Review of The Mind Robber by 15thDoctor
20 August 2024
This review contains spoilers
The Doctor is forced to take the TARDIS out of reality itself in order to escape the lava explosions we saw at the end of The Dominators. As a result, the team end up in a white void called "The Land of Fiction" which is presided over by an evil force which acts much like The Great Intelligence, who turns them into stories (motivation unclear). I'm not sure why any of this was happening, but it was an entertaining ride which certainly trumps the first story of this season.
This will not be the last trippy, dream-like "fighting against imaginary forces" story we ever see in Doctor Who, but I think its the first to take this concept quite as far as it does (angry unicorns). In hindsight the plan does come across as the sort of thing The Master would concoct. The fact that the character in this story also happens to be called "The Master" is an odd coincidence, it would be interesting to find out whether this story had any bearing on the creation of The Doctor's greatest Time Lord nemesis.
There is lots of imagination, fun and intrigue at work in this story, although it could be said to be slightly overlong as a whole and repetitive in places. There is only so many times that you want to see The Doctor and his companions realise that the way to destroy their enemy is to loudly declare that "it doesn't exist!" The problem with this common story device is that any peril a character faces can be undone by wishing things out loud, which makes all the peril pretty pointless.
Much like The Celestial Toymaker, The Doctor faces riddles in order to get to the next stage, whilst riddles work well in books and video games I'm not sure that television is their most suitable medium. They are either tediously obvious or unsolvable in the time you are given on screen. Watching The Doctor work them out is not fun. A far better realised task leads to The Doctor accidentally creating a fake Jamie, this is hilarious (and a good cover to allow Frasier Hines to go on holiday).
It is a fun, but very flawed story.