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.
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
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