Review The Twin Dilemma (1984)

[Doctor Omega]

Your thoughts on this story....

The Doctor's moods are wide and in a jumble as he settles into his new regeneration. Elsewhere a set of genius twins are kidnapped, whose mathematical computations can manipulate features of the universe. They're immediately put to work by aliens for an as yet unknown end.

On to the next story....

ATTACK OF THE CYBERMEN....

https://www.imdforums.com/threads/attack-of-the-cybermen-1985.5312/


Back to the previous story....

THE CAVES OF ANDROZANI....

https://www.imdforums.com/threads/the-caves-of-androzani-1984.4541/

 

[Doctor Omega]

“There were some complaints about the costume, and it’s nonsense. It was nonsense then and it’s nonsense now. Colin’s costume is fine for the Doctor, he’s not a human like one of us, he’s an alien, he’s a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey and so he’s bound to have different customs and different outlooks, and so it seemed logical to make it a bad taste costume. Bad taste in our opinion but not in his.

“I always liked wearing Hawaiian shirts, and Hawaiian shirts are very colourful, and I always felt that people took you very well, that they assumed you were a warm, friendly, funny, likeable, approachable sort of person if you were wearing a Hawaiian shirt, because of the bright colours and the patterns and so forth. So when it came to designing a costumer for Colin Baker, I thought why not make it a Hawaiian shirt, but make it Edwardian, like the other Doctors wore, like Tom Baker or Jon Pertwee would have worn, sort of Tom Baker meets the Hawaiian shirt. So we decided on a multi-coloured motif.

“It stretched to the opening title sequence as well, we took the Peter Davison title sequence and added streams of multi-colours, just like on my favourite Hawaiian shirts. I thought it looked terribly nice”.

 

[Doctor Omega]

As a run of the mill story, I don't think the sluggy plot is particularly dreadful.

As a season ending debut story, with scenes of the Doctor over-acting and being a violent theatrical bully in a distractingly silly outfit, it was a complete disaster imo.

Colin's era was crippled by this story and never recovered; but Colin's acting choices also have to be called into question. He had chance to course correct his interpretation from ATTACK onward and chose not to.

The wind was taken out of his sails I thought in his TRIAL performances; his bombastic confidence shaken after the very public drubbing that the show had received. But he still continued to be overly theatrical in that season too I thought.

I do think it is a shame that it all went so wrong for him. But I do feel he was a partial architect of his own demise and that it cannot all be blamed on this story or that coat.

 

[Doctor Omega]