The Ultimate Foe | Sophisticated Idiots

The Ultimate Foe
(aka The Trial of a Time Lord Part 4)
1986

The Ultimate Foe review: The Sixth Doctor, played by Colin Baker, is dragged through the sand in a chilling cliffhanger

or Final Fantasy

or A Glitz in the Matrix

Do you remember when some decadent, degenerate so-and-so thought it was a good idea to reimagine the Wicker Man with Nic Cage? And have another stab at Get Carter with Stallone as the lead?

Well, Doctor Who suits were sufficiently inspired by these so-called homages to make their own Valeyard (geddit?) attempt at giving this enormous gamble of a season a memorable send-off: they went double or quits by trying to remake the superlative Deadly Assassin.

Needless to say, The Ultimate Foe falls well short of this lofty bar (and it’s probably unwise to invite the audience to make a direct comparison between the two Bakers).

But you know what – high praise incoming – it’s not a total disaster.

The nods to Assassin come thick and fast as our lonesome Doctor is menaced in a nightmare world by an array of oddball characters.

And in a two-fingered meta salute that’s wholly apt in this painfully self-aware Trial, we even rile Mary Whitehouse one last time with another on-screen attempted drowning.

The Doctor’s journey into a surreal pseudo-reality might not be as original a concept as it was a decade earlier (despite attempts to revitalise it by filming on The Great Pottery Throwdown set during raku week). It might not be executed anywhere near as well. And it might rely strangely heavily on Onslow from Keeping Up Appearances.

But the stuff in the matrix is at least interesting. And pleasingly dark both in tone and mise en scène (*puts A Level Media Studies to good use*).

As a result, The Ultimate Foe is the best of this season’s four stories.

And no, it’s not purely because it’s mercilessly short. Unusually, this one could do with being longer.

The overarching thread of the trial itself has been stretched to breaking point over six hours – yet suddenly snaps with an utterly underwhelming end. It’s over before you can say Let Me Be Your Fantasy (Factory).

Speaking of short-lived…

Carrot juice or no carrot juice, The Ultimate Foe does at least leave Colin in relatively good health (btw, including his cameos in Caves and Arc of Infinity, this is Colin’s 13th appearance. A Baker’s Dozen indeed).

This is an era from which nobody emerges with much dignity, so we’re relieved that Colin's able to bask in one of his better showings for his definitely-always-planned-to-be farewell.

When he’s not quoting Hamlet, our hero (now a colossal 900 years old, apparently) indulges in the grand guinol of being zombiefied (again) and continues to spout dialogue of the highest levels of pretentiousness.

And then the story teases us with the tantalising prospect of a Good Doctor versus Bad Doctor face-off.

Among the appetite-whetting lines, at one point Six asserts, “I want you to meet my darker side,” worryingly oblivious to the ordeal his portrayal put us all through last season.

But instead of delivering a punch-the-air climactic duel between good and evil, the Valeyard’s whole “I’m the worst of you” (does his placing between Regens 12 and 13 make him the pent-up rage of Peter Capaldi?) shtick just sort of peters out. Like the Master’s wifi on his Zoom call to the courtroom.

Credulity was tossed away like an exploding quill aeons ago, but the suggestion that a courtroom of Time Lords (even corrupt ones) would not only continue to listen to the Master but let him boss them about, is laughable.

Thankfully, the most irritating traits of the Master (delightfully mocked by the Valeyard as a “second rate adversary”) are curtailed here, most likely because he’s largely confined to home-working.

And extra points are awarded for his TARDIS occupying the black-and-red beauty at Rye Harbour, in our neck of the woods.

A quick (and bizarre) aside... the Master pops up in the finales of each of the final four Classic Doctors. Though spookily, neither Six nor Seven’s closing Master encounters were written as their swansongs – the Ainley kiss of death, eh?.

Anyway, here the Master and the Doctor’s long-running will-they-won’t-they relationship gets even cuter when Beardy saves Curly by parachuting in two “star witnesses”. He means Mel and Glitz.

Honestly, resurrecting the dead crew from Warriors of the Deep would have been more use.

The return of Glitz, in particular, defies logic. As does the obligation to name him in full at every turn (Colin even exerts precious oxygen on this pointless task while being water-boarded).

We accept that Glitz is a mildly amusing minor character, but no more important in Who legacy than Mace in The Visitation or the cave-dweller in Creature from the Pit.

In total, 80s audiences endure Glitz in three separate stories. That’s as many as Classic classics like the Sea Devils and more than both the Rani and Omega.

Heck, even the Zygons and Sutek only had the honour of a single outing each.

The frequency of Glitz's appearances somewhat smacks of barrel-scraping, which makes us wonder if that's why the Doctor was leaning into that wooden cask so precariously.

Anyway, we’ve heard enough evidence and, frankly, the outcome is bleeding obvious (“I accept your verdict,” Colin whimpers. Ouch). So let’s leap straight to sentencing.

As the Valeyard stares down the lens and laughs directly at the audience (which the Beeb have being doing for most of the 80s), The Ultimate Foe brings us to the end – both of The Trial of a Time Lord and of Colin Baker’s flirtation with the role.

Obviously, neither of these gigantic gambles pays off. This leaves the bust producers with a mere five grotzies remaining to their name. Which they decide to stick in an Each Way Nudger in the hope of securing funding for 12 more stories with a Scottish short-arse in the lead.

Wanna bet how that proverbial throw of the dice (death throe?) will turn out?

In the meantime, The Ultimate Foe at least gifts the audience a lasting memory from this otherwise hastily forgettable season. The Episode One cliffhanger is a genuine belter, the hands yanking Six through the sand generating childhood terrors we’re still grappling with.

Along with Peri’s bald-cap sit-up, this is one of only two enduring images from this endurance of a Trial.

Still, that’s more than was achieved by the Noughties versions of The Wicker Man and Get Carter. Which were rotten to the core.

So Colin may not have departed the way he’d have wanted. Nor got close to the Deadly Assassin heights of Tom Baker with his swansong.

But he can leave with the satisfaction of having bested those Hollywood heavyweights Nic and Sly - and, more importantly, socked it to those Beeb execs.

The sanctimonious hypocrites.