DOCTOR WHO:  NIGHTMARE OF EDEN

commentary by Judy Harris

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#33:  NIGHTMARE OF EDEN (4 Parts)	
ORIGINALLY AIRED:  11/24/79 to 12/15/79
WRITTEN BY:  Bob Baker	
DIRECTED BY:  Alan Bromly
PRODUCER:  Graham Williams
SCRIPT EDITOR:  Douglas Adams
	

I guess it was inevitable, but I was sorry to see DOCTOR WHO do a story about drug smuggling and addiction. I prefer my TV science fiction to stay in the realms of fantasy. That personal reservation aside, NIGHTMARE OF EDEN had some really poor monsters, not at all frightening and very fakey looking. Additionally, the costumes of the passengers were minimal--dark glasses and a silvery hooded overall.

Some of the special effects were pretty bad as well--in particular the flight of the Hecate shuttle to and from the Empress, which was nothing more than a cardboard cutout; no one bothered even to superimpose some flame and smoke to indicate a method of propulsion.

On the other hand, this was a very colorful show, and benefited by an eccentric performance from Lewis Fiander in tinted granny glasses and a strange accent.

In 2116, the interstellar cruise liner the Empress, carrying 900 passengers, dematerializes out of warp. The coordinates for its orbit around the planet Azure have been misset by Secker, the navigator, who is acting very apathetic and euphoric.

Because the Empress has dematerialized in the wrong space they collide with a smaller vessel, the Hecate, captained by Dymond. The two ships are sticking straight through each other at the entrance to B deck, blocking some passenger sections and cutting off access to the power unit.

The TARDIS materializes within the Empress next to the collision site. K9 remarks the overlapped areas are highly unstable interfaces. Romana thinks the Doctor shouldn't interfere. "Of course, we should interfere! Always do what you're best at," the Doctor tells her.

Dymond shuttles over from the Hecate. The Doctor and Romana follow him to the bridge, where he argues with Captain Rigg over whose fault the collision is and whether the insurance will cover the damage.

The Doctor bustles in, claiming to be from Galactic Insurance and Salvage. He suggests trying to separate the ships. Dymond agrees but Rigg says he has no power. Romana stays with Rigg, while Secker takes the Doctor and K9 to the power unit on level B.

After the Doctor's departure, Rigg sends Dymond and Romana to the first class lounge and checks Galactic Insurance and Salvage in his computer records, discovering they were liquidated in the year 2096.

In the ship's corridor, Secker's mood changes and he refuses to show the Doctor to the power unit. Instead of trying to find his way himself, the Doctor follows Secker into a luggage area, where he removes a small thick tube from a locked drawer. When Secker leaves, the Doctor uses the sonic screwdriver to unlock the drawer and finds another tube, which K9 says is a fungus, the source of the dangerous, addictive drug XYP, commonly known as vraxoin.

The Doctor has seen whole planets destroyed by this drug. It induces a kind of warm complacency and then a total apathy, until it wears off, and soon after you're dead. The Doctor puts the vrax into his pocket and leaves with K9.

In the first class lounge, Romana meets Tryst, who says his ambition is to be the first zoologist to qualify and quantify every species in the galaxy. The government used to fund his trips but the galactic recession put a stop to that. He has just returned from an expedition and proudly shows off his invention, the CET machine. This is a Continuous Event Transmuter. When he turns it on, a large "window" appears in one wall of the ship. Through the window can be seen a steamy swamp.

Tryst says this is more than just an image; it's a matter transmutation. His assistant Della explains they collect specimens for study, convert them into electromagnetic signals and store them on an event crystal in the machine, where they go on living and evolving.

In the 1973 Pertwee story CARNIVAL OF MONSTERS, written by Robert Holmes, there was a similar gizmo, called a Scope, which scooped up specimens from different planets and miniaturized them. In that show, however, the images weren't projected lifesize; it was more of peepshow where you had to peer into a viewer. In CARNIVAL OF MONSTERS, the Doctor and his assistant Jo Grant, were actually caught up in the Scope and most of the show concerned their efforts to get out again.

