The Trial of a Timelord: The Ultimate Foe or Time Inc.

 

 

 

“In all my travels across the universe I have battled against evil, against power mad conspirators. I should have stayed here! The oldest civilisation, decadent, degenerate and rotten to the core! Power mad conspirators; Daleks, Sontarans, Cybermen! They’re still in the nursery compared with us! Ten million years of absolute power: that’s what it takes to be really corrupt.” – The Doctor

The Ultimate Foe concludes the Sixth Doctor’s tenure, and it’s an interesting piece of television. This two part conclusion ties together all the threads of the previous three adventures, bringing in Sabalom and Mel as witnesses for the Doctor by request of the Master, who has some interesting revelations to make of his own.

 

The Master makes a somewhat unexpected and clichéd return to Doctor Who having last been paired with the Rani and once again seemingly doomed. How does he do it? Anyway there’s no time for that because the Master has gained access to the Matrix with comparative ease to the Keeper’s claims of it being truly impenetrable. As is the effect for the matrix looks rather like a child’s birthday at Alphabet Zoo mixed with a bad LSD trip. The Master’s appearance also marks yet another clichéd villain performance courtesy of the slightly obsessed Anthony Ainley, who was reported to have only played the Master because he enjoyed the role, so much some rumours have it he would answer the phone by saying “This is the Master speaking” and then cackle down the phone. It’s a mad old world.

 

As it is the Master has some juicy gossip, and goes on to explain that Ravalox was indeed Earth (as we’d by now guessed) but the reason for it’s movement was altogether more complex. Earth had been used as the repository for the scientific secrets that were being secretly peddled from the Matrix. As soon as the Timelords got wind of this they decided to shift the planet two lightyears from it’s original position, putting it in the way of the fireball that ravaged the planet. Naturally the keeper maintains the Matrix is impenetrable as he knows all too well the inverse is correct.

 

The Doctor’s final performance is as acidic as we’ve come to expect from the Sixth Doctor beginning with his typical childish tirades in the courtroom, he at least silences himself somewhat as he begins to take on the Valeyard, The Master of course has one more quick revelation to make before he departs, the Valeyard, much like the Dream Lord, is a manifestation of the Doctor’s dark side somewhere between his twelfth and final regeneration. Well lovely. Anyway this all means the trial has all been a bit of a waste of time and you can’t help but feel that your time has been wasted slightly as well. But never mind that there’s a matrix to save! The Valeyard has gone mad and for some reason now moves by disappearing and reappearing. We never actually get an explanation as to why this power has suddenly manifested itself, it just has: live with it.

 

The Doctor’s two companions really should have done a Martha and fucked off whilst the going was good. As it is Sabalom ends up being more of a hindrance than an asset to the Doctor and his constant financial banter reminiscent of a galactic Del Boy brings agony to my ears every time this wretch of a recurring character speaks. Mel doesn’t get off lightly either though, as in her opening moments all the playful dialogue she was gifted with in the previous serial has now evaporated, replaced by the kind of cringe-inducing gibberish you’d expect the tea boy to come out with at the office party whilst trying to drunkenly butter up the boss. It’s that bad. Her physical aspects don’t help the Doctor out much either as she merely bumbles about like a decapitated cow, running into problems and making a poor show of solving them. And her voice sounds like a cat in a trash masher.

 

The Doctor must then solve the day with a psychotic version of himself, a Scottish bloke with a ridiculous beard, a cosmic wheeler dealer and the reincarnation of Barbara Cartland. That said it doesn’t deter him from his duty, and that duty is to prowl around some admittedly quite creepy streets coming up with a plan to stop two psycho’s in one. Indeed the Valeyard’s ultimate contraption is the usual neo Nazi bullshit you’d expect from late 80’s Who,  which the Doctor duely solves by tinkering with a machine and causing a random explosion. It’s a shame this Doctor could have gone out on a high, had it not been for those two final words: “Carrot Juice?”. Add all this together and the show is really starting to show it’s age. Good luck Sylvester…