Definitely some interesting aspects here (the gorgeous opening shot, the Three Sacred Texts, Sabalom Glitz as the last truly great Holmes-created side character), and I find myself growing fond of the larger Trial Of A Time Lord framing. Between this story arc where the Doctor watches his own show, getting involved in another TV show with Vengeance On Varos, and even directly addressing the audience at the end of The Caves Of Androzani, it's these moments that would become the foundation for his predominantly metafictional lane in the Big Finish audios.

It's just that the actual story here is pretty middling. A mystery that's not much of a mystery, a conflict that's not that compelling, and characters that overall don't leave much of an impact.

We now come to the season long story, The Trial of a Time Lord, which can also be viewed as four separate stories, but they’re all tied together by the single overarching plot of the Doctor once again standing trial by the Time Lords, with his prosecutor the Valeyard determined to see him put to death. This season had a lot of meta subtext, basically reflecting the then real world trial Doctor Who was on with the BBC, this was one of the closest points it came to cancellation after dwindling viewing numbers and a determination from the higher ups in the BBC (such as Michael Grade) to see the show cancelled. Which briefly was what happened at the end of Colin’s first year which resulted in an 18 month hiatus, but the BBC eventually buckled to fan pressure and the show was renewed for another year. When the initial cancellation was announced, the original Season 23 was in pre-production with several stories scripted, people contracted and even paid off in full.

Despite the fan outcry of wanting the show back, the BBC still left the show at a major disadvantage, the budget was cut once again, the episode number was vastly reduced and from here on till the end of Classic Who there would only be four stories per season. On top of which, JNT by this point had wanted to move on to other TV projects, but was being forced to stay on as producer by the BBC, the best writer in the show’s history Robert Holmes had scripted the opener and was halfway through finishing the finale before sadly dying after a short illness. He’d written a rough outline of the finale’s last episode which Eric Saward had stepped in to finish, but after several arguments with JNT and Saward’s long history of not being a fan of Colin Baker, he angrily quit the show and took the rights to the script with him. Meaning the writers brought in to finish the story, Pip & Jane Baker, weren’t even allowed to know what was in the original script. It’s honestly a miracle this season managed to buy the show a few more years of life and how they were able to turn things around after.

The season opens with honestly the most spectacular opening shot in the show’s history as the TARDIS is pulled into a Time Lord space station, then we cut to a crappy interior set and things immediately go downhill from there. The Time Lords are once again placing the Doctor on trial for interference in the lives of other civilisations, an idea that had been done much better in The War Games. The prosecutor for the Doctor’s trial is the mysterious Valeyard who presents his first case, an adventure he had with Peri very recently on the planet Ravalox. This brings us to The Mysterious Planet, Robert Holmes’s final completed script and sadly it’s not one of his best works, although I will that The Mysterious Planet is honestly the best story of the season. Most people would disagree with me and it doesn’t exactly feature the best parts of Trial of a Time Lord (apart from the opening shot), but structurally it’s better put together than the stories that follow, it’s the one that’s the least broken by either logic or behind the scenes shenanigans.

It doesn’t take the Doctor and Peri long, but they discover that Ravalox with its Earth-like atmosphere, environment and indigenous population, is in fact Earth billions of years in the future, somehow far beyond the orbit of it’s sun after a devastating firestorm that propelled it across the universe and wiped out most of the population. As is normally the case, the survivors have formed their own tribes and communities, some living above ground, others below in the old London Underground, some primitive others more advanced. But everything’s being overseen by a robot named Drathro and a pair of intergalactic conmen are planning to steal the robot’s closely guarded secrets. The event is being viewed from the courtroom and as a result sections of it are edited out, commented on, misinterpreted and other clever stuff like that. What’s not clever is the story keeps interrupting itself so the Doctor and Valeyard can hurl insults at each other like preschoolers with a complete disregard to legal jargon. I’m no legal expert but I’m pretty sure you can’t just change the entire proceedings of a trial midway, a trial that initially started off as a simple inquiry. Another positive is Glitz and Dibber, the classic Robert Holmes double act who are a pair of conmen manipulating everyone around them so they can gain access to the robot’s secrets, Glitz in particular would go on to appear twice in the show and was one of the few good things about this and Season 24. Again, The Mysterious Planet is not good, but it is the best of the season and certainly the most coherent.

You know, I'm not rating this serial that high, but it wasn't that bad either.  That opening with the models and CGI was genuinely impressive, exciting, and amazing.  That energy continues well into the early courtroom scenes.  Even though I know what's happening, there's a good sense of intrigue going on here.  What's happening?  Why is the Doctor on trial?  It's good stuff.

The actual execution outside of the framing device is a lot weaker, though.  It feels like the actual mysterious planet of The Mysterious Planet is a little boring.  Some Doctor Who sets and alien worlds look great - this is not one of those situations.  It really feels like everything is just barely holding together at the seams.  And the characters living there felt flat and boring.  It all felt so artificial - like these were costumes and sets rather than people and places.  Still, I found Six and Peri pretty entertaining.  They have good banter here, for once, and it already feels like a huge improvement from last season.  Again, it's just not that bad.  Not that great, but not that bad, either.

This is part of a series of reviews of Doctor Who in chronological timeline order.

Previous Story: Plight of the Pimpernel

What a start to Season 23, like the nothing the show has seen before. It's probably been said many times, but that model shot is gorgeous and for a second I genuinely felt like I could have been watching something big-budget like Star Trek. The courtroom framing device is excellent, often more interesting than the story itself. The Valeyard is a great villain so far, performed wonderfully by Michael Jayston. He's the perfect foil to Colin Baker's eccentric and obnoxious Doctor (not hate on his Doctor I absolutely love him).

The actual plot to the story is nothing remarkable but it is surprisingly competent for this era of Doctor Who. I like all the various narratives going on, Sabalom Glitz and Dibber are a fun little duo. The reveal that the planet they were on is Earth could have been done a bit more impactfully in my opinion. Ironically, I think it's where Chris Chibnall lifted the "barren planet is Earth" reveal for Orphan 55.

The big robot is not the most compelling villain, but he does the job for the story. I'm not the biggest fan of the way this adventure ends, it feels quite rushed and like they suddenly remembered that there had to be a bit of action beyond getting captured and re-captured over and over. A promising start to the season though.

Next Story: Mindwarp

The "story" part - ie not the trial - of the Mysterious Planet is Doctor Who at its most average. There's chase scenes down corridors, big robots, and side characters in silly outfits. Whilst I wouldn't go as far as to say they've figure out how to write Peri, someone has realised that audiences prefer it when their two main characters seem to like each other, which is a very nice change from s22.

The trial section is more fun, with the Valeyard, Inquisitor, and Doctor all playing off each other. It's not, like, groundbreaking television, but it is such a welcome change to have a Sixth Doctor serial (or part of one) that could reasonably be called "enjoyable"