The Collection - Season 23 Blu Ray

Just imagine if Season 23 had opened not with the Trial ship hanging in the void accompanied by deathly electronic chimes but with the Hyperion 3 docking near Mogar, the Doctor’s voiceover introducing new and old viewers to his next adventure, inviting us in as fellow detectives in a space-age whodunit. It would be a very different and perhaps far more efficient way of introducing this particular series’ new premise. Despite the presence of Bonnie Langford, to whom some fans reacted with unsubstantiated, unreasonable and undeserved venom at the time, the first scene between her and the Sixth Doctor sets up a new status quo for the TARDIS team. Gone is the clumsy, repetitive bickering of Season 22, replaced by a companion who’s managed to cajole this most bombastic, arrogant and immoveable of Doctors onto an exercise bike. It says a lot about the force of nature that is Melanie Bush that the Sixth Doctor we see in Terror of the Vervoids is almost unrecognisable as the Doctor of the previous year. Here, he’s by turns charming (whipping out flowers from his sleeve with a smile), funny (“Wish I could get rid of my waist as easily, eh?”) and warm with only the occasional arsy moment thrown in for good measure. (He waits for Mel to leave before going with her passenger list idea, presumably just to save face.) Given a few more episodes, it’s possible that Mel may have proven the perfect foil for Old Sixie. The adventure itself is a well-structured, intricate murder mystery with some cracking cliff-hangers, hard sci-fi ideas and the oft-criticised over-articulation of Pip and Jane Baker’s prose-y script is far more charming than it’s given credit for. In short, this might well have been a terrific way to launch the show after its unfair hiatus and Vervoids gives Colin Baker perhaps his best opportunity to shine as a leading man. That’s certainly something Pip and Jane Baker understood: the Doctor should be the star of his own show.

As it happens, we ended up with the unwieldy and miscalculated season that was The Trial of a Time Lord in which our hero is relegated literally to the dock as well as spending a few episodes playing The Bad Doctor again for reasons neither Eric Saward nor Philip Martin seemed to fully understand. No one is going to argue that this season is Doctor Who’s finest vintage. But the fabulous team behind these Blu-Ray Collection releases led by Russell Minton have given us the chance to take a step into a parallel world in which Terror of the Vervoids launched the show with a terrific, new title sequence and a solid, fast-paced, occasionally gripping 4-parter which any new viewer could understand and enjoy without being drowned in drab Time Lord lore or witless courtroom squabbling. Charles Norton’s new edit of Vervoids is a sure-fire hit and this box set’s crowning glory, worth the entry ticket alone. For all the fantasising fans have done over the years about the mythic Lost Season of Toymakers and Ice Warriors, this new re-telling of a familiar story is perhaps the most tangible glimpse of a very different Doctor Who, a show which had the confidence to tell simple, standalone stories, free from continuity and introspection, with a sense of fun, mystery and scary monsters. It’s a glimpse perhaps of a Doctor Who which remained a success with all the family?

Elsewhere on the boxset, we can experience another way of watching Trial afresh in the bonus discs’ original 71 edits of every single episode, running at slightly longer lengths than on transmission. Remastered and with 5.1 sound mixes (courtesy of the incredible hard work of Mark Ayres), the slight differences and extended or hitherto deleted scenes make it feel as if one is experiencing the show for the first time and in many cases highlight the best of Trial. They also, sadly, highlight the worst of it.

Take the 71 edit of The Mysterious Planet Part One: the opening courtroom scene lasts longer than on transmission and outstays its welcome with the first irritatingly, triflingly banal objection from the Doctor. It’s perhaps a metaphor for all those following courtroom scenes, which feel more and more tiresome as the series progresses and reach their nadir in Mindwarp Part One in which they repeatedly interrupt the flow of the Thoros-Betan narrative with facile observations. The courtroom set itself is bland and vacuous, allowing only for the same three of four camera positions. Nicholas Mallett tries an early over-the-shoulder shot from the Inquisitor’s perspective but that’s about as inventive as it gets. The Mysterious Planet’s problems, however, extend far beyond the courtroom.

