Time of Your Life

Somewhere else, across space and time, the Doctor has gone into hiding on the planet Torrok. Haunted by the events of his trial and the revelations of his future, he has taken a time out from his travels with the express intention of avoiding meeting Melanie Bush as long as possible to give himself time to recover. His rest is cut short by interferance by the Time Lords themselves, and the Doctor is propelled into a head on conflict with the local broadcasting firms, who are showing some incredibly violent television to a population who are unable to see anything beyond their televisions.

So here we have another of those famed sci-fi cliches about how bad television is and what a prophet of doom it is and how everyone who watches television will be turned into sheep in the future. Sci-fi writers love this kind of thing, and in Doctor Who it has already been touched on in Vengeance on Varos as well as referenced in previous novelized adventures (and in the future adventures would be a pivotal plot factor in the episodes Bad Wolf and The Parting of the Ways). Problem with doing it this way is the Doctor is again being shown on television as a contestant in a game that will see him victorious or dead; he's done this on Varos already, and Leela several novels back was also subjected to such rigours. And it all smacks of the Stephen King novella turned Arnold Schwarzenegger movie The Running Man.

Did all this repetition put me off, though? Not really, no, because Steve Lyons is no stranger to Doctor Who, and at the time of this novel's publication he had put out a few adventures already and laced them with humour, character intregue, and fantastic dialogue. I will readily admit that no Lyons novels exactly leap into my head as examples of now Doctor Who should be done, but at the same time I don't cringe at his name the same way I do at the likes of Peter Darvill-Evans, Neil Penswick, and Mike Perry and Robert Tucker. And sometimes Pip and Jane Baker.

Lyons gets the honour, though, of creating the first ever non-televised character for the series. Yes, by now reading this blong in a linear progression a reader would be acquainted with the likes of Jeremy Fitzoliver (sometimes with the third Doctor) and more recently Erimem (with the fifth Doctor), and there are plenty more to come, but the first ever character to be officially sanctioned by the BBC is one Grant Markham - a computer programmer geek fanboy. Grant has some of Melanie's background in computers but I am relieved to say that he does not have the whining irritating factor of Adric, nor is he shifty like Turlough was originally. Grant joins the Doctor at the end of the sory but only appears one more time in print, with his departure story not even part of the Missing Adventures range. Open ended, some might say, but in a future book, Instruments of Darkness, he is mentioned in passing, proof that he made a lasting impression on the Doctor.

Unfortunately, he doesn't get a chance to make one with the readers.

NEXT EPISODE : KILLING GROUND

He Jests At Scars

The Doctor has been destroyed. The Valeyard has won and is free to roam and plunder time and space in the TARDIS. At his side is companion Ellie Martin, a bewlidered young woman dumbfounded by the callousness and cruelty she sees him inflict. But the Valeyard's freedom has come at a terrible price; he alters history at a whim and sets in motion chains of events that shatter the web of time. Mel is sent by the remaining Time Lords to try to appeal to whatever shreds of the Doctor's character that may remain, but with reality collapsing all around them, is it too late?

Another of Big Finish's Unbound series, He Jests at Scars goes farther than previous installations and looks at the Universe without the Doctor. Michael Jayston reprises his role as the malevolant Valeyard with Bonnie Langford carrying on as Mel, but a more hardened Mel who has been changed by all she has seen. She's more determined, the's angrier, she's reconclied herself to the fact that she may have to kill, and best of all, she doesn't scream (imagine that din through headphones - no thanks). As far as the collapse of reality goes, Mel herself becomes a temporal anomaly here; she was only at the Doctor's trial as a result of being brought back in time, and with the Doctor gone, he will never meet her - a circumstance the Valeyard goes out of his way to ensure.

As a replacement companion, Ellie Martin is not exactly a good match for the Valeyard; she doesn't really get the implications of what is going on util it's far too late, despite the fact that she is witness to her terrorizing ways and she herslef is put in direct danger for him to achieve his goals. The actual character of Ellie Martin was originally created for Big Finish's spin off audio series Sarah Jane Smith - and you can guess who the star of that one is.

