OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 648
STORY NUMBER: 145
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 20 September 1986
WRITER: Robert Holmes
DIRECTOR: Nicholas Mallett
SCRIPT EDITOR: Eric Saward
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 3.9 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - The Trial Of A Time Lord
The Tribesman Broken Tooth disables the L1 robot and takes The Doctor & Peri, Glitz & Dibber and Balazar back to his Queen Katryca. She has them imprisoned while a bonfire is built for their execution but are freed when the reactivated L1 robot arrives and captures the Doctor. Katryca and her Warriors disabled the robot with the guns and, thinking they have killed the Immortal, decide to storm his citadel. Glitz has Dibber fetch heavy weapons before they too go underground, hunting for the secrets files held by the Andromedan Sleepers. At this point some of the evidence is censored which the Doctor & Inquisitor object to but the Valeyard plees it's on the High Council's orders. The Doctor is revived by Peri and they go underground to try to save the colony's population from destruction from the unstable black light system. They are captured by Murdeen on Drathro's orders and he shoots at them....
No Crash Zoom! 2 out of 3 so far.
Court room: annoying. Ravalox: pedestrian. But between the two it feels like Holmes has some idea where he's going with this as regards the end of the season and as we'll see certain elements of this tale have influence down the line. Unfortunately the sparking guns are back. What's wrong with proper laser effect shots?
The 3.9 million people who watched this episode is the series lowest viewing figures since The War Games Episode Eight recorded 3.5 million viewers on 07th June 1969.
Glitz is played by actor Tony Selby. He'll be back for the last two episodes of this story/season and Dragonfire this season. His assistant Dibber is played by Glen Murphy only appears here but is shortly to get a starring role in the London's Burning series. I suspect you all know who Joan Sims, playing Katryca, is but just in case you don't a look at Wikipedia's Carry On Film Series page should tell you. The casting of David Rodigan as Broken Tooth came as something of a shock to me at the time because I knew him as a Reggae DJ on Capital Radio! At this point Adam Blackwood, playing Balazar, had a Blake's 7 credit as Tok in Season 4's Assassin to his name. He'd later play Cyril 'Barmy' Fotheringay Phipps in the first series of Jeeves and Wooster only to be replaced by Snakedance's Martin Clunes in the second. If you want to find Timothy Walker, playing Grell, elsewhere he's Angus, the groom at the first wedding in Four Weddings and a Funeral. Finally two people with Doctor Who form: Roger Brierley, the voice of Drathro, was Trevor in Dalek Masterplan part 8: Volcano and reading what I wrote in February 2011 I guess he's one of the two cricket commentators. Tom Chadbon, playing Merdeen, is a lot easier to identify: he was Duggan in City of Death.
I take issue, the courtroom scenes are great, yes the name calling isn't really worthy of the Doctor, but it does show him cocking his nose at Time Lord authority in some fashion. Something he's got form for after all and the performances are fantastic. Especially Jayston, who is barely restrained venom personified throughout. Given what we learn of him later, it's a great way to portray the character.
ReplyDeleteI enjoy the scenes of Ravalox, and they are fun, the sparking guns are indeed a touch irksome but let's be honest it's Doctor Who we can easily forgive that as the series has committed worse acts in the name of saving money.