fixes the mind

The Mind Robber

The Mind Robber is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in five weekly parts from September 14 to October 12, 1968. The story is distinguished as a rare trip into nearly pure fantasy, and by the establishment of the Void, a realm outside of space and time.

Plot

Synopsis

In defeating the Dominators on Dulkis, the Second Doctor sets off a volcanic eruption. He leaves the TARDIS, along with his companions, Jamie and Zoe, in the way, though, and it gets buried in lava, blowing a fluid link (The Daleks) in the process. This forces the Doctor to use the emergency unit to take the TARDIS away from danger and indeed out of reality itself.

They land in a white void and as the Doctor fixes the TARDIS, Jamie and Zoe are lured outside and are confronted by white robots. The Doctor gets them back inside but, as they try to return to reality, the TARDIS explodes and the travellers are scattered into nothingness.

They end up in a forest where the trees become letters when seen from above. The Doctor, after facing a series of riddles, finds Jamie, but accidentally changes his face. They are soon reunited with Zoe and then encounter Gulliver, who gives them away to life-sized toy soldiers. They are taken to the edge of the forest, where a unicorn charges at them. They manage to turn it into a statue by loudly declaring that ‘it doesn’t exist.’

They continue on and reach a house, where the Doctor brings Jamie back to normal. They discover that the house is the entrance to a labyrinth. Here, while leaving Jamie behind, the Doctor and Zoe encounter the Minotaur and Medusa, whom they deal with in the same way as the unicorn.

Jamie, pursued by a soldier, climbs up a rock face with the help of Rapunzel’s hair and enters a citadel through a window, triggering off an alarm. He hides and finds Gulliver, who cannot see the White Robots who are chasing Jamie.

The Doctor and Zoe exit the labyrinth and encounter the Karkus, a cartoon character from Zoe’s home era. The Doctor accidentally manages to dispel the Karkus' "anti-molecular ray disintegrator" by commenting that no such weapon exists, and the Karkus attacks them. Unfortunately the Doctor can't get rid of the Karkus, because he has never heard of the character before and cannot say for certain that the Karkus is not real. Zoe, however, beats the Karkus into submission with her martial arts skills, and he allies himself with them. He takes them to the citadel, where they find Jamie. Zoe accidentally sets off the alarm again, but the trio do not hide and instead let the robots take them to the main control room.

Here, they meet the Master, a kidnapped Earth writer who underwent the same tests as them when he first arrived. He explains that he is getting old and needs the Doctor to replace him as creative source for the Land of Fiction.

While he is talking, Jamie and Zoe sneak into a library area where they encounter the White Robots again and become trapped in a giant book. The Doctor refuses the Master’s offer and climbs out through a skylight.

The Master hypnotises Jamie and Zoe, gets them to trap the Doctor and links him up to the Master Brain. The two battle, summoning up various fictional characters to fight against one another. The Doctor prevails, releasing Jamie and Zoe who override the Master Brain, causing the White Robots to destroy each other.

The Doctor unplugs the Master from the Brain and they all retreat to a side room. The White Robots destroy the Master Brain, the TARDIS comes back together and normality is restored.

Continuity

"The Master" of the Land of Fiction should not be confused with the renegade Time Lord known as the Master.
The Land of Fiction also features in the Virgin New Adventures spin-off novels Conundrum and Head Games by Steve Lyons. In Conundrum, it is revealed that the Land of Fiction was created by the Gods of Ragnarok. The novels, like all spin-off media, are of uncertain canonicity.
The Master was once the writer of a series about a character named Captain Jack Harkaway, not to be confused with the Doctor's later companion Captain Jack Harkness.
One of the fictional characters encountered is the minotaur of Greek mythology. Variations on this myth were used again in the Third Doctor serial The Time Monster and the Fourth Doctor serial The Horns of Nimon.
A prominent feature of this serial is a white "void" outside of time and space, that the Doctor describes as "nowhere". The Tenth Doctor gives the same description to the "void" in the 2006 series of Doctor Who, and Sarah Jane is brought to a similar place in the Sarah Jane Adventures story Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?
Before Jamie (as played by Hamish Wilson) gets turned into a cut-out for the second time, he shouts, "Creag an tuire!" Frazer Hines joked on the DVD commentary that this is Scottish Gaelic for "vodka and tonic". However, it is actually the motto of the MacLaren Clan of Scotland, meaning "the boar's rock". These are also Jamie's last words in his last regular serial, The War Games, as he charges an English redcoat on the fields of Scotland.

Production

Working titles for this story included Man Power, Another World and The Fact of Fiction.

This serial was originally composed of four episodes, but the preceding serial, The Dominators, was reduced from six to five episodes. This resulted in a sparse first episode being written as they had to use the limited budget of the replaced episode. This stretching of the story also resulted in the first four episodes only running between 19 and 22 minutes in length, and Episode 5 being the shortest Doctor Who episode ever at slightly over 18 minutes.

During production, actor Frazer Hines contracted chicken pox and was hurriedly replaced by real-life Scot Hamish Wilson for episode 2. This also meant that a scene had to be quickly written to explain Jamie's sudden change in appearance.

Casting

Ian Hines, who plays one of the soldiers, is the brother of Frazer Hines.

The Karkus was played by Christopher Robbie, who would return to the series in Revenge of the Cybermen (1975), playing the Cyberleader.

Outside references

The white robots that close in on Jamie and Zoe in the void outside the TARDIS had been loaned from a previous use in the British science fiction television series Out of the Unknown.

Jack Harkaway was the name of a character from a Penny Dreadful called Boys of England. Harkaway was first introduced in 1871.

Broadcast and reception

Although a caption at the end of Episode 5 stated "NEXT WEEK - THE INVASION," it would be three weeks until Episode 1 of The Invasion was broadcast, due to the BBC's coverage of the 1968 Summer Olympics.