The Horns of Nimon - Episode 4

This is quite a landmark episode in the history of Doctor Who because it’s the final episode of the seventeenth season which is the 20^th episode of the season and the joint lowest (tied with season 12). This is also the last episode with Graham Williams as producer and Douglas Adams as script editor. It is also the last episode where the time tunnel sequence is used and the last episode that the theme tune is used. Sadly after the humour disappeared to a certain extent in the previous episode it returns in todays episode. The only upside to this is that it meant that Lalla Ward got to drive the plot (such as it is) through and it meant that when she was on screen I was able to enjoy the episode. Lalla Ward does get some good scenes and it is perhaps her strongest performance since she joined the show.

The Doctor doesn’t really do very much during the course of this episode because he’s trying to get Romana back but this takes an awful long time. Tom Baker really hasn’t been very good in this serial and I take no pride in saying that. The thing about Baker’s performance is that he has become a pastiche of his former self. Even Soldeed’s death is a bit over the top. The laughing that Graham Crowden does wasn’t what was intended but I think that it sort of makes a change to the normal deaths that the villains of the piece get.

The way that the Nimon were defeated was a bit of a disappointment and the thing about the episode is that it never felt like they were building up to something. If I didn’t know better then I would have assumed that there were more episodes left in this story. It’s been a while I think since I have noticed this problem but its definelty the case with this story that there is a lack of a build up.

It’s a shame that this is the last story of Graham Williams’ tenure as producer because I don’t think it’s the send off that he deserves. I have never thought that highly of Graham Williams as a producer before I started this marathon but I have to say that that opinion has changed because I think that he was a better producer than I gave him credit for. Yes sometimes he struggled to get Tom Baker’s humour in control and he didn’t have quite as good a run of stories as Philip Hinchcliffe but I think that he did what was asked of him by BBC management and that is to try and lighten the show after the Hammer Horror themed stories that preceded his time. It cant have been easy behind the scenes and my appreciation of his time has improved. This is probably one of his worst stories (before this I would have said Underworld would be the worst) but I think that to judge him just on this story would be unfair. Douglas Adams’ tenure as script editor wasn’t a complete success but he seemed to do a better job of been a script editor than he was when he was just writing.

This season has been one of inconsistency. It started off with an average Dalek story before improving greatly with ‘City of Death’ and then starting a gradual decline in terms of script quality and production values. I think that the Tom Baker’s penultimate season as the Doctor wont and isn’t remembered for the quality stories but more for what was the beginning of the end for the show. When the show returned, it would have a totally different tone to it and I wonder whether my opinion of it will change for the better or for the worst.

 

The Horns of Nimon - Episode 3

Well this is the first episode of the 1980’s. There that will be the last time I bang on about the last or second to last or first episode of a decade until at least the end of the classic era. This is the episode where the Doctor finally meets the Nimon. For some reason this is a short scene and then they are separated for the rest of the episode. The thing about this episode is that nothing really happens until the very end of the episode. I think that the appearance of several Nimon is perhaps a good move because thinking that there is just a solitary nimon doesn’t quite work and I still have a problem with the look of the creature. Kenny McBain says (in the information text) that he didn’t want them to just look like a bloke in a costume. Sadly he doesn’t quite make this happen as it seems the walk is designed to make sure the headpiece doesn’t fall off.

Soldeed is still highly enjoyable in this episode and just seems to be having the time of his life as he is roaming around. The addition of Graham Crowden was used as one of the selling points which is fair enough but the second was the costumes and sets. When this is one of the selling points of the entire serial then you know that there isn’t much going on. Not even the monsters are used which shows how memorable they are. K9 gets captured by Soldeed which is a great moment and my enjoyment went up even more when he was in bits.

The cliffhanger wasn’t great but neither was it terrible and that pretty much sums up the episode. There were things that worked and things that didn’t but more importantly the humour in the episode was reigned right back and there were a few gags here and there but it was nowhere near as bad as in the previous episode. The performances from Tom Baker and Lalla Ward were quite good. Tom Baker didn’t really get the chance to be as annoying as he was in the last episode and there seemed to be glimpses of the old Doctor today. Lalla Ward was her usually strong self though I thought that there was a moment that was a bit silly for Romana when the Doctor mentions the term positronic circuit which sees Romana throw her arms in the air and say “of course”. One more thing about the performances is that I liked how Seth tries to dodge fighting the Nimon in front of Teka. This was a clever moment and was one of the few things in the serial that made sense.

There is just one more episode of this serial left and one more episode before we venture into the John Nathan Turner era.

The Horns of Nimon - Episode 2

Todays episode is the final episode of the 1970’s. It’s quite impressive how much the show has grown in this decade and the show starts a gradual decline that would carry on for the rest of the classic era. It’s weird to think that there is just nine years of the classic era left and I am less than a month from entering the Peter Davison era.  My main gripe with this episode is the humour which is again a major problem with this story because it starts pretty much from the beginning. There is a moment later on where the Doctor is messing around with the console and there is a flash and explosion along with some comedy noises and I think that just totally ruin the story and I am really getting fed up with this and I am only two episodes in. Thankfully the story does actually get given some time away from the comedy show that is the Doctor and K9 show. The reason why the Nimon takes them is so that they give the humans some technology/power that they crave. This is the generic explanation but considering I am desperate for something good to happen in this story that I am just happy that something works.