It can only be assumed, then, that the Valeyard managed to do away with everyone who was witness to the Doctor's trial; the Inquisitor, the Keeper of the Matrix, the jury, Glitz, the Master and even the pair of twit guards who ran out the door at the first sign of trouble. It can also be assumed that Mel was protected from the carnage as she was within the Matrix, and she was pulled out by the Time Lords to help them fight the monster they had created. Typical, as the Doctor would say.

But of course it didn't really end like that. As I said before, it ended with the Doctor and Mel leaving in the TARDIS and presumeably he was off to return her to her proper place in space and time - to his future - and then carry on. And carry on he does, even if the adventures in print and audio are not officially regarded as canon. Luckily the guardians of the series who kept the books and audios coming are still a bit driving force behind the new televised adventures and they keep in mind what was done during those lean years where there were no new episodes on television. The further adventures of the sixth Doctor during this span are by far the most interesting of any range, as there is potential all over for him to go anywhere and meet anyone. Colin Baker went on record when he took the role as wanting to remain in the role of the Doctor for longer than namesake Tom Baker's seven years, and with all the material produced by Big Finish, Virgin Publishing, and BBC Books there is at least enough published material to seem as if he achieved it.

The televised series would return 9 months later with a new Doctor, Colin Baker being released from the role early (which is French for he was fired), but as far as this blog is concerned he's still got a long way to go...

NEXT EPISODE : THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE

The Trial of a Time Lord - episodes 13 and 14 : The Ultimate Foe

The trial is coming to its end. With the destruction of the entire Vervoid race now hanging over him, the Doctor must fight for his life, but cannot produce any witnesses to attest to his versions of events and back up his claims that the Matrix has been altered. Help arrives in the most unexpected form : Glitz and Mel are yanked from their time streams and delivered to the trial space station - by the Master! The Valeyard bridles at the presence of the Doctor's old foe, but with the testimony of Gltiz a lot of things become clear; Earth was moved across the galaxy and renamed Ravalox by the High Council of Time Lords themselves in an attempt to hide Gallifreyan secrets that had been skimmed out of the Matrix by Drathro's masters. The arrival of the Doctor and Peri threatened to break the scandal and the trial, along with altered evidence, cooked up to cover the truth, and the Valeyard was installed as court prosecutor with the Doctor's remaining regenerations as his reward for success. The Valeyard flees into the Matrix, pursued by the Doctor and Glitz, and a battle of wits ensues, with the survival of the Doctor and the Time Lord society itself at stake.

The real big revelation here is the true identity of the Valeyard. He's the Doctor. He is the future version of the Doctor, a distillation of all the Doctor's darker thoughts and nature, a possibility that could emerge somewhere between his twelfth and thirteenth (and final) incarnation. Bound by the Doctor's moral impulses to serve the greater good the Valeyard is powerless to emerge until the shady machinations of the High Council allow him the possibility of escape. The Doctor is, in effect, fighting himself, and the battleground of the Matrix proves to be full of traps and tricks as seen during the fourth Doctor's battle against Chancellor Goth in The Deadly Assassin.

So what's the Master's deal in all this? He's Glitz's boss, and had originally sent Glitz and Dibber to Ravalox to retrieve the secrets held by Drathro for his own means. The Master's plan stretches further though; with his arrival and the revelation about the fate of Earth, the High Council of Time Lords is deposed by an outraged public, and he sees this as an opportunity to seize power for himself. His revelations go farther, though, to include the fate of Peri: she is not dead, as was seen on the screens, but lived, and became Yrcanos's queen (although one would imagine she's going to have a bone to pick with the Doctor for leaving her behind if their paths ever cross again).

