Continuing our four-part review of the BBC's forthcoming Trial Of A Time Lord DVD release, which constitutes the complete 23rd season of Doctor Who in 1986…

2: Mindwarp (eps. 5-8)
Director: Ron Jones
writer: Phillip Martin

Plot
"Gentlemen , may I remind you that this is a court of law, not a debating society for maladjusted, psychotic sociopaths”.

Thus does Inquisitor Lynda Bellingham break up the latest spat between the Doctor (Colin Baker) and the Valeyard (Michael Jayston) before the latter proceeds to his second round of evidence against the rogue time lord: the events that directly preceded the Doctor’s strong-armed subpoena to court (Mindwarp is the final ‘retrospective’ evidence: the following two adventures take place in the future and in the relative ‘present’ of the trial room, respectively).

With the confusing matter of the Earth’s galactic relocation (in The Mysterious Planet) unresolved and deferred to a later session with the ‘high council’, the evidence-screen shows us the Doctor and Peri on the planet Thoros Beta in the 24th century, seeking to destroy a source of lethal munitions on the advice of a dying warlord.

It soon transpires that the planet is the home of old enemy Sil (Nabil Shaban), the slug-like sharp trader with whom our heroes had an unpleasant experience in the previous season's Vengeance On Varos. The servile Sil has the mundanely evil scientist Crozier (Patrick Ryecart) performing bizarre genetic experiments on the planet's populus and guests in the hope of developing a successful brain transplant technique that will save the life of his crusty old boss Kiv (Christopher Ryan, recently seen as Sontaran leader General Staal in series 4's The Poison Sky).

Having saved the brutish King Yrcanos (Brian Blessed) from Crozier's mind-softening process by waking him when subjected to it himself, the Doctor emerges with an altered and apparently traitorous personality. Yrcanos teams up with Peri and the addled time lord to fight back.

From this point the Doctor, in the trial room, admits that he cannot recall the events on-screen, many of which he claims have been manipulated by the Galifrean Matrix, the sacrosanct repository of all knowledge which has chronicled these adventures; but that doesn't seem possible…?

Back to the evidence: Yrcanos is reunited with his genetically mutated general Dorf (Thomas Branch), now a species of wolf-man, and finds his old colleague nonetheless loyal. The battle is on!

Peri blunders her way into Sil's harem only to be betrayed and half-drowned by the now totally complicit Doctor whilst trying to pass a message to him in disguise.

While the Doctor is away apparently helping Crozier with his evil experiments, Peri and Yrcanos seem to be more than buddying up, and with the aid of new allies set forth to kill Sil and recover the Doctor, if possible. It's an attempt that will cost Peri everything. Or is that just Matrix distorting the truth of what really happened…?

Opinion
Brickyard, boneyard, junkyard…Baker’s endless and witless stream of anti-Valeyard invective is tiresome. It was worth one joke, but threads several episodes of Trial. The interruptions to the story could be better-tolerated if they had any kind of point, but they rarely do, except to take us out of the adventure and remind us of the context: Doctor Who is on trial! Yes yes, we get the subtext. Also, for how little understanding of or respect for judicial proceedings is shown in Trial, a course in Galifrean law must constitute a late-night scrap in a back alley. Win it and you're a lawyer…

The story proper starts out with some pretty good video manipulation on the English beaches representing Thoros Beta, and really lights up with the re-emergence of Nabil Shaban as the unctuous nasty - Sil is truly the Uriah Heep of science-fiction, a mixture of ingratiating servility and megalomania, and the great costumes help both Shaban and Ryan literally get into their roles. The underlying commentary on the emerging 'yuppie' culture is not lost in Mindwarp, but neither does it get in the way of the plot.

Thomas Branch 's make-up and performance give TV possibly its finest wolf-man ever, a cross between David Threlfall's Smike in Nicholas Nickleby and Lon Chaney Jr. - oddly enough, Dorf's goodness and nobility only serve to make him more frightening and empathetic.

The set for Sil and Kiv's underground lair is truly an eye-opener by the standards of the time; in the commentary, Baker recalls his accidentally discovering that the huge hinged door leading into it cost more than Nicola Bryant! The money's up there on screen, and it helps this creepy and hard Who tale immensely.

