Day 110 — April 20th 2021
The Mind Robber Episodes Two and Three
The Mind Robber — Episode Two
Let’s do the obvious thing first; it’s pretty serendipitous that Frazer Hines happened to fall ill and needed a week off during the production of this story, because the fact that Jamie gets turned into a cardboard cut out and brought back to life with a different actor feels like it fits in with everything else here perfectly.
It’s a brilliant idea, too. I wonder how people reacted at the time? On occasion during this marathon I wonder what it must be like to watch through them all like this without the weight of knowledge. I’d love to watch through not knowing when companions are coming or going, or when the ‘popular’ monsters are going to show up. Would I have thought this was the end of Jamie as we knew him? Replaced forever with another actor?
I have to admit that as fun as the idea is, I do miss Frazer when he’s not here. Hamish Wilson tries his best, but he’s not a patch on our original Jamie. I’m not sure I believe that Doctor Who could really get the face wrong, either. He knows the boy so well! I think I’m right in saying that none of the options he’s presented with in this episode were actually Frazer Hines, so perhaps it’s unfair to judge him!
Sadly, I can and will judge the rest of the episode… oh dear. I’m really not enjoying this very much. I think I may have answered my question from yesterday and discovered that I thought I liked The Mind Robber when it turns out I’m actually not a fan. Once again we’re given some brilliant ideas that sound better than they play. And I’ll admit that I was a little bored watching this episode.
I think one of the things putting me off the story is that it’s reminding me massively of The Celestial Toymaker. I always knew there were similarities in the ideas behind the Land of Fiction and the Toymaker’s Realm, but they feel especially linked today, given that Doctor Who is forced to solve several puzzles as the episode plays out.
The one area that did sort of work for me was the arrival of the school children to terrorise Doctor Who. They feel so out of place, possibly the strangest things in the whole episode. The Steven Moffat era of Doctor Who is full of kids, and they’re a staple of the show in other modern eras, but you just don’t really see kids in the show at this point.
I’ve been trying to think when the last time we saw kids was. The Ark, possibly? I think I remember there being some kids there. There’s a baby in The Power of the Daleks, but I’m not sure we’ve had any since then. The last time I can remember kids actually playing a part in an episode — with dialogue and everything — was the boy at the start of The Reign of Terror, but surely we’ve had some since then? Either way, it’s really effective having a group of them gang up on our hero here.
There’s one other thing I love about this episode, and it’s something I alluded to yesterday; the Clockwork Soldiers.
How brilliant are they?! They look sort of like Papier-mâché and that’s absolutely right for the story. And the sound effect for their footsteps is fantastic, too, and definitely quite creepy. I think I’d have definitely had nightmares about them if I’d seen this story as a child. Somehow, they’re far more terrifying than Daleks or Cybermen!
Overall, I think it’s a 3/10 for this one, I’m afraid.
Oh and a fun thing to note; after the subtitles to The Enemy of the World mistakenly recorded Jamie’s battle cry of ‘Creag an tuire!’ as ‘Brigadoon’, this story avoids the problem by simply skipping over that bit in the subtitles!
The Mind Robber — Episode Three
Watching this again, I can remember being annoyed by Zoe’s characterisation last time around as much as I am now. I think that probably settles it — I always think that I like The Mind Robber until I watch it and discover that I’m not a fan. That’s oddly fitting for a story about being unsure what’s real and what’s fiction.
Anyway, Zoe. This is only her third story, but she’s been written as thoroughly logical up to this point. Almost to a fault, in fact. It’s really annoying in The Wheel in Space, and it means that she takes things in her stride during The Dominators, so you get no sense of her being newly arrived as part of the TARDIS crew. Throughout this episode, though, she’s generally quite irrational. We discover early on that the way to avoid the dangers of this world is to remind yourself of their fictional nature, and to simply deny them.
But Zoe struggles to do that on every single occasion. There’s a case to be made for her simply being too frightened by their immediate danger to see sense, and I’d believe this from Victoria, but it just doesn’t ring true for Zoe. If anything I feel as though it should be Jamie who’s struggling to remember what’s happening, and logical Zoe who has to pull him together.
It doesn’t help that both the confrontation with the Minotaur and (the cliffhanger!) with Medusa play out in almost identical ways;
Zoe: ‘It’s going to attack!’
Doctor Who: ‘But Zoe, it’s a legend. Another mythical beast, like the unicorn.’
Zoe: ‘But it’s there!’
Doctor Who: ‘No! The Minotaur is a mythical beast. Say it!’
Zoe: ‘The Minotaur is a mythical beast. It doesn’t exist!’
Zoe: ‘It’s gone…!’Zoe: ‘She’s going to look at us!’
Doctor Who: ‘Zoe, we have to say Medusa doesn’t exist!’
Zoe: ‘But she does!’
Doctor Who: ‘Zoe, Medusa is a myth. If you believe it her, she can turn us both to stone. Now, Zoe, say it. The Medusa is a myth. Say it!’
Zoe: ‘But she’s alive!’
Doctor Who: ‘No!’
Zoe: ‘She’s real!’
Doctor Who: ‘No, don’t look in her eyes. Don’t look!’
I just find myself totally not believing that she’s struggling this much with getting through this world. I suppose you could argue that it’s because the Land of Fiction operates in an entirely illogical way so it confuses her, but that’s certainly not how it’s written.
Oh, but I’m just having a moan. I will say that the Medusa looks brilliant — the stop motion sequence of the snakes coming to life is fantastic, and it’s an early example of John Friedlander’s work on the series. He’ll go on to be quite important as we make our way through the 1970s.
Also very nice in this episode is the location work of Frazer Hines being pursued up a cliff face by a Clockwork Soldier — you get a decent sense of scale in the sequence which I think is lacking in the studio scenes. The location sequence was filmed on Sunday 9th June, a handful of days before the first footage of the White Void for Episode One was filmed at Ealing. That means the Clockwork Robots would have been available for that episode, and as much as I love the White Robots, I still think they should have stuck with these soldiers!
Friedlander isn’t the only person key to the next decade of Doctor Who who makes their debut with this story Terrance Dicks is credited as the ‘Assistant Script Editor’ for a couple of episodes. It’s surprising to remember that The Mind Robber is actually the last story to be produced during the programme’s fifth production block, which started way back in The Abominable Snowmen.
Dicks was doing some trailing on this story in preparation for becoming the script editor when the show resumed production after the summer. He didn’t have an awful lot to do with this story, though, as he recalls on the big Troughton years documentary on the Underwater Menace DVD;
‘The Mind Robber was almost entirely Derek [Sherwin’s] baby. I didn't like it. I don’t like fantasy.’
Despite a couple of nice sequences in this one, I think I’m inclined to agree with Terrance. I’m not sure the fantasy elements in the Land of Fiction are a good fit for Doctor Who, and they’re utterly failing to grab me. It’s a 3/10 for this one.
