The Twin Dilemma is a novella written by Eric Saward. Released in 1985, it is a novelization of Anthony Steven's Doctor Who serial of the same name.
Characters[]
- The Sixth Doctor - a more brash and abrasive incarnation of the Doctor
- Peri Brown
- Azmael (or Professor Edgeworth) - the Doctor's mentor on Gallifrey, forced to work with Mestor
- Mestor - the leader of the Sectoms, an immensely powerful and immensely amoral telepath
- Hugo Lang - a Lieutenant in the Intergalactic Task Force
- Romulus and Remus Sylvest - twin geniuses kidnapped by Azmael
- Noma - one of Azmael's Jacondan allies
- Drak - one of Azmael's Jacondan allies
- Slarn - a Chamberlain on Jaconda
- Verne - a vain Time Lord who accidentally regenerated into a hideous monster and was destroyed by the High President
- James Zarn - the inventor of the revitalising modulator
- Vinny Mosten - the namesake of Mosten acid
- Archie Sylvest - the father of the Sylvest twins
- Nimo Sylvest - the mother of the Sylvest twins
rest to be added
Publisher's summary[]
The Doctor has regenerated, having sacrificed his fifth persona to save Peri's life. But things are not going well...
On this occasion the process of regeneration is by no means smooth, for the even-tempered, good-humoured fifth Doctor has given way to a rather disturbed and unsettled successor.
In a particularly irascible moment the new Doctor comes dangerously close to committing a shocking crime. Overwhelmed with guilt for his violent behaviour, the repentant Time Lord decides to become a hermit...
Plot[]
Chapter 1: Home Time[]
In a scenic brick house on Lydall Street lives a family of geniuses called the Sylvest family. Several years ago, they fathered two twin named Romulus and Remus. To the horror of their father Archie and mother Nimo, the twins have remained cold and childish prankster-geniuses while growing up. While Nimo buries herself in her work, Archie begins to think about killing the twins. When he tells his therapist about this, he is surprised when his therapist tells him that this is completely normal. Indeed, his therapist tells him that he must think of the perfect way to kill his children - as this will give the neurosis that he needs to be a truly successful genius.
Around a year after this, Archie visits his children to tell them goodbye before he and his mother leave on a night out. While doing this, the twins mope about being "abandoned again" by their mother and then coldly turn away. Archie is disturbed by this, but quickly forgets it when he is assaulted by the husband of the computer programmer he has been drinking massive amounts of voxnic and presumably been having an affair with.
Chapter 2: The Maladjusted Time Lord[]
Meanwhile, within the TARDIS, the Doctor finishes his spectrox-caused regeneration into a somewhat large body while watched over by his companion Peri. While the Doctor initially seems only focused on mocking his previous incarnation, he quickly falls to the floor and tries to explain the regenerative process to Peri before he slips into the TARDIS' wardrobe. Unbeknownst to Peri, he has been made mentally unstable by the regeneration. Once he emerges from the wardrobe in an ugly many coloured outfit, the maladjusted Time Lord begins jibbering about the evil mythical creature known as a "Peri" and how this makes his companion an alien spy before attacking her. While Peri grabs at a mirror, the Doctor strangles her near to death with a savage glee on his face before Peri is able to show the Doctor his face in the mirror. This sends the Doctor sprawling to the floor in despair.
Chapter 3: Enter Professor Edgeworth[]
As a very knowledgeable cat watches from outside, a jovial-looking man who calls himself Professor Edgeworth teleports into the Sylvest household and introduces himself as a friend of their father. Shortly after arriving, Edgeworth says that he must leave and offers to shake the twins' hands. While doing so, he injects both of them with a drug that makes them completely subservient and teleports out. Archie soon returns from buying off the husband of his fling and finds that his sons have been teleported away. Fearing that their skills will be used for evil, Archie contacts the Intergalactic Task Force. Meanwhile, the Doctor has seemingly recovered from his mania. Unfortunately, he also doesn't remember what he did to Peri until she tells him - which leads the Doctor to cry out in anguish and decide to become a penitent hermit on the most desolate place in the universe, Titan III. Unfortunately, he decides that Peri shall accompany him on this hermitage if she likes it or not.
Chapter 4: Mestor the Magnificent[]
As Edgeworth's slips towards the planet Titan Three, Professor Edgeworth - or the Time Lord renegade and High Council assassin Azmael - thinks over his arrival on the planet Jaconda, which coincided with the reemergence of a race of tyrannical gastropods called the Sectoms. Meanwhile, the twins begin to recover from the drugs and try to make a distress signal. This is revealed to be for no reason, as (likely due to Azmael purposefully turning the ship's cloaking off) they are pursued by a fleet of Intergalactic Task Force ships led by one Hugo Lang. While the ship warps to the Baxus Minor galaxy, Hugo's fleet follows the warp and ends up near the planet Titan III. While pursuing Azmael's freighter, they are caught in a massive cloud which destroys most of the ship and causes Lang to crash his freighter. Once it has destroyed the ship, the cloud surrounds Azmael's ship - and reveals itself to have be a manifestation of the will of the Sectoms' leader, the immensely evil and psychically powerful Mestor - whom Azmael secretly wants to destroy.
Chapter 5: Titan Three[]
Almost immediately after the Doctor arrives on Titan III - intending to spend his hermitage in a dark cave - Hugo Lang's ship crashes to the ground. Upon hearing this, the Doctor immediately snaps towards becoming a hero and pulls Hugo out of the wreckage and into the TARDIS. Once Hugo awakens, he immediately assumes that the Doctor is the one who sent the cloud and tries to kill him - with the Doctor knocking him out. Though the Doctor doesn't want to do it (due to Hugo trying to kill him), Peri is able to convince the Doctor to keep helping the crashed pilot. While doing so, the Doctor realizes that there are serious gaps in his memories.
Chapter 6: An Unsafe Safe House[]
to be added
In-universe continuity[]
- Lindos, a substance said to be very important to the regenerative process in this novella, is mentioned in David A. McIntee's audio drama Unregenerate!.
- Azmael is linked to the hermit from The Time Meddler, who is also linked to K'anpo Rimpoche from Planet of the Spiders.
- Voxnic is mentioned. This is also mentioned in Saward's audio drama Slipback, Daniel Blythe's novel The Dimension Riders, and Robert Valentine's audio drama The Mission.
- Titan III is mentioned in Craig Hinton's novel The Quantum Archangel.
- A Sectom appears in Jonathan Morris' comic The Professor, the Queen and the Bookshop.
Sources[]
- Goodreads