Episode #45 : The Mind Robber

"We're nowhere. It's as simple as that."

 

Episode 45:    The Mind Robber.
Companions:  The 2nd Doctor, Jamie McCrimmon and Zoe Heriot.
Air Date:         Five episodes. 14th September to 12th October 1968.

 

To escape from the volcanic eruption on Dulkis, the Second Doctor uses an emergency unit. It moves the TARDIS out of normal time and space. The travellers find themselves in an endless void where they are menaced by white robots.
Having regained the safety of the TARDIS, they believe they have escaped - until the ship explodes. They find themselves in a land of fiction, where they are hunted by life-size clockwork soldiers and encounter characters like Rapunzel and Swift's Lemuel Gulliver.

The Mind Robber is one of those early classic stories where after the first viewing you sit back and wonder what on earth that was all about. I certainly did. A couple more viewings and you come to see that it's not as strange or poor as you first thought. This really was what The Celestial Toymaker wanted to be. Had that story been similar to this in it's telling it may have been far better than it was.

The over all plot is a bit strange. It follows straight on from the end of the prior tale with the Doctor being forced to shunt the TARDIS into another reality to escape the encroaching lava. The companions are dropped into a strange cerebral world where anything that is fictional can exist. Throughout the story we encounter fictitious characters such as Gulliver, Rapunzel and Cyrano de Bergerac as well as robots and clockwork soldiers.These are all controlled by a figure called The Master (not to be confused with the villain to come in later stories) who is an English writer abducted from 1926 and set here to control the fictional universe. He in turn is controlled by some computer called the Master Brain whose plan is to draw all of humanity into the fictional world so that it can take over. Hopefully it isn't just me who sees plot holes in that. Who created the Master Brain in the first place?

I really enjoyed Patrick Troughton's portrayal of the Doctor in this story. I almost get a sense that he was channelling William Hartnell in places. Zoe however, just spends most of the story screaming and calling for help.
There is an odd part to Jamie's story here though. In one episode he is turned into a life size cardboard cut-out of himself but without a face. When the Doctor recreates his face wrong, he is restored to played by a different actor. It fits the story, but the truth was that Frazer Hines was ill for a few days with chicken pox.

The Mind Robber is a good story but it may take more than one watch to hook you.