What's Wrong With... The Ultimate Foe

Trial of a Time Lord limps to its conclusion, and we have already covered some of the problems with this season-long single story, such as the bizarre vagaries of the Time Lord judicial system.

One thing we have to bear in mind is that the Vervoid story hasn't actually happened yet. The Doctor hasn't met Mel at this point in his own timeline, and what we saw for the last four weeks was simply a look into his future. Which begs the question of what he will actually do when he finally gets that call for help from Special Investigator Hallett?

Do the Time Lords wipe his memory of those events before he goes free after this is all over? There's no suggestion that they do anything of the sort. He simply departs the space station with Mel.

Everyone now knows that he is going to commit genocide at some point in the future, so is that addressed? Unless the Valeyard really messed about with the last bit of evidence then the Doctor showed no sign of remembering having seen these events unfold before. Is he just a very good actor, or does his memory get wiped?

If he does recall those events, will he feel obliged to allow everything to run its course, or will he attempt to handle things differently to avoid genocide - even if that means changing his own timeline and those of everyone on the Hyperion III?

Look at any typical court case and you'll probably find witnesses involved. So far none have been called for the Doctor's case, by either side. It finally gets mentioned here, but the Doctor moans that anyone who might be able to help him is scattered throughout time and space. But these are Time Lords, who can visit any point in time and space they choose - so picking up witnesses should be the simplest of tasks.

We can understand why the Master selected Glitz to be brought to the station, as he had evidence of the High Council's involvement with Ravolox and the thefts from the Matrix, but why bring Mel whom the Doctor only knows through watching an (unreliable) future adventure?

The biggest problem with this pair of episodes is the Matrix. It's an artificial environment which can be manipulated by whoever controls it. In this case, that's the Valeyard.

At one point the Doctor ties him up. But that's Matrix wire he's using. The Valeyard should simply be able to think himself free. Same for everything that happens here, yet he fails to kill the Doctor or Glitz.

Maybe it is the fault of the troubled circumstances under which these episodes were written but there is no consistency regarding the rules of how the Matrix works. One minute it's not real so you can't be harmed, and the next you can be.

If it's an artificial environment fashioned by the Valeyard, how did the Master manage to park his TARDIS inside? It's a physical object, which the creator of the domain must surely have noticed.

The Matrix is said to have seven doors, but the Keeper claims that there is only one key. Does that key then open all seven doors - a bit of a security risk if they left it on the bus. If each door has its own key, then what's the Keeper talking about? Does each door have its own Keeper, and this one only looks after the one on the space station?

Was the Keeper a disguised Valeyard all the time, or did he simply bump him off and take his outfit only after escaping from the Matrix?

The Valeyard, posing for no real reason whatsoever as the Dickensian Popplewick figure, tries to get the Doctor to sign away his remaining lives. The Doctor agrees to do this, on the basis that the Valeyard could kill him anytime anyway. So why doesn't the Valeyard do this? Why only here and now is he able, or willing, to destroy the Doctor and thus gain an existence of his own?

What has giving consent got to do with the process?

The separate business of assassinating another bunch of Time Lords, who all just happen to be gathered to watch this trial, isn't very well set up. It's suddenly added late in the final episode.

If you've got everyone you want to kill assembled in one place, in deep space, isn't it easier to simply sabotage the space station? Let all the air out or blow it up.

The least said about a Megabyte Modem being a devastating weapon, the better... The only thing scary about those was the time it took to download videos.

The Valeyard unleashes a Particle Disseminator onto the court. If this really does what the name implies, then you shouldn't be able to avoid its effects by simply ducking under your chair. Interesting how all the Chancellery Guards leg it from the courtroom, leaving their superiors to fend for themselves. The weapon not only fails to harm anyone in the courtroom, but it doesn't even damage the furniture.

And earlier, did the Valeyard really have to stress the word "disseminate" so obviously when talking to the Doctor - giving away his whole plan?

More Pip & Jane unrealistic dialogue on show, especially things like the Valeyard's "catharsis of spurious morality".

Mel states that Gallifrey doesn't have any Crown Jewels. How would she know? And surely the well known relics of Rassilon - his Coronet, Sash, Rod and Key - constitute a "crown jewels" of sorts.

Once the Valeyard's scheme has been defeated, the Inquisitor simply shrugs her shoulders as though nothing really serious has occurred - even though we've just heard that there's civil strife on Gallifrey. She suggests that the Doctor run for President again - despite now knowing that he's not only capable of genocide but will actually commit it in the near future.

And what has she said or done throughout these entire proceedings to make the Doctor think that she might be the best person for the job? She was all for the assassination plot to take out Crozier for one thing.

