The Mind of Evil - Episode 1

I am listening to the first episode of ‘The Mind of Evil’ on audio. Yes I know that it is on DVD and has been for quite some time however due to the fact that I lent it to someone and forgot until I was just about to watch it. I remember buying the audiobook just before I went on holiday a couple of years ago and so realising my blunder I decided to listen to this until I could get the DVD of my friend.

The story takes place in a prison where there is a strange process which is used on criminals. The process was created by Dr Keller and whats weird is that this is obviously the Master (obvious if you’ve seen this before) and he’s been working on this for a year which implies one of two things. The first is that he was working on this before the events of ‘Terror of the Autons’ or a year has passed since that story. Can’t figure out which it is. What is good is that there is no indication that it could be the Master and absolutely no reference is made to him or the events of the previous story. This is clearly designed to throw us of the scent and think that someone else would be behind it.

The idea that there is a machine that works on fear is a great one. There is nothing that’s more worrying about a machine that seems to have a mind of its own. There appears to be no-one operating it and it can go wherever it wants. The fact that the prisoners seem to go crazy when the machine powers up is a useful tool for the viewer to know when something is going wrong. The officials from the prison range from either incompetent to blasé. I think that they will hopefully develop a bit more as the story progresses but only Dr Summers (Michael Sheard) comes across as someone with some common sense.

I like that there seems to be two random plot strands going on in this story as the whilst the Doctor is dealing with strange deaths, the Brigadier is trying to maintain things at the World Peace Conference. Things are made more difficult by Captain Chin Lee of the Chinese delegation who starts causing trouble on two separate occasion. Firstly to say some papers have been stolen and the second was to report a murder but the Brigadier doesn’t waste anytime in calling her bluff. It must have seemed odd at the time of broadcast as to what the point of this was. Only time would tell but in 1971 it must seem like there is no link to what’s going on at the prison.

The cliffhanger is a good one as the Doctor isn’t in physical harm (kind of) but is in psychological harm as fire starts to appear. I say appear but as I am listening to this on audio I can only imagine that. I think that I am helped by imagining what the scenes in my head. Unlike stories from the Hartnell and Troughton era where I cant imagine what was going on or what things looked like, I know what and how things looked on screen. It’s a good opening episode and the first six part adventure of the Pertwee era looks like it could work better than six parters from the 1960’s.