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.