If you are a fan of Doctor Who, or something of a similar stripe, almost by definition, you appreciate and celebrate what is good, indeed excellent, about the object of your affection. The 60 for 60 Countdown the Tour is conducting now, or the annual ‘Top Three Tournament’ still underway over at Outpost Gallifrey are examples of this.
This is not to say that there aren’t middling or forgettable points in the lifetime of any drama such as Doctor Who. Of course there are. And to say there haven’t been over the course of 60 years simply defies common sense. The so-so get filed away mentally, consigned merely to be part of the overall tapestry, but little more. Tour Honchos agree that the opposite of ‘love’ is not ‘hate,’ but apathy.
Then there are entries in the canon which the Tour has acquired an active distaste for. Stories for which our own opinion goes beyond the notion that it ‘just didn’t work for us.’ In that vein we present Love & Monsters, which has its adherents but leaves us so cold we suffer from hypothermia. Sleep No More is the same. And then the Tour probably stands alone in disliking 42. They may be been experiments in form, but in each case you could say at least it appears they tried.
The sins of The Horns of Nimon are so manifest they have been chronicled all over the place, even here. Graham Crowden, seeing that Tom Baker was very much large and in charge, vied with him to see which could go further over-the-top. There are TARDIS scenes which lack basic gravity, as the regulars could barely suppress their smirks on camera, perhaps even improvising off the plot because they had, in some sense, checked out of the proceedings.
In short, it didn’t appear they were trying.
That Horns is in ‘Worst Place’ is not a new opinion for us. This was cemented so long ago it’s probably foundational now. Happily an upcoming anniversary is there to connote the best in Doctor Who, so getting this out of our system is somewhat therapeutic for us,
That doesn’t mean we don’t give stories we dislike any less of an effort (we love all of our 300 children equally). There haven been new-ish HD caps up for The Horns of Nimon for a while now. There’s nothing to dislike there.