The fact that Peri is still alive and married to Yrcanos is a massive cop-out on the ending to Mindwarp.

Bearing in mind once again that Mel will only become his companion at some later date, why doesn't the Doctor simply go and collect Peri now that he knows she's still alive? Does she actually want to be stuck on a barbaric planet with Brian Blessed?

And just what did actually happen at the conclusion of Mindwarp, if she's still alive and not a repository for Kiv's mind? (Or is it actually Kiv whom Yrcanos married...?).

Not a problem at the time, but hindsight certainly hasn't been kind to this story. 

The "gap" between incarnations during which the Valeyard was said to come into being came and went without anyone even noticing it, when Steven Moffat decided to have the Doctor's life-span come to an end on Trenzalore at Christmas 2013. Then Chris Chibnall decided that the Doctor wasn't an actual Time Lord at all, and had lots of incarnations before the grumpy old bloke in Totter's Lane - so the Valeyard should really have come from a point in the Doctor's distant past, and not his future. 

(One way round this is to accept that there is a potential for a Valeyard-type figure for any Time Lord towards the end of their normal 12 regenerations cycle. Perhaps the Borusa of The Five Doctors was actually his "Valeyard", who had bumped off the nice but doddery Arc of Infinity one and usurped his role as President. Left with only a single aged life after finally achieving his own existence, he would certainly want to become immortal).

A lot of unanswered questions, but we should just mention those troubled circumstances under which this story came into being. The Ultimate Foe is a bit like the Valeyard himself actually, falling between the incarnation started by Robert Holmes and completed by Eric Saward, and the incarnation devised by Pip & Jane Baker after Holmes passed away and Saward then fell out with JNT and quit.

Unlike the Valeyard, this story actually succeeded in bumping off the Doctor, as Colin Baker got the chop very soon after...

What's Wrong With... Terror of the Vervoids

It's one of the few whodunnits I know where you don't actually care who done it. Once the monsters start running amok you almost forget that there is supposed to be a murder mystery here.

By the time they get back to this plot thread, you've lost interest.

You can have monsters running around a spaceship, or you can have a killer hidden amongst aliens on a spaceship, but it takes a very careful balancing act to run both types of story simultaneously - and the Bakers (Pip & Jane) don't quite manage it.

The big problem here is, of course, the fact that this story takes place in the Doctor's own personal future - when he's being threatened with being put on trial for his life. Doesn't the fact that this particular epistopic interface from the spectrum show that the Doctor is going to get away with everything and be free to back to roaming the universe, meddling in the affairs of others - the very thing they've pulled him up on? 

Why was the Doctor allowed to see into his own future when permitted to select this evidence? Most people would prefer not to know their own future. What if you go to look and find that you get run over by a bus in half an hour?

Surely there were older adventures the Doctor could have selected that he would actually have remembered, which might have better illustrated his innocence. Why not show them The Three Doctors, or The Deadly Assassin, where he actually saves Gallifrey pretty much single-handedly. That would shut them up.

How do you send a message to a time machine, when you aren't a time traveller yourself? How can the investigator, Hallett, possibly know that the Doctor is in the vicinity in this particular time zone?

He's another of those old friends who are popping up every five minutes these days whom we have never heard of.

After summoning the Doctor, Hallett then denies that's who he is in such a manner as to make everyone suspicious of him. He might as well wear a "murder me because I am out to get you" T-shirt.

After posing as a man named Grenville, he then disguises himself as a Mogarian. How come the other Mogarians don't spot he's an imposter amongst them?

If Hallett's so good, why did he make the schoolboy error of not switching on his translator in the lounge?

He is killed straight after this, so how did the killer manage to spot this faux pas and then administer poison in a busy area in so short a time?

The Mogarians die at the slightest splash of water, yet we see them drinking tea and they are on their way to Earth, which has an awful lot of rain in most areas. Their protective suits aren't terribly efficient, are they?

Presumably their rooms are en suite - which is like you or I being given a room with a lethal booby-trap on the other side of the door.

The Doctor is soon being brought before Commodore Travers - yet another of these old acquaintances. The Bakers were notorious for their cliched dialogue, and Travers' "... I found myself involved in a web of mayhem and intrigue" is a choice example. No-one talks like that, outside a 1950's B-movie - or a Pip & Jane script.

There's more ripe dialogue such as Mel's "You've got a killer on board!" when Travers asks how three people have come to be murdered. Well, duh?

Or how about his "... in my mind that's murder" after describing someone being pulverised and sent floating into space.

And what was Edwardes going to say to Mel before he was so rudely electrocuted? "We don't want you breaking your neck. At least not until - ". Until what???

