Are We Nearly There Yet?

I have eight bookcases and four CD racks in my living/dining rooms courtesy of IKEA. Doctor Who encompasses 5 bookcases and is creeping into the others. (That Complete History purchase my wife bought me is beginning to haunt her! And the Blu-Rays have to languish alongside the rest of television.) Two of the CD racks are top to toe Doctor Who and many of the bookcase shelves are taken up with CDs. I have bought every Big Finish Doctor Who-related CD. This includes The Main Range which started it all off: one a month from 1999. 240 releases later…and I’m still going. The Lost Stories were shows written for but unproduced on television; they’re all there too. The criminally undervalued Companion Chronicles – over 80 of those. Novel Adaptations, Stage Plays, Short Trips, Unbound and freebies sit alongside ranges of the Eighth Doctor, Fourth Doctor, Tenth Doctor, War, Third Doctor, First Doctor, Fifth Doctor, more. Then there’s Dalek Empire, Cyberman, Gallifrey, Bernice Summerfield, Jago & Litefoot, Counter-Measures, Charlotte Pollard, Sarah Jane Smith, UNIT, Torchwood, Class and the list goes on. I should say I probably have around 1500 CDs including the Target novels, soundtracks and other BBC output such as Nest Cottage. The question is: have I got enough yet?

When foolish members of the lay public casually ask about DWM, “What do they fill it with?” or even worse, “Is every page about Doctor Who?” I am wont to reply, “We managed to fill this magazine for 16 years with articles exclusively on Doctor Who when Doctor Who wasn’t even on the telly.” Arguably, if the show hadn’t returned in 2005, the magazine would still be alive and kicking, with covers devoted to the next Big Finish release, star interview or Blu Ray release. To be honest, I wistfully yearn for the days when the magazine was filled with articles on the four-act structure of a typical adventure or defining characteristics of a convention-going fan or press round ups from the 1960s. The point is, given the vast history of Doctor Who, there remain tonnes of unexplored avenues of discussion, archiving or insight. I still don’t know a bloody thing about Jackie Lane.

But the pursuit of furthering Doctor Who knowledge doesn’t necessarily equate to purchasing product. With a license fee, one can experience brand new episodes every year on BBC One. Why then do I have so many iterations of The Ark in Space in my house? Seriously, I have the Target book, a DVD, a Special Edition DVD with new documentaries, a Blu Ray edition with 5.1 sound, a script book, a Complete History section, a DWM archive feature, the soundtrack by Dudley Simpson arranged by Heathcliff Blair. I’m toying with the idea of buying the Target novel with the Steven Moffat introduction too. I had the VHS twice as well. And the great insanity of this collectormania is that I don’t even much like The Ark in Space. It’s over-lit and Part Two drags like a body-bag. Thank God I never had the laser disc.

However, with each re-watch or re-exploration of a beloved text, there is always something new to discover. Enjoying the Blu Ray recently, I learned that I needed to cut The Ark in Space some slack. Yes, Hinchcliffe and Holmes would do menacing far better a year later, but here it’s new and strange and in parts, very frightening. I realised that each episode has a problem to solve peculiar to those 25 minutes. Despite the white, white light, I did somehow marvel at those polystyrene designs and appreciate the intention far more than I have ever done before. As Who fans, we can enjoy a programme on its own terms rather than seeing only the joins in the sets. We can also enjoy programmes more than once. And here’s the thing, collecting shows is not just done for the sake of having them, it’s for revisiting and reappraising and witnessing them again with a good polish because we love them. It’s akin to restoring an old painting or buying a deluxe edition Yes album. One can always go back to them, appreciate them and discover more layers and interpretations. Every Doctor Who adventure is the same. I don’t particularly enjoy The Dominators but I imagine one day, I’ll look at it again and find in it something good. I’ve even re-bought Big Finish CDs as super-expensive but cover-lickingly beautiful vinyl editions.

