Doctor Who fans in my last Doctor Who review I said that you'd be seeing me alot sooner then you thought. That's because one of the presents I got for Christmas was Season 23 of the show on blu-ray and is part of the classic collection and so I began to think maybe I could extend my output of Doctor Who and so where else to start with this season 23 look back then at the very beginning with my review of The Trial Of A Timelord AKA The Mysterious Planet.
The plot of the episode is Peri and The Doctor travel to the planet Ravolox a planet which has a lot of similarities to earth and while there and somewhere on the planet there is a robot that wants to blow up the universe. I want it known that I won't be judging the overall arc of the season instead i'll just be judging each individual story in this regard the story this episode is pretty forgettable at least in my opinion but at the same time it does a good job of setting up the season long arc.
Starring in this serial is Colin Baker as The Doctor and in her second to last Doctor Who serial Nicola Bryant as Peri Brown. As for the guest cast we have Lynda Bellingham as The Inquisitor , Michael Jayston as The Valeyard , Tony Selby as Sabalom Glitz , Joan Sims as Queen Katryca , Glen Murphy as Dibber , Tom Chadbon as Merdeen , Roger Brierley as The Voice Of Drathro , David Rodigan as Broken Tooth , Adam Blackwood as Balazar , Timothy Walker as Grell , Billy McColl as Humker and Sion Tudor Owen as Tandrell.
In terms of what I thought of the acting in this serial it was honestly alot better then what I was expecting it to be since I hadn't seen anything from this season I was expecting the acting to be pretty bad. So I was shocked to find that at least in this serial it's pretty decent if your a fan of British television there are a few names that you'll recognize namely the late Lynda Bellingham and the late Joan Simms.
I really did like the idea behind the planet of Ravalox and while I won't give away the big twist with the planet it is something that you can see coming if you notice clues I honestly didn't notice that much if i'm being honest. I will say that while the idea behind the planet is indeed interesting due to the lack of a budget it doesn't look as interesting as it really could be and granted this isn't the shows fault this fault lies with the BBC but more of an effort could have been made in making Ravalox look more I guess alien would be the right word.
From what I can gather the scenes with the doctor on trial are a framing device in that other stories are being told but there all being linked by this one event. I know that that sounds pretty obvious given the subtitle for this season is The Trial Of A Timelord but given that I haven't seen this season I have to assume that the rest of the season will follow the same idea and if so it's an interesting way to go about things but given that we get a new companion this season I hope that they don't skip over how the doctor met her.
Lets us talk about the villain of this serial Drathro first of all I really hated the voice they give him it just sounded so freaking annoying and it honestly was getting to the point where I couldn't wait for his scenes to end because of how annoying his voice is. I also found his motives to be really hard to understand so im not sure if there was something that was in the script but was edited out of the episode or what but I do feel that his motives should have been a tad bit more clear all I know is it's something that involves some from unstable light called black light and that's it.
I will admit to liking the design of Drathro I honestly felt that the look that they gave him really did suit his character. I feel that this is were the budget for this episode went well Drathro's design and the opening shot which I will be talking because both of them look really good and yet everything else at east from the characters that appear just in this episode just look cheap by comparison and for Doctor Who that's never a good thing.
I just said that one of the things that clearly got alot of the budget for this episode was the opening model shot and can you blame me when I put the episode on I honestly thought that it was a newly made effects shot but no it was the original one. Which is something that really did blow me away due to how good it looked it's no wonder that FOX used the exact same shot in their promo's for the 1996 Doctor Who TV movie which is something i'm not even making up they use this exact opening to pro-moat the TV movie so even in the nineties it still looked good.
For this season the show seems to be taking a nonlinear approach to it's story telling and i'm honestly not to sure how I feel about that. On the one hand it does keep the show fresh which is always a good thing but on the other hand this form of story telling doesn't really work well in the world of Doctor Who since in my opinion Doctor Who works best when there isn't a season long story being told if you want proof of that just watch series 6 from the modern era.
This serial would also see a few little changes made to the show with some changes being made to Colin's costume and Nicola being made to wear clothes that were better suited for a kids TV show if you know what i'm saying. Perhaps the biggest change tho at least in my opinion was the new theme song which was composed by Dominic Glynn which I can safely say i'm not a big fan of this theme nothing is going to be the classic theme tune in my eyes and this was just painful to listen to.
Another change made to the show was the fact they had a lot more humour starting with this very serial. Granted the choice to add in more humour didn't come from the creative team but then BBC controller Michael Grade who demanded that the show have less violence and more humour and if i'm being honest here the humour in this episode was pretty good there were plenty of goof jokes that did have me laughing but at the time I don't feel that the violence should have been toned down to the point where it's barely even present.
Overall in terms of opening episodes go there are better ones out there but at the same time this one does a good job of setting up the season long story arc. It's just a shame that a bunch of scripts had to get thrown away fro this season and judging by one of the extra's on the blu-ray set they would have made really good episodes but I can't judge something that wasn't transmitted and so this serial gets a 6.5 out of 10 from me.