The spaceship seems to be rather empty for a luxury liner - so there aren't all that many suspects for the murder mystery element.

Is it common for luxury liners to have holds full of volatile minerals and quarantined passengers with deadly contagions? No wonder it's looking so empty.

It's 2986, and they are still using tape cassettes in the liner's gymnasium.

The bridge of the Hyperion III is said to be hijack proof - yet someone is able to walk in with a gun and hijack it...

"Demeter" doesn't mean "food of the gods". It's the name of a goddess.

Onto the Vervoids now, and why would you genetically engineer a slave race which comes equipped with poisonous spines and toxic gas?

Why give them the power of speech and this level of intelligence if they're only supposed to be slaves? One of them knows how a shower works within hours of them emerging from their pods.

If this evidence was selected by the Doctor just before the next stage of the trial began, how did the Valeyard have time to tamper with it? He edits in a sequence of the Doctor sabotaging the radio equipment, which doesn't seem very relevant anyway, but leaves in Travers specifically asking for the Doctor's help - when he's trying to prove to the court that the Doctor always interferes uninvited.

Finally, the Doctor gets accused of genocide. He selected this evidence out of all the other possible things he could have picked, and on hearing Article 7 mentioned he knows exactly what it means. Why pick evidence which will let everyone see him committing such a serious offence?

Considering that the Doctor's defence appears to simply be "I get better in the future", this was a very stupid choice.

What's Wrong With... Mindwarp

One of the problems with this story is the one which Colin Baker often mentions in interviews - namely what is going on with the Doctor when he acts in a hostile manner towards Peri and sucks up to the Mentors? Having asked the usual "What's my motivation in this scene" question of director Ron Jones, he was told to ask the script editor. When he asked Eric Saward for an answer, he was then asked to speak to the writer - who referred him back to Saward. There are three possibilities as to what is going on:

1. The Matrix is lying and has been tampered with,

2. The Doctor is only pretending to be nasty in order to curry favour with the Mentors so that he can undermine them,

3. His brain has been frazzled by Crozier's equipment.

Left with no answer from anyone else, Baker opted to play it as No.3.

We, the audience, are left asking the same question as Baker - why is he acting like this? He made up his own answer, but it's never explained to us what's happened.

Once again we have to question the Gallifreyan legal system. As mentioned last time, they seem to be able to make it up as they go along, so that an investigative tribunal can suddenly become a trial. The Doctor was brought here because of his continued meddling / interference in the affairs of others - but suddenly they bring up the fact that Crozier's experiments could change everything across the entire universe - and they appear to be blaming him for this. 

If they knew about Crozier's work, why not put a stop to it themselves? If they used the Doctor as an unwitting pawn once again, then they sent him to Thoros Beta in the first place - so they can hardly accuse him of interfering in this instance.

In fact, rather than allow the Doctor to put a stop to the scientist's work, they actually pull him out of the situation and opt for a less than subtle assassination, involving the deaths of bystanders.

The Valeyard accuses the Doctor of abandoning Peri - when it was the court which dragged him away and prevented him rescuing her.

The process which takes the Doctor out of time results in short-term memory loss - so is it really fair to put someone through a legal process which involves answering lots of questions about recent events when they know their memory of these is impaired?

The Inquisitor is supposed to be impartial, but she suddenly announces that she knew all about Crozier, the assassination and Peri's death all along.

The stupid thing is that we'll later discover that none of this part of the story happened anyway. Just where does the story actually end, and what's Matrix manipulation?

(How can the Time Lords even know what happened once the TARDIS leaves, as that's what's supposed to be providing the pictures?).

It's not just the Gallifreyan legal system that varies from minute to minute. Crozier is supposed to be a brilliant brain surgeon, but next thing he's able to transfer the contents of the mind into a new brain - which I would have thought must be an entirely different medical discipline.

Can't be many surgeons who allow food and drink - or exposed brains - in their supposedly sterile laboratory.

The idea that someone can transfer their mind into another body is hardly universe-shattering stuff. A giant slug was able to do it in Baker's very first story, and we've seen lots of instances of possession over the years - certainly since the Hinchcliffe-Holmes days.

Talking of mind transference, Sil seems to have undergone a personality transplant. He's quite a different character in this from when we first met him on Varos. He looks different as well - smaller cranium and he's changed colour.

And what were the chances of finding a dead marine Mentor who is the spitting image of Lord Kiv?

A few other questions: why does the Doctor leave the TARDIS door open when the ship has landed in the middle of the sea?

Why are there never any guards at the big metal door to Crozier's laboratory, despite the importance of what is going on and who is in there?

