The Mind Robber is the 45th serial in the Doctor Who program and it started airing September 14 and ran through October 12 1968. It's one of the few of the intact serials with the Second Doctor who is played by Patrick Troughton. Wendy Padbury plays Zoe and Frazer Hines plays Jamie. During the second week of production Frazer got chicken pox and was sent home. With a script trick another actor, Hamish Wilson, got to play Jamie in the second episode. The trick was reversed and Frazer was back in the kilt for the rest of the serial.
The first episode of the 5 parter opens with the Doctor and Jamie outside the Tardis. It's the end of previous serial and they are right next to a volcano. The Doc doesn't even notice it until he turns his head about 45%. How could the Doctor have missed that? I try to like the show more but every now and again it really does something stupid. To escape the volcano the Doctor uses a dangerous bit of technology. The Tardis winds up in a white void created by cutting the previous serial down by a week. They stretched the script for The Mind Robber so it was 5 weeks. They didn't have any more budget money since the money for the previous serial was almost all gone. They cut the length of the episodes down too. They usually run 25 minutes and on average these are barely 20 minutes each. To save money most of the set for the first episode is a white cyclorama, a white floor, white smoke and white robots. Those robots were recycled from another BBC production called Out Of The Unknown. That show was never released on dvd and many of them are lost. The robots were painted white for The Mind Ripper and that doesn't cover up their cheapness. In closeup their bodies look like cardboard. Escaping the white set the Tardis breaks up and the Doctor disappears. Jamie and Zoe are left spinning on the control panel. That iconic butt shot (top of post in case you missed it) is appreciated to this day. Wendy was 20 or 21 years old when that was shot so you're just a normal perv for enjoying it. I'm sure part of Wendy's big appeal was that jumpsuit.
The script for the first episode was by Derrick Sherwin, who was also the script editor, and he never got any extra pay for it. No budget left. It was a fair script but the rest of the four episodes showed more promise. I liked the take on a fantasy world with fictional charactors controlled by the Master. I've seen that concept used in many cartoons over the years and Jasper Fforde would do a great job with it in his novels. The original 4 episodes of The Mind Robber were written by Peter Ling and they're set in the universe of the Master of the Land of Fiction. It's a different Master, not the one that is the long running villian in the series. The place the Tardis settles is weird looking forest like place with tall trees that are actually words. The sets aren't great, they are back in Lime Grove and there just isn't much room in that place. They encounter some people, Lemuel Gulliver, Rapunzel and her mighty hair, some mytical creatures, Medusa, a unicorn and the Minotaur, some wind up toy soldiers, and a cartoon character called the Karkus.
The Master is finally revealed as an old man, kidnapped from Earth and forced to create. Really it's a big computer that did all the heavy lifting. The Master is getting old and wants the Doctor to take over. The Doc isn't interested and he works his brain on getting the hell out of there. Better story idea than some. Not the best produced but there you go. There were a couple of good featurettes and a commentary with Wendy Padbury, Frazer Hines, director David Maloney, and a short visit from Hamish Wilson. All of them have interviews in the featurettes.
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