I am quite aware that somehow the Doctor Who collection has become out of control. I have far too many books, more than I can ever read, but I love having them. “I like seeing them on the shelf but I never look at them,” said Tom Baker in 1999. Sometimes, a book can simply ooze grandeur. I only have to pick up a copy of The Also People or Blacklight or The Scales of Injustice to know how brilliant and special they are. I don’t actually need to read them again. The OCD gene is admittedly an itch that needs scratching though. A friend gifted me his copy of Lungbarrow for my 30^th birthday in an excessively kind act for which I’ll be forever grateful. So those gaping holes in the Virgin novels are now those other rare beasts: The Dying Days and So Vile a Sin. Oh, for a charity shop with good stuff in it; those tiny gaps gnaw away at my soul daily! I’d also like a copy of ..ish with the correct number on the sleeve, a couple of Titan script-books I never picked up, and The Second Doctor Handbook. But these purchases would be gluttony indeed for a man with three girls and a loving and lovely, ever-patient wife to support!

As 2019 approaches, it looks like it might be an even bigger year for Bigger Finish and this year was tight enough as it is. Can I bear to say no to a few boxsets? I’m sure I’ll find a way to get my grubby little protuberances on them. It just means I’ll need a new CD rack by February. And eventually a spare wall. (For the record, there are very few Big Finish releases I don’t actively enjoy – miraculous, given the scale of the output - so I’m justifying the expense with an enjoyment:expenditure ratio.) In the meantime, I might actually finish The Also People. 

JH

The Eighth Doctor: The Time War Volume 2

Generally, I have a problem with war stories. Quite often I feel writers treat stories of war as if they are already deeply emotional. They presume we care about the thousands, millions, of casualties and deaths without doing very much to make us care. They end up being as emotionally engaging as a newsreel: sad but distant. Simply saying “Millions will die,” is not enough to make us emote or indeed, increase the jeopardy. Look at The Parting of the Ways: Jack cries, “This is it, ladies and gentlemen, we are at war!” But Russell T Davies doesn’t show us the war on Earth, the continents being destroyed, homes being demolished. He focuses on a small outpost in space, full of people we know and we watch as their world is obliterated around them. It’s a canny move, because really, war is just a word. It’s the people who live through it we should focus on.

That said, it should be fairly easy to understand my disappointment with John Hurt’s War Doctor series. It felt loud and furious but uninvolving and samey. The stakes were high but the people to care about were few and far between. I was - as JNT would have it - surprised and delighted to find the Eighth Doctor Time War series so massively enjoyable. 

The first volume approached the idea of Time War very well indeed, from bootcamp training to worlds ravaged by time itself. It took the words Time and War and properly explored the ideas conceptually and dramatically. The only failing, I thought, was new companion Bliss, who was sketchily drawn, too quickly introduced and averagely performed. It has since come to light that Bliss was only conceived for the one box set but as storylines coalesced and the Time War saga rolled on, it became clear there were more stories to tell. On the evidence of the second volume, this is very true!

Here we have a wartime rebellion story, a fanservice-ing oddball tale, a prison-break drama and a submarine bottle story: all bar the second, traditional wartime staples. All, however, use the Time War twist well, to enlarge the playing field, slightly warp the rules and make these stories unquestionably Doctor Who, although Paul McGann sounds quite at home as Captain Jonah in the boxset’s fourth sojourn. 

The Lords of Terror is perhaps the weakest instalment and that only because it feels overly familiar. This is the entry most like a now-traditional Time War tale. (God, it has its own genre!) There’s the Doctor being appalled by Ollistra and a fleet of Daleks incoming. The story’s twist is sadly made hugely obvious by the title but the narrative is adroitly paced and thrilling. It’s such a shame though that this couldn’t be the story where we connect more strongly with Bliss. Her parents may never have existed thanks to the war, she and the Doctor learn. But it’s greeted with more of an “Ah well, let’s go somewhere else then” attitude rather than a human resonance. They even decide giving her a title like “An Orphan of the Time War” is perhaps the appropriate thing to do right now. Arguably, the scene in question is underwritten by Jonathan Morris but then Rakhee Thakrar does absolutely nothing to give her lines weight, no stiff-upper-lip brave face and Bliss resultantly ends up feeling as distant as those aforementioned newsreels. So she’s an orphan? So what?