Why does Frax think that the Lukoser will kill the Doctor and Peri when (a) it's chained to a wall leaving room to get past, and (b) is quite a nice bloke really? Has he killed others? Just how many prisoners manage to escape from Frax's guards and get along that tunnel?

If Crozier is employed principally to save Kiv through brain transplantation - and there's urgency to do so, at the cost of his own life - why is he messing about making wolfmen, pacifying warlords and aging rebels?

What's Wrong With... The Mysterious Planet

For the purposes of this thread I'll be looking at the four sections of Trial of a Time Lord individually, even though it's supposed to be one long story. Except when it isn't.

One thing very wrong with these four episodes is that they make up the last complete storyline written by the much missed Robert Holmes, and sadly it is one of his weaker ones.

The Caves of Androzani had been a reworking of one of his less successful earlier works - The Power of Kroll - and it proved to be far superior. The Mysterious Planet also reworks elements of a less successful earlier work - The Krotons - but lightning doesn't strike twice and it is far from being a classic.

It's also upsetting to learn that Holmes was ordered by Jonathan Powell to go back and redo a lot of the story, despite it having already been accepted by JNT and Eric Saward - leaving him feeling he was being treated like a first-timer instead of a seasoned script writer / editor.

Onto the story itself, and the most obvious problem is the choice of evidence selected by the Valeyard to open the trial. The whole Ravalox affair is meant to be kept ultra-secret - so why select this to screen in the first place. It surely draws the Time Lord court's attention to something which they aren't supposed to know anything about.

And we can clearly see that the Doctor has intervened very little in the affairs of the planet, compared to some of his previous adventures. In Frontios he actually asks the colonists not to so much as even mention that he's been there, for instance. 

He stumbles into these events purely because he's intrigued by the planet and is forced to later intervene to save half the galaxy being blown up through the actions of Glitz and Dibber, over whom he had no control - so hardly his fault.

A small amount of dialogue gets bleeped out, but anyone who can lipread would surely be able to see what's being talked about. Why not simply delete that section of evidence altogether, rather than draw attention to it? The Valeyard leaves in the bit about "...the biggest net of information in the Universe". Wouldn't the Time Lord court be thinking that sounds just like their Matrix round about now?

The Valeyard claims that lives were lost, but the body count here is very small, and again outwith the Doctor's control. Merdeen would probably have had to kill Grell whatever happened as he threatened to shop him to Drathro, and the Doctor would have tried to prevent Katryca and Brokentooth from entering Marb Station had he had the chance.

The Doctor visits Earth on a regular basis, so how did he not spot that his favourite planet was not where it was supposed to be for however long it's been Ravalox? We're talking millions of years.

Glitz tells Dibber to keep his gun out of sight when they approach the village - but then pulls his own weapon on Katryca in the middle of her throne room when he's surrounded by her warriors.

It's stated that the tribe have had few women for a very long time. If that's the case, how has it been sustaining itself all this time? (And what do they eat?). Has Merdeen only been allowing men to escape to the surface, or does Marb Station also have a gender imbalance?

The Marb people treasure their water - yet leave it in the corridor where it could get stolen or spilled. Why not have it securely locked away if it's so precious?

Do they hide behind their doors all day on the off-chance that a stranger might wander in and take a sip?

And would Marble Arch Underground station really look just as it did in the 1980's after 2 million years? It's had two major refurbishments since the 1930's, the most recent of which was in 2010 - so the one we see here is already out of date.

Drathro uses a Black Light Converter, so these things must be fairly common back in Andromeda. Surely one of them must have broken down at some point in their history. Yet the Doctor claims no-one knows what will happen if one is destroyed and thinks it could destroy the universe. It's hard to watch this without thinking of Plan 9 From Outer Space.

The cutaways to the courtroom happen far too often and take you away from the story and, like the Inquisitor, we get fed up with the Doctor's feeble name-calling.

The two blond-haired blokes are annoying and aren't in the least bit funny.

Holmes does a David Whitaker and confuses a solar system with a constellation (a pattern of stars as seen from a specific location). For an entire constellation to move 2 light years means an awful lot of stars - which surely would have been difficult to conceal.

Why does the Doctor's tribunal take place on a space station and not simply on Gallifrey itself? Something we will revisit: what sort of judicial system do they have on Gallifrey where the participants can start making it up as they go along? How can a Prosecutor - a mere court official - possibly turn a tribunal into a trial, unilaterally?

In the very last scene the Doctor states that his presence on Ravalox was "most specifically requested". By whom? There's no evidence to support this at any point during the story. He simply turned up because he was puzzled by the similarities to Earth. Something lost in those rewrites?

And finally, a Canadian goose is simply a goose that lives in Canada. The specific breed of goose which you might see in the UK is a Canada Goose...