Trial of The Valeyard (Alan Barnes and Mike Maddox)

The 2013 subscriber's special finds the Sixth Doctor back in the Time Lord trial rooms - but he's not the one in the dock this time! This time his sinister alternate The Valeyard faces his fate in the subscriber special that Big Finish Productions could only call "Trial of The Valeyard"!

"Trial of the Valeyard" was written by Alan Barnes and Mike Maddox, directed by Barnaby Edwards and was recorded on the 15th and 20th May 2013. It was released in December 2013 to those who had a subscription to the main Doctor Who range which included the December 2013's release, "Afterlife". It will also be available to buy a year after release in December 2014.

This special tale reunites Colin Baker's Sixth Doctor with Michael Jayston as The Valeyard and Linda Bellingham as The Inquisitor in a tense courtroom drama. The three were last seen sharing the screen in 1986's epic fourteen-part The Trial of a Time Lord season of stories. The tables are turned in this new story as The Valeyard is forced to face up to his evil deeds - how will The Doctor judge his alternate self?

Sixth Doctor

In The Trial of a Time Lord 14-part epic the Sixth Doctor was put on trial by his own people, with a mysterious villain called The Valeyard as his prosecutor. "Trial of The Valeyard" is a new audio adventure that brings these characters back together... but with a twist.

'It's The Inquisitor, The Valeyard, and The Doctor back in the courtroom together, going at it hammer and tongs', Mike Maddox, co-author of this story has revealed, 'but this time The Valeyard and The Doctor have swapped seats: The Valeyard is in the dock. The three of them together are such larger-than-life characters - it's just too much fun not to do!'.

On screen, The Valeyard was described as an amalgamation of The Doctor's dark side, from much later in his life. 'A distillation of all the darkness in The Doctor made flesh is quite fun to look at', Mike Maddox has revealed, 'but does that mean he's not The Doctor, and you've taken loads of his bad thoughts and made a person? Has he regenerated, and all the good stuff's not in him any more? Or does it mean something dreadful has happened and The Doctor has become so horrible he's stopped calling himself "The Doctor"? We had to play with this idea: what is The Valeyard?'.

But how far does "Trial of The Valeyard" go in terms of answering that question? 'We took a deep breath and just plunged into it: we've decided what he is, and that gets explained in the story'. Mike Maddox has also revealed 'I loved writing for him. I quite like writing for the Sixth Doctor, because he's quite opinionated and shouty at times, and The Valeyard is sometimes quite close to that in terms of being very forthright, very convinced by what he's saying. It's great fun to have two characters who will quite deliberately antagonise each other - at no point are they ever going to seek to build a rapport, or sympathise or try to understand each other. Every bit of self-loathing, every bit of himself The Doctor might not like, is standing there right in front of him!'.