The Mind Robber

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045 – The Mind Robber
Doctor Who serial
The Doctor and two denizens of the Land of Fiction, Rapunzel and the Karkus
Cast
Doctor	Patrick Troughton (Second Doctor)
Companions	Frazer Hines (Jamie McCrimmon)
	Wendy Padbury (Zoe Heriot)
Production
Writer	Derrick Sherwin (episode 1, uncredited) Peter Ling
Director	David Maloney
Script editor	Derrick Sherwin
Producer	Peter Bryant
Executive producer(s)	None
Production code	UU
Series	Season 6
Length	5 episodes, nominally 25 mins each (see notes)
Originally broadcast	September 14–October 12, 1968
Chronology
← Preceded by	Followed by →
The Dominators	The Invasion

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.

1 Synopsis
2 Plot
3 Cast
- 3.1 Cast notes
4 Continuity
5 Production
6 Outside references
7 In print
8 Broadcast, VHS and DVD releases
9 External links
- 9.1 Reviews
- 9.2 Target novelisation

[edit] Synopsis

The Second Doctor and his companions Jamie and Zoe are taken out of normal time and space and transported via a white void where the TARDIS is seemingly destroyed, to the Land of Fiction, where literary characters come alive.

[edit] Plot

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.

[edit] Cast

Dr. Who — Patrick Troughton
Jamie — Frazer Hines and Hamish Wilson
Zoe — Wendy Padbury
The Master — Emrys Jones
A Stranger / Lemuel Gulliver — Bernard Horsfall
Karkus — Christopher Robbie
The Medusa — Sue Pulford
Redcoat — Philip Ryan
Princess Rapunzel — Christine Pirie
D'Artagnan and Sir Lancelot — John Greenwood
Cyrano — David Cannon
Blackbeard — Gerry Wain
Soldiers — Paul Alexander, Ian Hines, Richard Ireson
Children — Barbara Loft, Sylvestra Le Tozel, Timothy Horton, Christopher Reynalds, David Reynolds, Martin Langley
Robots — John Atterbury, Ralph Carrigan, Bill Wiesener, Terry Wright

[edit] Cast notes

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

[edit] 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.
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.
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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] Outside references

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

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

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.

[edit] In print

Doctor Who book

The Mind Robber
Series	Target novelisations
Release number	115
Writer	Peter Ling
Publisher	Target Books
Cover artist	David McAllister
Release date	November 1986 (Hardback) 16th April 1987 (Paperback)
Preceded by	The Ark
Followed by	The Faceless Ones

A novelisation of this serial, written by Peter Ling, was published by Target Books in November 1986.

[edit] Broadcast, VHS and DVD releases

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.
This story was repeated on BBC2 in 1992.
This serial came out on VHS In May 1990.
This story was released on DVD in the United Kingdom on March 7, 2005 and in North America on September 6, 2005.
The DVD release included the documentary The Fact of Fiction, produced by Richard Molesworth, looking back on the making of the serial and featuring interviews with Wendy Padbury, Frazer Hines, Hamish Wilson, Christopher Robbie, director David Maloney, script editor Derrick Sherwin, writer Peter Ling and designer Evan Hercules.