5 episodes
Aired between 14th September 1968 and 12th October 1968
Written by Peter Ling
Produced by Peter Bryant
Directed by David Maloney
Synopsis
After racing into the TARDIS to escape the lava, the Doctor tries to take off. The TARDIS chooses that moment to have another strop and starts to malfunction. Jamie fears that the lava will melt the TARDIS with them all inside it. The Doctor assures him that they're quite safe, but when Jamie presses him for an example of a time when the TARDIS has been swamped in molten lava and he can't recall one.
Zoe and Jamie begin to panic. The Doctor explains that the only way he can think of getting out of the situation without vaporising the fluid links is to set up an emergency circuit, but he's reluctant to do so because it will take them outside of time and space into the unknown. Jamie and Zoe order him to do it before they all fry. He employs the unit and waits with baited breath. They do indeed escape and seem to land....nowhere. The Doctor is happy enough with that, as it will give him time to repair the ship.
Zoe and Jamie pop off to get changed and have some food, whilst the Doctor sorts out the repairs. Zoe and Jamie each individually start to hallucinate, seeing their home towns displayed on the scanner.
Even though they know it shouldn't be real, they can't help but be lured and hypnotised by it. Jamie manages to snap out of it long enough to go and warn the Doctor, but Zoe wanders outside the TARDIS whilst he's gone.
When the Doctor finds out what's happened, he's distraught, and seemingly frightened about what could be awaiting them outside, clearly because it's something he's never dealt with before with it being outside the realms of time and space. As he's investigating the panels, Jamie is hypnotised once more by visions of Scotland and wanders outside the TARDIS into the white mist beyond, calling for Zoe.
The Doctor is beside himself, and is adamant that there is some kind of evil presence at work, but even so, he refuses to step beyond the TARDIS doors.
Out in the vast white nothingness, Zoe and Jamie manage to find each other, and become concerned when they cannot see any sign of Scotland or the futuristic city complex. As they look around, they are surrounded by a group of menacing white robots.
The robots close in and begin to use hypnotic rays on the companions, but the Doctor rescues them, forcing them back to the TARDIS as quick as they can and taking off to enter the normal realm once more. As they try to break out of the nothingness, the power builds inside the ship as its assaulted by some kind of psychic force. The Doctor is placed under a spell, and the TARDIS shatters, leaving Zoe and Jamie to drift in the ether of nothingness, clinging to the console for dear life.
Consiousness drifts away from them all....
...When they come to their senses, they find that each of them have been separated from the other and are now within a great forest.
Zoe explores the place and comes across a stone building, falling down a hole as she steps inside.
Jamie wanders around the forest until he see's a 'redcoat' skulking about. He charges the soldier but is shot and promptly turned into a cardboard cutout with no face.
The Doctor comes out of his trance and follows the sound of Zoe and Jamie's voices. He deciphers a cryptic message from whomever the culprit of this charade is, which states that his friends are safe and well. Continuing on, he comes across impudent school kids and eventually the cutout of Jamie.
He puts his face back together, but gets it wrong, changing Jamie's appearance (and speech patterns).
Together, the Doctor and Jamie rescue Zoe and begin to figure out where they are, realising that the trees are actually printed words on a page that spell out well known proverbs .
The group soon come across Lemuel Gulliver, but get no sense out of him.
As they are talking, they hear the sound of someone approaching, and hide behind the letter trees. Clockwork redcoats turn up but Lemuel doesn't actually see them and he accidentally gives the Doctor's location up.
Now prisoners, the Doctor, Zoe and Jamie are taken to the edge of the forest of words, where they suddenly find themselves alone again and confronted by a terrifying unicorn that charges them.
As it draws nearer and nearer, the Doctor instructs Zoe and Jamie to deny its existence, stating that it's a myth, it's not real and if its not real, it can't hurt them.
The unicorn turns into a cardboard cutout.
The trio continue to explore and come across the entrance to a maze, guarded by one of the skulking 'redcoats'. Jamie once again charges the soldier and once again, the soldier shoots him and turns him into a cardboard cutout without a face, before running off. The Doctor does the exercise again, getting Jamie's face right this time.
They head into the labyrinth using a ball of twine to mark the way. Jamie decides he's waiting behind with it when it runs out, whilst the Doctor and Zoe head on. Despite Zoe's insistence that she's worked out the maze's formula to find the exit, they end up in the centre of the labyrinth where they encounter the Minotaur.
Once again, they disbelieve the monster and it goes away.
Back with the twine, Jamie hears the clockwork 'redcoats' approaching.
He hides but they find him. He realises that the soldiers have cameras in their hats and disables the camera before legging it up a rock face where the soldier cannot follow. The rockface gets steeper and forces him to stop. He wishes that he had a rope to make it easier, and as if by magic, a rope drops over the escarpment, tethered to the window of a high tower on top of the cliff. Jamie climbs the rope, only to find it's actually a long plat of hair belonging to Rapunzel, He disappoints her by telling her he's not a prince, but she lets him inside the tower anyway.
