The Mind of Evil

056 – The Mind of Evil
Doctor Who serial
File:Mind of Evil.jpg The Doctor and Jo find themselves locked in a prison cell
Cast
Doctor Jon Pertwee (Third Doctor)
Companion Katy Manning (Jo Grant)
Others Nicholas Courtney — Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart Richard Franklin — Captain Mike Yates John Levene — Sergeant Benton Roger Delgado — The Master Fernanda Marlowe — Corporal Bell Patrick Godfrey — Major Cosworth Simon Lack — Kettering Pik-Sen Lim — Chin Lee Kristopher Kum — Fu Peng Tommy Duggan — Senator Alcott Raymond Westwell — Prison Governor Michael Sheard — Dr Roland Summers Roy Purcell — Chief Prison Officer Powers Eric Mason — Senior Prison Officer Green Dave Carter, Bill Matthews, Barry Wade, Martin Gordon, Tony Jenkins — Prison Officers Clive Scott — Arthur Linwood Neil McCarthy — George Patrick Barnham William Marlowe — Mailer Hayden Jones — Vosper David Calderisi — Charlie Johnny Barrs — Fuller Matthew Walters — Main Gates Prisoner
Production
Directed by	Timothy Combe
Written by	Don Houghton
Script editor	Terrance Dicks
Produced by	Barry Letts
Executive producer(s)	None
Music by	Dudley Simpson
Production code	FFF
Series	Season 8
Running time	6 episodes, 25 minutes each
First broadcast	30 January–6 March 1971
Chronology
← Preceded by Terror of the Autons Followed by → The Claws of Axos

The Mind of Evil is the second serial of the eighth season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in six weekly parts from 30 January to 6 March 1971.

The Doctor and Jo visit Stangmoor Prison in England to witness a demonstration of the Keller Machine. This machine, invented by Emil Keller, a Professor of Criminology, extracts the negative (or evil) impulses from the minds of hardened criminals. But Keller is really the Master in disguise, and the so-called machine actually contains an alien mind parasite that feeds on, and can destroy, living minds. The Master is plotting to start World War III by destroying the World Peace Conference in London, using a nerve gas missile hijacked by the prisoners, and using the mind parasite (once it has fed sufficiently) to murder the American and Chinese delegates.

This serial was formerly lost from the BBC's television archive, the colour PAL videotapes on which it was made having been wiped in the 1970s. Only a monochrome telerecording, made on film for overseas sale of the programme, survived. But the serial has been restored using advanced computer technology to recolour one episode (by manually colouring key frames, then applying motion estimation to recolour the other 90%) and by extracting a colour signal - thought lost, but recorded by accident onto the monochrome film negatives - to restore colour to the other five episodes.

Plot

The Third Doctor and Jo Grant visit the remote Stangmoor Prison to examine a new method of "curing" criminals, whereby the negative impulses are removed from the mind using the Keller Machine to enact the Keller Process. Professor Kettering, who is managing the use of the Process at the behest of the absent Emil Keller, reconditions a number of inmates including Barnham, a hardened criminal who reverts to an innocent and childlike state due to the Process. The Doctor’s suspicions about the Keller Machine are heightened following a string of deaths, including that of Kettering himself, which seem to occur when the Machine is operated. Each death seems to be triggered by visions of personal phobias – and the Doctor is threatened by an inferno when he gets too close to it.

Meanwhile, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and the troops of UNIT are handling the security arrangements for the first World Peace Conference. Captain Chin Lee of the Chinese delegation, whose delegate leader is dead, is behaving strangely, and attempting to heighten tension in relations with the United States. It emerges that her actions are under the influence of the Master. She uses the transmitted power of the Keller Machine against the American delegate, Senator Alcott, who barely survives the attack. Captain Chin Lee is deconditioned by the Doctor, and tells him that Emil Keller is in truth the Master, whom the Doctor has previously trapped on Earth by stealing the dematerialisation circuit of his TARDIS.

Back at Stangmoor a riot has broken out and resulted in a dangerous criminal who was next in line for the Keller Process, Harry Mailer, seizing control of the prison. Jo is briefly taken hostage, but she enables the guards to retake the prison. The Master, who had heard of the Stangmoor riot by eavesdropping on UNIT, arrives and meets Mailer, to whom he supplies enough gas grenades for Mailer and his prisoners to retake control of the prison. The Doctor returns to the prison to be captured by the Master, who sets the Keller Machine loose on the mind of his old foe, weakening the Doctor considerably. The Master is losing control of the Keller Machine, which contains a dangerous alien Mind Parasite, and forces the Doctor to help him contain its power. This done, the Doctor is imprisoned once more.

The Master has come to Stangmoor to recruit the prisoners as a private army, and uses them to hijack a UNIT convoy transporting a deadly Thunderbolt nerve gas missile, which the Master intends to fire at the Peace Conference. Captain Mike Yates, who was leading the convoy, is taken prisoner by the criminals. Left in the dark, the Brigadier decides the Thunderbolt missile must be in Stangmoor and comes to the rescue in a "Trojan Horse" style assault. UNIT troops take control of the prison, killing Mailer and the other leading rioters. But the Keller Machine is growing stronger, and breaks free of the temporary restraints placed on it by the Doctor, who discovers by chance that Barnham, having previously been subjected to the Keller process and thus having no evil left in his mind, has become immune to the Mind Parasite.

