Doctor Who:
Nightmare of Eden
By Bob Baker
“Steady, steady. This way.
Not that way! This. Oh! Oh! Oh, my fingers, my arms,
my legs! Ah! My everything! Argh!”
The Doctor and Romana
answer a distress call from the space liner Empress which had gotten itself
locked with another ship the Hecate while in hyperspace. They soon get involved with trying to free
the two ships when The Doctor discovers that someone is smuggling the drug Vraxoin. Vraxoin is a very addictive and
dangerous drug and it is very serious situation that whoever is smuggling it be
stopped.
But things do not go as
planned as the Customs agents from Azurian have boarded and the man in charged
Fisk demands that The Doctor and Romana be searched. They find traces of Vraxoin on The Doctor and
accuse him of being the smuggler. All is
not going well as there is a mysterious person walking around the ship and the
Mandrils have gotten loose from the Eden projection of Tryst’s machine and are
now wreaking havoc. But The Doctor has discovered their secret and has his
hands full solving the mystery out and separating the two ships.
Nightmare of Eden is the
third best story of season 17 by default.
You see season 17 isn’t all that good and well The Creature From the Pit
and The Horns of Nimon are just really bad.
Season 17 could be described as the arm pit of the Tom Baker era as the
stories were just way to silly and just well not good and the science fiction
in them is just plain mediocre.
Nightmare of Eden is just well silly and a tad bit ok to watch.
Nightmare of Eden does
have a good theme and message that does resonate to current events with the
drug smuggling and the dangers of addiction.
So you have to give the production crew props for that. Not often does the writers message in Doctor
Who is that obvious as most of the time it is subtle like with taxes or
politics and stuff like that where the parents mainly understand but the drug
message is pretty clear for all.
Nightmare of Eden starts
off pretty well and what happens all too much this season is that it turns into
a silly farce. Especially in part 3 when
the custom cops come about and start making a mockery out of everything and you
can tell they were added for comic relief.
With all that aside and get past the silliness of the Mandrils also who
don’t really do much and have no rhyme or reason for doing what they are doing
except for being the monster of the week the story is not bad.
The story is actually
pretty decent and is clearly hampered by the silliness and poor direction as Graham
Williams took over director duties and you can tell just by watching that this
was not a happy shoot. Even with all
its problems Nightmare of Eden isn’t all that bad as season 17 has shown us
that there is worse stories than this one.
Grade C
No comments:
Post a Comment