Doctor Who: The Brain of Morbius

Part One

“Can you spare a glass of water?”

Bizarrely, we start with the sight of a mutant from, er, The Mutants. Of course, I know I shouldn’t read too much into the fact that they’re just reusing an old costume, but it’s interesting that the Doctor later refers to it as a “Mutt”, although he then proceeds to give it an origin showing it’s clearly not from Solos.

Just as in Genesis of the Daleks, the Doctor is hugely annoyed at the Time Lords for clearly having sent him here (“some dirty work that they won’t touch with their lily-white hands”). This time he throws a right strop and refuses to investigate, instead just sitting around playing with his yo yo. Pertwee would never have reacted in quite this way! It’s interesting to see how much less respect the Time Lords are given in the Hinchcliffe / Holmes era, right through from the beginning. And as we’ll see, there’s a lot established about Time Lords in this story. The Doctor even says he was “born in these parts”.

Right from his first scene Philip Madoc, a fantastic villain in The War Games, makes it clear that he’s out to challenge Kevin Stoney for the title of Doctor Who’s greatest one-off villain so far. He’s clearly playing the Peter Cushing role in a pastiche of Hammer-style Frankenstein (is this the one Hinchcliffe story that lives up to it’s old “Hammer horror” reputation?) and his lab, with its many vials of bubbling liquids, is splendidly redolent of the films. He even has his own Igor in Condo.

The Sisters of Karn, though… I’m doing my best to just think of them in the context of the series rather than the New Adventures, but it’s hard, especially when Maren mentions the “silent gas dirigibles of the Hoothi”. And apparently I’ve been pronouncing “Hoothi” wrongly all these years. NAs aside, though, they’re basically a coven of witches (they transport the TARDIS by what can only be described as magic), but interestingly they seem to know the Time Lords quite well.

Interestingly, Solon seems to be a human from a spacefaring future, and is a contemporary of Morbius, and yet this can’t be long after the Doctor’s own “present” on Gallifrey. So can we assume the Doctor’s from the fairly near future, say sometime in the next few thousand years?

This is a fantastic first episode, full of Hammeresque fun and great dialogue. And Philip Madoc’s performance is a joy.

Part Two

“I can see that, you chicken-brained biological disaster!”

I love the dialogue between the Doctor and Maren, and underneath it the Doctor’s casual attitude to his forthcoming burning at the stake: “Surely you remember Popecatepetl?” Fortunately he’s rescued by Sarah- for the second story in a row. Unfortunately Sarah is blinded, something Lis Sladen plays brilliantly.

Philip Madoc continues to ooze greatness as Solon (apparently poor Condo should be “put down!”). And it’s a nice plot development that the Doctor has to rely on Solon to examine Sarah’s eyes. Solon of course tricks him into another visit to a forewarned sisterhood in a nice example of lying acting from Madoc.

There’s a great cliffhanger, with Morbius revealed as a brain in a jar.

Part Three

“Even a sponge has more life than I!”

We get a lot of exposition from the Sisterhood, who are now less suspicious of the Doctor. And in spite of the fact that they’re revealed to be luring the spaceships to their destruction, and they earlier tried to kill the Doctor in a particularly nasty way for no reason whatsoever, we’re clearly now supposed to think of them as goodies.

Still, they and the Doctor are now mates, especially after he fixes their flame for them. I like the Doctor’s speech about immortality and stagnation, though. And it’s ironic that Morbius, although completely paranoid, is in fact broadly correct when he tells a panicking Solon that the Doctor and Maren must be in league and he must be given an artificial brain case immediately. Of course, Solon gets to work, and it’s at the worst possible time that Condo discovers Solon has used his arm for Morbius’s previously headless body, and gets shot.

Part Four

“You thought I was dead, didn’t you?”

“Mmm.”

“You’re always making that mistake.”

If we’re in any mistake as to the source of this story, Solon gets to say to Morbius “Look, don’t you recognise me? I made you!” Fortunately, Condo is still alive to save Sarah before being killed, but the Doctor and Solon have to run after Solon with an elephant gun. And the Doctor, in a rare lapse into stupidity, leaves Solon alone in a room with Morbius and an operating theatre. Oops!

The Doctor and Sarah are in trouble, and in a touch which made me smile the Doctor has left the Sonic Screwdriver in the TARDIS. Ha! The Doctor’s plan, to poison Solon and Morbius with cyanide, is clever but extremely nasty.

And so we come to the famous mind-bending scene, oddly suggested by the Doctor himself. It does indeed seem from the context that all the faces are the Doctor’s, which can’t be true- er, I think the only way round this is possibly the “Let us never speak of this again” strategy.

