The Mind Robber Episode 3

The one where the Doctor meets a Minotaur, Medusa and Lemuel Gulliver...

So unicorns don't exist in the Doctor Who universe, hey Doctor? They're legends, are they? Well, tell that to your eleventh self, who claimed he was a unicorn in the 2011 book Borrowed Time! Joking apart though, I find it very difficult - and rather depressing - to think there are no unicorns in the Doctor Who universe, no alien creatures that resemble them. I mean, if purple horses with yellow spots can exist (as stated in Frontier in Space), then surely unicorns can?

Anyway, I digress... Episode 3 of The Mind Robber is chock full of padding, sadly. After two episodes of weird and wonderful mind-bending imagery and crazy goings-on, the middle episode crumbles into an underwhelming, repetitive stop-gap. It even looks terribly dull, thanks to it being largely set in either a labyrinth of cave tunnels, or against black drapes.

You can feel writer Peter Ling and director David Maloney running on the spot as the Doctor and Zoe transform Jamie's face back to Frazer Hines, then wade through endless cobwebs and unwind endless twine. It's an episode that gets nowhere slowly, and there's even a scene slotted in with Bernard Horsfall's hypnotically placid stranger where we discover he's actually Lemuel Gulliver, he of the work of fiction by Jonathan Swift (Dean Swift to the Doctor!). It's strange that the Doctor insists on believing in Gulliver - he even wants to have a good chat with him someday, as if his travels are real - when we know that believing in fictional characters in this "world of fiction" can be a dangerous thing.

A world of fiction. Isn't that fantastic? Just the very idea of a world, a land, a domain populated by fictional characters from the classic works of literature, it's astonishing! Such a vital, fresh and bright idea on Ling's part, and one with endless possibilities, and certainly plenty of potential. It's such a shame the Land of Fiction was never revisited in the TV series, because the potential is endless. I'd love to see the TV show revisit it, because its appearances in Doctor Who spin-off fiction have been very juicy. The New Adventure book Conundrum suggested the Land of Fiction was created by the Gods of Ragnarok (from The Greatest Show in the Galaxy) to entertain them, but they got bored of it. The DWM short story Future Imperfect sees the Second Doctor revisit the Land of Fiction to get back his recorder, and while there he encounters Gulliver once more, who is actually Chancellor Goth from The Deadly Assassin in disguise (Goth and Gulliver were both played by Bernard Horsfall, folks!). The Land of Fiction has also featured in Big Finish audios, such as The Crooked Man and The Legend of the Cybermen. The potential is there, it just needs tapping!

Jamie gets to have his own adventure, which at least splits the narrative, allowing us to find out a bit more about the Master's set-up while the Doctor and Zoe stumble from fictional threat to fictional threat. He is chased onto location by a clockwork soldier, and is forced to climb a rockface, using a conveniently dropped rope to heave himself to the top. Wonderfully, he discovers it isn't a rope at all, but the extremely long platted hair of Princess Rapunzel. She and Jamie's little interaction is brief but delightful, as the princess asks whether Jamie is a prince, or perhaps a woodcutter's son. "No, I'm the son of a piper," says Jamie. "How very disappointing," she replies!

Jamie finds a futuristic room full of computers seemingly programmed with works of fiction, including Treasure Island, Vanity Fair, Don Quixote, Swallows and Amazons, The Pit and the Pendulum, Black Beauty, Martin Chuzzlewit, Greek legends, and even an audio-book of Little Women! There's also a "work in progress" ticker-tape machine recounting events elsewhere as they happen, allowing Jamie to read what's happening to the Doctor and Zoe as if reading their adventures in a book.

Curiouser and curiouser, said Alice...

The cliffhanger is merely a rehash of the previous one, with a very well realised Medusa bursting into serpentine life and advancing on the Doctor and Zoe. The stop-motion snake hair is done very well, and the Medusa mask quite eerie - unlike the Minotaur mask earlier on, which Maloney very wisely kept to a shadowy, crash-zoomed minimum! It looked like one of those gonk troll dolls! Maybe it's related to the Taran Wood Beast...?

First broadcast: September 28th, 1968

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: The realisation of the Medusa is very well done.
The Bad: The Doctor faces a unicorn, a Minotaur and Medusa, and has a chat with Gulliver, in an episode which progresses the plot very little. Ironic for a plot centred on a land of stories.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆

NEXT TIME: Episode 4...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Episode 1; Episode 2; 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/.