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Rating: Country: UK Release Date: January 5, 2010 Distributor: BBC Warner Director: · Peter Moffatt Cast: · Colin Baker · Nicola Bryant · Kevin McNally · Maurice Denham Related Sites: · IMDb: Doctor Who - The Twin Dilemma Grade: B

I was in my college days when the local PBS station finally secured the American broadcast rights to the Colin Baker episodes of Doctor Who, and well I remember the viewing party we had as we awaited the newly regenerated Doctor. Finally, after a session of Dave Allen at Large (I recall he talked about playing "Cowboys and Indians," and mentioned he had a "sawed-off shotgun" as he glanced down at his partially missing index finger), the PBS announcers came on with what seemed an interminably long plea for more pledge money from the viewing audience, so that they could obtain even more Doctor Who episodes.

And then came the star field animation and familiar theramin theme, slightly altered to let the viewers know that, yes, indeed, something had changed. And there was Colin Baker, laying there in the tattered and muddied remains of Peter Davison's outfit, with Peri Brown (Nicola Bryant, who, if we were forced to admit it, was the real reason we were watching the show; if only we'd known then the fun Baker and others were having "biting her on the bum" every time she crouched down -- more about that in the special features of this release), the doctor's perky companion, watching on.

Colin Baker's initial foray as the Doctor found him wearing a Victorian coat that had been the only survivor of "an explosion in a rainbow factory" (as Baker later described it), adorned with an adorable cat brooch as a lapel badge. The Doctor was also a bit out of his mind, suffering from quick-changing bouts of manic-depressive outbursts.

Simultaneous to the Doctor's mental dilemma, we find two mathematical prodigies -- Remus and Romulus (Andrew and Gavin Conrad) -- kidnapped from their home by another renegade time lord using the name Edgeworth (played by Maurice Denham). Edgeworth's goal is to use their brilliance to calculate the formula for bringing two outlying planets into the same orbit as his own (currently ruled by a giant anthropomorphic slug with psychic powers named Mestor), but occupying a different "time zone," so that the two planets could be used as larders for the otherwise barren homeworld. However, once the Doctor, Peri, and pursuing police officer Hugo Lang (Kevin McNally) arrive on the scene to rescue the twins, it becomes apparent that Mestor's hidden agenda is to cause a solar explosion that will cause thousands of Mestor's eggs to be strewn across the universe, where they will hatch and conquer.

This DVD release of "The Twin Dilemma" inclues an audio commentary track with Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant and Kevin McNally. I know some folks prefer to learn about the craft of the actual filming, but I've always been partial to commentary tracks delivered by the actors themselves, and I was certainly happy with this one. In fact, while I normally prefer text commentaries over audio ones (and this disc contains one of those as well, with copious -- and sometimes tedious -- production notes, rather like a digested version of The Handbook: The Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to the Production of Doctor Who), this time the audio one was well worth the time.

Other bonus features on this disc include an interview with sequence designer Sid Sutton ("The Star Man"), a twelve minute segment with Baker and comedian Amy Lamé on the costumes worn by the Doctor throughout the series (up through Baker's own run) titled "Look 100 Years Younger," and an eighteen minute segment called "Stripped for Action - The Sixth Doctor," in which John Ridgway, Simon Furman and Alan McKenzie discuss the Doctor Who comics that featured Baker's incarnation (and which included as a companion a talking anthropomorphic penguin named Frobisher).

The rest of the features include some PDF materials, and a collection of television promotional segments -- including interviews with Baker and Bryant on Breakfast Time, and an interview with Baker on a children's program, Blue Peter.