The Mind Robber

Runtime

100 minutes

Time Travel

Alternate Reality

Tropes (Potential Spoilers!)

Clockwork, The Doctor Falls, Lost the TARDIS, Robots

Location (Potential Spoilers!)

The Land of Fiction

Synopsis

To escape from the volcanic eruption on Dulkis, the Second Doctor uses an emergency unit. It moves the TARDIS out of normal time and space. The travellers find themselves in an endless void where they are menaced by white robots.

Having regained the safety of the TARDIS, they believe they have escaped — until the ship explodes. They find themselves in a land of fiction, where they are hunted by life-size clockwork soldiers and encounter characters like Rapunzel, the Karkus, and Swift's Lemuel Gulliver.

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5 Episodes

Episode 1

First aired

Saturday, September 14, 1968

Runtime

20 minutes

Written by

Derrick Sherwin

Directed by

UK Viewers

6.6 million

Appreciation Index

Synopsis

The TARDIS arrives in a white void, having made an emergency take-off to escape the volcanic eruption on Dulkis. The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe find themselves in the Land of Fiction, where characters from the imagination come to life, and The Master, the mysterious ruler, chooses the Doctor to take his place.

Episode 2

First aired

Saturday, September 21, 1968

Runtime

20 minutes

Written by

Directed by

UK Viewers

6.5 million

Appreciation Index

Synopsis

With the TARDIS destroyed, the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe find themselves in a strange forest patrolled by mysterious soldiers.

Episode 3

First aired

Saturday, September 28, 1968

Runtime

20 minutes

Written by

Directed by

UK Viewers

7.2 million

Appreciation Index

Synopsis

The Doctor realises that the travellers are trapped in a world where fiction is real and where creatures are a threat if people believe in them.

Episode 4

First aired

Saturday, October 5, 1968

Runtime

20 minutes

Written by

Directed by

UK Viewers

7.3 million

Appreciation Index

Synopsis

The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe reach the citadel at the centre of the land, where they finally encounter the Master of the Land of Fiction.

Episode 5

First aired

Saturday, October 12, 1968

Runtime

20 minutes

Written by

Directed by

UK Viewers

6.7 million

Appreciation Index

Synopsis

With Jamie and Zoe having been turned into fiction, the Doctor must find a way to save them without suffering the same fate or becoming part of the Master Brain.

Characters

Second Doctor

Patrick Troughton

Jamie McCrimmon

Frazer Hines

How to watch The Mind Robber:

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DVD

The Mind Robber

VHS

The Mind Robber (VHS)

Reviews
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7 reviews

This review contains spoilers!

“You know he’s a fictional character”

Mes critiques sont de plus en plus courtes mais que dire sinon que Ling flippait, et que pourtant l’histoire qu’il écrit est aussi magique que décisive.

En fait c’est vraiment une parenthèse certes fauchée (et un peu improvisée), mais quand même très avant gardiste dans ce tout qu’elle dit de la série

Le Docteur est encore n’importe qui, et il peut donc être toutes les histoires possibles.

Pourtant, avec le seul pouvoir de son imagination, il se bat pour ne pas être qu’une histoire.

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Review last edited on 22-11-24

An acid trip of a story that is a better version of The Celestial Toymaker. The serial clips along at a decent pace. The variety of sets, and situations, make this a very engaging story. The imagination of the writers is poured into every aspect of the story. The costuming is excellent, and the set design is top-notch too.

Also, this one gets bonus points for the famous shot of Wendy Padbury hanging onto the TARDIS console.

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Review last edited on 9-09-24

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.

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Review last edited on 20-08-24

This is an excellent story. The core concept itself is brilliantly creative and fun while the characters are well-thought out and, while some may be a bit one-dimensional, that's clearly intentional. I think the earlier parts, when there's still a lot of mystery, are the best but it's all pretty good, if a bit tonaly inconsistent between the start and end. Also of note is that the special effects seem really good for the era.

Like Liked 2

Review last edited on 2-08-24

This review contains spoilers!

The Mind Robber is a wonderfully bizarre story which takes the madcap, no-breaks production pace of 60s Doctor Who and uses it to its advantage. The surprise requirement of a fifth episode when The Dominators was cut down left Derrick Sherwin scrambling to write an introduction to the story. As a matter of happy accident, this resulted in an exceptionally good and surreal first episode. Peter Ling might not have liked it, but I certainly do.

Frazer Hines' surprise case of chicken pox is also played off with astonishing naturalism, using the nature of the Land of Fiction to briefly recast Jamie which works out brilliantly as a fix. This plays into the obvious meta tendencies of this story, which seems to flirt openly with acknowledging the Doctor as a fictional character in his own right.

The adventures in the Land of Fiction are great too; I love the sets and the variety of bizarre characters that the TARDIS team run into. This is one of the best stories of 60s Who, without a doubt.

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Review last edited on 2-08-24