6x02. The Mind Robber
Writers: Peter Ling and Derrick Sherwin (episode 1)
Director: David Mahoney
Script Editor: Derrick Sherwin
Producer: Peter Bryant
Synopsis: In a desperate
attempt to escape the oncoming lava on Dulkis, the Doctor takes the
TARDIS out of time and space altogether. He and his companions
subsequently find themselves in the Land of Fiction, whose mythical
inhabitants range from a unicorn to the explorer Gulliver to a band of
toy soldiers. Determined to unravel the secret of this strange place,
the Doctor discovers that a kidnapped comic book author known only as
"The Master" has been forced by an alien intelligence to oversee a
project
to transfer all of Earth's population to the Land of Fiction, where
they will become fictional characters themselves.
Review: "The Mind Robber"
has its positives and its negatives, but it certainly doesn't suffer
from lack of originality: there are very few scenes in this serial that
could be mistaken for a scene from any other entry in the Doctor Who canon. The script rests
on the premise that taking the TARDIS "out of reality" places it in the
Land of Fiction, where characters from novels and comic books appear
and where the Doctor and his companions can escape threats by reminding
themselves that they are fictional and thus banishing them from
existence. This is a concept that might seem better suited to The Twilight Zone than Doctor Who, but the script takes
the idea and runs with it, and in fact it only stumbles when it
introduces some more traditional sci-fi elements.
The TARDIS crew's experiences in the Land of Fiction are sometimes
eerie (Jamie's hallucination of Scotland), sometimes darkly humorous
(the Doctor having to reassemble Jamie's face, and then Jamie actually
being played by a different actor for a while because he gets it
wrong), and sometimes just flat-out weird (the discovery that they are
surrounded by letter-shaped trees that spell out various aphorisms).
The first and second episodes are probably the best, maintaining a
consistently surreal, mysterious tone that keeps the viewer guessing
without going too far and just resorting to arbitrary strangeness.
Later on, things take a more overtly comedic turn with the arrival of
the Karkus, a futuristic comic book character, and the Doctor's match
of wits with the Master as each exercises his power over the characters
of the Land of Fiction. Fortunately, the latter sequence is
sufficiently entertaining (The Master: "And then the Karkus turned his
gun on Jamie and Zoe and pulled the trigger...." The Doctor: "But the
power was out!") that I can forgive the shift in tone, and something of
the dreamlike quality is preserved with images such as Jamie and Zoe
being enveloped by a book as the Master briefly turns them into
fictional characters, or the children from Episode 2 reappearing out of
nowhere to taunt the Doctor when he's trapped inside a replica of the
TARDIS.
I've heaped plenty of praise on Troughton in previous reviews, but his
talents are particularly evident in "The Mind Robber," as his whimsical
and slightly panicky nature makes him the ideal Doctor to wade through
all this absurdity. (Consider a line like, "Oh no, now his *face* is
gone!" Now ask yourself if
it would be half as funny coming from Hartnell or Davison or even Tom
Baker.) Zoe, who didn't make much of an impression in "The Dominators,"
is much better here, displaying her keen intelligence in helping to
decipher the maze in Episode 3 and realizing that they needed to
overload the alien computer at the end. Aside from the Doctor and his
companions, the only "real" character here is the Master (no, not
*that* Master), who is effectively
portrayed as a kind old man and a popular comic book author who's been
coerced into this strange role.
There is, of course, a certain irony in the fact that the Doctor and
his companions face the threat of being turned into fictional
characters, when they are, in fact, already just that -- fictional
characters. Whether this is meant to emphasize any particular theme,
I'm not entirely sure: one might argue that the mental battle between
the Doctor and the Master is meant to celebrate the creative process,
or that it's subtly satirizing Doctor
Who and other works of fiction for their arbitrary contrivances,
or possibly both. And it is probably not an accident that a character
like Gulliver -- an explorer just like the Doctor -- shows up, or that
there are references to the world of serialized comic books. My own
instinct is that the script is meant to acknowledge the roots of Doctor Who and its status as a
work of fiction, but that it doesn't really offer any specific
commentary on this subject.
What I did find rather disappointing about "The Mind Robber" is the
ending, in which we discover that an alien intelligence is plotting to
take over Earth and transfer its population to the Land of Fiction. For
one thing, it strikes me as unnecessary: the serial was doing just fine
without the introduction of yet another Alien Plan To Conquer Earth
(TM). But more importantly, it has the effect of taking away the sense
of mystery without actually explaining anything. I'd have been
perfectly happy to see the serial remain 100% fantasy, perhaps ending
with the TARDIS crew escaping but the Land of Fiction still intact,
leaving all of them wondering how this strange place ever came to
exist and how it really works. Instead, we have the alien "master
brain" overloading and destroying the Land of Fiction, but conveniently
reassembling the TARDIS so the Doctor, his companions, and the Master
can escape (talk about a deus ex
machina!). The serial ends with a lot of unanswered questions,
such as how exactly the process of turning someone into a fictional
character works, or why the Doctor and Jamie and Zoe can banish threats
by reminding themselves that they aren't real, but instead of
emphasizing the theme of the unknown and using these unanswered
questions as strengths, the script side-steps them in favor of a fairly
superficial conclusion.
But despite the lackluster ending, "The Mind Robber" is still a
success. It may get by on style more than substance, but the
imaginative plot and skillful use of imagery make it a winner, and it's
easy to see why it's remembered as one of the better Troughton serials.
Other notes:
- "The Mind Robber" is a good example of how external constraints can
spur creativity: script editor Derrick Sherwin added the first episode,
where the TARDIS crew discover a strange white void outside, when "The
Dominators" was (mercifully) shortened from six episodes to five, and
Jamie's change in appearance was necessitated by Frazer Hines' illness.
Rating: *** (out of four)
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