Trial of a Time Lord: The Ultimate Foe - Classic Doctor Who Review
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The Matrix does come up before this story in the deadly assassin, but the master is shown to manipulate it, which makes it seem less reliable here off the bat
The Matrix gets a name drop in lots of stories after. Invasion of Time being probably the biggest. But it's a major location of a third of The Deadly Assassin and fans of the time would know what it was.
The actual line is "Between the twelfth and final regeneration." So New Who's retcons make the Valyard more possible. 3:37
The last Classic Who appearance of the Master didn't use the Master as a joke. Ainley was effectively creepy and threatening. 7:26
Leela and Vicki got the "marry them off" treatment too. Jo Grant was married off to a guy who mainly insulted her in every interaction. 14:34
I'd switch the Valyard's motivation from hate to obsessive love. An obsessive Time Lord desperate for the love and attention of whoever the Doctor's companion is at the time would be scarier and a distinctive threat. 19:42
Point about Jo Grant's marrying off story. Interestingly, the actor who played her love interest was, at the time, her real life partner, and there's some suggestions that their real life relationship had a similar vibe. And now I shudder.
Absolutely right about Colin Baker's disgusted rant at the Time Lords. This is his 'I am the Doctor' moment. It took a while to arrive in his era but thank God it came and it's beautifully done.
To me, together with Jo Martin as the Fugitive Doctor, Michael Jayston as the Valeyard is one of the most wasted performances in Doctor Who. Big Finish did bring him back more than a couple of times and they managed to explore some elements of his character without downright explaining what he is and Jayston is just amazing in them. Regarding Peri, Big Finish retconned some events in two different instances (but by the same writer): "Peri and the Piscon Paradox" and "The Widow's Assassin", they still acknowledge the events of Trial, but they added some context to it.
What's actually said is that The Valeyard comes between his 12th and final regenerations, so could be an incarnation.
If you ever see Michael Jayston in other roles such as in Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy, you can see that he'd have made a great Doctor in his own right, the guy has chops
This is one where you really need the context of the production to understand how it ended up this way, where not only did the lead writer die before he finished the final episode, but the replacement writers were legally barred from knowing the ending he’d planned until they were finished with their own. The whole Valeyard twist famously makes no sense, and it really says something that the revival series has never once tried to touch it even among all the other quirks of the classic series that it’s given new context to.
It does look like the 60th anniversary specials are doing Neil Patrick Harris as the vallyard so we could get more of the character in November
Not only did the lead writer die, but the script editor tried to fill in, then quit because the producer wouldn't let him end the season on a cliffhanger. That's why Pip and Jane Baker had to finish it off without knowing what the original ending was, legal issues.
I'd best describe the Valeyard as the personification of all the Doctor's negative attributes including self loathing. I like how it's treated as a warning for 6 if he doesn't change his ways, if there's enough negativity inside him to create an entire being. I'm mixed on how Peri's fate was handled, Big Finish's post Trial 6 and Peri stories are amazing. Might be worth putting Piscon Paradox and Widow's Assassin on future patreon polls.
Don't forget 'He Jests at Scars' as well.
The Matrix was in Tom Bakers "The Deadly Assassin" and then accessed in "Invasion in Time" and also very slightly used in "The Five Doctors".. But yea... it's a bit wonky in this episode for sure.
One of the things that made me sad about this story is that when Colin Baker finished filming, the show itself was not confirmed to be continuing, and as its lead, Baker felt it was on him. Then, some point after that, John Nathan Turner phoned him, and basically said, "Great news! The show is coming back. But you're not."
Baker basically filmed his finale unaware. While the BBC tried to paint it as him kicking up and point blank refusing, he asked them to let him know when they would want him for a regeneration scene or story, and at first, he was ignored. Then he was told he might not be needed. Finally, two weeks before filming was due to start, the BBC wanted him to give between four to six weeks. The trouble was, Baker was already working as the lead in a traveling play where he was the only "star". He tried to negotiate, to arrange two or three days here or there, to shorten his portion to a brief scene if they preferred. They wanted four to six weeks and for him to give up the play for the time filming for them. So, he said no. Which means that Colin Baker's final words are "carrot juice".
