Four Episodes
Aired between 24th November 1979 and 15th December 1979
Written by Bob Baker
Produced by Graham Williams
Directed by Alan Bromley and Graham Williams (See the Trivia)
Synopsis
A huge space liner, Empress, manages to "crash" into another, smaller spacecraft, Hecate, melding both together during matter transmission.
As the crews try to sort it out and "detangle" the ships, the Doctor offers his help.
We're introduced to the crew and passengers throughout - Captain Rigg of the Empress has a first officer who's hooked on a particularly addictive drug called Vraxoin. Then there's a scientific crew collecting samples of planets and species in a Continuous Event Transmuter (CET) machine. The Hecate is captained by a single pilot called Dymond.
As the Doctor tries to help Rigg and Dymond untangle the ships, they begin finding strange swamp creatures within the liner, and discover that Vraxoin is much more of a problem on the ship than what it initially looked like.
Everything begins pointing back to the CET machine and Tryst, the eccentric German scientist who created it.
The CET machine is unstable and where it normally puts up film of the recreated portions of alien planets, the mangled ships make the process unstable, allowing things from the digital Polaroids to move out into the ship and vice versa.
On the CET data for Eden, the Doctor and Romana find a member of Tryst's crew, called Stott. He turns out to be a space drug enforcement officer who was trying to get to the bottom of drug running. He was left on the planet.
As the Doctor and Romana get closer to the truth, the space customs officers turn up and try to bust the Doctor for possession on Vraxoin.
They give them the slip and through all the dodging and hiding, they discover two key things, the Mandrels turn into Vraxoin when they die (and are clearly the source of the drug) and Tryst has sold out, becoming a drug runner to pay for his expeditions. He seemingly trapped the mandrils in the CET machine to transport them without them being detected, then to convert them to Vraxoin at a later point.
The Doctor ultimately saves the day by leading the Mandrils back into the CET machine using his dog whistle like the pied piper.
Tryst and Dymond detangle the ships and try to make a get away,
but the Doctor turns the machine on them, trapping them in the machine so that the Customs and Excise Police can arrest them.
Trivia
- Bob Baker and Dave Martin wrote a few Doctor Who stories over the years, but Dave Martin said he'd finally had enough of it. Bob Baker therefore submitted a speculative script on his own and it got picked up
- As it happened, this would be the last Doctor Who story that Bob Baker did
- Vraxoin was originally called Xyp or "Zip" but Llala Ward petitioned to change the name so taking drugs wasn't as appealing to kids
- Director Alan Bromley was chosen for this story. He'd not done one since the Time Warrior, and it was quickly discovered that he didn't gel with the new production team and cast. Bromley was meticulous in how he wanted lines saying, and refused all advice given to him. Relationships between Tom Baker and him became volatile, and everyone was growing to hate the production. It got so bad that Graham Williams had to step in - it's unclear on if Bromley quit or if he was sacked, but Williams ended up completing the story
- The guy who plays Tryst supposedly came up with the stupid German accent during rehearsal in order to relieve some of the tension.
- After the story was done, the crew all had t-shirts printed with the Doctor's line: "I'm relieved the Nightmare is Over"
The Review
Doctor Who has always been good at social commentary, but I doubt if anyone thought it was brave enough to tackle such touchy subject as drug abuse. This was seven years before Grange Hill even dared to tread in the same area. You could say the Talons of Weng-Chiang did this, but hardly on the same scale.
Refreshingly enough, this story hasn't got all that much humour in it (okay, okay, except the "Oh my Everything" scene). But really, it's only in there as much as say, the Robots of Death. I don't mind that at all.
Nightmare of Eden is a complex story, with multiple things going on - the ship crash, the drugs, the Mandril's and the Stott arcs all to keep track of. Whilst that sounds great, I think that it does mean that the story is diluted to give attention to each aspect. It would work great in a novel, because you just make the novel bigger, but in a TV show when you're restricted on time, it means that the story becomes wide and shallow as opposed to narrow and deep.
Ultimately, that's how I'd describe Nightmare of Eden, wide an shallow. Good ideas are there, but drown ironically in a lot of corridor chasing and messing around with blurred corridors. The pacing is slow and by episode 3, I'd got a little bored of it all. I didn't really care about Stott at all, although again, it's nice to see Doctor Who taking an adult approach by inferring that him and Della were lovers.
Carnival of Monsters which is a similar problem is much more dynamic because it thrusts the Doctor and Jo into the machine, forcing them to confront and deal with the monsters. This story doesn't do that and so you don't get the buy in as much from the audience. Yes, the Mandrills slaughter a load of passengers, but as Rigg says, they're only economy class. To us, they don't even have names, so why should we care?
This was a decent attempt at a serious issue, but the slow pacing and limited budget on the Mandrils just bring this down a little and make it somewhat of a chore to watch. There have been similar stories that have gone before, and they were better told. Big shame.
Rating
6 out of 10
Rewatchability Factor
4 out of 10
Watch this if you liked...
- Terror of the Vervoids (Trial of a Time lord Part 3)
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