‘You are dead, Doctor. Goodbye.’
After almost 18 months off-air Doctor Who returned to television in September 1986 with the 14-episode The Trial of a Time Lord, an epic serial intended by its production team as a grand statement about both the programme and its lead character.
Its final two episodes, ‘The Ultimate Foe’, would prove to be the climax, if not the resolution, to the longest ever Doctor Who
serial and to behind-the-scenes issues, both inside and outside the
programme’s own production office, that had dogged the series for over a
year.
Suffering from unprecedented
scripting issues, including the death of its original writer and the
withdrawal of his successor's replacement script for the final episode after
it had been issued to the cast and crew, this serial, while not
intended as such, also came to serve as the finale for Colin Baker’s
interpretation of the Doctor on television.
This Black Archive examines multiple
drafts of both episodes’ scripts to look at creative conflicts behind
the conclusion to this epic adventure, and the clash of intentions and
interpretations that resulted in what was seen in the final transmitted
programmes.
