N.B. there might (or might not) be spoilers in this article!

You’re either going to be in the mood for The Horns of Nimon or you’re not. It’s very silly, the Nimon look as though they’re going to fall over at any given moment and if you don’t like your villainy on the hammier side of hammy then the Co-Pilot and Soldeed are not going to be your thing.

“Ah, well, people often don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Romana, The Horns of Nimon: Part Three

But if you are up for a bit of pantomime nonsense then The Horns of Nimon can be a lot of fun. When the Co-Pilot’s cowardice and ineptitude finally catch up to him and there’s no more of his calling the Anethans ‘weakling scum’, there’s still enjoyment to be had from watching Graham Crowden playing Soldeed like a cross between a Rumours-era Mick Fleetwood and Ming the Merciless.

Indeed my son and I wondered if Jonathan Pryce watched this performance as prep for The Curse of Fatal Death. (My son also sussed out pretty early on that this was a re-telling of the Minotaur myth.)

There’s also a strong performance from Lalla Ward that helps you to ignore the mostly forgettable Anethans and Skonnon around them. (And the occasional comedy sound effects.)

With The Horns of Nimon we say goodbye to 70’s Doctor Who. Its third and fourth episodes were transmitted in January 1980 and whilst we’re not quite ready for that spangly decade just yet, change is just around the corner.

It’s also time to say farewell to Douglas Adams brief tenure as script editor and Graham Williams time as producer.

Sadly, The Horns of Nimon is not the big end of an era epic that The Talons of Weng-Chiang, Planet of the Spiders or The War Games were. Of course, it was never meant to be; the curtailed production of Shada denied us a proper finale.

But insomuch as it has a lot to like and a lot perhaps not to, The Horns of Nimon is not too out of step with the three years of stories that have come before it.