The Brain of Morbius Part Two

The one where Sarah is blinded...

You have to admire the wonderful use of the English language in this story. The list of ways Solon insults people is so rich and amusing, and Philip Madoc delivers what could be some very purple prose with the right amount of conviction as to make it work. He describes Condo as a "chicken-brained biological disaster" and a "chattering ape", while his greatest scorn is reserved for the Sisterhood (that "squalid brood of harpies") and their leader, the "accursed hag" Maren, also described as a "palsied harridan"! This wonderful dialogue is surely not the work of Robin Bland, or Terrance Dicks; it has to be from the mind and pen of the great Robert Holmes!

A lot more time is spent with the Sisterhood in this episode, and it must be said that Jean McMillan's make-up is wonderful, whether it's the younger sisters' red and gold faces or the aged make-up for Cynthia Grenville as Maren. Grenville was not an old lady when they filmed this, but was made up to be, and if you look at her when interviewed on the DVD of this story, she still doesn't look as old as Maren more than 30 years later!

The Doctor doesn't seem to be taking the Sisterhood very seriously at first (he seems amused that they're still practising teleportation), not until they condemn him to death, at which point he obviously starts to protest. For the second story in a row he is tied to a pillar prior to execution, and the elaborate performance the Sisters enact for the Song of Death is wonderfully OTT (I'm sure you can spot a couple of the Sister actresses stifling laughter during this routine). Choreographed by the prolific movement director Geraldine Stephenson, the circling, swishing dance routine is both eerie and mildly silly, but coupled with the whispered chanting, their quaint little fire sticks, the flaming torches and the gorgeous costumes, it manages to evoke the feel of the witches' ceremonies depicted so colourfully (but not necessarily accurately) in the 1970 docu-film Legend of the Witches.

We learn that Morbius tried to lead a rebellion against the Time Lords from the planet Karn, but his people executed him by throwing him in a dispersal chamber, as witnessed by Maren. But the Doctor has felt the presence of Morbius's mind, suspecting that he is still alive somehow. Piece that together with the fact Solon has a headless monster in his laboratory, and is very keen on securing the Doctor's head for some as-yet-unspecified reason, and it's all beginning to make a gruesome sense.

Solon appeals to Maren to let the Doctor live, offering Condo as sacrifice in his place, but in truth, all Mehenderi really wants is his head! Maren refuses, but luckily Sarah has wormed her way into the shrine, dressed as a Sister and helps the Doctor escape using the handy pliers he keeps in his pocket (along with the broken brolly and the yo-yo!). Tragically, when escaping the shrine, Maren manages to blind Sarah with her magical ring, pitching the storyline into an even darker realm in which the companion - the young viewer's relatable lynchpin - is seriously injured.

Sarah losing her sight is done really well, with Elisabeth Sladen portraying the fear that anybody who loses their sight would undoubtedly feel. The Doctor cannot be sure that her sight will return, and fails to express very much sympathy when he threatens to bite her nose if she wallows in self-pity. More evidence that the Doctor is an alien with alien reactions to things. I think Sarah has every right to feel self-pity, after losing her sight helping him to escape execution (for which he fails to thank her). Sladen is also very good at portraying blindness, stumbling into and over things, reaching out desperately to feel ahead of her, staring blankly ahead. Sometimes you watch an actor pretend to be blind and it's so obvious they can actually see and haven't done their research, but Sladen manages to convince that she is genuinely sightless.

It's interesting that the Doctor decides to take Sarah back to Solon for a professional opinion about her eyesight, rather than return her to the safety of the TARDIS. Sarah is obviously not keen on the idea of going back to see Solon, and expresses understandable fear throughout her examination. Solon tells the Doctor that there is little chance of her sight returning as her retinas have been almost completely destroyed, and this is pretty blunt and frightening news for younger viewers. The idea that Sarah might be permanently blind is an interesting direction, and children at the time wouldn't necessarily be sophisticated enough to think that Sarah's not going to stay this way (it'd be an uncharacteristically brave thing for Doctor Who to do in 1976. Hell, it was pretty out there when the Doctor went blind in 2017).

Solon converses with an unseen Morbius in the basement, and we get clues as to what state he's in when Morbius says he cannot feel or see (but he can talk and hear!). I love the line where Solon says Condo is no longer reliable and "must be put own", suggesting he sees his slave as more of an animal than a human being. Again, surely that's 100% Holmes, rather than Dicks? By the end of the episode we've seen precisely what state Morbius is in, although we should've guessed from the story's title. Morbius is a talking green brain in a bubbling vat of liquid, a monstrosity the viewer can see, but which poor blind Sarah cannot (and isn't it amazing how she manages to get down all those stairs without breaking her neck?).

A talking brain is a very gruesome thing (I've never quite got over the ickiness of the Brains of Morphoton in The Keys of Marinus!). In fact, this whole story is gruesome through and through, both in its themes and its visuals. It's surely the height of the Hinchcliffe era's push to be as scary for the kids as possible, its gothic overtones making it one of the darkest stories of the period. It's Doctor Who doing Frankenstein's monster, but with added witches. You've gotta love it.

First broadcast: January 10th, 1976

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: Some of the dialogue for Solon is wonderfully funny, all harridans, harpies and hags!
The Bad: Barry Newbery's outdoors set really suffers in the cold light of the studio's daytime lighting. It looks like a theatre set.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★☆☆

"Would you like a jelly baby?" tally: 05

NEXT TIME: Part Three...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Part One; Part Three; Part Four

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/2014/07/the-brain-of-morbius.html

The Brain of Morbius is available on BBC DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Brain-Morbius-DVD/dp/B001A47GD4