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Doctor Who Target Books (Numerical Order) #139
Doctor Who: Mindwarp
Accused of ‘crimes against the inviolate laws of evolution’, the Doctor is on trial for his life.
The sinister prosecutor, the Valeyard, presents the High Council of Time Lords with the second piece of evidence against the Doctor: a dramatic adventure on the planet Thoros-Beta which led to the renegade Time Lord’s summons to the Court of Enquiry.
But as the Doctor watches the scenes on the Matrix he is puzzled by what he sees - his behaviour is not as he remembers. Only one thing is certain: on the evidence of the Matrix the Doctor is surely guilty as charged...
The sinister prosecutor, the Valeyard, presents the High Council of Time Lords with the second piece of evidence against the Doctor: a dramatic adventure on the planet Thoros-Beta which led to the renegade Time Lord’s summons to the Court of Enquiry.
But as the Doctor watches the scenes on the Matrix he is puzzled by what he sees - his behaviour is not as he remembers. Only one thing is certain: on the evidence of the Matrix the Doctor is surely guilty as charged...
144 pages, Paperback
First published November 15, 1989
160 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
September 2, 2020
There's lots to like about the second section of Trial of a Time Lord.
As this is the 'present' section of the evidence this instalment adds jeopardy to the overarching serial.
Knowing that The Doctor had been taken to face the charges of meddling and unbecoming a Time Lord from the end of this adventure really adds a bit of tension in a slow and overlong novelisation.
The fact that this process meant The Doctor was hazy on the forthcoming events helped added to the mystery.
I like it when these audiobook releases have The Doctor as the narrator, Colin Baker certainly has fun with the various impressions of all the side characters in this story.
Especially Brian Blessed's King Yrcanos!
Unfortunately there's no escaping the 4 hour 41 minute run time though, you could easily watch all 4 original episodes three times over and still have time to spare.
As this is the 'present' section of the evidence this instalment adds jeopardy to the overarching serial.
Knowing that The Doctor had been taken to face the charges of meddling and unbecoming a Time Lord from the end of this adventure really adds a bit of tension in a slow and overlong novelisation.
The fact that this process meant The Doctor was hazy on the forthcoming events helped added to the mystery.
I like it when these audiobook releases have The Doctor as the narrator, Colin Baker certainly has fun with the various impressions of all the side characters in this story.
Especially Brian Blessed's King Yrcanos!
Unfortunately there's no escaping the 4 hour 41 minute run time though, you could easily watch all 4 original episodes three times over and still have time to spare.
June 17, 2015
As I was painfully aware of the behind the scenes drama going on when this TV episode was made, I wanted to give it a second chance and hoped that Martin would use this opportunity to fix things.
He didn't. Mindwarp is every bit of a dreary, jumble of ideas and plot holes that it was on TV.
He does add a pathetic epilogue that fixes nothing and contradicts later episodes in the Trial series.
The Doctor's motivation and actions still are unexplained and inconsistent, most of the cast is bland and Peri is badly treated and gets no extra characterization besides being emotionally traumatized.
The trial scenes don't feel as clunky as in the other stories, and I like the idea of using the trial as big story arc, but still the trial is such a farce and you know from about five minutes in the Doctor is being set up and the trail is so badly run that it loses a lot of its dramatic punch.
The Mentors are a fun alien race. Shame we didn't see more of them.
He didn't. Mindwarp is every bit of a dreary, jumble of ideas and plot holes that it was on TV.
He does add a pathetic epilogue that fixes nothing and contradicts later episodes in the Trial series.
The Doctor's motivation and actions still are unexplained and inconsistent, most of the cast is bland and Peri is badly treated and gets no extra characterization besides being emotionally traumatized.
The trial scenes don't feel as clunky as in the other stories, and I like the idea of using the trial as big story arc, but still the trial is such a farce and you know from about five minutes in the Doctor is being set up and the trail is so badly run that it loses a lot of its dramatic punch.
The Mentors are a fun alien race. Shame we didn't see more of them.
October 6, 2014
To this fan, "Mindwarp" is a low point of the original run of Doctor Who. It's a confusing script that isn't clear on the motivation for certain actions that unfold on our screen and one that leaves me a bit cold, despite the death of a one of my favorite companions.
So it was that when Target first published their adaptation of "Mindwarp," I hoped that author Philip Martin might take the opportunity to fill a few gaps or at least explain a few things that unfolded on-screen.
Unfortunately, that's not the case with "Mindwarp" and it ends up being as completely forgettable as when it first hit shelves more than twenty years ago and just as frustrating.
I listen to these Target novels while doing various forms of working out because they're familiar enough to me to not require my full focus the entire time for fear of missing a crucial plot detail or two when the wind comes up or water gets between my waterproof ear buds and my ear drums. But if you saw me running or working out with a confused, frustrated look on my face, odds are it was because I was listening to this audio book and feeling more and more frustration with it as the story went along.
