I honestly don't see what could have possessed JN-T and Eric to have conceived the entire season as what's effectively one 14-part story, with viewers needing to have seen most, if not all, of the thing for it to make any sense of it all. I have the luxury of watching 'Trial' over six or so hours should the need arise, and there are still elements of the thing I find baffling. Twelve episodes are one thing if it's the Daleks generally capering around space and time, and the whole thing grinds to a halt for a few minutes each week while Billy explains to Peter what's going on. Fourteen episodes where even the production team don't know what's happening or where the thing's even going is suicide. In my view, the 45-minute episodes of Season 22 were the right way to go. It's a shame the Beeb by that stage had it in for the show (Season 22's ratings weren't significantly lower than Season 21's), as the 25-minute format was fast becoming obsolete. Not that "Trial" would have worked much better as 45-minute episodes, but without the suspension it wouldn't have come up. This is all without mentioning that a Radio Times listing for "Trial of a Timelord Part 9" is hardly going to encourage the casual viewer that this might be a good time to tune in.

That 'Trial' is effectively one big story, regardless of production codes and crew or Target novels, provides one more problem. It means that everything's working towards the conclusion, and when that falls flat, it's difficult to appreciate the positives when the final outcome is so damn frustrating.

Parts 1-4, "The Mysterious Planet", are burgeoning with promise. Sure, it's not quite there. Marb Station suffers from the mid-1980s bright-light problem, never really feeling like a post-apocalyptic bolt-hole. The Tribe of the Free are deeply irritating pillock yokels, not numbering a single interesting character or notable performance among them. Dratho's mob are similarly faceless, only Balthazar coming across as someone you could care about. Tom Chadbon, after the wonderful Duggan in "City of Death", is a huge disappointment, being relentlessly flat as Murgrave, while Tunker and Handrell are downright embarrassing. It'd be easy to blame a lot of this on Eric, or John, or Nicholas Mallett, but as with "The Two Doctors"', it seems Robert Holmes is finally running out of good scripts. It's not like Holmes had been adverse to bad scripts before (witness "Revenge of the Cybermen" or "The Power of Kroll"), but like "The Two Doctors" it just isn't working here. Some direction choices don't help, but it's unlikely, considering his reverence, nay, worship of Holmes, that Saward would edit his scripts to any drastic extent.

Of course, like "The Two Doctors", Holmes does get a couple of things right. He arguably writes the best screen Sixth Doctor across his two stories, and in his "Trial" script, the Doctor and Peri finally gel as a team. And, just as Shockeye stood out among the supporting cast in "The Two Doctors", so Glitz and his sidekick Dibber stand out here. Glitz especially is effective, coming across as a genuine cut-throat rather than the affable rogue who would appear later in "Trial" and "Dragonfire". Dibber works well as the apprentice too, and they're the last of the classic Holmes double-acts. The plot is very good, tearing the Doctor between Earth and Gallifrey, and it gives him chance to do some classic detective work early on. The idea of Drathro maintaining an underground society is also sound, even if the execution's not quite there. One of the problems is that it feels like there's about a dozen or so survivors, and about the same number of Train Guards - there's no sense of there being the five hundred mentioned repeatedly. It's a nicely-paced four-part story, with revelations fed to the audience at a steady rate, also establishing a few bigger ones for later in the story. The Trial sequences are used nicely, not overpowering the Ravalox parts.

Phillip Martin's segment, Parts 5-8 ("Mindwarp") are rather more flawed. Sil didn't really impress me in "Vengeance on Varos", so a return here isn't fantastic news. Here he's employed largely as comic relief, babbling, begging and brown-nosing with Kiv - I should state that I'm not sure it's Nabil Shaban's fault here, just the very bad scripting he has to deal with. The plot's hugely uninteresting, to be frank. Who, bar the Timelords, cares if Kiv gets a bigger head? It's important because we're told it's important, not because anything feels genuinely threatening. There seem to be a huge amount of corridor scenes and lots of being captured and locked up. Most of the characters again are very, very dull people, 'enlivened' by some astonishingly bland actors. Only three guest actors come out with any real credit: Patrick Ryecart, who has a wonderful understated charm as Crozier; Christopher Ryan, who probably benefits from being the straight, non-irritating foil to Kiv and is rather likeable as a result; and of course, Brian Blessed as Yrcanos. I've seen quite a few people who claim his insanely OTT performance is embarrassing; it's actually enormous fun, injecting some much-needed energy into a languid story. He's also got a nicely fleshed out character to work with, and gets some lovely little scenes with Peri.

