The Randomizer: The Horns of Nimon

[purplecat]

Tom Baker again. I am beginning to suspect my random number generator is more pseudo than random.

I was tempted to start this review with some joke about going from the sublime to the ridiculous but I've actually always had a soft spot for The Horns of Nimon. I don't really know enough about the evolution of fandom opinion, or even current thought about the story, but my suspicion is that a lot of the dislike stems from a sense that "Doctor Who is Serious SF, dammit!" and one thing The Horns of Nimon is making no pretence to be is serious.

I'm not going to pretend that The Horns of Nimon is some undiscovered classic, but there is, frankly, a lot worse Doctor Who out there. It is, at least, never dull and mostly manages to be pretty entertaining. It even has a lot of fun with its retelling of the minotaur legend into which a fair bit of intelligence, thought and care has clearly gone.

However there is no denying that there is more than a nod towards pantomime in the story and that nod is far more up-front and in your face than is normal for the humour in Doctor Who. The co-pilot's endless repetition of "Weakling Scum!" never fails to make me giggle, and the TARDIS sproinging noises come and go so fast that they don't really bother me too much. Graham Crowther's enthusiastic performance as Soldeed is probably the weakest thing here, at least from the point of view of Doctor Who as semi-serious drama:



Actually, Norman Jones' Hieronymus from The Masque of Mandragora had a similar line in eye-rolling madness but somehow managed to keep it just enough in check that he didn't immediately remind you of a pantomime villain.



However, there's no denying that you can't even pretend Soldeed is a real person. He's a pantomime villain through and through and only the fourth wall is preventing him gurning at the audience and answering them back. It isn't easy to watch Soldeed and pretend in your child's heart that this really happened somewhere.

However I've grown out of the need to pretend that Doctor Who really happened somewhere and that aside, given the flexibility of the Who format, I don't object too strongly to the level and style of the humour on display in The Horns of Nimon

Meanwhile there is much to enjoy. There is the retelling of the minotaur legend in an SF setting which I actually really like and think is pretty clever. It's also mostly a good story for the second Romana who is one of my favourite Who companions despite the fact that Lalla Ward's acting is far more theatrical in style than is really suited for television (full of heavily emphasised gestures and expressions and a tendency to speak always as if her voice needs to reach the back of a crowded auditorium). I think it is particularly telling that when she gets accidentally sent off to Chronos on her own, the audience is not particularly worried for her safety - there is no doubt she is just as capable of taking care of herself as the Doctor is and that is very rare, even with modern day companions. It is one of the things that always struck me about the handling of Ace in some of the early New Adventures books. The Doctor could send her off to do things for him, and there was no sense that she would be safer, or that the major resolution of that thread would be reuniting with the Doctor himself.

Teka, on the other hand, is a strangely frustrating character. It is difficult to tell (from the combination of scripting and acting) whether she was intended merely to be the caricature of a pathetic and clinging woman or whether we are supposed to pick up on a note of determined manipulation underneath it all. At the end, the Doctor seems to acknowledge that Teka is going to secure a place in legend for the unfortunate Seth and it isn't too hard to imagine her becoming a ruthless matriarch. It doesn't help that all the Anethians, including poor old Seth, are all somewhat wet so Teka's apparently mindless confidence in Seth's abilities actually gives her the appearance of more backbone than the rest of them. As an aside, I was frequently distracted by the fact that Meriadoc Brandybuck appeared to be lurking in the midst of this helpless group of sacrificial victims.






At the end of the day, as long as you are not expecting something that is taking itself particularly seriously, there is nothing particularly terrible about The Horns of Nimon. It's the kind of Who story it is easy to laugh at, but it's clearly inviting you to laugh at it and if you can't see that then you are sort of missing the point. At the same time it has a good enough story to hold the interest for the 100 minutes or so it takes to play out. I remain somewhat mystified by the vilification it meets with in some quarters.

