The Horns of Nimon [Doctor Who, Story 108]

The Horns of Nimon by Anthony Read

22 December 1979 - 12 January 1980​

I hope I do not overly damn this story with faint praise when I say that it's at least never boring.

I felt that The Horns of Nimon had a pleasingly grubby and desperate feeling at the beginning when we first see the decrepit Skonnan spaceship and the "sacrifices" on board. It's a feeling which is especially magnified by the hostility between the nameless co-pilot and our heroes later on, which makes things feel particularly dire. But as soon as the story ends up on Skonnos, all of these stakes and the tone it had been building up seemed to dissipate for the most part. It's really quite disappointing, because I think this story almost succeeds in being good.

The concept behind the Nimon themselves is interesting enough, their locust-like swarming from planet to planet to sap its life force shown in bleak detail during Romana's brief visit to Crinoth. Their voices even sound kind of cool, but I just can't take that costume seriously. Some effort was made, to be sure, but their bodies just look too small for their heads. I feel that hulking minotaur monsters ought to be a bit more heavily built. They just toddle around awkwardly instead.

After dipping into disappointing territory in some respects, the story manages to parabolate back into some level of enjoyability again by way of Soldeed. The performance behind him is so absurdly over-the-top that it gets the eyes rolling at times, but at least it kept them open. It was thoroughly memorable, I'll give it that.

I thought Lalla Ward was quite good in this story. She has a number of moments where she takes charge of the situation and gets quite domineering, enabled by the Doctor's general absence from the narrative for the first two episodes. I also find her red coat very pleasing to look at. Where's the Romanadvoratrelundar fashion catalog?

In the end, this is not a special story by any means, but it is at least not an awful one. It takes a sort of outsized importance by accidentally being the end of several historiographical eras, including the Graham Williams era and Seventies Who generally.

Despite my vague waffling earlier on, the real plan always was to end the "Seventies Who" leg of the marathon with this as its last televised story (notwithstanding the fact that this serial very rudely edges into the earliest days of 1980). So with a doff of my imaginary hat, I mark this occasion with gusto, appreciative of the fact that I've successfully cleared a second decade of televised Doctor Who.

But we aren't quite at the end yet. There are still two dangling threads, and two of those funny little roundup posts, too. Stay tuned.

(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 6 October 2021.)