Hogan Reviews

The Quin Dilemma, as well as being one letter away from an entirely different and rather ruder dilemma, is a celebration of forty years since the Sixth Doctor made his debut, which you could probably guess given the title is also a play on his first story, which was frankly awful but at least this was really good! It’s set out with a framing device episode, then a single part story, then a two part story, then another single part story before everything comes together for the sixth and final part, but it’s all so strongly connected that it didn’t make sense to break this into four or five reviews, so… let’s take a look!

The opening story sees The Doctor (Colin Baker) and Mel (Bonnie Langford) already walking around the planet Arunopal with a girl called Zita (Carrie Quinlan) who says she never gets to leave her house normally and is enjoying the fair games and such as it’s the big day where King Otho (Andrew Dunn) steps down and names his oldest son as the new King, though this time there’s an issue in that he has five quintuplet sons and he doesn’t know which is technically the oldest. As The Doctor searches for the cause of strange temporal anomalies Mel and Zita settle in for the big occasion and hear that King Otho will decide who takes the throne by pitting his sons against each other in a game as the day they were born was also the day his wife was kidnapped by someone is a cloak and a man called The Doctor, who is currently located on four different planets in this exact time zone and so each of his sons, Alonza, Byron, Clarent, Dellan and Urvis (all voiced by Jonnie Broadbent) are sent to different worlds (or two to the same world) and the first to bring their father The Doctor alive will be crowned King. Well, I say different worlds, one son gets lucky as his Doctor is on Arunopal right now and our titular Time Lord gets chased into the nearby forest and while Zita helps him escape the Prince he ends up in front of a woman who points a gun at his face…

Our first side-adventure sees The Doctor, Peri (Nicola Bryant) and HG Wells (Philip Labey) rally the monks of Lindisfarne Island for the infamous Viking raid of 793 AD, though of course it ends up being a Viking-like alien race rather than actual Vikings, especially as historical records claim that dragons were seen at the raid, which here of course they literally were (but probably not in reality. Probably). The Doctor can’t stop the slaughter but he, Peri and Wells help some Monks escape with their holy relics, but in doing so The Doctor is cornered but “saved” when he is teleported onto the quintuplet who was sent here’s ship (apologies, I listened to the audio a few days ago and I can’t find a listing that says which twin was in what episode beyond the next story and I sure as hell can’t remember!) I was also confused about HG Wells travelling with The Doctor and Peri but apparently that was a thing in a couple of books, so a nice nod to another part of the Sixth Doctor’s history, I guess (though I would’ve preferred Peri and Frobisher…)

“The Four Sixth Doctors” would probably have been too weird a title, I guess…

The next two-parter features The Doctor, Constance (Miranda Raison) and Flip (Lisa Greenwood) land on a planet in the midst of a civil war that weakened them enough that they were easily conquered by the Sontarans (all voiced by Dan Starkey). For the majority of the story The Doctor and Constance are either running from the Sontarans, who wish to use the local crystals to create short-range teleporting devices, or are being targeted by Quins Clarent and Dellan (told you this was the only one that names them…) while Flip accidentally rallies both sides of the civil war together and leads their combined army to attack the Sontarans directly. Eventually Clarent and Dellan take each other out but learn to work together as The Doctor makes all the crystals useless just as the Sontarans fall to the locals, meaning it won’t be worth their time coming back. Of course right at the end The Doctor is captured by the Quins and taken away…

The fifth story has The Doctor and an older Peri (but not the older Peri from later in his run) take a relaxing trip to the icy world of Zycros where its currently undergoing its once-in-a-millennium thaw. The two discuss their past, including what The Doctor did to Peri during his post regeneration crisis and how that affected her (she phrases it very similarly to people talking about abusive partners, claiming she knew everyone would tell her to run but she just saw a friend who needed help so stayed with him even though it went against her instincts, which was awkward to hear…) but the arrival of this Arunopal Prince causes an ecological issue thanks to his ship’s engines that plays with the thaw so eventually The Doctor goes with this Quin willingly just to save the planet. It was 30 minutes all about The Doctor and Peri putting the past behind them, even saying this was the first day of the rest of their life together, forgetting about the past, only for Peri to see him snatched away.

This leads to the finale, which I’ll get to in the Spoilers. It’s well set out but obviously some parts are just too short to get drawn into, and I will say that the big “twist” in the finale I saw coming very early on, but that didn’t take away from the story too much. The Quins are all played well, all for laughs but with the exception of some of Episode 5 looking into Peri’s experiences the whole story is much more light-hearted so they fitted in well. A good celebration anyway, especially a scene in the final episode where the Sixth Doctor lists all his companions in order, many spin-offs included (that’s going to be awkward if they ever give him yet another new companion in the future…)

The Continuity:

Despite all the companions floating around there isn’t actually a great deal of continuity here. HG Wells first met The Doctor and Peri in the Sixth Doctor TV story “Timelash” and his travelling with them is something established in the novels, apparently, but that’s it really. The older Peri’s thoughts about the Doctor line up with a lot of her dialogue in audio story “The Reaping”, but I don’t know if that’s really continuity but I thought I’d bring it up!

Overall Thoughts:

“The Quin Dilemma” is a really fun celebration of the Sixth Doctor, and although some of the stories are a bit too short to really get going the overall story arc was a fun one with some really enjoyable characters and a (mostly) lighter tone that works well. A good way to ring in forty years of Colin Baker and his multicoloured coat.

Picking up from the end of Part 1 The Doctor manages to talk down the lady with the gun and escapes with her to her cottage, where he learns they’re Zita’s mum and Nan and the mum at least is furious that The Doctor has let Zita get taken by the guards, but allows him to hide from the inquisitive Quin who comes knocking, only to then send him off to the palace to save her. Sadly he’s captured anyway and is brought before the King, but then so are the other three Sixth Doctors that were captured in the other stories, all at the same time, meaning the King still has no answer to his question. The Doctors all have a chat and soon one of them (the Mel one again) agrees to take the King back to the night of his children’s birth so he can finally get an answer, but puts a cloak on him so people don’t figure out who he is. The Doctor and the King arrive and see that actually the Queen gave birth to sextuplets and the first born was a girl, but as the King wanted male heirs the Queen and the nurse later left secretly soon after the births with the girl so she could be raised in a nicer environment. The Doctor and the King soon leave the scene and thus the kidnapping was no such thing, it was The Doctor and the future King leaving, and as I’m sure you’ve figured out, Zita is that daughter and her mother is the ex-Queen (with her “nan” being the nurse)

Before the King can be too outraged The Doctors’ various companions all arrive via TARDIS trickery and the materialisation of multiple of the same TARDIS in one area not only causes the time ripple that drew the Doctor to this planet in the first place but puts the very universe in danger. The Doctors put their heads together and come up with the plan to save everyone that uses the two different Peris touching to cause the “blinovitch limitation effect” as power. The Doctor tells the assembled royal family that they have a chance to change history this one time due to the effects of the paradox and agree to change it so the Queen never runs and instead lives with the King and all six children, though Zita asks to retain her memories from the old timeline. After everything is sorted The Doctor and Mel visit the planet on the same day but now to see Queen Zita ascend to the throne and we hear all five boys are much nicer people thanks to having a kind mother to help guide them. A nice little end.