The Twin Dilemma Part Four

The one where Mestor's devious plan is revealed...

"Why don't you kill her?" Noma asks Mestor of the captive Peri. "I find her pleasing. Pleasing!" replies the giant slug, which is the last thing I expected him to say. Why on earth would a giant Gastropod (or Sectom, as the novelisation has it) find the female human form remotely attractive or appealing? Don't giant slugs fancy giant slugs the most? It's the latest of far too many instances when Peri becomes the focus of an alien threat's devotions, like she's some kind of universal sex symbol, devastatingly attractive to almost every species in the entire cosmos, from Androgum to Zarbi!

And apart from the preposterousness of Mestor finding Peri "appealing" (yuk), there's the fact this plot point is very swiftly dropped almost as soon as it's mentioned. Mestor's soft spot for Peri is never mentioned again, meaning the only reason Mestor doesn't kill Peri is because the writer doesn't want him to. In truth, he would kill her, seeing as that's what he's been threatening all along.

"It's very disconcerting to have a large void in the middle of one's mind!" In the lab, Romulus and Remus insist that Azmael restores their memories (the loss of which hasn't had very much of an impact on their personality or behaviour anyway), although seeing as they were so damn unhappy with their mother and father, perhaps they don't want to remember? Azmael agrees, and does so by removing the little green circles from their wrists. Unfortunately, you can see Maurice Denham unstick the circle from Remus's wrist all too obviously!

The scale and chutzpah of Mestor's plan becomes apparent when the Doctor susses out what's really going on. Mestor doesn't just want two new larders for his eggs to hatch in, he intends the orbits of the two smaller outer planets to decay and crash into the Jacondan sun, resulting in an enormous explosion which will scatter the Gastropod eggs far across the universe, spreading the Sectom seed to countless galaxies and worlds. Fair do's to Mestor, it's a frighteningly clever, audacious plan.

The twins complete their vital calculations, but in order to make sure Mestor doesn't kill them now their use is over, they delete the physical evidence and carry the maths in their minds. This strikes me as a rather pointless exercise as Mestor can simply reach into their minds and fish the calculations out. I don't imagine the Sylvest boys will give up much mental resistance!

The Doctor and Azmael return to Mestor's throne room for the final confrontation, which involves chucking bottles of unidentified chemicals at the Gastropod. This fails because Mestor has a psychic barrier around him, so it's hard to tell what the Doctor's actual, proper plan is to stop the monster. "I've worked out what you're up to and it's got to stop," he warns. "I'm not having your sluggy eggs spread all over the universe, causing havoc. Nor will I allow you to destroy what was once a very beautiful planet... Now will you give up this nonsense?" It's all very naive, all mouth and no (stripy) trousers.

Thankfully, writer Anthony Steven (did he really write most of this, because I feel like script editor Eric Saward should be more responsible) has thought of a way for the Doctor to defeat Mestor quite out of the blue. Suddenly, without prior warning or mention, Mestor expresses his frustration at being trapped within his sluggy body, and wishes to transfer his mind into the Doctor, and use his body too. Mestor demonstrates his ability to do this by placing his mind inside Azmael's, but the elderly Time Lord manages to contain Mestor while the Doctor destroys the Gastropod's physical body, preventing him from returning to it (all that ooze!).

It's embarrassing having to watch poor Maurice Denham mime to the voice of Edwin Richfield inside a rubber monster suit. You can tell Denham isn't comfortable doing this, and certainly has little experience of how to act alien possession, but the old trooper soldiers through it like a pro. In the end, Azmael manages to exorcise Mestor's mind, but the strain has been too much, and the Time Lord collapses, on the point of death himself. Azmael is in his thirteenth and final body, and has no more regenerations to use up. It's a very sweet death scene, with Denham managing to regain some of his self-respect as he gazes up into the eyes of his old friend, recalling "that time by the fountain". Whatever happened that fateful drunken evening between Azmael and the Fourth Doctor is certainly a very important memory for these two. They both remember it so fondly, and you do get the impression something is being left unsaid. This is compounded by the fact the Jacondan Chamberlain tells Mestor that Azmael "often spoke" of the Doctor...

The Doctor has lost a very old, dear friend and mentor, and Colin Baker gets the wistful tone just right. Maybe this is the moment the Sixth Doctor recognises the compassion and selflessness he's been lacking? Er, no. The very next thing he does is find Peri in the tunnels and grab her from behind, his hand clamped over her mouth like he's Jack the Ripper jumping out of the shadows. He does it for no good reason other than to terrify her, and is yet another example of him exercising some form of control over her. It's quite sickening.

It's goodbye to Hugo, who decides to stay behind on Jaconda rather than return to Earth. "I've nothing to go back to Earth for," he confides. "I've no one there." To which the Doctor rudely responds: "That I can believe." What an absolute arsehole.