Planet of the Ogrons is an instant tonal shift and insanely good fun. In short, an Ogron who believes himself to be the Doctor, dressed in velvet, arrives on Gallifrey in the TARDIS, the Doctor and Bliss meet The Twelve and head off to investigate… and hilarity ensues. Whilst not strictly a comedy, there are laughs aplenty here: the Ogron-Doctor’s uplifting rallying speech to his fellow Ogrons is a moment to treasure. Suddenly, the Doctor and Bliss feel as if they’ve been together forever and the addition of the Twelve and the Doctor-Ogron makes for a positive “gang” feel across the hour. Amidst all the laughs, Bliss - through her Ogron friend - learns more about the Doctor’s philosophy. Julia McKenzie is terrific as the Twelve, her sweet old lady act belying a subdued ferocity beneath. She’s a welcome change of pace from Mark Bonnar’s equally excellent but more manic Eleven. Even the ubiquitous Nick Briggs doesn’t sound like Nick Briggs in this a quite masterful and different turn. Special mention however, must go to Jon Culshaw’s cute Doctor-Ogron. For a series based amidst a devastating war, it’s bizarre that it ends up being this sad, funny, hybrid character who is the one, across the whole boxset, we end up feeling for the most.

In the Garden of Death has a delicious remit: how would the Doctor, Bliss and the Twelve escape from prison if they couldn’t remember who they were. Guy Adams, also author of Planet of the Ogrons, runs with this conceit and their memories remain missing for an enjoyably long time. The Daleks are used as they should be, a distant menace, and the dynamics within the prison inmates are realistic and dramatic. That the Doctor is in solitary means his reassurance is often missing where it ought to be a comfort. The only disappointment (SPOILER ALERT) is that the day is saved simply by tinkering with gadgets and not with some great cleverness more fitting for a couple of Time Lord genii.

Lastly, relative new-boy to Big Finish Timothy X Atack’s Jonah plummets the TARDIS team between the waves of an ocean planet. There is a definite sense of unease across this masterfully written finale. It is perhaps quieter and subtler than one might expect from the last of four tales but it’s no less excellent and still includes phrases like “depth charges.” The idea of Daleks falling through the depths towards a helpless submarine is a terrifying one and perhaps the best, most original use of the pepper pots for some time. The nature of the Twelve’s relationship with the Daleks is for the most part unclear and forms a tense narrative spine throughout the play’s entirety. It’s also a joy to hear Paul McGann enjoying himself so tangibly. Jonah ends this particular boxset with a very high bar for the next one to aspire to.

Overall, there are, perhaps unbelievably, more and more stories to tell of Russell T Davies’s once unimaginable Time War and these smaller skirmishes are proving far more effective than the brasher, harder War Doctor episodes. For a concept that once felt like it had nowhere left to go, the Eight Doctor’s Time War feels positively fresh with new ideas. 

8/10

Addendum: Just a quick word to celebrate the great Jacqueline Pearce who is, as ever, completely unassailable here. She will be truly missed, not just by the Doctor, but by Blake and Avon and all of us unworthy fans. Rest in Peace, Jacks.

JH

Cover Art: The VHS Years

Continuing my exploration of the world of Doctor Who cover art, I reach the VHS years. Honestly, the VHS covers hold the most nostalgia for me, far beyond the hallowed Target book paintings. I was at just the right age to treasure those video releases; they were the all-new Doctor Who episodes to a child of the wilderness years and each new cover was the equivalent of a movie poster, tantalising young eyes in their magnetism. Often, I wouldn’t see them until I unwrapped a birthday or Christmas present. I remember opening The Two Doctors on Christmas Day and thinking how wondrous it looked. Castrovalva was an Easter present (a substitute for eggs!) and Logopolis came along a little while later. (Imagine my confusion.) They were the most beautiful paintings. Here, hesitantly because there are so many I could choose from, are my Top Ten:

10: ROBOT

It seems like a simple painting, perhaps not even a particularly exciting one but it captures the optimism and charm of Robot in that Tom Baker portrait alone. It’s bright and forward-looking and Alister Pearson’s painting is, as ever, so photo-realistic it’s almost unbelievably a painting! His rendition of K1 gleams beautifully and its growth at the end of the story is implied in the cover, rather than spoilered. In its understatedness, the Robot cover is easily one of the finest.

9: THE THREE DOCTORS

I remember finding The Three Doctors in Rochdale’s TESCO. It must have been in the TV charts. I’d never seen it on the numerous occasions I’d be searching for videos in WHSmiths or HMV so it could only have been a new addition to the range. The cover stood out from the shelves: it seemed serious and weighty. To be honest, the painting is far more serious and weighty than the story itself but illustrates clearly the pure iconoclasm of the important adventure. And Omega looks terrifying and powerful in dark red.

