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.
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