The Mind Robber

Episode 1

The TARDIS is still sitting in the path of the lava flow from the volcanic eruption at the end of the last episode; the Doctor tries to take off, but the fluid links are leaking mercury vapour.

Hannah: Again? That's the third time now! Did he not put enough mercury in it two weeks ago?

The Doctor hits an emergency switch that takes the TARDIS out of reality altogether, but not before it gets completely engulfed in lava.

Hannah: That's not lava. It's a model covered in... shaving foam? No, it's too lumpy. It's more like half-melted ice cream.

Hannah is fascinated by some minor additions to the TARDIS interior. (She makes no comment about its ability to leave reality, of course.)

Hannah: That's the first time I've seen it from that angle; you can see a corridor leading off from the main console room. It seemed tiny all the way through the Hartnell era, except when we'd occasionally go off and see that room with the chairs and the water dispenser, but that's the first time I've seen real depth to the TARDIS where it's not just one really big room and sometimes a partition; there are actually corridors, like a space station. Also I don't remember all these decorative filigree things up by the ceiling, either.

Zoe changes out of her Dulcian clothes in favour of a sparkly catsuit.

Hannah: What... is that?
Me: You like it?
Hannah: (laughing) It's very... strong on the eyes.
Me: What's wrong with it?
Hannah: Nothing, it's very powerful. Catsuits are more practical than kilts, but seriously, that is very shiny. Interesting that the Doctor has that outfit lying around, just in case she fancied wearing it.

We're not in Kansas anymore; the TARDIS has materialised in a white void where a malevolent force is trying to lure them outside, and it doesn't take much to tempt Zoe and Jamie.

Hannah: I thought she was supposed to be the clever one?
Me: Yeah, but she's inexperienced as well.

Hannah can hardly contain her indifference when she sees what's waiting outside ("Oh, it's robots"), especially when Zoe remarks that they don't look very friendly.

Hannah: Well, they haven't attacked you yet, have they? They just look like robots.
Me: Scary robots.
Hannah: Not really. Why have they got those Cyberman handlebars?
Me: They're reused from an episode of Out of the Unknown; they were in an adaptation of an Isaac Asimov short story.
Hannah: Wouldn't anyone have recognised them? That's like re-using exact costumes from Electric Dreams in the new series. I'm pretty sure a lot of people would notice.

The Doctor hears a voice in his head, urging him to leave the safety of the TARDIS.

Me: Are you finding this scary?
Hannah: No, I'm finding it a bit annoying.
Me: You don't find it scary to see the TARDIS being invaded like this?
Hannah: The doors were open. It's just a lot of talking and wincing.
Me: Honestly, I find this whole episode genuinely terrifying.
Hannah: Really? Being in a white room?
Me: Don't you? The TARDIS is being invaded by some unseen force, and the Doctor is hearing voices in his head that are trying to lure him outside; even as an adult it's hugely disturbing.

Our heroes hurriedly take off, but while they're in flight the Doctor notices that the TARDIS is using more power than it's storing.

Hannah: Are they dragging something out of the nothing with them?

Then the TARDIS explodes.

Hannah: Well that's not true.
Me: What do you mean?
Hannah: It's all in their heads. Everything is in their heads.

The console drifts through space, with Jamie and Zoe clinging onto it.

Hannah: This looks like some kind of fashion shoot, with Zoe draped across the console and wearing a catsuit.
Me: Have you spotted everyone's favourite part of this episode?
Hannah: What, that lingering shot of Zoe's rounded bottom?
Me: That's the one.
Hannah: What about the Doctor? Someone's just spinning him round on a Lazy Susan.

Then we reach the end of the episode, and the moment I've been waiting for.

Hannah: They've got someone credited as "the Master", but there wasn't anybody else in it.
Me: That was the voice in the Doctor's head.
Hannah: Oh, okay. And they called him the Master? Hmmm.
Me: I'm going to put you out of your misery before we go any further; it's not that Master.

As tempted as I am to string her along for the next four episodes, I just haven't got the heart to get her hopes up like that.

