285 The Mind of Evil: Episode Three

EPISODE: The Mind of Evil: Episode Three
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 285
STORY NUMBER: 056
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 13 February 1971
WRITER: Don Houghton
DIRECTOR: Timothy Combe
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Barry Letts
RATINGS: 7.5 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - The Mind of Evil
EPISODE FORMAT: 16mm b&w film recording recoloured using chroma dot recovery

"Your UNIT friends are transporting their nuclear missile. I intend to take it away from them!"

The Doctor overpowers Chin-Lee removing the device that links her to the Keller machine and severing the Master's control over her, saving the life of the American delegate. Prison officers, with a little help from Jo Grant, regain control of the prison wing but when the Master, in the guise of Emil Keller, arrive he helps Mailer seize the entire prison. The Doctor is captured when he arrives to collect Jo and is chained to the Keller machine which subjects him to images of many of his foes.

Second episode out of three which has ended with the Doctor subjected to images from the Keller Machine! Visually it's very hard to work out what the Doctor is seeing here but the soundtrack makes it quite clear:

Dalek: Destroy! Exterminate! Annihilate! Destroy!

The first vague appearance of the Doctor's oldest foes during the Third Doctor's time on the program.

Come to think of it the episode that doesn't end with The Doctor being tortured by the machine has someone else, the US Senator, subjected to images from it instead!

FU PENG: That was one of the legendary monsters of my people.
DOCTOR: A collective hallucination, gentlemen, nothing more. Who's that?
BRIGADIER: Senator Alcott. Is he dead?
DOCTOR: No, but he's suffering from acute shock.
FU PENG: Sing-sen!
DOCTOR: Yes?
FU PENG: What is this?
DOCTOR: Well, it's a telepathic amplifier.
BRIGADIER: Is that what caused the hallucinations?
DOCTOR: No, not caused them. No, it merely picks up the impulses and projects them through Chin Lee's mind.
BRIGADIER: Impulses? From where?
DOCTOR: Well, unless I'm very much mistaken, from the Keller machine at Stangmoor prison.

FU PENG: Doctor, I've understood very little of what you have been saying. Please, explain more clearly.
DOCTOR: Wa ai, Peng-san. Wa ai. Chin Lee was being used by someone who was trying to drive this world into war.
FU PENG: You will find this person and punish him?
DOCTOR: Yes, I will if I can.
FU PENG: Then I leave matters to you. I must go to my Embassy.
DOCTOR: Hang ahn, Peng-san.
FU PENG: Din gon ba bi lu, Sing-sen.
DOCTOR: May God go with you also.

And with one bound the peace conference is all but gone from the story, which effectively exposes it as some padding to stretch the rest of the story out to 6 episodes. It's a shame because, although he's only on screen twice and both times very briefly, Kristopher Kum does a cracking job as the Chinese delegate Fu Peng and his interaction with the Doctor is a joy to watch!

The Peace Conference is now reduced to being a target for the missile that the Master hopes to steal:

MASTER: Your UNIT friends are transporting their nuclear missile. I intend to take it away from them.
DOCTOR: Well, it's a lunatic scheme. Still, that's only to be expected.
MASTER: Oh, come, Doctor, how can I possibly fail? I launch the missile and wipe out the peace conference, the world is at war.
DOCTOR: I see.

As it is, the conference's presence in the story is quite useful as it helps set the international tone for the third Doctor's stay on Earth which is a theme we'll return to in the Day of the Daleks as UNIT acts as security for another peace conference.

While we're on the subject of padding: why do the guards regain control of the prison wing only to loose it again mere minutes later? Yes it gets the Master in to fix the Keller Machine but why not have him there from before the prison is initially seized. Odd. Liz remarked that Pertwee's performance at the end of the episode doesn't look like the Keller machine is subjecting him to his worst nightmares. Quite the contrary in fact by the way he's writhing around!

Cast:

Fernanda Marlowe appears as UNIT's Corporal Bell in this story and the next. Can't find anything else on her CV I've seen her in but her character is rare in Doctor Who appearing in more than one story without being a regular. Trying to find a decent picture of just her was really difficult and I had to resort to raiding the The Mind of Evil DVD photo gallery!

The main guest actor in this tale is William Marlowe, as Mailer, who later is seen as Lester in Revenge of the Cybermen. Despite identical surnames the two Marlowes were not married, contrary to just about every publication on Doctor Who I've ever read saying they were. At the time William Marlowe was married to Catherine Schell, later to find fame as Maya in Space: 1999. Then in 1979 he married Kismet Delgado, the widow of the actor playing The Master Roger Delgado. He appears in Out of This World, the ITV science fiction anthology series, as Bill May in Cold Equations. Like most of the rest of this series the episode no longer exists but the soundtrack is held by Kaleidoscope. He also appears in the 1975 BBC The Legend of Robin Hood as Sir Guy of Gisborne.

Hayden Jones, Mailer's henchman Vosper, had voiced the Autons in Terror of the Autons and would have played the phone engineer there too if this better role hadn't been offered him. He'd been in Out of This World appearing in the sole surviving episode Little Lost Robot where he plays Walensky. This episode is available on DVD. He was also in Out of this World's BBC successor Out of the Unknown voicing the robots in The Prophet, which is sadly missing. Said robots are later repainted white and used in the Doctor Who story The Mind Robber.

Neil McCarthy, Barnham, returns as Thawn in The Power of Kroll. He can also be seen in The Professionals as Sam Armitage in It's Only a Beautiful Picture, Clash of the Titans as Calibos and Time Bandits as the 2nd Robber.

Roy Purcell, Chief Prison Officer Powers, receives a promotion to the President of the Council of the Time Lords in The Three Doctors. You can see him in Doomwatch as Dr. Barton in Public Enemy and in The Professionals as Richardson in Kickback.

Eric Mason, playing Senior Prison Officer Green is also CPO Smedley in The Sea Devils. He appears in Fahrenheit 451 as a Male Nurse, The Sweeney as Kenny Jarvis in Abduction and Hot Fuzz as Bernard Cooper.

Then we have the rest of the Prison Officers. One of them is our old friend Dave Carter who Katy Manning takes great pleasure in pointing out on DVD commentaries every time she spots him! He's already been a Male Rebel in The Power of the Daleks, an IE guard in The Invasion, The Old Silurian plus other unidentified Silurians in The Silurians, Inferno as a Primord and Terror of the Autons as the Museum Attendant. He returns in The Mutants as a Skybase Guard, The Time Monster as a Roundhead Officer, Invasion of the Dinosaurs as Sergeant Duffy and The Android Invasion as Grierson. There's an Adam Adamant Lives! on his CV where he plays a Partygoer / Tourist in Death Has a Thousand Faces and an episode of The Tomorrow People, The Living Skins: Cold War where he's a Guard.

Another Prison Officer Bill Matthews was Davis the Silurians. He returns as a Draconian in Frontier in Space and an Extra in Planet of the Spiders. He was He was in Quatermass and the Pit as a Sightseer in The Halfmen, Man in Crowd in The Wild Hunt and a Sightseer in Hob, A for Andromeda as an Extra in The Murderer and an extra in the Doomwatch episode The Islanders.

IMDB says a third Prison Officer Martin Gordon can be seen in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story as Vane�.

This episode should have featured footage shot at RAF Swingate on 30th October 1970, but ended up cut from the final program for filming reasons..

Two day after this episode was broadcast In the Dark, the 9th episode of Doomwatch Season Two, was shown on BBC1. This episode features Second Doctor Patrick Troughton as McArthur.