It's an odd day in the Doctor Who production office. They've just decided to cut the previous serial down, from six to five episodes. This means that they've now got an episode spare, meaning that the following serial, The Mind Robber, has now been increased from four to five episodes. This could work, but there's no money for this new 'odd' episode. All they've got are the main cast, a white backdrop, and some old robot costumes that they've dug out. Script editor Derrick Sherwin has now been told that he has to produce a twenty minute piece of television that does not exceed these limits, as well as being entertaining so that nobody turns off in disgust at how cheap it all is. What is produced is one of the finest 25 minutes in the history of Doctor Who.The TARDIS is taken outside of time and space, creating a strong sense of the other when moving around the featureless white void of the world. It's genuinely disconcerting when Jamie and Zoe are lured out into the void, and we see the Doctor get mentally attacked by an unknown presence. It feels like nothing else that we've ever seen before, and just completely wrong. Even when the companions are captured by the robots, it's not the way that we'd normally expect, by seeing the robots approach our heroes before one of them screams. Instead, the video cuts away from the robots to the vision that the Doctor is presumably receiving, that of Jamie and Zoe beckoning him towards the void with unsettling smiling faces. But the audio is still with the robots, and we hear Zoe's scream overlaid with the image, causing one of the most terrifying things that Doctor Who has produced in a while.
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