Trial With A Time Lord

John Lloyd’s lost courtroom drama Doctor Who story’s been completed for audio

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DOUGLAS ADAMS’S WORK ON classic Doctor Who has been thoroughly raked over by now. The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy creator worked as the script editor on the show during its Tom Baker-starring seventeenth season and wrote two complete serials himself (“The Pirate Planet” and “City Of Death”), plus the unfinished “Shada”. But now audio producer Big Finish has unearthed an intriguing relic from the era that brings the work of another British comedy legend into the Whoniverse…

John Lloyd is best known for creating the groundbreaking Not The Nine O’Clock News and QI, as well as producing all four seasons of Blackadder. Before all that, however, Adams had approached him about writing for Who. His planned story, “The Doomsday Contract” never made it as far as a complete script, but now writer Nev Fountain has fleshed out Lloyd’s idea into a complete four-part drama starring Baker and Lalla Ward.

“Douglas and John had already worked together,” says Fountain of the story’s origins. “John was the second producer on