285 The Mind of Evil: Episode Two

EPISODE: The Mind of Evil: Episode Two
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 284
STORY NUMBER: 056
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 06 February 1971
WRITER: Don Houghton
DIRECTOR: Timothy Combe
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Barry Letts
RATINGS: 8.8 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - The Mind of Evil
EPISODE FORMAT: 16mm b&w film recording recoloured using chroma dot recovery

"Things are going very badly at the peace conference. The Chinese delegate's dead and we think he's been murdered!"

The Doctor is saved by Jo Grant who enters the room breaking the machine's hold over him. Benton is following Chin-Lee in the street but collapses as she taps into the power of the Keller Machine. The Doctor is called back to London by the Brigadier but Jo remains behind where she befriends the recovering & changed Barnham. Meanwhile Unit, in addition to guarding the conference, is now responsible for the transportation and disposal of a Thunderbolt Nerve as missile. However their phone communications are being monitored by a phone engineer working opposite......the Master in disguise!

The Doctor & Brigadier meet with the new Chinese delegate who the Doctor befriends by speaking his own language. The Master meets with Chin-Lee and instructs her to kill the American delegate. The Doctor connects Chin-Lee with the Chinese assistant seen working with Emil Keller when he installed the machine at Stangmoor prison. At the prison a riot has broken out instigated by Mailer, the next prisoner due to be processed. The prisoners are seizing control of the prison with Jo trapped inside. Chin-Lee summons the American delegate to the rooms of the Chinese delegation where he is confronted by a Chinese dragon!

Oh look, it's the Master behind what's going on. What a surprise. Well it is this time perhaps, and well done for keeping him absent for an episode to conceal who it is. But you wonder about the wisdom of bringing their new villain back so soon after his debut. I suppose that would be ok if it wasn't for what happened in the next three stories....

But is it that soon? We return to a statement in the previous episode:

DOCTOR: Tell me, how long has this machine been installed?
GOVERNOR: Nearly a year. Emil Keller came over from Switzerland to supervise the installation.

If The Master is Keller, did he set this all up before Terror of the Autons or, with his Tardis immobilised by The Doctor in the previous story, has he done all this since?

How the Keller Machine kills is explained by The Doctor:

JO: You were right about Kettering. He did have a morbid fear of water.
DOCTOR: So he drowned in a perfectly dry room.
JO: Doctor, what did you see?
DOCTOR: Fire.
JO: But why should you?
DOCTOR: Well, some time ago, Jo, I witnessed a terrible catastrophe. A whole world just, just disappeared in flames. Well, this machine picked that memory out of my mind and used it to attack me.
JO: This fire you saw, it wasn't real.
DOCTOR: Neither was the water, nor the rats, yet Linwood is dead and so is Professor Kettering. We believe what our minds tell us to, Jo.

The events the Doctor is referring to take place in Inferno, the previous Doctor Who story written by Don Houghton.

Not content with having two strands to the story, the Keller Machine at the Prison, which does rather take a backseat here, and the peace conference, this episode also introduces a third strand:

YATES: Excuse me, sir. We're about ready for off, sir, if you'll just okay the movement order and route plans.
DOCTOR: Off for another little trip, Captain Yates?
YATES: Not exactly, Doctor. We're moving the Thunderbolt.
DOCTOR: The what?
YATES: The Thunderbolt. It's a nuclear powered missile with a warhead full of nerve gas.
DOCTOR: I thought they'd outlawed those things?
BRIGADIER: Oh yes, they have. This one's on its way to the naval dockyard. They're going to dump it at the bottom of the ocean.
DOCTOR: With the peace conference going on it's not the most tactful time to be trundling rockets about, is it?
BRIGADIER: I see you're taking Benton.
YATES: If it's okay with you, sir?
BRIGADIER: Oh, you're welcome to him. Just make sure he doesn't lose the missile for you.
YATES: Sir?
BRIGADIER: Well, he somehow managed to lose a Chinese girl in broad daylight.
DOCTOR: Chinese girl? What Chinese girl?
BRIGADIER: All right, Yates, carry on. Good luck.
YATES: Oh, thank you, sir.

