Started 9-Feb
Oh well I suppose we have to because we've come this far.
Easily the worst DW serial to date and likely the worst ever.
Nothing works here.
What is the entertainment value of this? The story is shit, the sci-fi is pathetic (zanium, the rejuvenator, the Mestor plan, 'equations', the healing ray), the characters are unsatisfying, the effects are cheap and boring. It's not funny or scary or compelling.
Costumes - fail. In fact Series 21 has had a string of bad monster costumes Myrka, Malus, Tractators, Magma Beast, Mestor (and his fellow grubs). These all have bad design and poor/rushed execution in their makeup. Something's badly wrong in the monster kitchen....The design is gaudy and struggling to keep up with
Also bad costuming for the Jocondan 'guards' (Noma, Drak, Chamberlain etc) The use of 'blackface' gets some kind of weird pass and the use of feathers...yes, feathers... for hair, eyebrows, moustaches, beards is an extraordinary artless fail. Imaginative and inventive, technically.. well they don't fall off... all well and good. But they look silly.
Acting - Helen Blatch, Dennis Chinnery have small roles with badly delivered awful lines.Edwin Richfield is embarrassed by a poor costume and terrible voice modulation (and crappy plot, script and dialogue). Maurice Denham tries valiantly to make something of his part, Kevin McNally (yes really) fails to make an impact (his dialogue is particularly crap). As for the Twins...
Script - plot is some banal kidnapping cliche that morphs into Jocondan court "intrigue" with a twist of sabotage a solar system to prompt reproduction of the evil monster's 'eggs'. (Even if this comes off where are all teh baby grubs gonna live? In interplanetary space? Wha?) Add a dash of Mestor wants to 'mate' with Peri (same plot spew twist occurs in Timelash IIRC) and whatever Hugo is up to and whatever you have is a mess of tame potboiler.
What exactly happens in the end of p2. The Doctor seems to magically reuse a ladies' wristwatch and a 'rejuvenation' chamber to make a time travelling teleport to escape a time-bomb rap. Apart from the plot issues (why can;t he disarm the bomb, defeat the count-down, escape the same building he just broke into so easily...) how does this equipment allow such an outlandish outcome? If the Doctor has such 'magic' at his disposal why doesn't he use it when... well insert any plot point of the previous 21 series?
And can anyone please explain Peri's reaction to the explosion? I mean give it all you've got (love) but it's not exactly believable given Doctor Hoon has spent 2 eps abusing everything you say and do....
Dialogue - is terrible. Actors visibly struggle to deliver their lines with any credibility. Also the lines frequently do not match the characters' intentions of the previous scene.
Characters - The Doctor has supposedly 'mad' moments which 'pass' without comment or reaction from surrounding characters. The new persona of the Doctor lacks credibility, likeability, audience confidence.
Nicola Bryant as Peri is served a horrible costume and some woeful lines and terrible writing.
Sets and Lighting are recycled, flat, cheap looking. The tin foil covering of old consoles is alarmingly obvious. The plinth vase things from Planet of Fire reappear in Mestor's throne room. The lighting is 'gameshow'.
The scriptwriter Anthony Steven was reknowned for *adaption* work and rarely wrote original drama. Eric Saward's claims that he rewrote this script heavily tell us a) that's right and b) Eric can't write either.
Director Peter Moffatt has obviously given this the kind of effort that anyone else has put in i.e next to none.
Colin Baker gets a panning from many fans for this. Actually I don't think he's particularly bad or hopeless. His role is badly served by poor production choices certainly but he says the lines and doesn't bump into the furniture. He doesn't give a sparkling performance but it's adequate.
How did this happen? Apparently the studio time ran out and an extra
session was booked for 14-2-1984 some 5 weeks before transmission. This
is not new for DW and is no excuse.
Producer John Nathan Turner is at fault the most here. He has made some abominable decisions that lead to this. The way Colin Baker was cast as the Doctor is bordering on unprofessional. The decision to make Twin Dilemma as Colin's debut and to do it as last of series 21 (previous season enders are usually scraping the barrel for budget money and time) were both really bad ideas.