Romana calls Tryst's invention a crude form of matter transfer by dimensional control. She points out the recent collision has caused all sorts of unstable matter interfaces on the Empress, which might affect the dimensional matrix of the CET.

The Doctor returns to the bridge and asks to see Rigg's log, to check if the ship has been to any planet where Secker may have picked up vraxoin, but Rigg assures him the trip is just Azure to Station 9 and back again.

Rigg tells the Doctor Galactic went out of business 20 years ago. "I wondered why I hadn't been paid," the Doctor deadpans.

He heads to the first class lounge to find out where Tryst traveled before he boarded the Empress. Tryst mentions the Sigmus Gap and System M37. He has published the log of his travels on the ship Volante, to accompany his lectures, and he gives the Doctor a copy. He had a crew of 10, but 1 died.

Tryst is charmed the Doctor knew Professor Stein, Tryst's mentor, but is less than pleased at the Doctor's criticism of the CET.

Alone in the first class lounge, Romana turns on the CET and changes the setting to Ranx and then Gidi. Other settings she doesn't try include Zil, Darp, Lvan and Bros. Even if the CET could do what Tryst claimed, it seems unlikely the crystals would also contain the weather and climate of the specimen worlds, let alone the sun, which is clearly shown in this sequence.

When Romana turns the dial to Eden, she thinks she sees something, but Della comes in and turns off the machine, saying Tryst doesn't let anyone else touch it. Della tells Romana Eden is the planet where they lost the crewmember.

On the way to find the power unit, the Doctor tells Rigg, "The two ships are rejecting each other, molecularly speaking." Under the shuttle bay, they hear a scream. K9 cautions the smokey area is a matter interface, but the Doctor and Rigg dash in and pull out Secker, whose face has been clawed. K9 tries to investigate but his sensors won't function in the unstable interface environment.

The Doctor returns to the luggage area. Someone has ransacked the drawer where Secker got the vraxoin. This unseen person shoots the Doctor and takes the vrax out of his pocket.

As they watch some doctors labor over Secker, Tryst assures Rigg he brought no live animals onto the ship. All his specimens are laser crystal recordings. Secker dies.

K9 leads Romana to the luggage area, where the Doctor says he was bushwacked. He tells Romana someone aboard the ship is smuggling vraxoin.

K9 cuts through the shuttle bay wall. The Doctor and Rigg remove the panel and a monster pokes its head through. K9 stuns it. The Doctor and Rigg replace the panel, and K9 welds it back in place.

Rigg thinks the Doctor is a narcotics agent investigating drug smuggling, but the Doctor tells him, "I don't work for anybody; I'm just having fun."

On the bridge, Rigg scans for vrax, but the scanner shows nothing.

Romana returns to the first class lounge and turns on the CET to Eden. A small bright light flies out--a glowing Eden insect--bites her on her neck, and she faints. Della finds Romana and leaves to get her something to drink. Someone drugs this liquid, but Rigg gets it accidentally.

The Doctor removes the demat control from the TARDIS and sets it up in the Empress' corridor. K9 predicts only 60% chance of success in separating the ships.

The Doctor returns to the first class cabin, where Romana tells him the CET is unstable and a creature has escaped from the Eden crystal. Tryst enters and asks the Doctor what's wrong with his invention. "At a rough guess, the spatial integrator, transmutation oscillator, hologistic retention circuit; should I go on?" the Doctor ticks off. Not to mention the dimensional osmosis damper, which Tryst doesn't even have. Tryst promises to turn the machine off.

The drug starts to take effect on Rigg. The Doctor is ready to try to separate the ships, using power from the TARDIS, where Romana is. Dymond is in his craft, and the Doctor and Rigg are in the Empress' control room. However, Dymond's ship starts to break up, so he switches his power off.

The Doctor goes to the unstable interface area and blows K9's whistle. A man dressed like the passengers comes up behind the Doctor, then runs off. The Doctor pursues him through pallets 67-90 of the passenger section. The passengers are none too pleased with the delays and want to know when they're going to land. The Doctor gives one irate woman a jelly baby, saying "And don't forget to brush your teeth."