8: THE TRIAL OF A TIME LORD

What a shame that this striking piece of art was buried inside the TARDIS tin and produced on cardboard! Alister Pearon’s portraits mirror the grandness of the story. Michael Jayston’s Valeyard points and accusing finger at the viewer, whilst Colin Baker’s Doctor looks scared but valiant. The three villains below represent excitingly the segments of the trial itself and the angry red background, complete with a matrix screen, feels dramatic and exhilarating. This is one of Pearson’s best works but it’s never talked about, probably because it was so well hidden!

7: THE MASQUE OF MANDRAGORA

It’s that man Alister Pearson again: he came up a lot when compiling this list and there were a whole handful of his covers I had to heartbreakingly demote to mere Top 20 status. His Masque cover is dominated by a backlit, eyeless, Pagan face, angry-looking but uncannily emotionless. Below, Tom Baker looks guarded and Hieronymus terrifying. With every Alister Pearson painting the likenesses must be mentioned. Here, there are four crackers. Although he perhaps only sells the period with the costumes - the helix forming the painting’s background - it’s a rich and vivid cover, selling the story far more thoroughly than the later DVD cover and even the Target book. Perhaps it’s only equalled by Pearson’s other attempt for the blue-spine Virgin reprint. Both are striking but then the VHS has that haunting, devastating face…

6: THE TOMB OF THE CYBERMEN

In 1992, The Tomb of the Cybermen burst back into our lives. I had no idea it had been missing but the cover painting sold its importance to this seven-year-old. Black and silver, it didn’t seem like any other 60s cover. The Hartnells and Troughtons were almost always light-grey, as if to reassure the buyer of their black and white archival status. Tomb looked so much more imperative, an urgent Troughton in the foreground, the Cyber-controller arms poised and ready to attack, and best of all, the two of them framed by the enormous tombs, Cybermen waking within. This was a cover that had something of the fable about it, the legend that had been The Tomb of the Cybermen writ large in black and silver.

5: RESURRECTION OF THE DALEKS

Bruno Elettori isn’t a name that has gone down in Doctor Who history but his covers for Resurrection and Dragonfire are so moody and well-lit. Whilst Dragonfire is slightly let down by the bright rays from the dragon’s eyes filling the page, Resurrection suffers no such impediment. The Davison portrait is a shadowy orange, Davros a picture in green. At the bottom, spacecraft explode and zoom away to safety and at the top, the Daleks are coming… This is a cover full, of incident, imaginatively composed and dripping in atmosphere, much like the story itself.

4: THE FIVE DOCTORS

This one had to be there : it was the first VHS I bought, and that on the strength of the cover. Looking at it now, Pertwee seems to be sporting a white afro and Davison has gone grey. Tom’s eyes are too close together and Troughton’s are almost shut. But there’s a grandness to the design that - in much the same way as The Three Doctors – mirrors the story’s importance. There may not be monsters here, but the sight of the five Doctors alone was enough to fuel this child’s imagination. Sometimes the hero, or at least five of them, is all a boy needs!

3: AN UNEARTHLY CHILD

There isn’t much to say about this totemic painting that hasn’t been said before. It is a thing of profound beauty. In one picture, it illustrates the strangeness of Doctor Who, particularly in those very earliest days, and the enigma of William Hartnell. The eponymous Susan is, for once, granted equal status to that of her grandfather and the image of the TARDIS on a barren landscape below them sums up their relationship without the need for words. But if the painting were to have a title, it’s probably be: Wanderers in the Fourth Dimension of Space and Time.

2: PLANET OF THE SPIDERS

At the last minute, the great Andrew Skilleter puts in a most welcome appearance. His illustration of Pertwee here is one of his best. The blue colour scheme is bold and complements the story itself. The composition, Metebelis 3 either side of Pertwee, the Great One below, the blue crystal central is simple and clever. I bought this from Woolworths in Blackpool, holidaying with my parents, and remember the sales assistant having trouble putting the videos in the plastic case – it seemed to take her centuries. But I didn’t care, because if there were ever a cover to thrill the curiosity of a child, it’s Andrew Skilleter’s tantalisingly effusive Planet of the Spiders.

1: THE DEADLY ASSASSIN

Easily one of the best portraits of Tom, unusually scared and desperate sans signature scarf and hat, the image marks out this cover and indeed story as something very different and very special. The skeletal Master creeping in from the left, over Tom’s shoulder, lends the cover an off-kilter nature, but the distant masked gunman in silhouette below grounds it. His weapon is no space ray gun either, it’s an earthly rifle, making the story feel unusually dangerous and realistic. This, coupled with Tom’s haunted expression, make Skilleter’s masterpiece the most unnerving, striking and vital VHS cover of the lot.

