Get ready for some dimensionally transcendental meditation! Qualified hypnotherapist - and former TARDIS traveller - Nicola Bryant will be hosting a ‘Quantum Hypnosis’ session via Zoom on the evening of June 18th at 7pm.

Lie back and let Nicola - who played companion Peri opposite Colin Baker’s Doctor - help you to exchange stress for relaxation, as she takes you on a mental voyage to create resilience and a deep sense of peace. The session will last for approximately one hour. You will need somewhere quiet and relaxing where you can lie down to fully participate. 

Nicola is putting on this unique wellness event to raise money for ‘Dogs on the Street’ and ‘Chimney Farm Rescue’ - two charities close to her heart, dedicated to helping vulnerable canines and their owners. 

Tickets cost £10 and can be purchased from: https://www.outsavvy.com/event/4650/quantum-hypnotherapy-with-nicola-bryant-tickets

[Source: Richard Unwin]

Manufacturer: Big Finish Productions

Written By: Andrew Smith

RRP: £14.99 (CD) / £12.99 (Download)

Release Date: August 2019

Reviewed by: Nick Mellish for Doctor Who Online

"On the planet Omnia, a young man leads the Doctor and Peri through the battle-scarred ruins of a city. Among the rubble he shows them proof that their invaders and new masters, thought to be invincible, can be defeated. The proof is the blasted, burnt-out remains of a Dalek.

But this is a Dalek-occupied world like few others. For one thing, there are few Daleks to be seen. And for another, the Daleks have appointed an Omnian, Magister Carmen Rega, to govern the planet as their emissary.

Why are the Daleks not present in force? And can the Doctor and Peri risk helping the Omnians, when the least show of resistance will be met with devastating reprisals from space?"

There was a lot of buzz surrounding Emissary Of The Daleks, the latest play from Andrew Smith, when it was first announced. Rightly so, too, as the premise sounded very promising indeed: a world under Dalek rule which ticks along nicely, just so long as no-one rises up against them. As ideas go, it's a good one. Would you dare risk killing everyone if things are actually okay as-is?

There is a lot of potential there, with the Doctor and Peri in the role of possible antagonists. Do you risk it all just because they're Daleks, or accept the planet is fine right now with them in charge?

I was therefore excited to start this play, but that soon slipped into uncertainty and quickly into being unenthused. The trouble is, the premise is never really tapped into. Instead, we have a story we have seen a hundred times before. Daleks invade the planet; a well-meaning but ultimately flawed and foolish leader acts as human / Dalek liaison and does terrible things when trying to "do the right thing"; general population is terrified and live in fear and slavery; and the Doctor saves the day.

There was not one plot point or twist that I did not see coming at least two scenes earlier. Two of the cliffhangers involve screaming and what sounds like the death of the regulars… only they're fine. The character development and family relationships are as easy to guess as the plotting.

I really wanted to like this play, and there are definitely some good parts. I like the piece of Dalek mythology which Smith gives us, about how each Dalek sucker is as individual as a fingerprint. It ranks up with Trevor Baxendale's assertion in his novel Prisoner of the Daleks that Daleks could kill you quickly, they just choose to do it painfully, as good ideas that will be forever stuck in my mind as canonical now.

The story is something you've come across before, time and again, but the plot is at least free of holes, and whilst none of the characters made an impression, the cast have no weak links or performances on show.

Perhaps it's unfair to judge this play on what it is not, but what it is is so familiar as to be a bit dull. It may be told competently but I'm not sure you'd be able to call it exciting with any real sincerity.

As it stands, Emissary of the Daleks is by no means a disaster, but it's also entirely nonessential and overfamiliar to the brink of being boring. The buzz for the premise may be justified, but any for the execution is not.

+ Emissary Of The Daleks is OUT NOW, priced £14.99 (CD) / £12.99 (Download).

+ ORDER this title on Amazon!

Manufacturer: Big Finish Productions

Written By: Roland Moore

RRP: £14.99 (CD) / £12.99 (Download)

Release Date: July 2019

Reviewed by: Nick Mellish for Doctor Who Online

"What if you’d committed a truly dreadful crime but couldn’t remember?

The Doctor takes Peri to the Memory Farm – a state of the art space station where hidden memories can be harvested and analysed. To their surprise, they find the station in lock-down and all its resources dedicated to probing the memories of an elderly man. Garius Moro may, or may not, have been responsible for the deaths of billions of people many years ago, but he simply can’t remember.

The assembled representatives of two opposing factions, each with their own agenda, anxiously wait for the truth to be unlocked from Moro’s mind. But when a memory does eventually surface, everyone is surprised to learn that it is of Peri..."

Following on the heels of the Mags trilogy, we see the return of Peri to the main range after several years’ absence. Rather than follow up the plot threads left hanging from her last, post-Trial trilogy, we are instead treated to a story set earlier in her timeline, though at times it feels even earlier than that.

Roland Moore’s debut story for the Big Finish main range, Memories Of A Tyrant is a bit of an odd beast in that it’s a Sixth Doctor and Peri story that feels entirely geared towards it being a Third Doctor and Jo story, complete with a fight scene, references to The Curse of Peladon and The Green Death, central ethical dilemma, and an old friend of the Doctor who helped free wrongly convicted aliens. It gives the entire play a slightly unusual feel, being simultaneously true to the show but not really true to the era. I wonder if perhaps it started off with a different TARDIS team in mind, or if they just wanted to try something different? Either way, it can be a little jarring at times.

This air of incongruity aside, it also happens to be an unusual play for other reasons. Its central premise is interesting: Garius Moro is a tyrant responsible for the murder of billions and he has finally been captured - or has he? No visual record of Moro exists, and the man captured has no memory of his past life whatsoever. There is, therefore, a question of morality at stake here. Is it right that a man utterly ripped of his memories should suffer a punishment for his actions, actions which he cannot recall committing and finds hard to believe himself capable of? And what if they have the wrong man?

The main issue with this play is that it dodges both these issues entirely, something not down to Moore who addressed this in his original script, but down to director, producer and script editor John Ainsworth, who according to the play’s extras insisted that they go unanswered, to better retain uncertainty. All this does is neuter Memories Of A Tyrant, robbing its exciting meat and bones of weight and making the ending feel unsatisfactory. It goes out of its way to dodge the moral quandary but that just raises more questions than it answers, namely why commission a play such as this if you don’t want to fully engage with its soul?

It’s a pity as overall Memories Of A Tyrant is a fairly enjoyable listen which gives Peri a lot to do, and Colin Baker is clearly having fun pretending to be a convict. Moore has hit upon an interesting issue, has written it as a Third Doctor tale, and has had his answers removed from on high. It makes for one of the strangest releases Big Finish have put out for a while now, and certainly a tricky one to grade.

I would like to try and take a leaf out of its book and cheat my memory. I would like to recall the happy cast and the good ideas this play has, ignoring the era uncertainty and production interference. I will not succeed; the execution looms large in my mind. But trying to do so, at least, feels the done thing.

+ Memories Of A Tyrant is OUT NOW, priced £14.99 (CD) / £12.99 (Download).

+ ORDER this title on Amazon!

Manufacturer: Big Finish Productions

Writer: Justin Richards

RRP: £14.99 (CD) / £12.99 (Download)

Release Date: December 2014

Reviewed by: Nick Mellish for Doctor Who Online

“The TARDIS arrives in the CAGE – not a trap, but the College of Advanced Galactic Education, one of the most prestigious academic institutions in colonised space.

Not a trap. Or is it?

The Doctor’s here to receive an honorary degree in Moral Philosophy. But there’s something rotten at the heart of the Medical Facility. Someone is operating on the students. Someone without a conscience. Someone with access to a Sidelian Brain Scanner – a technology that hasn’t been invented yet.

That someone is the ruthless Time Lord scientist known as the Rani – in her new incarnation. But will the Doctor and Peri recognise the Rani’s hand before her trap is sprung?”

***

Ah, the Rani.  Until her triumphant lack of reappearance on TV post-2005, no-one really seemed to give two hoots about her, which is a pity as Kate O’Mara always gave it her best, and The Mark of the Rani is, for my money, one of the Sixth Doctor’s strongest televised adventures.

Suddenly though, things had changed.  Doctor Who was back, and fandom got it into its head that the Rani should be involved for… well, for whatever reason fandom had at the time.  It’s never been entirely clear, but maybe the ‘Bring Back McGann!’ brigade were on holiday.

Whilst BBV and Pudsey Bear had both tried and failed to kill her reputation for good, Russell T Davies’s stubborn refusal to include Mistress Rani in the revived series was the last straw, and then— and then! —he only went and truly rained on everyone’s parade by teasing us all, naming a character Rani who, crucially, wasn’t the Rani in The Sarah Jane Adventures, and if that wasn’t enough, the Master came back and then went and regenerated into a woman.  By then though fandom seemed to have forgotten about it altogether and were busy attacking Philip Morris for having the sheer audacity to return nine missing episodes to us all.  The bastard.

Step forward Big Finish, professional fanboys who had undertaken the steady resurrection of the Voord, the Mechonoids, the Rutans, the Nimon, the Nucleus of the Swarm and even some of their own characters such as Hex and Hex and… erm, Hex.

It was time to bring out the big guns; it was time to bring out the Rani.

The Rani Elite is the first Big Finish outing for the character, pitting her once again against the Sixth Doctor and Peri, albeit in regenerated form this time around due to the sad death of Kate O’Mara.  You can feel its shadow looming over much of this production, largely due to the dialogue being very clearly written for O’Mara and her portrayal of the role.  In much the same way that the Doctor is the Doctor but just swapping, say, mentions of Bessie for mentions of Jelly Babies won’t paper over all the cracks (yes, BBC Books, I’m still looking at Drift all these years later), so it is here.  Siobhan Redmond is wearing the tyrannical Time Lady’s shoes now, and she clearly has a lot of fun with it, but I felt throughout that I wasn’t hearing her interpretation of the role, just her reading someone else’s lines.  I would love to hear Redmond do her own thing with it in later appearances, as what we get here is fine, but not a whole new Rani.  More a Rani 1.5 affair.

As for the story itself, it’s not bad at all.  Justin Richards is always a very safe pair of hands in which to place a slot in the schedule, and there are enough twists and turns along the way here to keep you guessing and feel very true to the era, arguably far more so than any other story in these past few Sixth Doctor/Peri releases (though references to Time and the Rani make this very firmly Big Finish territory).

Set on a school with the Rani pretending to be one Professor Baxton, Richards’s script treads territory walked on by The Unquiet Dead previously, but with enough flair and difference to hold its own.  The questions posed are big ones: at what point does living become a privilege and not something one simply does? Is there a hierarchy over who should live and who should die?

Being Doctor Who, I think you can answer those questions without hearing the play, but all the same the script, and characters within it, handle them well and it helps the four episodes to move along nicely.  As a play in its own right, it’s not bad at all.

As a conclusion to this latest set of Sixth Doctor and Peri plays? Well, it hints at things to come briefly with regards to Peri and her health, but is mostly a standalone play, which is a blessing, really.  The trilogy format has grown increasingly stale as of late, with arcs being imposed on them rather than feeling like natural states of affair, and it’s nice to have heard three mostly standalone plays that just happen to feature a particular Doctor and Companion(s) pairing.  I’d love to see a return to the days of alternate Doctors and no big arcs month on month, but maybe that’s just me.  As it is, I’d like to see fewer arcs with no real cause to be there, and more individual releases such as this has been.

Lastly though, as a reintroduction to the Rani, I think it only half works.  It gives us her amorality writ large and some nice scenes to play with alongside Colin Baker’s Doctor, but as I have already said, it’s a story for O’Mara and not Redmond.  As such, we’ll have to wait a while longer to see what her incarnation brings to the table.

Whatever else though, it’s nice to have the Rani back with us, whatever face she decides to wear.

Now, let’s start moaning about Philip Morris again.  How DARE he only return nine episodes! Who does he think he is…? 

Manufacturer: Big Finish Productions

Writer: Mark Wright and Cavan Scott

RRP: £14.99 (CD) / £12.99 (Download)

Release Date: November 2014

Reviewed by: Nick Mellish for Doctor Who Online

“The year is 2163. Ten years since the Daleks invaded the Earth. One year until the Doctor, in his first incarnation, will help bring the occupation to an end. But for now, their reign of terror goes on.

The TARDIS brings the Doctor and Peri to Scotland – enslaved, like everywhere else on the planet. But there are rumours of Dalek-free islands off its coast. Places where resistors and refuseniks are coming together, gathering arms and armour, preparing to strike back against the enemy.

When the Doctor falls in with an unlikely group of freedom fighters making that dangerous journey to Orkney, he finds himself trapped – but not only by the Daleks, their robotised henchmen and their human collaborators.

By history.

Because history shows that for another year, resistance is useless...

The rebellion must fail – and as a Time Lord, the Doctor can do nothing to help.”

***

There are certain things that Big Finish do which could be seen as fingerprints across the main range: the return of characters from the past, the use of actors more recently seen in Doctor Who on TV, and sequels to stories from the original 1963-1989 run.

