The Mind Robber

Did You Know?

• A novelisation of this serial, written by Peter Ling, was published by Target Books in November 1986.
• The Mind Robber was released on VHS in May 1990 and on Region 2 DVD on 7 March 2005.
• A special edition aired on BBC iPlayer on 1 November 2023 in the spin-off Tales of the TARDIS, opening with Jamie and Zoe in the Memory TARDIS discussing past adventures.

Plot

After defeating the Dominators and triggering a volcanic eruption, the Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe find the TARDIS in the path of lava. Attempting to dematerialise, the fluid link fails. At Zoe and Jamie's insistence, the Doctor uses an emergency unit that takes the TARDIS into another dimension outside reality. The TARDIS rematerialises in a spatial void. Jamie and Zoe are tempted out by images of their homes on the scanner. After a confrontation with robots, the TARDIS explodes and splinters, separating the trio. The Doctor finds Jamie and Zoe and deduces they are in a world of fictional and mythological characters. A gun transforms Jamie into a cardboard cutout with his face missing; the Doctor reassembles his face from features on a board, but first does it incorrectly, giving Jamie a different face temporarily. The Doctor encounters Lemuel Gulliver and Captain Karkus, a superhero from Zoe's time. A Unicorn threatens them but is defeated when the Doctor reminds Zoe it is not real. After Jamie's true face is restored, the team splits again: Jamie goes to Rapunzel's castle, while the Doctor and Zoe face Medusa. They meet the Master, an Earth man abducted to provide creative energy for unseen aliens. The Doctor's experiences were tests to prepare him as replacement. The aliens plan to bring all Earth people to the land of fiction, leaving Earth empty for colonisation. The Doctor rescues Jamie and Zoe from a giant book, and they return to the control room to free the Master. Jamie and Zoe overload the computer, which explodes; all four escape just as the TARDIS reforms.

Production

Working titles included Man Power, Another World and The Fact of Fiction. Originally composed of four episodes, the preceding serial The Dominators was reduced from six to five episodes, resulting in a sparse first episode written to use the limited budget of the replaced episode. The first four episodes ran between 19 and 22 minutes, and Episode 5 became the shortest Doctor Who episode ever at slightly over 18 minutes. During production, actor Frazer Hines contracted chickenpox and was replaced by Hamish Wilson for episode 2; a scene was quickly written to explain Jamie's sudden change in appearance. On both occasions before Jamie becomes a cutout, he shouts 'creag an tuire'; Hines joked on the DVD commentary that this is Scottish Gaelic for 'vodka and tonic', though it is close to the MacLaren clan's slogan 'Creag an tuirc' ('the rock of the boar'). Location filming took place in June 1968 at Harrison's Rocks in Sussex and Kenley Aerodrome in Croydon, with other filming at Ealing Studios. Studio recording for episodes one and two occurred in June, and for episodes three, four, and five in July 1968. The white robots were loaned from the series Out of the Unknown.

Broadcast and reception

A caption at the end of Episode 5 advertised The Invasion for the next week, but it was delayed three weeks due to BBC coverage of the 1968 Summer Olympics. The story was repeated on BBC2 from 31 January to 28 February 1992, achieving viewing figures of 2.57, 2.64, 1.5, 1.5 and 3.46 million respectively. The BBC's Audience Research Report showed a mostly negative reaction, with just under a third reacting favourably; complaints centred on the story being more fantasy-oriented than science fiction, making it seem 'silly', while others liked the concept but found it too complicated for children. Paul Cornell, Martin Day, and Keith Topping wrote in The Discontinuity Guide (1995) that the combination of disturbing images, superb literalism, and set pieces made it one of the most memorable stories of the era. David J. Howe and Stephen James Walker in The Television Companion (1998) praised its inventiveness but noted that the various characters made it 'a bit of a jumble' and that padding from the elongated episode count caused the story to go 'downhill' after the first episode. Mark Braxton of Radio Times (2009) praised the 'brave' premise and 'delightful' humour, while The A.V. Club's Christopher Bahn described it as 'one of the series' most genre-breaking and forward-thinking stories'. Charlie Jane Anders of io9 (2010) listed the cliffhanger to the first episode—the TARDIS breaking apart—as one of the greatest in Doctor Who history.