But here's most egregious thing. This is so bad that you have wonder whether the efforts put in, however poor the result, are in fact sincere. Is this people's best effort?
With JNT and Eric Saward I don't think I can conclude they're making a good enough effort. The history of cancellation coming within the next year of this production is probably not solely the fault of BBC upper management.
As of Feb 1984, the DW production office is staffed by people who don't give their best.
That is a first.
ABM Rating 0.1/4.00
LJM Rating 0.7/5.00
SPJ Rating 0.38/10
No. 136 (out of 136)
Link to Cumulative Rankings
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https://www.radiotimes.com/news/2012-04-10/the-twin-dilemma/
The Twin Dilemma
An abysmal debut for sixth Doctor Colin Baker – what went wrong?
By Patrick Mulkern
“I am the Doctor – whether you like it… or not!” – the Doctor
Picture the scene: BBC Television Centre, 15 February 1984, and there was I, walking round Studio Three, inspecting the sets of The Twin Dilemma, about to enjoy the recording of a television classic…
Only I don’t mean Colin Baker’s almost unspeakably dire debut story. In fact I had tickets to the BBC1 sitcom The Young Ones in a neighbouring studio. It was the hilarious Bambi episode, better known as the University Challenge one, featuring a then virtually unknown Emma Thompson, Ben Elton, Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry. Sorry, Doctor Who. For once – no contest!
In any case, at the behest of producer John Nathan-Turner, the viewing galleries were locked throughout both of The Twin Dilemma’s three-day sessions, presumably to stop secrets leaking out about this key story – one I’m sure JN-T once cited as his own personal favourite.
I don’t recall him ever justifying this peculiar preference, but 25 years later fans’ own taste and judgment consigned The Twin Dilemma to the very bottom of Doctor Who Magazine’s Mighty 200, a survey of every transmitted story. How ironic that it should directly follow The Caves of Androzani, the “all-time best”. Pinnacle to drivel in one almighty nosedive.
Is The Twin Dilemma “the worst ever”? I’m unsure; there are other strong contenders from the 1980s. But it does pull off the trick of being both staggeringly dull and staggeringly gaudy.
Anthony Steven’s leaden script is plonked in the lap of lackadaisical director Peter Moffatt. The plot, such as it is, barely supports two episodes, let alone four, each limping towards abysmal cliffhanger close-ups that show Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant in the worst light. It’s shot without flair in starkly lit studios and in not one but two quarries. The titular twins are reputedly brilliant but are dull-eyed lemons with pudding-basin haircuts; they speak with soft Rs – hence “Womulus” and “Wemus”.
We’re told that bad guy Mestor is a giant slug – lest we conclude that the rigid costume is a turd with antennae. It’s pitiful to realise that Edwin Richfield (Captain Hart in The Sea Devils) is buried somewhere beneath all that rubber. Much toil has gone into the make-up-and-feathers job on the crow-like Jocondans but that doesn’t stop them looking daft. If there’s any saving grace, it’s guest actors Kevin McNally and Maurice Denham who invest their underwritten parts with a degree of dignity.
The crucial failing, however, is the rubbish hand The Twin Dilemma deals Colin Baker for his introductory story. And here begins a tragedy really. Not just for Doctor Who fans and the series itself, but for its enthusiastic new star.
Baker has charisma in spades, screen presence delivered by JCB. As anyone can testify who saw him energise The Brothers (BBC1’s 1970s haulage drama), or an episode of Blake’s 7, even the dismal Peter Davison serial Arc of Infinity, Baker is incapable of an uninteresting performance. Strident, bombastic, often sneering but with beautiful diction, he commands a scene. He has a tendency to do too much for some tastes, and what he certainly didn’t need in Doctor Who was his volume dial turned up beyond endurance.
One episode of post-regeneration instability is manageable, but JN-T and script editor Eric Saward seem determined to challenge viewers with the most unlikeable Doctor on record. Having such an obnoxious figure in the Tardis, belittling, even assaulting his companion, makes for alienating television. There are chinks of light, but the antagonism between the Doctor and Peri would become a default setting. Why travel together? Why watch?
