Doctor Who: The Trial of a Time Lord : The Ultimate Foe (8 page)

‘We accept your allegation, also without reservation. Are you willing to take the stand again?’

‘There will be no end to this affair otherwise.’ He mounted the podium.

‘The charge of genocide was based on your own evidence in relating the story of the Vervoids.’

‘A charge refuted by the Doctor,’ challenged his diminutive companion.

‘It seems you have a champion in this young person.’

‘I was there, remember,’ asserted the champion.

What was it about the vehement response that caused the Doctor to pause... quizzically to study the pert, young face..?

‘Would you accept her as an impartial witness? Or, at best, as not being your enemy?’

‘My Lady... I would trust Mel with my life...’ The solemnity with which the statement was pronounced was not typical of the Doctor. He spoke slowly, carefully, as if choosing each word advisedly.

‘Then I think, for the purposes of this analysis, we should view again the destruction of the Vervoid creatures.

Keeper?’

‘My Lady?’

‘Switch on the Matrix.’

... A Vervoid appears on the screen. Head sculpted like
a closed, ivory bud, it has sunken cheeks that project
forward an O-shaped, rubbery mouth. Curling,
transparent sepals shield ear-slits. Neither eyebrows
nor lashes frame the lid-less, staring eyes in the
grotesque, noseless face. A biped, its legs, body and
arms are covered with waxy green leaves.

Mel’s scream blasts from the screen as other tall,
plantoid Vervoids complete a towering barrier about
her, bent on puncturing her neck with a venomous
thorn in their avowed and instinctive need to eliminate
the human race.

‘The Vionesium, Mel!’ bawls the Doctor.

Jolted from her stupor, she fumbles with the catch
on a golden capsule she is holding.

Abandoning cover, the Doctor flips open his capsule
and lobs its contents into the midst of the Vervoids...

‘Is this a true record of what occurred, Melanie?’

‘What do I say, Doctor?’ appealed the witness.

‘Tell the truth.’

‘Yes, but I don’t want the Court to twist it like the Valeyard did.’

‘The truth can’t harm me.’

The scene was still continuing as she replied to the Inquisitor. ‘That is what happened.’

... On the screen, bedazzled Vervoids try to shield their
eyes from the flaring brilliant white light of the
exploding Vionesium...

‘Without the Doctor’s inspired idea to use Vionesium, we’d all have finished up on the Vervoid’s gruesome compost heap.’

Confirmation of her testimony was taking place on the screen.

... Disorientated, the creature’s reel helplessly, moaning
in pain: a danse macabre orchestrated by eerie
uluations..

‘Must we watch this again?’ blurted the Doctor afflicted by sadness at the pathetic re-enactment.

The Inquisitor indicated to the Keeper to switch off before she spoke. ‘Melanie... is it your contention that the Doctor was solely responsible for devising the scheme that destroyed the Vervoid race?’

‘Absolutely,’ the piping voice asserted. ‘The rest of us were stymied.’

‘A unique solution.’

‘Out of this world!’

‘An appropriate expression, wouldn’t you say, my Lords?’

The elderly sages nodded, whispered comments affirmed their agreement.

‘Appropriate?’ Her voice was less bright now. ‘Will someone please explain?’

‘Young woman, Gallifreyans are uniquely gifted. They have no magic. A Time Lord’s perceptions are of the highest order in the Universe.’

‘All the more reason to admire them,’ came the smart reply.

‘It is also the reason they are subjected to special restraints. These talents should not be fecklessly exploited.’

‘Feckless! If the Doctor hadn’t used his precious talents to wipe out the Vervoids, I wouldn’t be standing on this spot now!’ Flushed with anger, she turned to the Doctor expecting him to speak up in his own defence.

He did not.

‘Doctor, do you wish to question this witness?’

‘No.’

‘You have no evidence to offer in rebuttal?’

The Doctor shook his head. His melancholy resignation confused his young companion.

‘Something’s going wrong here,’ she complained. ‘I can sense it. You said the truth couldn’t harm you... yet I’ve a feeling I’m attending a lynching party! Tell them you had no choice, Doctor!’

‘There’s always a choice,’ came his sombre reply.

‘Does your response mean you are prepared to accept

this young woman’s evidence as a faithful representation of the facts?’

‘Yes.’