Hannah: I'm not feeling much threat so far. It's more like a psychological thriller, rather than anyone being in danger of dying or anything, so it's a weird kind of threat.
Me: If this episode feels a bit out of place, it's because the story needed to be extended after they dropped an episode from The Dominators.
Hannah: So that's why the first episode is all filler?
Me: It's a lead-in to the main story. There wasn't any additional money, so it was written by the script editor using no extra characters, no scenery, stock robot costumes...
Hannah: But that means that the rest of the episodes do have things in?
Me: Yes, the other episodes are completely different. In every sense of the term. But they created this episode out of necessity, and ended up with something very spooky and mysterious; I think it's probably one of the best and most interesting single episodes they've ever done.
Hannah: Oh. Well, I don't. It's interesting that something can speak to the Doctor's mind, and send its influence through the TARDIS even before the doors are open, and it's interesting to know that there's a big enough threat out there that can overcome all those barriers, but at the same time it's mostly just filler.
Me: It's setting up the rest of the story. It's like the first episode of The Space Museum, where the first episode creates all the mystery and intrigue and then they spend the rest of the story following up on it.
Hannah: Yeah, but I don't think this is done particularly well. Sorry, I think it's rubbish. Some bits here and there are really good, but the rest is very repetitive. They go outside, get lost, find the TARDIS again, and then Jamie has a nap and dreams about unicorns. And that took 21 minutes. And then the TARDIS appears to have exploded, which is interesting.
Me: Do you want to watch the next one straight away and see where they end up, or do you want to go to bed wondering where the story is going?
Hannah: I won't be wondering about it.
Me: Fine, let's just watch the next one then.

Episode 2

Me: The rest of the story is written by Peter Ling, the creator of Crossroads.
Hannah: Which I never saw.
Me: I wouldn't worry about it.
Hannah: Oh look, it's the same shot of Zoe's bum again.
Me: If they liked it once, they'll love it twice.

Our heroes have taken the ill-fated wrong turn at Albuquerque and find themselves separated from each other in a very odd-looking forest. Oh, and Jamie gets turned into a cardboard cut-out.

Hannah: Jamie's voice sounds very deep. Maybe that's what turning into cardboard does to you.
Me: Yeah, must be.
Hannah: Maybe it's not his voice?
Me: Well... yes and no.

She doesn't find the life-size clockwork soldiers very reassuring.

Hannah: Oh no, why does it have to be doll-based soldiers again? This whole thing feels like a cross between The Celestial Toymaker, Alice in Wonderland and Labyrinth.
Me: Labyrinth as in the Jim Henson film?
Hannah: Yes. Although I don't remember very much about it, apart from it being in a labyrinth.
Me: Jennifer Connelly is in it. And also David Bowie, with his enormous--
Hannah: Yes, I know that.

The Doctor meets a stranger and tries to converse with him in English.

Hannah: Why does the Doctor always choose English? Why is English his go-to language, just because he has a fascination with Britain? I mean, I've stopped bringing it up every time, but the aliens always speak English. Every person they've bumped into speaks English. Even the robots speak English.
Me: I think we can take it for granted that there are special rules in this one.
Hannah: This man has a lovely eloquence, by the way.

The face is removed from Jamie's cut-out and the Doctor is tasked with putting it back together from an array of jigsaw pieces.

Hannah: Ew, that's not nice at all. This is creepy; they're stuck in a place where anything can happen at any time.

But he gets it wrong, and ends up giving his companion a different face. Come on, we've all done it.

Hannah: Eurgh! I don't like it! Imagine if they did that today; they wouldn't need a different actor, they could just use CGI to make his face look disfigured.
Me: Frazer Hines had chicken pox, so they had to replace him with another actor for a bit.
Hannah: How old was he? Five?
Me: You can get it at any age.
Hannah: I know, but most people get it out of the way as a child. So does that mean this Jamie sticks around for a bit?
Me: A little while.
Hannah: Is he trying to do Frazer's little squinty thing? He really furrows his eyebrows and looks around just like that. His impersonation of Frazer Hines' Jamie is pretty spot-on. Obviously not the voice or the accent, but...
Me: Yeah, he's doing very well. He's definitely got the mannerisms and everything.
Hannah: It's like he's regenerated. This is actually a very clever idea.
Me: They were very lucky. If it had been literally any other story, they couldn't have done it like that.

She looks for the the proxy Jamie in the end credits.

Hannah: "Hamish Wilson". Is he an actual Scot?
Me: Yes, he's Glaswegian.
Hannah: Oh, and there's all the schoolchildren that were in it earlier. I feel like these children might have won a Blue Peter competition to go on there, because that's the kind of thing they do.
Me: They're much better actors than I remembered, actually. They're certainly a sight better than some of the adult actors we've had.

Hannah sums up the last two episodes.

