The Horns of Nimon

How is it where ever I go in the universe there are always people like you pointing guns or phasers or blasters... now don't do anything hasty, it's just a flying visit. Take me to your leader.

The Horns of Nimon was the unintentional end to Season 17 when Shada ended up being cancelled due to a technician strike. It has a reputation of being a prime representative of the Douglas Adams era with a lot of jokes but also a lot of unintentional silliness. The acting is said to be very over-the-top as well but with everyone doing it, it supposedly makes the whole thing feel like a farce. I'm nervous when it comes to farces so we shall see.

Plot Summary

A dilapidated warship from the Skonna Empire is carrying a group of youths from the plant Aneth. Desiring to make good time as this was to be the last tribute ship, the co-pilot overloads the engines, blowing them out and killing the pilot. The ship stalls in space and creates a gravity well.

On the TARDIS, the Doctor is attempting to make repairs but has taken a number of systems off-line, including the dematerialization circuit. It gets caught in the gravity well and crashes into the warship. The Doctor extends the shields to create an air tunnel through which he, Romana and K-9 pass through.

They find a set of high energy crystals along with the Aneth youth. The Doctor sends K-9 back to the TARDIS to assess the repairs needed while he and Romana continue. They are detected by the co-pilot, who takes them to the bridge when they offer to help repair the engines before they are sucked into a singularity.

On the planet Skonna, the leader, Soldeed, is overseeing the preparations for the arrival of the youth, who are tribute to be sacrificed to the Nimon, a powerful Minotaur creature living at the center of the city. Upon receiving word of the warship's disappearance, Soldeed ventures into the Nimon's lair to inform him where he is most displeased. He sends Soldeed out with instructions to fulfill the tribute one way or the other.

Romana and the Doctor manage to jury rig something using some spare equipment from the TARDIS. They supply power and tell the co-pilot to ready the ship but not to start until the Doctor has moved the TARDIS onboard the ship. But the co-pilot starts the ship before the Doctor is ready and leaves the TARDIS in the gravity well. The Doctor activates the visualizer and sees a small planet being dragged into the gravity well. The Doctor puts the TARDIS into a spin and uses the momentum of the incoming planetoid to slingshot the TARDIS out of the gravity well.

The co-pilot locks Romana away with the other tributes when she tries to take control of the ship. In with the tributes, she learns that their leader, Seth, has been selected to defeat the Nimon and free Aneth from tribute. Seth however confides in Romana that he was just a traveler and has no plan. It was simply a backstory to feed to the tributaries to give them hope.

The ship arrives on Skonna and when two of the high energy crystals are shown to be missing, the co-pilot tries to claim that he used them to repair the engines. Soldeed immediately sees through the lie, condemns the co-pilot to death and pushes him into the Nimon's maze. Soldeed then pushes both the tributes and Romana into the maze as well, convinced that this will finally fulfill the bargain and the Nimon will bestow them with the technology to rebuild their empire.

After making some repairs, the Doctor steers the TARDIS to Skonna and then lands in the central plaza. He is arrested and brought before Soldeed. The Doctor shows off his technological knowledge but with the reveal that he is connected to Romana, Soldeed orders him taken to the Nimon as well. The Doctor briefly escapes his guard but is recaptured and put into the maze. Once in, he attempts to leave markers to follow back, but the markers disappear and the walls both appear and disappear in random order.

The tributes find the Nimon's lair and find both a desiccated body as well as previous tributes stored in hibernation. Romana realizes that the Nimon feeds on the energy of the tributes and keeps them in hibernation until he has completely used up each one. The co-pilot jumps out with his gun, hoping to fool the Nimon that he was ordered to escort them into the maze. The Nimon, drawn by the noise, sees through this and kills the co-pilot.

The Doctor enters and distracts the Nimon, allowing Romana, Seth and another tribute, Teka, to escape into the tunnels. The remaining five tributes however are too scared to move and the Nimon sets them in hibernation while taking the power crystals they had brought.

The Doctor and his party sneak back into the lab and observe the Nimon powering his equipment. He inflates the black hole that the Skonnan ship and the TARDIS were trapped in and brings in a capsule containing two other Nimon. The Doctor realizes that the Nimon have exhausted the planet they are currently occupying and are colonizing other planets under the guise of bringing a technological revolution.

