The Mind of Evil - Episode 2

At the end of the previous episode, we learnt that the Doctor seemed to be scarred of fire. It’s nice how we learn about how the Doctor saw a world burn which explains why he is scarred of it. It’s a rare moment of learning something new about the Doctor and despite the development of knowledge that we have learnt in the last couple of seasons, its nice to learn something new. It’s good that Jo is the one that saves the Doctor. The Doctor is rather ungrateful as he tells of Jo for going against his instructions and being there to save him. It does feel like there is a little bit of contempt from the Doctor which is not something that I think I like because it doesn’t feel Doctor-like. If I were Jo and I had gotten anything other than a thankyou then I would have just told him where to get off. But that’s just me.

Neither Benton or Yates come through this episode very well. Yates is made immobile by the Doctor when he tells the Doctor that he needs to see the Brigadier and Benton faints when he is trying to track Chin Lee. I know that they aren’t suppose to be the most reliable characters in the world but they don’t come out of it very well here.

There is a new prisoner called Mailer (played by William Marlowe) who gets introduced in this episode. Within minutes he has managed to get one over on the guards but it’s a small part of the episode which clearly shows that it will become more important to the story in future episodes. I suppose it’s the benefit of a six part story because you can plonk characters into a story but not have them do very much. It makes the viewers aware of them but they can focus on other things until they become relevant.

I like the scene where the Doctor and the Brigadier are talking to Fu Peng and it’s great the Doctor talks in Fu Peng’s language and this is funny because it clear means that the Brigadier is excluding from this conversation. There is another bit of comedy from Nicholas Courtney when the Brigadier corrects the Doctor about the nationality of Fu Peng and its clear to everyone what the Doctor meant. It’s a bad joke (in a good way) but its like the ‘cut off’ joke that he did in ‘Terror of the Autons’. It’s acceptable on the basis that the Brigadier is getting more stressed as he has to maintain the peace at the peace conference and also transport the rocket on the quiet. You wouldn’t want to be the Brigadier at this stage.

We discover that the Master in involved in this episode and some people must be quite delighted that he is back and perhaps in hindsight that might be a problem because there should be a certain amount of time before he returned. The Daleks and the Cybermen returned after a short period of time so the same should have been done for the Master. Despite saying that, its good to have Roger Delgado back as he is brilliant and as I have mentioned before was a brilliant piece of casting.

The cliffhanger for the episode is pretty much the same as the last one as someone (not the Doctor this time) is in a state of fear. I know it worked last time but sometimes you can go to the well too many times and that is the case here as due to the fact that it’s a sort of throwaway character, I don’t really find much to care about which is a shame. I am still enjoying this story and think that elements that seemed totally random are becoming relevant and I think that is due to the writing. I don’t think that I am losing anything by not listening to it on the computer. A good story.