Comments

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

I have never in my life considered Dr Who serious science fiction (or even science fiction at all - I reckon it comes under the 'science fantasy' heading) and, indeed, have muttered that for years the BBC didn't do any real science fiction, let alone serious science fiction, because "We'v> e got Dr Who for the science fiction fans, and that should satisfy them."

I loathe "The Horns of Nimon". I loathed it when I first saw it and I loathe it now. It has no imagination and a totally derivative plot. (It doesn't help that I hate both Tom Baker's Doctor and don't particularly like Lalla Ward's version of Romana.) I hate the whole "actors not taking it seriously so not to alarm the kiddies" ethos of this particular period. I think the whole thing is cheap and nasty and don't want it in the house.

[purplecat]

Hmm... I think Crowther, at least, is being serious about his silliness. I'd much prefer this to actors who simply can't be bothered. I saw Joan Sims in an episode of The Mysterious Planet recently and that is far far worse: she exudes total contempt for the whole enterprise and is surrounded by extras who clearly regret having got out of bed that morning. I'm not sure the plot is that derivative - it isn't slavishly following the minotaur legend at all - and while it would be hard to argue that any of the ideas themselves are particularly original (military society on the brink of collapse following a war, parasitic aliens, wormhole based travel, etc. etc.) that is true of the vast swathe of Doctor Who.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Which is why I am not really a Who fan...

[reggietate.livejournal.com]

We had noticed :-) I grew up with it, so it's perhaps inevitable that I do like it (I was two and a half or so when it aired). It's a part of my life. Sometimes it can be rubbish, but mostly it's not bad, and at times it can be sublime. But if you aren't into it, it's inevitably going to look pretty crappy.

I do like that icon, though, who made it?

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

My usual go-to person for Who icons - calapine. She did a whole series of River with the various Doctors - they're on her LJ.

[reggietate.livejournal.com]

I'll have to check her out, thanks :-) I love River. And I do need a few Good Who icons.

[purplecat]

Yes, I can't imagine Horns having anything to offer someone who has no fondness for Who, or even for that era of Who. As I said, it's no classic.

[reggietate.livejournal.com]

Doctor Who's is practically its own genre, I think. Personally I like the term 'telefantasy', which seems to have fallen out of favour nowadays.

I'd certainly regard Quatermass and Survivors as science fiction (and wasn't Doomwatch a Beeb series?). Or do they come under speculative/dystopian/apocalyptic fiction?

Nimon isn't great, but if yo take it more as a pantomine, it's not so bad. Just not up to the usual Who standard. I must admit, I prefer earlier Tom Baker, though.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure what 'telefantasy' is supposed to mean. For it to have any real meaning you'd have to be convinced that the medium is, in fact, the message, which I am not.

Also, I was referring to the period just after Dr Who was introduced, when the BBC, which had been making wonderful real science fiction, like the three Quatermass serials, the two Andromeda serials, 1984 - all of which were produced before Who was even commissioned - stopped dead and only produced Who for several years.

The BBC did buy in Star Trek as a summer replacement for Who but treated it as badly as they did Buffy (Indeed, I remember actually having a letter published in Radio Times pointing out that (first and second seasons of) Trek were actually SF, unlike Who.)

Survivors is dated 1975-1977 and has more plot and logic holes than a fishing net. Doomwatch had only two seasons worth watching) 1970-1972 but those two seasons are both hard SF and pure gold.

There was the excellent Counterstrike but that was really a techno-thriller, and the BBC hated it so much they wiped it at once even though at least one episode wasn't shown because of strike.

[reggietate.livejournal.com]

I think telefantasy basically encompasses a lot of the odd stuff the BBC (and also ITV) produced back in the day, that didn't really fall into one strict category like SF and wasn't the kind of thing being written at the time.

