Day 652: The Trial of a Time Lord Part 13 - The Ultimate Foe Part 1

I used to have a plan for how I was going to cover this story. You see, my original plan for this story was going to be along the lines of looking at how much I adored this story upon first viewing, and mounting a spirited defense of it. This would, of course, fall apart towards the end of the story, due to the fact that I did not like The Ultimate Foe on first viewing. Then The Armageddon Factor came along, another story which I disliked on first viewing, and I found myself quite enjoying it. Annoyingly, this meant that I had to chuck out all of those plans because there was now the chance that I would enjoy The Ultimate Foe. And sure enough, it's not that bad.

It's got an awful lot of things in it that bear mentioning. For a start, there's the revelation of the nature of the Valeyard where we discover that he is in fact a future incarnation of the Doctor, from somewhere between his twelfth and final incarnations. It's a clever and remarkably insane twist, that's surprisingly underplayed when it's revealed. The only shame is that it's revealed with only two episodes lieft to go, meaning that there's a feeling of a missed opportunity. We could have had a story dealing on the nature of evil within the Doctor, or the duality of the two men facing off against one another, but instead we get the character as just another villain for the Doctor to face off against as the story comes to a close.

There's also another, sadder fact to mention. This episode is the last thing that Robert Holmes wrote before he died. He's been a fantastic writer for the series, concentrating on brilliant and well-drawn characters as well as wonderfully witty dialogue and fantastic stories. His episodes have been consistent highlights of the series and he remains sorely missed. But still, time marches on, and we'll have to see what was done to resolve the issue of the fact that they now have Part 1 of a 2 part story with no ending and no writer to write it tomorrow.