The Mind Robber

To avoid the volcanic eruption on Dulkis, the Doctor makes a dangerous move and hops the TARDIS outside of time and space. It is just supposed to be a temporary measure until he can get the ship to work properly; he is edgy about the white void the TARDIS has materialized in as he knows well enough the powers of the beings who live outside time and space (remember the Toymaker?). But the powers outside the ship manage to lure Jamie and Zoe out, and eventually the ship itself is attacked and all three are stranded in the Land of Fiction. The Land is overseen by the Master of Fiction, and in their efforts to escape and not be turned into fictional characters themselves, the travellers encounter other characters from Earth literature and mythology. The Master of Fiction himself is from Earth and is to be replaced as the creative force behind the Land itself and the replacement he has in mind is none other than the Doctor himself.

In a break from tradition, Jay was on hand for this one and it wasn't the Cybermen for a change. I gave him the option for a Cyber story but no. *sigh* The joy of having a professional person watch this stuff is to see things from another end, while still suspending ones disbelief enough to talk about the story itself and other events that led to it. In episode 1, there is some odd mixing of the faces of Jamie and Zoe as they watch scenery roll by on the TARDIS scanner, which is something new for Doctor Who. "Where's the block of cheddar cheese to go with this?" Jay asked from his chair. Okay, not a techincal analysis, but still valid. Episode 1 itself is set in just the TARDIS and the white void outside; there are 5 episodes in all in The Mind Robber, all of which exist in their entirety on VHS (and in September they'll be on DVD) but episode 1 is merely 17 minutes long. The journey through the Land of Fiction takes up the remaining episodes, all of it studio bound except for Jamie escaping from a vicious wind up toy soldier up a rock face by using Rapunzel's hair. Perfect way for the camera to almost look up his kilt. "Ahhh come to Papa," Jay said again. Okay, he's right, Jamie is kinda hot. There are some other interesting effects in the show, most notably being the stop-motion animation of the snakes on the head of Medusa the Gorgon. After seeing the new series though with all its computer generated everything something like this looks like child's play, but for a television series in 1969, this would have been a lot more impressive than we would credit. And Medusa's attempts to make Zoe look at her and turn her to stone are actually quite chilling. Earlier in the story Jamie is attacked and turned into a statue, and a different actor, Hamish Wilson, plays him for an episode rather than Frazer Hines who reportedly had chicken pox. Or something. Clever way to work around it though; Jay and I had to give them credit for how it was engineered. I'm not going to tell you how, though.

Once the Doctor gets a handle on what is going on he sets about to battle against the Master of Fiction in a fight that will tear the Land apart, but when the Toymaker's realm was destroyed everyone was in danger of going down with it. How will everyone escape? (You know they do though).

NEXT EPISODE : THE INVASION