But this exchange enables The Doctor to find the link that ties the problems at the prison to the peace conference:

DOCTOR: Brigadier, what Chinese girl?!
BRIGADIER: Well, Captain Chin Lee, the General's aide. I thought she was implicated so I had her followed. Benton lost her.
DOCTOR: That's it then. That's the link.
BRIGADIER: What is?
DOCTOR: When Emil Keller installed his machine at Stangmoor prison, he had a Chinese girl with him as an assistant.
BRIGADIER: It could be coincidence.
DOCTOR: Coincidence, my foot. You'd better put out a general alert for that Chinese girl, Brigadier. She's got to be found and quick!

It does seem to be a somewhat tenuous connection though.....

The highlight of the episode for me is the scene where the Brigadier take The Doctor with him to see the new Chinese Delegate and the Brigadier ends up being completely sidelined!

BRIGADIER: Oh, Mister Fu Peng? I'm Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart of UNIT command. I'm in charge of all security arrangements. And this is our scientific advisor.
DOCTOR: (in Hokien) This unworthy person welcomes you and delights in your safe arrival.
FU PENG: (in Hokien) Thank you for your courtesy and welcome. It is I who am delighted to meet such a charming person in this barbaric country. (in English) It is rare to meet a westerner who knows my language.
DOCTOR: Oh, thank you. Actually I fear my Hokien is somewhat rusty.
FU PENG: On the contrary, it is excellent.
DOCTOR: Well, it's many years since I've had a chance to use it.
DOCTOR: I remember once having a conversation with Tse-Tung.
FU PENG: Tse-Tung? But that is the personal name of our chairman, Mao Tse-Tung.
DOCTOR: He himself gave me leave to use it.
BRIGADIER: Yes, if we could just discuss the immediate problem.
FU PENG: You will take some tea?
DOCTOR: Kam si ya.
FU PENG: Tang pei lai. Sing- sen.

Another bit of arch name dropping here as the Doctor claims to know Mao Tse Tung!

The new Chinese delegate Fu Peng is played by Kristopher Kum, a regular face in TV and films during the 60s and 60s. He was in the Sean Connery James Bond film You Only Live Twice as a Control Room Technician, five episode of Gangsters, late to have an influence on 1980s Doctor Who, as Mr. Yang, Revenge of the Pink Panther as a Chinese Businessman and The Professionals as a Minder in Need to Know.

His American opposite number Senator Alcott is played by Tommy Duggan. You can see him in Superman II as the Diner Owner

Heard, but no seen, in this episode is Laurence Harrington who provides the phone line voices. He can be seen in Space: 1999 where he's Jackson in Journey to Where and Stewart in The Dorcons. He's in The Sweeney episode Visiting Fireman as a Lawyer and appears in Jon Pertwee's Worzel Gummidge several times as Cyril.

The Master's Chauffeur is played by Francis Williams who later plays a Sedan Chair bearer in The Time Monster. However he was due to play an African Delegate at the peace conference in episode one of this story: He was filmed on location but the footage wasn't used. Was the intention for the delegate and the chauffeur o be the same character and The Master to have two members of the peace conference, him and Chin Lee, under his control?

The location used for the UNIT HQ in this story is number 24 Cornwall Gardens in Kensington - both Chin Lee and Benton are seen exiting the door at number 24. The Private Gardens outside are seen in both episodes 1 and 2.

Down the East end of Cornwell Gardens is Cornwall Gardens Walk, where Chin Lee ambushes Benton.

This location was also used in 1966's The War Machines and you can see how little the location has changed in the intervening 5 years.

In fact it's changed very little since: I visited the location in 2015, it's a short walk from Gloucester Road London Underground station!

Further location filming for the first two episodes was recorded at the Commonwealth Institute but cut from the final edit of the program. Two day after this episode was broadcast The Web of Fear, the 8th episode of Doomwatch Season Two, was shown on BBC1.