There are more, but these three often stand out, and it is the latter which is present and correct here in Masters of Earth.  Coming straight on the heels of a story that was simultaneously a sequel to Peri and the Piscon Paradox and Mindwarp (or The Trial of a Time Lord if you prefer), we get another sequel, this time to The Dalek Invasion of Earth.  We’ll be ticking the ‘return of characters’ box with the Rani next month, but there is at least a few weeks’ pause between them both.  This time, it feels rather… brave to have sequels so close together.

Written by Cavan Scott and Mark Wright, this play starts with a light recap on the last story, though not so much that no newcomers couldn’t jump right in, before we’re plunged into Dalek-invaded Earth and all the horror that entails.  The Doctor wants out, having been here before and ended up integral to the Daleks’ defeat: the web of time has to be maintained, and the usual get-out-of-jail-free clauses which so pepper the series, but of course, things don’t end up like that and before he can stop it, both the Doctor and Peri are involved.  But of course they are.

Before I go any further though: The Dalek Invasion of Earth.

I must confess that my love affair with that tale started rather late in the day, with its DVD release.  I had always liked the Peter Cushing take on the tale, but the TV version had left me cold on VHS… and then we got the DVD, with its incredibly clear sound and remarkably clear picture, and I could suddenly appreciate the drama in a way I had never quite grasped before.  Years later, we got the audiobook recording of the Target novelisation, and the combination of good sound design and CD production, great narration from William Russell, and a stellar adaptation by Terrance Dicks made me fall in love with it all over again… and then! Then we got Big Finish’s own take on the tale’s mythos with An Earthly Child, Relative Dimensions, Lucie Miller and To The Death, all of which were stunning.

It’s fair to say then that I was both hopeful and fearful of this story: Big Finish have previous for doing good things with this setting, but Invasion of Earth is particularly good, so I didn’t want them to mess up.

Scott and Wright are old hands at Big Finish though, and whilst their Project plays concerning the Forge may not have been my cup of tea, I could always recognize that they were well-crafted plays, just not in a genre I especially went for.  Scott has since helmed Iris Wildthyme and I must admit that I was heartened to see their names linked to this play months before: they’re good writers and, as Scott as proven, a safe pair of hands, and perhaps their slightly grittier take on Who would suit the era in which this was set.

I’m going to spoil this review now by revealing my rating now: it’s a nine out of ten.  I don’t want to keep you all in suspense for no good reason.  The truth is, it’s damn close to getting the full ten, but something in particular let it down for me.  Let’s get to that in good time, though.

Despite my preconceptions about this being potentially gritty, Scott and Wright don’t really go down that route, instead telling a good adventure yarn instead, but with an air of hopelessness due to the struggle which the guest cast are undertaking.  The Daleks are brutal, the resistance weaker than they realize, the tension high, and the setting surrounded by familiar Dalek tropes: Varga plants, Robomen, saucers, traitors ready to betray their fellow human… it’s all here.

It doesn’t feel like a slog or box-ticking exercise though, but something that flows nicely and uses the 1960s Dalek trappings well.  It almost should feel tokenistic and cluttered, but no, Scott and Wright prove their worth yet again, with Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant and Nicholas Briggs all giving their all as well, elevating an already good script to higher places still.

What about that one point, though? Why only nine of out ten?

Well… sadly, because another Big Finish cliché, and frankly a Doctor Who cliché through and through, is someone getting irreversibly possessed by an alien creature or parasite, but being able to beat it by thinking really, really hard about it. (“No! No, I won’t become possessed because my mind is too strong!”)

It’s probably just a personal taste thing, but it’s a plot device that irks me a lot.  It makes me wonder how dull a story such as Inferno would have been if to stop becoming a Primoid, all they had to do was believe in themselves.

The trouble here is that it’s a big deal and a major part of the final act, and so, to my mind at least, it cheapens the tension and drama by giving us a fairly lazy plot device to wriggle out of a blind alley.

It’s not a minor quibble but a big one, and yet there is enough good elsewhere for me to still be giving this a firm nine.  It’s a far stronger play than this trilogy’s opener, and once again, the reputation of The Dalek Invasion of Earth remains pure.  Good on Scott and Wright, and good on Big Finish.

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Sixth Doctor Overview

Dear diary,

These modern Doctors. Just no sticking power, is there? If I thought the Fifth Doctor era was over quickly, it did nothing to prepare me for this - Colin Baker's only been with us for about a month, and now that's the Sixth Doctor gone, too! This is the first time that I've had to write an overview post before the regeneration has occurred, but I thought I'd let the Sixth Doctor bow out with Colin, rather than with the outfit and a wig in the next episode. 

So, just how has this very short era stacked up against everything that came before it? There's a common conception within Doctor Who fandom that the mid-to-late 1980s are rubbish. When I first took my steps into the world of fandom, it was a fairly strong message that almost gets drummed in to you - everything is great in the 60s and 70s, and the early 80s aren't awful, but don't bother with either Colin Baker or Sylvester McCoy because they're rubbish and a taint on the great tapestry of Doctor Who. Actually, though, I've always found a lot to enjoy about this period of the programme's era, and I'd choose to re-watch it sooner than a lot of others!

I'm not entirely blind to its faults, however. The Sixth Doctor stories on the whole, from The Twin Dilemma through to the end of the Trial rated on average 5.77 - which makes it my lowest rated era for any Doctor. I can pinpoint exactly why that is, though, and it's two culprits from Season Twenty-Two. Both Attack of the Cybermen and Timelash averaged just 2.5, bringing them in as my lowest rated stories on average from this entire marathon. Both of them rated only a 2/10 for an episode, and only a handful of other episodes from the first twenty-one years of the programme have done that. Something about them just left me entirely cold, and that's really harmed the era overall. It's perhaps telling that if you were to take out the four episodes that comprise those two tales, the average for the era would be a far nicer 6.25 - a massive improvement.

At the other end of the scale to those two stories, the story I've rated highest for the Sixth Doctor, with a score of 7.5, is The Mark of the Rani, which really captured me right from the word go. A combination of stunning direction coupled with an interesting new villain in the form of the Rani, and a beautiful location really came up trumps. Next in line from this is The Mysterious Planet, coming in with an average score of 7, and then a score of 6.5 for Vengeance on Varos, Revelation of the Daleks, and The Ultimate Foe.

I'm quite pleased to see two of the four Trial of a Time Lord segments so high up the list, there, because it's another season that isn't thought of very highly in general. Terror of the Vervoids came in with an average of 6, while Mindwarp really failed to connect with me and only mustered an average of 5. Taken as a whole across the fourteen episodes, The Trial of a Time Lord garnered 6.07.

If there's one thing to have come out of this era of the programme, it's a realisation of just how good Colin Baker is as the Doctor. I've always rather liked him, and I know he's had something of a reinvention on audio, where people have been better able to appreciate his talents, but he shows so much promise in these two seasons. I genuinely think that Colin's sacking after Season Twenty-Three may well be one of the biggest missed opportunities in Doctor Who - I'd love to see how he would have continued to develop the role as the seasons went by...

...And under a different stewardship. I'm still something of a fan of John Nathan-Turner, but I really do think that it's incomprehensible to take the programme off the air, publicly state that it's no longer as good as it used to be... and then let the same producer and script editor carry on with it! The powers that be now claim that there was no one else to do it, but it just seems so bizarre not to get a new team in to replace the one they felt wasn't working. The events surrounding the end of the season, with Saward's resignation, show that the team was being pushed to breaking point, and it's a real pity that we never got to see Colin shine on screen with a better set of stories around him!

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 681: The Ultimate Foe, Episode Two (The Trial of a Time Lord, Episode Fourteen)

Dear diary,

The problem with doing an epic, 14-part Doctor Who story is that the payoff in the final episode has to be worth paying attention to the preceding weeks. You have to feel as though you've been given adequate entertainment for the time that you've invested in the programme. The problem with this episode in particular, is that it's possibly got the most tortured journey to screen of any episode the programme has ever produced. Forget your Shadas , your Greatest Shows and your TV Movies, they're still in the nursery compared to The Ultimate Foe. Originally scheduled to be written by Robert Holmes, tying up all the elements he started putting in place at the start of this season, it ended up being taken over by Eric Saward when Holmes fell ill and later died. While all of this was going on, Saward and John Nathan-Turner finally came to the end of the road, and Saward left the programme, refusing permission to use the completed script. Ultimately, writing duties were taken over by Pip and Jane Baker, who JN-T felt could provide an adequate episode on time and using sets, actors, and costumes already budgeted for and contracted.

Now, I'm not going to go out and claim that this is a fantastic episode - because it isn't. I am, however, going to claim that it's not a bad one. It's not even the worst episode of the season, as far as I'm concerned, and there's an awful lot crammed in to this episode that I know would have entertained me as a child watching at the time. There's so much in there, that the episode is actually extended from the usual length, to create thirty-minute extravaganza! I'm not going to go in to detail about everything that I've enjoyed here, but in brief; the cliffhanger to yesterday's episode is fantastic, and the resolution here as the Doctor emerges clean from the sand is equally good. The exploding quills. The interaction between the Master and Sabalom Glitz. The fake trial. Even the often ridiculous dialogue has been rather fun, and I can't help saying 'There's nothing you can do to prevent the catharsis of spurious morality' to myself, and I'd imagine it's something that I'll be doing for a while, yet!

I will say that you can tell the difference here between the half of the story written by Robert Holmes - yesterday's episode - and this one. I think being out on the same locations and with the same characters makes it more apparent than it would normally be going from story to story, with completely different settings and different casts. Yesterday's episode was filled with an awful lot of bokum, but today's episode suddenly has people talking as though they're in a science fiction programme - it's especially noticeable with the Doctor during all the beach scenes, because he's not talking properly any more. Don't get me wrong, it sounds perfectly fine coming from the Doctor's mouth (and this Doctor, in particular), but it's not as natural as the lines Holmes gave him.

On the whole, I've rather enjoyed the Trial of a Time Lord season. I won't go in to great detail about the way the story has come out ratings-wise, because we're at the end of another era, and I'll be doing that in my Sixth Doctor Overview post, which will be a post above this one of the Doctor Who Online news page. I will say, however, that I'm not against the idea of the trial format as I know some people are. It doesn't work quite as well as the production team think it does, and I have a feeling that it's largely down to the three main bits of 'evidence' not really filling the roles they're supposed to properly. The concept is a rather good one, but the execution has left a little to be desired, I think. The programme has returned from an 18-month break with a good series, largely, and I think I would have enjoyed it as a kid on first broadcast. It's been bright and colourful, with a Doctor who can be taken to much easier than last year. I don't think I could have asked for much more!

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 680: The Ultimate Foe, Episode One (The Trial of a Time Lord, Episode Thirteen)

Dear diary,

I don't think I've ever really understood the Matrix in Doctor Who. It seems to be too many different things all at once. It's a whole pocket universe. It's a virtual reality. It's the place where Time Lord consciousness is uploaded when they die. It's a communications network. For the last twelve days, it's been a DVD collection of the Doctor's adventures. In The Deadly Assassin and in this story, it's playing the part of a virtual reality that can be bent to the will of the strongest inhabitant… I just get lost in trying to keep up with it. Today adds an additional complication in that not everything is an illusion in the way the Doctor expects it to be - somethings, like the harpoon thrown at Glitz, are decidedly real!

I'm also confused about the way that you actually enter the Matrix. In this episode, we're introduced to 'the Keeper', who announces that you can only enter the Matrix with the Key of Rassilon, which is always kept in his possession (unlike the Key of Rassilon which featured in The Invasion of Time). He says that people are very rarely allowed to enter the Matrix, and it happens perhaps once a millennia with him blessing and the key. And yet, in The Deadly Assassin, the Doctor simply needed to be wired to a machine to enter the realm, as did Goth, whose equipment wasn't exactly up-to-scratch! We then enter the Matrix here through the 'Seventh Door', which happens to be on this space station (that I can buy, the High Council would have ensured it).

What's lost me about all this is… did the Valeyard actively go in to the Matrix to alter all the footage we've been watching? While the Doctor was off reviewing the events of Terror of the Vervoids, was the Valeyard skulking around in a Matrix-version of the Hyperion III, altering events behind the Doctor? And if you only need someone to physically enter the Matrix once every thousand years or so, then why do you need to have a minimum of seven doors? Surely that's just Inviting a leak of the contents?

Then we've got the revelation that the secrets Glitz was hunting in The Mysterious Planet were leaked scientific advancements from the Matrix itself. Right. Okay. So now, the Matrix is also a Dropbox file, where the Time Lords can store all their scientific information, when they're not slipping in to the pocket dimension to play a game of cat-and-mouse? Please tell me that I'm not the only one who can't quite wrap my head around all of this?