The Inquisitor rose. ‘In all my professional career, I doubt if I have ever been confronted with a decision more painful than the one I now have to make... Doctor, you stand accused of genocide. The verdict must be guilty.

Your life is, therefore, forfeit.’ She gestured imperiously to the guards. Take him from the Court!’

‘Switch off ! Switch it off!’ cried Mel from another Court.

The real Court. ‘The Doctor’s been tricked!’

Indeed he had.

For the trial in which he was participating was bogus!

The power of the Matrix to foster illusion, had been ingeniously marshalled by the Valeyard to hoax the Doctor.

A masquerade which the genuine Court had been watching on the Matrix screen...

14

In the authentic Courtroom, the genuine participants watched the charade being enacted by their
doppelgangers
on the Matrix screen.

Two guards marched forward to arrest the Doctor.

‘Leave him alone,’ cried the bogus Mel. ‘Don’t go with them, Doctor.’

‘Are you advocating I should reject the verdict?’

‘At least plead mitigating circumstances.’

‘I can’t.’

‘You must.’

‘Remember you asked me once why I was prepared to take such terrible risks?’

Indeed she had – at least, the bona fide Mel had. This counterfeit of the Valeyard’s looked a perfect outward copy of Mel, but she had not been blessed with Mel’s extraordinary memory.

However – ‘Yes’ came the mendacious reply.

‘I said then that unless we are willing to sacrifice our lives for the good of all, anarchy and evil will spread like the plague. The rule of law must prevail.’ Quitting the podium, he stood before the Inquisitor. ‘Madam, I accept your verdict.’

‘Switch it off!’ implored the real Mel again.

The Keeper complied.

‘What are you made of? Stone?’ she ubraided the whole assembly. ‘The Doctor’s been tricked into believing that was
this
Court. The legitimate Trial Room! An illusion concocted by the Valeyard to take advantage of the Doctor’s romantic nature! He’s convinced he must sacrifice himself. And you’re content to let him!’

A lengthy speech for Mel... but she had used the harangue to work her way nearer the Keeper... and the exit...

‘They are in the confines of the Matrix. We cannot interfere,’ reproved the Inquisitor.

‘Well, I can!’

Prepared for the Keeper to trip her as before, Mel stamped on his foot, snatched the Key from its chain, and nipped through the exit!

The conquest of temporal physics that enabled Time Lords to manipulate relative dimensions within their TARDISes, had led to a transcendent refinement: the micro-physical world of the Matrix. A world where the memories and knowledge of every Time Lord were stored: a communal, eternal brain. And, as with that organ, it could regurgitate data in a sequential fashion or a dream-like mix that defied cogent apprehension.

In seeking to enter this forbidden territory, Mel was stepping into a kaleidoscope of reality and hallucination.

Plucked from the sealed corridor by an Astanaeus beam of light evolved from Thydostanic Kinesectoral energy, she was sent pirouetting out of Time and Logic, to be dumped in the decrepit locale where the Doctor had been deposited.

Children’s voices sang –

‘London Bridge is falling down...

Falling down...’

Lingering only to get her bearings in the badly lit Victorian alley, Mel embarked on her zestful search for the Doctor.

He, at that moment, was being escorted aboard a tumbril ready to be transported to the place of his decapitation.

This gruesome prospect did not deter the Doctor from approving the style shown by his peers: he was to be conveyed to his execution in a manner befitting an Aristo.

The first guard steadied the shafts of the two wheeled death cart, while the second bolted the rear flap. A flick on the hind quarters of the chestnut shire horse... and the final journey began.

Clip-clop. Clip-clop.

The metallic clatter of the shire’s hoofs initiated a swelling murmur of blood-thirsty taunts.

‘Kill him!’

‘Off with his head!’

‘Bring the scoundrel to Madame Guillotine!’

‘Death to the upstart!’

‘Villain! Villain! Breathe your last!’

Mel’s efforts to navigate the rat-infested warren of alleys were not meeting with much success. Concern for her own safety as well as the Doctor’s was now a consideration. If Jack the Ripper had pounced from the gloom, she would have been terrified but not surprised.

So it was with relief she heard the raucous taunts and sped towards them...

‘Off with his head!’

‘Death to the upstart!’

Rotting cabbages and squashy tomatoes pelted the Doctor.

