Doctor Who and the Nightmare of Eden

When the Doctor and Romana answer a ships’ distress call they find that one ship has materialized partway inside another ship.  Whilst investigating this, the Doctor discovers that someone on one of the ships is transporting Vraxoen the most addictive drug in the universe. Posing as an investigator from a defunct insurance company the Doctor sets himself the task of separating the ships, finding the drug dealers and solving the mysterious murders that suddenly started happening. But what does all this have to do with Tryst the owner of the mysterious CET machine?

Some might argue that this story falls into the tail end of Tom Baker’s reign when Tom had really had enough and the stories stopped being good solid sci-fi and started being a little “Weird”, Full Circle, Warriors Gate, anyone?

But the reality is that this is a good story with some punchy dialogue dealing with an adult theme that is only let down but some of the acting, the direction, the overly ambitious script and the production design…oh and the lighting.

First let’s deal with Tryst and his accent.  According to the writer Bob Baker there was no reason for Tryst to have a German accent and it wasn’t in the script. So why Tryst has a German accent is a mystery and why the director allowed him to continue with the accent when everyone heard how bad it was is positively enigmatic. But the fact is that Tryst has an accent that would have been considered insulting during the war. Then we have the monsters.  Not a single child that was alive during the airing of this serial didn’t want to take a Mandrel home and cuddle him all night long, such was the cuteness quotient of these supposedly terrifying creatures. The ships look rubbish and the whole production has a “cheap” feel. Despite all this, we have a really engaging and quotable story that just reached too far.

Audio: Two channels, check.

Video: How much you like badly done CSO (blue screen) will probably dictate how much you like the video quality of many scenes in this serial. Me? Not so much. 

Special Features:

I’m pretty sure that this is the first release we have had since BBC worldwide took over from 2Entertain all I can say is that it’s looking even cheaper, if that were possible. There seems to be no love or care put into the special features here, no stars; only behind the scenes people who were happy just to get the call. Even the fonts on the title cards look cheap. Ok it’s not the most respected story in the Doctor Who archive but if you’re going to give me some special features then try to make them special instead of terrible. These underwhelming features include:

The Nightmare of Television Center: A short that details some of the behinds the scenes shenanigans that went on during the filming of this story.

Going Solo: Writer Bob Baker talks about how proud he was of the script and how short the production fell of his expectations.

The Doctors Strange Love: Two people you’ve never heard of who are far too pleased with themselves talk about the story to another person you’ve never heard of to grating effect.

Ask Aspel: Lalla Ward is asked stuff by Michael Aspel. She answers, I snooze.