All that said, I do like the idea that Glitz is trading in Gallifreyan secrets. There's something about it which feels again as though it could fit quite neatly in to my vision of the Time War drawing closer, with the Daleks trying to hack in to the Time Lord's great big databank, and the 'lesser species' all flocking to the breach to try and swipe some of the secrets for themselves. I've mentioned before how much I enjoy these odd little hints of Gallifreyan mythology to seep in from time to time, and this is a perfect example. I also love that the current High Council is so utterly corrupt, and that they'd made a deal with the Valeyard to set up this whole trial, and to use the Doctor as a bit of a scapegoat.

It then raises the interesting question of which High Council this may be. Is it the current one, back on Gallifrey? I'm almost tempted to think of it as being a future High Council (possibly even the one we see in The End of Time, headed by Rassilon himself?), who have opted to come back in time and put the Doctor on trial in this particular incarnation because he's a) the most violent of all the Doctors up to the point where the Time War kicks off, and b) the next Doctor is the one who helps to kick it all off, when he blows up Skaro! There may be a bit of fudging to be done in the next episode, but I think it's a theory which can just about hang together, so I think I'll be accepting it into my own 'head canon' from now on!

Today is probably the best moment to actually discuss the Valeyard, too. There's been lots of talk about him within fandom in the last year or so, with it being revealed that the Matt Smith incarnation of the Doctor is the final one in his current life-cycle. The general topic that keeps being raised is that we should have therefore seen the Valeyard come in to being when David Tennant became Matt Smith, with some people actively suggesting that the Meta-crisis Doctor could well be the birth of the Valeyard, because it fits in with the timeline. Actually, it's simply that these people aren't listening to what's said in this episode! I saw lots of complaining that the Valeyard is supposed to appear between the Doctor's twelfth and thirteenth incarnations, but that's not what the Master actually says - he specifically describes it as being between the Doctor's 'twelfth and final' incarnations. Now, at the time, this was intended to mean between twelve and thirteen, but in hindsight, not knowing that the Doctor's life has been extended with a new regeneration cycle, it opens up one or two more interesting possibilities. For what it's worth, I don't think that we'll ever see the Valeyard in the programme again, but I don't think we've missed the boat recently in the way that some people seem to claim!

I really do love the way that the revelation of the Valeyard's origins comes about, too. It's not made a bit thing of, there's not massive reveal, it's simply slipped out in the middle of the Master's sentence, and then he carries on talking. That works so beautifully, because it leaves you almost not listening to the rest of the conversation - you're too busy trying to work out if you've understood what was said properly or not. The Doctor then picks up on it a moment later to help confirm your suspicions. It's very cleverly done, and I'm glad that in his final episode, Robert Holmes could slip in something as beautifully executed as that.

The Doctor himself is on fine form again today. During The Mysterious Planet, I picked out his speech about stars dying as a real highlight moment of his era, and I think that we've got another one today. It comes as he decrees the assembled Time Lords in the courtroom for their part in events on Ravalox;

THE DOCTOR

In all my travellings throughout the universe I have battled against evil, against power-mad conspirators. I should have stayed here. The oldest civilisation, decadent, degenerate and rotten to the core. Ha! Power-mad conspirators, Daleks, Sontarans, Cybermen, they're still in the nursery compared to us. Ten million years of absolute power, that's what it takes to be really corrupt.

It's such a grand speech, and it works especially well for this most grandiose of Doctors - I think a few of the earlier incarnations could have pulled it off (Pertwee and Tom Baker especially), but it seems very fitting for the Sixth Doctor, and it gives Colin one more chance to shine before he bows out tomorrow…

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 679: Terror of the Vervoids, Episode Four (The Trial of a Time Lord, Episode Twelve)

Dear diary,

I'm sorry, but the Doctor deserves to lose the trial after that, I'm afraid. What on earth was he thinking, showing Terror of the Vervoids in his defence? I mean, sure, the Matrix has been tampered with to make him look even more guilty, but it's still a story in which the bodies pile up (am I right in thinking that there's only about two characters left alive at the end?), and he does finish up by committing genocide! I can take his point about not letting a single Vervoid leaf touch the soil of a planet, but surely he must have realised how that might look to a court who suspect him of being a violent meddler, and when he's facing down a prosecutor who will turn anything against him? I mean.. come on!

He seems to have two arguments about this adventure - that he becomes a better person in the future (and, in fairness, he's a lot more like the traditional 'Doctor' in this story than he was through Season Twenty-Two), and that he was specifically summoned to the Hyperion III, and asked to help. Well, right, okay, I can sort of see the argument he's making with that last one, but surely there must be another example of him being specifically asked to help with something, if that's enough to get him off these charges? Why not show one of the many times that the Time Lords have swanned in an asked him to go and meddle? Or - even better - the time that the White Guardian - a being whose authority exceeds the Time Lords - chose him to undertake the most dangerous mission in the universe, because he was deemed to be the most capable? It just seems like he's really not doing himself any favours by choosing this particular story in his favour, and I'm actually a bit annoyed about that! It would have worked better if the Doctor had been shown this evidence by the Valeyard - an example that if he's left unchecked, then in the future he will go so far as to commit genocide!

You can probably tell that this has wound me up a bit. It just seems so stupid of the Doctor to have chosen this one to show in his favour, and then seem so pleased about it! If the charge here is that he's been meddling in the affairs of other planets, then surely this isn't the best example of showing that you don't always do that! I think he's trying to make the same argument that he did in The War Games - that sometimes getting stuck in and fighting for the side of 'good' is better than standing by and letting evil take control - but he's not actually said anything along those lines yet! It's simply the only way I can make sense of what he's thinking with these four episodes!

Oh, but that's only one side of it, and I have to admit that I've enjoyed Terror of the Vervoids on the whole. I think that stripped from its Trial of a Time Lord trappings (and despite what I said the other day, I think it actually could be done - I suppose we don't need to see who destroyed the communications room, only that it is destroyed when Mel and co enter to send a message), this could be a fairly nice little story, probably condensed down to three episodes once all the courtroom stuff has been removed. I'm assuming that someone has tried this type of edit before? Surely? The only real problem that I can foresee is that the Doctor explains how he knows one of the Mogarians isn't real in the trial, but otherwise…

And now we're off on to the final couple of Sixth Doctor episodes! It does seem to have come around ever so quickly this season - even though we're an episode longer than we were for Season Twenty-Two, you really do feel the fact that the episodes are back down to the regular 23 minute length. I vaguely recall the ending of Trial not making a great deal of sense when I watched it before - much like the whole Matrix sequence of The Deadly Assassin, I suppose - so here's hoping that it stands up better this time, because I'd dearly love to see Colin go out of the programme on a high…

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 678: Terror of the Vervoids, Episode Three (The Trial of a Time Lord, Episode Eleven)

Dear diary,

I'm a little bit disappointed with the actual Vervoid creatures in this one. The tension and menace was effectively built up over the first two episodes, but now that the killer plants are awake and carrying out their own nefarious schemes, they're just a bit rubbish, aren't they? I mean, there's lots about them that should be interesting to me (an especially so to a young audience) - they've got the ability to poison you, they can fire a noxious gas from their 'mouths', and they're humanoid plants! It's a concept that the programme has been playing with since right back in the 1960s, and has already done very well in The Seeds of Doom, but here it's just being done so poorly.

It all starts from the moment we first hear one of the creatures speak. It's a low, rasping, whispery voice, the kind that has previously been so effective for the Ice Warriors and the Zygons, but here it's being applied to such mundane dialogue. The first line we hear a Vervoid say is 'help me with this', as he drags a body! It's hardly the most menacing thing to ever come out of a monster's mouth in Doctor Who! Later on, they also get such stand-out lines as ''congratulations must be delayed', and they get to stand around discussing their plans like… well, like any other bargain-basement monster. We've spent two episodes building up to the reveal of these creatures, and two very good cliffhangers that has led to them, and they just mill around as though they've something better to do. It's a massive anti-climax, and I can't help but feel a little annoyed by it.

As for the design of the Vervoids… it's something of a long-standing joke in Doctor Who fandom that they look a little bit like genitalia, but that no one can ever decide which bit! Again, on paper they should be quite a good concept - humanoid plants which are more humanoid than either the Krynoids of the Varga Plants - but they just come across looking like actors stuck in somewhat ill-designed monster costumes. I don't think it's helped by the fact that they're being given so little of interest to do, so you spend more time than you perhaps should looking at the costumes and spotting the flaws!

There's so much potential for a tight, tension-filled mystery here, with a finite number of characters all trapped together in a confined space as they start to get bumped off one-by-one, starting - it seems - with an investigator… there's amoral experiments, and killer plants, and as if all that wasn't exciting enough, the space ship is now being plunged right into the jaws of a black hole! All the ingredients are here for a great story, but they just aren't hanging together for me.

People have often said that this is the segment of the Trial season which would work the best being completely stripped of the courtroom segments, but I'm honestly not sure how it would work. I do think that they'e becoming boring and repetitive again (there's one today which seems to be there purely to remind us that Michael Jayston and Lynda Bellingman have been contracted for 14 weeks), but at the same time, there's a few which are absolutely vital. We've gone beyond simply having the Doctor claim that things have been 'tweaked' slightly to alter the facts, and we've got him reacting today to a whole scene - himself destroying the communications array - which he claims never happened. With so much in this story possibly not being quite as it seems, would it be all that feasible to do a re-edit?

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 677: Terror of the Vervoids, Episode Two (The Trial of a Time Lord, Episode Ten)

Dear diary,

There's something that I don't understand about Terror of the Vervoids, and it's the way that this 'evidence' fits in with the rest of the trial. The Valeyard presents two cases against the Doctor, as evidence of the way he meddles in the affairs of other peoples and planets. Okay, I can go along with that, although I'm not sure that he's actually chosen the best examples of such things (surely showing something like Frontios would be far more damning if it's the case that all adventures are recorded in the Matrix - after all, there the Doctor claims that it's expressly forbidden for him to even be there, and although he feigns protest, he's soon helping the colony out), and I'm also not sure why he chose to show one example that needed careful bleeping to stop High Council meddling from being seen, and another which shows the High Council directly influencing events by ensuring Ykarnos can kill everyone…

No, it's these four episodes which really confuse me. The Doctor has chosen to present an example of his adventures… from his own future. I think I can just about buy that the Matrix may have scanned such things (though if its recorded adventures that have yet to happen to the Doctor, then shouldn't the Valeyard be showing the War Doctor blowing up their own planet as his most damning evidence?), but I really don't understand why the Doctor has chosen this specific adventure to make his case! In the first Episode, even without the bits of the adventure which have been altered, the Doctor agrees when someone comments that the bodies start piling up as soon as he arrives! I'd also like to touch on this idea that the Matrix has been tampered with. Throughout the previous nine episodes, it's been clearly stated on several occasions that the Matrix simply cannot lie. The Doctor claims that events aren't being played here quite how he remembers them. He claims that they've been specifically edited to paint him in a bad light. In both examples (and at least the first of those is brought up on several occasions during both The Mysterious Planet and Mindwarp), the Valeyard and the Inquisitor point out to the Doctor that it's utter nonsense, as the Matrix can't be edited in such a way.

Then, in today's episode, the Valeyard accuses the Doctor of that type of meddling with the footage… and the Inquisitor points out to the Doctor how serious it would be if he were doing that! How come we've suddenly gone from it being an absurd notion to being something that's just frowned upon? The Doctor's claim that events being shown aren't quite as they were before was brought up as recently as yesterday, so it's not simply Pip and Jane Baker misunderstanding things…! I don't think I've lost track along the way, but I think the production team might well have done. I'll be keeping a close eye on the remainder of the Trial season, to see if this is now a permanent shift in attitude towards editing the Matrix. I'm also half wondering why they didn't include as a part of the Doctor's defence a flashback to lots of other stories, in which his meddling has been for the greater good. An annual flashback was common during the Peter Davison era, but this feels purpose built for one!

I'm a little saddened in today's episode that the direction isn't always as fantastic as it was yesterday. We seem to lurch from being really very good (the continuation of the explosions and sparks from the cliffhanger), to the very bad (the CSO starfield. It's not so much the starfield that doesn't work, it's the way that it's cropped out around Colin Baker and Bonnie Langford's hair! Yikes!). By the time we reach today's cliffhanger, things have perked up considerably, and the make-up of the half-human-half-plant creature is one of the programme's more successful alien prosthetics! I'm hoping things settle back down tomorrow into the 'good' camp! 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 676: Terror of the Vervoids, Episode One (The Trial of a Time Lord, Episode Nine)

Dear diary,

Largely inspired by the gorgeous staging and camera work during today's cliffhanger, I watched on in the credits eagerly to see who the director was. It's Chris Clough's first work on Doctor Who, and I'm pleased to know that he'll be back for several more outings over the next few seasons. That final shot today is beautiful, as Mel's scream fades into the closing theme, and the camera pulls back past sparks and explosions, and giving us the brief look at something bursting out from the pods… this sequence wouldn't be out of place at the height of the Philip Hinchcliffe era, when the programme is supposed to be 'scary'. Not many of the cliffhangers during The Trial of a Time Lord are anything other than a close up of the Doctor's face, so it's nice to see that this one has used the break from the current norm to do something really interesting and different!

