Brief Summary
This video summarizes Season 23 of Doctor Who, known as "The Trial of a Time Lord," which faced numerous production challenges and creative conflicts. The season suffered budget cuts, script changes, and behind-the-scenes disagreements, leading to a disjointed and controversial narrative. Despite these issues, some stories like "Mindwarp" are highlighted for their strong cast and dark themes, while others are criticized for illogical plots and rehashed ideas. The season's overall quality is deemed poor, with the trial format failing to enhance the stories and the departure of Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor adding to its troubled legacy.
- Production turmoil and budget cuts significantly impacted the season.
- "Mindwarp" is a standout story despite the season's overall weaknesses.
- The trial format is criticized for being poorly executed and detracting from the stories.
The video begins by noting that there was an 18-month gap between seasons 22 and 23 because the BBC initially wanted to cancel the show. Despite its return due to public outcry, the BBC did not make necessary arrangements to ensure its success. Colin Baker's appearance changed, with noticeable weight gain, a redesigned, more garish costume, and longer, blonder hair.
Producer JN-T wanted to move on to other jobs but was held in place by the BBC, while head writer Eric Saward vocally disliked Colin Baker's Doctor and JN-T. Together, they decided to scrap the originally planned season 23, which was already in pre-production with three stories scripted and paid for. The BBC's desire to end the show was so strong that they were willing to lose money. The original season would have included a new Ice Warriors story, the return of the Celestial Toymaker, and a story set in Asia titled "Yellow Fever and How to Cure It," some of which were later adapted into Big Finish audio stories.
The new season 23 became "The Trial of a Time Lord," inspired by the feeling that the show itself was on trial. This season marked the show's second season-long arc. The budget was cut again, the episode count was halved, and the show would only have four stories a season until its end. The tone shifted away from violence and horror to a lighter, more comedic approach, which was not well-executed, and the reduced budget was evident.
The first story, "The Mysterious Planet," was Robert Holmes' last completed script for Doctor Who before his death. The TARDIS is pulled into a Time Lord Space Station in a visually impressive sequence. The Time Lords put the Doctor on trial for interfering with other life forms, reminiscent of the Second Doctor's trial but less effective. The prosecutor is the Valeyard, played by Michael Jayston. The first three stories are presented as evidence in the trial, with "The Mysterious Planet" depicting the Doctor's past. The planet Ravalox is revealed to be a devastated Earth moved across the galaxy. One of the story's highlights is the con men double act, Glitz and Dibber. The story also features references to books like "The Water Babies" and "Moby Dick." The trial segments involve editing, censorship, and misinterpretation of events, with the Doctor and Valeyard exchanging insults.
"Mindwarp" is the video creator's favorite story of the season and a direct sequel to "Vengeance on Varos." It depicts the adventure the Doctor was on when summoned by the Time Lords. The story is set on Thoros Beta, where Sil from "Vengeance on Varos" returns. Sil's boss, Kiv, has a problem with his expanding brain and seeks Dr. Crozier's help to transplant his mind into a new body, eventually choosing Peri's brain. King Brian Blessed falls in love with Peri and objects to the transplant. The ending, where Peri's fate is left ambiguous, is a point of contention, with various non-TV media offering different suggestions. The video creator prefers the dark ending of mind wipes, body-snatching, and violent death. The story includes sections where the Doctor appears to team up with Sil and act evilly, suggesting the tapes played in the trial have been tampered with. Christopher Ryan, known for "The Young Ones," plays Kiv, and Patrick Rycart plays Dr. Crozier. Nabil Shaban returns as Sil, and Brian Blessed plays King Yrcanos. The video creator praises the cast's performances and considers it the best story of the season, despite the court parts detracting from it.
"Terror of the Vervoids," also known as "Horror of the Plant Vagina Heads," features a human Starliner in the future. The Doctor is traveling with a new companion, Mel, an idea that Moffat likely wished he had come up with first. The story is from the Doctor's future, so the circumstances of how he and Mel met are unknown. Mel from after the Vervoids appears in the final story of the season, which is the Doctor's first meeting with her from her perspective. The Starliner contains deadly alien plants called Vervoids, and the Doctor must prevent them from reaching Earth. The Doctor commits genocide by destroying the Vervoids, leading to accusations of genocide during the trial. Mel is portrayed as annoying, with her screams and attempts to make the Doctor lose weight. Michael Craig plays the commander of the ship. The story is a fairly traditional base-under-siege type, but the trial sections create logical problems, as the Time Lords are trying the Doctor for future events.