Once inside, he see's that its a lot more high tech than what he expected. He find a ticker tape machine that's spewing out the story of the Doctor's actions as and when they happen. Jamie grows concerned when he reads that the Doctor and Zoe are about to meet Medusa.
Sure enough, back in the labyrinth. the Doctor and Zoe DO meet the Medusa.
She approaches them both and Zoe freaks out when the Doctor asks her to disbelieve. Zoe gets caught up in the drama of it all and cannot think of Medusa as an illusion. Suddenly, a sword appears by his side, but he refuses to use it as an imaginary target doesn't need to be 'killed' because it never existed in the first place. He instead uses a mirror from his pocket to bounce Medusa's vision back at her and turns her into stone.
Inside the tower, Jamie reads the machine as it explains the end of the test. He discards the ticker tape and continues exploring. He meets Lemuel Gulliver again and is forced to hide as the white robots pass by. He warns Gulliver not to give his location away, and sure enough, the robots wander past leaving Gulliver alone (especially as he still cannot see them himself). Jamie thanks Gulliver and creeps out of hiding.
The Doctor and Zoe eventually get out of the labyrinth, only to be confronted by a new threat: the imposing figure of Ze Karkus, a super-powered character from a cartoon strip in the year 2000.
He threatens them with an anti-molecular ray dis-integrator, but the Doctor is beginning to figure out the rules of this world now. He openly disbelieves the gun as it is scientifically impossible. The gun disappears and Karkus gets angry, rushing towards them. Zoe yells for the Doctor to help her disbelieve the Karkus too, but it's not as easy as that, because the Doctor has never heard of him before, therefore he could possibly exist.
The Karkus grabs hold of the Doctor and throws him to the ground, but gets a nasty surprise when Zoe gets to use a series of Judo throws on him. Hers skills are so formidable that it doesn't take long to defeat him and get him to submit to her commands.
Zoe commands that Karkus takes them to the person who is controlling everything in this realm. He agrees and takes them to a great citadel.
The Doctor and Zoe dismiss ze Karkus and bluff their way in as him. Once inside it doesn't take long for them to find Jamie investigating the place. Jamie fills them in on what he's found and warns them about a light beam trip wire alarm system in the room. Zoe conveniently forgets about that when she's frightened and sets it off. The Doctor decides not to hide anymore and tells Jamie and Zoe to stand openly with him, They think he's gone bonkers, but the Doctor says its the quickest way to get to the "master" who's in charge.
As predicted, the white robots show up again and take the TARDIS crew to the main control room, where they meet the "Master": an old man in victorian dress (including a reading skull cap) who is hooked up to a futuristic machine.
The "Master" explains that he is a fiction writer from the 1920's and was brought here to undergo tests just like the Doctor and his friends. He tells them that the purpose of all this is to get the Doctor to agree to run the land of fiction, as he is getting too old now. In return, when hooked up to the machine, he will have access to the complete works of human kind from the beginning of time.
As he is revealing his plan, Zoe and Jamie sneak away and find themselves in the vast library - source material for all the fiction. They come across the white robots and are cornered literally into the pages of a book. The robots press the book closed, trapping Zoe and Jamie within its pages and thus making them fictional characters.
Presented with the opportunity to take control of the land, the Doctor refuses. The "Master" gets angry (channeling the voice of the entity within the machine). He calls forth the white robots and tells the Doctor he doesn't have a choice, especially when he's threatening Zoe and Jamie.
The Doctor is torn but decides to resist. He scrambles up one of the book cases in the room stating that he's yet to see a robot fly. He escapes through a sky light and runs off.
Now Jamie and Zoe are fictional, they are under the "Master's" control. He hypnotises them and gives them orders to trick the Doctor and bring him back.
Out on the ramparts of the citadel, the Doctor despairs about his next move. He encounters the school children from before, as well as Gulliver but he can't get them to help him as they say they are all under the "Master's" control.
Zoe and Jamie turn up and claim they've escaped and found the TARDIS. They encourage the Doctor to rush inside with them and take off quickly, something that he's only too happy to do. When he gets inside, they lock him in with an evil laugh.
The walls of the TARDIS fall away to reveal that he's actually inside a perspex prison. He is led back to the control room and forced to hook up to the master brain.
The "Master" laughs about the fact that he's won and urges the Doctor to submit, but the Doctor turns the tables, explaining that whilst ever they're both connected to the brain, they share equal power.
They begin a battle of wits, summoning great fictional characters to do battle such as Cyrano De Bergerac...
Blackbeard...
Sir Lancelot,,,
, and of course, Ze Karkus. The Doctor has a slight disadvantage that he cannot mention his own name, or the name of his companions in the narrative, or they will become fiction too, and thus able to be controlled.