I think it's helped, too, by the fact that the Hydroponics Centre set is so beautifully done, and the same can be said for the hold outside. Some people write off all 1980s Doctor Who as being poorly lit like the Myrka sequences from Warriors of the Deep, but this is the perfect example that the programme can still get it right in this era! This episode is also a good one for showing off the full sale of the trial room setting - it's another huge set, and when shot from interesting angles, there's lots of little details to pick out. Sadly, not all the sets in this story are as effective, and I don't really much care for the main passenger quarters of the space liner. I think they're supposed to look a bit cheap and tacky, but they come across as terribly dated now, too. There's one or two shots where I can sort of see what they were aiming for (with some nice shots of the stars passing by the windows overhead), but I'm afraid that I'm not being won over by them.

Today's episode also sees the introduction of a new companion for the Doctor… and I think it's fair to say that it's the strangest introduction we've ever seen for a new regular to the programme. Forget Dodo bursting in and giving us her life story, here, Mel just happens to be stood around with the Doctor in the TARDIS, forcing him to work out on an exercise bike! Something I've not missed this season is the lengthy TARDIS scenes which so dominated Season Twenty-Two. We've not had any sight of the Console room now since Timelash, which has been a refreshing break. When we catch up with this pair in there today, it feels as though it should be a fairly fun scene, with the Doctor and his companion getting on with something a bit more mundane in between adventures, but…

Well, I just don't care about Mel! Not yet, anyway. Were this the Doctor and Peri opening the episode with this scene, I think I'd be more willing to buy it - they're clearly written and acted as two people who have spent a lot of time together and become great friends, but because this is the first time we ever set eyes on the girl, it's very hard to muster up much enthusiasm towards her! That said, her enthusiasm is infectious, and it's hard not to quite like her when she sets off exploring. She clearly works very well with Colin's Doctor, too, which is quite fun, and they're already at the stage here that Peri took until The Mysterious Planet to reach in the Doctor's attitude! 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 675: Mindwarp, Episode Four (The Trial of a Time Lord, Episode Eight) 

Dear diary, 

I've never been overly fond of Peri's exit from Doctor Who, in either this form, or the alternative that gets offered during the end of the Trial season. I'm not entirely sure what doesn't sit right about it with me (it certainly not the fact that a companion dies, because I think that works wonders in the cases of Katarina, Sara, and Adric), but I've always thought that it stick out as simply being wrong somehow. 

Watching the episode today, though, I can't help but realise just how effective it is! I mean... it's brutal. I think the moment that it really starts to turn and you suddenly realise how much you fear for Peri is when Crozier orders her head shaved, and it feels so out of nowhere, and something that we can relate to so easily, especially given that Peri's hair has been allowed to grow out this season, fuller than we've seen it before. 

It then also shocked me when we cut back to the laboratory a little while later, and it's been done! I know from seeing the story before that Nicola Bryant goes out wearing a bald cap, but I'd sort of forgotten just how effectively it works, and I love that they don't make a big deal of it. We cut back to the action, and Peri's laying there bald. If anything, I think that's more scary than when she sits up at the end and starts talking in a deep, scary voice. No matter how much I'm enjoying it here, it still doesn't sit quite right in my mind, and it sticks out too much as a companion departure - not necessarily in a good way. 

People often complain that the effect of this ending gets entirely undermined come the end of the season, when it transpires that she's actually living happily as a warrior queen alongside Yrcanos, and I'm sure I'll make my own mind up about that when I get there. That said, I can't help but think it's been clearly signposted throughout the story - especially in these last couple of episodes! I'm sure Colin Baker tells the story that they only addend the 'happy ending' for Peri later on when he wondered what was real and what had been faked in the trial, but I think it's clearly set up that Peri should be going off to rule with this man! Oh, I don't think it's something that she would ever do by choice, and she'd never purposely give up life in the TARDIS for that particular fate, but I don't think it feels too out of place in retrospect. 

Brian Blessed has actually impressed a great deal throughout this story - far more than I was expecting him to! I mused the other day that you hire him to simply be Brian Blessed on screen, and while there's plenty of that on display in Mindwarp, he actually has lots of rather nice little moments alongside Nicola Bryant in particular, and I'm very impressed with him on the whole. 

Today's episode has continued to take the aspects I was finding scary yesterday - the Doctor not being able to remember what happened - and ramp them up a gear, making things even scarier in the process. I love (and I can't stress that enough, love) the way that the TARDIS appears in the corridor right in the middle of all the chaos, and the Doctor is compelled to walk backwards in to the box. There's something genuinely scary about the Doctor being taken away at just the moment everything comes to a head, and that works so well. I think my only slight criticism about this sequence is that the chaos isn't quite enough for me! You've got lots of supporting artists spinning around in corridors, but I want explosions and people tearing the set apart! Really up the stakes! 

So with that, we've said goodbye to Peri, and we're off on the next stage of the programme's life. I think I like how much you couldn't predict Peri's departure from the way she joins the series back in Planet of Fire, and I'm not sure if I can remember the last time the programme had been shaken up this much between a companion's arrival and departure, either. We're deep in to the period of Doctor Who that many people consider to be the weakest, now, and the introduction of Mel in the next episode is something that many consider to be another step towards death. If I can enjoy her as much as I've enjoyed all the other things recently that I'm not supposed to... I think we're in for a treat! 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 674: Mindwarp, Episode Three (The Trial of a Time Lord, Episode Seven) 

Dear diary, 

The thing I'm liking most about Mindwarp is the idea that the Doctor can't really remember anything that's happening here. There's something genuinely unsettling about the moment when he first interrupts the episode to tell the court that he can't remember what he's seeing - and Colin plays it as calm and a little bit scared. He shouts and gestures again only moments later, but suddenly it's because he's genuinely worried by the event,s not because he's putting on a show for the sake of the trial. I love that even he isn't entirely sure that this isn't just the way he behaves, and when he's trying to convince the Inquisitor of his innocence, it comes across as the man trying to convince himself more than anything. This is then all turned back on him. when he does get back the odd pocket of memories, and the Valeyard points out how convenient it is for him to remember now... yeah, this is probably my favourite thing about the trial so far. 

Sadly, though, the episode itself isn't grabbing me at all. I'm getting on better with it now than on previous viewings, and I actually understand better what's going on this time (I'd somehow convinced myself that the sandy-coloured Mentor in this story was a separate character to either Sil or Kiv, and forgotten that he was Kiv's replacement body), but I'm still not enjoying it half as much as I did with The Mysterious Planet. I'm beginning to wonder if it may just be that I don't get on with Philip Martin's style of writing. Vengeance on Varos is often hailed as a total 'classic', and yet I'm not as fussed on it as some people seem to be, and while I've often seen this episode trumpeted as being the best of the Trial season, it's leaving me completely cold! 

A few years ago, I did a different kind of Doctor Who marathon with my friend Nick Mellish, who provides many of the Big Finish audio reviews here on Doctor Who Online. We made our way through all of the Paul McGann audio plays from Storm Warning through To the Death, which comprised ten years of adventures for the Eighth Doctor. We wrote our thoughts about each episode and emailed them to each other, eventually putting together a book which followed the marathon. For a brief period, the Eighth Doctor's companion Charley ends up going off on travels with the Sixth Doctor, and we dutifully followed her for a few weeks, in adventures with Daleks, and Draconians, and even the odd Kroton or two. 

Once we'd finished the marathon, and started to get withdrawal symptoms from not hearing a new episode every day, we decided to do it all over again with a different Doctor. The Sixth incarnation seemed to be the obvious choice, having already been through a few adventures and really enjoying them, and we decided that we'd start with the season of 'lost' stories from the originally planned Season Twenty-Three. Over the last five years or so, Big Finish have dramatised lots of stories originally written for the show and at some point left behind, but when they did this first set, it was something of a novelty, picking up stories that have grown up their own reputation within fandom. Stories like The Nightmare Fair, which would have pitted the Doctor and Peri against the Celestial Toymaker on a holiday to Blackpool, The Hollows of Time, a rematch between the Doctor and the Gravis (and the Master), and The Space Whale, which has been a 'work in progress' story for so many Doctors that it's hard to keep track. And then there's Mission to Magnus. 

Magnus is the story originally proposed by Philip Martin for Season Twenty-Three, long before the format of the trial was imposed. It was to feature the return of Sil, alongside the Ice Warriors, and has always been one of the 'lost' tales that people know a little bit more about. But we didn't really much care for it. We never managed to finish our Sixth Doctor marathon, as real life got in the way slowly, but looking back over the entries wrote to each other for that story... I was mostly just left a bit bored by it, and it's perhaps telling that I don't mention Sil anywhere in my write up. He obviously made very little impact on me! Nick was somewhat less forgiving, because of the way that Martin's scripts tend to treat (and talk about) their female characters. Thinking back to the Eighth Doctor book, neither of us were very keen on Martin's The Creed of the Kromon, either (that's putting it mildly), and so I think this story has decided it once and for all for me - I simply cannot get in to his stories. Here's hoping that the one final episode may well be enough to bring things around...  

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 673: Mindwarp, Episode Two (The Trial of a Time Lord, Episode Six) 

Dear diary, 

I seem to be saying it an awful lot of late (he's not around for long - I'm glad I can make the most of it here and now), but Colin Baker really is fantastic, isn't he? He's got that perfect quality for an actor to play the Doctor, where he can salvage anything, and you really perk up when he's on the screen - and not just because you're looking directly at that coat! In this episode, when tasked with playing a Doctor who's brain has been fried, and isn't quite acting himself, even by this incarnation's standards, he really relishes it and runs with it - there's a few shades of Troughton-as-an-androgum in the performance, and I'm becoming more and more saddened that we've only these two seasons of Colin to watch. I've heard various Big Finish adventures with him in over the years, but I have a feeling that I'll be seeking them out a bit more thoroughly once this marathon is over. People talk about the fact that he had a renaissance on audio, but I love him here and now on screen! 

It's perhaps a good mark of his skill that he's able to stand out so much in this episode... when Brian Blessed has been woken up (oh how tempting to simply write that name in capitals...)! Blessed has become something of a national treasure over the years, and you can sort of see here that he's already started to become a parody of himself. That's not a criticism, mind, because Blessed has managed to go so far into being his own parody, that it's no longer even that - it's just what you want! Philip Martin has said in the past that he was thinking of Blessed for the part and was overjoyed to hear that John Nathan-Turner was thinking along the same lines, and it's not hard to see why, is it? King Yrcanos has been written to be played by Brian Blessed, and you almost get the sense that they've stuck him into a costume, placed him on the set, and told him to just get on and do whatever he wants! 

The actual story today is interesting me a little more than it did yesterday, but only marginally. I can't honestly claim to be enjoying it. Oh, there's lots I am liking here - those aforementioned performances, along with the sets on the whole (there's a story that Colin Baker saw the invoice for that big round door in the set and loudly declared to the rehearsal room that it cost more for these four episodes than Nicola Bryant did! You can almost believe it, though, because the door is a great piece of set, and I'm surprised the cost wasn't deferred by being used lots more in Doctor Who after this, like the modern series does with particularly expensive sets! - on the whole, though, I'm just not all that invested on the events here. 

I wonder if part of it may be that I know Peri will be bowing out in a couple of days, and I've never been fond of her exit (either of them)? There's a vague sense of simply wanting to get that over with, so we can bring in Mel and start the programme off on another new phase. I'm also having what I can only describe as 'Sabalom-Glitz- Withdrawl-Symptoms'... none of the supporting cast in this story are anywhere near as entertaining as Glitz and Dibber! When I was watching Vengeance on Varos, I found myself being rather taken by Sil, and he was often the thing I was enjoying most about the story. Here, though, he's simply boring me, and I can't really decide why. I think it's a combination of the costume not working quite as well here as it did back then (there's a few instances where you can see it's clearly slipped down his face a little), and Nabil Shaban seeming to give a slightly different performance, which just isn't quite working for me. Maybe being surrounded by all these other people in charge of him is lessening the character a bit, where he could be so thoroughly unlikeable the last time around, coming across as being 'the boss'?  

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 672: Mindwarp, Episode One (The Trial of a Time Lord, Episode Five) 

Dear diary, 

More than once over the years, I've heard Mindwarp described as being the best segment of the Trial season, and yet when I've seen the full series before, I really didn't much care for it, and think I remember it as the opposite end of the scale - as the weakest of the stories here! I'm not sure what it was about the story that I didn't like on the last occasion, but I think I can guess from watching this episode; I'm just a little bit bored. 

I'm not even entirely sure why that should be, because there's certainly a lot going on in this episode. You've got an alien world that's looking very alien (more on which in a minute), two 'monsters' attacking our regulars, plus the regulation guards chasing after them and taking them as the 'villains' in the situation, the return of Sil, and lots of action in the trial room itself. The episode is positively bursting with things happening, but almost all of them are failing to grab my attention. The big selling point is surely the return of Sil to the programme, having featured in Vengeance on Varos last season... but that story didn't excite me in the way most people enjoy it, either, so I'm not terribly bothered by his return! 

