Customer Reviews

BETTER THAN EXPECTED! - By: R. D. Finley-day, 03 Nov 2008
We've all heard the naff reviews over the years, my advice? Ignore them & check this out!
Negatives first-yes, the courtroom scenes can drag (but we soon lose those throughout the series) & some of the acting is dross (that's what you get employing theatre luvvies)
Positives-Colin Baker (top form, should have stayed on),the storylines (varying)and a superb ending.
By the end of this, you really wish the 6th Doctor would have remainied on & even Bonnie Langford seems less irritating from the series first 80s airing.
Loads of extras, good all-round boxset.

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"Objections sustained, or overruled" - By: Bob Marlowe, 27 Oct 2008
Fun stories but a long way from classics. Slightly the epic that never was as the defiance of reflecting the BBC attitude to the showin the stories needed stranger scripts to sustain it. Breaking away from stories to come back to the courtroom does slow things down a lot. With an actor of Michael Jayston's calibre playing the prosecuting Valeyard we get some dramatic confrontations, but on the whole trial scenes are samey.
A thankless but necessary role for Linda Bellingham playing the inquisitor made up like a young Barbara Cartland & whittering on about court procedure! At 1 point I noticed an extra looking like Leonard Sachs playing Borusa, maybe they found himin a cupboard!
After some top notch FX summoning the Tardis to court & a scene establishing the trial we'rein to the 1st of the stoires that the Timelords have matrix pirated copies of.
Celebrated writer Robert Holmes' last complete story "The Mysterious Planet" is sadly not his best, but he was v ill at the time. Better than Power of Kroll or Space Pirates he offers a slightly Planet of the Apes post apocalypse scenario with good characters (especially Glitz darker thanin later offerings & dear old Katryca too), wit & crsip dialogue. What it lacks is energy.
On the production side there's a terrific robot designin Drathro (although the L1 looks a bit Wallace & Grommit!), & a spectacular location for the tribal huts.
Philip Martin's "Mindwarp" works betterin spite of itself, the finished script is a bit of a mess. The sheer energy plus the direction & performances really lift it. Patricularly noteworthy are returning character Sil played by Nabil Shaban, his weary boss Kiv played by Staal from Sontaran Strategm: Christopher Ryan, the loud & lovely Brian Blessed & Patrick Ryecart as Crozier, the scientist dipping into Dr Moreau's(1)xmas bumper books of cruel experiments. His measured insanity is even menacing when he's drinking tea!
Colouring the sky to look alien & the pink sea is terrific. Pink must be the official respray colour of the look at the old Terileptil costume.
Watch for Martha's dad as Trevor Laird plays a guard!
"Terror of the Vervoids" is a fun bit of fluff, a lightweight but very enjoyable whodunnitin space. It goes a bit Terence Dudley with red herrings but is pacy & entertaining.
The Vervoids are a silly monster with a head that I can't describein case children are reading. Oddly on original transmission, we never noticed!
"The Ultimate Foe" is the best bit, as the Valeyard's true nature is revealed for a showdown inside the fantasy world of the matrix. The Doctor gets help from 2 unlikely sources; Glitz (again marvellously played by Tony Selby) & the Master. Anthony Ainley's Master is at his best just enjoying the events & waiting for a chance to do the Doctor/Valeyard or both in. One of Ainley's most relaxed & charming portrayals, his scens with Glitz are a joy.

Uncle Colin gives some of his best workin this season. Witness when he comforts Peri that her Earth is safe whatever happensin the future (long before a similar scenein End of the World) & his reaction to her "death". Just 2 examples, there are many more.
The Doctor & Peri get a warmer relationshipin Mysterious Planet but are shortchangedin Mindwarp. Even before the Doctor is damaged by an interrogation machine, he has taken Peri to the home planet of Sil without even warning her & jokes about her nearly being transmogrified into a bird!
In story 2 & 3 it's never really resolved what is making the Doctor act out of character & this weakens Colin's good work.
SPOILER ALERT!
I think this is pretty well known now but having killed Peri off chillinglyin "Mindwarp" they reverse itin "Ultimate Foe" never explaining what actually happenedin Mindwarp.
Sorry but at the time Bonnie Langford was miscast. She never gives bad performances but is announcing her lines rather than naturally delivering them Ultimate Foe.To be fair she has some awful lines to work with & made me eat my words by being so goodin Big Finish CDs.