"The Ultimate Foe" is a two-part story that is considered a mess. Robert Holmes died after finishing the first draft of the first episode, and script editor Eric Saward quit before the story was produced due to disagreements over the ending. Pip and Jane Baker had to write a new ending without knowing the original script. The story is not presented as evidence in the trial but as the Doctor's sentence of death. The Doctor battles the Valeyard in the Matrix, similar to "The Deadly Assassin." The Valeyard is revealed to be a distillation of the Doctor's darker side, seeking the Doctor's remaining regenerations. The original idea was for the Valeyard to be a desperate Doctor in his final incarnation seeking to prolong his life. The Matrix is surreal and low-budget. The Doctor survives and leaves with Mel. Colin Baker was fired shortly after and refused to return for a regeneration story.
The video concludes that Season 23 is not good, even worse than Season 22. To appreciate the season, one must be interested in the trial aspect, which the video creator is not. The surreal ending is a rehash of "The Deadly Assassin." The video recommends the season only for completists or fans of Colin Baker, who deserved better. For the best of the Sixth Doctor, the video suggests listening to Big Finish audio adventures like "The Space Race" and "Jubilee." The next video will cover the Seventh Doctor, the return of the Rani, and the last companion of the classic show.
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Transcript
Full transcript of “A Quick Guide to Classic Who Season 23”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:16 changes appear soon there was an 18-month gap between seasons 22 and 23 the BBC wanted the show gone for good but there was such an outcry that it came back now you'd think in that time they'd rearranged things so the show could be a success when it came back the BBC didn't do that they clearly didn't want the show at all and I just buckled
1:02 to public pressure over the hiatus Colin Baker clearly put on some weight the sixth doctor's costume was slightly redesigned somehow making it look even more garish and his hair was longer and blonder why it was the mid-80s but that's one of the smaller problems here producer JN t wanted to move on to other jobs but was being held in place by the BBC and head writer Eric's a word vocally hated Colin Baker's the doctor and didn't think much of JN T and away between them they decided to jettison the entire originally planned season 23 the original season 23 was in pre-production when the hiatus was announced three stories had been scripted people have been contracted and were paid off in full the BBC one of the
1:49 show gone so badly they were willing to lose money over it and they did we lost a new Ice Warriors story the return of the celestial toymaker and a story set in Asia with the dubious title of yellow fever and how to cure it some of whom have been adapted into Big Finish audio stories the new season 23 would be the trial of a Time Lord inspired by the feeling that the show itself was on trial the show's second season long arc the budget was cut again the episode count was pretty much halved and until the end of the show there would only be four stories a season the tone of the show shifted again with the violence and horror elements being replaced by a much lighter tone in attempts at comedy it's not a pretty sight and the obviously
2:34 reduced budget doesn't help the first story is the mysterious planet it was Robert Holmes his last completed script for Doctor Who he died partway through writing the finale for the season the TARDIS is pulled into a Time Lord Space Station in a sequence that looks brilliant even today this is the best bit of model work the show has ever done even now it's our past it's just a petty they clearly spent half the budget on it I can imagine fans excitement seeing the sequence only to be dashed when we cut to a shittier than usual interior sent the Time Lords are putting the doctrine trial for interfering with the affairs or their life forms something that was done before and far better with the second doctor it also didn't take 14 episodes to do and had a far more
3:20 realistic ending guilt the trials not quite so transparent though there's weirdness and intrigue afoot the prosecutor is the valley art which the show believes is an actual word but I've seen no evidence of that he's played very well by Michael Jason the first three stories are used as evidence in the trial the mysterious planet is from the doctors past the later ones are from the present and the future so what is the mysterious planet of the title it's called ravalox it's remarkably earth-like and the doctor in peri get embroiled in drama between a primitive tribe of saxon ish warriors some intergalactic con men and a giant robot ravalox as it turns out is actually earth devastated by solar
4:05 flares and moved across the galaxy for reasons that are not at all ridiculous and/or nonsensical one of the few good things about this is the con men double act glitz and dipper they're one of the few parts of vintage homes shining through the crap well them in the books post-apocalyptic things often have a book or two surviving and becoming important to the culture of the survivors usually is the Bible for some reason but and this is the water babies Moby Dick on the UK habitats of the Canadian goose the first three stories this season are presented as being viewed in the trial itself and as such stuff is edited censored commented on left out misinterpreted and some other clever stuff like that less cleverly the