I’d highly recommend the Big Finish story “He Jests at Scars” which is a what-if story about what would have happened if the Valeyard had won. Its got a lot of continuity deep cuts, but it’s a really interesting characterisation of the Valeyard, showing how he’s not just “generic cackling villain” but a true reflection of The Doctor’s darker sides, up to and including his cowardly side and his self loathing. Plus the ending is one of the best moments in all of Big Finish, in my opinion, very dark but also rather tragic in its own way.
Here's why I'm firmly in the "Bring Back The Valeyard!" crowd. There are little moments throughout the Trial that I think bolster the character to something more than just a knockoff of The Master. His motive is not just life but freedom, not just from being a puppet of the High Council but freedom from the Doctor and his "spurious morality" as he puts it. His extensive critiques of the 6th Doctor's behaviour almost feels like something some other incarnation would say in multi-Doc story. I like the idea hinted at in the story that The Master is low key afraid of him and is doing all this because he doesn't want to be stuck with a Doctor without restraint. As I mentioned back in Mind-Warp I like the very bitter delivery when he blames The Doctor for Peri's death, which remember wasn't part of his machinations it was decision made by the other Time Lords, like deep down he might have felt a little bit upset (although this might be pure fan wank on my part).
With the threat of the "Time-Lord Victorious", the presence of the Dream Lord and the establishment of the Timeless Child (as much as I don't like it) the time is honestly ripe for The Valeyard to return and fully becoming something other than an "Evil Doctor". Like say something involving the fob watch with all the pre-Hartnellian memories left over from Flux.
Ive been waiting for you to finish the season to talk about this, because behind the scenes, Trial of a Time Lord was a SH*TSHOW!
After Colin's first season, the show was canceled. Through fan campaigns, the show was renewed. The original plans for season 23 were scrapped & Trial was essentially hastily rewritten in its place.
Robert Holmes was supposed to write the finale, but he passed away after writing the first episode. So script editor Eric Saward was going to finish it.
However there, the working relationship between Saward & exec. producer John Nathan-Turner had been deteriorating for some time...and this season is when it reached its zenith. Saward just walked off production.
In the eleventh hour, JNT had Pip & Jane Baker (Mark of the Rani, Terror of the Vervoids, Time & the Rani) finish the finale. But there was legal stuff because Saward did not want them using any ideas from his script. So the Bakers had to write their own final episode with lawyers breathing down their necks to make sure none of Sawards ideas (or anything resembling them( made it into the story
Like... it's kind of a miracle the Sylvester McCoy era exists at all!
In a later novelisation Phillip Martin had King Ycranos and Peri come to America where he becomes a big wrestling star and she's his manager.
Also, as others have stated, The Matrix has been seen many times before - making its first appearance in The Deadly Assasin.
17:05 I'm pretty sure there was some fan theories at the time that the Dream Lord _was_ Nu Who's reintroduction of the Valeyard.
There’s a line of the War Valeyard Big Finish stories.
regarding The Matrix, it made its first appearance in The Deadly Assassin in 1976, This was not it's first appearance although this story they hammer home its alleged infallibility
Post Amy's choice, I mostly assumed that if they brought back the Valeyard, he would be played by Toby Jones, as the Dreamlord/Valeyard concepts are close enough for this to not require further explanation. My ideal approach would be for the Valeyard to hijack the current Doctor at the time, and the protagonist to switch to a past Doctor and their companions. This would be a new way to do a multi-doctor story.
However this is close enough to what happened in Power of the Doctor, that they would probably have to wait a while if they were going to do it that way.
