The Twin Dilemma Part One

The one where the new Doctor tries to strangle his companion...

Same season, new Doctor. Same opening titles, new effects (and face!). The Doctor Who titles have regenerated with the title character and we now have Colin Baker's grinning face swathed in a rainbow of swirling colour. It's great to see the four-year-old titles given a bit of a polish, and I do like the logo zapping at the screen, and the new watery ripple effect for the story title and credits.

And for the second (and last) time in Doctor Who history, viewers get a preview of the new Doctor's outfit before the story's even begun, as we see the shoulders of his coat and the flouncy necktie long before he finds his new clothes on screen. Similar happened with the Fourth Doctor, as we could glimpse his scarf in the opening titles of Robot part 1 before it ever appeared on screen proper.

Rather than cut straight to the chase and carry on where the regeneration left off, we're taken to a futuristic sci-fi abode where two identical twin brothers play a cheapo board game. Everything about this set, the costumes and the lighting, screams 'cheap sci-fi', and none of it would look out of place in the regularly cheap-looking The Tomorrow People, The Adventure Game or Galloping Galaxies. But this is 1984, when blockbuster sci-fi was ruling the roost in cinemas.

I accept Doctor Who had no way of competing with the budgets of films such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Blade Runner and Tron, but it doesn't even look like set designer Valerie Warrender tried to make things look solid and expensive. Warrender was better suited to fairytale-like, historical designs (The Androids of Tara and The Creature from the Pit), and had absolutely zero aptitude for science-fiction. It's understandable not having much of a budget, but there's less excuse for a lack of vision or creativity. These sets look cobbled together from any old bits and bobs from other SF and children's TV. There's no thematic vision; there's just tin foil and glue. It's the end of the season, but a "that'll do" approach won't cut it for a Doctor's introductory story.

The same is true, if not more so, of the safe house set later in the episode, a riot of cobbled together control panels, silver foil and randomly draped tulle fabrics.

Gavin (real name Paul) and Andrew Conrad play bratty twins Romulus and Remus. It's always a cheap shot to laugh at the boys' rhotacism at this point in most reviews, but I'm not that cheap. There's plenty else to shoot at. It's great that director Peter Moffatt managed to find real-life identical twins to play these parts (I can well imagine them casting two almost-but-not-quite identical twins!), but while they are not the best actors, they are genuinely trying! Their father Les had been an extra on a number of Doctor Who serials since the 1960s, including this one (he's a Jacondan guard in parts 3-4).

After a spat with their father (Dennis Chinnery must have been desperate for pin money), the twins are left alone in the house to "play maths", but are visited by a mysterious old man dressed like a candle. Again, BAFTA-nominated veteran actor Maurice Denham must have been looking for a quick buck to say yes to this. Creepy Professor Edgeworth ("never heard of you") claims to be calling in on their dad, but actually proceeds to mesmerise and abduct them - every parent's worst nightmare.

Once the twins' abduction is discovered, Professor Sylvest alerts the special incident team of Interplanetary Pursuit (space police, basically), which seems to be based in a mothballed side room in a 1970s hotel. Commander Fabian is not amused when Lieutenant Hugo Lang reports their disappearance, because apparently the twins' remarkable mathematical skills mean they have the potential for unimaginable power that would enable them to "change events on a massive scale". The twins falling into alien hands would appear to be a catastrophic disaster, so why the hell were Romulus and Remus left alone by their father to go gallivanting about town ("Buzz off and enjoy your evening out")? If they're so precious and powerful, why are they not under 24-hour armed guard? Why do they have no form of personal security whatsoever? "This is something I've always feared," says Fabian. Then why has she never done anything about it?!

Anyway, the twins are transported to an XV-773 space freighter believed to have been destroyed months ago, but which is actually under the control of Edgeworth and two bird people. Out of the blue, we're confronted with two feathery Jacondans, Noma and Drak, a kind of avian Laurel and Hardy. Fair do's, Denise Baron's make-up is pretty good, with plenty of feathers and a beakish nose, although I'm not sure why they have little silver horns, and Pat Godfrey's 'space tunics' are disappointingly bog standard (why not something to reflect their birdlike culture?). We don't learn much about Jacondans or Noma and Drak in this episode, but I do hope they're fleshed out in some way and not treated as simple "monsters of the week".