I don't think the Beeb ever really thought of Who as an SF programme, either, but it's not strictly speaking a fantasy, and given that Who was only ever considered as a Childrens show, I'm not sure you can blame it for the lack of SF on the BBC :-) Survivors? Well, plot holes aside, it's still SF, and a pretty decent example of post-apocalypse. And there were adaptations of Day of the Triffids and Child of the Vodyanoi (there was ever ITV's Quatermass, which I like a lot more these days than I originally did). Also, 1990, which I managed to see again on Youtube recently

I never saw Counterstrike. What was it about? I do think it's a shame so many thing got wiped unnecessarily, but it seems to have been common pocily until relatively recently, because of the cost of videotape.

I so wish I'd been able to see all of The Quatermass Experiment, though. The two eps of it that survive are really good (it's not a coincidence that my username is reggietate *g*).

The BBC's attitude to F does seem to have been somewhat ambivalent, though.

[inamac.livejournal.com]

Counterstrike's premise was that there was a group of aliens (from Alpha Cantauri - aren't they all?) planning to take over the Earth, and another group (the 'observers') dedicated to stopping them. At all costs the humans are not to know that this clandestine battle is going on.

Unfortunately, when the primary Observer ends up in hospital, his secret is divined by his doctor - who joins him in his assignments.

Simple premise, but it had the advantage that it needed a minimum of SFX and relied totally on plots and acting.

The unbroadcast/wiped episode wasn't lost because of a strike though - the BBC pulled it in favour of a documentary on the Kray twins, who were sentenced on the day that episode was due to go out.

[reggietate.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Sounds like something ripe for a modern remake. I'm all for that kind of SF that doesn't rely solely on effects to make it work. And since it costs considerably less... the Beeb's recent forays into SF territory haven't been wildly successful, but that doesn't mean they couldn't pull off something like this in the future. It would be a good fit for BBC 4, don't you think?

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

But A for Andromeda, The Andromeda Breakthrough, The Year of the Sex Olympics and so on are real science fiction. Between 1963 and 1970 the BBC produced no science fiction on BBC1 - BBC2 had a version of Caves of Steel but practically no-one saw it.

Dr Who started out as an educational programme. Why do you think the companions were teachers? From then on the BBC regarded SF as 'childrens' programming, which is how they treated Star Trek. There was the odd technothriller, like Counterstrike and Doomwatch sneaked under the radar because Kit Pedlar and Gerry Davis sold it to the Beeb as prediction. However, Survivors is pretty much a soap.

It is noticeable that Nigel Kneale went over to ITV, and Terry Nation to the States because of the Beeb's attitude to what they preferred to write.

[reggietate.livejournal.com]

Yes, Who was regarded as a children's programme, but I'm not so sure all of SF prgramming, such as it may have been, was considered the same. Much as we'd like it to be otherwise, even the BBC had to take into account popularity - was serious SF in demand in those days, or perceived as such? Soap-SF or not, Survivors was an adult show, as was 1990. B7, on the other hand, was a space opera more or less, but a very popular one.

Didn't TN go to the US to try getting the Daleks launched into a series of their own? You couldn't exactly call him an SF writer, despite them and B7. And the high-ups at the Beeb weren't overly sympathetic to Who or SF in general, it seems to me. It hadn't had the revival in popularity it's got now. Perhaps they just didn't get it.

As for Nigel Kneale, did his switch to ITV do him that much good? I confess I don't know a lot about his later career. I do know he hated Who, though :-D

I do wish we could have more serious SF drama, though. I love space adcenture shows and things like Primeval, but I want to see drama that has SF ideas just as we see cop shows and medical shows and so forth, too.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

No-one was on the streets on Sunday night when the Quatermass serials ran. Churches actually asked the BBC to re-shedule. A for Andromeda had a huge audience and massive critical acclaim, as did the sequel. The Year oF the Sex Olympics is one of the most influential TV plays ever produced.

Remember that the BBC had produced one of the the most successful radio serials of all time, in the three Charles Chilton stories of Jet Morgan and his crew (Journey into Space, The Red Planet, and The World in Peril) in the 1950s, but with the 60s, the BBC looked at the American stuff produced by people like Irwin Allen and saw how effect-heavy it was and decided they couldn't compete. Gerry Anderson offered them his stuff, and they declined. The policy had changed. So had the management.