Near misses: What a shame for me not to have included any Colin Howard artwork. I loved his Key to Time covers and almost included his purple Androids of Tara. His Sylvester McCoy efforts are equally exciting: Paradise Towers and Survival are action-packed and thrilling. His Frontier in Space looks epic and his Sea Devils perfectly captures the story. Perhaps it’s that Howard’s portraits don’t quite capture the actors as sublimely as Alister Pearson but there were plenty of covers I seriously considered before settling on the Top Ten. His unused Time-Flight would have been a classic too! I’d also like to mention the bizarre illustration for Terminus which I thrilled at when finding in HMV: bright blue and with a smiling Davison, the cover nevertheless felt menacing and fresh. Finally, those aforementioned slate-grey Troughtons with their fabulous likenesses were all considered for the list: The Dominators, The Mind Robber and The War Games, as well as Hartnell’s Dalek Invasion of Earth. They really were utterly fabulous.

JH

Learning to Love: The Twin Dilemma

As a child, I blasphemously preferred The Twin Dilemma to The Caves of Androzani. I know: sacrilege. But it was faster, more colourful, louder and had better monsters – everything a child’s imagination needed. Caves was a bit grey and drab for a seven-year-old. As I grew into adulthood and indeed, fandom, it became apparent that everybody thought The Caves of Androzani was very, very good and The Twin Dilemma was very, very bad, poll toppingly and poll bottomingly good and bad. Since gaining awareness of this common fan consensus, I’ve always felt a little guilty about slipping Twin Dilemma into the DVD player. In fact, I’d avoided doing so in case a childhood favourite ended up looking a bit crap. With fresh eyes, I took to the tale this week and was in fact, very pleasantly surprised.

Of course, The Twin Dilemma is certainly not BAFTA worthy. It’s a cheap, standard, 80s TV sci-fi run-around but for once in 80s Doctor Who, it’s got a half decent plot. To summarise, twin genii are kidnapped from their home, their genius to be used to re-align planets, which will result in the super-heating and hatching of gastropod eggs enabling a new race to devastate the universe. It’s pretty simple but is told in a series of well-paced stages. The only problem from a plotting perspective is that the children’s genius is not used against leading gastropod Mestor at the story’s conclusion. The Doctor - as Troughton would have it – simply “bungs a rock” at the giant mollusc instead. What we (perhaps mercifully) lose in Romulus and Remus action however, we gain in a Colin Baker stand-off, and it’s only right that he be front and centre for this, his debut tour-de-force.

Colin Baker never, ever underperforms. Here, he is brash, bold and bombastic, many times on the verge of a ham haemorrhage, but always utterly charming even when the script is doing its best to make us hate him. After attacking Peri during one of his fits, the Doctor’s memory is affected. When Peri relays to him what he has done, does he apologise? No, he makes it all about him: he must atone, become a hermit and put Peri through a thousand years of mind-numbing boredom. That’s some apology. The Doctor does mention what a wonderful girl Peri is elsewhere in the story, but not when she’s in the room, and his lack of remorse is what is most off-putting about this incarnation. All he had to do was apologise sincerely at the story’s conclusion and I’m sure many of the problems fans have with The Twin Dilemma would have been avoided. Why Peri seems to want to live and let live in those last few seconds is baffling. Above all else, this new Doctor is irritating. His self-indulgent spiel about how old and lacking in fashion sense he is comes across as deeply unattractive. His entrance from the TARDIS on Jaconda, eyes wide shut, hands across his chest and face to the heavens is the behaviour of a pillock. And the less said about his craggy knob the better. It’s a testament to Colin Baker that he makes it through his material unscathed and undoubtedly the Doctor. Nicola Bryant, apart from some pour crying acting at the close of Part Two is terrific throughout. This could have been an almighty TARDIS crew, and Hugo Lang should have hopped aboard too, the better to temper the Doctor’s over-enthusiasm. He and Peri make for a great brother-and-sister team. He’d just have to lose the tinfoil.