Edgeworth is seen communicating with a creature called Mestor, whose face we see superimposed over Denham's for most of the episode, affording us a teasing glimpse but no clear sight of whoever this crime lord is. When we do finally see Mestor properly, Moffatt directs it with as much flair as a wet firework, introducing him in a long-shot, framed in such a way as to make the viewer wonder whether it's the bloke in a slug costume in the distance speaking, or the frog statue draped in tinsel in the foreground. Once Moffatt's got round to showing us Mestor more closely, I kind of wish it was the frog statue talking. It's a very poor monster costume, unconvincing in every way and a perfect demonstration of why people began to see Doctor Who as a laughing stock by the mid-1980s. Lessons had not been learned from the little flappy hands of the Tractators earlier in the season: Mestor has these too, as well as ridiculously fake deely-bopper antennae and a huge cross-eyed face. It's embarrassing.

And to think that the man inside that rubber suit is none other than Edwin Richfield, an actor who gave such a memorable guest turn as Captain Hart in The Sea Devils, and appeared in countless character roles throughout the 1960s and 70s. Richfield was 63 when he agreed to play Mestor, and maybe in this case he really did do it for the money, because his CV shows he'd barely worked in television for the previous six years. He had worked on stage however (principally with the RSC in New York), and he also ran a business on the side manufacturing portable cabins (I'm not making this up), but even so: is this what Richfield's career had come to?

Now that all the Sylvest stuff is out of the way, let's concentrate on the new Doctor. Colin Baker makes a strident first impression, his Doctor seemingly full of energy, but also very full of himself. He's much more self-regarding than his predecessor, admiring his new body effusively, to the extent that he starts stamping on the fading memory of his fifth self. "I was never happy with that one," he moans, going on to label Peter Davison's Doctor as feckless and effete. It's one thing a new Doctor cocking a snook at his predecessor, but quite another for him to trample all over his good memory, particularly when there's almost eight million people watching who rather liked Peter Davison. Rather like the hurry to replace Davison's name with Baker's at the end of The Caves of Androzani, this character assassination feels a little too pointed, and unnecessary. No new Doctor is going to enchant new viewers, upset by the loss of "their Doctor", by slagging off the old one.

I'm not warming to this guy. And my introduction to the Sixth Doctor continues to disappoint when he strides into the wardrobe room to choose his new clothes. Before he's even lifted a sleeve, he descends into a maelstrom of madness, collapsing into a coat-rack ranting about change, boredom and the "grinding engines of the universe", culminating in a disturbingly maniacal laugh straight out of the corridors of a psychiatric hospital. No. No, this is not Doctor Who, not my Doctor Who, and certainly not my Doctor. This guy is nuts. Did nobody advise Baker to rein it in, just a little?

He then chooses an outfit that is as outrageous as it is dreadful, a multi-coloured, multi-patterned patchwork monstrosity that looks like a Sea Devil's thrown up on him. Then there's the staggeringly awful yellow striped trousers, and the clown-like blue spotty necktie. I'm sorry Colin, but adding a cute little cat badge to the lapel isn't going to help at all.

Costume designer Pat Godfrey's original instruction from producer John Nathan-Turner was to make the outfit as "tasteless" as possible, but after numerous attempts that weren't deemed tasteless enough, she came up with this utter horror in an attempt to demonstrate an extreme. Instead of being appalled, as any right-minded member of society would be, JNT approved it, and that was basically the beginning of the end for the Sixth Doctor. Who on earth is going to take seriously a hero who runs around the universe dressed like Coco the Clown? And more importantly, who on earth is going to take Colin Baker seriously as an actor dressed like an explosion in a paint factory? In a few years, the Doctor had gone from a floppy-hatted, long-scarfed bohemian eccentric to an intergalactic laughing stock. Colin Baker's era was doomed from the moment he put that coat on.

"You can't go out dressed like that," says Peri. "You look dreadful." Quite.

