54) INFERNO

​Characters shout and argue back-and-forth between one and other, klaxons blaze in the background, there’s a lot of running back and forth between locations, too much time is spent standing around talking and doing nothing, and there’s a forced love story with little chemistry that has no business within an apocalyptic-Earth narrative. The writing is sadly poor, (although there are some witty lines), and almost unoriginal, and recycles too many clichés from b-movie disaster movies (a drilling project heading for disaster, a technician who turns into a ferocious monster, and a project director who fails to listen to cold-hearted logic and reason). The story is a mess, and what’s worse is, the most promising element, the parallel world, commits an even worse offence – it’s boring. There are some nice subtle differences between The Doctor’s world, and the parallel world, but everything else which would have been far more exciting is expositional. Parallel worlds are, and were, nothing new to science-fiction, and sadly Doctor Who failed to create a compelling world, which the audience would be sad to see totally destroyed within four short episodes.
   The direction is overall fine, and you would expect nothing less from Douglas Camfield, but the story falls into constant repetition, and has to deal with two unbearably slow episodes at the beginning. The cliffhangers sadly fall into the same category, and The Doctor’s escape from the parallel world is perhaps one of the laziest cop-outs ever; we don’t see The Doctor leaving, and the audience are denied a hold-your-breath moment where we wonder if  The Doctor will successfully return home.
   The story is saved by some memorable and thought-out moments. The Primords provide a fresh take on the classic werewolf creature, but for some reason they continually break the fourth wall (looking straight at the camera and we the audience), which is confusing and downright distracting. The tension and danger that both versions of Earth face are relatively well realised, and the production values are commendable (even though they are recycled for two different versions of the same location), a clever idea when one thinks about it. Aside from the bare minimal, everything sadly falls apart towards the end; the parallel-world characters dissolve into hysterics when facing the rage of the Inferno, and the final resolution sadly occurs off-screen, which almost punishes audiences for sticking with a story for two-and-a-half hours.**