The day is saved when it turns out Balazar knows one of the tribesmannys, and he gets them to pewpewpew the robot instead.
The Inquisitor complains about the violence she is being forced to watch, but the Valeyard claims that "a certain amount of graphic detail is unavoidable." Is this Robert Holmes having a bit of fun at the expense of the Mary Whitehouse types, i.e. the sort of viewer who complained that the previous season, his own The Two Doctors included, was too violent?
The Doctor, Peri, Balazar, Glitz and Dibber are all captured by the tribesmannys and taken back to the village. The Doctor tells Queen Katryca the truth about Drathro and the black light converter, but because she has already been told so many lies by Glitz (and, we are given to infer, other "star travellers" before him) she does not believe the Doctor's story either.
Imprisoned again, Glitz says to the Doctor
"You're the Time Lord, haven't you got a rring you can rrub? A magic lamp?"
which is a none too subtle way of reminding us that Glitz knows something about the Time Lords already - at least enough to have seen Genesis of the Daleks at any rate. Glitz confirms that this planet is Earth, and that it was moved out of position "only by a couple of light years" in order that the rescue ship sent for Drathro and "the Sleepers" should miss their target. This begins to unravel the mystery of Ravolox, although it does not explain how the Earth or the Solar System could be mistaiken for anything other than what it is at the scale at which star systems operate at.
The robot hulks through the wall and captures the Doctor.
Back (or should that be forward?) in the courtroom the Doctor calls the Valyard more names, this time "the Farmyard" and "the Scrapyard," but this scene also contains some useful exposition about how the trial can watch scenes that the Doctor is not in, so long as "they are within the collection range of a TARDIS." The Valeyard reveals that the Doctor's TARDIS has been fitted with a "new surveillance system" (or "bugged" as the Doctor puts it), which explains why all of the trial evidence must come from a point after the bugging began. This may explain why the Doctor chooses the story he does for his defence, rather than simply bunging on a classic story or two that would be certain to get him off. The Inquisitor dismisses this as "an unimportant issue" but I think this is one of the subtler moments in the story.
Queen Katryca and her mannys pewpewpew the robot, and are convinced that they have killed the Immortal. As the queen plots to plunder "the Immortal's castle" her dialogue gets increasingly theatrical, reminding me of Irongron and the medieval mannys from The Time Warrior.
"It is ours now. All the tools and metal. All the strange materials that bend and do not break. All the mysteries and treasures of our ancient forefathers that we shall learn to use again. Do you not agree? Then let us... attack!"
I'm not the only one reminded of season 11, since when the Doctor wakes up he does a Jon Pertwee impression and says
"Oh, my head hurts abominably, Sarah Jane."
Katryca's dialogue continues to get even more exaggerated and flowery once they go underground:
Katryca: "We have no need for indecision in the tribe of the Free. Long we have waited for this moment. The Immortal is dead, and we shall plunder his castle. The spoils of triumph are ours. Now think, which is the way?"Balazar: "This way."Broken Tooth: "This way."Katryca: "Am I to be surrounded by fools? We go forward. Forward, I say! I have read it in the flames many times... we go... forward!"
Perhaps this is meant to be a symptom of her increasing megalomania, a trait often possessed by Robert Holmes's baddys.
Glitz and Dibber, meanwhile, continue to play the double-act komic relief:
Glitz: "Do I look like a philanthropist?"Dibber: "Well, how do I know? I've never seen one."Glitz: "A philanthropist, my son, is someone who gives away all their grotzits out of the simple goodness of their heart."Dibber: "Oh, you mean they're stupid? Oh yeah, you probably do look like one, then."
While not the worst material, it does feel a bit forced, rather than seeming to arise naturally out of the plot. Similarly, there is a very clunky bit of plot introduced when Glitz's dialogue is suddenly bleeped out midway through a sentence to Dibber:
"Whatever you do, don't open your big pie-hole and let him know that we're after the stuff..."
It then cuts to the courtroom.
Valeyard: "The remainder of that evidence has been excised, my lady."Inquisitor: "Excised? Why?"Valeyard: "By order of the High Council."
This is obviously included to let the Doctor, and the more astute of us cats watching at home, know that there is something suspicious going on here, but it is a bit of a plot hole - there is nothing vital to the Valeyard's case in this scene, so why show it to the courtroom at all, with or without the censored part? It's not an insurmountable plot hole - it could be an early hint that the Valeyard does not have total control of the Matrix, but this is a plot thread that will never be properly resolved or explained (like so much of Trial of a Time Lord), perhaps due to the clusterfuck surrounding the writing of the final episodes - which we shall reach in due course.
The Doctor and Peri have also gone underground, and they meet up with CHAAAAADBON, who hasn't done much this episode except have Grell make insinuations at him. He makes up for this by getting in on the cliffhanger, pointing his crossbow at the Doctor and firing it.
Crash-zoom to... wait, this one doesn't end with a crash-zoom! Surely this can only be so there is no mistaiking that the crossbow has definitely been fired. A clever bit of foreshadowing for Colin Baker's fate at the end of the season.
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