Full Notes: Nightmare of Eden
Nightmare is right.
Plot Summary
When two ships collide hyperspace, the Doctor must separate them while dodging drug smugglers, opportunistic bureaucrats, and shambling monsters that escape from a digital recording.
Story Essentials
Season 17, Serial 4
Story number: 106, per the The Pull To Open Codex
Writers: Bob Baker
Director: Alan Bromly, Graham Williams
Producer: Graham Williams
Aired 24 November – 15 December 1979
Notable for:
Last story written by Bob Baker; first he did without Dave Martin.
Tom Baker (and others in the production) HATED director Alan Bromly. He quit halfway through and Graham Williams took over.
First time they used video for starship effects (instead of film)
Commentary:
This story is stuffed full of good ideas:
Ships collide while in a state of “materialization,” resulting in them being stuck to each other with “interfaces” in between.
Recordings in laser crystal literally capture pieces of the thing and store them in a device. Sort of like a miniscope, but… different.
Drug smuggling! Doctor Who’s never done that before. PLUS it’s a super-addictive future drug. Cool!
Mandrels are actually the drug itself. WHAT???
The whole thing is kind of a trip, with cynical characters, a healthy amount of twists, and a few great moments of comedy. But it’s also repetitive, the Mandrels are a totally uninteresting monster apart from their nature of being the source of the Vraxoin, and the direction (sorry, Graham Williams) really suffers at the end. Poor acting, too — so many of the characters (Stott in particular is REALLY bad) say their lines like they’re reading from a teleprompter.
The drug's name was changed from XYP or "Zip" because Lala Ward was a narc and didn't want it to sound cool. K9 still calls it XYP, though. K9 knows what's up.
So a fungus that kills you, at a speed and via a mechanism unknown, and people voluntarily take it? A drug whose effects seem largely indistinguishable from drinking on the job? Baker, who'd come from an episode of "Target" on the heroin trade, comes across as naive. Indeed, the whole story foreshadows the dangerous simplicity of the "war on drugs" – and having frequently drunk Tom Baker come on all high and mighty about the killer drug is … well, not quite the height of hypocrisy, but up there.
The production that made not just Williams but DNA leave!
DNA clearly influenced by this: the two comedy cops show up in HHGTG series 1 (in the same outfits in the TV version) and the passengers in the abandoned starliner in radio series 2 waiting for lemon-soaked paper napkins
Not just Baker doing the ad-libs now – he and Ward suggested looking at an apple in Eden and commenting on the trouble it caused "last time"
Lewis Flander was Australian. Is that why he thought the accent sounded funny? Would be hilarious if he dropped it when arrested …
"Are you claiming superior know-ledge?" LOL
Did he steal those glasses from Mr. Fibuli?
The problems of too many ideas: There are two ships in orbit above Azure that have collided. Is nobody on the planet interested? Why are the narc cops the first thing we see from Azure? It's like saying "hey, two planes seem to have melded in the sky. Let's send in the DEA!"
THE BRITBOXER REBELLION: This is on Internet Archive. Twice!
Pull To Open: Nightmare of Eden
Season 4
Episode 49