I'll give Colin Baker credit for trying to make this work, but he's not given the best source material to work from. There were moments I want to just skip this one and not finish it, but I kept hoping Martin might be just about to find the storytelling spirit he did for "Vengeance on Varos" and put it on display here.
That never quite happens and it leaves me wondering why this one would get an audio book release and why old favorites like "The Day of the Daleks" and "The Curse of Fenric" are still sitting there, just begging for an audio book release.
So it was that when Target first published their adaptation of "Mindwarp," I hoped that author Philip Martin might take the opportunity to fill a few gaps or at least explain a few things that unfolded on-screen.
Unfortunately, that's not the case with "Mindwarp" and it ends up being as completely forgettable as when it first hit shelves more than twenty years ago and just as frustrating.
I listen to these Target novels while doing various forms of working out because they're familiar enough to me to not require my full focus the entire time for fear of missing a crucial plot detail or two when the wind comes up or water gets between my waterproof ear buds and my ear drums. But if you saw me running or working out with a confused, frustrated look on my face, odds are it was because I was listening to this audio book and feeling more and more frustration with it as the story went along.
I'll give Colin Baker credit for trying to make this work, but he's not given the best source material to work from. There were moments I want to just skip this one and not finish it, but I kept hoping Martin might be just about to find the storytelling spirit he did for "Vengeance on Varos" and put it on display here.
That never quite happens and it leaves me wondering why this one would get an audio book release and why old favorites like "The Day of the Daleks" and "The Curse of Fenric" are still sitting there, just begging for an audio book release.
October 11, 2025
Slightly better-constructed than Martin’s first book/script in this range, this handles the tension of the two narratives quite well, but stumbles at fleshing out the secondary characters and the locations. I groaned at Yrcanos’s “tell me more of this Earth thing called love” moment, and at the epilogue which felt like a joke tacked on at the end of a particularly grim episode (which it was at the time, frankly) and which contradicted the ending of the broadcast season. Tense and scary in most of the right places, this is enjoyable fun.
December 13, 2024
So the Trial of a Timelord is a mess.
This story is a mess.
But sometimes, a dizzying array of normally clashing colors, ideas, tones, narrative styles, and even endings themselves can produce something entertaining.
Unlike the first Trial story, the court sections are directly relevant to the inner show, because the Doctor suspects evidence tampering. This isn’t how it went, from his perspective, and the audience is meant to empathize— the Doctor would never turn compliant, much less evil, surely? The prosecution/Valeyard could just skip to the end result, but since the defense/Doctor can’t remember it, it _needs_ to play out for the whole court to witness. In turn, readers/viewers would need to pay attention, to point out things that are out of character.
Alone, that’s a coherent, if complex, idea that could carry a story. But it is almost immediately undercut by the random crazy overlapping events and environments. Honest to goodness sci-fi-tropey non-blue skies and water! Sil! Sil’s people! Brain transplants! Warlords! Wolfman! Random enslaved people with weird names and potentially offensive “tribal” wear! Betrayal - by the Doctor! Persis Khambat—I mean Bald Peri! Evolution of all life in the universe anachronistically imperiled! Time Bubble!
All of that is bonkers. It just keeps turning weirder corners, and you know there’s no way it’s going to be resolved in a satisfactory way. It all comes crashing down around its own shaky foundations, and I’m loving the rubbernecking baby!!
Okay, I’ll calm down. Really this _book_ should be boring, and yes, I fell asleep reading parts of it. It should be boring compared to the televised story because, as much as I would love otherwise, Brian Blessed is not here to shout every word at me. How can this possibly compete with the absolute fruit punch of a television experience exploding from all the above volatile ingredients?!
It does so by pulling the ultimate cop out — it spoils a happy ending that the tv show made the audience wait _weeks_ for — AND THROWS IN A NEW ENDING! An ending, I might add, so much more satisfying, so much less patronizing, that I WANT MY PERI BLESSED WWF SPIN-OFF!!! Big Finish, where are you running away to?! HEY! HOLD IT!!
This story is a mess.
But sometimes, a dizzying array of normally clashing colors, ideas, tones, narrative styles, and even endings themselves can produce something entertaining.
Unlike the first Trial story, the court sections are directly relevant to the inner show, because the Doctor suspects evidence tampering. This isn’t how it went, from his perspective, and the audience is meant to empathize— the Doctor would never turn compliant, much less evil, surely? The prosecution/Valeyard could just skip to the end result, but since the defense/Doctor can’t remember it, it _needs_ to play out for the whole court to witness. In turn, readers/viewers would need to pay attention, to point out things that are out of character.