When the Nimon leave, the Doctor and his group work to see if they can reverse the flow. He summons K-9 from the TARDIS but K-9 is captured and damaged by Soldeed. Soldeed intends to take K-9 apart to see how he works but stops when he sees the Nimon's temple become activated. Convinced that Skonna's new age is about to begin, he enters the maze to converse with the Nimon.

The Doctor experiments with the controls and manages to reverse the direction of the capsule. However, Romana was in the capsule and was transported back with it. The Doctor attempts to bring it back but Soldeed interrupts and damages the equipment with a blast from his staff. He then threatens to kill the Doctor for interfering with the Nimon's plans but Seth stuns Soldeed. He then works to repair the damage done by Soldeed.

Romana emerges from the capsule and finds herself on the planet Crinoth. She is pursued by other Nimon but they are stunned by Sezom, the last survivor of Crinoth and who held a position similar to Soldeed. Having seen how the Nimon consume the resources of the planet without fulfilling their promises, he works only to spare others from the Nimon. He has modified his staff with a mineral to amplify it's power to a level that will actually stun the Nimon. He helps Romana get back to the capsule, overcome the Nimon guards and climb into it, awaiting it's recall by the Doctor.

While the Doctor is repairing the machine, Soldeed awakens and runs off. Seth and Teka run after him but become separated in the maze. Teka is captured by Soldeed who turns her over to the Nimon, though he is shocked to see three take her. Seth returns to the Doctor just as he has finished the repairs.

Meanwhile, the captain of the guard, Sorak, experiments on K-9 trying to figure out how he works. K-9 is reanimated and after shocking Sorak, enters the maze to fulfill the Doctor's call.

The Nimon reenter the control room capturing the Doctor. The Nimon reactivate the device pulling the capsule with Romana to them. Sezom was killed in his defense of the capsule. The Nimon attack Romana and Seth as he reenters the room. Romana gives him the mineral from Crinoth and he places it in the staff. He stuns two of the Nimon while a third is taken down by K-9.

The Doctor and K-9 set about running the calculations to reverse the pull of the black hole while Seth and Romana go to rescue Teka. They find her in suspended animation along with the other Anothians. They start to revive her when Soldeed attacks them. He has gone mad in his refusal to accept that the Nimon deceived him. He runs to the power room and jams the overload switch before Seth shoots him down. With the switch jammed, they have no choice but to flee.

With everyone revived, they are joined by the Doctor and K-9 and K-9 leads them out of the maze. The Nimon also revive and chase after them. The Doctor's group emerges from the maze and orders everyone to take cover as the whole complex explodes, taking the three Nimon with it.

With Soldeed dead, Sorak takes over and sends the Anothians back in a spare ship with Seth in command. The Doctor, Romana and K-9 reenter the TARDIS to continue their repairs and as they take off, they observe a distant explosion. The Nimon trapped on Crinoth had tried to convert the planet to energy to reopen the portal to Skonna but with the receiver destroyed, it backfired and destroyed Crinoth with them still on it. The group then leaves the system to pursue adventures elsewhere.

Analysis
The Horns of Nimon is very similar to Underworld in that you have a potentially interesting story with a science fiction spin on a Greek myth, only to have it undone by production values and poor acting. I think The Horns of Nimon did it better than Underworld but it's still a case of looking at what could have been versus what is actually there.

One of the most frustrating things is that the potential of this story shines through. The tale of the Minotaur is a wonderfully dark story and a number of the people in this story do a good job of playing the tale straight, giving it a slightly creepy edge. That even works with the Douglas Adams style one-liners that intercut the story, giving it a gallows humor edge. But there are three characters that take all that potential and squander it. If a minor character is off, that can be overlooked, but in this case it's the Doctor and Soldeed that throw the tone off and never get it back on track.

By Season 17, it's obvious that Tom Baker has decided that the Doctor should be light-hearted and funny. He adds a serious tone here and there when required but he still feels that this is a show for children and that if the Doctor doesn't show fear, the kids won't be scared either. This can work in stories like Nightmare of Eden but the Doctor usually has to be balanced out by some gravitas on the other side. Here, the actor playing Soldeed has dialed it up to eleven in the idea that this story is a complete farce. Tom Baker either goes along with that or decides that he will not be upstaged by anyone and also dials it way up so that his performance is just as over-the-top and silly. He controls it better than Soldeed but when contrasted with the tone of everything else, it just doesn't fly.