Colin Baker's speech here lives rent-free in my head. Like I've said before, this story as a whole introduced me to Colin's Doctor, and I'm positive is why I'm so fond of him. The add-on about Peri at the end felt out of place, but my headcanon for it (I haven't heard the BF audios of Peri), is that marrying Yrcanos was the best way for her to survive, and while it might not have been a romantic/happy ending, it was what would keep her alive and able-bodied and - hopefully - give her the chance to get home someday. The Valeyard was so clearly tampering with the Matrix all throughout that doing a deep fake of Kiv's transplant being successful isn't out of the realm of possibility. I *think* the Matrix was discussed before as being the infallible repository of Time Lord knowledge - either in Deadly Assassin, Leela's final story, or in Arc of Infinity.
The Valeyard has a ton of possibility still left partly because his existence is so ambiguous. The Master says he was created "between your twelfth and final incarnations", which at the time implied he was the 13th, but now he can exist anywhere. And in Classic Who, the idea that the Valeyard could come back and be the darkest Doctor was, for a few years at least, something that was a real possibility.
I ADORED Mr. Popplewick as a concept, and in execution. Bureaucracy personified.
*He Jests At Scars* is the Big Finish Unbound audio play that brings back Michael Jayston’s Valeyard - brilliantly, but its deliberately non-canon, as it assumes a different ending to *The Ultimate Foe* so discontinuity applies.
There is a new series of Unbound with Colin Baker as an alternative War Doctor. This starts the Time War after *Genesis Of The Daleks* when the 4th Doctor contemplating the destruction of the Daleks instead of asking “Do I have the right?” decides “I have no choice” …
7:48 Actually the Matrix made its first appearance in the Deadly Assassin (4th Doctor story), I'm pretty sure you've seen that one, or am I mistaken? In that story the Matrix is introduced as the repository of all knowledge, and there it too, is very much tampered with, also by the Master (the skeletal version). So it's less of "the audience were invested in its infallibility" and more like "the audience knew the Time Lords were playing up the importance of their invention".
I'm glad that you found this story alright overall, to me it's extremely nostalgic and atmospheric, I love the dream-like bits in the Matrix. Glitz's shenanigans were particularly fun! And the Valeyard may essentially be another Master, but he's just such a charismatic villain, and just like the Doctor he has the potential to be varied and multi-faceted (in principle), which is why I personally want to see him return.
I think the matrix is also a part of the Tom Baker story 'Deadly Assassin'.
As others have mentioned, the Valeyard is an amalgamation of the Doctor's dark side, from somewhere between his twelfth and final incarnations. I like to think he's a byproduct of the Time Lord Victorious (the 12 incarnation (Tennant) into the final one of that regeneration cycle (Smith)). Unless the Valeyard appears in future episodes, I think of him as a closed loop; he was only a threat to the Sixth Doctor specifically.
The sets that you talk about in the Matrix are actually on location, at the Potteries in Stoke-on-Trent. Not a million miles from where I'm typing this, in fact.
The Matrix itself was established in The Deadly Assassin and referenced off-and-on since, most notably in The Invasion of Time and Arc of Infinity.
With regards to Peri's survival, I have it from the horse's mouth that Peri was supposed to have stayed dead. I met the writer of Mindwarp, Philip Martin, in November 2019 and asked him about it. He was quite cheesed off about so seismic a change but wasn't bitter about it or anything.
If I’m not mistaken, it was JNT who undid Peri’s death swiftly after Colin Baker, sweet guy that he is showed a lot of distress over such an awful fate for her. And the actress Nicola Bryant didn’t learn of this for years… decades, I think; she was unhappy because she appreciated the unusually-grisly end for her character.
@@borjankosarac3645 It wasn't so much that Colin Baker was upset by Peri's death, it was more a case of he didn't understand whether it happened or not. JNT took this to mean that he should reverse it rather than confirm it, asking Pip and Jane Baker (no relation) to say she survived instead. C. Baker has apologised profusely ever since, both to Nicola Bryant and the late Philip Martin, as he felt he'd robbed Bryant of a great on-screen death.
@@andrewbowman4611 Ah, now I get it. And of course Colin felt bad, he's the nicest person by all accounts.
