Review of The Twin Dilemma (#137)

DVD Release Date: 05 Jan 10
Original Air Date: 22 – 30 Mar 1984
Doctors/Companions: Six, Perpugilliam Brown
Stars: Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant
Preceding Story: The Caves of Androzani (Five, Peri)
Succeeding Story: Attack of the Cybermen (Six, Peri)

We’ve rolled back around to a Low for this month’s entry in this year’s series of Highs and Lows, and it is definitely one you’ll see on a lot of fans’ s***-lists. Although the list I keep coming back to only ranks it at 222 of 254 (roughly at the bottom 1/8), list author Charlie Jane Anders mentions that it’s not really all that bad. I find I have to agree with her.

Note that I’m not saying it’s a good story, but it’s not as bad as I remembered. As I watched it again, I started to develop some hypotheses about why it has such a poor reputation in the fandom, and I think I’ve got some solid working ones.

Before I get into the details of that analysis, though, I want to talk about what I remembered about the story before I started my re-watch. It wasn’t a whole heck of a lot, to be honest. First and foremost, I remembered the closing line, because it so clearly breaks the fourth wall. Although nominally talking to Peri, the Doctor turns almost straight to camera and says, “I am the Doctor. Whether you like it or not.”

The actual context of the quote is even more obviously directed at the audience than I’d remembered, because before that (in?)famous line, the Doctor is telling Peri she shouldn’t be so quick to judge. “I would suggest, Peri, that you wait a little before criticizing my new persona. You may well find it isn’t quite as disagreeable as you think.” Shots fired.

As much could be said of any regeneration, since fandom goes through a predictable cycle of grief, denial, and acceptance (to varying degrees of each, depending on the particular Doctor and a given fan’s own proclivities), but somehow it’s especially apt here. Colin Baker replaced Peter Davison at a particularly odd moment, coming in for the last story of Season 21, with a 9-month gap before his next appearance. Fans had to have been feeling off-kilter from the odd timing.

And it was not what could be called a strong first showing, either. While the story itself is decent enough for Doctor Who, it’s not particularly memorable in and of itself. My own recollections, aside from the Doctor’s parting line, consisted of “teenage male twins,” “some sort of wasteland,” and “uncompelling.” Even the video clips in the DVD menu didn’t trigger any memories.

There is a megalomaniac, the necessity for human genius, and some classic sci-fi nonsense. New enemies, old (to the Doctor) friends, and both quarries and corridors all make appearances. Nearly all the necessary elements for a compelling story are present, but somehow it doesn’t quite “hit.” And I think I know why.

It comes down to the Doctor.

Now one needs to keep in mind that this is a new Doctor’s first story, and as such, the Doctor is going to be suffering some post-regeneration stress. In Ol’ Sixie’s case, that manifests in the form of psychosis. He literally tries to kill Peri at one point, and when he’s not doing that, he’s busy insulting her. It’s actually pretty awful to watch, even if one doesn’t particularly care for Peri.

He snarks at her about “trying to teach [him] compassion,” which doesn’t sit right with me at all. While other incarnations haven’t always known how to behave comfortably around humans (notably the Twelfth, who needed actual notecards), none of them have been outright antagonistic toward the idea of compassion. They just might not know how to express it in a way humans could understand.

If this is one’s first encounter with the Sixth Doctor (as it was for me), it’s unlikely to leave one with a favorable impression of him. Sadly, in the televised stories, it doesn’t often get better; somehow he got saddled with this post-regeneration madness as his base personality. It’s truly unfortunate that many writers (how did their misconception never get corrected?) never looked beyond the Doctor-Peri interactions during his post-regeneration crisis to find their deeper relationship and develop it on-screen.

Given how abrasive—dare I say even abusive?—the Doctor is toward Peri during practically this entire adventure, it’s no wonder fandom has labeled it as a story better avoided. If it were possible to separate out the plotline from the regeneration crisis, it might fare better. Given how tightly the flavor of the Doctor’s imbalance is woven throughout the narrative, though, I think its poor reputation is, alas, deserved—a victim of its placement within the regeneration cycle.