The Mind Robber - Episode 5

Now I am onto the final episode which is actually the shortest episode running at just 18 minutes. It’s about seven minutes less than a normal episode but to be honest judging by what I would see, I think that it was perhaps the right length.

The episode starts off with a nice little scene between the Master and the Doctor and it leads to a rather disappointing castle set. Things don’t get any better when Karkus made a return. Rapunzel also makes a return after her blink and you’ll miss it performance in episode three. De Bergerac is brought into the episode quite late in the episode and aside from the rather ridiculous prosthetic nose, it seemed like one character too many as far as I am concerned. It was during this moment where other characters were being bought in that I thought that the story was going a bit too far away from what I would be happy to put up with.

There’s a nice moment when the Doctor almost turns himself into fiction when he starts typing. Then it becomes a battle of wits between the Master and the Doctor. The scene where he gets tricked into the TARDIS and the box that he is in gets moved is rather well done. I also liked how Jamie and Zoe were used in this episode. The Master had copied them and got them to act differently to how they would normally and I liked this though somehow it seemed rather strange to see them do anything that would hurt the Doctor (yes I know they weren’t the real Zoe or Jamie). The performances of the regulars have all been rather good and they’ve dealt with the unusual story well and there wasn’t a dud performance and they were all given good stuff to do.

It’s good that they didn’t decide to kill off the Master. Normally he would have either sacrificed himself or just got caught in the crossfire but they decided just this once to end it on a good note. The way that it ended seemed a bit odd but I suppose odd is the perfect word for this story. As an episode it did feel a bit like it was 90% padding and 10% of proper story. Even though it was so short it didn’t have the sort of ending that I was expecting. I think that the problem with the story is that whilst it certainly has a charm that I hadn’t noticed before, it cant be said that it’s the most effectively told story as the excessive amount of fictional characters became an issue.

The Mind Robber - Episode 4

We see the return of the strange borrowed robots from the first episode. I would have rather have the clockwork soldiers instead of these borrowed robots. They served a purpose in the first episode because the soldiers would have looked out of place in the white void but after that they should have been the principle guard.

On a negative note, the Karkus is a rather silly character. The whole situation is make even more silly when Zoe is fighting with him. It another test for the regulars after dealing with the Medusa and the very beginning of the episode. Speaking of the Medusa, I am still impressed with the way that they made it work and still think that even by 2013 standards, it is something that gets overlooked because we would all like to knock the show for the slightly dodgy effects but this should be praised.

We get to meet the Master and we discover how he ended up being the Master and we learn that his mind is running the machine and effectively the world that the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe find themselves in. I thought that Emrys Jones’ performance as the Master was very good. He starts off in the first meeting with the Doctor started off quite nicely and then got somewhat nasty when the Doctor refuses to help. I should take a moment to comment on the set used as the master’s… is office the wrong word? Or should it be study? Anyway its rather well done though its not immediately noticeable that

The Master is well realised as he knows that Jamie and Zoe have escaped without actually acknowledging them on screen. He’s probably the best thing about the episode as we finally get to meet this character who seems to rule this world. It’s hard to really dislike the Master’s plan but obviously we understand why the Doctor doesn’t seem so keen but I think that I find Jones’ performance to be very warming.

After the ropey start, it does pick up to be quite an interesting episode even though its relatively short it feels like a normal length episode. I do feel that this experimental story is working well. It’s not going to be one of my favourite stories but I certainly feel that as we approach the final episode I am liking this story far more than I have done in the past. I think that whilst it feels like a bit of a mish-mash in terms of characters that have been thrown in, I certainly think that compared to say ‘The Celestial Toymaker’ or ‘The Web Planet’ this certainly beats them.

The Mind Robber - Episode 3

This episode starts with the horse that had been painted horse running towards them. When I write it like that it doesn’t sound particularly good but its perhaps better than I am making it sound. This episode sees Frazer Hines return after his bout of chicken pox. He returns on his 76^th episode and is just one behind William Russell now. It’s strange that as much as I thought Hamish Wilson did a good job standing in for Frazer, once Frazer was back I felt a little sense of relief that they were back together and it felt like it was back on track and it was done rather well if truth be told.

The thing about the episode is that it does feel like it’s a holding pattern until the Doctor gets to encounter the Master. Obviously not THE master but less intense version. It’s quite odd that we don’t get to see his face but rather just his voice and its left to the other characters to keep the danger levels up. There are more literal characters that appear apart from Gulliver. Rapunzel appears when she helps Jamie climb the rocks to avoid capture by the clockwork soldiers. Though no sooner has she appeared than she literally disappears. This means that Frazer has to do his best acting against a ticker tape machine reading whatever came out of it. To be Frazer, he did it very well.

I was impressed with the stop-animation effect used to realise the Madusa. If you did this now it would look very slick and very good but doing it back in 1968 makes it look even more good. The cave scenes were also quite good because they didn’t seem boring and did the job that they needed to do and it was during this that some sense came to the producers because they could have shown us what the minotaur looked like but they didn’t and instead we got to see the shadow which was obviously the right thing to do because no doubt it wouldn’t have looked as good on screen.

Whilst I was impressed with the Madusa realisation, I thought that the cliffhanger did lack a sense of drama. It seemed like a bit of a weak ending but that’s probably the worst thing that I could say about it because as an episode it works very well and seems to be comfortable in its current setting. As far as experimental stories its one that works reasonably well and I am certainly a lot more engaged in the story than I was at any point during ‘The Dominators’.

The Mind Robber - Episode 2

So now we are onto Peter Ling’s story. After the padded episode we get to the meat of the story and this is where things start to go a bit mad. It’s always cool when the TARDIS breaks up as it’s a well done effect.

This is the episode where Frazer Hines is absent from the episode as he had chicken pox although in what has to be seen as a clever answer to explain his absence they don’t write the character out but get someone to play him. It’s a shame it happened in this episode as it marks his 75^th episode and overtakes Jacqueline Hill and becomes the second longest serving companion in the shows history (so far). Hamish Wilson does a good job of pretending to be Jamie and whilst it seems odd for someone else to be Jamie, Wilson does a good job considering he probably had little to no time to prepare.

This is where the story starts to go slightly mad. We get Gulliver from Gulliver’s Travels and then there are a group of kids who pop up with riddles. It’s shortly after this that the Doctor and I suspect the viewers realised this wasn’t going to be quite like normal Doctor Who stories which depending on your point of view is a good or a bad thing. The scene where the Doctor has to try and come up with the right face for Jamie is a telling moment because after 77 episodes you would have thought that the Doctor would have known what Jamie looked like however the only purpose it served was to accommodate Frazer Hines’ absence.

This episode marks the first appearance of Bernard Horsfall who plays Gulliver. He would go on to appear in several episodes and is always impressive in whatever role he plays.

One of the more impressive things about this episode was the realisation of the sets. It’s not pointed out until halfway into the episode that what appears to be a forest of trees is in fact a forest of words. Another are the clockwork guards which are rather impressive and are much better than the robots that we saw in the previous episode.

I think it’s fair that the cliffhanger is fitting to the tone of the story. It ends with a unicorn charging at the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe. Although its a horse and its just been painted white and I think that it’s a brave attempt that almost works however I just don’t buy it. On the other hand I can’t imagine what else they could have done considering that unicorns don’t exist (sorry folks but they don’t). I do find myself to be in two minds about this story. I think that there are things to enjoy and its certainly more enjoyable than ‘The Dominators’ but its not quite as good as some of the season five stories and that’s what doesn’t sit right with me. However at the moment the quality of the story has stayed at the same level since we moved into the story and that’s at least a good sign.