[reggietate.livejournal.com]

Well, in most cases, they probably couldn't compete, effects-wise but a lot of SF based on scientific ideas doesn't rely on effects, so you may be right that there was just a change in attitude from the management. It does seem odd, though, given that Quatermass and other shows had made such an impact.

I know the effects people on B7 were pretty much thrown into despair by Star Wars, then they just said Sod it, and id d the best they could with the resources they had. Maybe modern audiences are just too spoilt now by fancy CGI.

It almost seems as if anything that could slip under the radar as a thriller was okay, while anything that was obviously outright SF just didn't fit the remit. Making a 'kids' show meant it could be safely ignored, I suppose, which is how Who and B7 survived.

I b=vaguely remember a repeat of Journey into Space at some time, and another radio series called Earthsearch. It's been a hell of a long while since I listened to radio drama, maybe I should start again before it vanishes!

Did the Beeb really refuse Gerry Anderson? That's a shame. Whatever you might think of 'puppet' shows, his model work was always fantastic.I wonder what Pace 1999 would have been like if the BBC had made it?

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

I'd never heard that Anderson had any possible relationship with the BBC until the 1970s. His entire methodology developed within the financial support and risk-taking possible in Lew Grade's internationally-minded ATV/ITC; the BBC couldn't have afforded it. One has only to look at the recently unearthed documentation on The Daleks TV series, proposed by Terry Nation in the mid-1960s and reported on earlier this year by Nothing at the End of the Lane, to see how they were alarmed at the potential costs of a filmed space adventure series.

Blake's 7 wasn't a children's programme, though it probably suffered from the perception that SF was a juvenile form. I think Gareth Thomas has complained about that.

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

I don't think the BBC ever intended to stop making science fiction institutionally in the 1960s, but it's true that the reorganisation of television drama in 1963 meant that the producer/directors who had been making the serials you liked largely left; and though Sydney Newman, who instigated the reorganisation, liked SF, he saw it as more suited to single plays than to the serials which had dominated the medium before, hence Out of the Unknown, though of course this is no good to those who don't have BBC 2.

I don't think the BBC hated Counterstrike as such; bureaucratically it was down to the series producer to authorise the retention of the transmission tapes in the short term, but if there was no repeat scheduled within the contractual window, or Enterprises didn't want the tapes so they could make film recordings for overseas sales, they would be wiped.

[daniel-saunders.livejournal.com]

I like the term 'telefantasy', despite the word being a little ugly and vague. Personally, I tend to use it to refer to pre-1990s programmes which rely more on atmosphere and slightly surreal imagery than being 'serious' SF. I mean programmes like Doctor Who, The Prisoner, Sapphire and Steel, Quatermass and later episodes of The Avengers. (Blake's 7 perhaps gets in by default for sharing elements of the style and so many actors and production personnel.) These are all favourites of mine, so it's a useful catch-all term for me.

[reggietate.livejournal.com]

That's very much how I feel about it. It doesn't seem to fit the modern shows we have now, which is perhaps why it's fallen out of use. It's a useful catch-all term for British sci-fi of a certain period, pre CGI.

[lonemagpie.livejournal.com]

Nimon's *hilarious* - and meant to be. It's at the height (or depth, depending on your POV) of the Williams/Adams era, and was meant to be a sort of Christmas comedy episode (I won't say panto, as that's a rather different genre, and has entirely different connotations where Dr Who is concerned).

If Shada had been finished, and Nimon hadn't thus ended up as the season finale, this story would probably be just semi-forgotten, rather than unfairly reviled.

[purplecat]

Being perceived as Williams' swan-song certainly doesn't do Nimon any favours but I do think fans are more inclined to forgive the dull than the silly and I suspect most of the viewing public are the other way around.

[daniel-saunders.livejournal.com]

I really like season seventeen, but I do consider Nimon to be the weak link, although it's not bad. I think Graham Crowden's performance would have been better if he had started fairly sane and descended into madness over four episodes, instead of being bonkers throughout. The death-laugh is in character, though, and I don't have a problem with it.

