<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

Doctor Who Season 23 marked the first time the programme's continued production had been threatened in many years. Although Doctor Who still had a following, the BBC felt it was too expensive to produce, too violent for a family audience and, perhaps more importantly, its upper management simply didn't like the program. It was now made known publicly that the program was on probation and the new season was delayed for six months to give the production team time to retool the show according to the wishes of upper management.

When it returned, the program retained its budget from the previous season, but its episode length was returned to its traditional 23 minutes and only 14 episodes were produced. This allowed the production to devote almost twice as much money to individual episodes, bringing it into reasonable proximity with the visual standards of its American contemporaries. The show would retain this season format for the remainder of the classic series.

Script editor Eric Saward had decided that this season would consist of four segments, three of which would be somewhat standalone stories. A fourth would resolve a season long framing story which involved the Doctor being put on trial once again by his fellow Time Lords. Tragically, long time writer Robert Holmes, who penned more of the most popular Doctor Who stories than any other writer before or since, sickened and died before he could complete the frame story. Fearing cancellation, producer John Nathan-Turner instructed Saward, the only other person who had worked on the season's final episode, to rewrite the last episode so that the story was resolved at the end of the season (the season was originally to have ended on a cliffhanger). Enraged by this demand, Saward left the show and refused to allow his work on the episode to be used. This left Nathan-Turner literally days to have a replacement script written. Husband and wife team Pip and Jane Baker stepped up to the task, but to avoid charges of plagiarism, they could be given no information on the content of the original episode. Though it leaves more than a few obviously loose threads, the story they came up with does resolve the season's story arc in an entertaining manner.

Season twenty-three began airing on September 6, 1986.

• Trial of a Timelord: The Mysterious Planet (4 episodes)
• Trial of a Timelord: Mindwarp (4 episodes)
• Trial of a Timelord: Terror of the Vervoids (4 episodes)
• Trial of a Timelord: The Ultimate Foe (2 episodes)