OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 653
STORY NUMBER: 146
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 25 October 1986
WRITER: Philip Martin
DIRECTOR: Ron Jones
SCRIPT EDITOR: Eric Saward
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 5 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - The Trial Of A Time Lord
Peri, Yrcanos and the rebels are merely stunned and taken prisoner. Kiv's new body begins to reject it's new brain but he insists on attending a meeting as Crozier searches through the prisoners for a replacement. When he suggests using Peri the Doctor makes his excuses and goes to see the prisoners but by the time he gets there she has already been taken. He frees Yrcanos who destroys the slave control room but amid the chaos that follows the Tardis materialises and the Doctor is snatched out of time to the space station. As the Doctor in the court room watches in horror Yrcanos bursts in to Croziers lab only to find the shaven headed Peri now with Kiv's brain patterns in her head. Enraged Yrcanos kills Kiv/Peri with his sidearm. The Valeyard and Inquisitor explain to the Doctor that Crosier's experiments had to be stopped and that they used Yrcanos to do this by ending Peri's life. The Doctor insists that he was fetched out of time for some other reason, and he is going to find out why.
Oh my goodness they've killed Peri, Yrcanos has shot her! But actually she's gone much earlier in the episode as Kiv's brain takes over hers. The Doctor's powerless to do anything, because the Time Lords has taken him away. This was a huge shock at the time even though we knew Nicola Bryant was leaving. But don't forget that the Doctor's been having doubts about the validity of what he sees here. If you think what's happened to Peri is horrific wait till you find the full truth of the situation later!
Crash Zoom on Colin #7 of 8 episodes!
I don't like Mindwipe. It's nasty, with Peri getting chained in the sea and then getting shown to be taken over by Kiv and then shot, the Doctor's behaving oddly again and there's accusations that what we're seeing isn't what's actually happening. Well if it isn't why bother showing it to us then?
This episode features Deep Roy in an uncredited role as the Posicar Delegate (wearing a resprayed Terileptil head) conferring with Kiv & Sil. Deep Roy was previously Mr Sin in Talons of Weng Chiang, has four Blake's 7 credits to his name (The Web as a Decima, Gambit as The Klute, Moloch as Moloch's voice and Terminal as a Link) as well as being all the Oompa-Loompas in the 2005 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
A whole pile of farewells here: Bye bye to Nicola Bryant, who mainly returned to the stage after Doctor Who. You can see her in Blackadder's Christmas Carol and in several minor television roles. As recent pictures will testify she appears to have discovered the secret of eternal youth!
So as to mark Miss Peri Brown's departure shall we have the full "lusting after Peri" list?
1 Caves of Androzani: Sharez Jek
2 Twin Dillema: Azmael/Edgeworth
3 Twin Dillema: Mestor
4 Twin Dillema: Lang
5 Vengeance on Varos: Sil
6 Mark of the Rani: Luke
7 The Two Doctors: Shockeye
8 The Two Doctors: Jamie
9 Timelash: The Borad
10 Revelation of the Daleks: The DJ
11 Revelation of the Daleks: Jobel
12 The Trial of a Timelord: Yrcanos
I'd also like some pawing by the Cryons and Katrtyca's attempts to marry her off taken into account m'lud!
It's also bye bye to writer Philip Martin, who would later produce scripts for Star Cops, and director Ron Jones.
Significantly this also marks the departure of Script Editor Eric Saward from the show. I like most of Saward's stories as a writer (The Visitation, Earthshock, Attack of The Cybermen & Revelation of the Daleks) but think that quite a lot of the stories he script edited aren't so good, especially the later ones with an increasing amount of violence & horror in. His relationship with producer John Nathan-Turner had deteriorated somewhat over time - I've pointed out the incident with director Peter Grimwade previously - and now his friend Robert Holmes was gravely ill throwing the plans for the end of the season into some confusion.
Episodes 5-8 of The Trial Of A Time Lord were novelised by Philip Martin. All 14 episodes of The Trial Of A Time Lord were released in a video boxset in October 1993 in a Tardis shaped tin with a picture of one of the seven Doctors on the base of the tin. I'm yet to meet anyone with all seven tins! All 14 episode were released on DVD on 29 September 2008.
Now that was a shock. Poor peri, but that's a memorable exit.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you about Saward's writing, but by god he was a dreadful script editor. Everything was the writer's fault, as opposed to him fixing them.
I'm saving my full arguements for a future Stardub where we talk at length of Trial of A Time Lord.