TV Review: Doctor Who: Nightmare of Eden (1979)

Doctor Who: Nightmare of Eden (1979) written by Bob Baker and directed by Alan Bromly

The Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker), Romana (Lalla Ward), and K-9 land on a space liner that's crashed into another ship. The two ships are stuck together and the two captains are stuck arguing over who's at fault while exchanging insurance information. The Doctor and Romana pose as insurance agents and get involved. The situation gets much more complicated as monsters show up (this is Doctor Who, after all) and a bizarre scientist shows off his zoological collection from various planets (any guesses as to where the monsters are coming from?). And a minor drug smuggling plot gets higher and higher in priority as the show goes on.

The first episode is a bit all over the place with the plot, introducing a fair number of characters who have seemingly uninterrelated problems. Figuring out what's going on is a bit challenging, like parsing "uninterrelated." Part of the problem is the low-quality effects--the crash of the two ships is shown on screen but viewers can't really tell that's what happened until later in the episode when the  characters talk about it. On the other hand, the acting is quite good. The drugged out characters are convincingly loopy; the kooky scientist is entertainly weird; Baker and Ward have great comic chemistry. All the various strands of plot lines eventually come together but not in the most convincing way.

Slightly recommended.