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!

The Mind Robber Episode 4

The one where the Doctor meets the Master of the Land of Fiction...

The cliffhanger is basically resolved in the same way as the previous one, by our heroes convincing themselves that the creature threatening them isn't real. There's a nice twist here in that the Doctor is almost tricked into accepting Medusa by using the sword to vanquish her, but he realises at the last moment that he cannot kill that which is not real (an idea which is quite disturbing in itself). It just goes to show how unimaginative the cliffhangers have been on the whole in Season 6 so far. The Mind Robber episode 1 aside, they've all been formulaic and repetitive (especially The Dominators). Let's hope better is to come...

Ooh, that sound the robots make when they approach tingles my spine! That metallic scraping noise that signals their arrival, it's fantastic! We haven't seen the mute white robots since episode 1, so it's great to have them back, this time blending in with the futuristic surroundings of the computer room, and later standing in contrast to the gloom of the Master's domain. I adore that robot design, and think they're one of the best robots Doctor Who's ever had (even though they were Out of the Unknown's first!).

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.

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.

The Mind Robber Episode 1

The one where the TARDIS leaves reality and turns white...

The first thing to strike me about this episode is that the TARDIS walls are simply blown-up photographs of the real walls! I realise this is not new or unique to The Mind Robber, but it's been some time since we last saw inside the TARDIS, and as this episode is set almost entirely inside the Ship, it seems much more grating. Back in 1968 of course, people were watching on tiny, scratchy little 625-line black and white TVs with about as much definition as a burnt dictionary, so it wouldn't have been as obvious to them. But in 2018, thanks to it being beautifully restored and issued on shiny DVD... well, those photo blow-ups are really bad!

The Doctor soon tumbles into a state of panic as he seems unable to dematerialise the TARDIS as the Dulcian volcano spews its hot lava towards them. The effect of the TARDIS in the lava is actually very good, even if it does look more like porridge than molten rock. Before we know it, the TARDIS's fluid links are playing up again and start leaking mercury vapour. The last time this happened, the Doctor disconnected the time vector generator (The Wheel in Space) and they had to evacuate the Ship as the inside dimension was separated from the outside shell. That seemed drastic at the time, but perhaps not quite as drastic as removing the TARDIS entirely from reality, as he does here!