Actually no the matrix was established way before this and had appeared or was mentioned at least in three other stories
These final two parts are so weird but also pretty fun. There's nothing you can do to prevent the catharsis of spurious morality! Mel excitedly exclaiming about a megabyte modem! It's ok, Peri isn't dead, she just married BRIAN BLESSED! Absolutely bananas. The Valeyard is a much better in idea than execution, when Amy's Choice first aired I spent half the episode thinking the Dream Lord was him, because yeah, he's this done way better!
Totally unbelievable! But anyway, Peri is not one of my favourites. Good riddance!
Great review, and I'm totally in agreement with what you say about the Valeyard. I love Michael Jayston who is a bit of a legend in the UK, but the character he plays is basically a pound store/dime store Master. The Dream Lord is far more interesting.
Apparently the Virgin New Adventures books had a strict rule that writers weren't allowed to use The Valeyard, partly for potential continuity issues, but also because the people in charge of the VNAs just found him dull.
That said, I don't have the best source for this, so chances are that might not be true or only half-true
The crispy Master didn't want the Doctor's regenerations. The Eric Roberts one did. So the TVM is recycling from here not the other way round.
Had to recheck. You said "Tile of a Trimelord" at the end!
I totally agree the dreamlord was fantastic
12 and final (not 13th) and in a divergent time stream. So he has all the memories of the first 6 Doctors but in his stream he got darker and darker until the Valeyard is his final life.
Ok, the Tremas body Master can't do the Eye-Hypnotism like Delgado or The Doctor because he doesn't have Time Lord eyes, he has Trakenite eyes. Or at least that's what I thought. Could be I've rationalized it that way for so long I think that's official when it isn't, but it makes sense kinda sorta.
7:35 The audience at this point DOES have a really good idea of what the Matrix is from prior stories like The Deadly Assassin, Invasion of Time, and Arc of Infinity.
16:55 There are people who think The Dream Lord IS The Valeyard. I don't. But it has been postulated. The Master's line about where The Valeyard comes from is, and I'm paraphrasing from memory: "an amalgamation of the Doctor's darker side, taken somewhere between his 12th and Final Incarnation." This leads me directly to the Metacrisis Doctor. That Doctor is human-like but still Time Lord enough his brain doesn't burn up like Donna's SO maybe still Time Lord enough to not age, to outlive Rose, to grow bitter and evil and discovering the motivation to want the Doctor's lives, and he'll take the lives well before the Time War so they aren't as sullied themselves. IDK, it's a thought. Doing a story where Tennant is a younger Valeyard could be interesting. RIP Michael Jayston. Oh and you made brief mention of Big Finish, which has 3 continuations of The Valeyard which were all good. The most original idea was The War Valeyard in the 8th Doctor's Time War series, cause they did something different alright. There is a Book called Matrix that's pretty good too.
I'd really like someone to get Vera to do a Patreon Sponsored review of 'He Jests at Scars'.
Isn't the wording that the Valeyard is an incarnation between the Doctor's 12th and "final" incarnation? Meaning he could be still in the Doctor's future.
At the time and still now 12th and 13th which was/means final by Robert Holmes.
The Matrix was in Deadly Assassin in 1976 and then in Arc of Infinity...
Ant Tony not Ant thony (the h is silent most the time in the UK). Remember his Master is wearing a corpse so his ability to hypnotise is likely compromised.
Well, it does all tie in with the Ravolox story!
Yeah, Ravelox was the only story that truly mattered
The Matrix has come up in classic Who. The Deadly Assassin the Doctor fights the Master 's servant. The Master manipulating the Matrix has been done before. Why the Key was so important in this story and also in the Invasion of Time. To be fair the Time Lords must have forgotten this. The Time Lord's being killed plot hearkens back to Deadly Assassin. Also in the new Who the Master destroying Gallifrey also goes back to Deadly Assassin. Ultimate Foe tried to add Easter eggs with a bunch of stuff.
