This one didn’t live in my memory as much as its predecessor did,
but then that’s hardly surprising. I haven’t watched it since, either, although
I have read the Target novelization since. So what do I remember? There’s a
prison in it, and prisoners, and I think that they get hooked up to a machine
at one point which is supposed to sort their heads out for them. Shades of “A
Clockwork Orange”? Well, I’ve read and seen that, and I can’t say that the
comparison particularly struck me before. There’s the Master again, a stolen
missile, and a dragon too. That is honestly just about it, and I’ll be
interested to see just how all these disparate plot elements come together.
After Watching
Well, the one main plot element I missed out of the
before watching section was The Keller Machine. This was a machine ‘invented’ by Professor
Keller. He turns out to have been the Master – and that must be one of the few
times that he used an alias which was not a dead giveaway that he was in fact
the Master. From my miniscule knowledge of German I do know that it means
‘basement’ or ‘cellar’ – as in bierkeller. ‘I am the Basement, and you will
obey me.” Doesn’t have quite the same ring to it really. The Keller Machine is
a miraculous invention which ‘cures’ criminals by taking away all their nasty,
evil impulses. So one of the tropes we’re returning to in this story is mind
control.
It’s probably a coincidence that this story was
broadcast in the same year that Stanley Kubrick’s film version of Anthony
Burgess’ “A Clockwork Orange” came out, but that dealt with rehabilitation of
prisoners essentially through brainwashing techniques – and if you’ve seen the
film you’ll know that there the similarity to The Mind of Evil” ends. The film
was released a few months later than the story was broadcast. I can’t say
whether Don Houghton had read the book and was at all influenced by it.
At the heart of the Keller Machine is an alien creature
that feeds off these negative impulses. It becomes clear, though, that this is
a mental parasite, which feeds its victims a succession of horrifying images
drawn from their own deepest fears. In the case of the first victims of the
machine a man who is killed by his fear of drowning is found with his lungs
full of water, and a man killed by his fear of rats is found with scratches and
bites all over him. The US delegate to a peace conference – more about that
later – is so scared of dragons – honest to gosh – that he actually physically
manifests one until the Doctor tells it to go away in either Cantonese or
Hokkien, and it becomes the Master’s Chinese pawn again. Now, this is an
interesting idea which is just left as an idea and not explored at al by the
show. The Doctor dismisses the dragon as a collective hallucination. Yet
collective hallucinations cannot fill your lungs with water, and they cannot
cover your body in rat bites and scratches. So was the machine using its
victims’ mental energy to materialise these things, or was the victims’ extreme
fear unlocking latent mental powers which made their fears corporeal? Either
way it would have been interesting to know.
That’s the Keller Machine. It’s all part of the Master’s
rather convoluted plan. He’s installed the Machine in Stangmoor Prison. The
idea is that the Machine will use the Machine to create enough confusion in the
prison for him to walk in and use the Prisoners as his own private army to help
him hi-jack the Thunderbolt Missile which UNIT are overseeing the disposal of
so that he can fire it at the World Peace Conference and create World War III.
Phew. Before he goes along to the Prison, the Master hypnotises Captain Chin
Lee, incidentally played by Don Houghton’s wife, the rather lovely Pik Sen Lim,
and gives her an electronic doohickey which enables the Machine to kill the
leader of the Chinese Delegation by proxy.
Well, there we. There’s been better stories and there
have been worse. Now, when I reviewed “Terror of the Autons” I made the point
that the plot was developed at pretty much breakneck speed. Being a six parter
this wasn’t so much the case here. Actually, I think that the first three
episodes worked rather well because of this slightly more measured approach –
for example, we didn’t actually get to see the Master until the second episode.
He was posing as a telephone engineer so he could tap the Brigadier’s phone,
and he had one of those little red and white stripey tents. Here’s a funny
thing. Maybe it was because it had been on Doctor Who, but when I was a little
kid I used to wonder whether you would go into one of those tents one day and
find the inside was just like the TARDIS.
Now, here’s a point which is worth making about the
Third Doctor. Throughout Troughton’s tenure, the Doctor was clearly not a super
being. Yes, he usually won, but it was through using his brains alone, either
his knowledge or his cunning. This story for me sees the Doctor taking another
step towards superhumanity. At one stage Captain Mike Yates appears, telling
the Doctor that the Brigadier insists on seeing him at once. When the Doctor
refuses Yates says that he has been authorised to being him by force if
necessary. He has the temerity to lay hands on the Doctor, at which the Doctor
takes his hand in what I can only describe as ‘the Gallifreyan wrist-pinch’ and
immobilises him without batting an eyelid. Then when he does go to help the
Brigadier, who is having awful trouble with General Fu Peng of the Chinese
delegation, the Doctor immediately deduces that he must be Hokkien, and
addresses him in (so the General said, although I have my doubts) perfect
Hokkien dialect. All smiles, problem solved.
