Day 640: The Trial of a Time Lord Part 1 - The Mysterious Planet Part 1

I love The Trial of a Time Lord. It's actually one of the stories that I was most looking forward to covering in this blog, as I really enjoyed the experience of watching it the last time I saw it, which was just after finishing my final exams in high school. I needed something to get my mind away from all of the doom and gloom that's associated with waiting for results. Thankfully, 'Trial' delivered that in spades, providing stories that were about having fun, as well as more complex stories that grab the audience's attention with some interesting character moments.

Of these two story types, The Mysterious Planet is chiefly in the 'fun' section, in my opinion. It's written by Robert Holmes, but it's not the serious Holmes that wrote The Caves of Androzani, instead it's a lighter tale, akin to The Ribos Operation. The distinction can be best shown in the way in which the characters are drawn. For Caves, all of the characters were written with a slightly evil streak to them, and whilst this made them more complex, it also meant that you could never find yourself to really like any of them, which, given the tone of Caves, works to the story's advantage. For The Mysterious Planet, on the other hand, all of the characters are given a wit and warmth that, even if they appear to be antagonists, you can still clearly enjoy their company. Two examples of this are Glitz and Dibber, where they are rogueish characters who may have tried to kill the Doctor, but we're also allowed to make jokes with them about prison psychologists or the phrase "Take me to your leader".

It all creates a nice atmosphere, that I actually really appreciate. And whilst it may not be the best thing for the series at the moment, I still utterly love it.