Alone, that’s a coherent, if complex, idea that could carry a story. But it is almost immediately undercut by the random crazy overlapping events and environments. Honest to goodness sci-fi-tropey non-blue skies and water! Sil! Sil’s people! Brain transplants! Warlords! Wolfman! Random enslaved people with weird names and potentially offensive “tribal” wear! Betrayal - by the Doctor! Persis Khambat—I mean Bald Peri! Evolution of all life in the universe anachronistically imperiled! Time Bubble!
All of that is bonkers. It just keeps turning weirder corners, and you know there’s no way it’s going to be resolved in a satisfactory way. It all comes crashing down around its own shaky foundations, and I’m loving the rubbernecking baby!!
Okay, I’ll calm down. Really this _book_ should be boring, and yes, I fell asleep reading parts of it. It should be boring compared to the televised story because, as much as I would love otherwise, Brian Blessed is not here to shout every word at me. How can this possibly compete with the absolute fruit punch of a television experience exploding from all the above volatile ingredients?!
It does so by pulling the ultimate cop out — it spoils a happy ending that the tv show made the audience wait _weeks_ for — AND THROWS IN A NEW ENDING! An ending, I might add, so much more satisfying, so much less patronizing, that I WANT MY PERI BLESSED WWF SPIN-OFF!!! Big Finish, where are you running away to?! HEY! HOLD IT!!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 14, 2020
"Mindwarp" is probably the most controversial story of that controversial series "The Trial of a Time Lord." The brief was to really put the screws down on The Doctor's character, to show all the bad sides that the critics claimed were there for the show - propensity to violence, callousness regarding companions, dubious moral double standards, and so on. However, there was also to be a question regarding how much of what the viewer sees or the reader reads is altered to suit the opinions of the critics, or in this case The Valeyard. Since we never do find out the degree to which truth has been warped, it is hard to say whether any of The Doctor's actions are justified. All this is further complicated by the dreadful trial interludes (written originally by Pip & Jane Baker, who significantly altered Robert Holmes's original trial ideas, and probably for the worse). In his novelization of his script, Philip Martin has tried to stay true to what was presented on TV (with one notable exception), while also smoothing out some of the rough spots. Thus, he provides some explanatory material, especially in the trial scenes, to have it make more sense, at least as far as figuring out why The Doctor acts as he does on Thoros-Beta. The one thing Martin has truly changed was the fate of Peri. Fans mightily objected to the throwaway line to explain this at the end of "Trial" on TV. Martin's answer is perhaps happier for Peri, but not any more satisfying. On its own, without needing to fit into the Trial over-story, "Mindwarp" would probably have been a very good "Doctor Who" episode. However, the requirement to fit into the "Trial" narrative simply muddies elements that ought to be more transparent.
July 12, 2021
A bit of a weird one here, as the Trial of a Time Lord dimension deepens here, making it quite hard to discern what is real and what isn't here, as definitely get the impression that some of what is portrayed in the book didn't actually occur, and that some of what did occur isn't shown at all.
Harder to pin down the characters as a result really, with the Doctor swinging from being likeable to dislikeable a lot, and hard to determine what is driving it at times, whether effects on his mind, false Matrix visions or what.
Does make for an interesting read, but at the end of it don't have any real closure on what actually happened, which later books don't really address either.
Some interesting new characters introduced here, and we get a return of Sil (a thoroughly dislikeable character), and some interesting ideas and twists here.
It builds up to quite a grand finale, leading to an apparently quite dark and stunning ending for Peri, potentially proven right here to want to avoid getting into danger, but makes for quite a shocking read.
This grand finale is somewhat weakened by the epilogue, but at the same time at least this gives a bit more closure for a reader who doesn't read the rest of the arc.
Harder to pin down the characters as a result really, with the Doctor swinging from being likeable to dislikeable a lot, and hard to determine what is driving it at times, whether effects on his mind, false Matrix visions or what.
Does make for an interesting read, but at the end of it don't have any real closure on what actually happened, which later books don't really address either.
Some interesting new characters introduced here, and we get a return of Sil (a thoroughly dislikeable character), and some interesting ideas and twists here.
It builds up to quite a grand finale, leading to an apparently quite dark and stunning ending for Peri, potentially proven right here to want to avoid getting into danger, but makes for quite a shocking read.
This grand finale is somewhat weakened by the epilogue, but at the same time at least this gives a bit more closure for a reader who doesn't read the rest of the arc.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 22, 2025
Book 358 - Philip Martin - Doctor Who - The Trial of a Time Lord - Mindwarp
Story 2 of 4 and the craziness continues. It is a real sidestep as soon the Doctor is working with the crazy scientists and his companion is in as real a danger as any have ever been. Martin brings back his wonderful creation of Sil and when Sil’s alien leader needs somewhere for his brain to be transplanted… the Doctor and Peri risk everything.
