"We can't go on together, with suspicious minds."

Seen: 4th - 25th October 1986

The Long Way Round

If the first section of The Trial of a Time Lord found Doctor Who feeling, if vainly, its way towards a new style and a new status quo, the second finds it charging back in the direction from which it had come. Mindwarp, the title for the four episodes transmitted as The Trial of a Time Lord Parts 5 to 8 until relatively late in production, is a direct sequel to 1985's Vengeance on Varos. It has the same writer (Philip Martin), the same director (Ron Jones) and a returning villain in capitalist exploitation-eer Sil (Nabil Shaban). It also has much of the bleak, blackly comic tone, and many of the same themes and concerns.