Nightmare of Eden

God help me, and please don't run in the other direction when I tell you this, I'm the world's biggest fan of Nightmare of Eden. Unabashedly, unapologetically so. It's my favorite Doctor Who story, and when I say that to people who know me, even the ones who have known this fact for a long time, they usually turn their noses and scoff and shake their heads. How on earth could I love such a story that features monsters with flairs? One with such a hammy acting job with a terrible accent? Or, here's the big one, a story that features the immortal line, "Oh, my arms, my legs, my everything!"

It's rather difficult to explain, until you look at the facts. Nightmare of Eden is a quintessential science fiction story -- high concept (the CET machine), a morality play (the dangers of drug abuse), set in familiar trappings (in this case, on a space cruise liner), with plenty of action and adventure and subterfuge, not to mention comedy and drama in equal measures. There is some wonderful work by Tom Baker and Lalla Ward here, perhaps some of the best work they ever offered in Doctor Who. Case in point: the Doctor's justification to Captain Rigg (the delightful David Daker), in which he argues that he does indeed work for Galactic Salvage and Casualty despite their going out of business many years before -- "I wondered why I hadn't been paid." Compare that to the wonderful sequence at the end where the Doctor tells Tryst (Lewis Fiander, and yes, I agree his accent's more than a bit over the top) to get out of his sight; you can tell how truly pissed off the Doctor is at that moment, how sad and angry and bitter and furious and despondent the whole thing has made him feel. Lalla Ward equally exercises her acting chops with some terrific one liners -- I absolutely adore the "I'll need a screwdriver" line... contrary to some opinions that it's simply bad writing, I feel it's a tremendous send-up of Doctor Who writers who so often used the deus ex machina (the sonic screwdriver, K-9, the Time Lords) to get our heroes out of trouble. But far more often, Romana looks like she feels equally interested and bored, sometimes at the same time. "Oh, don't mind him, he just likes to irritate people"; has there ever been a more fundamentally truthful word out of the mouth of a Doctor Who companion? I think not.

The plot, if you haven't ever seen the story (in which case, you're really missing a treat) is quite complex for a Doctor Who story: a luxury cruise liner is sidelined when it collides with a cargo vessel. While the Doctor and Romana help to separate the ships, the Doctor uncovers a sinister link between a possible drug smuggling ring and a brilliant professor's newest project: the Continuous Event Transmuter, a device that studies and catalogues alien life by storing hologrammatic images on crystal recordings. However, it appears that the C.E.T. does far more than that, and may be responsible when hideous monsters start attacking the passengers and crew. Can the Doctor and Romana stop the bloodshed, find the man who keeps peering out at them from the projection, and stop the drug trade all at the same time? It's a lovely story about morality -- not only the dangers of drug addiction but also the rights of life, however savage and misunderstood, to continue its own existence. Even if they evolve into hideous bug-eyed beasts with flairs. Oh, my arms, my legs, my trousers...

Sure, there are lots of corridors -- all of them yellow. Yes, the passengers of the Empress seem to be wearing coveralls and goggles for no apparent reason, and all seem to be confined to one cramped room. (Maybe they're steerage, and the first class passengers are all having a brandy? Who knows?) Yes, it does seem that the Doctor embarks on his mission to separate the ships... four... different... times. It ultimately doesn't matter, because if you can get past some of the more dodgy aspects of its production (and let's face it, if you care about cheap yellow corridors, what the hell are you doing being a Doctor Who fan?), you can see this story for what it is: high adventure, filled with twists and turns. Even after you think you've got everything sorted, along comes this guy looking out at you through the C.E.T. projection. And we think he's bad, until we find out he's not. And his girlfriend's aboard. And... well, the bad guys turn out to be the good guys, and the good guy we like at the beginning isn't so good anymore. What is amazing is that at the end of the story, we honestly feel that while Tryst is a bad guy, HE doesn't feel he's done anything wrong. And so we're presented with a final morality issue, Tryst sacrificing human scruples (in this case, addiction to vraxoin) for the sake of preserving the Mandrels. 

Nightmare of Eden has just the right amount of comedy and pathos to make it a winner. I don't know why it's so misunderstood; maybe it's the flair monsters, the yellow walls, or the over-the-top Tryst performance. It does, however, boast a superb screenplay, some nifty acting on the part of regulars and guest actors alike, and holds up after repeated viewings. And I love it to pieces.