Indelibly, we have the sixth Doctor’s new clothes. Costume designer Pat Godfrey was asked to produce increasingly garish concepts before arriving at a putrid patchwork of fabric off-cuts, which JN-T gleefully trumpeted as “totally tasteless”. How is that a good thing? The sixth Doctor looks like Harpo Marx playing a circus clown, an eyesore that’s impossible to take seriously. Davison put his finger right on it when he later told DWM, “John managed to turn the Doctor into his own image.”
JN-T’s end-of-the-pier tastes are rammed home by the revamped title/credit sequence, cheapened by hideous kaleidoscopic lights, rather like the Blackpool Illuminations after too many beers. Even the neon Doctor Who logo is a blur.
If The Twin Dilemma is individually a disaster, it also establishes the opening titles, the Doctor’s clothes, his behaviour and sniping banter with Peri – all part of an unpleasant shift in tone that would permeate and eventually poleaxe the era. How did Nathan-Turner and Saward think that this approach might be in any way acceptable?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/classic/episodeguide/twindilemma/detail.shtml
Bottom Line - from The Discontinuity Guide
The plot, if scientifically stupid, is actually rather good. The trouble is, there's not enough of it for two episodes, never mind four, and the slack's taken up with endless dull talking scenes. All this and farting music. Still, there are some very good performances in here, and it's a pity Hugo didn't get kept on.
Analysis - from Doctor Who, the Television Companion
The era of the sixth Doctor gets off to a truly dreadful start with a story that is at times almost painful to watch. One of the most disappointing things about it is the depiction of the new Doctor himself. Perhaps the best that can be said about this is that the idea of making him dangerously unstable was a brave attempt at a different approach. Sadly however his bizarre behaviour and outrageous mood-swings seem forced and artificial, and succeed only in alienating the viewer. The worst moment of all comes in the first episode where, in a violent fit, he tries to strangle Peri before eventually managing to compose himself. One can imagine viewers switching off in droves at this point, having become completely disillusioned with the series.
Surprisingly, however, most contemporary fan reaction to Colin Baker's debut was cautiously optimistic. Simon Cheshire, for example, suggested in TARDIS Volume 9 Number 1 in 1984 that he was just about the only thing worth watching in the story: 'The sixth Doctor looks like turning out very well indeed - he has traces of his predecessors, yet he's sufficiently different to be an interesting and enjoyable character in his own right. If his neat blend of arrogant flippancy continues then I'm sure he'll be a firm favourite in years to come. Indeed his scenes with Peri were the only ones which really worked in this ropey escapade. The whole thing was just coloured-in Flash Gordon.'
Tim Munro, writing in the same magazine, had rather more mixed views: 'I find it difficult to judge [Colin Baker] after so little a time, but what I've seen of him I've mostly liked. His arrogance and total self-obsession [are] very nice, and his attitude to Peri in the first episode was magnificent. On the other hand I don't like the move to a totally alien Doctor - a Doctor who does not comprehend compassion and who retains his alien values might as well go home and be President.'
A major problem with the sixth Doctor is the horrendous costume that he is required to wear. Continuing John Nathan-Turner's policy of giving his Doctors highly stylised, uniform-like outfits, this one was designed according to his remit to be 'totally tasteless'. Quite apart from making the series' lead character look a complete joke, it has the unfortunate effect in storytelling terms of precluding any possibility of him entering unobtrusively into a situation or being anything other than the centre of attention. A still further drawback is that it encourages, indeed almost requires, the series' designers to make all other aspects of the production look equally bright and gaudy, simply to compete.
It would have been no good the costume designers giving Peri subtly hued outfits to wear, for example, as she would have simply faded into the background. So in The Twin Dilemma we have her sporting a blouse that appears to have been made out of deckchair material; and similarly Hugo Lang, who spends quite a bit of his time with the two regulars, acquires a jacket that seems to consist of sections of garishly coloured tinfoil.