Weird bits of dialogue abound throughout the script. “May my bones rot for obeying it,” is a line any actress would have difficulty with but one which Helen Blatch seems to devilishly relish. The Doctor’s firm insistence that he calls regeneration “a renewal” is bizarre but Colin drives on through the line over-earnestly anyway. “Death by embolism” becomes something of a catchphrase in the story’s latter stages and antiquated terms like “hue and cry,” “do not presume upon my patience” and “it’s very disconcerting to have a large void in the middle of one’s mind” are Anthony Steven’s seeming stock-in-trade. Nobody speaks in any way like a person, except Peri and even that’s only some of the time. Perhaps my favourite brief exchange given its bathos is this nugget:

AZMAEL: But Noma, he is a friend. He will save us from Lord Mestor. 

NOMA: The Lord Mestor is our friend. He is our enemy.

It’s almost as if these characters are quite aware that they’re in a cheap, standard, 80s TV sci-fi run-around. However, once one is keyed into the delivery - the very self-dramatisation of these characters - The Twin Dilemma becomes much more fun. We can bask in the stagey performances and glory in the audaciously ham-fisted dialogue. It’s quite something to hear speeches of such operatic nature and even rarer to watch performers tearing into them with misguided abandon. 

The terrific cast sports old dog Maurice Denham, Kevin McNally, Dennis Chinnery and Edwin Richfield. All give their absolute best. Barry Stanton has a small but sinister turn as Noma and Seymour Green’s Chamberlain is deliciously camp. Nobody here is sending up the show. Their tangible dedication allows the story to be at once extremely serious and extremely funny. Barry Stanton’s early delivery of, “I shall contact MESTOR” as if to let the viewer know this might be a name we need to remember is ludicrous. His later curiously high-pitched “Mestor is dead!” is also the choice of someone doing their very best and resultantly sliding out on their arse. Kevin McNally is also playing the odd-choices game too. He delivers loudly and probably intentionally “Does Mestor know this could happen?” but somehow manages to mispronounce Mestor with a hard “or” sound to rhyme with implore. He’s been hearing this name for weeks of rehearsal but decides, what the hell, I’m doing it my way as Peter Moffatt shakes his head and sighs up in his sad gallery. 

Design is certainly prouder than that of Androzani. Whereas Trau Morgus was happy with a plain, purply-pink wash across his office, and General Chellak liked his walls slate grey, on Titan 3 we have the full glam-glitz approach to walling. Mestor’s throne room has beautifully painted, colourful slug trails adorning the place like a red carpet. Azmael’s laboratory is a curious shade of orange and Romulus and Remus’s house looks nothing remotely like a house, even a future house, making their kidnap feel theatrical and unmoving. However, the multiple locations and inability in the script to settle on one planet, means that there’s always something to look at, and it’s usually bright.

Malcolm Clarke’s music is by turns wonderful and dreadful. The fairground fanfare when Peri enters the console room is diabolical in its inappropriateness. The final insane stab of Part One makes it clear that Lang poses no threat whatsoever. That shrill squeak when the Doctor places his cat brooch on the lapel is a wild choice. However, there’s the quite beautiful and strange Jean Michel Garre inspired “twins” refrain, as they play equations together. The music as Azmael dies lifts the scene from a rather lovely one to perhaps Colin Baker’s finest hour. Clarke’s last citing of the Doctor Who theme as Baker smiles at the camera is enough to reassure the viewer that this guy is going to be fine. Even the composer recognises that Baker is the man.

The Twin Dilemma is a dynamic, gaudy and crazed set of episodes. The intention was bold but the decision to go for an ultimately unlikeable Doctor was ill-judged. On the page, that’s what Colin’s Doctor is here: he’s not unpredictable, alien or bad-tempered, he’s simply annoying. It’s a credit to Colin Baker that he salvages the script with every ounce he has and even makes that coat I’ve refrained from mentioning look half-way reasonable. The episodes are terrifically well-paced and energetic, with only one short TARDIS scene feeling like padding. The narrative zips along excitingly and despite innumerable critiques to the contrary there’s much to applaud: Maurice Denham, the involvement of a police force (a massively underutilised idea for Doctor Who), a straight-forward, just challenging enough plotline, two great leading performers, some transcendental music, two sets of soft r's, and the melodramatic, mental dialogue. Watched in the right frame of mind preferably with a pint, dare I say it, The Twin Dilemma is much more fun than Androzani even to these adult eyes (and I do happen to completely love Androzani)! It's certainly much funnier.

Après nous le deluge!

JH