Who Review: Nightmare of Eden
An interstellar cruise ship with many passengers on board materializes out of hyperspace to find its shipping lane occupied by a trade ship, causing the two to merge in a kind of dimensional crossover. It appears to be an accident, but the cruise ship’s navigator is clearly under the influence of some kind of narcotic. The TARDIS appears on the cruise ship close to the point of collision, and the Doctor immediately volunteers his services to separate the two craft. However, he is soon distracted from his task by the discovery of Vraxoin, a dangerous and addictive drug, on the ship. This is most likely what affected the navigator, causing the collision with the trade ship. The Doctor is also taken with a strange device brought on board by a couple of passengers: zoologist Tryst and his assistant, Della. The device is a C.E.T., Continual Event Transmuter, which the zoologist is using to store parts of planets in small, crystallized form, ostensibly for the purpose of preserving them. It was on one of these planets, Eden, that they lost one of their team, presumed dead when attacked by monstrous creatures called Mandrels. The Eden project interests the Doctor greatly, but Tryst and Della are reluctant to revisit that location. Nevertheless, both Romana and the Doctor make use of the C.E.T. to visit Eden. And what they discover is the stuff of nightmares…
SPOILER ALERT!! My comments may (and likely will) contain spoilers for those that haven’t seen this serial. If you want to stay spoiler-free, please watch the story before you continue reading!
Bob Baker penned this story, his first solo outing from his regular partnership with Dave Martin, with whom he wrote a number of previous Who stories. This is one of those Who serials where there’s a good premise, and it’s not badly written but it suffers from lack of budget, some bad acting from extras, and, yet again in the Douglas Adams era, too much humor.
The central theme of the story is drugs. We have drug smugglers and drug abuse dealt with quite frankly, which is good, though the dialog can be a little preachy on the subject. The navigator is high on Vraxoin, which leads to the collision with the trading ship. Though it’s not all as it seems, since the pilot of the trading ship is in cahoots with Tryst, the zoologist, to smuggle the substance from “Eden” using the C.E.T. device. The Mandrel monsters from Eden are carriers of the drug, as the Doctor discovers when he accidentally electrocutes one of them, causing it to reduce to dust. In the end, the Doctor catches the bad guys as they are making off with their Vraxoin by containing their ship within the C.E.T., and projecting them back onto the cruise ship. As I said, this could make for a solid Doctor Who story, and if you can ignore a lot of the silliness, the painful acting (like I noted, mostly from the extras–the main cast is very good), the low-budget sets, and the pantomime monsters, it’s actually worthwhile.
But there’s the rub. It’s hard to ignore a lot of the flaws, many of which I’m sure had nothing to do with Bob Baker. And I don’t doubt the budget had a part to play, though the production team have managed better with as much before. Perhaps the most striking effects fail is when K-9 cuts a hole in a metal wall, and the Doctor and Captain Rigg strain to remove the piece of wall. Then a Mandral appears in the gap, and the Doctor swiftly replaces the wall on his own! The model effects suffer for being captured on videotape as opposed to film, and I’m sure the effects people were not happy about that. Film is simply more forgiving than videotape.
What can I say about the Mandrals other than, what exactly were they thinking? They don’t look at all frightening. I’m sure someone has described them as Muppets, and that would be quite an apt description. At the end when the Doctor leads them off the ship and into “Eden,” he does so blowing his dog whistle like the Pied Piper. And then he disappears into the woods, and all we hear are growls, and the Doctor’s moans and shouts, culminating in, “Oh my fingers, my arms, my everything!” This might be funny to some, but to me it’s more pantomime than serious children’s drama.
To sum up, “Nightmare of Eden” has potential, but that potential is overshadowed, and undermined, by the comedy. Add to that some wonky effects, and you have to wonder if anyone was taking the show seriously anymore at this point. Watch it if you want, but I wouldn’t insist on it.