Hard because in Mindwarp the lovely Peri bites the dust as a shaved-bald shadow of herself; many an envious eye was cast on Nicola Bryant's body during her three year stint on Doctor Who, but it's Sil who actually gets it when he has his brain put into Peri. It's a heartless ending to a memorable Who assistant, and all the more impressive for that. It's hard to say whether the doubt that is later to be cast on this grisly outcome is a cop-out or a relief.

A great cast is rounded out by the superlative shouting man-mountain that is Brian Blessed; call him Yrcanos if you like, but he's basically playing King Vultan from Flash Gordon again. Is there a problem here? I think not. He has a whale of a time as the unthinking warlord and so do we watching him. It's nice to see the romance forming between him and Peri as well, and personally I prefer the alternate version of her fate presented in part 4, The Ultimate Foe: that she and Yrcanos actually went into the sunset together and her death was a lie generated by a tampered-with matrix (a later Doctor Who novel actually made her the manager of Yrcanos in modern-day California, with the warrior-king now reigning wrestling champion!)

But this too, is yet to come…



Extras

­- Commentary with Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant and 'Mindwarp' writer Philip Martin
The best commentary is arguably yet to come with The Ultimate Foe, but this is a friendly if under-populated chat that actually constitutes the first meeting ever of Baker and Martin, who were kept apart during Mindwarp - a fact which contributes considerably to the needless confusion as to whether the Doctor's 'evil' scenes were real or 'matrix manipulations'. Baker is a great host and raconteur, and any commentary with him is always veering between jollity and his welcome efforts to dig out background nuggets about the shows.

- The Making Of Mindwarp (20.16)
Philip Martin, Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant, Brian Blessed, Eric Saward, Patrick Ryecart, Michael Jayston and others contribute to yet another first-class accompanying documentary. Though it goes at breakneck pace and yields an avalanche of information, there's the usual crossover with commentary tales and one could have wished it ten minutes longer. The friendly cross-criticism between Blessed and Ryecart is amusing, and the continuing tales of BBC and production-team politics ensure that this is no dull tale in itself.

- Deleted and extended scenes (9.02)
Nothing exceptional here, and nothing that would add or subtract much to Mindwarp if restored either.

- Now And Then: On The Trail Of A Time Lord (21.00)
A relatively dry and fully-narrated look at the location work of the entire Trial Of A Time Lord season, grounded with some background context of how Doctor Who broke out of the studio in the 1960s with Reign Of Terror. Contains enough factoids, before-and-after production footage from location and peculiarities to be worth a look.

- A Fate Worse Than Death (2.23)
Colin Baker and Bryant express their considerable reservations at the about-turn regarding Peri's death at the conclusion of Trial. Interestingly we listen live as Bryant sees the traitorous footage for the first time, never having watched the show after her own departure.

- Trails and continuity (3.29)
Welcome to the 'completist' content; something for us Who elders to get momentarily nostalgic over, but this will mean very little to younger viewers. Still, it fills three minutes, I guess.

- Info text track
I say again: there's a good reason why an attempt should be made to corral all this fascinating information elsewhere - it distracts you from the program without engaging you in the alternative manner of a commentary track.

- TV talkback (5.35)
A youthful Philip Schofield presents a children's TV commentary show of the period, where the young ones weigh in on Trial. For anyone who got their letter read out, this is obviously the extra they wil home in on.

- Children In Need (3.14)
Doctor Who was a fixture in the BBC's yearly telethon even after he went off the air, and this mid-season entry features an impressive array of Doctors and assistants including Patrick Troughton, John Pertwee, Peter Davison, Liz Sladen, Louise Jameson, Baker & Bryant, Ian Marter and many more. The only time I have ever seen Janet Fielding sport relatively long hair.

- Lenny Henry (4.34)
Sorry, but Ricky Gervais nailed my own opinion on the comic worth of Lenny Henry in the first series of Extras, and this lame Doctor Who parody does nothing to change my mind.

- Photo Gallery (6.58)
A middling-quality set of production stills, mostly shots of action rather than behind the scenes stuff, but rounded off with some poignant pics of Nicola Bryant in her dead-Peri bald cap.

The Complete list of this four-part review

Part 1 (The Mysterious Planet)
Part 2 (Mindwarp)
Part 3 (Terror Of The Vervoids)
Part 4 (The Ultimate Foe)

Trial Of A Time Lord is released on September 29th, RRP £49.99

Check out the complete list of Doctor Who content at Den Of Geek here...