The one area which I do rather like is the planet's surface. A sea of pink, which washes against rocks of blue under a green sky... and all in the most florescent hue they could possibly achieve. It's ridiculously garish, and incredibly of its time, but I'm really rather impressed with it. This feels like the programme really going out of its way to present us with a truly alien world for the first time since... well, in quite some while, anyway. Often enough, alien planets in the series have settled into being a standard quarry/jungle/only seen from the inside/studio set, and while this is shot out on a simple beach, the effects added in post production really make it look like something a bit special. When you compare this to some of the original location footage in the extras on the DVD... you can see how bland it might have looked otherwise! Did it stand out as much on first broadcast as being this garish, or did it just seem fittingly 'of the time'? 

I seem to be flip-flopping in regards to the actual trial scenes as each episode goes by. A few days ago, I started to find them irritating, before Colin Baker giving a rather brilliant performance managed to win them back around for me. Today, they seem to be perhaps a little over-bearing - I'm sure there's more in this episode than any of the others so far? We seemed to be cutting back and forth every few scenes. 

I'm starting to wonder if I may not mind this so much were we given a bit more going on in each of them; there much have been four or five so far this season which boil down to the Doctor asking if what we're seeing is relevant, and the Inquisitor musing that she's been wondering the same. If there's not much to actually say in these moments, then would they perhaps be better left out? Or, at least, confined to the start and the end of episodes, if they need to be included to remind us of the on-going narrative of the season. I thought that the opening of this episode, for example, was rather good, summing up the story we've just watched, reminding us that there's still some lingering questions about it, and then setting the scene for the next adventure. It's only when we start popping back for the odd line here and there that I start to lose patience... I bet all those supporting artists in Time Lord collars got bored of it, too, having to swivel back and forth on those chairs every three minutes! 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 671: The Mysterious Planet, Episode Four (The Trial of a Time Lord, Episode Four) 

Dear diary, 

I've said it before during this story, but I really do love Sabalom Glitz. What's surprised me is how much I've enjoyed him being partnered up with Dibber - I' always thought of Dibber as being a weaker link to the character. They're absolutely brilliant together, and it's a bit of a shame that we don't get to see them paired up again in any other stories. There's just so much to love about them, and a certain amount of that needs to be placed at Robert Holmes' door, filling their mouths with plenty of dialogue which has made me smile and laugh almost all the way through their scenes. I'm genuinely hugely surprised that the pair haven't been brought back in any of the Big Finish audios - Tony Selby and Glen Murphy are still working actors, and surely I can't be the only one who would love to hear them back against either the Sixth or Seventh Doctors? I'm going to cross my fingers tightly, because I think this may be my number one thing that I'd love to hear happen! 

These two aren't the only ones to impress me in The Mysterious Planet, either. I've already praised Colin Baker's performance once in the last few days, but it really does bear repeating again here - he's really a very good Doctor. Today's highlight from him comes in the form of his courtroom outburst, in which he riles against the Valeyard and the situation he's found himself in. It's a very over-the-top performance, full of gusto and bravado... and it's perfect for the moment. This incarnation of the Doctor, perhaps more than any other, is prone to being a bit theatrical, and he shows that perfectly here. What makes it all the more compelling is the sheer rage underneath it all. Colin completely goes for the scene with all that he can muster, and it's simply electrifying to watch. We're drawing ever closer to his all-too-brief time in the programme, now, and I really am going to miss him when he's gone. I'd so dearly love to see what this man could have done with the part given a few more years to expand and grow with the character. 

We're also getting nearer to the departure of Robert Holmes from the show, with this being his final complete story for the Doctor. He'll be back again for Episode Thirteen of the Trial season, but we won't be getting any more full stories from the man. Before I’d embarked on a big Doctor Who marathon, writers were largely interchangeable in my head. There was no real sense of ‘[X] writes very good stories’ while ‘[Y] writes very bad ones’, I just had a list of names floating around who had written stories at some point. Even then, though, I knew of Robert Holmes being considered the ‘bed tot the best’. So many other writers for the programme over the years have singled him out as the man who knew how to do it, so it was hard to miss his contribution. I couldn’t have told you much about my own thought’s to Holmes’ stories, because frankly they’d all blended in to the big pot of ‘Doctor Who tales’ in my head. 

But actually, having now sat through all of his contributions to the Doctor Who mythos, I can quite clearly see why he's considered to be such a luminary. Several of his stories have ended up towards the upper end of my ratings since he first cropped up in The Krotons, and I’m going to miss him being a part of the programme. 

And with that, we move on to the second segment of the Trial season - Mindwarp. From a previous viewing, I think of these next four episodes as being my least favourite of the season, but I've found plenty of new things to enjoy about The Mysterious Planet, so I'm hoping that the same will be true as we move forward... 

While I'm here, a quick note about how I'm rating The Trial of a Time Lord. You may have noticed that I'm referring to the different segments by their commonly-agreed-upon titles - The Mysterious Planet, Mindwarp, Terror of the Vervoids, and The Ultimate Foe. I'm really doing this because it makes it easier to discuss them here without you having to think about which part of the Trial, say, Episode Six might be, or Episode Ten. When it comes to rating the story as a whole, I'll be including it as one story (it is, after all, one big story - the credits say so!), but including the scores for the individual segments, too, so we can better see how they fit in to the Colin Baker era on the whole. And to make the 'average rating' list for his era a bit longer - it would be horribly short otherwise! 

Manufacturer: Big Finish Productions

Writer: Nev Fountain

RRP: £14.99 (CD) / £12.99 (Download)

Release Date: October 2014

Reviewed by: Nick Mellish for Doctor Who Online

“Once, long ago, in a land of monsters and corridors, a fair maiden was captured, and placed in a deep sleep.

She was used to being captured, and she had a hero who rescued her on just such occasions. But this time the hero never came.

And the fair maiden slept on.

Eventually, a King rescued the maiden, and made her his bride, which many wise old women might tell you is just another way of capturing fair maidens.

And still the fair maiden slept on.

Then, the hero had another stab at rescuing the maiden from her prison, but he was too late. And, more importantly, he had forgotten the rules of fairy tales.

He didn’t slay the dragon.”

***

It feels like this story has been waiting to be told by Big Finish for a while now.  Their fascination with a post-Trial of a Time Lord Peri goes way back to Her Final Flight, a subscriber special and one of those oft-forgotten plays which I always enjoy whenever I revisit it.  We then change ranges and ping over to The Companion Chronicles with Peri and the Piscon Paradox, which is every bit as good as reputation would have it.  Its writer, Nev Fountain, clearly really cares about Peri as a character and has given her ultimate fate a lot of thought, and Nicola Bryant has rarely been as good as she is throughout that play, squeezing the script for every drop of drama, heartache and laughter she can.  It felt like a decent conclusion to things: open-ended enough to maybe exploit further down the line, but with the option to simply move on now and leave things as they are. (I am desperately trying to not spoil that play here!)

We then switch ranges again, this time to the Main or Monthly Range, depending on what it’s being called this week, and have the Sixth Doctor travelling with Flip, but his heart(s) belong to someone else: Peri.  He simply has to see her; to know how she is doing.  It was clear from the very off how that trilogy was going to end: farewell Flip, prepare for Peri.

And now we are here with The Widow’s Assassin: Peri is back, Flip is gone, the Sixth Doctor is patiently waiting for things to click into place, and Nev Fountain is back in the hot seat, writing the follow-up-in-all-but-name to Piscon Paradox.

The first question is: is it as good? The answer, predictably, is no.  Let’s be honest though, it was never going to be.  Peri and the Piscon Paradox is about as perfect a play as Nev Fountain, and indeed Big Finish, have ever done, so it was going to be hard.

The second question is: is it satisfying for Peri? The answer is… debatable.  For Peri with regards to lines/action here and Bryant’s performance? Yes, it’s very good indeed.  As a continuation of her tale? Not so much.  It takes a rather easy way out, a way which avoids future complicated arguments between the Doctor and Peri about how things ended between them, and whilst that is perhaps understandable, it still feels like it robs us of some weighty drama further down the line.  It just doesn’t feel right or fair after all this time and fanfare.

The third question is: is it a good play? The answer is yes, it is good.  Not brilliant, but higher than average.  It is good.  Fountain is great at writing comedy and there are some genuine laugh-aloud moments across Widow’s four episodes, often in the guise of the hapless prison guards who so ineffectively guard the Doctor.  Halfway between the two guards from children’s television classic Maid Marian and her Merry Men and Evans from The Web of Fear, they sing whenever featured, and a whole host of alien delegates do likewise.

As with Piscon Paradox, there are some twisty-turny plot elements involving time here as well, though I must confess that I saw some of the larger twists coming a while off this time.  I think, in fairness to Fountain, that it is perhaps the result of a lot of twisty-turny plot elements involving time being prominent in the show on TV in recent years, not to mention in Big Finish plays such as Dark Eyes 2, The Light at the End and, indeed, Peri and the Piscon Paradox itself.  It just makes them slightly easier to spot than would otherwise be the case.

Still, Peri is back, and Bryant seems to be having fun alongside Colin Baker.  We’ve Daleks coming up next and the return of the Rani, so things look promising.  Even better, the irksome cliffhanger ending regarding Flip is resolved with an off-hand comment near the end of this play, which genuinely had me cheering: the best move Big Finish have made for a while now!

I am not going to pretend I thought this was the best play ever; in some ways, it disappointed me a bit.  It’s not Fountain’s finest, nor is it Peri’s, the Doctor’s or Big Finish’s.  It is, though, another decent monthly release after the recent Seventh Doctor/Ace/Hector-Hex trilogy, and that bodes well for the rest of 2014.

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 670: The Mysterious Planet, Episode Three (The Trial of a Time Lord, Episode Three) 

Dear diary, 

I'm somewhat surprised just how much I'm enjoying the design in this segment of the trial. I've often looked back on The Mysterious Planet as being just a little bit... rubbish, when it came to the look of the piece. I think I was mostly thinking of two areas - the set of the underground areas, which comes across as very plastic-looking, and the design of the cell in which our heroes find themselves locked up on the surface, because there's a few behind-the-scenes photos of that set which make it look very poorly painted. Actually, though, I'm wrong on both counts. Well, sort of. The cell actually comes across as much better on screen than it does being seen as a set in a studio, and it even looks rather good when the L1 robot is crashing through the wall to kidnap the Doctor. All the underground areas do still look as plastic-y as I remember them being... but I think that actually acts in its favour, giving the set its own unique feel. 

The piece of design I'm most keen on, though, is the big L3 robot - the Immortal One himself. There's something about the sheer stature of the creature which makes it look imposing, especially when he's towering over the two human servants in his control centre. It seems strange to think that this story comes more than ten years after the last big robot like this (in, um, Robot), and I think this one is possibly better. Oh, don't get me wrong, the design of the K1 robot is gorgeous, but it's perhaps that bit too designed. That doesn't take away from it on screen, but it doesn't really come across as being scary. The L3, in darker tones of grey, and with that big pointy 'head' really seems to be a bit more frightening, and I rather like that. 

I'm not so sure that I like the L1 as much, but that's possibly because it's in competition with this bigger older-brother. Do we actually see the L2 at all in this story? I don't think we do. Wonder what it looks like? I've mentioned it a few times in this marathon so far, but I'm a big fan of vintage Blue Peter, and the clip on this story's DVD, introducing the entire Trial season is a particular favourite of all the who-related segments. We get to see how both of this story's robots are controlled ('people power'), and I think it even helps to improve my admiration for the L3 - the poor controller trapped inside the costume has to peer out through the insignia on the chest, which helps to really sum up just how tall it is! 

During yesterday's episode, I complained that I was starting to see the irritation that could be caused by the constant flicking back to the trial room to catch up on the proceedings in the courtroom. I'm thankful to say that today's episode has been the complete reverse of that, and I've positively welcomed the inclusion of these moments. There's a point very early on - pretty much just as we see our characters escape from the cliffhanger - where we revert back to the 'present', and it felt entirely right that we should take a quick break from the main narrative here. I'm also impressed to see mention of the footage being excised at the request of the High Council, as I didn't think that revelation came until later on in the story. I'm already trying to think up ways that I can tie this somewhat more devious version of the High Council in to the Time War. 

While I'm briefly on the subject, I didn't mention the fact in Episode One that the Doctor has been deposed as President of Gallifrey, because of a degradation of his duties. I absolutely love this idea (especially since the Doctor even called on his official status last season in Timelash to help save the day), and I can easily tie this in to the Time War - the High Council know that even the Doctor, with his hatred of the Daleks, wouldn't risk plunging the planet into total war across all of time and space - hence removing him from a position of power, and putting him on trial in a further attempt to reduce his standing... I think this season could prove interesting if viewed from certain angles! 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 669: The Mysterious Planet, Episode Two (The Trial of a Time Lord, Episode Two) 

Dear diary, 

When Colin Baker first took over the role of the Doctor in The Twin Dilemma, he instantly won me over. Even when he was having to strangle Peri, or collapse in fits of manic laughter, there was something about the gusto with which he want for everything that completely worked for me, and I really enjoyed. That's not to say that I haven't enjoyed him in the stories since, but I think this may be the first episode in which he's really felt like the Doctor. There's lots of little moments in this episode - both in the dialogue and in the actions - where he's simply felt like the Doctor that I know and love, and I really can't remember the last time I felt that so strongly about this incarnation. Indeed, there's several lines here which I could easily imagine Tom Baker's Doctor saying, and I don't know if that's simply Robert Holmes managing to summon back up some of his old ability? 