The Doctor follows the fleeing figure into one of the unstable interfaces, where a monster attacks them. The Doctor crawls out of the interface with a radiation band dropped by the man he was following, who is also the man who shot him in the luggage area. The radiation band is from the Volante, Tryst's ship.

In the first class lounge, Tryst tells Della the Doctor is probably a narcotics agent investigating vraxoin. Tryst wonders if Stott, the crewman killed on Eden, could have been a drug smuggler. He seeks out the Doctor to say he suspects Della of being Stott's accomplice.

Dymond calls the Doctor to the bridge, where two customs men, Fisk and Costa demand the ident plaques of Romana and the Doctor, who have none. The excise men ask the Doctor his name and date of birth. "I'm called the Doctor. Date of birth--difficult to remember--sometime quite soon, I think," the Doctor says.

Costa checks the Doctor and Romana with an electronic probe and finds traces of vraxoin in the Doctor's pocket. The Doctor is arrested but distracts the excise men. He and Romana dash out of the control cabin into the first class lounge. The Doctor uses the sonic screwdriver to jam the door, while Romana turns on the CET to Eden. The Doctor takes the CET selector so it can't be turned off. Then he and the reluctant Romana enter the projection.

Fisk and Costa break in but can't find the fugitives. Inside the Eden crystal, the Doctor tells Romana the CET has a relative dimensional field. When the laser crystal is played back, it's restructured on an interdimensional matrix.

The Doctor is caught by some vines which pull him toward a sort of giant venus flytrap. He bites the plant's huge root, which spurts green gook and releases him. "You know, that didn't taste at all bad," the Doctor remarks.

He and Romana are menaced by some monsters, until they are rescued by the man who lost the radiation band, who introduces himself as Stott and leads them to a hut. He's been in the Eden crystal for 183 days and says the creatures outside are called Mandrels.

Stott is a Major in the Intelligence Section of the Space Corps on special assignment to find out who is drug running. He knows the main supply of vrax is in Eden, but not where or who the smuggler is.

Romana, Stott and the Doctor exit the projection near the power unit and run into K9. The Doctor gets his bearings in the power room--liquid hydrogen, turbo pump exhaust, reactor core, pressure shell. Jamming a switch down with a toothpick and brandishing the sonic screwdriver, the Doctor tells Romana he can start anything from a steam engine to a TARDIS.

The Mandrels attack the passenger and crew. One comes after the Doctor and K9 stuns it. The Doctor sends K9 to the TARDIS because "the demat has to be switched on from the TARDIS at exactly the same time as I switch on this old gas oven."

Fisk alerts the crew to search the ship to arrest the Doctor and Romana. Dymond returns to his ship, the Hecate.

The Doctor borrows Stott's watch to rig himself a timer. Romana has until 20:25 to reach the bridge and put the power on. "Off you go, then," the Doctor says.

The Mandrel K9 shot wakes up and attacks the Doctor again, smashing the timer and electrocuting itself. It tumbles to powder, which turns out to be vraxoin. The Mandrels are the source of the vrax and didn't show up on Rigg's scan because they were miniaturized in the CET crystal.

The Doctor rerigs the timer. On the bridge, Rigg is suffering withdrawal symptoms. He becomes violent and prevents Romana from setting the power on. Fisk comes in and shoots Rigg, threatening to kill Romana as well if she touches the controls.

At the power unit, the Doctor blows his whistle and at the TARDIS K9 switches on the demat unit. Romana presses the power control on the bridge. The ships separate but the Doctor is caught in the interface. Fisk is knocked out in the turbulence.

Dymond is anxious to be on his way, but the revived Fisk forbids him to go. Romana returns to the TARDIS, where K9 tells her the Doctor isn't aboard the Empress. He's in the Hecate unconscious. He wakes up and sees an intuka laser aimed at the Empress.

Dymond enters the room and uses the computer. When he leaves, the Doctor replays the display, which shows a projected turnover on the Eden project of z13,000,000 Gal. Credits, with an overhead of z23,900,000 and a profit margin of 9,100,000. "The profits on human suffering," the Doctor says.

