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In a dingy corner of South-east London, the Doctor and Evelyn
discover a gruesome trail of eviscerated animal corpses and
witness a brutal assault. Medical assistance comes from the
unlikely source of the Dusk, a local casino operated by some
rather peculiar individuals...
Brit-flick
gangster drama meets science fantasy and horror in this unusually
gritty production. The more gruesome-sounding moments include
a scene in which a tortured character's fingers are broken
one by one. Another, more fantastical incident, presumably
inspired by the movie Blade, has a man being inflated and
then exploded as the after-effect of a bizarre weapon.
The
crime-drama aspect is personified in the character of Reggie
"the Gent" Mead, one of the Dusk's co-owners, who is played
with brutal intensity by former The Cops star Rob Dixon.
His overt thuggery is offset by the plummier tones of his
partner in crime Amelia Doory (Holly de Jong). The eccentric
combination of characters brings to mind some of Doctor
Who's more off-beat adventures, such as Revelation
of the Daleks. The characters' strange properties and
abilities also reminded me of Ghost Light, although
I have to confess that the latter association was probably
planted in my mind by the character name Nimrod. The Nimrod
in this story, however, a shadowy antagonist of the Dusk's
personnel, played in a sinister turn by Stephen Chance, is
an entirely different - though equally odd - character to
Ghost Light's Neanderthal.
The
precise nature of the Dusk's inhabitants remains shrouded
in mystery up until the climax of the story's second episode
(provided that you don't read the CD sleeve notes by writers
Cavan Scott and Mark Wright beforehand). The cliffhanging
revelation had me kicking myself for not spotting the subtle
clues. Had I been reviewing just the first half of this production,
then I would have given it 8 or 9 out of 10.
As
it is, the revelation is also an explanation that deprives
the drama of much of its magic. The end result is firmly rooted
in familiar Who territory, and finishes up being a
more run-of-the-mill affair, although Scott and Wright do
succeed in putting an original spin on an aspect of the series'
mythology.
If
you have heard or read anything about Project: Twilight,
then the cat may already be out of the bag as far as the enjoyment
of any mystery is concerned. That would be a shame, because
the enigmatic first half of this project is definitely its
better half.
Richard
McGinlay
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