Day 221: The Invasion Episode 2

And this episode marks a very important addition to the mythos of Doctor Who, with the introduction of UNIT. They're a military organisation who investigate strange goings on, essentially meaning alien interference with the affairs of Earth. Their introduction allows for a sense of organisation with regards to the modern day stories for Doctor Who. Suddenly, stories that are set in the modern day will already have a set of allies in place, meaning that the audience will be able to latch onto new stories more easily. This is something that was explored, again, in The Web of Fear, which had Professor Travers as a recurring character from a previous adventure. This time, there's another recurring character, in the form of Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart. How he works as a character we'll deal with several times over the course of the next couple of years, including, perhaps, tomorrow's entry...

Day 220: The Invasion Episode 1

This story is able to push itself away from the previous serial by firmly placing both feet into the realm of reality. It's firmly modern again, with a story based around electronics, a relatively new technology at the time. Indeed, it's worth comparing this to the previous two times that Doctor Who went 'modern'. The most recent such instance was Fury From the Deep, although I would argue that that doesn't count as much, given that it was set in the fairly remote area of an oil rig, wheras the other most recent modern adventure was The Web of Fear, which can be easily compared to this story. Both are set in and around urban areas, and both will concern themselves with monsters roaming the streets, a topic that we will look at later. But the major difference between the two is in terms of the space in which the two stories take place. The Web of Fear took place in a small and confined area, building on claustrophobia within the space, whereas the Invasion is quite clearly more spread out, showing us the full city and drawing upon the fact that it is taking place in a larger area allows for more to be showed off, at the expense of losing the claustrophobic atmosphere that perpetrated Web. It's a change, but what is Doctor Who without change?

Day 219: The Mind Robber Episode 5

And so this episode ends with the Doctor being forced to write, and he writes the story as we see it unfold. It's another example of them leaning on the fourth wall, as the characters take over from the writer, in order to let the story unfold in the way that they want it to. And he's defeated by having the master computer overload, by introducing too many ideas for the piece, meaning that things become too heavy and everything starts exploding. This idea of the enemy becoming defeated because of the way in which the story is unfolding shows great imagination for how the story goes. And that's the key word for this serial: 'imagination'. This story is filled with ideas that stretch the limits of fiction, and show the limits of imagination as well, and tta makes for some incredibly entertaining viewing.

Day 218: The Mind Robber Episode 4

The ending to this episode is that Jamie and Zoe are being crushed by a book, as the Doctor is being offered to become the Master of the Land of Fiction. Given later events within this story, I've read the ending with respect to Jamie and Zoe as them becoming fictional which is the most marvellous conceit behind this entire story. It's based around fictional characters, and yet it ignores the fact that the Doctor himself is fictional, showing us fictions within fictions and making the audience think about what the very nature of fiction is. Do fictional characters realise that they're fictional, for instance. The majority f those whom we encounter here seem aware of a higher power that controls their thoughts and actions, but they don't know exactly why. This entire piece is absurd, and wonderfully so, and it's about to get a whole lot odder

Day 217: The Mind Robber Episode 3

Indeed, this story marks a departure for Doctor Who. This is an adventure set within the Land of Fiction, where we aren't really encountering things like what we had with previous stories, where things had scientific or historic explanations. Here, they're all cast aside as we enter into the realms of fantasy. We can fight unicorns and minotaurs, who can only be defeated by not believing in them. We don't need explanations as to how these things work because we're in a fantasy dream like state, and instead we can just enjoy the story for what it is.

It should be noted that the last time that Doctor Who went into fantasy was for The Celestial Toymaker, which took a similar slant on things. There, everything was indeed possible, but each idea was stretched out to an entire episode, leaving us with the realisation that the story only had a finite amount of ideas. Here, in The Mind Robber, we get to see that each episode has three or four things that could happen within it, each of them absolutely brilliant. We can see that a man can lose his face and come back with a new one, or that characters can read along with things that are happening in other scenes through a device ominously titled "Work In Progress". By showing all of this imagination, we're able to truly enjoy this serial as we go forth on our adventures.

Day 216: The Mind Robber Episode 2

A regeneration occurs in this episode. Ish. Frazer Hines, the actor who plays Jamie, caught chicken pox, meaning that he was unable to be present for the filming of this episode. In normal circumstances, this would mean that Jamie would just be off screen for the entirety of the episode, however things can be a little bit different this time. The Mind Robber, as witnessed by the previous episode, is a bit surreal. Therefore, it somehow makes sense in the episode that when the Doctor rescues Jamie, he does it slightly wrong and ends up with a different actor playing Jamie. It shouldn't make sense, but it does because that's the nature of this story. Things aren't meant to make sense, meaning that we can become truly creative with the way that this story is told.

Day 215: The Mind Robber Episode 1

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.