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The Twin Dilemma is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four twice-weekly parts from March 22 to March 30, 1984, the first to star Colin Baker in the title role.

Synopsis

In a post-regenerative crisis, the Sixth Doctor takes Peri to the desolate asteroid Titan 3 planning to stay there as a hermit for 1000 years. However, he is soon drawn into a plot to conquer the galaxy by a race of giant Gastropods…

Plot

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After his regeneration, the Doctor starts behaving erratically. He goes to the wardrobe and looking for a new outfit and finds a glaring, mismatched, brightly coloured coat which he immediately takes a shine to. Peri tells him that he could not go outside wearing such an awful garb, to which the Doctor takes offense.

Two twins, Romulus and Remus Sylveste, receive a visitation from a mysterious old man called Professor Edgeworth. They question how he managed to get inside their house, he tells them he will return when their father is there. He then proceeds to abduct them and the trio disappear. They arrive on a spacecraft in deep space. Edgeworth then communicates with his superior, a slug like creature called Mestor, who instructs Edgeworth to take the twins to Titan 3.

In the console room, the Doctor has a funny turn, quoting a poem about a Peri - a good and beautiful but evil fairy in Persian mythology. The Doctor accuses her of being evil, and of being an alien spy before rushing toward her and throttling her. He catches a sight of his own manic face in a mirror and collapses in a heap, releasing Peri. When she tells him that he tried to kill her, he initially denies he could be possible of such an act, but seeing how terrified of him she is, decides he must become a hermit on the desolate asteroid — Titan 3.

The twins' father contacts the authorities, he found Zanium in their room — a sure sign of intergalactic kidnap. A Commander Lang begins the pursuit and soon finds a suspicious ship previously reported missing. He tries to contact it, but it enters warp drive — something that class of ship is not designed to do.

On Titan 3, as the Doctor contemplates a thousand years of solitude, and Peri expresses her disapproval, they hear the crash landing of a craft. Examining its wreckage, they find the concussed body of Commander Lang. They take him back to the TARDIS where he reveals his whole squadron has been destroyed. Believing the Doctor to be responsible he points his gun at the Doctor and threatens to kill him…

Peri pleads with Lang telling him that the Doctor had in fact saved him, but he faints away. The Doctor is not keen to treat Lang, more concerned for his own life but eventually agrees to Peri's persuasion.

Edgeworth argues with Romulus and Remus, making them do Mestor's work. He scolds them for setting up a distress signal, so they are not allowed to use electronic equipment to solve the equations they have been set. An image of Mestor appears and gives the twins a more blunt threat — work for him or have their minds destroyed.

On the TARDIS scanner, the Doctor and Peri see a building — something which has no place on an uninhabited asteroid. Leaving Lang behind, they find a tunnel which may lead to the building, but on exploring find two aliens wielding guns. The Doctor cowers in fear and pleads with them not to shoot him. They are led off and are brought before Edgeworth. The Doctor claims to be a pilgrim to Titan 3, but Nomer, one of the aliens, says they are spies and should be shot. The Doctor suddenly recognises Edgeworth as an old friend - Azmael, master of Jaconda, whom he met in a previous regeneration. When the Doctor sees Romulus and, Remus and discovers it is Azmael who has abducted them, he is disgusted. Azmael teleports away with the twins and the aliens, leaving the Doctor and Peri locked in the building. The Doctor starts to break the lock's combination, but Peri discovers Nomer has set the base to self-destruct. The Doctor improvises a solution to teleport them back to the TARDIS. Peri makes a successful return, but the Doctor has not appeared when she sees the base explode on the scanner…

A glimpse of the Doctor is seen appearing in the TARDIS, he was delayed returning because using Peri's watch to synchronise their arrival, but the watch had stopped. The Doctor is surprised at Peri's compassion when she thought he had died.

On Jaconda, Mestor is seen putting to death one of the bird-like Jacondans for a petty offence of stealing a few vegetables. Soon, the TARDIS arrives, but instead of the expected beautiful planet the Doctor is expecting, he, Peri and Lang find a desolate wasteland covered with giant Gastropod trails. The Doctor is reluctant to go to the palace, scared for his own life, but is persuaded to take Lang there in the TARDIS. In the palace corridors they see murals depicting Jaconda's history, they depict the slugs of myth - but it appears that they are now all too real. Avoiding Gastropods, Lang gets stuck in a Gastropod trail.

Azmael takes the twins to his laboratory and shows them a store room full of Gastropod eggs. Mestor arrives and tries to persuade them that his aims are benevolent. Azmael begs him to stop reading his thoughts and stop Nomer watching his every move. He agrees and leaves. Azmael explains to the Twins that Mestor usurped him as leader of Jaconda and outlines a plan to draw two outlying planets into the same orbit as Jaconda. The Twins' genius is required to stabilise those planets in their new orbit. The Doctor, leaving Peri and Lang behind, finds Azmael's lab. In a manic fit of pique he attacks Azmael, but is restrained by a Jacondan and the Twins. The Doctor apologises to Azmael but demands to know what is going on.