Hugo's destiny is an interesting one, because surely he'll have to resign from Interplanetary Pursuit before resettling on Jaconda? The Doctor hands him Azmael's ring, a token of power on Jaconda, although surely the Jacondans would have to elect a new leader, as they did Azmael? According to Eric Saward's novelisation, Hugo has ambitions to be a chat show host, so maybe he moves into Jacondan TV rather than politics?

Some other thoughts:

• Mestor plans to place each of the three planets into different time zones, one day ahead of each other but in the same space. Azmael admits to having given Mestor time technology, so does this mean Mestor had access to Azmael's TARDIS? If so, what becomes of it (maybe it's the frog statue in the throne room!).
• The death of Drak is a bit of a shocker. He's standing against the wall in the background an entire 60 seconds before the Doctor speaks to him, but all along it would seem he was dead, his mind burnt out (despite Oliver Smith blinking a couple of times). Mestor was using Drak to monitor conversations in the lab, but disposed of him once his usefulness was over. It's terribly sad, and a rather gruesome aside to proceedings.
• "In my time I've been threatened by experts. I don't rate you very highly at all!" the Doctor tells Mestor. Love that.
• If you think about it, the character of Hugo Lang is utterly pointless. What is he for, what does he actually do?
• The character of Azmael has a life of adventure outside of The Twin Dilemma TV story. Spin-off fiction gives the old devil quite the biography, painting him as Gallifrey's first true renegade. He started out as Chancellor to Lord President Rassilon's successor, Pandad, but became a confidante of Rassilon's, to the extent that he helped him become the first Time Lord mind to be uploaded into the Matrix. Following a civil war between Pandad and Morbius, Azmael lost his job but became a student of Rassilon's secrets, and a tutor at the Prydonian Academy (the Doctor being one of his pupils). When Lord President Helron fabricated false charges against him, Azmael fled Gallifrey, a race called the Seedle Warriors in hot pursuit. Eventually Azmael returned to Gallifrey to face trial, but ended up shooting the High Council with a laser rifle and becoming the first renegade Time Lord. In doing this he became an inspiration to the likes of the Doctor, the Master and the Rani, so he had a lot to answer for!

We close inside the TARDIS, with Peri admonishing the Doctor for being rude to Hugo. The Doctor informs his companion that he has fully stabilised. "You seem to forget, Peri, I am not only from another culture but another planet. I am, in your terms, an alien. I am therefore bound to different values and customs." The Doctor then reprimands Peri for not giving him a chance. "I would suggest that you wait a little before criticising my new persona," he insists. "You may well find it isn't quite as disagreeable as you think. Whatever else happens, I am the Doctor, whether you like it or not."

In my case, that's a not, I'm afraid. Asking Peri not to diss his new persona after everything he has said and done is asking too much. He tried to kill her. He bullies her emotionally and physically. He doesn't seem to like her at all. All Peri has had since the regeneration is abuse, why should she withhold judgement, why give him another chance?

Those little cheeky grins between Baker and Bryant at the end are supposed to convey a connection between the Doctor and Peri, inferring that all the bluster and bother is surface flotsam, and that underneath it all they like each other really. I don't buy this, because the Sixth Doctor is not the man he was, not the Doctor Peri knew. She has every right to decide she doesn't like the new guy (seeing as he tried to kill her and everything).

The Twin Dilemma is not my idea of good Doctor Who, or even passable Doctor Who. It looks cheap and shabby, the performances are all over the place, and the characterisation is the worst I've ever seen. Decisions were made on character and motivation that are fundamentally at odds with what Doctor Who should be about. The Sixth Doctor is not just an alien with alien values, he's a complete and utter bastard, a bully and a boor. I know "Sixie" has a strong fan base, but that is largely nurtured from Baker's renaissance work with Big Finish on audio. As television, the Sixth Doctor era has a long way to go before I can begin to enjoy it, or even see it as the same show.

The Twin Dilemma was voted the least favourite Doctor Who story of all time in Doctor Who Magazine's 2009 survey The Mighty 200, and for the show's 50th anniversary in 2013 the story also came bottom (241st out of 241 stories!). Now that's bad, by everybody's standards.

Season 21 ended on a low, just as it began. Between these two slumps in quality, there was plenty to enjoy, most of all a Fifth Doctor finally being written properly. When it came for his time to leave, it was far too soon, although I cannot imagine what Peter Davison would have done with The Twin Dilemma, or aspects of Season 22.

First broadcast: March 30th, 1984

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: Azmael's death scene is nicely tender.
The Bad: Mestor's sudden desire to swap bodies, enabling Azmael to exorcise him, is deux ex machina writing of the worst order.
Overall score for episode: ★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ (story average: 2.5 out of 10, my second lowest score so far, after Time-Flight)

Word repetition: 3

NEXT TIME: Attack of the Cybermen...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Part One; Part Two; Part Three

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site.

The Twin Dilemma is available on BBC DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Twin-Dilemma-DVD/dp/B002ATVDEQ