Regarding wet Anethans, I think there's a sense in which the story is a spoof of the first Star Wars film, with Seth being a send up of Luke Skywalker and Teka of Princess Leia - not for the first or last time, Doctor Who makes the action heroes a bit pathetic and leaves the Wise Old Man (and his Wiser, Younger Assistant and their Wise Dog) as the real hero, rather than just the hero's mentor. But I do think it's sweet that the Doctor lets Seth take the credit so Seth can impress Teka!

I have also often found Lalla Ward's performance theatrical. I think I actually prefer Mary Tamm's Romana, fan heresy though it is to say so.

[purplecat]

I find it hard to view it as a spoof of Star Wars or at least if it is, it is one with a limited grasp of its source material and is therefore misses its targets by some way. Since around season 2 or 3 when Doctor Who lost the pretence of being an ensemble show, it has always tended to place the Doctor front and centre as the means by which the plot is resolved. As a result, is unusual in television in nearly always fore-fronting the mentor figure in preference to the more normal action-hero characters.

I think Tamm is the better actress, but I dislike the way her character was so often set up to be "Wrong" and to demonstrate that she was inadequate in comparison to the Doctor. The retooling of the character as someone far better aligned to the Doctor's way of doing things was, I think, a vast improvement and made the relationship far more a partnership of equals something the show has otherwise almost always been very wary of showing us.

[daniel-saunders.livejournal.com]

Interesting points.

I wonder what season seventeen would have looked like had Mary Tamm stayed on? I think by The Armaggedon Factor she was playing the surrogate Doctor role more associated with Lalla Ward. Perhaps the continuity of actress would have given more of a sense of a (real or imaginary) character arc (to use modern jargon), whereas a lot of fans seem to see Romanas 1 and 2 as essentially different characters, rather than as one who has grown as a result of her time with the Doctor.

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

I don't think it misses its target as such, but then if Horns is sending up Star Wars, it's sending up genre rather than the text.

Largely I think the problem with Horns is that the good ideas in it aren't co-ordinated properly, so there are several clashes of realisation. I can believe in some of the characters as real people: Soldeed may appear ludicrous but his appearance says something about his society, however broad.

[purplecat]

Hmm... it seems to me that at the genre-level the target is really just action-heros which is fair enough but if Horns is intended to be a spoof about action-heroics or even space-action-heroics then I think it's dropping the ball quite badly. There's not enough focus on Seth, nor is he particularly funny. Mostly, he's rather bland.

I was tempted in the review to say there was some interesting world-building going on but, in retrospect, I decided it was just world-building and it wasn't particularly good - we really only learn enough about Aneth and Skonnos as is needed to drive the plot. Attention seems to have been more focused on adaptation of the minotaur legend and some broad humour than on anything else. As you say the rest of what they were attempting - world building, spoofing Star Wars - suffers as a result.

[reggietate.livejournal.com]

There are worse things to be than enjoyably silly, and at least with Who you could generally expect something completely different next time round.

You're probably right about it being better received if it wasn't the season finale.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Do you randomise separately for Doctor and for story, or just randomise once for story? If the former, it's no surprise that Tom Baker comes up a lot.

[purplecat]

Randomise for story, but even so we should only be getting Tom about one in every four or five, not three out of every four.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Okay, three out of four is a lot. I suspect bias on the part of your random number generator.

[jane-somebody.livejournal.com]

Ignoring the interesting discussion on television SF played out in the rest of the comments, I was amused by El, on seeing the first picture in this review, asking why there was a picture of a man with a lobster on his head. :-)

[purplecat]

If only that were the sum total of the story's visual infelicities. The Nimon themselves are lumbered with massive platform shoes, I think in an attempt to make them tower imposingly over the rest of the cast. The camera man wisely tries not to show these whenever possible but they are sometimes visible and do look ridiculous.