The Trial of a Time Lord III

It's time to look at where "The Trial of a Time Lord" sits in relation to the rest of Doctor Who today. It's been pointed out in defence of the dramatic clean break which ushered in the McCoy era a year later, that "Trial" is overloaded with aspects that could be seen to pander to the fans and the show's mythology: the Time Lords, the Matrix, the Master, even Sil was officially a returning baddie. There was a time when the concept of regeneration was a fresh innovation introduced to give Doctor Who a new start; here, knowledge of it is dependent on the plot twist that the entire season hinges upon. Given all this baggage, it's somewhat ironic that the group of people that "Trial" seemed to piss off most at the time was the fans.

Somebody once stated that "Trial" was "quietly forgotten" in the years following the end of the Colin Baker era. It's certainly true that the Valeyard came to occupy a unique position in Who lore - he was not used again for many years, perhaps seen as an embodiment of everything that had gone wrong with Season 23 in the same way he was fictionally a sum of all the evil in the Doctor, a confusing, inward-looking contradiction. The novels even banned him from appearing, although Big Finish (but of course!) and Terrance Dicks later relented and brought him back. But to pin down the current fringe popularity of "Trial" - and as with any cult, it is a minority, albeit a very defiant one - we need to look at just why they decided to make the season in the first place.

Aside from being clever in the face of the people who really put Doctor Who on trial, the story is born of JNT's need to provide fan-pleasing elements into the series. Nobody BUT the fans would know of the Matrix, Time Lords and so on, so unless he was doing it to appease Eric Saward's Holmes-worship, "Trial" exists to bring JNT closer to who he perceived as the series faithful. Or perhaps he genuinely did want to bring the series past history to its present audience... it doesn't really matter. The important fact is that this monster of a season was made to be packed with things that we, as fans, find exciting.

And exciting they still are. We get to see some decent special effects, which any honest Doctor Who fan would have sold his TARDIS tent for during the mid-eighties. And we get more of "The Deadly Assassin" - not just a trip in the Matrix, but hints of long lost relics and Time Lord secrets. Remember that we do LIKE continuity. Sometimes it's hard to credit because we're so immersed in trying to forget it so Doctor Who appeals to a wider audience, but it's only us that attempts to bind the whole hotchpotch Who Universe together. The snippets of Gallifrey and the Doctor's past that "Trial" throws us should have been like scraps to a hungry animal. In addition to all this, we got a story that's complex and requires weeks of studious attention to follow. In this sense, a more adult Doctor Who.

But there lies the great contradiction, and the reason for both the failure of "Trial" and it's subsequent resurrection. Everything that the obsessed fan in us secretly loves about Doctor Who - the continuity references, the involved plot, the dark Doctor - is what probably turned off Mr and Mrs Bored Casual Viewer. But because the fans, threatened with the end of our show if ratings didn't buck up, cared more about the show appealing to a wider audience than how much we actually enjoyed it ourselves, we were cross too. So the story ended up pleasing nobody.

The people that love "Trial" today are either more honest than everyone else, or more concerned with their own enjoyment of Doctor Who than other peoples. Not that we should have a pop at fans who want the series to do well - we'd all have liked Season 23 to have achieved sky-high ratings. It's just a shame that, for some, knowing the series was playing out an almighty, bombastic, self-aware ratings suicide bid was enough to scupper their own pleasure. Season 23 is a show that rewards fans - by definition, you must BE a fan if you stick with one story for 3 months. And with the series future in jeopardy, no fan wanted that.

Nowadays, "Trial" doesn't have to please ten million people each week, so those with the courage to about face (or who weren't around in the first place) can safely love it. It's funny that most "Trial" fans I know were small kids or younger when the story aired; it's always harder to have an opinion when it's a revised one. In addition, "Trial" still contains all those elements we traditionally love about "Doctor Who" - space travel, monsters, hammy acting, some great lines and fourteen episodes that, thanks to an enviably notorious reputation, remained largely unexploited until the mid-nineties video release.

I can only apologise if my analysis of "Trial" so far has veered towards the negative. Unfortunately, my memories and reminisces deal with what actually happened, and "Trial" was... perhaps even still is, one of the least popular stories ever. This isn't fair, but then life isn't sometimes - it wouldn't feature in my own list of worst stories if that helps. Next time, to finish our look at the story, we'll have a positive glance at what "Trial" gave to the Doctor Who legacy.