I would love to know what the actor playing Soldeed was either thinking or got in terms of direction because his performance is absolutely terrible. You might think the character was already completely crazy or stoned out of his gourd based on the way he reacts to everyone around him. There is no moment of quiet or dialing it back. It's just up at eleven all the time. He has a moment when with the Doctor towards the end of Episode Two where he comes back a touch but that moment is so fleeting. Then you have his final scene in Episode Four where goes another notch up and the performance is almost painful to watch. Having already seen as crazy, trying to go extra crazy just makes the performance go to pieces.

The third character who is a bit of a loss is Teka. As a minor character that is mostly just an annoyance. She does absolutely nothing other than talk incessantly how Seth is going to be this great hero and save them all. Even when tasked to do something she ends up doing effectively nothing. I don't mind a bit of play up about the hero but a little balance would have been nice. Heck, showing her competent at anything other that verbally fellating Seth would have been an improvement.

Now that we've addressed the bad, let's hit the good. Romana is excellent in this story. She is competent, daring and even gets a few sharp barbs in here and there. The Doctor does very little in this story other than get himself captured and repair the Nimon's equipment. Romana is the one running about, trying to keep the Anothians alive and free. It is she that brings back the weapon to hold off the Nimon when they rise up. She also seems to actually care about the people around her. The Doctor seems to only care about Romana until the end of things.

Seth was pretty good too. In many ways, he was a less cocky version of Adric. I wouldn't be surprised if the interaction Seth had with Romana and the Doctor broached the idea of having a teenage boy as a companion. Unlike Adric, he is grounded in the limits of his abilities, clearly worried about not being able to perform what has been set before him. Yet he doesn't whine about it. He confides in Romana and puts Teka off a lot, but you don't see him curling up in a corner going "woe is me" as we so often have in fake heroes. Instead, he works as best he can and does step up when forced to do so. It actually makes for a nice arc for him.

Probably the best performance in the whole story lasted only five minutes and that was Sezom. He is in the same role as Soldeed but unlike that over-the-top performance, Sezom is reflective and quiet. He says more in a quiet look of despondence than Soldeed does with any of his ravings. Sezom's story is more tragic as well given that his planet was not interested in conquest but instead looked for peace and knowledge. His compromise of allowing a small evil (the tributes) led only to great evil rather than the peace and comfort that they wanted. It's an excellent performance and wonderfully underplayed. I'm glad that it was with Romana as well, who played off that well rather than going for an easy joke as the Doctor might have.

I like the idea of the Nimon a bit more than their execution. A minotaur race that act like locusts but that have real technological abilities is interesting. I even thought the costumes weren't that bad though the constant need for the actors to walk on tip-toe to simulate a hoof was probably jarring. What I didn't like about them was the constant arm movement. It was always like they were doing a free expression dance while simply walking around. I also would have liked some padding on arms. The loincloth covered the legs well enough, but the arms looked so skinny compared to the head and torso that it drew me out of the story. It was much easier to see it as a man in a costume rather than a creature. Padding would have added the illusion of musculature which also would have made the Nimon just that much more threatening.

I also enjoyed the sets for the most part. The clanking grates outside the maze were not good, but within the maze and the lab itself, I thought they did a good job. I could easily imagine that the hibernation chamber was recycled from The Ark in Space set while the computer equipment was probably gotten off some salvage yard. Both gave extra touches of realism when the budget would probably not have allowed that. I also appreciated the dim lighting. It hid what would have been imperfections in the set and costume and added an air of creepiness that might have otherwise been lost.

One small thing that was a bit odd was the pacing. The story had a slow start with a lot of hijinks in Episode One. It moved fairly steady after that, though it did slow down a bit in Episode Three. Then you have things all over the map in Episode Four. Many plot elements are stuffed in giving it a very crammed feeling, yet at the same time, there is a long segment of the Doctor's party following K-9 down various corridors with the Nimon doing the same. It kills several minutes that could have been used elsewhere. You then have a very hasty summary where three different storylines are summarily ended in a TARDIS coda that feels tacked on. It's very odd pacing with fast and slow elements throughout the whole story.

As stated earlier, this story is more of a reflection of what could have been. It has a number of good elements and even having dark or silly humor here and there are not a problem. The problems come from the contrast in performances and the up and down pacing. It's not quite the same but it's easy to see how the second attempt at this story in the form of The God Complex worked much better if only due to a consistent tone throughout. This story is not bad to sit through but there are going to be several roll your eye moments. If you can set those aside, it can be enjoyed just fine, but I doubt I will make much of an effort to come back to this one.

Overall personal score: 2 out of 5