We know that the Valeyard cannot win; and when the Doctor emerges victorious he dodges an offer of the presidency and takes off with Mel in the TARDIS. This was the last time the sixth Doctor would appear in the regular series, although logically he cannot go on with Mel seeing as she is from his future. We do not see him return her to where she belongs, so as far as anyone knows there's this big temporal paradox out there, although in the years since the combined efforts of Virgin Publishing, Big Finish and BBC Books have made the most of this and created the further adventures of the sixth Doctor, giving him a massive amount of material in the end (ironic for the second shortest-lived TV incarnation of the Doctor). Of course, I'm going to talk about some of this material.

But before I do, another trip back to the Doctor Who Unbound range and a look of what might have been if the Valeyard had indeed won his case against the Doctor and become free...

NEXT EPISODE : ...HE JESTS AT SCARS

The Trial of a Time Lord - episodes 9 to 12 : Terror of the Vervoids

Still reeling from the shock of Peri's death on Thoros Beta, the Doctor uses the Matrix to gather evidence for his defence. The Doctor looks to the future, to a time when he is travelling with a new companion named Melanie, and they answer a distress call on a luxury spaceliner headed from the planet Mogar to Earth. The call has been faked, though, and the commanding officer, Commodore Travers, is less than pleased to see the Doctor on his ship as their paths have apparantly crossed before. Also on board the ship are members of the Mogarian race, as well as the eminent agronimist Sarah Laskey and her team of researchers. As the flight is underway, the passengers and crew being to diasppear, murdered by forces unknown, until the ship is overrun with the planet-creatures known as Vervoids. The Vervoids are a result of experiments by Laskey, who has plans to use the race to perform menial tasks on Earth, but they have become self aware and view all mammalian life as a threat to them. As the bodies begin to pile up on a compost heap, the Doctor is forced to take drastic action and wipe out all the Vervoids before they reach Earth - committing an act of genocide...

There's a lot to be said about what goes on in these four episodes, even if they're not the best of the season. For starters there is the Doctor's growing conviction that the evidence is being tampered with at its source - confirmed by sequences he reviewed in priavte now being at odds with what the jury and the Inquisitor see in the trial room. The Valeyard is all smug about it and says that the Matrix cannot lie, and it's a dead cert now that he's somehow behind it. By now the sniping across the courtroom is getting a bit tiresome - every few minutes the action is interrupted, including one pointless demonstration where a sequence is rewound to show a poisoning victim.

Melanie Bush, the new assistant, is played by Bonnie Langford, and she's always smiling, and always bouncy, and a health freak, and she has this squeaky voice ... and the most shrill scream EVER in the history of the series. Personally... I don't like her. Too perky. I have this urge to backhand the TV when she starts the screaming. Oh the SCREAMING. Why do we need this? WHY? And why is the Doctor so whipped in her presence? Stupid stupid stupid.

The Vervoids. Hostile plant people. Not like the Krynoid, though; they have a pack mentality and a highly developed sense of self-awareness and parinoia. And poison thorns. They're not realized the best - they're obviously just dude in rubber suits with thick leaves glued on, but it's hard to do it convincingly on any budget. Their genocide doesn't exactly leave a yawning gap in an evolutionary sequence, but they're still a species, and they're all gone now, and it's all the Doctor's fault, so whether he's simply a meddler or not, he's now a mass murderer.

The Time Lords. Interesting how they sit there all judgemental about the Doctor saving Earth from extinction at the hands )leaves?) of the Vervoids yet these are the same people who two regenerations ago sent the Doctor to do just that very thing to the Daleks. (Although the Dalek thing has now been retconned in light of the new series - see future blogs about any Dalek story from 2005 and onward).

So at the end of it the Doctor almost proves his point, that he is needed where he goes and he helps when asked - and he almost is home free until the truth of how he deals with the Vervoids comes to light. Foolish if you ask me. Like he's played right into the Valeyard's hands.

