The Mind Robber

The Dominators are defeated but the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe are not out of the woods yet; there is still the question of a localized volcanic reaction on the island on Dulkis. The TARDIS doesn't have the power to escape the lava flow and the Doctor resorts to a desperate measure: he jumps the ship right out of time and space to an unknown realm until he can get the necessary repairs made. But outside time and space is not safe either, and eventually the travellers are at the
mercy of an unknown force with an army of fictional characters at its command and a terrible plan for the Doctor.

Here's another of the rare intact survivors of this era, with all five episodes residing in the BBC Archive as well as on VHS and DVD. It's certainly one of the more surreal adventures out there, which is interesting seeing as the series was leaning into more actual science in this era. It's not like the TARDIS has not been outside of space and time before, though; back in The Celestial Toymaker the ship was pulled out and similarly the crew were... well... toyed with by an omnipotent being in control of the whole thing. The Doctor doesn't exactly reference this adventure, but in his warnings to Jamie and Zoe when they first arrive there he is foreboding enough to indicate he has not forgotten the experience. And just like in Toymaker the TARDIS is not a safe haven; the powers that are attacking them can easily invade the ship - in this case they can even break it down. After turning the exterior white first, that is.

And like in Toymaker, the cast is made up of fictional characters, and some of them are actually toys - large fearsome clockwork soldiers - but the rest are snatched from the pages of popular works of fiction like Gulliver, Medusa, Rapunzel and a host of others. The characters do not have free will of their own and can only do or say what they have done and said in their fictional contexts, although Rapunzel seems to have a bit more free dialogue. Free will does exist for the TARDIS crew, and the truth emerges that they can influence things around them by their belief, or they can equally be controlled by it. There's a particularly horrific moment where Jamie and Zoe fall victim to the powers of the realm and are turned into fictional characters themselves by being squashed in between the pages of a massive book.

Jamie has an additional moment of terror earlier in the tale; he is turned into a cardboard cut out without a face and the Doctor is provided with a jumbled set of facial features with which to reconstruct it. And he gets it wrong. So Jamie spends an episode with a different face, played by a different actor as Fraser Hines himself was ill and couldn't perform. A versatile solution for sure, luckily the whole premise of the story allows for some creativity when faced with such production obstacles - indeed, the whole series itself was saved by a similar application with the introduction of regeneration. But Jamie does eventually get his proper face restored, but by Zoe with her fantastic perfect memory.

Unlike The Dominators before it I was able to watch this story before the novel was released, and the novel allows for some clever embellishments to the original, but not a lot; in print the story takes on a bit more of a fantastical feel unfettered by physical restrictions of limited special effects. It also helps that the novel was penned by the original author, Peter Ling, so some of this might be things he originally wanted to do, and equally some might be things he wanted to change after the fact. I'm not sure if I would have been disappointed if I read it first and then saw it realized in 1960's production values - either format works well to tell the story, although the small visual things that they could do like turning the TARDIS white and changing Jamie and Zoe's costumes white when they are lost in the void in episode one are far more striking to see rather than read.

 And then there's the moment when the TARDIS explodes. Saying it on page is one thing but to see the beloved police box blown apart and pieces sent spinning into the void, and seeing Jamie and Zoe clinging to the console... that's much different. There has really just been only one serious threat to the TARDIS back in The Edge of Destruction but as it was so soon in the series there was not enough time to be invested properly in the fate of the ship. Now, however, years later from a viewer's perspective, it means a lot more. Of course, if The Dark Planet had been made there would have been that invasion of the TARDIS by dark forces to witness... but no.

When The Mind Robber concludes, then, it flings the TARDIS and her crew right back into danger...

NEXT EPISODE: THE INVASION