21x7. The Twin Dilemma
Writer: Anthony Steven
Director: Peter Moffatt
Script Editor: Eric Saward
Producer: John Nathan-Turner
Synopsis: A newly regenerated and unstable
Doctor is reunited with his friend Azmael, who labors under the thumb
of the tyrannical Mestor on the planet Jaconda and has kidnapped the
human math prodigies Romulus and Remus as part of a plan to revitalize
Jaconda's future, only to discover that Mestor has more sinister plans
in the works to distribute his species' eggs across the galaxy by
causing Jaconda's star to explode.
Review: I'm pleased to report that I did not actively dislike "The Twin Dilemma," which seems to have a poor reputation among Doctor Who
fans, but I can't say that I was especially impressed with it either.
As the introduction to a new and controversial Doctor, it mostly gets
the job done. It's not always clear (and perhaps isn't meant to be)
when his behavior is attributable to post-regenerative instability and
when he's simply being a more petulant, rude, and bombastic person than
we're used to from previous incarnations - notably, he seems well aware
of his immediate predecessor's fallibility and even somewhat
contemptuous of it. In any case, Colin Baker handles the role ably,
keeping us guessing as to what he's thinking or how he's likely to
react, and he and Nicola Bryant portray his newly problematic
relationship with Peri with considerable hostility but enough of a
sliver of friendship that it doesn't become outright unpleasant to
watch (though it comes close a few times, and I was surprised that Peri
never simply asked to be taken back to Earth). I can't help but think,
however, that the creative team might have earned a little more viewer
sympathy if we'd gotten a better sense of the terror that the Doctor
must feel at realizing that he doesn't have complete control of his own
mind. On the other hand, introspection is a difficult thing to portray
in a character who's supposed to be a hyperintelligent alien, and
perhaps it's understandable that they shy away from it here as they
typically have in other serials.
The serial's plot, meanwhile,
is fairly weak material. For one thing, it's never explained exactly
how Azmael - himself a Time Lord - became so involved in Jaconda's
affairs or how Mestor managed to gain the upper hand over him. There
could have been an interesting parallel to the Doctor's own investment
in Earth's well-being - is Azmael similarly estranged from Gallifrey
and has he ever been sanctioned for it the way the Doctor has? - but
this angle is never explored, and Mestor is just your textbook
blustering villain. And while nitpicking the science on Doctor Who is
probably a fool's errand, the concepts in play here feel especially
half-baked and not entirely consistent with the rest of the series.
Normally I'm intrigued when time travel actually becomes part of the
story rather than just the pretext for the Doctor's involvement,
but the idea that you could maneuver two small planets into Jaconda's
orbit but avoid the negative side effects by displacing them into a
different timestream seems at odds with everything we know about how
time travel on Doctor Who works,
and the idea that the two small planets being sucked into Jaconda's sun
would cause some sort of supernova also seems dubious. This whole
scenario also makes something of a fool of Azmael by suggesting that he
was too distracted by other issues to realize what would actually
happen to the two planets - unless he's undergoing his own
post-regenerative disorientation, a Time Lord shouldn't just "overlook"
something like that.
I can give "The Twin Dilemma" some credit
for being willing to challenge the audience with this abrasive and
unpredictable new Doctor, even risking making him unlikeable at times,
but as a story it's rather mediocre and wouldn't pass muster on its own
without the draw of upending the status quo for the two lead characters.
Rating: **1/2 (out of four)
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