The Twin Dilemma (TV story)

Synopsis
A race of giant gastropods has taken over the planet Jaconda. Their leader, Mestor, now intends to cause an enormous explosion in order to spread his people's eggs throughout the galaxy, and he kidnaps juvenile twin geniuses from Earth to work out the necessary mathematical equations. Space fighters led by Lieutenant Hugo Lang are dispatched to get the twins back, but they come under attack and Lang is the sole survivor when his ship crashes on the asteroid Titan 3.

A newly regenerated Doctor and Peri become involved and help Jaconda's elderly former ruler Professor Edgeworth, who is really a Time Lord named Azmael, to defeat Mestor and free the planet's bird-like indigenous people from the gastropods' reign of terror. Azmael, however, sacrifices his life in the process.

The danger over, The Doctor tells Peri, "I'm the Doctor - whether you like it or not!"

Cast

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

Crew

 * Assistant Floor Manager - Stephen Jeffery-Poulter, Beth Millward
 * Costumes - Pat Godfrey
 * Designer - Valerie Warrender
 * Film Cameraman - John Baker, John Walker
 * Film Editor - Ian McKendrick
 * Incidental Music - Malcolm Clarke
 * Make-Up - Denise Baron
 * Producer - John Nathan-Turner
 * Production Assistant - Christine Fawcett
 * Production Associate - June Collins
 * Script Editor - Eric Saward
 * Special Sounds - Dick Mills
 * Studio Lighting - Don Babbage
 * Studio Sound - Scott Talbott
 * Theme Arrangement - Peter Howell
 * Title Music - Ron Grainer
 * Visual Effects - Stuart Brisdon

Story Notes

 * This story had working titles of; A Stitch In Time, A Switch In Time.
 * New opening and closing title sequences make their debut a more colourful version than the previous one, incorporating Colin Baker's face rather than Peter Davison's designed by Sid Sutton and Terry Handley.
 * The cat badge worn by the Doctor in 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.
 * Fabian was originally envisaged as a male character, and the Jocondan Chamberlain as a female one.
 * The Doctor attempting to strangle Peri marks the first time on television that the Doctor has intentionally attacked a companion (discounting such events as his physical confrontation with and subsequent partial electrocution of Ian Chesterton in DW: An Unearthly Child, his knocking out of John Benton in DW: Invasion of the Dinosaurs, and his tying up Harry Sullivan and throwing him in a closet in DW: Robot).
 * When in 2009 readers of Doctor Who Magazine readers voted on their favourite story The Twin Dilemma came in at 200 making it reader's least favourite Doctor Who story.

Ratings

 * Part 1 - 7.6 million viewers
 * Part 2 - 7.4 million viewers
 * Part 3 - 7.0 million viewers
 * Part 4 - 6.3 million viewers

Myths

 * The Edgeworth character was originally intended to be the first Doctor. (He wasn't.)

Filming Locations

 * Springwell Quarry, Springwell Lane, Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire
 * Gerrards Cross Sand and Gravel Quarry, Gerrards Cross
 * BBC Television Centre (TC3 & TC8), Shepherd's Bush, London

Discontinuity, Plot Holes, Errors

 * The altered revitaliser machine sends Peri 10 seconds back in time, and thus... back to the TARDIS? The revitaliser itself does not achieve this. However, the Doctor is fully aware that the TARDIS would detect any unusual time/space disturbance in its viscinity and redirect it to the control room for the Doctor to study (See Pyramids of Mars, The Awakening, Timelash, and The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, to name a few).
 * Why does Azmael bother with the 'Edgworth' alias? Anything to help cover his tracks. He has just kidnapped two children.
 * the Jocondan's awful death by embolism.
 * ezmael keeps a slug-killing potion hanging around, but has never thought of using it.
 * the tin foil sofa.
 * the twins believe Edgeworth's story that his teleportation into their living room is a conjuring trick.
 * why do the kidnappers stop off on Titan 3?
 * peri makes no mention of the Doctor's heroic sacrifice on her behalf, nor thanks him for it (no wonder he's touchy).
 * why does Azmael call himself Edgeworth anyway?
 * peri is lusted after by an alien hermaphrodite slug.
 * she has a touching faith in the notion that, as a policeman, Hugo cannot be a homicidal maniac.
 * the twins' father is indeed being 'melodramatic' when he tells them that their mathematical skills could change events on a massive scale: the sums Mestor requires could have been done by the Brigadier.
 * when Elena operates her monitor to check out the freighter, it's filled with a mass of text. But towards the bottom, it says, "Run", allowing the actress to press one key and activate the graphics.
 * Sylvest tells Hugo that he found zanium on the floor of his house. When Hugo relays this to the commander, he elaborates it into "a dust-like deposit on the floor."
 * When the twins are playing equations, they suddenly move about a metre apart so that they have room to turn around and face each other.
 * After the Doctor regenerates, a smudge of mud has disappeared from his sweater.
 * The silver computer terminal in the safe house on Titan 3 is prone to wobbling - most obviously when Peri spots the bomb and the Doctor walks away to have a look.
 * Mestor's hair-brained scheme defies the most basic laws of physics and any kind of logic. The smaller mass of Jaconda's neighbouring planets will not cause their orbit to decay (in fact, Jupiter shares an orbit with the small trojan asteroids). Even if they did, the tiny mass of a planet would not cause a massive sun to explode. Even if the gastropod eggs could survive a nova, it would be tens of thousands of years, at minimum, before a very tiny fraction of them would reach a planet.

Continuity

 * The transmat beam leaves behind a dusty residue, an effect also produced by the transmat used in DW: Bad Wolf.

DVD and Video Releases

 * The Twin Dilemma will be released on DVD on September 7th, 2009. This is the last Colin Baker story to be released on DVD.

Novelisation

 * Main article: The Twin Dilemma (novelisation)


 * Novelised as The Twin Dilemma in 1985 by Eric Saward.