4:51 doctor in the valley art insult each other through the courtroom sections a legal jargon flies with reckless abandon again I've seen it before and a better season better story with a better doctor the second story is mind warp and it's my favorite of the season it's the direct sequel to vengeance and varas it's taken from the doctors ruff present it's the adventure the doctor was on when he was someone for the time lords summoned by a mind control from across the universe and in a different time it's like they're apologizing for the Time Lords lack of power in the last 15 plus years it's the planet Thoris beta and SIL from vengeance and virus's back his boss kif has a problem his brain keeps expanding so who's paying dr. Crozier to transplant his brain into a new body
5:37 that can handle it eventually he just decides to transplant kid's mind into Perry's brain alas King Brian blessed has fallen in love with Perry over the course of four episodes and doesn't take this very well I know I kind of spoiled the ending but trial of a Time Lord did that first this heart-wrenching ending was done away with off screen at the very end of the season and I'm still not over it the official ending is that Brian Blessed rescued and married her the doctor who doesn't think to go check just takes other people's word for it so we have no idea what actually happened to peri and
6:23 as per usual the non TV media has come up with more than one suggestion so what really happened with Perry is up in the air I choose the mind wipes body-snatching violent death ending because it's me in this we see sections that the doctor swears didn't happen such as him teaming up with SIL and being evil it's pretty obvious of the tapes played for the trial have been tampered with but we the audience never get to see what really happened so at best this is confusing but it's supposed to be I think playing kid is Christopher Ryan who at the time was most famous for playing Mike and the young ones but is now probably most famous for appearing in the new show
7:22 what must not wholly be present at the meeting with our partner from posi car but also able to make same decisions playing dr. Cruz here is Patrick rycart who you haven't heard of but he was brilliant as captain Duff in the highlights by gun mentally she no longer exists morning ladies and gentlemen this is your captain speaking my name's captain denies I'm the one sitting at the front of the Hat when the earth woman's brain ages I can transfer the mental energy and consciousness of God into yet another body my temporary
8:10 amnesia all passengers on depart from the aircraft will receive the stickum yes go sir shortbread thank you Nabeel Shaban is still brilliant as SIL and I still wish he'd come back in the new show well Brian blessed is Brian Blessed Mother what more would you expect overall this is probably the happiest collection of actors the show's ever managed to put in one place it's quite an achievement Colin Baker wanted to beat Tom Baker's record and be the doctor for eight years at least and it's two years we got Alexei Sayle and Christopher Ryan possibly the biggest
8:55 tragedy was firing is that we never got to see Rik Mayall Nigel planer or Adrian Edmondson and Doctor Who mind warp has its problems but it's the best story of the season Bar None it's fairly dark has a great cast and if you ignore the red cond ending then it's a powerful end for the character of Perry it's an ending that even Nicola Brian prefers tone wise it's surreal not in the mind robber sword away where surrealism is built into the story it's a semi-normal story where every artistic choice is weird I really wish this story had been done different season the court parts damaged the story and the time prank done just confuses it in the other stories the court gimmick is a diversion from the crap in this one it's a detriment part 3
9:40 is 'terror of the Vera bods otherwise known as horror of the plant vagina heads their design might be some of the best trolling I've ever seen a national television it's a human Starliner in the future and the doctor is travelling with his companion mal now this is an idea that Moffat likely wishes he came up with first the story is from the doctor's future so we don't know how he and mal meant but mail from after their vods appears in the final story of the season which from his perspective is the doctor's first meeting with her and because of this being the last sixth doctor TV adventure we never get to see mal me the doctor from her perspective and when Big Finish decided to show Mel's first meeting with six from her perspective they made it a multi doctor adventure with two six doctors on two
