The third part of this boxset sees Henry Gordon Jago and
Professor Litefoot reunite with the Sixth Doctor. The trio previously appeared
in two special releases where the Doctor took Jago and Litefoot to the New World
and to Venus back in 2012. It also sees Flip Jackson make her first appearance
since seemingly falling to her death in Scavenger in 2014.
Flip’s first encounter with Jago and Litefoot doesn’t start
well with Flip sounding like a Chav when she lambasts Jago for calling her lad
and she responds with ‘Oi Whiskers, d’you wanna wear that pie?’ The confusing a
woman for a lad is very similar to Strax confusing Clara for a lad in The
Snowmen (2012 Christmas Special). It’s not a particularly strong joke so its
reuse isn’t the wisest decision. Another thing that doesn’t do Flip any favours
is when she admits she likes the character of Jar Jar Binks from the god awful
Star Wars film. Thankfully things get better for her as she becomes more
involved in the story and her initial reluctance to grace the stage disappears at
the right time and she ends up saving the Doctor.
Jago’s Theatre is being used by some called Yardvale. Even
if you couldn’t tell that it was the Valeyard by the fact that Jayston’s voice
is quite recognisable then the name he uses should start alarm bells ringing. It’s
the sort of trick that the Master would use and the thing about the character
of the Valeyard is that he isn’t really too dissimilar to the Master. Michael
Jayston is enjoying himself and is smack bang in the centre of this story and thrives
in the story. We know that the Valeyard is the dark side of the Doctor between
his penultimate and last regeneration although in Trial it was between his 12th
and 13th regenerations but now that has changed, this aspect of the character
has to change as well.
The Yardvale is doing a play where scenes are copied from
previous regenerations of the Doctor. I love this idea and felt that it just
added to the tension of what was going on. I like the game that we seem to have
to play to figure out which regeneration is being played out. As I get closer
to the end of the boxset, its clear that things are building up to something. The
encounter between the Doctor and the Valeyard didn’t disappoint and was the first
time in this boxset that we had had quite a big scene between the two and both Michael
Jayston and Colin Baker stepped up and gave a good account for themselves.
Even though the Yardvale part of the story was dealt with
the ending of this story was more of a cliffhanger to the final story. There is
a rather downbeat feel at the end of this story with the Doctor and Flip off in
the TARDIS and Jago and Litefoot continues their business. Like The Red House,
this story isn’t as good as End of the Line but was still enjoyable. Having
Flip back was welcome as her character is well written and well performed by
Lisa Greenwood. It was also having Jago and Litefoot back on good form after a
less than stellar series nine in their own series.