The Doctors Are In by Graeme Burk

Author:Graeme Burk
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: PER010030
ISBN: 9781770907829
Publisher: ECW Press
Published: 2015-09-30T16:00:00+00:00

THE INDEX FILE

The Sixth Doctor

The Twin Dilemma (1984)

Written by Anthony Steven

Directed by Peter Moffatt

The Big Idea Twin mathematical geniuses have been kidnapped by the slug-like Mestor, who plans to destroy a solar system. Only the Doctor can stop him … but the Doctor’s regeneration has gone horribly wrong.

Unstable? Unstable?! UNSTABLE?!? (RS?) This is, hands-down, the worst Doctor Who story of all time. It’s a train wreck that almost has to be seen to be believed.

Everything that could possibly go wrong does. There’s no budget. The Doctor’s an arrogant jerk. The villain is a slug. The costumes are laughable, not least of which is the Doctor’s. The acting is horrendous. The dialogue is worse. (“That is a direct order from the Minister. And may my bones rot for obeying it.”) The science is nonsensical. The Doctor strangles his companion.

And yet … I maintain that there’s something good to be found in every Doctor Who story. For me, it’s the costume-change scene. I’ve watched that over and over, because it sings with verve. It takes the bitchiness between the two lead characters and shows us that they’re two damaged people who barely know themselves, let alone each other, and now must share a life. And so they’re self-defensive and brittle — but the dialogue shines, in its own way.

Yes, the Doctor chokes Peri, but immediately thereafter he tries to atone for what he’s done. In a telling overreaction, he decides to hide from the universe for a thousand years, without a thought to Peri’s lifespan. He’s at once thoughtlessly arrogant and childishly penitent. It’s in no way pretty, but it is the perfect illustration of a regeneration gone horribly, sadistically wrong.

We’ve put this story in the Index File because it illustrates something very fundamental about the sixth Doctor. If you want to watch a “nice” story with him in it, watch the next one on our list. Hell, watch the previous one in the season. But if you want to see just how far Doctor Who was willing to go, then strap yourself in and watch this one. If you dare.

Second Opinion (GB) The number three story in Doctor Who Magazine’s 2014 poll of the past 50 years of Doctor Who was “The Caves of Androzani.” The worst, at number 244, is “The Twin Dilemma.” These two stories were broadcast one week apart.

It’s a sign of how disastrously bad “The Twin Dilemma” actually is.

As good as Colin Baker is, watching the Doctor in the first two episodes is like watching your best friend turn out to be bipolar. And not the seemingly cool, sexy bipolar (we’ll get to that in a couple of chapters); no, the sixth Doctor here is the scary bipolar friend who suddenly finds himself standing outside on a bridge in the snow wearing nothing but pyjamas and crying, while scaring you half to death.

It would have been so easy to fix this. The script could have more clearly shown the jeopardy of the Doctor being out of his mind.

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