How fitting that Morbius should meet his demise at the hands of a torch-wielding mob.

I loved that- a witty and fun spoof with great dialogue and Philip Madoc being fab. 5/5.

Doctor Who: The Android Invasion

Part One

“Is that finger loaded?”

We begin with an apparently lobotomised chap staggering towards his apparent demise, Roboman style- that’ll be a Terry Nation script, then. It means we’re in store for a solid exploratory first episode, though, and this one is nice and mysterious. Plus we’ve got Robert Holmes polishing the script plus Tom and Lis have really hit their stride- the relationship between the Doctor and Sarah is great here, with all sorts of subtle touches.

Unfortunately there’s an unintentionally funny scene with Sarah hanging from an, er, “cliff”, which even the camera angle can’t save. Still, I’m sure they’ll never allow this sort of thing to happen again so I’ll let it pass.

We have the intriguing and Avengers-esque situation of an English village, seemingly deserted, with the occasional oddity such as all the coins being new. A promising beginning, and the scene where everyone suddenly springs to life in the pub is very effective. Meanwhile there’s a new UNIT HQ, but people aren’t friendly, and terrifyingly the TARDIS takes off with the key in it. I have a problem with reviewing all this though- I’ve seen this story a fair few times and so I have no idea how obvious it is that they’re not on Earth and all the NPCs, to nick a useful term from roleplaying, are androids. Pretty damn obvious, I suspect, but I can’t really say.

Robert Holmes has been having fun with his script polishing duties- the Doctor’s reply to Crayford’s “Keep your hands where I can see them!” is a cheerful “Those are the first friendly words I’ve heard since I got here.” Unfortunately, though, we find out early on that the Brig has been called to Geneva to be temporarily replaced with some generic Avengers style colonel.

Part Two

“I will now activate the hostility circuits.”

Lots of dialogue between Sarah and the Doctor at the start of the episode, which reveals the important plot point that Crayford is supposed to have died on a space flight, is whispered and barely audible. Roll on the DVD and subtitles.

We get to see Benton and Harry but, alas, they’re androids. Instead, we’ll have to rely for our nostalgia fix on Sarah twisting her ankle like companions of old. And on the memories of Terror of the Zygons invoked by Styggron’s use of the dartboard as a scanner. Why did he do that, then? He wasn’t expecting visitors to the pub!

Part Three

“A foolish experiment, Styggron.”

For some reason the Kraals are now going to destroy the replica village, which gives us our first countdown of this most countdown-heavy of all Terry Nation’s Who scripts. There’s something so perfect for the genre in the concept of Styggron tying the Doctor to the centre of a village square which is going to explode in nine minutes while telling him that “Resistance is inadvisable!” that somehow it doesn’t seem to matter that the plot stopped making sense a long time ago. That’s the thing about this wonderful season; even the bad stories are great.

The silly conversations between Styggron and Chelaki crack me up. I can only assume that it’s a fundamental axiom of Kraal societies that maverick scientists must be given free reign to pursue even the most random and potty experiments. No doubt it’s a world full of Jeff Goldblums where the disaster movie has never been invented.

Things now start to get even more wonderfully silly. Not only does Styggron get to call Crayford a “puny-minded weakling”, but Crayford has apparently resumed contact with Earth claiming to still be in his ship having been missing for two years, his excuse being that he survived by recycling his water. Er, yes. And no doubt he saved oxygen by holding his breath a lot. This is the point where it becomes necessary to stop worrying about the plot and open another bottle of wine.

I suspect Robert Holmes came to the same conclusion while script editing it, and decided to give up on the lost cause that was the plot in favour of having fun with the dialogue. We end with some classic stuff: “I feel disorientated.” “it’s the disorientation centre.” “That makes sense.”

Part Four

“So, provided we don’t burn up in re-entry and aren’t suffocated on the way down, we’ll probably be crushed to a pulp when we land.” 

“Exactly! You’ve put your finger on the one tiny flaw in our plan.”

Finally we get to see the real Earth. But there’s no time to dwell on this as it’s all action from this point on. There’s an awful lot of fun on who’s an android and who’s not, but the result of this is that Harry and Benton don’t get to do much in their last story which is a real shame.

As usual we get great dialogue, presumably by Holmes (“If you do see me again today then I want you to report it to me immediately”), while Nation provides the countdowns (Three in one story!) and the triumphant eyepatch moment, which of course requires a certain quota of alcohol to experience properly.

There’s no denying it- this story is absolutely terrible. And yet I loved watching it! This is the Plan 9 From Outer Space of Doctor Who. It doesn’t really deserve a 3/5, but it’s going to get one.