Anthony Steven's scripts for The Twin Dilemma, apparently heavily rewritten by Eric Saward, leave much to be desired. Ian Clarke, also reviewing the story in TARDIS Volume 9 Number 1, highlighted some of their deficiencies: 'The general theme of a power to change matter by mathematics being misused and thus resulting in a threat to the universe is hardly original... Season twenty-one has contained some excellent dialogue, but not, I'm afraid, [in] this tale. It just seemed so full of clichés. I was most irritated by the scene in [Part Two] where Hugo, given the whole TARDIS to search for a small section of his gun, not only goes into the wardrobe but finds the precise piece of clothing in which it is hidden!'
It doesn't help matters, either, that Peter Moffatt's direction on this occasion is flat and uninteresting, and the whole production has a rather tacky, B-movie feel to it. The gastropods must be one of the series' most uninspired creations, as Andrew Martin observed in Shada 18, dated July 1984: 'Mestor, played by... Edwin Richfield, was a run-of-the-mill Doctor Who baddie, all threats, gurgling voice and hand-jiving... The gastropods were a nice idea wasted. I've always advocated slugs as monsters in Doctor Who as I'm petrified of the damn things. But... wasn't there a case for making the monsters in this story a little less like ultra-cheap Tractators?'
On the plus side, though, the bird-like Jocondans are quite effective, due in large part to Denise Baron's excellent make-up design. 'It would have been so easy to do them as boring humanoids,' noted Munro, 'but thankfully the make-up people rose to the challenge.' The performances are equally varied, ranging from the praiseworthy - Maurice Denham as Azmael and Seymour Green as the Jocondan Chamberlain - to the lamentable - Gavin and Andrew Conrad as the twins and, jaw-droppingly atrocious, Helen Blatch as Fabian. Gary Russell, writing in Zygon Issue 1, dated August 1984, tried hard to look on the bright side:
'The bit where the Doctor challenges Mestor, then throws the bottle and fails to have any effect, is a great scene, followed shortly after by Azmael's death throes, where the Doctor [allows] the very humanity that he claimed not [to] possess [to] show through beautifully.
'The last episode... is actually the best of the four..., showing the Doctor finally waking up to the fact that he has changed and his new life is worth living. Thus he fights to save Peri, the twins, Joconda and even [the] to an extent... rather clichéd character of Hugo Lang (a very Boys' Own Paper name if ever there was one).
'Trying to find any other good points in this story is rather difficult. The leads made it worth watching [and] the costumes and make-up for the Jocondans were splendid, but let down by the characterisations - a shame that although they looked birdy the opportunity was missed to play them that way, as the Menoptra played insects back in 1965.'
In the end, one can only agree with Russell's conclusion that: 'The Twin Dilemma was, apart from the acting of Baker and Bryant (and she became ropey occasionally), a silly waste of ninety minutes.'
This episode guide is made up of the text of The Discontinuity Guide by Paul Cornell, Martin Day and Keith Topping, and Doctor Who: The Television Companion by David J. Howe and Stephen James Walker.
http://www.shannonsullivan.com/drwho/serials/6s.html
Part of the motivation behind casting Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor was to create as great a contrast with Peter Davison, the outgoing star of Doctor Who, as Davison had made with his own predecessor, Tom Baker. Over the summer of 1983, the primary concern of Doctor Who producer John Nathan-Turner and script editor Eric Saward -- not to mention Baker himself -- was the development of the new Doctor. It was agreed that Baker should adopt many of his own larger-than-life characteristics, diverging from the more subdued demeanour of Davison's Doctor.
It was also felt that Baker should emphasise the notion that, although the Doctor may look human, he is nonetheless an alien, with a different mindset to mankind. The Sixth Doctor would therefore be unpredictable, argumentative and boisterous, sometimes offering a worldview very much at odds with his companion's; he would solve problems with dizzying leaps of logic in the manner of Sherlock Holmes. Baker wanted to make viewers initially suspicious of his Doctor, but gradually earn their trust over the course of his tenure. Nathan-Turner aspired to craft a character similar to the aloof but ultimately reliable Mr Darcy in Jane Austen's 1813 novel Pride And Prejudice. It was also thought that the new Doctor should boast very florid dialogue, incorporating both a plethora of quotations -- both real and fictional -- and a penchant for obscure vernacular. (Baker hoped that the latter trait would encourage children to look up the words for themselves in a dictionary, thereby expanding their own vocabularies.)
