Nightmare of Eden

What should or could have been a promising story was let down by a combination of things. After the okayish Destiny of the Daleks and the brilliant City of Death, I felt let down somewhat by the revelation that the Creature in Of The Pit was actually a good-natured monster - I like monsters to be monsters. And then there was the Nightmare of Eden.

What most let it down was the downright comic way the mandrels were dealt with in part 4, reduced to shaggy dogs following a tin whistle. The humour in the show had by now really reached a ridiculous level, and I felt that sending up the mandrels was really sending up the show itself. The mandrels themselves looked quite cool, I thought. Okay, they had flares but also wonderful green glowing eyes and corrugated shells for mouths, and at least their claws looked quite fierce. The problem was making the audience laugh at what had been up till that point a serious sci-fi show, by demeaning not only the monsters but the Doctor himself. 'My arms my legs, my everything,' indeed! Tom Baker's character had sunk to previously un plummeted depths with the sheer over the topness of his performance in the cet machine and his hamming it up was cringe-inducing. Oh, Doctor! I like a little humour and odd quip, sure, but this pudding was so over -egged it was more egg then pudding. In fact, I once heard that Tom Baker once wanted the cybermen to do Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers type dancing and to use that idea in a show. Is it possible to even imagine anyone taking dr who seriously after that, and I wonder how much of the mandrel's swan song was his idea.

The two customs men, Fisk and Costa, were made a bit more ludicrous than they should have been. Captain Rigg was excellent throughout but after he was shot down like a dog in part 3, crazed on vraxoin, nobody seemed to care about him afterwards. He was a good man who met a thoroughly undeserved end and all Romana felt was relief once he'd been shot. I dunno. Someone should have cared!

The Doctor's famous contempt scene towards Trist at the end didn't work - okay he was a drug dealer but he thought he was a goody, protecting endangered animals and suchlike, and he didn't even shoot anyone! Well, apart from Stott and can anyone blame him for that? I just felt that other foes that the fourth doctor had dealt with were far more deserving of the rough edge of his tongue, and as for his gall in using such (for the doctor) shocking contempt so soon after his clowning around scene, just beggared belief.These two very different aspects of the doctor should not even have been in the same story, let alone the same episode. I know drugs are evil, man, and the doctor is a role model, but still.

So basically, what started out as a very promising story in my opinion fell a little flat. Take out a little contempt, and a great deal of Michael Barrymore-type showing off from the Doctor and do something else with the mandrels and it would all have been better. But it would not have been the Nightmare of Eden.