Nightmare of Eden

Dear Gary—

Nightmare of Eden is not as bad as its rap, but it’s not as good as it should be either. It is a case of too many people letting the production down and not doing justice to a fairly solid script. It is almost as if everyone decided that as long as the stars showed up the show could rest on its reputation and not have to try very hard.

The result is four episodes of sufficient enough entertainment to pass the time.

It starts with the set. No attempt was made to make this in any way believable as an interstellar passenger cruiser. These are rooms set up on a stage with wide corridors, huge elevators (how many floors does this thing have?) and spacious lounges that don’t have much in the way of lounge furniture. There is none of the economy of space you would expect on such a ship, a government subsidized ship no less, that apparently only boasts two first class passengers (both on the government’s ride)for its cavernous first class lounge. Occasionally we do get a glimpse of coach, but these are just some rows of airplane seats set up on the stage with bizarrely outfitted passengers.

Let’s talk about those bizarre outfits. Why on earth would anyone voluntarily put on these ridiculous silver coveralls and sunglasses? I can’t imagine anyone falls for that “protective” nonsense they are told. Why don’t the crew and first class passengers need to wear them? Is there something in the coach compartments themselves that the passengers need protecting from? Or is this simply a means of identifying the riff raff? Or rather, a means of differentiating the extras from the speaking roles.

Sticking with costumes, I can see why the ship’s crew and Dymond, captain of the trade ship that crashes with the passenger ship, have to wear uniforms. But Tryst, Della and Stott? A zoologist and his colleagues? Why do they need uniforms? Or do they all just happen to dress alike?

I’m not even going to get into the monsters of Eden. They’re harmless enough. They’re useful for people to shriek “Mandrel!” and run to keep up some pretense of danger in our story. The monsters are more or less an afterthought for me; oh yeah, there are some lumbering creatures roaming about the set.

Everything about Nightmare of Eden strikes me as some lazy shorthand on the part of the production team.

And what’s with Tryst’s phony accent? I keep expecting him to break into a Danny Kaye Tschaikowsky routine.

“Interfere? Of course we should interfere. Always do what you’re best at, that’s what I say.” Even the Doctor has thrown up his hands on this one and given in to the ‘what difference does it make’ attitude. Let’s just dive in, he seems to be saying, and make the best of it. Throw all that pretence of Time Lord philosophy and detached concern out the window. At least the Doctor is having fun with it, which is exactly what makes Nightmare of Eden work to the extent that it does.

“Work for? I don’t work for anybody. I’m just having fun.”

That’s about all I take away from Nightmare of Eden. A bunch of men in space suits running around some cheap sets shooting off their blasters occasionally, a man with a funny accent with his machine that displays other worlds in a projection against the wall, Romana and the Doctor jumping in and out of the projection, some lumbering monsters wandering into the scene only to be chased off through an airline set that looks like it belongs to a different production, and oh yes, I think there is something about drug smuggling. Mildly amusing, a pleasant enough way to spend an hour and a half.

Once in a while someone does try to get things on track.

“I wish everyone would stop showing off and get something done about my ship.”

Two space ships have collided, the Empress passenger liner and the Hecate trade ship. The collision has rendered Tryst’s CET machine unstable and creatures are therefore able to walk in and out of it (curiously, only from the one projection of Eden and none from the other planets stored on the machine). An undercover agent has also been released from his captivity inside the Eden projection and reveals that drugs are being smuggled by someone in Tryst’s expedition. The captain of the Empress and one of his crew members are under the influence of the dangerously addictive drug. Customs officers arrive to investigate the crash. The Doctor and Romana have to separate the ships, discover who is smuggling the drugs and how, fight off the Mandrels and return them to their projection, fix the CET machine, and elude the Customs officials.

It could have been an interesting story, but unfortunately there is no feeling of tension, no impression of impending doom, no sense of any real danger. It is all rather loose and freewheeling.

“We’ll go that way and we’ll call it east.”

The few pretenses at Mandrel mania are rather pathetic. The monsters themselves just kind of blindly swat at people, and then there is Romana flinching at the thought of having to jump over a dead one. Come on, Romana, they aren’t very menacing when they are alive. You’re a Time Lord, for goodness sake. But then, maybe that’s her problem. After all, who are our only female Time Lord examples to date? Susan and Rodan. Perhaps when Romana regenerated she reverted to true Time Lady type.

“Here am I, trying a little lateral thinking, and what do you do? You trample all over it with logic.”

The Doctor’s lateral thinking is always welcome, but I think perhaps there isn’t enough rational thought to counterbalance in this story. Everyone kind of jumps in and out of their scenes reciting lines that were written for them. Captain Rigg does a creditable job, but his devil-may-care outlook while under the influence of Vraxoin, which is entirely appropriate to the script, gets lost amongst all of the unrestrained action going on around him.

“First a collision, then a dead navigator, and now a monster roaming about my ship!” Rigg exclaims at one point before the Vraxoin gains hold of him. “It’s totally inexplicable.”

“Nothing’s inexplicable,” the Doctor replies.

“Then explain it,” Rigg demands.

The Doctor answers in the only way he can, “It’s inexplicable.”

That’s Nightmare of Eden. It’s inexplicable. First a collision, then a dead navigator, and now a monster roaming about the ship. Not inexplicable as a plot. That rather nicely sums up the plot and it all should have worked. But somewhere along the way Nightmare of Eden abandoned the plot to its messy fate of shoddy workmanship and what is left works, but it works purely on the level of superficial entertainment.

“What is the man doing? He comes up with a marvelous idea then he fiddles about.”

Well, Gary, I’m done with all the fiddling about in Eden; too bad the marvelous nugget of an idea was never adequately developed, but at least it was pleasant enough to watch.