A ton of extras, Uncle Colin gives great commentaries for every episode with various others & they talk about plot points that Philip Martin wrote into Mindwarp that got left out, location work,wheeler dealer Geoffrey Hughes & what was Colin's last scene recorded. Eric Saward does lone commentaries for episode 1 & 13 of the season, remembering how he acted out of mourning at the time after Holmes'death.
There is a 4 part documentary, 1 part for each story & they are good if a little short. As per usual there are some gems like Dominic Glynn's explanation of how he came to creat the new version of the theme & even though I think his version's weak, I still found it interesting.
Show piece doc "Trials & Tribulations" covers the Colin Baker era & is full of treats like how Colin hated his costume, that charity record, how he loved his role of course & the sound bites from Jonathan Powell giving the real lowdown on why the show was cancelled & whether fan protests made a difference.
"Now get out of that" is a fun look at cliffhangers right up to the current version of the show.
There are many pieces of contemporary footage Blue Peter, Superstore & Wogan plus music videos inclduing the infamous charity record.
Deleted scens are mostly wisely cut courtroom action.

There is noting new form Lynda Bellingham, nabil Shaban or Bonnie Llangford all arein archive stuff.There's a lot of Pip N'Jane Baker who remind me of Neil & Christine Hamilton.

A great package of stories that are more for big Colin fans than others but if you can find it at a good price the extras are so good you'll be bound to find something you like.
1) See The Island of Dr Moreau by H.G.Wells

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Surprisingly good - By: Enrique Ovidio Carro Rey, 08 Oct 2008
I didn't expect nothing good of this. The trial of a Time Lord has a very poor fame, & the idea I had so far was that this was a huge crap. Well, after watching it camly, I don't agree. OK, it is a flawed show: The mysterious planet is routinely done, Mindwarp improves greatly, but Brian Blessed is completely over the top, Terror of the Vervoids is highly watchable if you don't start making questions (err, from the future? And "edited"? COME ON!!), & The ultimate foe gave us one of the best stories for Ainley's Master but leaves lots of plot holes. After watching the making of each program, I must say the final result is surprisingly good, considering the amount of trouble the production team had to face.
Colin Baker is much more relaxed & mellow here thanin the previous season, & I must say that he plays the "crazy Doctor" (in Mindwarp) ten times better than Tom Bakerin The invasion of time, when I have to wait until the Production notes & commentary to realize he was simulating he was insane. The rest of the cast has very good acting (Nabil Shaban, Patrick Ryecart, Honor Blackman) & very bad (Joan Sims, Bonnie Langford)
The trial of a Time Lord is not the best Doctor Who story, not even the best of Colin Baker's tenure. But it has moments that are amongst the best of the original series (Nicola Bryant's departure, the initial shot, the cliffhanger from part 9 to 10, the cliffhanger from part 13 to 14...)

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TIME TRIAL - By: Emanon, 03 Oct 2008
TRIAL OF A TIME LORD is never going to win awards as the greatest piece of television ever made, & certainly when you realise it was supposed to be a relaunch of the show after an enforced absence, you tend to find that it's essentially much the same as before. Having had the VHS for a while & not having watched it often, I didn't regard this as an essential purchase, & wouldn't see it as the best way to be introduced to old-style DOCTOR WHO, but ultimately it was a very enjoyable purchase as TRIAL OF A TIME LORD has simply never looked better. The picture & sound quality are so much better than the VHS release, & the excellent extras package gives a fair & honest appraisal of the series as it was at the time, & you are left with the sense of professional people really trying their best & giving their all to produce the best show they could. That it ultimately fails to live up to their expectations is a shame, but it's by no means the total turkey that people would have you believe. It was never going to be the sci-fi equivalent of Bochco's MURDER ONE for example, but then that's not what DOCTOR WHO is supposed to be, & as a few hours' entertainment for youngsters it has thrills, tragedy, humour & a certain intelligence that you would like to seein more modern dramas aimed at that age group. Be aware though, of the PG certificate, there are some bits that parents might consider too gruesome for their children (the children will, of course, love those bits!)

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A good story, Mindwarp was terrible though. - By: , 02 Oct 2008
Well Doctor Who story Trial of a Time Lord is good, the dr basically gets involvedin court for interfering with other worlds, basically he had already doen this before, they exiled him to Earth & made Patrick Troughton regenrate into Jon Pertwee, these two doctors are good doctors, i mean colin baker wasnt a very bad dr, but he was a bad drin his 1st season, & basically they probably put himin trial because they wanted to disrespect the "true" classic dr who stories of the 60s & the 70s with the new ones of the 80s, now peter davison is a good dr with a good era & so is sylvester mccoy. Colin Baker was the last good dr with the least good era. Now as for the story. The first part is The Mysterious Planet, this is good, the court is witnessing some of the doctors life events, & the dr visits the planet ravalox. This stoory is well written. Minwarp after this, a condfusing story, terrible. All the other parts were very good. Basically id reccomend stories from the new series & the jon pertwee & tom baker eras, i suppose the last DVD a collecctor should buy are terrible stories like Four to Doomsday.