10:26 males and no one met each other in the right order take that River Song and out of sync temporal storytelling and a way aboard the Starliner are the bare bones some alien plants that are utterly deadly the Starliner is heading for Earth and if a single of airport escapes they'll destroy the entire human race somehow humans are in a bunch of planets by this point so I don't know how that works and the way there's murders onboard and the doctor has to investigate and do his best to stop the Vera boys from making it to Earth by any means necessary article 7 permits no exceptions the doctor has destroyed a complete species the charge must now be genocide Mel is that's really terrible she's much improved in the Big Finish audios especially the one where she
11:12 takes on the valley yard unfortunately that's far from this in this she screams they even used Bonnie Lankford singing talents to pitch her scream at the ending music sting and she tries to make the doctor lose weight because it's the 80s the supporting cast aren't amazingly memorable it's like they used all that up in the last story but a dose feature Michael Craig is the commander of the ship if you're familiar with my movie reviews you might recognize him as Thatcher from turkey shoot barring the trial sections this is a fairly traditional story not quite but nearly a base under siege type story it's just fairly generic except for the
11:57 design at the vervain's and the fact that the doctor commits genocide but even that's not the first or last time that he'd do that in the classic show unless you're walking plant that vaguely resembles our sex to white and there's a few logical problems this story is used as a reason to add genocide to the doctors list of crimes when the story is from his future if Time Lords can March future events be tried for them and of access to time travel then surely their society must be Minority Report on steroids plus if you can watch future stories then that would mean he can avoid the problems just by watching this
12:44 story unfold this story which begins as a mystery he has changed the outcome and therefore might not commit genocide basically this story is a logical at least Mindwarp was deliberately weird and confusing the final story is the ultimate foe it's a two-parter and it's a bit of a mess Robert Holmes died after finishing the first draft of the first episode and an outline for the second script editor Eric's a word stepped up to finish the story but angrily quit the show before the story was produced he and J and he had argued over the ending of the season say word preferring the dark handing with the doctor and the villainous valley art fighting and ending up in the time vortex kind of like a sci-fi reckon back falls while J and T wanted a
13:29 happier ending say would refused to allow the script he wrote to be used so pip and Jane Baker had to write a new one and because of legal issues in real life they weren't even allowed to find out what was in the original script before writing their own so we have a story where they can't use the ending for legal reasons and so someone else had to come up with something and a way unlike the other stories of the season this one's not evidence in the trial it's the doctor Binks sentence of death and then battling the volley art in the matrix the same one from the deadly assassin I wasn't going to tell you who the volley art is but then he remembered that the original and unused idea was so much better than what they used he's a distillation of the doctors darker side somewhere between his 12th
14:14 and final incarnation whatever the hell that means and he wants the doctors remaining regeneration so he can be a real boy or something originally he was a desperate doctor in his final incarnation going after his earlier cells regeneration so we could live longer and paradoxes be damned neither way he's a precursor to the dream Lord in the new show the matrix is just as surreal and a low-budget as it was in the deadly assassin and there is another surprising appearance but I won't spoil it for you the doctor survives and leaves with mail happy and confident that he's going to have a wonderful life of course Colin Baker was fired not long after and was so pissed off that he rightly refused to even come back for regeneration story but more on that next
15:00 time this season isn't good sorry it's even worse than season 22 in order to really get this season you have to be interested in the trial and I personally am NOT it's been done better before even the surreal ending is a rehash of stuff done better in the deadly assassin if you're a completist or a fan of Colin Baker then check this season out if you're not then don't Colin Baker deserved so much better than he got if you want to try the best The Sixth Doctor has to offer then listen to some Big Finish audio adventures such as the space race where super intelligent Laika the dog starts harvesting Russian organs to enhance other animals or Jubilee the inspiration for the Eccleston story Dalek and better than it I'm not sure
15:48 why but in Big Finish six has kind of become a stand-in for the other doctors he's teamed up several times with Jago and light food from the towns of Wang Qiang and even at a brilliant series of adventures with Jamie that ended with legend of the Cyberman a brilliantly demented story where the Cybermen attacked the land of fiction from the mind robber that one's got a great twist ending uh next time when we'll meet the Seventh Doctor the Rani will return and we'll meet the last companion of the classic show
16:41 now I am sure alive within this also wonderful wonderful frame welcome to your new body I wish you could have found a more attractive one