The rearranging of the sets is a really inventive way of getting around the fact there wasn’t enough money for extra sets. It something that impressed which me does sound like damning with faint praise but it’s a genuine positive in this story. Another positive in this story is that for some reason I found Soldeed to be very good. I think that Graham Crowden seems to have pulled back the silliness and the character is bordering on slightly maniacal. It was weird seeing Tom Baker and Graham Crowden on screen together considering that Crowden could have been the fourth Doctor. The co-pilot meets a horny ending (that just sounds wrong doesn’t it!) when he is killed by the Nimon. It’s odd though that this is the cliffhanger, well technically Romanas reaction is the cliffhanger but this isn’t the best way of trying to entice people back for the first episode of 1980.

The character of Seth seems to be the one that the others are pinning their hopes on and if I were them then I would think that we were screwed because he shows absolutely nothing to me that suggests he could be the hero. Even in a story such as ‘The Mutants’ which isn’t one of my favourites, there was at least someone that was perceived to be the one that would bring balance to the force….sorry zoned out for a second but the point is that he worked in that story. With all due respect to Simon Gipps-Kent, I just don’t think that he carries much weight in narrative terms.

Its weird that they gave Romana her own sonic screwdriver in the previous episode and then proceed to part her from it in this episode. This seems like a totally silly thing to do or you could see it as a silly thing to have done in the previous episode to have given it to her in the first place.

The first episode of the decade was the first episode of ‘Spearhead from Space’ which I rated at 7.8 out of 10 and todays episode got 6.80. This is only the second time that a Tom Baker story has got below 7 (yesterdays episode was the first). It’s the first time that two episodes in a row have got below 7 since episodes five and six of ‘The Space Pirates’ way back in season six or January 12^th and 13^th of this year in my marathon. I think that this shows that the story hasn’t changed and could possibly get even worst with the remaining episodes. I will end on a surprising note, episode one got 6.0 million viewers whereas this episode got 8.8 million. That means that 2.8 million people thought that they would put their common sense next to one side and watch this episode. What is even more scary is that the next episode got 9.8 million episodes and the final episode would get 10.4 million. I really cant see what people were tuning in for. Presumably to see how silly the Nimon costumes were.

The Horns of Nimon - Episode 1

The Horns of Nimon is the last story of the season although that particular honour was suppose to go to ‘Shada’. Due to this, this season is the shortest so far and it’s the last story with Graham Williams as producer and Douglas Adams as script editor. I have never been a big fan of this story but I am going to try and be positive although I think that this may be difficult. This is the penultimate episode of the 1970’s with this episode being transmitted on December 22^nd 1979. The opening scene is quite interesting because its about the most serious scene in the entire episode. We have the pilot and co-pilot (for that is how they are credited) are doing a scene where they are complaining about the state of the ship and it’s they are the sort of characters that will be sort of clichéd in future Doctor Who stories. They do have a bit of a sinister side when its revealed that they have hostages with one of them being Janet Ellis who would go on to appear on Blue Peter from 1983-87.

When the action switches to the TARDIS that is when the serious/sinister tone goes for good. The humour returns after taking a slight holiday in the previous story. There are at least two things that occur in this scene which I found a bit tiresome. First is when the Doctor says “What could possibly go wrong?” just before something goes wrong and then he repeats it. The next is when he tries to give the kiss of life to K9.

After being impressed with the models and effects with the previous story I think that there is a dip in quality because the models don’t look as good and there are a few effects such as Soldeed walking through a curtain that look a bit ropey. Speaking of Soldeed, he is played by Graham Crowden who was considered to replace Jon Pertwee but instead the role went to Tom Baker. His performance is a bit on the pantomime side of things which isn’t the best way to start things. Another problem is the co-pilot who is played by Malcolm Terris who I just cant take seriously due to the way that he performs in the episode.

I mentioned the hostages and when they explain their circumstances to the Doctor and Romana I just don’t find it particularly interesting. Also the characters in general are rather bland and I don’t particularly find them interesting and so this is probably going to be a problem in future episodes. The Nimon design is also going to be a problem because it does just look like a bloke in a costume with a massive mask/head piece on. There are positives in this episode. Firstly the effect used to show the Doctor, Romana and K9 going from the TARDIS to the ship is quite well done and also I like the fact that Romana has her own sonic screwdriver which makes its debut in this episode. The scene where it is introduced is quite good as the Doctor tries to show that he’s not impressed with it before trying to do a swap on it. There was a joke delivered when the co-pilot says “Nimon waits for No man”. Ok so some jokes do work but that is the exception rather than the rule.

The cliffhanger would have worked quite well had it not been for the fact that Tom Baker plays it a bit to humorously. As a result I don’t think it has quite the dramatic tension that perhaps Anthony Read was hoping for. Kenny McBain clearly didn’t have much of a chance trying to keep Tom Baker in check because this has his finger prints all over it. There are good things in this episode but there are also bad things in this episode and I don’t think that my opinion will change over the remaining three episodes.