As a script, the first part of the Trial is as imaginative, loquacious and characterful as is typical of Robert Holmes even when not firing on all cylinders. Hell, even The Space Pirates boasts the brilliant Milo Clancey. In a parallel world, Glitz & Dibber are as fondly remembered as Jago & Litefoot, Vorg & Shirna or Garron & Unstoffe. However, JNT and Nicholas Mallett have cast Tony Selby as Glitz, a limited, run-of-the-mill actor who struggles to get through any sentence which includes words featuring more than one syllable. Watch as he “rrrrenders the rrrrobot non-operational” or as he observes that “yourssss is a simple case of sociopathy, Dibber.” You can see the man thinking his way through the mire of verbosity he is so clearly having to mentally wade through. What this part really needs is an Iain Cuthbertson or a Graham Crowden to lift it off the page, an actor of size and majesty and class, one who understands a text of theatrical proportions. Tony Selby doesn’t quite cut it. He’s followed slowly by a waddling Joan Simms as Warrior Queen Katryca, another actor who struggles to bring to life stagey cries of “Forward I say!” although she does have occasional moments of sinister magnificence: “I have studied the fires.” Lastly, the biggest disappointment of this scrag end of acting talent is the ordinarily brilliant Tom Chadbon, giving his most insipid shot at Merdeen. In some scenes, even though standing and speaking, his stark white make-up and vacant, omitting expression make him appear close to death. Casting is a serious problem in The Mysterious Planet and many of the extended scenes show up some of the actors’ even rougher takes. Things get even worse as the story progresses with Tumker and Handril, the blonde-wigged robots with less personality than Drathro. The two of them are utterly, shockingly bad and it makes the viewer wonder whether they are purposefully monotone and neutered or whether they’ve made a genuine acting decision between themselves to be as charisma-less as is possible. There’s a famous publicity photo of Colin and Nicola in hats and canes, announcing that they’re back in business, as it were. Judging by the capability of the tepid guest stars, however, we’re rooted firmly in the Z-list section of showbiz here, surrounded by talent which truly fails to inspire.

Another problem with The Mysterious Planet is its design work. Whilst Marble Arch Station looks completely glorious in its vaulted, gothic gloom, the tube tunnels themselves look more Supermarket Sweep than Web of Fear. They’re over-lit and plasticky. Imagine a Mysterious Planet played in shadows, the Immortal in his pitch-dark castle, throwing frightening black shapes against the dank walls. Imagine the train guards actually riding… you know, trains around their tube tunnels. The threat of their ubiquitous whistling through the tunnels just before the culling commences has Bob Holmes’s macabre humour written all over it. There is a tremendously dark and horrific story at the heart of The Mysterious Planet, that of a literal robot confining a group of naïve humans to a world of blackness and keeping their population at bay by murdering them routinely. What we get is a bunch of irritating mugs arsing about in bright corridors, trains you could walk away from at strolling pace and exits which seem fairly apparent and very easy to get out of. If just one person down there were a little bit curious, the whole wretched civilisation might have gone outside well before the Doctor arrives on the scene.

And so to our leading man: Colin Baker, perhaps the least celebrated of all the Doctors. Watching Colin now, and knowing the immense pressures the series was under, it seems a magnificently valiant performance, a rallying cry that this show needs to survive. A call to be seen. He plays every moment for what it’s worth and then some. Occasionally, his decisions aren’t the right ones and sometimes he could do with a director keeping him in check (his grimacing, obsequious, one-upman smile at the Valeyard after apologising to the Inquisitor is a foot-in-the-mouth moment), but the fierce passion with which Colin throws himself into the role makes him eternally endearing. What’s less forgivable is that after an 18-month hiatus, Eric Saward’s writing team still don’t seem sure how to write for him. The first deleted scene in the 71 edit as the TARDIS arrives on Ravalox shows the Doctor and Peri bickering as if they’d never been away. It seems a wise decision to have dropped it and to instead cut to Colin and Nicola playing against the lines and twirling umbrellas a few minutes later. Their opening scene as originally transmitted is far more charming and they seem like a TARDIS crew we want to spend time with. If only Colin had been allowed to play the Doctor a little longer, we might have been gifted more of this acerbically lovely paradox of a Time Lord. He comes into his own throughout the season and his best moments have to be that famous “power-mad conspirators” speech (incidentally Bob Holmes’s last fiery moment of bliss) and his genuinely tearful reaction to the death of Peri at the close of Mindwarp. In those moments, he is undoubtedly a star and the star of Doctor Who.