While Dymond suits up for the trip back to the Empress, the Doctor sneaks into the shuttle. Dymond enters and hooks himself up to an air hose. The Doctor puts himself into a trance, so he won't need to breathe. The shuttle takes off and returns to the Empress. K9 detects the Doctor's presence and leads Romana and Della to him. Romana has told Della Stott is alive and on the ship.

The Doctor tells Romana about the intuka laser, which she knows can be used to carry thousands of telecom messages. The Doctor says it can also carry a CET crystal, revealing Dymond has a CET projection machine aboard the Hecate. Tryst and Dymond are the smugglers. Stott comes along and they bring him up to date on what they've learned.

In the first class lounge, the Doctor fiddles with Tryst's CET machine, as Fisk, Costa and the crew burst in and arrest him. Stott enters, shows his ID and tells Fisk it's Tryst and Dymond who are the smugglers.

On the bridge, Della accuses Tryst of shooting Stott on Eden and smuggling the vrax. He says he did it to fund his expeditions. A Mandrel comes in, allowing Della to escape. While Dymond chases her, Tryst smashes the Empress' communications system.

In the corridor Dymond shoots Della; she's wounded but she'll be all right. Fisk cancels the arrest bulletin on the Doctor and Romana, and puts out one on Tryst and Dymond.

The Mandrels are rounded up and forced back into the Eden projection. The Doctor leads them the last few yards, blowing K9's whistle. Offscreen, they rip up the Doctor's coat and he stumbles out of the projection in tatters. Romana switches off the machine.

Checking his pulse, the Doctor tells Romana they have 2 minutes 58 seconds to rebuild Tryst's CET. He increases the gain on the matrix modulator and attaches jump leads to K9's ears to increase the machine's range and power.

Tryst uses the intuka laser to transfer the Eden crystal to the Hecate's CET machine, in the process giving the Doctor a mild shock. The Doctor then reverses the settings on the transmutation reflex, while K9 locates the position of the Hecate--47.3 vector 7 niner niner.

Fisk enters the first class lounge, angry that Tryst and Dymond have escaped, but the Doctor says he's already caught them. He turns on Tryst's machine and there they are. The Doctor increased the range of the CET, bringing them back via matter transmutation. Because the projection is still unstable, all Fisk has to do is pluck them out.

As he's lead away, Tryst appeals to the Doctor as a fellow scientist to understand what he did was justified to fund his research. "Go away," the Doctor says, not even looking at Tryst.

Della is recovered and reunited with Stott. The Doctor and Romana have destroyed Tryst's machine and plan to use the TARDIS to return the creatures on all the crystals to their home planets (despite the randomizer).

By coincidence, in 2001 I began an e-mail correspondence with Ray Stanley who lives in Australia and, as far as I know, has no interest in DOCTOR WHO. However, he is a long time friend of Lewis Fiander, who plays Tryst, and told me some facts about him, including that he is Australian, which I would not have guessed.  Click here for his movie credits. He played a lead character in the musical 1776 in London and Australia, and also played the lead in SAME TIME NEXT YEAR in Australia. He appeared with Rex Harrison and Claudette Colbert in the Australian production of AREN'T WE ALL? He also played Henry Higgins in the Australian production of MY FAIR LADY. One of the last things he did on stage in London was NOEL AND GERTIE opposite Patricia Hodge, which is available on a CD. In the UK he joined the Oxford Rep in 1967 when Tom Baker was also a member. At the time of Tom Baker's portrayal of DOCTOR WHO, Lewis had a young son who was a fan of the show, so Lewis asked Tom to get him a role on it, and thus the offer to appear in NIGHTMARE IN EDEN. According to Ray Stanley, Lewis agrees with me that the monster was very lame and that drugs did not belong in a children's serial.  Apparently Tom Baker was very angry about the drug plotline and tried to get it stopped and eventually the way it was dealt with was to send the whole thing up, which I think comes across in the performances.

David Daker, who plays Captain Rigg, played Irongron in the Pertwee story THE TIME WARRIOR.

Geoffrey Hinsliff, who plays Fisk, played Jack Tyler in the Tom Baker story IMAGE OF THE FENDAHL.

Peter Craze, who plays Costa, played Dako in the Hartnell story THE SPACE MUSEUM and DuPont in the Troughton story THE WAR GAMES.