Category: Episode by Episode
Doctor Who episode 664: Paradise Towers – Part One (5/10/1987)
‘It’s seen better days, that’s what’s happened.’ This is as big a change as The Leisure Hive, less for the visuals, which superficially echo Varos, but in the quality of the script. Suddenly, for all their odd slang sayings, these people speak like human beings. Mel might be on the menu for two cannibals from a dystopian future, but it sounds just like they’re having a cosy chat. The Doctor gossips away to the Deputy Chief Caretaker about the difficulty of doing a good job. Mel comes across as a middle class square, happier with the Rezzies than the Kangs, but even this humanises her in a way that the “computer genius with a memory like an elephant” brief never did. For several years we’ve had American teenagers that speak like characters from Victorian melodrama and space gangsters declaiming at each other in Bad Sci-Fi-ese. This is such a relief.
Doctor Who episode 663: Time and the Rani – Part Four (28/9/1987)
‘I have the loyhargil, nothing can stop me now!’ Imagine this as Colin Baker’s last episode. Suddenly, the nature of the Rani’s plan is revealed – to transform Lakertya into a time manipulator allowing her to ‘change the order of creation’. A little local difficulty has become a danger to the whole universe. Appalled, the Doctor wires the time brain to explode, while Beyus and Mel evacuate the captive geniuses. As Mel guides them to the TARDIS she looks back at the Rani’s base – no sign of the Doctor, and then a huge explosion. He must have been convinced that it was the only way to be certain of saving everything. Mel is inconsolable, rushing back to the ruins to find the Doctor terribly injured, but ready with a final bon mot before the miracle of the Time Lords works its magic for a seventh time…
Doctor Who episode 662: Time and the Rani – Part Three (21/9/1987)
‘A hologram! As insubstantial as the Rani’s scruples!’ It’s incredibly linear and straightforward. It’s also colourful and engaging. Whether it belonged on BBC1 in prime time on a Monday evening is debateable – Uncle Jack, which starred Fenella Fielding as the very Rani-like Vixen, was a fixture of children’s TV in the early 1990s, and this might have fit quite nicely in a similar slot. Compared to, say, Earthshock, this all looks very insubstantial.
Doctor Who episode 661: Time and the Rani – Part Two (14/9/1987)
‘Quite adept at manoeuvring, aren’t you, Doctor?’ McCoy is largely confined to one room for this episode as various characters come to him. There’s a risk that this could have sidelined him from the action, but I think the script manages to make it seem like events are revolving round him – the Rani is fetching and carrying for him, Mel is desperate to find him, while he pootles round investigating the laboratory, trying to piece together what’s really going on.
Doctor Who episode 660: Time and the Rani – Part One (7/9/1987)
‘I’m a bit worried about the temporal flicker in Sector 13. There’s a bicentennial refit of the Tardis to book in. I must just pop over to Centauri 7, and then perhaps a quick holiday. Right, that all seems quite clear. Just three small points. Where am I? Who am I? And who are you?’ The new Doctor wakes up full of plans. He’s diverted, for a while, by the Rani’s manipulations, but from the off this is an incarnation who intends to get things done. Most Doctors are a contrast to their predecessors, but the seventh especially so. While ‘Sixie’ was bombastic, erudite and confident the seventh Doctor is an underdog, dismissed as a ‘cretin’ by the Rani, jumbling his aphorisms, pratfalling and prone to melancholy: the Buster Keaton of Time Lords.
Doctor Who episode 659: The Trial of a Time Lord – Part Fourteen (6/12/1986)
‘The performance was too grotesque to be real.’ Given the circumstances around it (the original Saward script being withdrawn and the Bakers not allowed to know its contents), this could have been much more disappointing. It’s by no means a great ending (and the final joke of the Valeyard’s survival inadvertently throws into doubt whether this is all still a Matrix illusion), but it generally works.
Doctor Who episode 658: The Trial of a Time Lord – Part Thirteen (29/11/1986)
‘Most of what you saw was true.’ Except all the really dramatic bits, like Peri dying. Those were all made up. I think it’s a stroke of genius to bring back the Master as the Doctor’s key witness for the defence, and Ainley doesn’t disappoint as he leers over the court room, gently flirting with the Inquisitor, mocking the Time Lords’ love of propriety, and dramatically blowing open the conspiracy to conceal the theft of Matrix secrets by devastating the Earth. This might have been enough anyway: ‘causing ripples that’ll rock the High Council to its foundations’ and ensuring no-one else has the pleasure of revenge on the Doctor is perfectly Master-ish.
Doctor Who episode 657: The Trial of a Time Lord – Part Twelve (22/11/1986)
‘Whether or not the Doctor has proved himself innocent of meddling is no longer the cardinal issue before this court. He has proved himself guilty of a far greater crime.’ The titles of the Trial segments have been settled since the Target books were published in the late 1980s, but I think it’s telling that this one came out as Terror of the Vervoids rather than the working title The Ultimate Foe. The latter suggests a sort of Golden Age detective story – shades of The Final Problem or The Secret Adversary. The title it’s now known as promotes the generic Doctor Who monster plot above the detective element – which is entirely fitting because that’s exactly what the script does.
Doctor Who episode 656: The Trial of a Time Lord – Part Eleven (15/11/1986)
‘The Doctor is on trial for his life, yet in his defence he presents us with a situation in which he is deliberately flouting accepted authority.’ This is all lively enough, but it introduces what I’ve always felt is a flaw with the story. If this were a true Agatha Christie pastiche then the focus would be on the murderer and the investigation. But as Doctor Who needs monsters, so here the focus begins to shift to the Vervoids and their plans for the crew, and for Earth. Suddenly, it’s no longer a neat murder mystery but a story about obscene vegetable matter exterminating humankind.
Doctor Who episode 655: The Trial of a Time Lord – Part Ten (8/11/1986)
‘Are we to be subjected to a dissertation on interplanetary politics now?’ This is pure 1970s’ Doctor Who, particularly the scenes of the Vervoids attacking, which are shot POV with a green tinge just like the Wirrrn and the Rutans, and the very obvious CSO fringing around the Doctor and Mel’s hair when they stand in front of the observation dome.
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