Roughly 23 years ago, way back on the Usenet newsgroup Rec.Arts.DrWho (anyone remember that?), I started a discussion thread that was a fanfic free-for-all where each person would add a paragraph (or a few) based on the paragraph they'd just read. We ended up with about a dozen people writing simultaneously, and we were all being deliberately silly. But by the time the plot actually showed up, it turned out to be a story about getting redemption for the Valeyard...
This was before the Dream Lord was a twinkle in Moffat's eye, of course. I think we were all collectively curious about the dynamic about where the Valeyard could have come from, and how he might have worked if he'd been written better (not that we were writing him any better or even trying to). And I suspect that's the drive behind people asking for his return.
I like Trial of a Time Lord: The Ultimate Foe
The Valeyard actually comes between the 12th and FINAL incarnation. Which sure at the time would've been 13 but it still works now
12:53 I really appreciate the Sixth Doctor acknowledging that there’s always the choice (if only to do nothing) and that even if there isn’t a choice it doesn’t automatically make an action moral.
I think a lot of our problems in the real world are aggravated by a refusal of the philosophical construct of the necessary evil. By people taking the ethically easy way out of “if it had to be done, it most be good”. Not usually in such transparent terms, and usually in the form of extensive rationalizations or justifications for why the action that is _usually_ evil, _isn’t_ evil in this circumstance. Rather than grappling with the complexity that this action could be _both _*_necessary_*_ and *evil*._ i.e., that the world might be complex and there might not _be_ a one right answer or a clear-cut ethical response.
Congrats! With this you've covered all of the 6th Doctor tv stories, i think?
Unless I've missed something, I don't think they've reviewed Attack of the Cybermen.
@@someguy3752 That was on their podcast, if memory serves me correctly
@@thevacuumofcomments2946 Sorry, which podcast is this? I'm not really super familiar with this channel outside of their Doctor Who content.
Engagement for the engagement god! Subs for the sub throne!
OK, this is the one I've been waiting to comment on since you started covering Trial, because of the absolute clusterf*** the writing of episode 14 was done under.
Bob Holmes had the misfortune of dying between writing Part 13 and Part 14, meaning that PArt 14 was written, including first draft, by the script editor of the day, Eric Saward. Except it wasn't, because producer John Nathan Turner requested a change to the ending (which was originally scripted - don't know if it was originally drafted in Holme's notes - with the Doctor and the Valeyard tumbling through the Matrix in a wrestling match as a cliffhanger ending, which JNT was worried had too much of a sense of finality to it and might give the BBC management the ammunition they were looking for to axe the show) leading to Saward to walk out of the production in a way that meant they didn't have legal rights to use any of his script. Leading to JNT getting Pip and Jane Baker in to write Part 14 from Bob Holme's notes over the weekend or so they had before production needed to start on the script with lawyers watching over their shoulder to prove they had no access to anything Saward had written.
Frankly, given the circumstances it was written, it's miraculous there was a filmable script for Part 14. That's not to say I don't think it's good, just that under the circumstances, I don't think it _could_ have been good. I'm inclined to put more of the blame on this on Saward than JNT, while Holmes and the Bakers are blameless here, but neither of those two parties were exactly innocent (though, it's pretty much a culmination of the strained working relationship the two are reported to have had)
(And just noticed the typo that changes the meaning - I meant "That's not to say I think it's good" at the start of the second sentence in the third paragraph)
I actually really love the Valeyard reveal. Oh hey, it's The Master! Oh hey, did he just casually call the Valeyard, "The Doctor"? That was fun. You can feel how much The Master is relishing the way he reveals the truth to (Colin Baker's) The Doctor, and watching his befuddlement and shock.
Honestly, that was plenty motivation for The Master for his whole participation in this story. Yeah yeah exposing the corruption of the Time Lord high council and whatever blah blah blah. The whole, "or as I've always known him, the Doctor," thing was his main motivation for showing up at all.
This story had everything going against it after Robert Holmes died in the middle of writing it. He had only completed a draft of part 1 and left just an outline of part 2. Yeah while you can charge the writers of Part 2 for dropping the ball, but as someone that worked with deadlines this sounds like an impossible situation.
