The Mind Robber Episode 2

The one where Jamie changes his face...

Now let's get this straight from the start - this episode is totally bonkers! If episode 1 was like a feverish cheese dream, then episode 2 is like a feverish cheese dream while high on magic mushrooms after having read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. It's gloriously crazy!

It's so full of moments which pull the rug from under you (the viewer and our heroes!) that you're never sure of anything. It definitely has the maddest opening three minutes of any Doctor Who episode to date, which sees Jamie shot at by a Redcoat and turned into a cardboard cut-out, and Zoe encountering the Official Creakiest Door Ever and falling down a whacking great hole.

I question the truthfulness of Jamie so readily pulling out his dirk (hey, I said "dirk") and setting upon the Redcoat with murderous intent. I realise the Highlanders and the Redcoats were sworn enemies, but Jamie has never been the type to take to murder so easily and quickly, and certainly not after all the time he's spent with the pacifist Doctor. On a character level, it doesn't quite ring true, but seeing as Frazer Hines had chicken pox, something had to be done, and fast!

It's wonderfully bizarre that the Doctor has to reconstruct his companion's blanked out face by using cut-outs of various eyes, noses and mouths, and of course, getting it wrong ("Oh, now I've lost his face!"). The Doctor mistakenly constructs the features of Hamish Wilson, who "becomes" Jamie for the episode, and doesn't do a bad job at all of taking on Hines's mannerisms (such as hooking his thumbs into his sporran belt). The idea of "regenerating" Jamie while Hines recovered from chicken pox is inspired, and indicative of the wealth of fresh and startling ideas which populate Peter Ling's story.

Who is the Master that we see surrounded by controls and monitors, like a spider sitting at the heart of his web? Director David Maloney only shows him from the back, so we see no face, only hear the conflicted vocal intonations, as he swings from gentle to abrasive... again, as I said in my review of episode 1, just like the Great Intelligence! Of course, having seen the story before, I know this is not the Intelligence, and nor is it the Master as we know him/ her today, but if I were seeing this for the first time, like a newbie watching Twitch, I might very well wonder if this is the Master's debut. And actually, who's to say it isn't...?

What are the marching things which pass the Doctor in the forest? Again, Maloney chooses not to show them from the front, only their stiff legs and over their blocky shoulders, but that echoey marching sound they make adds to their oddness. At the end of the episode they are revealed as man-size clockwork toy soldiers, but still, Maloney opts not to show them too clearly, keeping the camera behind them, peeking over their shoulders, a trick he also used for the white robots in episode 1. This all adds to the quirky mystery of this strange place.

The Doctor meets a man who claims to have set sail from Bristol on May 4th, 1699, and has lost his companions, much like the Doctor. This man speaks with a strange turn of phrase, always answering the Doctor's questions, but often quite obliquely. It's frustrating that the Doctor fails to ask this man his name, but a clue as to his identity lies in the date he gives...

And what's this? Now the Doctor is accosted by a bunch of children in Edwardian dress, like kids straight out of an Edith Nesbit book. They bombard the Doctor with jokes and riddles, culminating in the glorious "pinch me" punchline which never fails to make me chortle. They help the Doctor to begin to understand how this strange place works by giving him a sword which turns into a dictionary, changing SWORD to WORDS (ie, the pen is mightier than the sword, geddit?).

Later, the Doctor and "Jamie" find Zoe trapped in a giant jam jar which appears when the Doctor works out that a door is not a door when it's ajar. I mean, this is flippin' bonkers! Gloriously bonkers!

And if all this surrealness isn't enough, our heroes discover that they're not in a forest of trees at all, but a forest of words - a typographical topography, if you like. OK, the overhead view of the letters doesn't match what we see the actors with in studio, but that doesn't matter when you think what a brilliantly clever idea all this is. In fact, the episode is packed to the rafters with great ideas, churning out twist after puzzle after mystery ten to the dozen.

The cliffhanger sees the unicorn from Jamie's dream in episode 1 charging toward them in a black void, suggesting Jamie had a premonition of events to come while sleeping in the TARDIS. I'm not sure this is ever really expanded upon, but it brings the episode to a neat little climax, and in some ways I'm glad, because watching The Mind Robber is exhausting! Notably, while this is the longest of the story's five episodes, it's still just 21 minutes 39 seconds, although it feels like a movie!

Can't wait for next week, and perhaps some answers!

First broadcast: September 21st, 1968

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: The imagination behind this script is incredible. Well done, Peter Ling!
The Bad: Jamie, the knife-wielding murderer? Nah...
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★★☆

NEXT TIME: Episode 3...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Episode 1; Episode 3; Episode 4; Episode 5

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site: http://doctorwhocastandcrew.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-mind-robber.html

The Mind Robber is available on BBC DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Mind-Robber-DVD/dp/B0006PTYOM/.