(642) The Trial of a Timelord (Part 3): The Mysterious Planet - Part 3

The third episode of this season is one that doesn’t get going for about ten minutes. There is a lot talking and this doesn’t exactly come across as very exciting. One of the first court room scene is quite interesting and that is something that stands out in this episode that I found the courtroom scenes to be more interesting than what was going on on Ravolox. The scenes on the surface are moderately exciting that is only because Glitz and Dibber are quite amusing and I like seeing them on screen. The stuff underground is less interesting because it just looks rather sterile and looks like an awful lot of 1980’s Doctor Who studio sets that look too clean and I just find myself not quite so interested.

It’s quite fun that they the tribe think that they have killed the Immortal but instead have just killed its robot and start to embark on a trek to the Immortal’s Castle. It’s clear that things are going to end badly for them because they are happy and we are nowhere near the end of this story. It’s a shame that Joan Sims’ character is going to get a not nice ending.

Towards the end of the episode there is the start of the suspicion that there is something dodgy going on when evidence. This is perhaps the best thing about the episode because it is where the season arc is really going to get going. As far as the central performances, I thought that Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant were good. Baker was slightly more noticeable but it’s a warm performance from the pair of them. Michael Jayston is still the strongest of the supporting cast. It’s a shame that he doesn’t have more involvement in the story at this point.

Merdeen appears to shoot the Doctor which forms the best cliffhanger in the series so far. I think that the fact there isn’t the extreme close up. I think that this episode is an odd one because it just seemed to lack any sense of excitement. If this were a normal four part story then I think that they would be building up towards something. However with this story it doesn’t feel like its building up to anything and that this story is just a holding pattern until the business end of things appear. It’s quite disappointing so far.