The story is terrifying and brilliant but as we discover further down the line… what is being seen in the trial room isn’t all true. For a lie to be believed it must be wrapped in truth. The ending is devastating and the Doctor has lost so much that the trial itself seems now irrelevant. And then Martin totally ruins it by adding the actual ending we don’t find out until Part 14… so poor.
Martin writes a superb story that if it wasn’t lost in the larger overarching tale… would have been a classic… instead it is a little stuck..l especially the ending. A shame.
Story 2 of 4 and the craziness continues. It is a real sidestep as soon the Doctor is working with the crazy scientists and his companion is in as real a danger as any have ever been. Martin brings back his wonderful creation of Sil and when Sil’s alien leader needs somewhere for his brain to be transplanted… the Doctor and Peri risk everything.
The story is terrifying and brilliant but as we discover further down the line… what is being seen in the trial room isn’t all true. For a lie to be believed it must be wrapped in truth. The ending is devastating and the Doctor has lost so much that the trial itself seems now irrelevant. And then Martin totally ruins it by adding the actual ending we don’t find out until Part 14… so poor.
Martin writes a superb story that if it wasn’t lost in the larger overarching tale… would have been a classic… instead it is a little stuck..l especially the ending. A shame.
October 27, 2023
Doctor Who : Mindwarp (1989) by Philip Martin is the novelisation of the second serial of season twenty three of Doctor Who. It is part of the trial of a Timelord serials.
The Doctor and Peri land on Thoros Beta because the Doctor is tracing high tech weaponry from another planet. There the Doctor encounters Sil, the alien trader he had previously met on Varos. Sil is getting a brilliant scientist to transplant the brain of his boss into other creatures. His boss is Kiv and is about to die. The plot gets stranger with mind controlled servants and rebels lead by Yrcanos.
This serial doesn’t work. It’s a pity because some of the ideas are not bad, there are just too many things packed in and it becomes incoherent. It’s sad for Peri to leave on a low note.
The Doctor and Peri land on Thoros Beta because the Doctor is tracing high tech weaponry from another planet. There the Doctor encounters Sil, the alien trader he had previously met on Varos. Sil is getting a brilliant scientist to transplant the brain of his boss into other creatures. His boss is Kiv and is about to die. The plot gets stranger with mind controlled servants and rebels lead by Yrcanos.
This serial doesn’t work. It’s a pity because some of the ideas are not bad, there are just too many things packed in and it becomes incoherent. It’s sad for Peri to leave on a low note.
March 31, 2019
Ok, I actually listened to the audiobook version which is a continuation of the overarch of Trial of a Time Lord. It's part two in fact. This one was read by Collin Baker and the first one, Mysterious Planet was read by the late Lynda Bellingham, both are engaging readers.
It's an interesting format of accessing an adventure as a form of evidence during a trial and both the story and the reader build the drama and draws you into the story further. It's the second part of The Trial of a Time Lord and it's got me hooked.
It's an interesting format of accessing an adventure as a form of evidence during a trial and both the story and the reader build the drama and draws you into the story further. It's the second part of The Trial of a Time Lord and it's got me hooked.
July 27, 2020
The second part of the trial I don't think it's as good as the first nice to see Sil again though
October 7, 2024
Not a bad adaption, although it would have been nice if he'd taken the opportunity to resolve some of the more ambiguous parts of the tv scripts, and I'm not sure the ending was really needed either.
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April 8, 2009http://nhw.livejournal.com/1068930.html?style=mine#cutid7[return][return]This is my favourite of the televised Sixth Doctor stories, but Martin doesn't quite do it justice on the page. In particular, the questionable reliability of the narrative in its own terms was made to work well on screen, but comes over as a bit of a cheat on paper. Also the "happy ending" for Peri is even more of a copout here than it was on screen (though at least Yrcanos shows some more romantic interest in her in the book).
October 25, 2016
Not the most inspired story, even in this lacklustre season. The plot limps along, not entirely making sense and the courtroom interpolations add to the pedestrian pace. The best bits of the televised version (the paintboxed planetscape with the ringed Thoros-Alpha in the sky) are missing (a very much reduced picture on the cover is overshadowed by the grotesque Sil); mercifully some of the worst aspects are missing, too...
The last page adds some information lacking from the televised story in order to make some sense if being read as a single book; not sure it's necessarily successful!
The last page adds some information lacking from the televised story in order to make some sense if being read as a single book; not sure it's necessarily successful!
September 21, 2011
The second novelization from "The Trial of a Time Lord" season appeared long after its 1986 siblings...perhaps that explains the disconnect? It's outrageous in all the wrong ways (especially its ridiculous ending), and it diminishes what is easily the best segment of "Trial". As someone who had to read the other three "Trial" books long before this one appeared, I can confidently say you can skip this without incident.
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