The Twin Dilemma review [Anthony Steven]

"I am the Doctor, whether you like it or not."

After sacrificing himself to save his companion, the Doctor begins his most unstable regeneration yet, all the while trying to save the galaxy from being infested with alien eggs.

Where are we?: Jaconda, a once lush planet and home to the bird-like Jacondans, devastated by the awakening of the Gastropods.

When are we?: The year 2300, according to the script, picking up right after The Caves of Androzani and a few days before Attack of the Cybermen.

Who are the bad guys?: The slug-like Gastropods, led by Mestor, who plan to destroy Jaconda's sun using the Sylvest twins' equations in order to scatter Gastropod eggs throughout the universe.

The Doctor's Case: 

• The Doctor makes a few deductive leaps while Lieutenant Lang is unconscious, surmising from his mention of children that a kidnapping for a king's ransom had occurred, but it's nice to see the Doctor being Doctorly.
• Just as the script says, the Doctor loses all of his self-possession after Peri points out the self-destruct mechanism, making him a far more watchable Doctor.
• The model work is all pretty good, but the best effect must go to the demise of Mestor, which was achieved using foam and the empty costume. Peter Moffatt found it gruesome enough that he used as little footage of it as possible.
• Azmael's death is a good showing for the gentler side of the Sixth Doctor, even if Azmael wasn't the most interesting or loveable of characters.

The Valeyard's Case: 

• The first serial of a new Doctor, for better or worse, leaves an aftertaste for the remainder of their run, be it Spearhead from Space (which served as a fresh start for the show and was the first of an excellent series) or Time and the Rani (a pantomime which the Seventh Doctor was somehow able to recover from). No matter how much you love Colin Baker - and nobody does more than I - nobody can say that this was a great start for the Sixth Doctor. Having the Doctor suffer a traumatic regeneration isn't an inherently flawed idea, but in execution it's not done very well. Having the Doctor attack his companion and blame her whilst their both at gunpoint was perhaps too far. His few seconds of horror and confusion at what he's done are the first glimpse of something beneath the bravado, but then instead of apologising to Peri he condemns her to serve as his disciple during his time as a "weary penitent". He twice calls her a stupid girl and is exceedingly rude to both her and Hugo Lang. The greatest misfire is, of course, his costume. The coat is as Peri describes it "yuck". His trousers, waistcoat and cravat (as seen in the photo above) are entirely mismatched. The costume as a whole makes the Sixth Doctor very difficult to take seriously, especially in the darker direction that the show is steering him in. It's without a doubt the most dated of the Doctor's looks, screaming of the '80s.
• The sets are terrible in this story. The room the Sylvests are forced to work in aboard the XV773 is abysmal, with one machine seemingly covered in aluminium foil.
• The Doctor isn't the only one making a poor first impression; in their first scene, Romulus and Remus question that their mother should be deserving of their affections just because she is their mother, calling her a fool and telling their father to buzz off so they can "play equations". Was Anthony Steven trying to make them sound clever? Because they come across as being unlikeable from the off. "Abandoned again", the one sighs.
• The Doctor drooling over himself and his noble brow in his first scene does nothing to endear us to him and doesn't make us sympathetic to his breakdown in the wardrobe a mere seconds later. It's followed by a cut to Romulus and Remus and then, once we've returned, the Doctor is picking out clothes and acting as though nothing has happened. We should have seen his immediate reaction to the fit rather than quickly returning to him being obnoxious and self-absorbed.
• The Doctor's little speech upon landing on Titan III about him being a "weary penitent" and falling to his knees is embarrassing.
• The cliff-hanger from episode one comes out of nowhere - perhaps we should have been given some glimpse of Lang awakening - and is resolved in the laziest manner possible. He simply falls unconscious as quickly as he awoke. The Doctor is prepared to let this policeman die before Peri convinces him otherwise. The cliff-hanger of episode two, with Peri shocked at the Doctor's supposed death, isn't too convincing.
• Lieutenant Lang choosing to change his jacket very convenient, as he just happens to select the hideous jacket that Peri had previously chosen to hide his gun's power pack in.
• Lang keeps waving his gun about and making threats, but he isn't remotely threatening.

The Ugly: The Doctor's coat, the costume Peri changes into, Lieutenant Lang's glitzy monstrosity... Mestor and the other Gastropods aren't the best Doctor Who monsters ever seen, but the Jacondons (particularly the Chamberlain) are done pretty well.

A Good Quotation: "In my time I have been threatened by experts and I don't rate you very highly at all."

A Bad Quotation: 

• "It's the diminutive of my proper name, Perpugilliam."
• "I'm very, very anxious!" Professor Sylvest says regarding his sons' disappearance.

The Music: The jaunty tune when Peri presents her new outfit is atrocious, but generally the soundtrack isn't too bad or distracting.

Anywhere in Time and Space: In 2300 (as the script dates it), the twins play a two-player game involving moving tall pyramids across a backgammon board. They use a blank square keyboard to write their equations (which look like a glitch in an arcade game) on a screen. People are also still wearing large glasses, as modelled by the Sylvests' father. Warp drive is possible and the police use space ships. Gastropods, figures of Jacondon mythology, are somehow known to at least some Earthlings. Azmael has a Revitaliser which the Doctor was able to alter to allow a small degree of time travel.

His Constant Companion: A number of police ships are shot down. A Jacondon is executed by embolism for stealing vegetables for his starving family. Mestor is killed by the Doctor using acid.

I'll Explain Later: 

• Exactly what dilemma is this serial named for? There simply isn't one.
• Why does Mestor call Azmael "Edgeworth" in the first episode? It becomes clear later on that Mestor knows that this is an alias. 
• What can the Sylvests do that 24th century computers can't?
• Surely it would have been more sensible for the Doctor or Peri to keep Lang's power pack on their person rather than going to the trouble of hiding it and risking him finding it upon waking?
• If the Doctor uses the Revitaliser to arrive ten seconds in Peri's future, surely she and Lang should be in the TARDIS. And what does he press in the TARDIS to get him ten seconds in the past?
• Why does Lang call Azmael "Edgeworth"? He could only have heard about him from the Doctor and Peri, neither of whom know his alias. The Doctor himself later calls him by the same name without any way of him knowing of the alias.
• The science about moving the lesser planets into Jaconda's orbit making their atmospheres identical and the gravity causing some disaster is just nonsense. Why? I'll explain later.

The Inquisitor's Judgement: The Twin Dilemma is very often voted one of the worst stories in Doctor Who history. It certainly has very little to be praised and doesn't have the best story, characters or acting, but at least it's no worse than Time and the Rani. This serial does the Sixth Doctor a grave disservice, giving him an infinitesimal amount of good material in this script that does nothing to solidify Colin Baker as the Doctor that we know and love. After watching this story for the first time, I had very little hope for the Sixth Doctor. Thank God for Trial of a Time Lord and, more importantly, Big Finish for saving the unlikeable Doctor we met in The Twin Dilemma. F

Doctor Who (Season 21)

The Caves of Androzani  |  The Twin Dilemma  |  Attack of the Cybermen