'Doctor Who: Nightmare of Eden' (1979)


My daughters have gone off on holiday, for a week, with their Mum so I started off the Bank Holiday weekend doing three of my favourite things; book shopping, reading a good book and watching a little 'Doctor Who'. My fourth favourite thing (ordering and eating a pizza) will kick in just after I finish writing this post.

I'm going through a phase, right now, where I'll come across a 'Doctor Who' DVD (nope, still not doing Britbox...) only to find that I already have it. Which is weird as I don't think I have that many but anyway... I pretty much jumped on 'Nightmare of Eden' when I saw it then, and that was my afternoon pretty much booked solid when I got home ;o) Having watched it though... I'm kind of half and half about the whole thing.

Two spacecraft fuse in a hyperspace collision. Fortunately the Doctor, Romana and K9 arrive to help. But when a crewmember is found clawed by a ferocious animal, it seems there's something even more frightening stalking the corridors. The answers lie with zoologist Professor Tryst, his CET projection machine, and a planet called Eden – the home of the ferocious Mandrels...

We open on the 'space collision' (such as it is, this is the BBC in 1979) and the sight of the two ship captains doing the equivalent of swapping insurance details while trying to lay the blame on the other party. I loved this, it's the future and we're in space but still trying to protect our no claims bonus … Never change humanity, never change ;o)

As the story progresses, it becomes clear that we're not so much about the 'space collision' here as we are about what it has uncovered, a drug smuggling operation and a particularly nasty drug at that. With killings happening on board, there are loads of questions (that branch out into even more questions) to keep things interesting. And it is intriguing, don't get me wrong, it just feels like everything is a little subdued and no-one seems to be really into it. There's a real discordant note to the plot then and it's difficult to shake. This isn't helped by the introduction of the Mandrels who may well be ferocious but are also verging on the adorable with their big green eyes and grabby hands that may well ruin a security guard's day but you also can't help but think that they're looking for a big ol' hug...I would absolutely buy a Mandrel plushie, that's all I'm saying at this point.

Fair play to 'Nightmare of Eden' for tackling the issue of drugs and addiction, you can see what they were going for and they really weren't that far off the mark. That air of things being a little subdued though... That drags the story off in one direction and those cute Mandrels do their level best to pull 'Nightmare' in another direction entirely. I'm not sure that 'Nightmare of Eden' really knew what it wanted to be and that's a bit of a shame.

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