Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...
Day 652: The Twin Dilemma, Episode Two
Dear diary,
Well… yesterday’s entry seems to have ruffled a few feathers! Hugely pleased to see so many comments of praise for the story, too! I’m sticking by it, though, because those first 25 minutes of The Twin Dilemma are brilliant, and easily as good as some of the real ‘classics’ from over the years! That said, I’ll admit that this is the episode where the problems really start to set in. While I’ve still enjoyed today’s instalment, there’s a lot more things cropping up which are harder to see the good in. Let’s start with one of our guest characters: Lieutenant Hugo Lang.
Some characters in The Caves of Androzani - I’m thinking especially of Morgus and the upper ranks of the army - are forced to wear 1980s ‘futuristic’ BBC costumes. They’re not great looks, and they could become quite distracting. What helps is that the people inside those costumes are well rounded, and therefore we spend more time focussing on who they are, and what they’re doing, rather than the clothes they wear. Here, Lang isn’t given a whole lot of character so far, and the frankly awful costume they’ve stuck him in really doesn’t help. He’s not even a tenth as rounded as the characters in Androzani, and that really does count against him. When we first see Lang in the police office, he comes across as - effectively - a junior office boy. He answers the call about the Zanium, and passes the memo on to his superior. He’s then the one tasked with leading the fleet in pursuit, and suddenly he’s supposed to be a somewhat powerful person! We then see him as the only survivor of Mestor’s attack, where he takes it upon himself to apprehend the Doctor and Peri.
In some ways, I’d be able to buy this with only a few minor tweaks here and there. It’s really in this episode that things start to fall apart for him. Passing out, he’s then left alone in the TARDIS, though Peri has taken the precaution of hiding the power pack to his gun. Fine, not a problem. That she chooses to hide it in the wardrobe isn’t all that perplexing, either, considering that they’ve just spent a fair amount of time in there while choosing the Doctor’s new togs. But then, as Lang goes searching for his ‘prisoners’, he happens to stumble into the wardrobe purely by chance. Is it near the console room? It didn’t take long to collect the Fourth Doctor’s coat during Mawdryn Undead, so again, I can just about buy it.
But then! Lang seems to decide that since his clothes are a bit dirty, he’ll try on some of the ones he’s just found in the wardrobe room! Why the heck not? He ends up picking something ridiculous and garish - even more so than the Doctor’s clothes - and it just happens to be the outfit that Peri has stashed the power pack in. It’s all just a bit too much of a coincidence for me to go along with.
To bring this back around to my initial point, the fact that Lang comes across as pretty incompetent as a character isn’t helped by the design that they’ve created for this intergalactic police force. They look like they’re wearing ‘futuristic’ BBC costumes, and not particularly good ones at that. The character already starts off at a disadvantage because he’s been designed to look a bit silly. It’s things like this which harm The Twin Dilemma more than anything.
Thankfully, though, Colin Baker is still electrifying in the role. I enjoy the way that he strides up the hills of Titan 3 performing to Peri, and then has another turn in the tunnels, where he begs the aliens not to harm him, and instead offers up Peri in his place. It’s still quite unlike anything we’ve become used to for the Doctor, and Baker is really going for it! I have a feeling that even when other ares of the stories are letting themselves down, he could well be a saving element!