As the story developed, maybe it was because I actually
have seen this before that I was thinking – I’ve seen this before – but I do
also think that this story was a little bit of a rehash of some of the elements
we have already seen in the Pertwee era, even though it’s only story 6. The
hi-jack of the missile – the hi-jack of the space capsule in “Ambassadors of
Death”. The Master’s alien ally/tool getting out of control – “Terror of the
Autons”. Mailer – Reegan in “Ambassadors of Death”. To that extent this story
is a little formulaic, and I certainly don’t think it’s as good as Houghton’s
previous story, “Inferno”. Which is not to say that it is without things to
enjoy. Basically, I think that you could have put Roger Delgado’s Master into
any old rubbish and he’d always have been worth watching so long as he had his
fair share of scenes playing off Pertwee’s Doctor. Once again, every scene they
appear in together is compelling. I almost think that the two of them could
have recited the South Wales phone directory to each other and it would still
have been worth watching. Well, Houghton’s dialogue is quite a bit better than
that. I particularly enjoyed the last exchange. In order to solve the situation
the Doctor’s plan involves exploding the Thunderbolt missile on the ground –
more about that later – since this will also destroy the Machine. In order to
get close enough to do that he lures the Master into letting him approach by
offering to return the dematerialisation circuit he stole from the Master’s
TARDIS in the previous story. In the confusion the Master steals back his
circuit. At the end he rings the Doctor to say he’s fine, and he’s on his way
to pastures new, but will return in time to destroy both Earth and the Doctor.
Nyahh haaa haaa. It’ll be a lot more quickly than anyone thought as well.
There are a few other things I’d like to mention.
Firstly some of the guest stars. I’ve already mentioned Pik Sen Lim. Then we
had good old Michael Sheard as the prison doctor. We last saw him the 3rd
season’s “The Ark”, and we’ll see him again in no fewer than 4 more stories.
The only classic series Doctors he didn’t appear with were Patrick Troughton’s
and Colin Baker’s. Next time will be in the all-time classic “Pyramids of Mars”
so that’s something we can all look forward to. We also saw Neil McCarthy as
Prisoner Barham. You might not know the name Neil McCarthy, but if you’re at
least in your 40s you’ll probably know him when you see him. He had a striking
physical appearance, the result of the condition acromegaly, and would die at
the tragically young age of 52. He appeared in tons of TV shows – most notably
as a regular in the first series of Catweazle, and played one of John Cleese’s
Robin Hood’s Merry Men in the Terry Gilliam film “Time Bandits”. At the start
of the story, the Doctor and Jo are attending a demonstration of the Keller
Machine, and it is Barham who receives the treatment. In the course of removing
his evil impulses it turns Barham into rather an innocent and helpless soul,
but it later turns out that he is immune now to the Machine, which is key to
the Doctor’s solution of the situations.
Now, sometimes when I watch a story I ended thinking
that either I missed something, or there is a huge plot hole. It’s such a big
one in this story that I’m sure I must have missed a vital piece of
information. The Thunderbolt missile is supposed to have a warhead full of
deadly nerve gas. Now, surely, surely when the warhead was exploded on the
ground in Stanham disused airfield, the nerve gas was released? If it wasn’t
then how not? Had it been removed from the warhead and I just missed that vital
piece of information? While we’re discussing the denouement as well it was
worth noting that the Doctor and Jo make their escape from the airfield in a
helicopter, leaving the poor sacrificed lamb Barnham behind. Maybe it’s just
me, but from “Fury from the Deep” onwards the production teams seemed to leap
at any opportunity to use a helicopter. We’ll note the further appearances of
helicopters as and when they happen.
Oh, and here’s another thing. If you watch the story
now, pay particular attention to the UNIT attack on the prison in episode 5.
For me this was notable for 2 things. Firstly, the Brigadier posing as a
‘cockney’ delivery man. I mean, we’re not exactly in Dick Van Dyke/Bert the
Chimney Sweep territory here, but it was pretty much a case of don’t give up
the day job, Alastair. Then the attack on the Prison. Now, although we didn’t
see a drop of blood, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a firefight quite like it in
Doctor Who. We already knew that the Brigadier is a crack shot, but suddenly so
is every UNIT soldier too. This little section was like Doctor Who reimagined
by Sam Peckinpah. Either that, or it’s the new government’s initiative to solve
prison overcrowding. I didn’t count the number of prisoners and UNIT men gunned
down in the 5 minutes’ action, but I’m sure it was comfortably into double
figures.
Now, you wouldn’t necessarily say that, when you analyse
it, this story was really up to the standards of season 7, and yet, for all
that I found it extremely watchable. I kind of think that when you get right
down to it, that’s the point.
What have we
learned?
The Doctor can
paralyse a man with a single pinch of the wrist (or Mike Yates is a total wimp)
The Master is now
free again to wander Time and Space. So that’s the last we’ll be seeing of him
for a while, then.
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