The Ultimate Foe: Ranking -243

  The Ultimate Foe

(Season 23, Dr 6 with Mel, 29/11/1986-6/12/1986, producer: Joh Nathan-Turner, script editor: Eric Saward, John Nathan-Turner (uncredited), writers: Robert Holmes, Pip and Jane Baker, Eric Saward (uncredited), director: Chris Clough) 

Rank: 243

'There's nothing you can do to prevent the catharsis of spurious morality - and other songs. A new singer-songwriter album by The Valeyard featuring all your fave raves'

It's the end #6 - and the moment is so unprepared for nobody making this realised it was the end, including the actor playing the Doctor. In which the Doctor and indeed Doctor Who's trial offer period comes to an end and the final verdict is...mixed. Season 23 is the unluckiest of series. What was meant to be a relaunch, full of everything the series could do best is scuppered at the eleventh hour by production problems, disagreements, walkouts and death. Robert Holmes was all set to write this 2-parter and had the ending for the trial all mapped out, only to get sick with hepatitis midway through this first episode and died soon after. Script editor Eric Saward took over using his notes, wanting to honour his mentor and friend, but had a colossal falling out with producer John Nathan-Turner over his planned ending, something that might have been used as an 'excuse' to end the series - after all, BBC controller Michael Grade had made it clear he didn't need very much of a one to axe it. As things turn out DW will limp on with just the normal Summer break before resuming production but without its star, Colin Baker, ironically pretty much the only person who worked on this story who wasn't trying to leave his job. Michael Grade made it clear that the series would only continue if they got rid of him, a treatment which was wretched and shoddy even if he had been the sole cause of why things had gone wrong. In actual fact Colin is pretty much the only person who comes out of the trial season well, his Doctor given lots of last chances to shine. I have sympathies too with writers Pip and Jane Baker, who had to write the second episode of this story in impossible circumstances, forced to use the characters, sets and even the props already costed and paid for from Holmes' original submitted script. However they weren't even allowed to see it - Eric had taken it with him when he left and threatened to get lawyers involved if there were any signs of plagiarism - in fact, just to make sure, there was a lawyer sitting with the writers and producer in every meeting they had about this story, just to make sure they didn't copy anything by accident. Given all this chaos the wonder isn't that 'The Ultimate Foe' ended up a bit convoluted and hard to follow but that it wasn't actually worse than it was. There's one last great hurrah for the 6th Doctor as he mirrors the 2nd put on trial in 'The war Games' in 1969, reiterating why he does what he does helping other planets and why turning a blind eye to misery is nearly as much of a crime as inflicting it. There's some lovely location filming in the Gladstone Pottery museum in Stoke-On-Trent (the closest DW has ever come to filming in my home town, Stafford) and a clever cliffhanger that really does make it seem as if poor Colin Baker is being swallowed by quicksand. He even had to learn to speak backwards so they could run the film in reverse! We also, finally, get courtroom scenes that actually add to the drama instead of detracting from it. What we don't have is the sense of grandeur we need after following a fourteen episode series arc or indeed a plot that makes a whole lot of sense. While we get the reveal about who The Valeyard, the prosecutor at this trial is, we're not really any closer to understanding his motivations (spoiler: he's a future Doctor turned evil! Kind of like The War Doctor seemed to be when we heard about him but hadn't yet met him and before John Hurt found a way of making him tired, disillusioned and sympathetic rather than plain 'bad'). The Master also has very odd motivations for getting involved: he seems to want to stop the Valeyard killing the Doctor because he wants to do it, but as per usual spends more time talking about it than trying to do it (or, indeed, killing The Valeyard given that theyr'e one and the same). Goodness knows why The Valeyard tries to kill the entire courtoom either as that both blows his cover and makes his prey seem innocent all of a sudden. Or indeed why The Valeyard disguises himself as Mr Popplewick, a creation of Holmes' that he never actually wrote any lines for so because he had to be in the script ends up simply as a 'disguise'. It's a waste of Geoffrey Hughes being easily the best 'celebrity comedian cast against type' of the 6th Doctor era, a cultured Victorian as opposed to his usual scouse slobs (he also voiced Paul in the Yellow Submarine film, whose kind of a halfway house between these two extremes, a cultured Scouser). Poor Bonnie Langford gets lumbered with some truly awful dialogue ('That's it Doc, now you're really dishing the dirt!') - odd given how well Drip 'n' Pain write for her in the 'Vervoids' story. There's an odd about face over what really happened to Peri too, though no explanation as to why the Doctor doesn't just nip back in time from being married to Brian Blessed, a fate noisier at least if not technically worse than death. The whole doesn't quite work then and flops as a big finale tying plot strands together never mind the last hurrah for the 6th Doctor. But then it as never written as those things. It was meant to be a continuation of the show with renewed vigour, a regeneration in fact. sadly it fails at that too but that's more down to BBC interference, backstage politics and bad luck rather than out and out effort or quality. The final verdict then is not guilty, albeit mostly on the grounds of diminished responsibility, with most of the fault lying at the door of Michael Grade whatever he said at the time or since.

Positives + Considering nobody knew it was the 6th Dr's farewell it turns out to be a really good celebration of his Doctor. His regeneration is born for impassioned speech-making and he gets to make quite a few after three stories of being told to be quiet while Colin also gets to show off his full range from humour to tragedy to horror to scientific gobbledegook to petulance to philosophising. We also get to see his Doctor way further out of his depth than normal, still blustering his way through with fake confidence after we can see that it is really a bluff and he's terrified. Some of the acting in this season is variable to say the least but Colin is always the solid reliable centre, this story and 'Varos' in particular proving that he could have been a great Doctor in different circumstances (and, arguably, a different costume). It's a real shame he never got a regeneration story (till Big Finish's excellent 'The Last Adventure', by far the best 'Valeyard' story) but you can also completely understand why Colin didn't ant to work for the company that had just sacked him

Negatives - A lot of fans love Michael Jayston's Valeyard. I'm afraid I'm not one of them. Whatever the plot says he never 'feels' like the Doctor, with none of the fire, emotion, intelligence or curiosity. Even turned evil you would expect the Doctor to be more like the Delgado master: suave, complex and knowing exactly how to work his foe's weakness against themselves. The Valeyard's so see-through a villain I wouldn't trust him to sell me a second-hand Tardis never mind be a court prosecutor openly manipulating evidence. Lynda Bellingham's Inquisitor is something of a disappointment too: her un-named mum in the Bisto gravy adverts gets far more depth.