PREVIOUS

NEXT

Nightmare of Eden

24th november 1979 - 15th december 1979

(4 EPISODES)

Some of my favourite Doctor Who DVDs from 2|entertain have been notoriously troubled stories furnished with fascinating bonus material, the latter flowing from the former like a serendipitous equation. Even the likes of The Space Museum and Timelash have been granted a new lease of life by their digital revisitations, as respected writers gather to champion the fallen, and zealous documentary makers descend to the dish the dirt.

This disc’s principal feature, The Nightmare of TV Centre, is distinctly underwhelming though. Capped at just over thirteen minutes and featuring only a modest assemblage of bit-part players, this feature fails to capitalise on the abundance of material that Nightmare of Eden’s troubled production offered. Whilst the semi-retired Alan Bromly’s sacking / resignation is of course broached, as is Tom Baker’s particularly inflammatory conduct (even for him) – “I thought we were meant to have a director up in the gallery, not a commentator…” / “If I listen to any more of this parrot, I’ll catch psittacosis…” - the programme spends as much time dissecting the decision to shoot models on video instead of film, and the ill-fated “floodlighting” of “The Muppet Show reject” Mandrels, as it does clawing open old wounds. At least assistant floor manager Val McCrimmon remembered to bring along her souvenir shirt emblazoned with the text “I’M RELIEVED THE NIGHTMARE IS OVER”. The disc’s commentary is similarly roving, lacking focus despite Toby Hadoke’s professional probing. Whilst Lalla Ward and Bob Baker, whose names will probably be the only ones that the majority of viewers recognise, have much to say that is of interest, they are often drowned out by the cacophony of guest stars and designers who seem to do nothing but ridicule the passion of fandom.

Above: Val McCrimmon wasn’t the only one celebrating the nightmarish production’s end

The above are complemented by a much more focused interview with the story’s writer, Bob Baker, entitled Going Solo, in which he discusses his only experience of writing for Doctor Who without his long-term writing partner, Dave Martin, who had gone off to write novels. Inspired by his own research into narcotic abuse that he’d carried out to pen a gritty episode of Target, as well as the heavy scientific tome The Explosion of Science, I think it’s fair to say that Eden was Baker’s bravest contribution to the series, but it’s certainly far from being his best. The fault for that, though, doesn’t necessarily rest with him. “I didn’t do a bad job,” Baker opines at the conclusion of the featurette – emphasis on the ‘I’ .

And indeed, conceptually, Nightmare of Eden is really something. Moody, complicated, and seductively stripped of metaphor, Baker’s grim tale of drug-trafficking on a space liner and monsters that have a narcotic afterlife is disturbing enough to turn anyone straight-edge, and its heavy science is sure to impress even the most obdurate of hard-line science fiction fans. However, Eden’s performances are mixed in tone, embracing both the pantomime histrionics of Lewis Fiander’s square-spectacled “Space Dutchman”, Professor Tryst, and the convincing, and often quite terrifying, performances of Geoffrey Bateman and David Daker as the Hectate and Empress’s respective captains. Some will champion the Dr Strangeloveish surrealism of Fiander’s turn and abhor the edgy understatement of Daker’s, while others will sigh at every one of Tryst’s hammy entrances, and find themselves enthralled by Rigg’s convincing descent into addiction. Everyone, though, is sure to be in awe of Tom Baker’s mercurial performance, which is by turns facile and frightening – much like Eden itself.

The production’s direction is similarly inconsistent, if not downright poor. Bromly - the man who used stock footage of a brick wall exploding rather than risk blowing up a model castle in The Time Warrior – was clearly not up to the challenge of executing a story set upon two spacecraft that have materialised inside one another in space, and in a way Graham Williams’ fast-paced stand-in direction only serves to highlight the shortcomings of Bromly’s stagnant shots. That said, even Williams’ segments of the serial are not all that they could have been as, having blown most of the season’s budget on a Paris location shoot and a monster that resembles a phallus, Nightmare of Eden was done on the cheap even by Who standards. Signs are drawn in felt-tip; sets are endlessly recycled to such an extent that the ensuing comic effect feels engineered; monsters are literally put under a spotlight so that every flaw catches the light.

All of the above proves wonderful fodder for Who scribes Simon Guerrier and Joseph Lidster and comedienne Josie Long in this release’s edition of The Doctor’s Strange Love. Lidster’s repeated observation about how this serial depicts “a man threatening to beat up a woman for drugs” is almost as a brutal as the scene it refers to, yet every bit as truthful, while Josie, as ever, finds humour in the absurd. “He went on to write Wallace and Gromit?” she asks, incredulous. “I thought you were going to say he went on to write Druggie Death Camp or something!” I could listen to these three carving up Who all day - but not Michael Aspel. Were I minded to though, for the sake of completeness the disc also includes Lalla Ward’s contemporaneous appearance on his popular children’s show, Ask Aspel.

Above: Dr Strangeloveish Doctor Who and The Doctor’s Strange Love together on one disc

Overall then, a mixed and peculiar Doctor Who serial receives a mixed and peculiar release. As readers will probably infer from my almost-preposterously tardy, just-because-I-want-to-have-done-them-all review, Nightmare of Eden isn’t a DVD to rush out and buy, but if you’ve an hour or two to spend and an open mind, you’ll probably get something out of it. Just don’t go mugging women to pay for it.

Copyright © E.G. Wolverson 2007, 2013

E.G. Wolverson has asserted his right under the Copyright, Design

 and Patents Act 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

Unless otherwise stated, all images on this site are copyrighted to the BBC and are used solely for promotional purposes.

‘Doctor Who’ is copyright © by the BBC. No copyright infringement is intended.