There's lots about this story which I'm really enjoying, and that does have to be placed firmly at Holmes' door. He's managed to create a world that I'm buying in to, and more so this time than I noticed on a previous viewing. I think my favourite moment has to be Peri's discussion about husbands, while being held prisoner; 

GLITZ 

Obviously she's a romantic at heart. 

PERI 

Well, so am I, but not romantic enough to want more that one husband. 

DIBBER 

Where we come from, a woman can have as many as six. 

PERI 

Oh, it's very similar on my planet, except we usually have them one at a time. 

I just know that this is a line which would have completely passed over my head as a child, but listening to it now elicited a rather hearty laugh from me - and it wasn't the only one for this episode. There's plenty of moments that have really managed to entertain me, and I think that's probably the best you can hope for! 

In the past, I've often seen people complain about the constant interruptions to the narrative from the trial room itself, and I've never really shared in those complaints. As far as I've ever been concerned, they're a fun part of the stories, and I recall rather linking them as a slightly different way of looking at the stories for a few episodes. That said, in today's episode, for the first time, I did suddenly understand where the complaints may have come from: there's at least two interruptions which came at just the wrong point, and completely took me out of the narrative. I then spent the rest of the episode wondering if there could be a way of editing this episode to omit them entirely. I think, with a bit of fiddling, that it probably is possible, but I'm sure that later on in the trial, once it starts to become less clear what's real and what isn't in the tales being relayed to us, that it becomes near-impossible. I'll be interested to see how I feel about these trips back to the court come the end of the story... 

Something else I'd just like to touch on today - and it's not something that I've really had cause to mention for some time now - is the musical score for this episode. It's Dominic Glyn's first soundtrack for a Doctor Who story, and it's really enjoyable! It first came to my attention during that gorgeous model shot at the start of yesterday's episode, where the beautiful cathedral-like space station was introduced with ominous bells and organ music. It set the tone perfectly, and he's managed to keep the music in this episode varied enough to keep my interest up, too. Glynn will be providing scores for several more stories over the final few seasons' of the programme's 'classic' run, and I'm looking forward to hearing them. 

He's also the man responsible for the theme tune to this season of Doctor Who. Now, I have to admit that I'm not that much of an expert on the theme tunes (and most of the time I don't even notice when they change from story-to-story. Certainly, as I've worked my way through all the episodes for this marathon, I've not ever really thought 'oh, they've changed the theme tune... even though I listen to it every day...), but I know this one comes in for a fir bit of stick. I'm not sure if I dislike it, though, and I'm certainly finding myself singing along with it as the episodes start up. Today, I even found myself watching the closing credits and singing along with those, too!  

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 668: The Mysterious Planet, Episode One (The Trial of a Time Lord, Episode One) 

Dear diary, 

I can remember getting Trial of a Time Lord on VHS. For one birthday, I'd made a list of several Doctor Who tapes I'd quite like, in order from the ones I was most keen to see through to the ones I was less desperate for. This one topped the list. I mean, when you look at the facts on paper, it does sound pretty impressive, doesn't it? The programme returns from an eighteen-month hiatus with the longest story they've ever made - fourteen episodes - in which the Doctor is put on trial for his life by his own people, and the villain turns out to be... an evil incarnation of the Doctor from the future! Oh, come on, when you're a young fan, you can't help but love a description like that! I was thrilled when I unwrapped the TARDIS- shaped tin containing the videos on my birthday (my tin has Patrick Troughton on the bottom, for those of you who like to keep track of those types of thing!), and I recall really enjoying the story, too. Certainly, it kept me much more interested an entertained than The Key to Time season would a few years later! 

And what a start it gets off to! That opening model shot, of the space station hanging in the stars is good enough in itself... but then the camera comes sweeping down over it! Oh, how I love it. I must have seen it a hundred times over the years, because it's just so good. Easily up there with the best effects that Doctor Who has ever had, and a great one to show people who complain that the old programme had rubbish effects. No it bloody didn't, look at this! Oh, and step away from that Warriors of the Deep DVD, this is what Doctor Who always looked like... promise. I really like the design of the space-station, too, all those spires like a cathedral, and each one topped with a little glowing light... it's just such a beautiful model, and it almost fits with the visions I have of Gallifrey, the ones I spoke about during The Deadly Assassin. This is ancient gothic architecture mixed with futuristic grunge, and it blend perfectly. 

I'm not sure the same can be said for the sets of the inside of this station, however. I rather like the set of the actual trial room itself - there's something about the scale of it, and the way that the golds set themselves off against the black drapes that form the walls, but it's really the corridor in which the TARDIS arrives that I'm not keen on. It doesn't feel as though it exists inside that beautiful cathedral structure that we saw to start with, and I can never quite reconcile them in my mind as the same place. Still, I'll be seeing plenty of it over the next fortnight, so I'm sure I'll have chance to get used to it! 

From this episode up until the end of the 'classic' run in 1989, the  programme has switched over to being entirely videotape - even for location shoots. We've seen the show dabble with this before in Tom Baker's era, of course, but I've not been looking forward to it over the last few weeks. More and more, the programme has been giving little moments to remind me just how much better it looks on film than video tape, and I know that there's a few stories coming up (notably in the McCoy years) where shooting on videotape only means that stories can come across as poor quality, because the source material just isn't as good. We're not off to a bad start, here, though. It's certainly true that the outdoor scenes look flatter than they would have done on film (and I think that forest would have looked stunning shot that way), but it doesn't look as awful as I was expecting. I think that having such an interesting location, with all the thin little trees obscured in the mist of an autumn day is probably helping matters. Now, I'm hoping that getting off to such a good start with this new 'all-video' approach will make the transition a bit smoother for me. 

As for the story itself... well, there's lots to like, isn't there? We've got several hallmarks of classic Robert Holmes cropping up again for his final story (he'll be back with Episode Thirteen of Trial, but not another complete adventure), and chief among them is the partnership of Glitz and Dibber. Hands up, I love Sabalom Glitz. Always have, always will. Indeed, having seen Trial of a Time Lord, I rapidly moved Dragonfire up my list of stories I wanted to see, simply because I was keen to see more of the character! He's absolutely trademark Holmes here, with his speech about the way he struggles to come to terms with the 'more pertinent, concrete aspects of life' a particular highlight. 

He's not the only one being given some great dialogue in this episode, either! A few months ago, I was talking to someone and they mused that Colin's Doctor doesn't get any great speeches during his tenure. They cited examples from all the other 'classic' Doctors (Hartnell's 'one day I will come back' from The Dalek Invasion of Earth, Troughton's 'some corners of the universe' from The Moonbase, 'being frightened' for Pertwee from Planet of the Daleks, Do I have the Right from Genesis of the Daleks for Tom Baker, Davison's 'summer cloud' in Frontios, 'every decision' for McCoy from Remembrance of the Daleks, and the speech about shoes from McGann in the TV Movie - as an aside, it seems that Dalek stories really inspire great moments from the various Doctors!), but said that Colin never really got anything as magical as that. I'd argue that he gets two in Trial of a Time Lord - the speech about corruption later on in proceedings, which I'm sure I'll mention again when the time comes, and also one from today; 

THE DOCTOR 

Planets come and go, stars perish. Matter disperses, coalesces, reforms into other patterns, other worlds. Nothing can be eternal. 

I think that's probably my favourite moment of Colin's Doctor, and certainly as good as any of those other examples. It's beautiful dialogue, and a wonderful delivery. 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 667: Revelation of the Daleks, Episode Two

Dear diary,

I'm not entirely sure what the point of this one was. The Doctor and Peri have come to Necros to pay their last respects to an old friend. But then it transpires that people in Tranquil Repose aren't actually dead, but rather in suspended animation (or are there dead people there, too? I sort of lost track of this bit…). It also turns out that the Doctor was summoned to pay these respects as a lure by Davros, to bring his old foe to the planet he's been hiding on since escaping from the Daleks last season. But… Um… why? Davros doesn't have any real trap laid out for the Doctor once he gets there, just the opportunity to stand around and say 'aha! It's me! Bet you didn't see that coming!' Indeed, once the Doctor has fallen for Davros' ruse and come to the planet, he doesn't actually do anything! He spends that entire first episode walking to the location, then spends most of today just standing around! He blew up a Dalek eyestalk at one point, but that's it! Very odd.

I also can't let today's episode pass without mentioning my least favourite thing about this story - Jenny Tomasin's performance as Tasambeker. I've never really been able to get my head around what she's doing here, and I think today I've simply realised that it's terrible acting! There's a way of over-acting which can work very well for Doctor Who (and, indeed, there's examples of it in this story), but Tomasin is going so over-the-top that it simply becomes a parody, and what could be quite a nice little character study goes completely out the window, because it's taken over by such a ridiculous performance. Thanks to having the subtitles on now, I at least know that her line when killing Jobel is 'to earn his favour, I have to kill you' - because in the past, I've thought she was working for someone called 'Earnest Baber', and that confused me no end!

The other characters in the story work much better for me with the actors playing them. Several of them are, as I've mentioned, somewhat larger-than-life, but I think that helps to give the story its own somewhat unique flavour. Orcini is great fun, and I really enjoy the way that he and the Doctor communicate largely through simple looks and tiny nods throughout much of the confrontation with Davros. Speaking of whom, this is Terry Molloy's second outing as the Dalek creator, and it's perhaps more… ranty than he was last time. Much of this episode requires Molloy to play the part as though he's a complete raving lunatic, but I think it works well enough, and he really gets in to it! It has to be said that while Davros is being shown to us as simply a head in a jar, he's actually quite scary - especially when the head suddenly turns round at a great speed to confront another character!

It's also time for another part in the build up to the Time War, I think. That makes it twice in one season! Davros is here developing an entirely new race of Daleks using human tissue. Could it be that besides wiping out the original Daleks who aren't faithful to him any more, he's starting to prepare for the oncoming war? It's always struck me that you'd have to branch out like this at some point - there's only so many Kaled Mutants left after the war on Skaro, so at some stage, you'd need to start looking for an alternative source of flesh. The next time that the Doctor comes face-to-face with the Daleks, it's going to be completely a part of the Time War, without any need for fudging events a little bit - we're really heading towards it now!

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 666: Revelation of the Daleks, Episode One

Dear diary,

This is more the relationship that I like to see between the Doctor and Peri. Yes, they're poking fun at each other's weight and having a bit of a bicker, but it comes across more as good-natured joking around than anything malicious. I think it's clearest when the pair are trying to scale the wall into Tranquil Repose, and the Doctor makes a point of saying he may not be able to lift Peri, considering how much she weighs. She then calls him 'porky' in response. It feels perhaps more natural to a real friendship, where you might joke around and call each other names, and I think I quite like that. I could have done without all the innuendo with the Doctor's fob watch, though! This is the last story in which the Doctor is given his very 'rough' persona, before it all gets toned down a bit for Trial of a Time Lord. On the whole, I've enjoyed the concept of having a less-likeable Doctor, but I think they did mis-step a little bit in first giving him four episodes at the end of the previous season (leaving the audience nine months before the next one to muse on the fact that they don't like the new Doctor), and in planning to soften him across his entire era - I think we needed to see more of this incarnation's softer side as this season wore on, just to reassure us that he's the same Doctor underneath it all.

This is also the last story to feature 45-minute episodes during the 'classic' run of the programme. Again, I think it can be a good idea - the 21st century series has shown that - but the production team at this point just haven't quite known what to do with them. In the making of documentary on the Attack of the Cybermen DVD, Eric Saward comments that he liked the 45-minute format because it allowed you longer to really flesh out your characters, but I don't think many of the writers have really done that! Robert Holmes has still been the master with The Two Doctors, and even Saward himself is doing a better job than usual of populating his world in this story (though here perhaps more than ever, you can see him trying to emulate Holmes' style), but I think episodes have largely felt a bit clunky this season. It was most highlighted in Timelash, when the episodes just dragged on-and-on, well past the point when I would have comfortably have liked a break from them. I'm almost wondering if I might watch that story again at some point with the international-style cliffhangers reinserted to make it four episodes - it could fare better!

Thankfully, there's a lot more to like in today's episode than there was in the last few. I really wasn't sure what I'd make of this story - it's been so long since I've seen it that I couldn't remember a great deal. I think I quite like it, with plenty of action going on to keep me interested, and I almost like the fact that the Doctor and Peri don't actually get involved with the main plot at all in this first half. I'd worried that it would feel like it was taking the mick too much, but it's allowed the cast of guest characters to firmly establish themselves before our regulars arrive. I'm looking forward to seeing what it's like once the two worlds collide - I don't think we've ever had so much time setting up the guest cast before the Doctor or his companion meets them, have we?

