The Trial of Doctor Who (home video)
The Trial of Doctor Who was a short comedy sketch featured on the DVD release of TV: The War Games.
It featured the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppets cast in the roles of the Time Lords from the trial sequences of the tenth episode of that story.
Synopsis[[edit] | [edit source]]
to be added
Plot[[edit] | [edit source]]
Two "Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Time Lords" have placed the Second Doctor on trial. The first Puppet starts to read out the Doctor's charges, only to be interrupted by the second asking "Who exactly" they are putting on trial, leading to a brief "Who's on First?"-esque bit, before the first Puppet asks the second to simply leave it to him.
The Doctor asks for a Thought Channel with which to make his case.
The first monster he shows off are the Quarks, but the Puppets mishear this as Kirsty Wark, and so dismiss this as "actually quite a bad thing".
His efforts to make his case using the Yeti ("Yeti nother rubbish excuse”), an Ice Warrior (which they mishear as "a nice warrior"), the Cybermen (which they ignore), and the Daleks (which they openly dismiss for "copyright reasons") are similarly unsuccessful.
The Puppets eventually accept his plea that he must stand against the evils of the universe. The Doctor asks if he is to go free. The Puppets say he is to be exiled on the planet Earth in the 1970s (to which they clarify that "some people might try to pretend it’s the 1980s"), as it is there that he has shown the most affinity. After a prolonged exchange in which the Doctor keeps repeating the phrase "in exile?", they inform him that his face will change, and offer him a list of faces to choose from.
He rejects all the faces for various reasons (one resembling the First Doctor is dismissed as "too old", the Sixth Doctor as "too fat", the Tenth Doctor as "too thin", the Fifth Doctor as "too young", and the Seventh Doctor as "that won’t do at all!"), before the Puppets give up and simply pick "Worzel Gunmidge" on his behalf, and force him to "stand in front of a rotating prism and make funny faces"
Cast[[edit] | [edit source]]
- Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Time Lords - Kev Sutherland
- Doctor Who - Patrick Troughton (archive footage)
Crew[[edit] | [edit source]]
to be added
Worldbuilding[[edit] | [edit source]]
- The Puppets think that a Quark is a "sort of cream cheese".
- The Second Puppet mentions "polishing Rassilon’s Rod"
Story notes[[edit] | [edit source]]
- The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppets are a comedy act created by Kev Sutherland that often appear on Doctor Who DVDs. This skit was on the DVD of TV: The War Games, and parodied part 10 of that story with the puppets comedically inserted into footage from it, taking on the role of the two Time Lords that try the Doctor.
- In-joking references are made to many aspects of Doctor Who, most notably the Nation estate's ownership of the Daleks and the UNIT dating controversy
