Doctor Who – Nightmare Of
Eden (1979/BBC DVD)
Picture:
C Sound: C Extras: A Episodes: C+
In a
freak accident, two spacecrafts have fused with one another. It is up to Dr. Who (Tom Baker), Romana (Lalla
Ward) and his trusty electronic dog K-9 to save the ships and save the day, but
the plot thickens when a highly illegal, addictive, deadly and profitable drug
is found on the ship, along with the Doctor as the main suspect for smuggling
the drug. Clearing his name, saving the
ship isn't going to be easy with a mysterious creature terrorizing ships
corridors in the four-part Nightmare Of Eden (1979) here on one DVD from the BBC.
There is
trouble in paradise when two spaceships accidentally phase into one another
releasing Mandrels from the planet Eden
from a traveling zoologist's subspace container. Doctor
Who must team up with a surviving member of the Eden expedition to uncover the true culprits
behind the drugs and clear the good his name. This blast from the past,
British Sci-fi from the ‘70s before just about all the effects converted to CGI
(though models are still used on better productions and these older analog
shows had analog visual effects many forget or do not know exist), when they
had aliens wore costumes, ships were models, and any special effects has to be
drawn in frame by frame.
Doctor
Who (for those not in the know) is a traveling immortal time lord, travel
though space, time, and dimensions he always seems to arrive in the middle of
some crisis to save the day. This era of
Tom Baker shows were the peak of the original run of the show before its
successful revival and the first to reach U.S. TV on a normal basis, thanks in
part to some PBS stations.
This is
from the 17th Season and is from Baker’s latter period, which is when
the show moved totally to PAL analog videotape, whereas older shows did tape
with 16mm outdoor shooting. The 1.33 X 1
image is not bad, but a little weaker than usual for a taping of this period
and the Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono shows its age.
We get a bunch of extras, though, including audio commentary, making and
behind the scenes, Fan's point of view, photo gallery and PDF material that is
DVD-ROM accessible.
- Ricky Chiang
