The Brain of Morbius - Episode 3

After two episodes, Morbius finally becomes involved in the story. The whole episode is building up to the when Morbius becomes more than a head in a jar. Sadly Sarah is still blind and that’s rather annoying, true it had a purpose in the previous episode but now they could have got round it somehow. Also if the Doctor said in the previous episode to Sarah that her vision should return in a couple of hours, why then did he then go to the Sisterhood for some of the elixir?

The Sisterhood are starting to lose their appeal as far as I am concerned. This is largely down to their first scene when the Sisterhood talk to the Doctor and they are still going on about his death. The issue of the elixir is solved by the Doctor and it’s a bit of a relief because it’s not the most important thing in the plot and yet it was the only thing that they would go on about so know they can get past this particular stumbling block.

Solon The shot of the green liquid pouring out of Morbius jar allowing the brain to just flop to one side is quite a grim image. Another grim image was when Solon shot Kondo and you actually see blood fly from his chest area. It’s perhaps another opportunity for Mary Whitehouse’s killjoy brigade to attack the show. Despite the potential hysterics that this woman would bring down on the show, I am happy that for once that production values aren’t at the centre of any problems with the show but instead the level of gore/violence is. Personally I think that there is just the right amount.

Doctor Who during this time was the era of borrowing from different movies and genres. Sort of the pre-Shaun of the Dead/Hot Fuzz type thing. There is a Jekyll and Hyde theme before this episode and there is definelty a Frankenstein moment in this episode when Solon is working on the new body for Morbius. I was half expecting for Solon to shout “It’s alive!” at the top of his voice but sadly this didn’t happen.

On a totally random and weird topic. I quite like the day scenes set on Kahn. I think that its nice there are some light scenes in what is effectively a very dark episode. They only appear for a few moments and don’t actually contribute anything to the story but they I still like them.

The cliffhanger seems to be a nice mix of the previous two. That’s because it involves the new body for Morbius, Sarah and her being blind and unable to see anything. Whilst it looked nice I don’t think that it had the ending it should have done. It doesn’t weaken the episode because the whole episode kept me entertained from start to finish (despite the few moments that didn’t quite work) and the final episode should complement this story really well.