Meanwhile, Peri is captured by Jacondan guards and brought before Mestor. When Lang escapes to Azmael's lab, and informs them what has happened, the Doctor finally shows compassion for her when he thinks she might die…

Mestor refrains from killing Peri immediately, finding her appearance pleasing. Jacondan guards arrive in Azmael's lab and seize the Doctor. The Doctor tells Mestor that he ought to allow him to assist with the dangerous operation of moving the planets, as a single mistake could blow a hole in that corner of the universe. Back the laboratory, Azmael informs the Doctor the details of the plan to bring the planets into the same orbit — they will be placed in different time zones using time travel technology Mestor stole from Azmael. The Doctor realises that as the other planets are smaller than Jaconda, bringing them closer to Jaconda's sun will lead to catastrophe. The Doctor enters the egg storeroom, and is disturbed that they have no nutritional mucus. He tries to cut one open with a laser cutter, but the shell is impenetrable. The egg reacts slightly to the heat. The Doctor realises they have been designed to withstand the heat of an exploding sun — the explosion of the Jacondan sun will scatter the eggs throughout the universe. When they hatch, the Gastropods will conquer the universe.

The one remaining Jacondan in the lab collapses dead, his mind burnt out. Mestor had been using him as a monitor, he knows the full details of what has been discussed. Peri, Lang and the Twins return to the TARDIS, whilst the Doctor and Azmael go to confront Mestor. When Mestor refuses to abandon his plans, the Doctor hurls a vial of acid taken from the lab at him, but a force field protects Mestor from any harm. Mestor threatens to possess the Doctor's mind and body, and to demonstrate takes control of Azmael's body. Azmael tells him to destroy Mestor's body before he can return to it, which he does with a further vial. Then Azmael, in his last regeneration, forces himself to regenerate — killing himself — and in doing so destroys Mestor. Dying, Azmael says he has no regrets and that one of his fondest memories was a time spent with the Doctor by a fountain.

The Doctor and Peri return to the TARDIS and Lang decides to stay behind on Jaconda to assist with their rebuilding. When Peri tells the Doctor off for being rude, he reminds her that he is an alien: "I am the Doctor… whether you like it or not!"

Cast

• The Doctor - Colin Baker
• Peri Brown - Nicola Bryant
• Edgeworth / Azmael – Maurice Denham
• Mestor the Magnificent - Edwin Richfield
• Lt Hugo Lang – Kevin McNally
• Sylvest - Dennis Chinnery
• Romulus – Gavin Conrad
• Remus – Andrew Conrad
• The Chamberlain - Seymour Green
• Drak – Oliver Smith
• Noma - Barry Stanton
• Elena – Dione Inman
• Fabian – Helen Blatch
• Prisoner – Roger Nott
• Jacondan Guard - John Wilson

Notes

1. Maurice Denham makes a guest appearance as Azmael. See Celebrity appearances in Doctor Who.
2. Anthony Steven worked very slowly on the scripts, offering many strange excuses (purportedly saying that his typewriter had literally exploded) and turning them in at a very late stage. Compounding things were the fact that the scripts were viewed as being of poor quality and too much for the show's budget by script editor Eric Saward, who was forced to massively rework them in a very short amount of time.
3. This story was the first time a regeneration took place before the end of a season since the Hartnell-Troughton change in 1966. Producer John Nathan-Turner elected to do this in order to break with tradition.
4. The cat badge worn by the Sixth Doctor on his lapel for this story was hand-made and painted by Suzie Trevor, and purchased for the programme from a specialist badge shop in central London. For each subsequent story, the Doctor was to wear a different cat badge to symbolize that he was a "travelling cat of different walks."
5. At least one aspect of Steven's original script featured the Joconda and Gastropods being dropped totally early in the fourth episode without resolution to the plot, with the final battle taking place in another dimension against a being called Azlan who was controlling Mestor all along.
6. Fandom often holds the serial in a very low light, being regarded as one of the worst serials ever made. A 1997 poll by Doctor Who Magazine ranked the serial the second worst of all time (Dimensions in Time was number one), while a 2003 poll by fansite Outpost Gallifrey ranked it worst of all, below even Dimensions in Time.
7. The Doctor is unusually violent at the start of this episode, even attempting to strangle Peri. The intention was to create a Doctor that was initially unlikeable, but would gradually reveal a kind-hearted soul (glimpsed in Revelation of the Daleks). This was also intended to be a contrast to the instantly likable Tom Baker and Peter Davison Doctors. However, in later interviews, director Peter Moffatt said that the original idea was merely to have the Doctor much in a much more energetic state than he was during the Fifth Doctor's debut story Castrovalva. Colin Baker said during a 2003 documentary celebrating the series's 40th anniversary that "the idea was that over the many, many years I would be playing the part, the outer layers would gradually peel away, revealing the kind-hearted soul."
8. Eric Saward intended for Azmael to be the hermit who the Doctor had spoken to in his youth, referenced in The Time Monster. Anthony Steven misinterpreted the request and instead made Azmael a former academy tutor of the Doctor. Ironically, the misinterpretation prevented a serious continuity error from developing, as the 1974 Third Doctor swansong-storyPlanet of the Spiders had already established the hermit to be a Time Lord named K'Anpo Rimpoche.

External links

• Cast and Crew list, on the BBC website

• Sixth Doctor serials