Next is Mindwarp, which most fans consider to be the best episode of the season, it does certainly have some of the best parts of Trial of a Time Lord, but I think calling it the best episode is giving it way too much credit. Another bit of evidence presented by the Valeyard, this adventure occurs just before the Doctor was captured by the Time Lords, the planet Thoros Beta where the Doctor and Peri once again encounter Sil from Vengeance on Varos, this time he’s subservient to his lord Kiv who’s suffering from his skull being too small for his growing brain, and so has employed a scientist named Krozier to find him a suitable body to place his mind inside.

This story does have a lot going in its favour, Sil is the best creation of the Sixth Doctor TV era, brilliantly played by Nabil Shaban and was even meant to be part of the original planned Season 23 so it really speaks volumes that they junked the entire planned Season 23 but still found a way to keep Sil involved with the show. As I talked about with Peri and the Piscon Paradox, the death of Peri is an incredible ending with Colin Baker putting in his finest televised performance as the Doctor, but again it’s made completely redundant by the end of the season with the completely unnecessary retcon. Another positive Mindwarp has is the guest cast, this is honestly one of the most entertaining guest cast I’ve come across in Classic Who, on top of Nabil Shaban being great as Sil, we’ve Christopher Ryan as Lord Kiv who at the time was best known as Mike from The Young Ones, we have Patrick Ryecart hamming it up as the mad scientist Krozier and last but 100% not least, we have the barbarian King Ycarnos played by the one, the only, Brian Blessed! Very rarely does Colin Baker get upstaged in Doctor Who to the degree that Brian Blessed achieves, he is just a joy to watch. So it is understandable why Mindwarp is considered the best of the season as it has some of the best elements, but the story is utterly broken by how it’s presented. At the end of part one the Doctor’s hooked up to one of Krozier’s mind machines which puts him in a very delirious and mentally fragile state. From then on, the Doctor begins helping the villains and turns on Peri, but the Doctor in the trail room can’t figure out what’s going on, was this an after effect of the mind machine, was the evidence being manipulated, or was the Doctor only posing as evil to get closer to the villain’s plans, the answer is I don’t know. Not only is it never made clear onscreen what’s going on, but even behind the scenes Colin Baker asked those exact questions and was met with “I don’t know”. So you have a story where the Doctor turns on Peri and starts helping the villains, and nobody both on and off camera can explain why. On the one hand it serves to put the Doctor in the present in a desperate situation where the Valeyard is winning over the courtroom and he’s forced to watch helplessly as Peri is taken away and seemingly killed. But on the other hand it makes the story unintentionally confusing and we’re never sure what to think of the Doctor and his actions. This normally wouldn’t be a huge negative but it’s the crux of the entire story and it could so easily have been remedied if they’d just picked one of the options. This would’ve been a lot better had it been done in another season, being tied to the trial story just breaks it.