Even more impossible, when they weren't allowed to see any of the outline of Robert Holmes'/Eric Saward's part 14, and had to make it up on the spot (save for anything lingering from part 13)
The script Saward wrote based on Robert Holmes notes for p14 (the same one that Saward refused to allow since JNT wanted to tweak the ending so theres less finality to it-especially when having anything close to definitive endings would have got it cancelled), was released online on Internet Archive a few years ago, having read it, think the broadcast ending fits better (considering how the whole point of Trial Of A Timelord was showing Doctor Who still had a future), but out of that context, its good in a Sherlock Holmes at Reichenbach Falls sense
edit- doesnt like the link but searching: "doctor who trial of a timelord part 14 original script pdf", should be top result
don't they say the valeyard is somewhere between the doctor's 12th and FINAL regeneration?
Quite like Trial of a Time Lord, it has its fair share of problems, but really shows how Colin Baker could have become a great Doctor (proven again and again in BF).
Yeah, this story was a total mess.
I think that the reason why people clamor for the Valeyard's return is because the idea is really cool more than that it was executed well. The idea of an evil version of the Doctor from the future is a really neat one, but I agree that it wasn't done well here. And funny that you brought the Dream Lord up, because I've always head-canoned that the Valeyard is the Dream Lord given a physical form.
If you want to see the Valeyard done better, Big Finish did some great stuff with him. He was a major villain in The Red House (part of The Last Adventure box set, which aimed to give Colin Baker a proper regeneration episode), which was one of the most disturbing Doctor Who stories I have ever seen, and The Valeyard was downright chilling in that one.
Totally will watch the global video you promise!
My thoughts: I do like Colin Baker as the Doctor in this, like him as the Doctor all around. Don't understand why many people prefer the 4 (Tom Baker), I find him rather bland, even in "City of Death". Well, it takes all kinds... Or as we say here, "There's no guide about taste".
In my mind Peri died at the end of Mindwarp and since the info about Peri is alive and living as a queen came from the Master l see it as the Master is deceiving the Doctor for his own reason after all the Master is devious and will lie when it suits his purpose after all in the Five Doctors did not both the 3rd and 5th Doctors not believe the Master when he said that he was sent by the Time Lords to help the Doctor.
If Moffatt wrote this then Peri would have died and come back six times over.
To me the master’s reveal works especially after he tells them he has manipulated the matrix which tells the audience the doctor was right that we weren’t seeing the actual events in the 3 serials we got during the trial that’s why it could make sense that pari could have married Brian Blessed character cause in the real event she could have developed feelings for him or something with what has happened in the show since especially in the season 4 finale with the meta crisis doctor being created in between the doctor’s 12th and 13th regenerations that he would become the vallyard in his history
People don't want the valeyard because he's interesting, people want the valeyard because they want him to be interesting.
He should be interesting but he isn't, people want him back so he can become interesting and live up to his potential.
Someone like the dreamlord, however, is already interesting, and so doesn't need to be made interesting in a modern story (not that I wouldn't like to see him return eigther though).
Not sure that guilting people for killing when their other option is to sit there and take death is very fair at all. Normally I'd agree with what you're saying here, but if someone or something is trying to kill you and you can't find any way out other than to kill them, it's really not your fault.
Huge difference between that and say going to war, or deciding to kill someone who isn't moments away from killing you, etc.
I don’t think she’s saying that it was necessarily a wrong choice, just that it was still a choice made and the Doctor holds responsibility for the choice.
@@eclecticdog2k901 No I understand but like I said, where I'd normally agree with the idea, applying it to someone killing someone that was trying to kill them is a bit much. Imagine that same logic put on someone defending against a murderer's attack on them. It's a bit over the top.
Robert Holmes died and Peri not dying was tacked on.
I thought the finale was kinda a mess. It had some cool ideas, but ultimately ended up leaving me very confused
One of the clearest cases of a Troubled production in all of Classic Who.
I always felt that the Valeyard should have been the Master in disguise or another Master incarnation. It would make things simpler