NEXT EPISODE : THE ULTIMATE FOE

The Trial of a Time Lord - episodes 5 to 8 : Mindwarp

The Valeyard's evidence against the Doctor continues with a viewing of the adventure the Doctor was engaged in before being lifted out of time and to the space station's courtroom. The Doctor and Peri arrive on Thoros Beta to confront arms dealers supplying weapons to lesser races, and they find the beastly Sil and his people, the Mentors, in control. Other work is going on in the caves of the Mentors' home, though; the brilliant surgeon Crozier is working on a means to prolong the life of Sil's boss, Kiv, and dabbling in brain implants on the side. The Doctor is subjected to a mind altering device and sides with the Mentors, leaving Peri to fight for survival alongside the barbarian king, Yrcanos, and the slaves from Thoros Alpha, and providing the Valeyard with even more ammunition against the Doctor.

This is good fun Doctor Who, with plenty of running around in corridors to keep us all amused. The script is delivered by Philip Martin, the writer who created Sil for Vengeance on Varos and planned to bring him back with Mission to Magnus (no elements of which were cannibalized for this script, by the way, so it's not a reworking of shelved material), and although we have switched writers, the linking sequences in the courtroom are still maintained the same (I detect the work of script editor Eric Saward here). The Inquisitor shows a bit of stress at having to intervene in the sparring between the Doctor and the Valeyard; the Valeyard hammers home his evidence by playing up the danger that Peri, and all companions before her, faces, and sets out to crucify the Doctor for his sudden switch in allegiances. The Doctor, while suffering from memory loss due to his abrupt removal from time, denies that he would do such a thing, although the evidence being presented via the Matrix suggests otherwise. Peri is abandoned, captured, tortured, courted by the insanely over the top Yrcanos as played by acting legend Brian Blessed, and then, tragically, killed.

Yes. Peri dies on the Matrix screen, her life snuffed out with a callous disregard. The Doctor is devastated by this. Fans all knew it was coming back in 1986 when the show returned to the screens and the news of Nicola Bryant's departure was overshadowed by the name of the actress who would replace her. But we all knew she was going to die, and when it finally happened it still came as a numbing shock. Companions do not die on a regular basis, although the last few seasons were peppered with deaths such as Adric, Kamelion, and Nyssa's near death from lazar disease; prior to these events, the last time a companion died was Sara Kingdom in episode 12 of The Dalek Master Plan in 1966. Fan reaction to Peri's death was mixed, although I remember showing it to my friends Lori Newman and Samantha Allen back in high school and they were delighted to see her go. When Jay and I watched it recently ... well there were no tears or anything - let's not get crazy now - but it was an understood that the death of a companion was a severe blow to the Doctor. Like, imagine losing your best friend.

Other performances of note include Nabil Shaban reprising his role as Sil, although in a slightly modified costume, and Christopher Ryan as Kiv. What's really going on over on Thoros Beta though - what's the deal with all those bodyguards with the huge - and I mean HUGE muscles? More recruits from the JNT casting machine no doubt, right Jay? Everyone else on set is eclipsed by some of those biceps, although Colin Baker's gut manages to cast quite a shadow all on its own. And while we're going on about visuals, check out the early attempts at Paintbox in these episodes with the white cliffs of Dover painted a bright blue and the oceans done in neon pink; every now and again though the process fails and tints Colin Baker's hair pink and both lead actors' faces blue. But that could be the glare, right?

Reeling from Peri's death, the Doctor begins to realize that there is more to this supposed trial than appears on the surface, and fuelled by rage and pain, he is determined to find out what it is.

NEXT EPISODE : TERROR OF THE VERVOIDS

The Trial of a Time Lord - episodes 1 to 4 : The Mysterious Planet

The TARDIS is yanked out of time and space, and the Doctor emerges into a courtroom on a massive space station. With a jury of distinguished Time Lords as witness, and the Inquistitor overseeing, the Doctor is accused of meddling in the affairs of other planets but the court prosecutor, the Valeyard. The Doctor tries to dodge the trial by using his status as Lord President of Gallifrey but he is informed by the Inquisitor that in his absence from his post, he has been deposed. Still confused from being pulled through the vortex, and without Peri at his side, the Doctor watches as his journey to the planet Ravalox is presented as evidence; a robot master oversees a small human population of the planet - which is revealed to be Earth following a devastating solar flare - while a small band of humans live on the surface above. Enter the unscrupulous Sabalom Glitz and his associate Dibber; mercenaries here on a mission of their own, although their presence results in a crisis endangering not only Ravalox, but untold millions across the galaxy.

