished watching all of Colin Baker's run in its entirety earlier this month, and I've come to a "Wow you messed up things" place when it comes to him. We'll talk about it a LOT more next year as we talk about him in the rest of Colin Baker's run, but really. In a lot of ways, this is his swansong and before reading this, I would like to remind you who it is we're dealing with. Check out his infamous post-departure interview he gave. That is Saward.

And oh boy do I just want to talk about him a bit.

If "The Mysterious Planet" explored a story from The Doctor's past, "Mindwarp" explores a story from The Doctor's immediate[ish] present. So let's... yeah. Let's go through this story. It's a doozy and a long one, but I think it gives rise to some solid discussion. Hope you like it.

So let's get to it!

Serial 143: The Mysterious Planet - The Trial of a Time Lord Part I

Doctor: Colin Baker (6th Doctor)
Companion: Peri Brown

Written by: Robert Holmes
Directed by: Nicholas Mallett

Background & Significance: I like ending things with a nice flourish. There's nothing so wrong with some cool events. This past summer it was The Key to Time. For the holiday break, we get to talk about another significant event-story in Doctor Who history. So for the next two weeks (that's two posts a week for y'all. Happy Winter indeed) we're going to talk about a highly debated and strangely controversial Doctor Who story: The Trial of a Time Lord. But first! A little background:

At the end of Colin Baker’s controversial first season, BBC head honcho guy Michael Grade leveled his sights at Doctor Who and took the first shot he could at a show that had fallen considerably in the ratings in the previous several years. He thought the show was silly and stupid and started talking about cancelling it.

The start of this, we’ll talk about more when we get to Colin Baker’s first story “The Twin Dilemma” sometime later next year, but after a full season of odd choices including making The Doctor wantonly unlikeable (which I find a plus because it’s a bold, bold move), moving the tone into a noticeably darker and more-typical-of-the-80s sadistic nihilism (see "Vengeance on Varos" and others), and changing the format into something no one knew how to handle, it’s not hard to see why people started jumping ship. The show had gotten weak and weird and strange and was a far cry (in the span of a season, no less) from the rollicking adventures of Peter Davison just a year earlier and Tom Baker just a few before that.

As such, Grade threatened cancellation and producer Jonathan Nathan-Turner took to the streets to drum up support for Doctor Who. You can’t cancel the thing. It’s been on the air for twenty two years. It’d be like cancelling a long running soap opera and staple of British TV. Fortunately, somehow, Nathan-Turner managed to stay the cancellation with a lot of help from the fans and turn it into an eighteen month hiatus.

It was a hiatus from which the show would never recover.

Now I'll be honest with you right up front. I think the concept for Trial is a bit melodramatic. The entire concept of the The Doctor on Trial comes directly from the current state of the show at the BBC because, in the mind of still-producer Jonathan Nathan-Turner, Doctor Who really was on trial. As such, I really do think it's a bit of a melodramatic concept to insert into the show. "Oh woe is us! Behold The Doctor's slow fall back to Earth as the once great show slowly falls from the graces of everyone" JNT cries, completely ignoring all the little things he did to help the show reach this point over the course of Colin Baker's run to this point (some of which we've touched upon earlier in this year, the rest of which we'll end up discussing in the coming one).

That said? Putting The Doctor on trial is a really awesome idea. As a concept, The Trial of a Time Lord has captured my imagination for quite a long time. Once I became aware of the classic series and started flipping through the collections in my local Best Buy, I remember seeing the boxsets for Trial and being completely obsessed with the concept of putting The Doctor on Trial for an entire season. And by The Time Lords no less. All of that was positively enthralling to me, but maybe that's because I love courtroom drama and never found it in my interest to avidly watch Law & Order.

But enough about my hang ups. What about the story itself?

Trial of a Time Lord is an interesting story to talk about. For one thing, it marks the dissolution of Nathan-Turner's since-first-season-of-Davison partnership with his script editor Eric Saward. It's also the swansong for the derided and notoriously unpopular Colin Baker. And it's also the last thing Robert Holmes ever worked on.

Now I know we've spent a lot of time here loving on the late great Robert Holmes (and there's plenty more opportunities to come), but it's interesting that this serial is not only the last thing Holmes ever completed for Doctor Who, but the last two episodes of Trial was the last thing Holmes ever worked on before his death. As such, it's a definite crux of the classic series if you ask me. After this, there would be a new Doctor, a new script editor, and one of the shining beacons of Doctor Who would be gone forever. Trial is the start of a four-year road to Doctor Who's inevitable cancellation in 1989 and represents a significant turning point for what was once a gem in the BBC's crown as, by this point, the show had become almost universally criticized and reviled.

Trial became everyone's attempt to re-capture the hearts and minds of every Doctor Who fan out there. Everyone on board needed to make a concerted effort to turn out the best show they possibly could. But could they really win over everyone? After an entire season of showing off a Doctor no one really enjoyed on some weird, dark, nightmarish perversion of such a beloved show, was it possible to turn the ship around and return Doctor Who to its glory days?

The simple answer? No. But I think that's... well... We'll talk about that as we go on because it's definitely important and meriting of discussion.

The story itself is split into four acts and based on the structure of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol", with acts one, two, and three, relating stories from The Doctor's past, present, and future (respectively) and the final, fourth act functioning as an epilogue to wrap up The Doctor's current situation, the Trial, and what exactly is going on with the mysterious Time Lord prosecutor: The Valeyard.

All of that we'll cover as we look at this story extensively over the next two weeks, but for now, let's just relish in what we have and celebrate two truly remarkable elements of greatness lost as a result of this Trial storyline: Colin Baker and Robert Holmes.

So let's get to it!