It was suggested that these defining mannerisms of the Sixth Doctor should be particularly accentuated in his debut serial, with his regeneration provoking manic and violent mood swings. Again, this was meant to provide a contrast with the Fifth Doctor, whose own introductory story -- Season Nineteen's Castrovalva -- saw him amnesiac, placid and vulnerable. However, it was agreed that this would be a challenging depiction to write, especially since Nathan-Turner and Saward had decided on the unusual move of giving Baker a full serial of his own at the end of Season Twenty-One, before the break in transmission. The portrayal of the Sixth Doctor in this adventure, then, would be the abiding impression in viewers' minds for nine months.
To this end, Nathan-Turner suggested recruiting veteran writer Anthony Steven, with whom he had worked on All Creatures Great And Small. Saward agreed to discuss the matter with Steven, although he and Nathan-Turner had very different impressions of the kind of script that Steven should write. Nathan-Turner wanted a straightforward adventure pitting the Doctor against a strong villain, while Saward felt that the new Doctor's personality would be better showcased in a more unusual storyline. This was just one of an increasing number of points of disagreement between the producer and his script editor, amongst them Saward's unhappiness with Baker's casting in the first place.
Originally a reporter, Steven had been writing for television since the Fifties. Much of his early work had concentrated on adaptations of classic novels such as The Three Musketeers and The Man In The Iron Mask, but Steven had also contributed many original scripts, including episodes of The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie and Dr Finlay's Casebook, in addition to All Creatures Great And Small. Steven was interested in trying his hand at Doctor Who, and on July 19th, submitted a storyline entitled “A Stitch In Time”.
Nathan-Turner and Saward decided to proceed forward with the development of Steven's serial, and on August 2nd he was commissioned for the script to episode one; the title had now been amended to “A Switch In Time”. The remaining installments were contracted on August 24th, by which time the title had changed again, to The Twin Dilemma. The character of Azmael was inserted into the story at the prompting of unofficial fan adviser Ian Levine, who had suggested that the Doctor should meet his old mentor, referred to in The Time Monster and State Of Decay. Unfortunately, Steven misunderstood the nature of the Doctor's relationship with the character, and made Azmael a tutor at the Prydonian Academy instead.
During the autumn, Steven's progress on The Twin Dilemma slowed to a crawl. To the mystification of the production team, he began explaining away his problems with increasingly bizarre excuses -- most famously, a claim that his typewriter had “literally exploded”! To make matters worse, The Twin Dilemma did not meet the approval of its assigned director, Peter Moffat, who had most recently helmed the twentieth-anniversary special The Five Doctors. Moffat implored Saward to intervene, pointing out a number of concerns of both a storytelling and logistical nature. By now, however, Steven had fallen badly ill, and could not continue working on the serial. The Twin Dilemma would be his only contribution to Doctor Who; Steven died in May 1990.
Left with no other choice, Saward took on the task of heavily revising The Twin Dilemma himself. He restructured the climax of the adventure, shifting it from space back to Joconda and beefing up Mestor's role. He also excised the suggestion that Mestor was in fact possessed by an extraterrestrial intelligence called Aslan. The Chamberlain was originally female, while Commander Fabian (apparently an homage to the Fifties crime drama Fabian Of Scotland Yard) was male, and merely a general. Azmael, meanwhile, was a reference to the fallen angel Azazel, while Remus and Romulus Sylvest were named after the legendary founders of Rome.
While the scripts for The Twin Dilemma were slowly hammered into shape, other elements of the new era of Doctor Who were falling into place. Having been contracted for the final five episodes of Season Twenty-One on September 30th, Baker's services for Season Twenty-Two were secured on October 4th. This contract also included an option for three additional years: Nathan-Turner was keen to avoid the brevity of Davison's tenure, while Baker -- long an enthusiastic fan of Doctor Who -- was in fact eager to eclipse Tom Baker's record seven seasons on the show.
