Sometime in the mid 1990s I picked up a VHS boxset of The Trial of a Time Lord going cheap at Woolworths (for younger readers, a once popular chain store.) It has remained somewhere in its original packaging. Unopened and unloved.
I still have a television set up in one room with a video recorder just in case I fancy watching some old videos.
I watched The Trial of a Time Lord on its original broadcast and never bothered since then.
So I decided to unwrap the video and put it on. Part one starts off promisingly with a model shot of a spaceship and a CGI Tardis. That really is the best bit of the entire series.
The Time Lords have put the Doctor on trial again for interfering. The prosecution is led by the Valeyard (Michael Jayston) who wants the Doctor to be dead for good. The Inquisitor (Lynda Bellingham) in the trial tries to be fair to the Doctor.
The courtroom view events in the sixth Doctor's timestream taken from the Matrix databank and put on a video screen.
It starts off with the Doctor and Peri landing in planet Ravolox. It supposed to be very similar to Earth. In fact it is Earth. A sign for Marble Arch tube station is the giveaway. A mystery that the Doctor wants to look into.
Also in this planet are two mercenaries, Glitz and Dibber. They are later captured by a pre industrial human tribe led by Katryca (Joan Sims.)
This is feeble stuff. Before Doctor Who was put in hiatus, John Nathan Turner had grandiose plans for season 23. This included overseas filming in Malaysia.
What we get is something that looks cheap, the costumes are in part atrocious and no one told to dress the Doctor less garishly.
The constant bickering in court soon gets tiresome. The story never flows because each time you try to engage with the main story, it switches back to the courtroom scenes.
This is just the first episode. Roland Rat: The Series that preceded this, was more entertaining.