Hannah: "And now for something completely different." That was just bizarre. But I liked it, because it wasn't slow bizarre; it was one thing after another, keeping you on your toes. It wouldn't work if there had only been the occasional weird thing thrown in when they couldn't think of anything realistic to move the story along, but everything here is strange, which means that nothing is too strange and you accept that this is what's happening.
Me: It's certainly a lot more coherent than Lost.
Hannah: All of this has a good, balanced tone of strangeness. All the nonsensical events give it an unnerving and creepy atmosphere.
Me: Told you this season would be more varied.
Hannah: So what happens next? Zoe has appendicitis and gets replaced by a duck?

Episode 3

It's been a couple of days since we last watched this story, so it comes as a surprise to Hannah when the episode begins with a unicorn charging towards the Doctor and his companions.

Hannah: Oh yeah, this! I'd forgotten about all of this.
Me: It's got unicorns and jigsaw faces and a forest of giant letters, and the TARDIS has exploded. How much more memorable do you need it to be?
Hannah: It feels very much like The Celestial Toymaker. There's rules and things, and toys.
Me: Except that it's actually a good story.
Hannah: Yes, it's definitely better. There's more mystery and less silly larking about.

The Doctor is given the chance to give Jamie another face-lift, but thankfully Zoe is around this time.

Hannah: Oooh. She's been looking at his face, then.
Me: She's got an eidetic memory.
Hannah: Oh, yeah.

Our heroes get lost in a labyrinth (sans David Bowie), so Jamie stays put while the Doctor and Zoe find their way to the heart of the maze.

Hannah: I don't think splitting up is a good idea.
Me: It's easy enough to get out of any maze, anyway; you just walk around the whole thing and take the same direction at each junction, turning around if you meet a dead end. Unless it's a really enormous maze, in which case you might starve to death first.

The stranger from the previous episode turns out to be Lemuel Gulliver.

Hannah: So he's been quoting straight from Gulliver's Travels the whole time?
Me: Yes, although I've never been sure why the Doctor is so eager to have a "long talk" with someone who can only quote verbatim from a book. Especially when he obviously knows it well enough to recite whole passages from memory.
Hannah: It's actually a little bit creepy that there's a person who - in this context - is a real living person, but his brain is confined to a small amount of possibility. It's cruel. But he's not real, so it doesn't matter.

Hannah starts to grasp what's going on.

Hannah: They've jumped into a fictional reality.
Me: Isn't "fictional reality" a contradiction-in-terms?
Hannah: You know what I mean. So, when they jumped out of the real universe, they jumped into the universe of fiction? Something like that?
Me: Well, it's a universe of fiction, rather than a single shared universe where all fiction exists. It's a land where fiction can be made real.

The episode ends with a statue coming to life and threatening the Doctor and Zoe.

Hannah: It's like a Weeping Angel. Oh, it's Medusa!
Me: And it's stop-motion animation!
Hannah: Is that the first time they've used it?
Me: Yep, this is proper Ray Harryhausen style, over 10 years before he did the exact same thing in Clash of the Titans.
Hannah: That's very cool.

Episode 4

The embarrassment of riches continues when Zoe uses unarmed combat to take down the Karkus, a comic-strip superhero from her own time period.

Hannah: Is he supposed to be wearing a suit that looks like muscles, or are they genuinely supposed to be his muscles? I like the little judo throw that she did.
Me: She's surprisingly good at handling herself. If she wasn't already one of my favourite companions, this scene would have clinched it.
Hannah: So this is a character that Zoe knows, but the Doctor doesn't. Has he just been spending too much time on 1960s Earth?
Me: Well, the story needed a character that the Doctor can't defeat by disbelieving in him, so obviously it has to be someone he doesn't know about. But if they used someone that the audience at home knows about it would undermine our faith in him, so they've made someone up instead.
Hannah: Which year is she from, if she remembers a strip cartoon from the year 2000?
Me: Maybe it's a classic that everyone remembers, like Peanuts.
Hannah: I like the fact that the writer has thought about her being from the future, because they've got their own commonly-known stories by then as well. So there are things like Grimms' Fairy Tales from a couple of hundred years ago, which are stories that everyone knows, and then there are things like Harry Potter, which will be the same level of classic in another hundred years...
Me: That's debatable.
Hannah: They're a worldwide phenomenon, just like the Grimm stories or Jane Austen.
Me: They'll almost certainly be remembered as classic literature, like the Narnia series, but I doubt anything is ever going to occupy the same place as all those traditional fairy tales in the mass consciousness. Although personally I'm not convinced they're going be remembered on the same level as Jane Austen either.

In a very out-of-character moment, Zoe forgets about an infra-red alarm and walks straight through it; Hannah is visibly disappointed.

