The Randomizer: The Ultimate Foe
Sep. 28th, 2012 02:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
purplecatHell's Teeth that was terrible!
Mostly, when classic Who is bad, it is just kind of dull. The pace is slow; the story is repetitive; and the actors look bored. The Ultimate Foe is almost the direct opposite of that kind of bad. It is bad in a frenetic, brash, showy, shouty fashion.
It isn't helped by an exceedingly troubled production history, nor the fact that it is, really, only the close of a longer story. The Ultimate Foe forms the final two episodes of A Trial of a Time Lord, in which the Doctor is put on trial by the time lords. This acts as a framing device for three fairly standard four episode affairs and then the whole is rounded off by The Ultimate Foe, so the story essentially starts as we move into the trial's climax. Secondly, the first episode of The Ultimate Foe was co-written by Robert Holmes with Eric Saward (then script editor). Holmes sadly died before the episode was complete. Saward fell out with the show's producer and left in high dudgeon taking with him the second episode. Pip and Jane Baker (sort of the Chris Chibnall's of the 1980s) were drafted in to write a new second episode based on the first episode alone with no idea of what the original intended ending had been. With that background, The Ultimate Foe is almost a triumph... but still, very, very bad.
In the immediate aftermath of A Trial of a Time Lord, there was a tendency to proclaim episode 1 of The Ultimate Foe as Robert Holmes' final masterpiece, ruined by the ham-fisted incompetence of the Bakers. Watching the two episodes, a quarter of a century later, it is hard to think particularly highly of either. However, I am somewhat impressed that the Bakers managed to craft some kind of coherent conclusion to the massive car crash of seemingly random shiny that they had to work with.
Some of the things that go wrong. Despite television's fondness for courtroom drama, they are difficult things to pull off well relying, as they do, on a lot of talking and relatively little action. The Ultimate Foe starts with a lot of talking in which the Doctor pontificates a lot and does himself no favours with either the courtroom or the audience. The Master turns up, and it says much that Anthony Ainley's performance here appears restrained. Mel, the companion, is summoned and I take back every single word I ever said in defence of Bonnie Langford as an actress. Then, in an ill-advised move, events move to the virtual reality matrix. The problem with the matrix, and with virtual reality based plots in general, is that the absence of a clear rhyme or reason to events is rarely a surrealist masterpiece and often just an incoherent mess (guess which we have here). There is a great deal of grandiloquence. A lot of scenery is chewed. Long scenes of exposition are relieved only by scenes in which people run around in imaginary settings to little effect. It is over-lit (as, to be fair, is 90% of 1980s Doctor Who). The best thing about it is the fact it stops after two episodes when the Doctor is suddenly let off the (actually pretty serious and entirely justified) charges against him because he's saved the courtroom from some technobabble.
I tried to list some good points, but even these come out damning. Tony Selby, as "loveable rogue" Sabalom Glitz, works hard to undercut the general pomposity of everything but in the end, the character is too much of an afterthought and he fails. The idea of the Valeyard as an evil version of the Doctor "caught between his twelth and thirteenth regenerations" (whatever that means) isn't an automatically bad idea. But the story already has one arch-nemisis for the Doctor in it (the Master) and two simply makes it crowded. It doesn't help that his plan is convoluted, and doesn't really make sense even within the technobabble of the show itself. In terms of dress and behaviour the Valeyard is difficult to distinguish from the Master so, really, what is the point? The character has re-appeared once or twice in spin-off fiction but sufficiently rarely that it's clear that people find it difficult to work with the concept. Lynda Bellingham carries off her part as the Inquisator with enough grace, dignity and humanity to make her performance pretty much the highlight of the episode. But it isn't good when your star turn is coming from the Mum in the Oxo adverts.
At the end of the day, The Ultimate Foe, is a poorly thought out mess. Avoid!
Mostly, when classic Who is bad, it is just kind of dull. The pace is slow; the story is repetitive; and the actors look bored. The Ultimate Foe is almost the direct opposite of that kind of bad. It is bad in a frenetic, brash, showy, shouty fashion.
It isn't helped by an exceedingly troubled production history, nor the fact that it is, really, only the close of a longer story. The Ultimate Foe forms the final two episodes of A Trial of a Time Lord, in which the Doctor is put on trial by the time lords. This acts as a framing device for three fairly standard four episode affairs and then the whole is rounded off by The Ultimate Foe, so the story essentially starts as we move into the trial's climax. Secondly, the first episode of The Ultimate Foe was co-written by Robert Holmes with Eric Saward (then script editor). Holmes sadly died before the episode was complete. Saward fell out with the show's producer and left in high dudgeon taking with him the second episode. Pip and Jane Baker (sort of the Chris Chibnall's of the 1980s) were drafted in to write a new second episode based on the first episode alone with no idea of what the original intended ending had been. With that background, The Ultimate Foe is almost a triumph... but still, very, very bad.
In the immediate aftermath of A Trial of a Time Lord, there was a tendency to proclaim episode 1 of The Ultimate Foe as Robert Holmes' final masterpiece, ruined by the ham-fisted incompetence of the Bakers. Watching the two episodes, a quarter of a century later, it is hard to think particularly highly of either. However, I am somewhat impressed that the Bakers managed to craft some kind of coherent conclusion to the massive car crash of seemingly random shiny that they had to work with.
