The Mind Robber Episode 5

The one where Jamie and Zoe become fictional characters...

POP! That's the sound of my little brain trying to cope with the mind-twistingly meta idea that Jamie and Zoe, two fictional characters from the BBC Television series Doctor Who, have just been turned into fictional characters within the fictional universe of the programme. They're doubly fictional - fictional for BBC viewers, and fictional in-universe too! I love it; I love the devil-may-care courage this script has and the bracing cavalcade of ideas that spill out of it. Peter Ling really should have been employed again by Doctor Who; it's s shame he wasn't.

There may be a good reason for why he wasn't though - the production office was in turmoil at the time, as commissioned scripts were falling through hand over fist. This explains why The Dominators was reduced from six to five episodes (gawd, imagine another episode of The Dominators!), why The Mind Robber had a fifth one added (written uncredited by script editor Derrick Sherwin), why you suddenly had longer serials (an eight-parter and a ten-parter), and why newbie Robert Holmes was commissioned twice in five months!

Production paperwork from 1968 shows that scripts that were never made were being commissioned left, right and centre - you can still sense the panic 50 years later:

• Feb 23rd: Paul Wheeler commissioned to write The Dreamspinner
• Apr 9th: The Dreamspinner is abandoned
• Apr 24th: Dick Sharples is commissioned to write The Prison in Space
• Jun: Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln begin work on their third Yeti story, The Laird of McCrimmon, which is soon abandoned
• Jul 5th: Malcolm Hulke is commissioned to write The Impersonators
• Oct 15th: The Prison in Space is abandoned
• Oct 22nd: Robert Holmes proposes a story called Aliens in the Blood, which is never commissioned
• Dec 30th: The Impersonators is abandoned

It's a catalogue of catastrophe that would turn any commissioning script editor white! The situation is so ironic, considering The Mind Robber is all about a writer who is enslaved to a giant machine which feeds off imagination and creativity. The parallels are startling!

This final episode sees the Doctor in a battle of wits with the Master of the Land of Fiction, trying to literally write himself out of trouble, but doing it carefully so as to avoid including himself in the fiction. He can't simply say "The Doctor defeated the Master" because that would place him in the fiction. It's a clever conceit, and it means the Doctor and the Master have to use other, already fictional creations to further their ends.

This leads to a bracing few minutes where the two narrators use figures from classic literature to fight one another, ultimately helping Jamie and Zoe to escape. In quick succession we have Cyrano de Bergerac, Musketeer D'Artagnan, Blackbeard the pirate, and Sir Lancelot, and that's in addition to return appearances from the Nesbit children, Gulliver, Rapunzel and the Karkus! It feels like a 21st century Who season finale, with characters from earlier episodes coming together at the end! I'm not sure why the Karkus is suddenly at the Doctor's command, seeing as it was to Zoe that he pledged his allegiance, but I'll let that go.

As the action comes to a head, and Jamie and Zoe manage to overload the Master Brain, there's a lovely moment where we see the enslaved author beg the Brain not to dispense of the Doctor, because he wants him to replace him. "I can't go on forever," he pleads. It reminds us that this man is a normal human being trapped and enslaved by an alien entity, and he's not evil at all. So I'm glad the Doctor takes the time to rescue him at the end by disconnecting him from the computer and taking him with them.

As with too many Troughton tales, it all ends with an explosion, but this time the Doctor isn't sure if he's actually won or not. We see them in a silent black void, waiting to find out what will become of them once the Master Brain explodes. The Doctor can only hope they will be returned to their proper times and places, and thankfully they are, as we see the TARDIS reform before the credits roll. What becomes of the freed author, we don't know. I can only assume he is returned to his desk in 1926, where he will wake up and continue with his scribblings for The Ensign. He'll probably assume it was all a terrible dream...

It's over, and so swiftly too. Episode 5 of The Mind Robber is barely 18 minutes long, and if you cut out the opening and closing titles, and the reprise, you've got just 16 minutes and 9 seconds of fresh footage. Surely this is the shortest regular episode of Doctor Who ever!?

The Mind Robber is a magnificent melange of creativity and imagination. Peter Ling's central idea is startlingly fresh, and with an extra opening episode bolted on the front by Derrick Sherwin which made so much out of so little, the story is a triumph. It can feel a little creaky at times, and definitely padded in the middle, but the passion, energy and creativity that was ploughed into the serial is plain to see, and you can't help but love it.

First broadcast: October 12th, 1968

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: The season finale feel to the appearance of so many literary figures is breath-taking.
The Bad: The episode is so ridiculously short that it'd be nice to have seen the writer returned to from whence he came, just a little scene to show him waking up at his desk in 1926. That would have given beautiful closure.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★★☆ (story average: 7.8 out of 10)

NEXT TIME: The Invasion...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Episode 1; Episode 2; Episode 3; Episode 4

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/.