Trial of the Valeyard review [Alan Barnes and Mike Maddox]

Transported aboard the Time Lords' orbiting courtroom, the Doctor once again encounters the Valeyard, an amalgamation of the darker sides of his nature. This time, however, the Doctor isn't in the dock. This time, the Valeyard is the defendant, accused of a crime so terrible that the presiding Inquisitor is forbidden to reveal it even to the court, nor even to his counsel for the defence - the Doctor.

If the Valeyard is found guilty, he'll be executed. Execute the Valeyard, and the secret of his origins dies with him. A secret that the Doctor is desperate to know - and which the Time Lords will stop at nothing to protect.

Previous Stories: Before listening to this, one should have watched The Trial of a Time Lord.

When and Where: The Gallifreyan space station, near the planet of Eta Rho. For the Valeyard, this takes place between The Ultimate Foe and The End of the Line. The Doctor is travelling alone and, for him, this is at some point after The Wormery but probably before The Marian Conspiracy given his arrogance.

The Doctor's Case:

• It's been decades since The Trial of the Time Lord ended with the reveal of the Valeyard's survival at the end of The Ultimate Foe and the mysterious villain himself has barely (if ever) been touched during this time. Neither Big Finish nor the TV show gave us any information on what the Valeyard did next or where he came from beyond the Master's short explanation that he was the Doctor's dark thoughts made manifest. At last, we get his story, even if most of it is probably untrue. The idea of a Shadow House where Time Lords who suffer an imperfect regeneration are hidden away is an intriguing idea and one that stirs a little bit of sympathy for the Valeyard, and it's the only part of his story that I personally believe. As for what happens to him post-Trial, he makes use of the Time Lords and their legal system to lay a trap that will kill Darkel (who he wants dead for some reason) and the Doctor. It's fitting that he should use the Gallifreyan judiciary once more to try to kill the Doctor.
• An overlooked part of Trial is that of the Inquisitor, who has since been given the name of Darkelatraquistahastrad, or Darkel. Michael Jayston does a great job but he doesn't overshadow the rest of the courtroom as Lynda Bellingham is equally compelling onscreen, so to have her return to arbitrate a trial with the Doctor and the Valeyard again is a brilliant place to find ourselves - the scenes in Trial might have been interrupting the action but it can't be said that they weren't well-performed. Here, Darkel is without the warm moments that she occasionally had on TV and is of more questionable morality, not being the same fair judge that we know. Fortunately, Bellingham's performance makes this change of character almost unnoticeable. Her voice has aged the most but it's still a lovely one to listen to.
• The Tenth and Eleventh Doctors irritate me the most of any Doctor, mainly because of all the babbling. They talk really quickly and quirkily, often about complete rubbish, and I find it grating. However, the "Thirteenth Doctor" (actually the Valeyard in disguise) shows that it can be done right. He's mad and talking nonsense with loads of references to the Doctor's history (Polly, Foreman's Yard, etc.) and it's fun to listen to. He reminds me somewhat of Patchface from A Song of Ice and Fire, an insane clown who seems to be saying gibberish but is actually predicting the future. It's not quite the same, obviously, but the comparison's there. It's a shame that it turns out to be the Valeyard in disguise but, then again, Big Finish could hardly introduce a Thirteenth Doctor so they had to fake it.

The Valeyard's Case:

• The main problem with The Trial of a Time Lord is the courtroom, as I discovered upon watching a fan edit of Mindwarp which removed the sequences. The first time round, the boring trial scenes took us out of the action and harmed the stories as a result. Here, the trial is perfectly fine but to have the Valeyard's story of his life play out as a flashback would have been more entertaining a way of telling us this information. It's not a huge problem, though, thanks to the lovely voice of Michael Jayston.
• Another problem with The Trial of a Time Lord is the Doctor in the trial room, where his flippancy irritates both the Inquisitor and myself the viewer with his stackyards and knacker's yards. In Trial of the Valeyard, it takes eight minutes for the Doctor to even learn that this is the Valeyard's trial because he talks incessantly from the story's beginning. It's not quirky and endearing: rather, it's annoying because we know what's going on and the Doctor's dragging out the reveal by being obnoxious. His repeated mentions of Ravolox to set off the alarm is childish and annoying, which I hate to see from my favourite Doctor.
• The story could do with being longer. The last time we saw the Valeyard, he had a season-long plan which was linked to a conspiracy by the High Council and involved wielding the sword of the Gallifreyan legal system against the Doctor, before using the surreal Matrix to attempt to get him to sign over his lives whilst also assassinating the courtroom. In this story, the Valeyard's big plan is leading the Doctor and Darkel to a bomb. It lacks the finesse and intelligence that we got from the Valeyard onscreen and a longer story would no doubt have allowed him to have a more insidious plot.
• The Doctor is the Valeyard's court defender. It's a great reversal, but there doesn't seem to be much of a threat when there isn't a prosecutor for the Doctor to go up against. Darkel is an arbiter (although, admittedly, a very biased one) but this is the Doctor of Words and he needs a sparring partner like he had in Trial who's actively attempting to have the defendant executed.

Who is the Valeyard?: The Valeyard claims that he was an orphan, living as a mute savage on a nameless planet. He was found by space scavengers at the age of about twenty. The scavengers helped get him to Gallifrey, where his biodata was found to be identical to the Doctor's, so he was sent to a Shadow House, one of the Black Nurseries. Time Lords who suffer failed regenerations are sent to such places. A Time Lord in constant flux there recognised him from his own future and told him to study regeneration so he could avenge those at the Shadow House. In his studies, he discovered that the regeneration rule was imposed by Rassilon and that the Doctor would, in his thirteenth incarnation, experiment on himself to break the rule and extend his life. This resulted only in the creation of the Valeyard. (Most of this story is known to be false, and The Brink of Death suggests that he was a black ops Time Lord creation.)

I'll Explain Later:

• Shouldn't there be a prosecutor at the Valeyard's trial?
• Darkel seemed dedicated to ensuring a fair trial in The Trial of a Time Lord. Why does she seem so willing to allow an unfair trial now?
• Why does the Valeyard want revenge on the Inquisitor? She had barely anything to do with his defeat.

This Reminds Me:

• The Doctor mentions the Master, the Rani, the Monk, Morbius and Borusa. He also asks if the Valeyard is going to play the spoons, which the Seventh Doctor does in Time and the Rani.
• The Valeyard describes the Seventh and Eighth Doctors and mentions Stockbridge. As the Thirteenth Doctor, he mentions Lady Jane Grey, the name Foreman (as well as allusions to Totter's Lane), Polly Wright, Tibet and fish people. He also does an impression of Jamie.
• The Doctor theorises about the Valeyard's nature, suggesting that he could be a future incarnation of the Doctor or be a Watcher of his.
• The Doctor triggering the alarm by saying "Ravolox" is like how Jack triggers a man's conditioning by saying "Torchwood" in They Keep Killing Suzie.

The Inquisitor's Judgement: Trial of the Valeyard could have been the epilogue to season 23, but fails to make an impact in that... nothing changes. By the end of the story, nothing has changed since The Ultimate Foe, with the Valeyard having escaped, Darkel sitting in her courtroom as an inquisitor and the Doctor speculating about his dark alter-ego without much to go on. It definitely would have benefited from being longer, with full-cast flashbacks of the Valeyard's past. Having said that, Michael Jayston and Lynda Bellingham give fantastic performances (as does Colin Baker, per usual, even if he is obnoxious at times) and it's about time we got a little background on the Valeyard, even if it's impossible to pick out from the lies.This story is okay, and that earns it a C.

Doctor Who - Bonus Releases

Night of the Stormcrow  |  Trial of the Valeyard