Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...
Day 544: The Horns of Nimon, Episode Two
Dear diary,
It’s becoming quite a theme in this series to have the Doctor and Romana separated for long periods of time. In this episode, they don’t even get to stand in the same room together, or speak to each other. They’re close enough in the closing moments that I assume they’ll be colliding mere minutes into the next episode, but they spend much of the story quite far from each other. It strikes me that were this the 1960s, it’s the kind of trick they’d use to give the Doctor a week off - following Romana and the tributes all the way to Skonnos, and not touching on the Doctor and K9, drifting off somewhere in the TARDIS.
I can’t say that I’d have minded that situation too much. While there’s a lot to enjoy between the Doctor and K9 in this one (and I’m loving the beating that the console prop is taking - if I didn’t know better, I’d assume that they were planning to build a new one next season, so sending this one out in style first!), it’s really Romana that I’m finding the most interesting to watch. I said yesterday that I’d grown to love the pair of them being at a similar intelligence level, and it means that the Doctor’s absence isn’t felt all that strongly here when he’s not around. There’s even the problem of a Sonic Screwdriver being left behind, and he’s not even needed for that!
All of Romana’s sequences benefit from being slightly more interesting than the Doctor’s. Especially while on the spaceship, it’s nice to see her given a villain to face in the form of Malcolm Terris’ Co-Pilot. He’s one of those great breeds of Doctor Who villains - someone who’s nasty just for the sake of it. Yes, he’s keen to get back to Skonnos with the tributes so that they can begin a new war with the universe and take control again, but it really wouldn’t kill him to wait a few moments for the Doctor to return to the ship. Later, once they’re facing Soldeed, it’s great to see him lying so openly about the way in which the ship was repaired… and then getting caught out, and sent to his death. Right to the end, he’s willing to be a murderer just to gain the upper hand, and he’s even great when lying to the Nimon about his reasons for being in his labyrinth.
Ah, yes, the labyrinth. That’s the only thing about The Horns of Nimon that I knew before starting out on the story: it’s based loosely on the legend of the minotaur and the labyrinth (which made the reference to such an adventure during The Creature from the Pit all the more bizarre!) I didn’t know that it was a king of high-tech futuristic labyrinth, though, in which the walls move suddenly behind our characters, and new routes open up when they’re just not looking. It’s actually very well realised on screen, with lots lingering shots in which a character walks past a blank wall, then doubles back to find it gone. It’s always nice to be impressed by things like this.
When it comes to the NImon itself… well, it’s always been considered one of the weaker Doctor Who monsters, and it’s very clearly a man with an over-sized mask placed over his head. I’m not entirely sure if the design works for me (though I do like the way it’s echoed in the model work of the buildings - a nice touch), but I’ll reserve judgement for now until we’ve seen a bit more of the creature in action. If nothing else, I love that the horns light up when he’s attacking, and I realised that they would about three seconds before it happened - though I’ll admit that I was expecting (and hoping for, honestly) the ‘moving’ lights like those in the Gel Guard’s claws from The Three Doctors!