The new star and his producer were less like-minded on the topic of the Sixth Doctor's costume. Baker preferred a black velvet outfit, but Nathan-Turner vetoed this on the grounds that it was too similar to the Master's usual dress. Instead, the producer wanted something totally tasteless to replace Davison's understated cricketing garb, and costume designer Pat Godfrey had to go back to the drawing board several times before finally devising something which Nathan-Turner felt was sufficiently garish. Godfrey was instructed to omit the colour blue from his pallet (since this would interfere with special effects shots using the Colour Separation Overlay technique), and was asked to retain the question-mark collars that Nathan-Turner had introduced in 1980. For his part, Baker decided to add a cat badge to the ensemble, which he would often swap out; this was inspired by “The Cat That Walked By Himself”, from Rudyard Kipling's 1902 anthology Just So Stories. Baker was otherwise reluctant to embrace Nathan-Turner's chosen design; indeed, years later, the producer admitted that the costume had been a mistake, and worked against the show.
Disaster nearly struck The Twin Dilemma in December, when a strike by the BBC's scenery shifters crippled Davison's farewell adventure, The Caves Of Androzani. One of the serial's two studio sessions was lost as a result, leaving Nathan-Turner no choice but to reallocate the first studio block for The Twin Dilemma, from January 10th to 12th, 1984, to the Fifth Doctor's swansong. One year earlier, a similar set of circumstances had caused the loss of the Season Twenty finale (eventually made as Resurrection Of The Daleks for Season Twenty-One). Fortunately, this time, Nathan-Turner was able to secure a new studio session for The Twin Dilemma, successfully arguing to his superiors about the importance of the new Doctor's introductory adventure.
Despite the postponement of production on his debut story, Colin Baker and his outlandish new costume were still unveiled to the press on January 10th. Despite Baker's ebullience, this was in fact a tragic time for his family: some weeks earlier, his two-month-old son Jack had fallen victim to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Baker would go on to make the cause of SIDS research and awareness an important part of his life's work.
As production neared on The Twin Dilemma -- now designated Serial 6S -- Moffatt found himself bedeviled with the difficulty of casting identical twin teenaged boys as Remus and Romulus Sylvest. At one point, Moffatt believed that he had located twin girls who would be suitable, but Nathan-Turner was opposed to the change of gender. At the last minute, Moffatt was approached by an agent representing Andrew and Gavin Conrad (the latter going by the stage name “Paul” to avoid confusion with another actor named Gavin Conrad). Moffatt was unimpressed by the boys' acting ability and lack of experience, but reluctantly hired them all the same.
Due to the delay incurred by the industrial action, recording for The Twin Dilemma began with what was originally to have been its second three-day block, from January 24th to 26th in BBC Television Centre Studio 8. The first two days dealt with scenes in the TARDIS and in the Titan Three safe house; also recorded on the 24th was material on “Edgeworth's” spacecraft (during which Colin Baker provided the voice of Jaconda Control), with the ducting set in use on the 25th. The last day of the block tackled more scenes on the spaceship, as well as those in the Sylvest twins' playroom and the ops room.
Two days of location filming were allocated to The Twin Dilemma. On February 7th, Springwell Quarry in Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire posed as the surface of Titan Three, while the next day, exterior scenes on Joconda were shot at Gerrards Cross Gravel Pits in Wapseys Wood, Buckinghamshire. By now, Baker and Nicola Bryant were beginning to warm up to each other after a frosty start to their relationship: Bryant had been nervous about suddenly becoming the senior member of the regular cast, and Baker had mistaken this for standoffishness on her part.
The rescheduled studio session for Serial 6S took place from February 14th to 16th in TC3. Taping took place on the sets for Mestor's throne room and various corridors on all three days, while Azmael's lab was also needed on the 14th and 15th. The TARDIS console room was once again required for the final day of recording, which drew the production of Season Twenty-One to a close.
