Something of a first awaits now as we consider Interstitial Insecurity, Colin Baker penning a Target Storybook entry for the incarnation of the Doctor he portrayed whether you like it or not! He chooses to set it, not unwisely, during the Sixth's champagne moment - which is to say the The Trial Of A Time Lord story arc. He's been forced to relive the implied events of Mindwarp culminating in Peri's death and it isn't looking good for the chap kitted out in that coat of many colours.
In line with Gallifreyan legal procedure he is at least allowed into the Matrix to prepare his defence against the aggressive questioning of the prosecutor in his case, who rather unethically has been promised the remaining lives of the man in the dock if he can cobble together enough evidence against him, even if it does involve a bit of tampering. Makes Judge Rinder seem a bit tame, no?
And he'll have a physical manifestation of the Matrix itself as a handy guide. A girl named Anosia who reveals the exact nature of the foul play in the process of showing him the true versions of events and admits that what he's seeing will be edited. You don't see that on Judge Judy!
The events of Terror Of The Vervoids need least editing work on her part, the planting of a less aggressive Vervoid crop airbrushed out, not that the Doctor will remember as his mind will be wiped the moment he leaves her company, in a similar development to what befalls the man he had been and had indeed run into in his current incarnation at the culmination of his Celestial Intervention Agency mission to Karn,
And during their encounter he would have cause to remember his first trial in possibly his scruffiest body, a similar eventual outcome for Colin at least behind the scenes as he would be unceremoniously shoved aside in favour of Sylvester McCoy.
DOCTOR: I never faint. I remember now. I felt a weakness. I felt a weakness and then I, I was in another place.Having resolved that little existential crisis, we can skip forward to his meeting with the Vervoids & introduction to future companion Melanie Bush, screaming her first of many later ear-piercing screeches in what would become sort of her stock in trade.
PERI: Can I get you anything? Celery! That's what you need.
DOCTOR: Celery, yes. And the tensile strength of jelly babies! But I, I had a clarinet. Or was it a flute? Something you blew into.
PERI: A glass of water?
DOCTOR: Water? No, don't think so. A recorder! That's what it was. Some kind of mind lock.
PERI: Doctor, you're not making any sense.
DOCTOR: I am making perfect sense. I was being put to death!
PERI: I think you should sit down.
DOCTOR: Sit down? They're executing me! Except it wasn't that way. It didn't end like that, so it's not possible.
PERI: What isn't possible?
DOCTOR: Well, I exist. I'm here, now, therefore I cannot have been killed then. That is irrefutable logic, isn't it?
PERI: Don't worry about it.
DOCTOR: But the there and then subsumes the here and now, so if I was killed then, I could only exist now as some sort of temporal tautology. That also is irrefutable.
VALEYARD: Every Vervoid was destroyed by your ingenious plan.
DOCTOR: Yes.
VALEYARD: Whether or not the Doctor has proved himself innocent of meddling is no longer the cardinal issue before this court. He has proved himself guilty of a far greater crime.
INQUISITOR: You refer to Article Seven of Gallifreyan law?
DOCTOR: No, my lady, that cannot apply! Had a single Vervoid reached Earth, the human race would have been eliminated!
VALEYARD: Article Seven permits no exceptions. The Doctor has destroyed a complete species. The charge must now be genocide.
Terror Of The Vervoids would become the sixth full story of the Sixth Doctor's to be novelised for the original Target range, Pip & Jane Baker committing their original television treatment to print & including deleted courtroom scenes which were later also present on the DVD release. The first full Target novelisation following on from Terrance Dicks' adaptation of Robert Holmes's The Caves Of Androzani - in which the then-relatively new Doctor appears during the twelfth & final chapter, Change - was The Two Doctors. Holmes adapting his own work into print and in doing so crafting the hundredth Target novel of a Doctor Who persuasion.
Quite the century to have scored! And it came with an introduction by John Nathan Turner himself just to add to the sense of occasion.
Ironically it was followed by a story most wouldn't hesitate to rule out for a duck, to again use a cricketing phrase, in the shape of The Twin Dilemma. The title of Chapter Two of Eric Saward's novelisation of Anthony Steven's original television outing, with edits by Saward himself, The Maladjusted Time Lord, doesn't even begin to cover it! Little wonder then that it scored an unwelcome hat-trick of wins in Doctor Who Magazine polls to find its worst ever story, you might think.
Prior to that crushing series of defeats, which Baker took personally, he had contributed to their Brief Encounters series with a story called The Deal. He would then turn his attention to a comic, The Age Of Chaos replacing Peri with Frobisher as he & his penguin friend shared the adventure with Peri's grandchildren - a product of her marriage to King Yrcanos. His stint in print was rounded off, up to that point, with a contribution to the Missing Pieces short story anthology with The Wings Of A Butterfly which was later adapted for audio by Big Finish in 2010 with Colin both writing the adaptation & starring in it.
July 27th, 2015 found him on cover for DWM 489.....
“My long reluctance to talk to DWM was based solely on the fact that the magazine has persisted for years in having polls and then publishing the results in full. Not just the name of the favourite Doctor or companion (as if that was worthy of noting anyway) but details of who came lower in the ‘who’s best’ listing – all the way down to least favourite. I have never been that sure about the need to do this, felt by some people, but had never realised until I was a part of it myself quite how dispiriting it can be to the less loved.”However unloved he felt back in the day, Big Finish and beyond may just have kick-started his renaissance!
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