Perhaps the one slight disappointment that I've got about it is the way the Daleks have been used. We're introduced to their part in the narrative without any fanfare - we simply cut right to some of them in Davros' lair. I know I used to joke about the fact that the 'Episode One Cliffhanger' would be the pepper pots turning up, even though we know they're in it from the title, but I sort of want a bit more of a song and dance made of them. The best Dalek moment in the entire episode, for instance, is as we watch the Doctor and Peri walking off down a large ramp into the complex, and suddenly behind them, right up close to the camera, a Dalek whizzes by. That's actually scary. If we hadn't seen the Daleks in the story yet - and if you didn't know that they were in it - I think that would be a real 'heart skips a beat moment'.

It would also be helped by the fact that we've got Daleks in this episode quite unlike the ones we're use to. Back in Day of the Daleks, I complained that in the colour-era stories, the Daleks always looked a bit rubbish. They're tatty, and broken. The different props have been mixed and matched and put together wrong, so they don't fit. The paint work has been touched up in dribs and drabs, where you can still see the wet patches, and they're that dull grey colour. It worked well for the bleak Genesis of the Daleks, but they just don't have the flair or style of the 1960s versions. But here! Oh! They're white and gold! They're brand new, and I've always loved this colour scheme on them. It adds to the moment when one glides past the camera, because you're almost not quite sure. It looked like a Dalek, but could it be…?

This episode is also home to the glass Dalek, and it's - you've guessed it - another image that's been seared on my brain from reading Doctor Who: The Legend years and years ago, before I saw this tale. There's something so wonderful about the idea, and I love the way it's been lit, sat up on its little platform. Beautiful. I'm sure that a similar creature appears in Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks, and it's no wonder that it's made the jump from page to screen, because it's such a beautiful visual concept.

While I'm on the subject of visuals - how lucky were they to have been hit by so much snow during the filming of this one? That opening shot of the TARDIS arriving on the bank of a river, with the snow being blown around by the wind, and the winter sun sitting in the sky… oh, it's beautiful. As the Doctor and Peri explore, you can't help but think that there really is something a bit alien about all of this, and it seems so perfectly suited to a story that's so steeped in the tones of death. I can't help but think that had they filmed this simply on a regular wet autumn day, it would have looked pants.

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 665: Timelash, Episode Two

Dear diary,

I don't know if I'm just in a more forgiving mood today, but this episode has been much more enjoyable than the first one was. Even some of the sets that seemed ridiculously bland yesterday have grown on me - and I rather like the light design on the wall of the Council Chamber! Not all the decor is to my tastes, though - the mural of the Third Doctor I could do without. It just seems far too much a fan-pleasing exercise than a good idea…

If I'm being honest - there's lots that I've enjoyed in this episode, but I think the whole is a great deal less than the sum of its parts. Lots of the things that I've liked don't really bare talking about at any length, so among them are the android's voices (and the way that they seem to be so at odds with the stature and shape of the creatures), The Timelash itself (I know it looks a bit rubbish, but an image of Colin being lowered down it on a rope is another one that captivated me as a young fan, seeing it for the first time), the cell that Peri is chained up in very briefly (possibly the best set in the entire story - a great design that wouldn't feel out of place in a German Expressionist film), and the smug look that Colin has on his face when he's ten seconds in the future and gets to push people; he science is nonsense, even by Doctor Who standards, but he just looks so pleased about it.

There's two things in today's episode that really are worth mentioning separately. The first is the make up on the Borad. Let's be honest, it's some of the best make up in all of Doctor Who, from 1963 right up to now. It's a great design, it's been well applied… yeah, it's hard not to like. I think I'd go as far as to say that it's the best thing in the entire story, and it's sort of a shame that it's let down by everything else around it - make up like this would still be the best thing in a fairly good story, so why waste it here!

The other thing I've loved… Herbert! Haha! I've never noticed before, but you wait nineteen years for a real-life historical figure to put in an appearance (the last such instance was right back in 1966 and The Gunfighters), and then you get two in one season! After George Stevenson, we've not got H. G. Wells, too. And you know what? I rather like the way that he's been used in this story - usually, we go in to them knowing who our famous 'historical celebrity' is going to be, but this time it comes as a surprise reveal in the final few minutes. There's loads of allusions to Wells' work throughout Timelash, but I'm not overly familiar with his stories, so I can't claim to have picked up on them all.

I just think that Herbert works ridiculously well with Colin's Doctor, and he's even become another one of those characters that I'd love to see return in an audio adventure some time - putting him up there with the likes of Duggan! I laughed out loud ridiculously hard when the Doctor has forcibly removed Peri from the TARDIS, only to take off and be confronted with Herbert. There's something about the way that they exchange 'hello' before getting in to everything! I love the scene in the first episode, too, where Herbert comes wandering out from the TARDIS corridors to explain that the ship is bigger on the inside… and the Doctor simply replies 'I know!'

Sadly, Herbert getting on so well with the Doctor comes at a price - he's especially awful to Peri in this story. Their relationship has never been quite as pleasant as, say either the Third or Fourth Doctor with Sarah Jane, or the Second Doctor with Zoe, but it's felt in the last couple of stories that they've settled into a groove where they bicker and argue, before they hug and make up, and simply love being with each other. In Timelash, he's perhaps worse to her than at any other time (even when trying to kill her!), and that's also put me off the story just a bit.

Sorry, Timelash, but great make-up and Herbert just isn't enough to stop you from becoming my lowest-rated story.

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 664: Timelash, Episode One

Dear diary,

Although I try to keep an open mind about every story in this marathon as I reach it, I have to admit that I've been dreading this one. Unlike, say, Underworld, which had a bad reputation, but I'd never judged for myself, or The Twin Dilemma, which I'd enjoyed in spite of such an awful reputation, Timelash is a story that I can remember coming away from on a previous viewing and actively thinking that it had a well-deserved reputation for being rubbish. Ever since, it's existed on my list of 'stories I don't plan to watch again'. Now, this isn't the first time in this marathon where I've come across such a story, and it can usually swing wildly in one direction or the other - I'll either come away loving it because it's better than I'm expecting, or I'll hate it even more because I've spent the last few days being so sure that I would. Sadly… I think we're falling in to the later of those two categories.

Something that's been becoming more and more prevalent this season is that the Doctor and Peri spend such a long time in the TARDIS. In this episode, they don't make it out of the ship until something like 23 minutes through - in 'old money', that would mean the entire first episode stuck in there! It's a trend that's been steadily growing for a while now (especially through the last two seasons, but it started as far back as Season Eighteen), and I think I'm just a bit bored of it. There was a time, when I was quite a new fan of Doctor Who, when the more time spent inside the TARDIS, the better the episode was - I was absolutely fascinated by it, and loved a chance to just look at the console room. Now, I'm not so sure. I'm also not keen on the way that the TARDIS is being set up this season.

Put simply, it no longer feels like a powerful time and space machine in the way that it did right back at the start of the programme, and it's all down to the way it's being treated. In Vengeance on Varos, when the Doctor retires to muse on the rest of eternity being spent in a dying ship, he sits on a garishly 1980s chair, that just happens to be plonked in the console room, away from anything else! It doesn't feel as though it's part of this console room at all (and neither, for that matter, does the entirely different chair which occupies a similar spot in The Twin Dilemma). Way back when, the TARDIS console room used to contain a little wooden chair, and various other odds and ends like that, but they somehow seemed to fit in perfectly with this strange place inside the police box. During the events of The Edge of Destruction, for example, the chair Barbara has to slump in doesn't feel incongruous, it simply feels natural that it should be there. I think the fact that the TARDIS is now less a collection of different elements - different attempts at making roundel walls, and fault locators, and ceiling lights - and more of a white void, coupled with the fact that the chair is so dated by being made in the mid-1980s, really does harm it.

In today's episode, it's the sudden appearance of straps being used like seat belts which feels out of place. When the Second Doctor gets up from regeneration and starts rummaging through a chest in the TARDIS console room, pulling out knives and cloaks and mirrors, it somehow feels natural. Similarly, when the Tenth Doctor does the same in The Unicorn and the Wasp, I'm somehow able to suspend my belief for long enough to just accept it. Here, though, it simply feels odd, and completely out-of-place with the set. If anything, it comes across as an excuse to pad out the running time a little (and I think I'm right in saying that the second episode, at least, did need some padding out with extra TARDIS scenes, so I may not be that far off the mark…!)

All that said… maybe they're better off being stuck inside the TARDIS, because the set design on Karfel leaves plenty to be desired. I get the impression that they're going for a kind of totalitarian minimalism effect - all blank walls and very little to inspire the people - but it just comes across as looking bland. Note how much more interesting it all looks, and how much my attention picked up, when we go in to the… I don't know, 'power chamber'? Suddenly, the lights are down, and they're trying something interesting with the colours. The sets aren't just flat blank walls, but rather there's some detail to them. Even the bland costumes look rather nice when there's some shadow to them!

I've little else to add, really, because Timelash simply isn't inspiring me to talk about it all that much! I'm in the sorry position of simply wanting to get tomorrow's episode over with, so I can move on to something that's hopefully a little bit better…

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 663: The Two Doctors, Episode Three

Dear diary,

The one part of this story that I've never been very keen on is the Second Doctor's transformation in to an Androgum. It's always just felt a bit odd, and seemed like such a strange thing to do to Patrick Troughton - surely if you'd got the Second Doctor back for one story, you'd want to spend as much time as possible with him simply being the Doctor? Watching it this time, though, I suddenly 'get' it - Patrick Troughton is absolutely relishing the part, and I dare say that he's giving a better performance as an Androgum than he is as the Doctor! He's really going for it, and I can't help but love that!

It's nice that he gets to spend some time with Colin Baker in this episode, too. I always think of the Second and Third Doctors failing to get on with each other, but the way that these two gently tease each other is brilliant, and I'm almost sorry that we don't get more of it. From the way the Second Doctor tells his Sixth self not to expect any thanks for saving him, through to the little jibe at the end about keeping out of each other's way… it's all just such good fun! There's a clip on Youtube from an American showing of Doctor Who in the 1980s, where they have a quick chat to Troughton, and ask him to introduce one of Colin's adventures. He makes a point of referring to Colin's Doctor as 'miss piggy', and it's clear that the good-natured playfighting continues well beyond the screen - I can imagine that the pair of them had a great deal of fun, sending each other up in rehearsals!

I figure that this is also the perfect point to bring up one of my favourite legends about the programme. There's a long-standing rumour that at one point in the 1980s, Patrick Troughton came back to the show and played a monster (possibly only for a single scene during the studio day). I've never known of the rumour being confirmed at any point… does anyone know? I'm aware that Troughton stood in for Peter Davison during some of the camera set ups on Castrovalva, but I'd love to think that he's inside a monster costume at some point in this period! It wasn't that long after this story that Troughton died, and so the thought that he may have made just one more appearance somewhere is appealing!

As for this story on the whole… Oh, I can't help but quite like it. The Sontarans are bumbling fools (but they're rarely anything else), lots of the stuff about the way that time machines work doesn't really tally with anything else we've ever been told about them, and there's really no point at all for being in Spain, but everyone is clearly having a good time making the story, and that enthusiasm is infectious.

I'm also wondering if I can find a way of incorporating this one into my ever-growing narrative of the Time War. The Time Lords are worried about the emergence of potentially viable time machines within the Third Zone, and send a Doctor to help… could it be that it's because they're worried that the Daleks might get their protrubances on one of the crafts? Equally, could it be that the Sontarans don't want the machine simply for the reasons they claim here, but because they're still trying to 'audition' for the Time War (as I postulated during The Invasion of Time)? Or, even, is it viable to imagine that maybe Chasene isn't simply working for herself to take over the universe, and is actually working for some more Dalek-y pay masters behind-the-scenes? 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 662: The Two Doctors, Episode Two

Dear diary,

I can clearly remember buying this story on DVD. I was at college, and we'd taken a trip to Cambridge for the day, for some reason. I'd decided at some point on the route down there that I'd be picking up this story at some point, and when the time came, my friend Ben and I slipped off to the local WH Smiths to collect it. I recall this distinctly, because when the time came to pay, I realised that I was a few pounds short, and I remember being overjoyed that Ben agreed to foot the shortfall. On the trip home, I tried to explain the plot of the story to him (by this point, I was fairly clued up on most of the general plots of the older stories), and he was completely baffled by the fact that there could be two Doctors in one story. I only bring this up because it's another one of those weird coincidences that The 50 Year Diary throws up from time-to-time. I've only ever been to Cambridge properly that once. When I travel back home from Cardiff now and then to visit family, I sometimes end up at Cambridge station, but we're only there a matter of minutes and there's not a great deal to see. Today, though, I'm trying a bus across the country, and it just so happens that while I'm watching this episode on my iPad… we've pulled up outside the WH Smiths in Cambridge! The exact shop that I bought this DVD from seven or eight years ago! These little coincidences do crop up from time to time, and they always fascinate me a bit!