For the regulars, Nicola Bryant continues her more subtle characterisation from the season opener, no doubt helped by Peri being written as a person, rather than a sex object. She also puts in a wonderful little performance as Kiv in the last few minutes. Sadly, after the usual exemplary performance in the first episode or so, Colin swerves off the rails. I'm not sure whether he's trying, in an exercise in futility, to wrestle the attention away from Blessed, or whether it's that he, like the rest of us, has little idea when and where the Doctor's being genuine, and where he's playing up to Sil and Crozier, but he slides into ham on a few occasions. The biggest problem, though, is the confusing mess of the last couple of episodes. The audience are left high and dry, having no idea what the Doctor's actually up to, what the Timelords are doing, why they're really all that fussed about Crozier's experiments and why they didn't get an actor to play Tuza instead of a plank of wood. Watched as part of Trial as a whole story, it's not helped by a lot of these questions never really being answered, and also by it's only real dramatic punch - a distressed Yrcanos destroying the Kiv-possessed Peri - being nonchalantly ret-conned in Part 14.

Things don't get much better in Parts 9-12 ("Terror of the Vervoids"). More time is, by now, going on the irritating Trial sequences. The Doctor and the Valeyard's sparring is terrible, the Doctor losing massive points for his childish behaviour - the amount of times you actually feel you should be siding with a bastard like the Valeyard because Our Hero is reduced to making crap jokes about his title is shocking, especially when Michael Jayston actually manages to inject some malice into the somewhat underwritten character - while preserving mystery is something, all we learn about the Valeyard in the first dozen episodes is he's got it in for the Doctor. Partly through the character demands of the largely neutral Inquisitor, Lynda Bellingham makes little impression. The Inquisitor exists largely as a mediator between the Doctor and the Valeyard, and as such has no depth whatsoever, and could probably have been acted by anyone from Sheila Hancock to Jackie Lane without any change to the end result. The biggest problem, though, is that the Vervoid story is set in the Doctor's future, pointing to him getting off from the trial. Okay, so we knew he would anyway, but this is a bit of a give-away to the characters involved...

The future setting also means we get Mel. I'm not Langford's biggest fan, but I seriously think just how irritating she is gets exaggerated. The character's biggest shortfalls - a total lack of depth - are down to this 'introductory' story. The problem is Mel's been kicking around with the Doctor for a while, and the script isn't sure whether to introduce her or not. We get many clunking moments as Mel or the Doctor note things about Mel that they should both really already know. She also looses viewer sympathy from scene 1 as she bullies the Doctor for being out of shape. Mel gets better as she goes along, but the Bakers aren't the most subtle writers the series has ever had, so Langford is left struggling with cardboard characterisation and atrocious dialogue. This considered, it's amiable that she simply decides to pour so much energy into a role that doesn't deserve it. This segment also conjures up an even worse cast of supporting characters than the first two parts. Nobody here is of the slightest bit of interest, not helped by a cast who seem uniformly disinterested. This hugely dents the murder-mystery set-up, as everyone's so colourless the scripted red herrings and shady characters fall flat. The Vervoids are passable monsters, but the whole thing just feels rather tacky and pointless.

Where it all really falls down, though, is the final two episodes. Episode 13, from Robert Holmes, benefits from some impressive visuals and a final threat that the trial's going to actually go somewhere. The scenes in the matrix are slightly derivative of "The Deadly Assassin", though if you're going to crib off an older story, it's a good one to pick. There's also more of a focus on the season's recurring characters, and a welcome return for Glitz. That said, without Dibber half of the fun's gone. While I'm a fan of Ainley's Master, here he's as superfluous as he got, just another random element chucked in, though the idea of him helping the Doctor because he fears the Valeyard is a great one.

Alas, it all utterly falls down. Gallifrey falls into civil war for no reason, which means the Doctor's off scot-free, getting to leave with Mel, who he hasn't met yet, the Valeyard's plan to kill 30 Time Lords using a screen and then take over the Doctor's remaining lives is thwarted, but he at least gets to possess the Keeper of the Matrix. What the Hell?

It doesn't help that all this is dressed up in opaque technobabble. Colin Baker does his best, but it's pretty obvious neither he nor anyone else really knows what's going on. Luckless Bonnie Langford is left high and dry, reverting to high-pitched stage squealing.

In the end, we're left with a dull, incomprehensible mess. The muddy, desperate conclusion wipes the story's positives out. It's actually a minor miracle the BBC decided to renew the series at all. Part of me feels a bit bad being so hard on the thing... It's pretty amazing how well the thing does hold together, but then at the same time this is no more than a salvage job.

Review written: Spring 2005
"Trial of a Timelord" Boxed Set VHS @ Amazon.co.uk