The parallel between the plight of the series at the time and the Doctor's own plight is not a secret; Doctor Who had been off the air since the conclusion of Revelation of the Daleks and its return some 18 months later was looked upon as the show's last chance to redeem itself and regain momentum. The entire umbrella theme of the Trial would run the entire twenty-third season, all 14 episodes (half the regular length of the series) and would feature a new villain (the Valeyard), a new, if somewhat weak, version of the main theme song, a new companion, and an overweight leading man now barely being contained by his multicoloured costume. There would also be no more use of film on location shoots, and the entire show was recorded on video, somewhat cheapening the overall look of the production.

The first four episodes are collectively known as The Mysterious Planet, penned by series veteran Robert Holmes, and it comes with everything one would expect from him: comedy double act, cracking dialogue between the characters, and a good rapport between the series regulars - which came as a relief to fans who tired of seeing the Doctor and Peri snipe at each other. The revelation that Ravalox is actually Earth and that it is in the wrong part of the galaxy comes as a huge blow to Peri; this is the first time she comes face to face with the mortality of her home planet. The death of the planet itself has been hinted at before; in The Ark Earth is seen being burned to a cinder by the sun, and more recently a solar flare drove mankind away from the planet as documented in The Ark in Space. How this latest destruction of Earth scenario fits into that continuity remains to be seen, although there are theories. Is Nerva Beacon in orbit over Ravalox right now? Is there a Sontaran lurking elsewhere on the planet? Actually, geographically the location is not far off from where the Doctor claimed to have arrived in The Sontaran Experiment ; he claimed the transmat circle was near Trafalgar Square, and in The Mysterious Planet the Doctor and Peri come to discover the abandoned ruin of Marble Arch station in the London Underground (realized a bit better than the stations in The Web of Fear).

How about that cast. Glitz and Dibber are not just there by chance; they've been sent for something specific and they already know about Ravalox's true identity. Katryca, the Queen of the Free, wants her people to live without fear of Drathro, the robot that runs the underworld and terrorizes his workforce. Merdeen, one of Drathro's henchmen, knows that there are free people on the surface and secretly allows Drathro's slaves to escape, and he sees the Doctor's arrival as just the help he needs to free everyone. Sitting in the courtroom, the Inquisitor is pretty impartial to the hearing although one can detect her Time Lord sensibilities being offended by the accusations against the Doctor; she keeps both the Doctor and the Valeyard in check though. As for the Valeyard, exactly who this oily dark character is remains to be seen; his contempt for the Doctor is onbious as he suggests that the Doctor face a capital punishment for his crimes if found guilty, contending that the Doctor's previous trial in The War Games dealt him far too lenient a sentence (the Valeyard is obviously not a revisionist, as the Doctor's supposed limbo and employ as an agent of the Time Lords prior to his exile would not be a lenient sentence at all).

The case against the Doctor seems flimsy, though, even to a casual observer, and it's obvious even without knowing that there are 10 more episodes of this to come that there is something else going on. Jay and I of course knew this so we chatted aimiably through the whole thing, remarking at how nice it was to see the Doctor and Peri actually talking for a change, even if Peri had made some sad fashion choices. We both agreed that Dibber is hotter than Glitz, and both look like they were hanging out in some gay bar when they were hired for the job. There has been much criticism that Drathro and his L1 robot cohort look like Capsela robots at worst and Transformers at best, but the sheer size of them against the BBC budget would make it hard to build them convincingly.

Anyways. There's more to come.

NEXT EPISODE : THE TRIAL OF A TIME LORD - MINDWARP