Review: Doctor Who Classic: The Mysterious Planet

Drathro and the Twins

Doctor Who, Season 23, Story One - The Mysterious Planet

Michael Grade didn't like Doctor Who. He really, really didnt like it. After several complaints about Colin Baker's tenure on the show in 1985, Grade put the show on an 18 month hiatus and the production team had to come up with something to keep the show alive. In keeping with the public mood surrounding the show at the time, JNT decided to have an entire season of interlinked stories where The Doctor would be put on trial for the crimes that he had committed. Composed of four single stories with the plotline running through them, the 14-part Trial of a Timelord arc is a strange period in the show's history.
     The first story, written by verteran writer Robert Holmes, introduces the main Trial storyline. The Doctor, taken away from Peri, has been called here to face trial by a mysterious figure called the Valeyard, who acts as the prosecution and uses video evidence from The Matrix (from the previous Gallifrey stories) to claim that The Doctor is guilty of various crimes ranging from interferance to Genocide. He's played interestingly by the former Emmerdale actor, Michael Jayston, and for this serial at least the Trial aren't annoying yet.
     The "video evidence" in this serial is taken from The Doctor's past - an adventure from after Revelation of the Daleks but before Season 23. Peri and The Doctor arrive on the planet Ravalox, which the Doctor is visiting because it's eerily similar to Earth and, despite the Gallifreyan database's claims, is teeming with life. The Doctor and Peri are notably more friendly to one another here, another part of the show's attempt to regain viewers. Watching them are two weapons traders, Glitz and Dibber. I love Glitz; he's easily one of the best supporting characters in the Eighties. They're here to scavenge a robot called the L3, which has taken control of an underground city run by human slaves. They need to take down a Light Converter, which is being used by a local tribe (led by Joan Sims) as a totem pole. The Doctor and Peri discover the underground tunnels - the entrance appears to be the entrance to the London Underground. This disturbs The Doctor, and he intends to find out why Earth has been so changed.

The Valeyard (Michael Jayston)

     He heads underground while Peri is intercepted by the tribespeople. Joan Sims locks up Glitz and Dibber together with her. The Doctor is arrested as a "water theif" but is eventually saved and goes to see the L3, who calls himself "The Immortal". Glitz reveals that he's here for Time Lord knowledge being kept here. The L3, called Drathro, forces The Doctor to work on his power system. He manages to escape and is followed by Drathro's L1 robot. Along the way he finds the leader of the L3's guards, Merdeen, who has been secretly escorting people to the surface. He meets up with Glitz and Dibber, but they find themselves trapped by tribesmen on one side and the L1 on the other. The L1 is disabled temporarily but they're taken to the tribe and locked up. The L1 breaks in, disabling The Doctor and allowing the others to escape. The tribe luckily destroys the L1, but they believe that this is the Immortal and thus go storming into the underground. The Doctor and Peri follow, but are collared by Merdeen who shoots them into a cliffhanger. Turns out he was shooting another guy, who had tried to rat him out to The Immortal. The tribe discover the L3 and he kills Joan Sims.
     The Doctor goes in and faces the L3. They have an interesting conversation about what makes organic life more important than mechanical life. Glitz and Dibber accompany Peri through a hatch into the chamber, but they're trapped there by the L3. As Peri and The Doctor are tied up, Glitz bluffs his way into getting the information by claiming that they can save him; they kill him and The Doctor finally stops his machine from exploding. Everyone lives happily ever after, and The Valeyard moves onto the next stage of the trial.
     I like The Mysterious Planet more than common sense says I should. It's shoddy, the villain's design is ridiculous and the acting is melodramatic and over the top. But because of Joan Sims and the way that Glitz' joke-a-sec personality takes over, it has a feeling very similar to a Carry-On film. Robert Holmes, as we'll see when I look at The Caves of Androzani, is excellent at characterisation and satire, and that's why these two side-characters are in ways better than the main characters. Colin's wit and exuberance comes off much better here than in other areas and thus the character is more empathizable; Peri too, although she's a little absent in what would become her penultimate story. I'll comment more upon the Valeyard at the end of the Trial, but I will admit that the strong performance soon does become tedious by the third episode of the story. However, it does produce some of the season's best lines and monologues, and the best one in this serial is the one in Episode Four in which The Doctor claims that The Valeyard should, based on the tired decadence of his arguments, change his name to The Knackers' Yard.

The Time Lord is on Trial.

    The Trial dynamic is interesting in this serial, despite how tiring it gets later on. Unlike previous arcs, where it was either a string of serials following on from one another or completely different serials connected by a common theme, this instead tries to do both. Here, at least, it's successful - the trial scenes enhance the story rather than slow it down. Some scenes are in fact censored the Valeyard, and this makes the core concepts that bit more intriguing.
     The Mysterious Planet is a great start for the Trial of a Timelord Arc, with satirical side-characters and a comedy aesthetic that I love. The villain is a little shoddy, perhaps, and overall the ideas are not that innovative or interesting, but the key arc behind it all more than makes up for it. I love the core story and I love the rambles on Ravalox, where character is king.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: Brian Blessed, A character I've met but you haven't and another craaazy scientist.