Day 263 — September 20th 2021
Nightmare of Eden Parts One and Two
Nightmare of Eden — Part One
Only in Doctor Who could you go from an episode yesterday where our hero appears to fellate a giant green bin bag to one today in which the main enemy for much of the running time is set up to be drugs runners. I always forget that’s such a part of this story, because it feels like surprisingly heavy material for this show, especially at a time when the show has been leaning more into comedy than ever before.
This is a solo outing for Bob Baker on writing duties, who usually forms half of the ‘Bristol Boys’ team, and I think you can tell it’s from the same place even if there’s only 50% of them here. Because this isn’t only about drugs, but has a big science fiction concept at the heart of it — two spaceships colliding and being fused together in space. I’ve found myself noticing the styles of individual writers far more in this marathon than I did in my last one, and I’m not sure I’m a huge fan of the type of stories we usually get when Baker is involved.
I’m not against the idea here in principal, but I think ‘d have preferred something a little more prosaic — if the two ships had simply collided without all the Unstable Matter stuff. I think it would have helped with the special effects (the realisation of the ‘Unstable Zone’ between the two ships is a weak point in this episode) and it’s the part of the story which falls down for me a bit. Everything else is surprisingly grounded — there’s talk about needing to speak to endurance companies, and massive recessions across the galaxy. Next to those very real things, all the sci-fi nonsense feels a bit out of place.
Outside of the big ideas, this is great script for dialogue, and Tom Baker in particular gets some brilliant turns of phrase. I suspect this might be a hint of Adams’ hand behind the editing of the script, as several of the jokes feel far more in his style than that of Bob Baker. My personal favourite comes early on, when Romana cautions against getting stuck in;
Romana: ‘I don’t think we should interfere.’
Doctor Who: ‘Interfere? Of course we should interfere. Always do what you’re best at, that’s what I say. Now, come on.’
He gets another brilliant moment later on when his cover story about being from Galactic Salvage Insurance is uncovered because they’d gone bust twenty years before (‘I wondered why I hadn’t been paid…’), but it’s nice to watch the balance of the light and dark in his character here. For all the larking about and frivolity he gets quite angered when he realises that there’s Vraxoin on board, and there’s a fantastic moment when his attitude towards Tryst changes because he doesn’t agree with the man’s methods for researching creatures and planets;
Doctor Who: ‘Tryst, thank you very much for your story. Very interesting. We must have a chat about this machine of yours sometime.’
Tryst: ‘Yes!’
Doctor Who: ‘And about the notion of your capturing alien species for your
own private zoo.’
Tryst: ‘Zoo? No, Doctor, this is important scientific research. I am helping to conserve endangered species.’
Doctor Who: ‘By putting them in this machine?’
Tryst: ‘Oh, yes.’
Doctor Who: ‘Ah, yes, of course. Just in the same way a jam maker
conserves raspberries.’
Overall it’s a decent start, and I’m going with a 7/10.
Nightmare of Eden — Part Two
I think where this one’s falling down for me a little is that everything seems to be pulling in different directions, which makes the overall thing a little disjointed. The script has moments of flippancy — necessary to lighten the mood — but on the whole it’s pretty dark and serious. Doctor Who has twice warned that he’s seen the after-effects of Vraxoin on the universe, and spells out just how vital it is that they stop this shipment before it can wreak the same havoc on Azure. We’ve seen one character killed by a monster already, and another has been drugged. The subject matter is unusually serious for Doctor Who, but it makes a nice change of pace. I suspect that if this sort of story had been told in the Hinchcliffe era it would have had a much darker tone. Heck, it even has shades of the Pertwee era, which often looked at social issues.
The problem is that other departments don’t seem to have gotten the memo that this is a pretty serious subject. The sets are nicely designed but they’re all a bit bright and airy for me. All the trouble from the merged spaceships seems to have been confined to a single doorway and nothing else, but I can’t help feeling like we should be seeing the effects spiralling out across the entire ship. I want to see bits of twisted metal and falling debris! Electricals sparking and lights flickering in the smoky corridors. As it is, this all looks a bit too pleasant.
I will say that I’m more of a fan of the ‘service’ corridors all decked out in silvers and yellows, and there’s a pretty strong ‘branding’ to those which make them more effective than the regular beige corridors which have a bit more of a showing in this episode. All the same, it’s too clean and easy. Give me some damage!
The costumes on the whole are pretty standard 1970s ‘science fiction’ material, but there’s instances like the passengers all wearing silver costumes with big shades which just feels so ridiculous as to look totally out of place in this story. They feel too at odds with the darkness of the script. They don’t even use the uniformity of these characters to make the chase sequence in this one particularly exciting — there’s a single beat of Doctor Who assuming he’s lost his quarry and then the chase carries on.
Where it really falls apart for me is in Lewis Fiander’s performance as Tryst. He’s gone for the Doctor Who tradition — in the vein of Professors Zaroff and Marius — of affecting a broad comedy accent for the role, and I find it almost impossible to take him seriously. There’s a scene in this one where he accuses one of his team of smuggling the drugs, but the accent robs it of any tension. Douglas Adams has complained in the past that when you put humour into the series people take it as an excuse to ham up their performances, and I think this is the perfect example. I’m usually a fan of going a bit over the top — I praised several of the characters in City of Death for being caricatures after all — but in this instance it’s definitely to the story’s detriment.
I think City of Death is actually a really good comparison to this one. There, it felt like every department was working in tandem to produce a story which felt completely balanced and worked well. It’s the absolute opposite of this one, where I’m not sure any member of the team spoke to anyone else while putting it all together.
It might seem like I’m being totally negative here, so I’ll say that there’s a few moments in this one which do work for me. David Daker’s turn as Rigg is fab, and his performance once he’s been drugged feels believable and grounded. It makes for a nice contrast to his earlier more uptight persona. The Mandrel emerging from the smoke looks pretty good (I’m sure we’ll discuss the creatures themselves more tomorrow). Finally, the cliffhanger in which Doctor Who and Romana run hand-in-hand into the jungle projection looks fantastic. It’s another bold Bob Baker idea and I’ll confess I’ve struggled to get my head around exactly how the CET machine works, but it makes for a great closing image to this episode.
And then there’s another bit of brilliant dialogue which sums up our hero nicely;
Rigg: ‘But who do you work for?’
Doctor Who: ‘Work for? I don’t work for anybody. I’m just having fun.’
4/10