The battle is so furious and chaotic that it begins to overload the master brains capacity. In the confusion, the Doctor gains the upper hand, releases Jamie and Zoe and orders the white robots to destroy everything. He rushes away from the citadel with them, avoiding the white robots as he goes, and takes the Victorian writer with him.
Jamie and Zoe fret that they cannot escape because the TARDIS was destroyed. The Doctor is unsure if they can escape, but theorises that if the master brain is destroyed, all the fictional events will be reversed and the TARDIS will reform.
He was right, as the white robots blow up the master brain, the police box reforms around them, and the Victorian writer is sent back to his own time.
Trivia
- These are some of the shortest Doctor Who episodes.
- The "Master" was supposedly modeled after the great children's author Frank Richards.
- Peter Ling who wrote this story also created british soap opera: Crossroads, but on the strength of this story, we can't hold it against him too much
- The whole business about Jamie getting his face shot off twice was to cover the fact that Frazer Hines had to go off for a week with Chicken Pox. Hamish Wilson did an admirable job of standing in on such short notice.
- It's not really trivia, but I do feel I need to mention that putting quotation marks around the word "Master" is intentional. For those who are totally new to Doctor Who, all will become clear once we get to the third Doctor's run.
- This story was originally meant to be a four parter, but Derrick Sherwin had to fill the gap from the episode dropped in the Dominators and had to create episode one out of thin air, with no budget for sets or additional actors. This caused probelms with Patrick Troughton who was upset at having to carry the show for a full episode without additional money.
- It's worth mentioning by now that it was beginning to look like the end for Patrick and Frazer. The reality was that they really were having the time of their lives on the set, but Frazer's agent was determined that he had done long enough there and wanted to move him into a more musical career and perhaps even movies. As for Patrick, he was being hounded by his "lady" every time that he went home for lowering himself to do children's television and not serious acting work.
What worked
- Wendy Padbury's cat suit
- The obligatory spinning console shot
- Loved the idea about the forest of words
- The way Lemuel Gulliver only speaks in phrases from his book is great
- The rules of the land of fiction preventing the Doctor from mentioning himself, Jamie or Zoe in the narrative lest they become fiction themselves.
- The fact that pressing someone into a book makes them part of that fiction.
What didn't work
What was the point of Gulliver, and the unicorn and all that?
The ham acting of Fraser and Wendy when they're under hypnosis
The white space at the beginning wasn't all white, and so we can see the floor and walls
What the hell is that thing on the side of the "Master's" mouth
Overall feelings
The creation of the Mind Robber although commissioned, was almost like a happy accident. Peter Ling got the job more on recommendation and contacts rather than anything else. He was working with Derrick Sherwin and Terrance Dicks on Crossroads, and was asked if he'd like to submit a script to Who. He'd never really done much science fiction, and so turned to the cute idea of bringing him to the land of fiction. The result of all this is something refreshingly different. It could easily have been yet another monster of the week, and filled with obvious childish tropes. He even focused on the stories he enjoyed (hence Gulliver) rather than what was exceptionally popular at the time. Ok, we get another great intelligence set up, but that aspect is barely touched upon until the last episode.
Things could have been a lot worse if the first episode hadn't acted as a transition between the originally intended four episodes, as we'd have been thrust into the deep end with bonkers characters and plots and made to deal with it. As it stands the first episode does a really good job of building up the tension and shows that there is something so bad out there that even the Doctor is scared.
In fact throughout the story, Troughton does a stellar job, as does Bernard Horsefall (Gullivar) who we will be seeing a lot more of in the future. The problems come with everything else. Peter Ling made Zoe less of the brain box logical girl, and more of the type of airhead to blunder past an alarm system that's already been pointed out to her. Jamie's insistence of charging a loaded gun is less his fault, but is still a bit clumsy.
With everything I've said above, this should surely be a contender for a 10 star rating, right? Well, no. The clue should come from the episode lengths. Each episode gets shorter and shorter as the story goes along, with the final one being about 15 minutes long. the sad fact is that there's just not enough there to keep people interested. With the exception of episode 1 which in itself was playing for time, the entire story is about blundering from one fictional scene to another with a big fictional mash up at the end. Once Gulliver's out of the way, it gets old hat and the closest the threat ever really gets to being frightening is the appearance of Medusa.
Rating
7 out of 10
A nice change from monster of the week and siege stories
Rewatchability Factor
4 out of 10
A good effort and a nice change, but ultimately left me feeling bored.
Watch this if you liked.,,
- The Trial of a Timelord (Parts 13 and 14)
- Amy's Choice (Doctor Who Series 5)
- The Doctor's Wife (Doctor Who Series 6)
Consulting the Matrix
Which fictional character would you have liked to see in the land of fiction and why?
No comments:
Post a Comment