Doctor Who review: Terror of the Vervoids: Special Edition
By James Aggas
Before we review the Blu-Ray box set of Doctor Who’s twenty-third season, we take a look at an interesting special feature: a brand new version of Terror of the Vervoids. Is it an improvement over the original?
Earlier this month, Season 23 of Doctor Who was released on Blu-Ray in North America. While we haven’t reviewed the box set itself yet, (trust me – there’s a lot to cover,) we have taken a look at how well the arc of The Trial of a Time Lord worked. To sum up, it was extremely hit-and-miss. The story made a lot of frustrating choices, but at the same time, it also made some brilliant ones, too.
One of the weaker aspects of the whole season was, unfortunately, the trial itself. The fact that the trial scenes kept interrupting the flow of each story usually detracted from the viewing experience rather than added to it.
So the idea of a story being presented without those scenes included is an intriguing one. Especially when that story chosen is Terror of the Vervoids – arguably the story the least connected to the trial. So how well does this story work on its own terms?
A new take
From the very opening credits (as you can see above), it’s clear that this is more than just the original story with the trial scenes removed. We get a brand new version of Terror of the Vervoids, carefully re-edited and with new effects added.
The new CGI works well, although there are times when I thought that they stuck too close to the look of the original story. Particularly the Black Hole of Tartarus. The original effect was one that I thought could have been done better, and yet the new CGI for it looks almost exactly the same as the original effect.
As for the new titles: it’s nice that we have them, and it’s a great mix of Classic and New Series styles. The one aspect I don’t like however is the “shaky cam”, which is definitely used too much, but it’s still an interesting new take on the Sixth Doctor’s intro.
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A standalone story?
But what of the major selling point: the story itself? How well does Terror work without the trial scenes interrupting it every few minutes?
Overall, rather well. The story is one of Pip and Jane Baker’s stronger ones, featuring a clear influence from Agatha Christie murder mysteries, with the Doctor and Mel of course playing detective.
However, even better than the mystery itself is how the Sixth Doctor is presented. While he’s often been portrayed as difficult and arrogant at times, here, he’s far more charming and likable. While I like the eccentricity and difficult behavior of Six in his early stories, it is nice to see this more developed side of him. It also highlights how much more fondly remembered Colin Baker’s Doctor could have been if he had been given the chance for more development on-screen.
The trial’s absence
So the overall presentation of Terror of the Vervoids does work rather well without the trial scenes. Mostly, anyway. I must admit, there were times when I genuinely missed them. There’s a rather crucial explanation given by the Doctor during a trial scene, for example, and one or two non-trial scenes had to be edited out completely because they weren’t quite showing the “true” events. So the story doesn’t have quite as much of a natural flow as some other Doctor Who stories. But then again, this won’t be too much of an issue – after all, it can be assumed that most viewers have watched the original version already.
More than that – while some of the earlier trial scenes are missed, some of the later ones definitely aren’t. This is because the trial scenes gradually become more and more confused over when the story happened to the Doctor – while at the beginning, it was clear that these events were in his future, the later scenes implied that the adventure had already happened to him. With these scenes edited out, Terror no longer has that confusion, and actually works better as a result.
Overall, the new edition of Terror of the Vervoids is an intriguing watch. It doesn’t make the story a classic, but it’s still enjoyable, and it’s great to watch a version of it outside of the trial story.
Next. The Eighth Doctor will meet Torchwood’s Sergeant Andy in 2020!. dark
Are you a fan of Terror of the Vervoids? Do you think other stories in The Trial of a Time Lord could benefit from a standalone edit? Let us know in the comments below.