Trials and Tribulations

Sorry but this does not cut it for me. When looking at a documentary to take in the turbulent Colin Baker years it is easy to dwell on the negative as this does.

There were many positives in Colin's reign too.

These should have been mentioned.

For instance Colins vision for the Doctor, he had the most inauspicious of starts strangling Peri but he wanted to get towards a more mellow, multi-layered character as he has done in the Big Finish audios. It would also have been nice to have had more on Mel. I appreciate Langford was not interested - cannot say I blame her - but the character was underdeveloped and unappreciated. Gary Russell has shown that with his books and Big finish.

Released on The Trial Of A Time Lord DVD box set, Trials And Tribulations is a look behind the scenes of Doctor Who during the Colin Baker era. For those of you who might be unaware of the significance of that era it was an era where the show was canceled for the first time, script editor Eric Saward and producer John Nathan-Tuner had a major falling out and Colin Baker was virtually fired by the BBC's top brass amongst other things. Yet despite the fact that the period covered is a contentious one Trials And Tribulations covers it fairly with excellent results.

Thanks to some very candid interviews with all the major participants in the events (including the late John Nathan-Turner thanks to a 1994 interview with fan and filmmaker Bill Baggs) everyone gets the chance to present their own separate remembrances of the events in a fair and balanced approach. Of particular interest is Jonathon Powell who was one of the BBC brass responsible both for the cancellation and Colin Baker's firing who gives the reasons why the BBC made the decisions it did at the time. There's also the chance for both Eric Saward and John Nathan-Tuner to (at last) give both sides of their falling out over the finale of The Trial Of A Time Lord season and its aftermath. The interviews tell the major part of the story and have a front seat while a wealth archive footage and images take a lesser role.

Thanks to the candid interviews and other materials, fans get a chance to get a fair and balanced look at one of the most contentious and controversial eras of Doctor Who. The result is the most in-depth making of documentaries yet put together for a Doctor Who DVD yet. For that matter, Trials and Tribulations is one of the strongest making-of documentaries on any DVD I've seen. For fans of the long running series this should be worth the cost of The Trial Of A Time Lord box set alone.