Some of the things that go wrong. Despite television's fondness for courtroom drama, they are difficult things to pull off well relying, as they do, on a lot of talking and relatively little action. The Ultimate Foe starts with a lot of talking in which the Doctor pontificates a lot and does himself no favours with either the courtroom or the audience. The Master turns up, and it says much that Anthony Ainley's performance here appears restrained. Mel, the companion, is summoned and I take back every single word I ever said in defence of Bonnie Langford as an actress. Then, in an ill-advised move, events move to the virtual reality matrix. The problem with the matrix, and with virtual reality based plots in general, is that the absence of a clear rhyme or reason to events is rarely a surrealist masterpiece and often just an incoherent mess (guess which we have here). There is a great deal of grandiloquence. A lot of scenery is chewed. Long scenes of exposition are relieved only by scenes in which people run around in imaginary settings to little effect. It is over-lit (as, to be fair, is 90% of 1980s Doctor Who). The best thing about it is the fact it stops after two episodes when the Doctor is suddenly let off the (actually pretty serious and entirely justified) charges against him because he's saved the courtroom from some technobabble.
I tried to list some good points, but even these come out damning. Tony Selby, as "loveable rogue" Sabalom Glitz, works hard to undercut the general pomposity of everything but in the end, the character is too much of an afterthought and he fails. The idea of the Valeyard as an evil version of the Doctor "caught between his twelth and thirteenth regenerations" (whatever that means) isn't an automatically bad idea. But the story already has one arch-nemisis for the Doctor in it (the Master) and two simply makes it crowded. It doesn't help that his plan is convoluted, and doesn't really make sense even within the technobabble of the show itself. In terms of dress and behaviour the Valeyard is difficult to distinguish from the Master so, really, what is the point? The character has re-appeared once or twice in spin-off fiction but sufficiently rarely that it's clear that people find it difficult to work with the concept. Lynda Bellingham carries off her part as the Inquisator with enough grace, dignity and humanity to make her performance pretty much the highlight of the episode. But it isn't good when your star turn is coming from the Mum in the Oxo adverts.
At the end of the day, The Ultimate Foe, is a poorly thought out mess. Avoid!
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(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-28 01:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-28 01:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-28 01:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-28 02:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-28 02:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-28 02:06 pm (UTC)Ah, that makes sense of the "still images + soundtrack" bit of your original post.
Needless to say, I've never actually go around to watching the documentary!
Of course!
(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-28 02:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-28 02:08 pm (UTC)My memory from the original broadcast is that the Ultimae Foe episodes are the best. So I hope for the sake of your sanity that the randomiser gives you some classic stuff on the next few dice rolls.
And how could you manage to review this without once mentioning the true horror of this series - worse than Bonnie Langford even - Colin Baker's bigger-than-usual blond perm.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-28 02:11 pm (UTC)Colin Bakers frequently looks like some kind of toy rather than a real person. I've never managed to put my finger on quite why his appearance in Who makes me feel like that, but it does. Possibly its the general sense that even eccentrics rarely dress much like the 6th Doctor.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-28 02:12 pm (UTC)I think you are right, though - the Bakers knew what was produceable in BBC studio conditions, and Chibnall knows how to write to the brief now, always difficult with Doctor Who.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-28 02:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-28 02:22 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-28 02:25 pm (UTC)The final segment of The Trial of a Time Lord (parts thirteen to fourteen) contains some brilliant ideas. Unfortunately, none are put into practice well. It is a great twist that the Valeyard is a future incarnation of the Doctor, but the Doctor does not deduce this, he is simply told by the Master (of all people). The idea that the Matrix was raided by aliens and the Time Lords moved the Earth, with apocalyptic results is also intriguing, but again the Doctor does not find this out himself, he is told by Glitz and the Master. Likewise, the Doctor does not prove his claim that the Matrix has been tampered with, the Master does. Worse still, none of these ideas are explored adequately.
Indeed, it is not clear why the Master is in this story at all. Both the Master and the Valeyard are conceived as evil versions of the Doctor, but the Valeyard, as a genuine future Doctor, is more interesting. One villain is more than enough for fifty minutes of story (or fifty-five – not for the last time, Doctor Who has an extra-long season finale when it really needed brutal pruning) and Michael Jayston, who is very good with some poor material, ends up rather sidelined. I suppose I should count myself lucky that the Valeyard did not turn out to be the Master.
There are other little details that do not work either. Half the Doctor’s “absolute power” speech is delivered with his back to the camera, which is terrible direction. Peri marrying Yrcanos is unlikely and most of Mel’s dialogue is awful. Why does the Valeyard wear his robes under his Mr Popplewick disguise? And the Key of Rassilon has changed function yet again. What is the point of doing a continuity-heavy story to please the fans if you get the details wrong? The ending is also odd. What is being implied? That the Valeyard has killed the Keeper of the Matrix, or that he has stolen his future regenerations? If the latter, is he no longer a threat to the Doctor?
To be fair, one aspect of the story which does work is the scenes set in the Matrix, which are appropriately surreal and draw on Dickens (as is often stated) and Kafka (less often noted, but bureaucratic procedure, doubles and doors that lead to unlikely places are all Kafka hallmarks, although to make matters more confusing, Dickens was a big influence on Kafka).
Back to 2012 and all I have to add to my earlier self (part-way between my twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth incarnations) is that Trial is still better than most of the season before it and that if you want to see the sixth Doctor in a surreal story done well, go for the Voyager arc in the DWM comic strip ("Logic tells you that the world is round. But logic is a new toy.").
(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-28 02:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-28 02:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-28 02:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-28 03:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-28 03:17 pm (UTC)Voyager is great though.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-28 07:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-28 07:08 pm (UTC)... I really ought to watch that documentary on the DVD.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-29 07:40 pm (UTC)I believe so, and that was deemed too downbeat, especially as it was potentially the last ever episode. I think that's what prompted Saward to storm off (or at least was the final straw).
(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-30 08:59 am (UTC)