Anyway, today's episode. It's all a but of a mixed bag, isn't it? On the one hand, Robert Holmes is peppering the script with lots of his trademark elements, and that' always fun to have. On the other… it feels as though everything is just a bit wasted. We've got Patrick Troughton back as the Doctor for three nights only… and he's spent most of it either unconscious or strapped to a table (at times, both! I'll come back to the Second Doctor in a minute). We've headed off to Spain for the annual trip abroad… and it doesn't look all that much like there was any point. Oh, sure, the Hacienda looks nice enough, I guess, as does the olive grove, but I'm not convinced that they couldn't have replicated this kind of look back home for a bit less money. I think I'm right in saying that before they ended up in Seville, this story was planned to take place in New Orleans, which may have added more character perhaps? Still, I know we venture into the town itself in the next episode, so maybe that will help out a little?

So, the Second Doctor. As I've said, it feels almost as though he's being wasted in this episode. He gets some nice scenes in yesterday's instalment, getting to do his conversation with Dastari, but here he really is kept under wraps a fair amount, isn't he? It's telling, I suppose, that Patrick Troughton can still absolutely shine even in this diminished state, though. His chat with the Sontaran is fantastic, and I really laughed right the way through (of particular highlight was him asking 'tea time already, nurse?' as a trolley of medical equipment was wheeled in, and then commenting that the Sontaran's don't have faces built for laughter.)

Speaking of the Sontarans… I can never quite make my mind up on this pair. For a start, they're that bit too tall to be Sontarans (In my write-up of the species for the Doctor Who: Adventure in Time and Space Role Playing Game, I made a point of saying that Sontaran scientists are somewhat taller than the regular soldiers. It doesn't quite hang together, but it's close enough for me to squint and believe it), but it's really the masks that I'm not sure about. I think they're very good - the features are harder set and more 'militaristic' than any of the previous versions we've seen - and they've lost that heavy eye-shadow they'd become so fond of for The Invasion of Time. But then, the mouths don't really work, with the actor's lips visible behind the sculpted Sontaran lips. That's off-putting. And then there's the fact that the neck-rings seem to have beed just placed on to the costume, and not affixed in any way! There's several shots in today's episode where they seem to just float independently of the body, and that certainly doesn't look right to me!

And then you've got the Sixth Doctor and his companions. I've not really touched very much on the way that the Sixth Doctor and Peri's relationship seems to work - where he's often a bit of an arse to her, and she simply goes along with it - but I think this story shows it up very nicely. He is an arse to her, but you can see that they share a deep bond under all of that. Peri seems to go along with him because she knows that under all the pomposity and bluster (and rudeness, let's be honest!), he's a very good man, and she's proud to travel alongside him. As Clara said recently in The Caretaker, you get to see wonders, and Peri's willing to put up with this guy for those! I think she's the perfect companion for him in many ways, and I always love it when she cuts right through his showboating and brings things back down to earth. We get it in today's episode, where he ruminates on the approaching end of the universe, and then announces that it'll take a 'very few centuries' to occur. Peri laughs this off, and ventures off to find Jamie, leaving the Doctor performing to an empty room.

Jamie is working very well here, too, for that matter, and I'm enjoying the way he bounces off the Sixth Doctor. I think if I had to pick my favourite exchange from the episode, it would be from the Doctor trying to explain his different incarnations to the Highlander;

JAMIE
He's not the Doctor I know.

DOCTOR
I am too, Jamie McCrimmon. I am another aspect of him, just as he is of me.

JAMIE
Eh?

DOCTOR
I was him, he will be me.

JAMIE
Who will I be?

Although I'm longing to get just a bit more time of Jamie with his Second Doctor, I'm glad that he works so well with the Sixth, at least. By the time The War Games rolled around, and we waved goodbye to Jamie, I'd had more than enough of him, and was ready for him to leave. Enough time has passed now, though, that it's great to see him again - I'm glad to have him back, if briefly! I know he was paired with the Sixth Doctor again on audio a few years ago, and I think that might be worth checking out once this marathon is complete!

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 661: The Two Doctors, Episode One

Dear diary,

The Two Doctors has always felt like a bit of an oddity. It's not an anniversary story, like The Five Doctors, or an excuse to bring back all the previous incarnations, as in The Three Doctors, but rather an excuse to get Patrick Troughton and Frazer Hines back together again for a bit of a knees up in Spain. Who am I to complain about that, though? There's something a little bit magical about the way the titles fade into a black an white image of the pair (heightened by the fact that the titles are especially saturated today!), and the story starts off from there. Indeed, we don't even see Colin Baker's Doctor until almost ten minutes in to the episode!

The only issue that I now have, coming to this story having watched all the episode that precede it, is how wrong it feels for the Doctor and Jamie to be talking so casually about running a mission for the Time Lords, and the fact that he's able to pilot the TARDIS so well (for him, anyway). When I first saw The Two Doctors, it was simply The Second Doctor coming back in to the programme after many years away, and that was simply brilliant. Now it's all just a bit… off. I'm not going to go wildly in to the theory of Season 6B (I've never really decided if I like it as a concept or not…), but I can at least understand why people feel the need to explain these oddities away - they really do stand out.

Having had the Second Doctor and Jamie taking up the majority of the tale for the first ten minutes… we then barely see them again for the rest of the episode! The space station is attacked by an unseen menace (though we already know it's the Sontarans), and then we're more-or-less with the Sixth Doctor and Peri for the rest of the running time. That's not a bad thing, though, and in fact it may be some of the best time we've spent with the Sixth Doctor so far. There's something so sinister about the way that the Doctor comments on the work being done on this station 'threatened no one', and being answered by a booming voice, 'it threatened the Time Lords…'

I almost wonder if I would have liked that to come before we spend any time with the Second Doctor? It would be a wonderful hook for opening a story - the Doctor collapses and feels unwell, he goes to see Dastari, finds the station in ruins, hears the booming voice of the computer… and then starts to remember the last time he visited the station. Cue Jamie and the Second Doctor arriving at the station in their TARDIS, and deciding to slip in quietly. There's nothing wrong with what we've got here, but it seems odd to have such a wonderful mystery being set up for the Sixth Doctor while we already know what's happened!

While I'm on the subject of the station - isn't it a lovely design? I really like every bit of it, from the main station design right through to the service areas down below. There's something very 1980s about the style, but it really appeals to me. It also look fantastic when the Doctor and Peri get to explore in the dark, silhouetted against small pockets of colour and light. It's not often that Peter Moffat gives us something this well executed, so it's always nice to see when he does!

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 660: The Mark of the Rani, Episode Two

Dear diary,

Well… we do have to spend a lot more time in the studio today than we did in yesterday's episode, but we still get a fair few sequences shot out on location, too, where the direction really does continue to be fantastic. It feels a bit like I'm watching a proper drama, with lovely close-ups of the actors, and beautifully composed three shots. I think, if there's one thing I'll be taking away from The Mark of the Rani, then it'll be just how good it looks.

There also needs to be a certain amount of love given for the location that they've used here. I think I'm right in saying that this story carried a dedication from the BBC to the 'Ironbridge Gorge Museum', where much of the story was filmed, and it's not hard to see why. I often find myself in stories like this praising the way that the BBC can build fantastic historical sets in the studio, but this is probably the best location that we've had for a historical tale in ages. I have a feeling that even going off for a holiday in Spain for the next episode is going to pale in comparison!

I'm also compelled to praise the Rani a little bit more with this episode, because she's brilliant! This story makes quite a point about the way the Master operates - seemingly always obsessed with killing the Doctor over anything else - but it also presents the Rani as the character that should be the Doctor's nemesis. Do you remember, back in The Mind of Evil, how I praised the way that the Master was able to control all of the events while sitting quite happily in the back of a car, smoking a cigar? Or the way he moves all the pieces in The Time Monster, sat in a high-backed chair before a fireplace? That character hasn't regenerated into the Master that's been doing battle with the Doctor from Traken to Sarn, that character became the Rani as we see her here.

She's not on Earth with some diabolical plan - she's here because she needs to be. There's no grandiose attempts to take control with robots shaped like the king, or huge radar dishes. She's here, she's set up everything she needs, and she's getting on with it. I also love that when the Master tries to get her assistance in killing the Doctor and taking control of Earth, she points out that she doesn't need to do that - she's already the ruler of a planet, and she's quite content, thank you very much. I'm even impressed by a fact about the Rani that's always left me a little cold in the past. It's said that she was exiled from Gallifrey because she bred giant mice, and one ate the Lord President's cat. It's always seemed like such a silly idea to me in the past, but the way that Kate O'Mara delivers the line is wonderful.

I can't talk about this episode without mentioning another one of the most famous things about it… the trees. Oh dear, the trees. I'm sure you know the story: Luke has been hypnotised by the Master. He's led Peri off to get her out of the way. The Rani has set some lethal land mines for the Doctor. Luke steps on one of these mines… and it turned in to a tree. Later on, a group of rebels carrying the Doctor on a pole also find themselves turned in to a tree… with the Doctor's pole suspended between branches. It should be silly, and indeed, I've always thought of it as being so… but I rather enjoyed it here! The trees don't look all that convincing, and the moment when Tree-Luke swoops down a branch to save Peri from the same fate is a bit ludicrous, but I rather like the actual transformation effect! I think it's generally a result of simply enjoying the episode so much that it can do very little wrong in my eyes!

The Mark of the Rani is Pip and Jane Baker's first contribution to the programme, but they'll be back for a few more stories over the next few years. They've never been hailed as the greatest writers Doctor Who has ever had (indeed, I was hugely saddened, and more than a little offended, recently when Jane Baker passed away and there were some comments on my Facebook News Feed to the effect of 'good riddance, her episodes were rubbish'. Suffice to say, those people no longer show up on my newsfeed), but I have to say that I've really enjoyed this particular story. There are more than a few examples of their trademark thesaurus-needing dialogue on show, but I didn't find it distracting to the plot in the way that I'd expected to. That's another thing to keep an eye on, I think, over the next few stories from them. So as far as I'm concerned, they're very welcome to the programme with a story like this, and I'm actively looking forward to their next one (which I seem to recall enjoying more than any other part of the Trial season…!)

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 659: The Mark of the Rani, Episode One

Dear diary,

The Mark of the Rani is, for me, another one of those 'fact' stories. What I mean is that I can rattle off plenty of information about it - it's the first Pip n' Jane story, the first appearance of the Rani, the Master's first face off against the Sixth Doctor - but I couldn't have told you just how good it is! I'm watching today's episode on a coach, making my way across the country, to visit family. I was praying that it might be an interesting enough instalment of Doctor Who to help break up the monotony… and is it ever! I've loved it!

The thing which is appealing to me the most here is the direction. It's genuinely some of the best we've ever had in the programme (it's better than The Caves of Androzani, which is the one every bangs on about direction-wise in this era, though for different reasons), and I'm gutted to know that this story represents Sarah Helling's only work on the programme, because she's got a talent that really could help improve the stock of the series.

I think it's partly helped by the fact that so much of today's episode takes place out on location (is this one of the highest film-to-videotape ratios that we've ever had?), and regular readers of the 50 Year Diary will be well aware of my feelings towards film in Doctor Who. There's lots of shots that look simply gorgeous here - beautifully framed - and I'm a little bit stunned by them. I've seen The Mark of the Rani before, but couldn't remember it being this visually gorgeous! I'm just hoping now that I won't have to pay the price tomorrow, and spend most of the episode trapped inside on video…

I've already made brief mention of the fact that this is the first appearance of the Rani in the programme. She's built up something of a reputation over the years for being a bit of a rubbish character, but I have to confess that I'm rather fond of her. I think it helps that this is the serial in which she's given less over-the-top eccentricities, and her plan is half-way decent, too. She's not here trying to impersonate the Doctor's companion, or trap him in a time loop on Albert Square, but rather because she's got her own experiments to work on.

I'm less thrilled to see the Master turning up, and surely this is the most ridiculous disguise that he ever wears? There's something quite creepy about the way the scarecrow's head moves as he watched the Doctor and Peri depart, but then when he takes off the costume (in one of the few poor areas of direction, sadly), there seems to have been no reason for the disguise at all. I can just about buy that he's ended up in the same place and time as the Rani, because he claims to have followed her here, but he seems to have been standing in the field just for something to do on a Tuesdays afternoon!

That said, when he's paired up with the Rani, I can't help but really love it. The way the pair spark off each other is hilarious, and you can't fault the Rani's description of the Master's schemes - ' It'll be something devious and over-complicated. He'd get dizzy if he tried to walk in a straight line.' The one area which does feel a bit out of place is that they seem to all subscribe to the Gallifreyan Academy's alumni newsletter. The Rani is well aware that the Master's last plan went wrong for him and seemed to finish him off, and they both know on sight exactly what this new Doctor looks like! It must be terribly awkward for him - every time he turns up to a reunion, he's got a different companion in tow, the old dog!