Hannah: (sigh) Just when we were talking about how intelligent she was.

The cliffhanger involves Jamie and Zoe being pressed between the pages of a gigantic book.

Hannah: Yeah, they're just dead. Like flies crushed in a dictionary.
Me: Probably why they call it a printing press.

Episode 5

Hannah: This story is odd.
Me: Do you reckon?

In fact, this episode is unusual for a number of reasons.

Me: I don't know if you've already noticed, but each of these episodes has been shorter than usual; they're only twenty minutes long instead of twenty-five.
Hannah: Why are they shorter? Is every episode shorter now?
Me: No, it's just this story. Anyway, the point is that this is the shortest episode of Doctor Who ever, not counting mini-episodes.
Hannah: How long is it? Nineteen minutes?
Me: Eighteen.
Hannah: Wow.

The realm of fiction is controlled by the Master (no, not that one), a boys' magazine writer who has been abducted by the computerised "master-brain". He's a rather charming old man when left to his own devices, until the master-brain starts talking through him.

Hannah: Aw, that's disappointing; I thought he was nice. Except for trapping them and forcing them to do things. I thought he was just a man who was being told to do things against his will, but then he did the evil chuckle.

Jamie and Zoe have been turned into fiction, and the Doctor sadly observes that they're no longer real.

Hannah: It's funny, because they're already not real.
Me: Ah, well, that's interesting. Is the Doctor in this world because he's fictional?
Hannah: Let's not go there.

When they're not following the Master's orders, the fictional characters of Jamie and Zoe are content to just stand there and stare into space.

Hannah: They're not very good characters.

The master-brain's plan is to bring everyone from Earth into the realm of fiction, leaving the planet uninhabited so that it can take over.

Hannah: Why does everyone want the Earth so much? Surely there are other uninhabited planets out there with similar properties.
Me: Maybe they're all as boring as Dulkis or Xeros.
Hannah: But why does the master-brain want the Earth? It's just a machine. It's a bit odd that they haven't explained that. And it's a very strange way to take over something; stealing the Doctor and building up enough power to make fiction more powerful than people, then making everyone fictional so that the planet is empty. You could just make a virus that kills everyone.

With a little help from Rapunzel and the Karkus ("He's got really skinny shins"), the Doctor restores his companions and fights the Master for control of the story. During the final battle, where they both sit at their typewriters and dispatch various fictional characters to fight each other, Hannah clearly enjoys the spectacle of Cyrano de Bergerac having a sword fight with D'Artagnan (not to mention Blackbeard tackling Sir Lancelot).

Hannah: It's a story battle! This is almost a good sword fight.

Jamie and Zoe overload the computer, returning the Master to his normal self, and all four of them begin to fade as they return to reality. Or, possibly, oblivion; it could go either way.

Hannah: This could have been the end of Doctor Who.

Then the TARDIS reassembles itself.

Hannah: I knew the TARDIS hadn't actually exploded.
Me: Well, it sort of did. Probably.
Hannah: So... have they got an old man with them now, or has he been sent back to his own time? We're not going to know until the next one.

The Score

Hannah: That was a lot of fun.
Me: Bit different from the last season, wasn't it?
Hannah: Yeah, it's another one of those stories where I don't really know what's going on, but it's still enjoyable. It doesn't quite make sense, but it's entertaining and constantly moving...
Me: You mean none of the episodes are missing?
Hannah: I mean the story keeps on going; it's pacy. A little bit repetitive in some areas, but nowhere near as bad as some other stories. Some very interesting concepts as well, even if they don't always get properly explained.
Me: I think most of this story defies explanation. The whole thing feels as though we're watching the Doctor having a strange dream after eating too much cheese.
Hannah: How did the master-brain catch the Master in the first place?
Me: He fell asleep one summer and woke up there.
Hannah: But how did it all start? Why does it have to be a world of fiction?
Me: I think with any kind of story like this, it becomes less satisfying the more you explain it.
Hannah: It was exciting and different, and I do like weird, but it wasn't amazing. I would happily watch it again, but that's mostly so that I can get my head into the right place at the beginning, rather than because it deserves another watch.

7/10

Just for kicks, I decide to play Frazer Hines' 1968 single "Who's Dr. Who?". Judging by Hannah's reaction, she finds it almost as surreal as anything else we've seen in the last five episodes.

Hannah: Why did he want to do this? It wasn't bad, but it's like the cast of Casualty releasing a song about the chief executive of the hospital.