Saturday, April 6, 2013

The Ultimate Foe

The Ultimate Foe
by Robert Holmes and Pip & Jane Baker
Originally Broadcasted: November 29th-December 6th, 1986

The Doctor has been accused of the greatest crime in Time Lord society, genocide. It's up to the Doctor now to defeat the true enemy, himself, or should I say the Valeyard. With the help of Sabalom Glitz and Mel, the Doctor enters the Matrix to do battle with the Valeyard, but will he be able to survive what just appear to be illusions?


The Ultimate Foe is, to me, one of the strangest Doctor Who stories of all time. This is the story that gets to bring The Trial of the Time Lord season-long arc to a close. And it gets just two episodes to do that. This is one of few stories that actually has a different writer for each episode. Legendary Who writer Robert Holmes set out to write the script for this story, but unfortunately passed away after only completing Part One. Script editor Eric Saward set forth to finish the final episode based off Holmes' story brief, and he completed it. But producer John Nathan-Turner didn't like how the story ended, in a cliffhanger that saw the Doctor and the Valeyard presumably falling to certain death. Because of this, Saward quit his job and withdrew his script from the show. So JNT then turned to Pip and Jane Baker (writers of the previous Trial installment, Terror of the Vervoids) to write a completely new script for the last episode. They impressively managed to build off of Holmes' episode quite nicely, however real Who fans can tell the difference in writing styles. After a bunch of bickering in the courtroom, including a wonderful speech from the Doctor and the shocking revelation that the Valeyard is an evil future Doctor somewhere between his 12th and final regeneration (talk about being specific!), the heroes and villains enter the Matrix. In this story, the Matrix is shown as Victorian London, a Jack the Ripper type area, with a wonderfully creepy atmosphere. The Doctor also ends up in a barren wasteland (otherwise known as a random quarry in Southern England), where one of my favorite cliffhangers occurs, showing the Doctor dragged into the sand by disembodied hands. As Colin B. quite blatantly shouts though, it is an illusion! I think the real star of this story is the Master. He pops up on the portal to the Matrix and reveals he's been watching the events of the trial with much interest. It is he who reveals who the Valeyard really is. He just seems to be having a blast, with an obvious evil motive, but a fun element to it. This is one of my favorite performances of Anthony Ainley's Master. The Ultimate Foe brings The Trial of the Time Lord to a close in a mostly satisfactory way. It's sad however that it also brought a premature end to Colin Baker's time as the Doctor. "Carrot juice, carrot juice, carrot juice..."

Luke's Rating: 8/10

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