As the episode wears on it becomes quite clear that what's happened to the Doctor has not been thought through properly, certainly not as consciously as Christopher H Bidmead did in Castrovalva. At no point does Peri thank the Doctor for saving her life with the last of the bat's milk, and instead seems to be more bothered about the Doctor's muddy jacket than the fact he's changed his entire face and personality. There are a few dismissive explanations about regeneration from the Doctor, but on the whole, Peri just accepts what's happened. She laments the loss of the Fifth Doctor, but isn't enquiring enough to wonder how and why this has happened. Long gone are the days when Ben and Polly spent an entire story distrusting the new guy. Now that the viewers understand what regeneration is, the production team doesn't want to spend too much time dealing with it on a character level.

And then something remarkable and profoundly shocking happens. Colin Baker's performance so far has been exuberantly over-the-top, larger than life, but pretty much in keeping with the excessive tone of the episode. But for some reason, the writer Anthony Steven and script editor Eric Saward think showing a darker side to this Doctor might be a new and innovative thing to do, and so we see the Sixth Doctor flip from an eccentric egotist to a leering, overbearing bully. Triggered by the origin of Peri's name, he likens her to an evil fairy from Persian mythology. "And that's what you are," growls the Doctor in a terrified Peri's face. "Thoroughly evil."

Then, the Doctor tries to strangle Peri to death. He grabs her by the throat and drags her around the room, thrusting her onto the TARDIS console, then pushing her to the floor before forcibly squeezing the life out of her. This is the Doctor, our hero, looked up to by millions of children across the country, and trusted by parents to take their kids on a trip of a lifetime through time and space from the comfort of their living room for 25 minutes every week. But now here he is, trying to murder his friend with his bare hands.

This is not the Doctor Who I signed up for.

The Doctor is thankfully scared off by glimpsing his reflection in a mirror, and he subsequently becomes very remorseful and wishes to atone for his sin by becoming a hermit and contemplating his misdeeds in isolation. "Regenerate, yet unregenerate," he mutters, appalled at his own misbehaviour. But no amount of sorry can make up for what he's done, not for me anyway. Peri may well be able to brush off his murderous attempt as merely a "manic moment of no consequence", but when it comes down to it, this is the guy she's travelling the universe with. Alone. She should be absolutely terrified to be anywhere near this guy. He's capable of strangling an innocent young girl, something I could never believe the Doctor in any other incarnation is capable of. "I have an in-built resistance to any form of violence, except in self-defence," he claims. "No, you don't," says Peri.

And that seals it. No matter how sorry the Sixth Doctor is, no matter how messed up by a rocky regeneration he remains, and no matter that he never tries to kill his companion again, I have seen what this Doctor is capable of. In his very first episode, the Sixth Doctor has crossed a line I never knew existed, or would need to exist. This is not post-regenerative trauma, this is a fundamentally misjudged move on the part of the production team which mutates and injures the basic character of the Doctor. No Doctor of mine is capable of cold-blooded murder.

And aside from all that, this Doctor's really quite annoying, flinging himself about like a poor Shakespearean actor, and generally being a bit of an arse towards Peri, who's just trying to keep up. His treatment of her (the attempted homicide aside) is generally condescending and dismissive, the behaviour of a raging egotist and emotional bully. The relationship between the Doctor and his companion has become unsettlingly abusive, and no fun to watch.

At the end of the episode the TARDIS lands on Titan 3 and they come across the burning wreckage of Hugo Lang's pursuit ship (which looks very impressive, I have to say). They find the unconscious Lang and take him back to the TARDIS, dumping him unceremoniously on the cold hard floor to recuperate. Are there no conveniently-present-for-this-week-only beds or chairs about the place? Coming round, Lang points his gun at the Doctor, accusing him of causing the spaceship to crash and destroying his entire command.

"Murderer!" he says, astutely. "Now I'm going to kill you!" Oh please do it, Hugo! Maybe then he'll regenerate and we'll get a proper Doctor.

First broadcast: March 22nd, 1984

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: I like the feathery make-up for the Jacondans, and the modelwork is good.
The Bad: That strangulation attempt. Unforgivable.
Overall score for episode: ★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

Word repetition: 1 - The Sixth Doctor had a tendency to repeat certain words as a trio of indignations (maybe subliminally influenced by Peri's "three I's in one sentence"?). His very first instance comes in his very first episode when Peri is describing his predecessor. "Sweet? Sweet! Sweet?"

NEXT TIME: Part Two...

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

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