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While the TARDIS is immobilised for repairs, the Doctor, Romana
and K9 come across a Skonnon spaceship bearing tributes for
an alien benefactor, the bull-headed Nimon. These tributes
comprise radioactive hymetusite crystals from the planet Aneth
- and human sacrificial victims...
This
is the final Tom Baker story to make it onto video. But the
BBC certainly haven't saved the best for last.
In
its favour, The Horns of Nimon offers a larger than
usual role to Lalla Ward as Romana, who is separated from
the Doctor during the second episode and most of the fourth.
She comes across as an adventuress in her own right, and makes
a good template for a female Doctor, although she does defer
rather too readily to the male character of Sezom (John Bailey)
in Part Four. The change of emphasis in the fourth and final
episode, in which Romana is transported to the planet Crinoth,
is also refreshing in terms of plot.
However,
many of the most risible aspects of the Graham Williams-produced
era of Doctor Who are all-too vividly on display. These
range from budgetary shortcomings - including cheap-looking
sets and the Co-Pilot's (Malcolm Terris) split trousers at
the end of Part Two - to some extra-hammy acting from Tom
Baker and Graham Crowden, whose villainous Soldeed famously
laughs during this death scene. There's further comic excess
when the TARDIS console explodes, accompanied by a montage
of comedy sound effects.
Evidently the production team thought they could have a bit
of a laugh with this story before concluding the seventeenth
season with the more level-headed Shada. Sadly, industrial
action put paid to that, and the Williams era ended here,
with this load of bulls. Not a high note to end on at all.
Richard
McGinlay
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