Doctor Who: The Trial of a Time Lord REVISITED (Parts 9

For the third story of ‘The Trial of a Time Lord’, ‘Terror of the Vervoids’, we finally move on from the Valeyard‘s prosecution to the case for the Doctor’s defense. There’s an interesting idea here in that the Doctor presents an adventure not from his past, but from his future. This does raise a few questions (won’t presenting a future adventure virtually prove to the court that he will be declared innocent and therefore won’t be executed? Will the Doctor forget the events he’s watched when they inevitably do happen, or will he merely go through the motions?), but it’s still an intriguing idea.

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My favorite part is that it allows us to ‘skip ahead’ with the Sixth Doctor and see how much more he will mellow and become even more likable with time. Not that I haven’t enjoyed watching Colin Baker‘s Doctor throughout ‘Trial’ or that he hasn’t developed since season 22, but the charming, humorous and considerably less arrogant man we see in ‘Terror’ is a sheer delight. My favorite moment especially is when he’s trying to charm the stewardess Janet with a smile, flowers and a magic trick, all at once. Compared to the incredibly self-absorbed, arrogant man we got in ‘The Twin Dilemma’, it’s both wonderful to see how much Six truly progressed, and sad to think about what could have been if he had been able to stay for more seasons. (On the plus side, we can be more than thankful for Big Finish for giving Colin’s Doctor a second chance. We can also be thankful for ‘Terror’ at least for giving them an excellent starting point towards developing his character.)

We’re also “introduced” to Mel. It’s interesting to be introduced to a companion this way, where we don’t get her story of how she met the Doctor first and just jump straight to a point where they’re already good friends. Mel is certainly a different companion to Peri – very enthusiastic and much more keen to just jump into things, regardless of the danger. Bonnie Langford at this point is OK (although there are times when her performance is a bit too much), but not as great as she will become later in the Big Finish audios. Still, I will say this much: she could really scream well back in the 80s, and while not much later on, that high-pitched wail became overused (looking at you, ‘Time & The Rani’), at the end of part 9 it’s used to brilliant effect. ‘Trial’ doesn’t exactly have a lot of good cliffhangers – frankly, most of them are zoom-ins on Colin Baker’s face – but the cliffhanger to part 9 is definitely a true classic, and Bonnie Langford’s scream genuinely enhances rather than ruins the effect.

As for the story itself, I’d like to say it’s lighter-hearted than ‘Mindwarp’, which almost seems ridiculous when the body count is so much higher. But there’s a more comfortable tone as the plot involves a murderer on a cruise ship. OK, so the cruise ship is in space and there are also a ton of super-murderous plant monsters as well as an unknown human murderer, but it still has something of the Agatha Christie influence about it. Having the dual plot elements of the Doctor working out who the human killer is, while at the same time trying to stop the Vervoids, allows the plot to flow quite nicely over its four parts and avoids feeling too padded out.

As for the trial scenes, there are even less of them to interrupt the story, and of the ones we do see, they remain watchable. One thing that helps them to stand out is the Doctor being noticeably calmer than before. This is partly because for once, he feels more in control, (although with the Matrix becoming less and less reliable as evidence, that feeling of control decreases over time,) but also because, after what he learned in ‘Mindwarp’, he’s finally taking the trial seriously. The more I watch of Colin’s Doctor in this story, the more I have nothing but praise for him, as we see more and more sides to Six.

The only major problem I have with this story is its conclusion – it seems that by the end, the writers had completely forgotten that the events of ‘Terror’ were supposed to take place in the future and the Doctor gets charged with another crime – one that he hasn’t even done yet! However, overall ‘Terror of the Vervoids’ is still a rather enjoyable story, one that uses a nice and simple Doctor Who template of monsters, murder & mayhem before we reach the season’s closing episodes.

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Doctor Who: The Trial of a Time Lord REVISITED (Parts 9 – 12)

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