Whilst The Mysterious Planet remains ultimately as bland and uninspiring as its script is rich and imaginative, Mindwarp dazzles the senses from its first beach scene. Thoros-Beta is quite the alien planet, its vivid, fluorescent beach a rich visual imagining, and its cornucopia of unusual inhabitants is introduced at a fair lick. When Trevor Laird orders his guards to “Let them go. There’s nothing down there. Only the Lukoser,” we know we’re about to meet yet another weird cave dweller. Despite its courtroom interruptions, the first episode is incessantly paced but afterwards Mindwarp becomes a rather shapeless thing with a truly bizarre but nevertheless interesting tone. Sil’s joke about Kiv’s new body (“I wish you could have found a more attractive one”) comes at a moment when seriousness is surely needed because at this point in the Trial, the shit is seriously hitting the fan. Elsewhere in the episode, comedy mentors dither and clutch their temples whilst Peri dies off screen. It makes for the strangest viewing experience. Mindwarp is never quite clear what emotional beats it wants to hit and ends up feeling like something of a meandering dream. Characters wonder around from cave to cave. Gordon Warnecke is unfathomably dreadful as Tuza and Brian Blessed is deliriously mental as Yrcanos. If there’s one scene from the 71 edits which definitely should have been kept in, if only to make sense of his later inexplicable marriage to Peri, it’s the searing cry of rage he screams as his bride-to-be is led to the slaughter. And that death is a striking, painful moment, as powerful as Trial gets. If only it had been the real deal.

Terror of the Vervoids, even with the Trial segments, is perhaps the most successful of the stories. As a murder mystery it works. As a monster-of-the-week, sci-fi B-movie it works. As a traditional Doctor Who story it works. I’ve already said that Pip and Jane understood the Sixth Doctor and here they gift us with the best, most natural scenes of Colin Baker. Special mention must go to David Allister as Bruchner too who gives an edgy, teetering performance and, in the 71 edit provides a masterclass in cliff-hanger acting from which even Crash-Zoom Colin Baker might take a few hints.

The final two episodes are a curious combination. Bob Holmes for fifteen minutes, Saward for ten, Pip and Jane for thirty. It’s quite miraculous that the whole thing feels curiously cohesive. Well, as far as a Matrix-set, political assassination, computer-based, fantastical courtroom plot can be. It’s a neat touch by Pip and Jane to make the screen with which we’ve all been witnessing the Doctor’s adventures the ultimate devastating weapon, almost as if they were in on the plotting of the Trial from the very beginning. Not bad for a hastily written script based on a few set photos. Say what you will about their “catharsis of spurious morality,” the Bakers can definitely write to a spec. And even though Trial represents the upsetting burn-out and defeat of Eric Saward, it’s worth noting that the second half of The Ultimate Foe Part One is some of his finest work, the Mr Popplewick scenes proving deliciously unnerving and the early scenes in the Matrix (now complete with a Valeyard stoking fires like a demon) have a nightmarish quality to them. In the end, it cannot be argued that this is a particularly satisfying ending. The whole sorry adventure didn’t know where it was heading when it first set off, but the ride was a usually enjoyable, tonally sporadic but always interesting, one. Michael Jayston is never far from the screen which means we’re never far from the classiest acting chops. Colin is always loudly magnificent and there are moments of real, visceral power, particularly the Vervoid episode endings and the climax of Mindwarp. The concept of the Trial feels in itself ill-judged but there is a keen sense of a show raging against the dying of the light which is always fascinating, especially from this safe distance, to witness.

Whilst there is a great deal of arguably warranted negativity both in this review and on the original DVD Special Features accompanying the season, the Blu Ray edition’s producers have wisely decided to re-dress the critical balance, making the show feel more like a fun place to be with some upbeat additional programmes. Chris Chapman's Doctor Who Cookbook is a glorious curio and The Doctor’s Table is a rip-roaring, laugh-out-loud brilliant idea with some particularly funny barbs from the four stars of the Trial. Bonnie Langford’s interview with Matthew Sweet puts the programme in perspective and it’s refreshing to hear a more joyous attitude towards it than those of us perhaps more emotionally invested in the show. She comes off as a true star – professional, respectful and just a little bit above it all in the best possible way. I’m still not thrilled by the Blu Rays’ answer to Googlebox in the often leaden Behind the Sofa features but when a not-particularly-well-loved 14 part-serial from 1986 is given a treatment on Blu Ray with 32 versions of the episodes to watch, each re-mastered, all with 5.1 surround sound, four with new effects, it feels churlish to criticise a product made with such obvious and deep affection. In 1986, Doctor Who was in poor condition. Here, in 2019, we can finally say that the Trial now appears to be in far ruder health and like the show itself, just needed a little care and attention from the right people. Another huge success from Russell Minton and his team, the Great Curators of our special show!

JH