Jolting over cobblestones, the tumbril lumbered through narrow streets of soot-grimed slums; the natural habitat for the pox-scarred, unwashed denizens shying their putrid garbage and baying for the Doctor’s death. His arrogant stance and disdainful mien incited them to fever-pitch.

Into this mêlée thrust the diminutive Mel.

Gagging at the malodorous stench given off by the mob, she pummelled to where she judged the Doctor to be.

Slick as a razor, the upraised guillotine glistened, awaiting the release that would allow it to despatch its victim into the abyss, or, more prosaically, his head into the basket!

The tumbril had halted in the shadow of the keen-edged blade.

Erect, betraying not a hint of fear, the Doctor was reminded of the fine prose that brought
A Tale Of Two
Cities
to a noble climax. The last speech uttered by Dickens’ hero before he kept his assignation with Madame Guillotine.

‘ "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done;" ’ quoted the Doctor in rich, melodious tones. ‘ "... it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known." ’

During this peroration, Mel emerged from the motley crowd. ‘Never mind the Sidney Carton heroics! You’re not signing on as a martyr yet!’

‘Go away!’ whispered the Doctor urgently. ‘Go away, Mel!’

Mel did not move.

‘That trial was an illusion!’ she declared.

Illusion?

As her proclamation hit the air – everything happened at once.

The guards vanished.

So did the horse.

And the tumbril – causing the Doctor to plummet to the ground in an undignified heap!

‘You’ve ruined everything!’ he grumbled, dusting off his stain-free jacket.

Stain-free?

Not only were the Doctor’s clothes wiped clean, so, too, was the courtyard.

Gone were the stinking vegetables... the brutish rabble...

and the guillotine.

‘Ruined?’ Mel was nonplussed. ‘I’ve just saved your life!’

‘All you’ve done is keep me from a confrontation with the Valeyard!’

‘But you were on your way to –’

‘– a rendezvous with death as a result of a bogus trial and my noble act of self sacrifice.’

‘You knew it was an illusion?’ said Mel disbelievingly.

‘How come?’

Had she really been paying attention to the trial when it was being played on the Matrix screen, she would have known.

Or should have.

She repeated the question. ‘How come?’

Then came the surprising answer. ‘Through you, Mel.’

‘Through me!’

‘Yes!’ His voice soared to a shout that reverberated around the enclosed courtyard. ‘In your evidence at the bogus trial, you testified that you heard me deny the charge of genocide. You were never there, Mel. You’d never been inside the Trial Room at that time!’

He circled, ensuring that no nook or cranny should miss his words. ‘With your extraordinary ability for total recall, you wouldn’t make such an elementary mistake!’

‘Okay, okay, I’m not deaf !’

‘The Valeyard overestimates his own cleverness,’ he continued, even louder. ‘Like all megalomaniacs, he’s consumed with his own vanity!’

He lowered his voice to normal level. ‘That should’ve inflamed his bloated ego!’

He patted Mel reassuringly. ‘Didn’t you notice that once your standin made the false claim, I never again called her Mel? A clue you should have spotted! Come on!’

‘Where?’

‘To visit Mr J. J. Chambers.’ He mounted the stairs to the Fantasy Factory.

‘Who’s Mr J. J. Chambers?’

Lit by the fluctuating lights of the colourful sign, Mel stood fast. ‘I asked you a question!’

The Doctor smiled. ‘You’ll find out...’

15

‘Sabalom Glitz,’ Queen Victoria called.

At least, that was how it seemed to Glitz as he recovered consciousness; lost when the exploding quill flung him against the wall.

‘This way!’ The imperious monarch’s summons would brook no delay. ‘Hurry, Sabalom Glitz.’

Glitz crawled forward... then regained his compos mentis. ‘Oh, so you’ve decided to come back for me, have you?’

Like the Doctor, Glitz was only too aware of the maxim

‘there’s no honour among thieves’. It originated on the planet Earth, but held good for the pan-galactic brotherhood of which he was a founder member.

‘Trust me,’ the Master had urged when unfolding his plans to Glitz at their inaugural encounter. ‘Trust me?’ In Glitz’s lore, this reassurance was practically a password: identification of a consummate liar. He’d used the pledge frequently. Especially when dealing with the innocents abroad who believed in honesty. They’d ‘trusted’ him often enough.