Yates manages to contact UNIT, and informs them that the Thunderbolt is hidden on an abandoned airfield near the prison. The Doctor contacts the Master, offering to return his dematerialisation circuit in exchange for the missile. The Master agrees on condition he will come alone. But the Doctor uses Barnham to transport the Keller Machine to the airfield, and turns the Mind Parasite loose on the Master. With the Master helpless, the Doctor is able to trigger the missile's self-destruct circuit and the Thunderbolt and the Keller Machine are destroyed. The Master uses the chaos to escape with the dematerialisation circuit, killing Barnham in the process. He contacts the Doctor by telephone to taunt him that he is now free while the Doctor remains trapped in his exile on Earth.

Literary Criticism

The plot of this serial contains a number of structural flaws, which were a significant contribution to the decision by the Doctor Who production office not to commission any further scripts from writer Don Houghton.

Firstly, it had been established in the previous serial, Terror of the Autons, that the Master's TARDIS is no longer working. Indeed, in Mind of Evil the Master actually recovers his missing circuit at the end of the final episode: this is a major plot point in that episode. However, in Episode 1 the only practical way in which the Master could have impersonated Emile Keller (to install the Keller Machine at Stangmoor Prison a year earlier) was to have gone back in time by a year, using his TARDIS - which is not functional at that point.

Secondly, with his TARDIS out of action, how does the Master travel to the unnamed alien planet and collect the mind parasite? This unresolved problem is carefully side-stepped at every point: the Doctor is never allowed to consider where the creature actually comes from.

Thirdly, why does the Master bother to set up the elaborate scheme for murdering the Chinese delegate, so as to sabotage the peace conference, when he is arranging to destroy the conference with the Thunderbolt missile? Put another way, why is he going to so much trouble to hijack the missile (involving seizing control of the prison, and installing the mind parasite in the Keller machine there), when he is so close to breaking up the peace conference by the simple expedient of murdering the delegates? These two aspects of the Master's plan are irreconcilable: either plan, on its own, is sufficient to achieve the Master's goal, so the other is redundant.

Fourthly, why does the Master need a huge gang of criminals to hijack the missile, which he knows has a minimal escort, instead of simply adopting his usual technique of hypnotising the tiny UNIT force escorting it?

Fifthly, how does the Master know, a year in advance (when he installs the Machine), that the missile's route from its Army storage facility to the dumping site at sea will take the convoy close to Stangmoor Prison? If he is relying on stolen information from the Time Lords' files (as in Colony in Space), how does he obtain it with his TARDIS out of action? And the fact that he goes to the trouble of eavesdropping on UNIT's communications implies that he does not know the convoy's route at all. These facts are irreconcilable.

Finally, why is the Doctor suddenly and unaccountably interested in prison reform, such that he attends the demonstration of the Keller Machine in Episode 1? This is not a subject on which he shows interest in any other serial: not even in the one other serial, The Sea Devils, which explicitly involves a prison. Also, if he sees the Keller Machine as a threat, why has he not investigated the process during the year-long trial which has already been running?

Continuity

An insight into the Master's motivation and his relationship with the Doctor is given when the Mind Parasite turns on him and attacks him with images to evoke his deepest fear: the Master is confronted with and recoils from images of a gigantic Doctor towering over him and laughing uproariously at him.

The Mind Parasite attacks the Doctor on three separate occasions. The first visions are tongues of flame, enveloping the Doctor's terror-stricken face. He tells Jo as he recovers, "Not long ago I saw an entire world consumed by fire..." This is a reference to the recent serial Inferno (also written by Don Houghton). The images in the two later incidents are of past monsters (including the War Machines, a Cyberman and a Zarbi). During these latter hallucinations, Dalek voices are heard chanting for subjugation, extermination, and destruction.

Production

Working titles for this story included The Pandora Machine, Man Hours and The Pandora Box.

The serial features a guest appearance by Michael Sheard, who had previously appeared with William Hartnell in The Ark, and would later appear with Tom Baker in Pyramids of Mars (as Lawrence Scarman) and in The Invisible Enemy (as Lowe), and with Peter Davison in Castrovalva (as Mergrave), and with Sylvester McCoy in Remembrance of the Daleks (as the Headmaster at the Coal Hill School). See also Celebrity appearances in Doctor Who.

The production filmed in Kent where some exteriors, primarily for Stangmoor Prison, were filmed in and around Dover Castle. The junction of Archer’s Court Road with Pineham Road in Whitfield was the location where the Master’s troops ambush the missile convoy. The hangar at the former RAF Swingate was used as the Master’s hiding place for his deadly missile. And Stone Hill Park, formerly Manston Airport, was the base for the helicopter company providing the choppers and aerial footage in the series. This serial went so excessively over budget - primarily due to the use of the helicopter in episode 6 - that its director, Timothy Combe, was banned by Barry Letts from being considered for any subsequent Who work.

Themes

James F. McGrath of the Patheos religion blog notes that the serial poses the question of pacifism (in relation to Barnham's mental state after the Mind Parasite has extracted all of the negative impulses from his mind), and asks: "Can pure unadulterated kindness ultimately prevail? Or does it take evil, in whatever small a measure, to effectively combat evil?" In the serial itself, the prison's medical officer tells Jo Grant that Barnham is "either an idiot or a Saint, depending how you look at it".

Broadcast and reception

David J. Howe and Stephen James Walker, in their 1998 book Doctor Who: The Television Companion, noted that the Master's plan was "so convoluted that it seriously lacks credibility". However, they wrote that "the action is brought to the screen with such style and panache that the viewer hardly notices them", with the direction and the alien menace being the highlights. In 2009, Mark Braxton of Radio Times praised the direction and Delgado's Master, though he noted there was a high body count. SFX reviewer Ian Berriman gave the serial three out of five stars, finding it enjoyable if one did not concentrate on the Master's plan, noting that the "two aspects of the plan never dovetail satisfactorily". DVD Talk's John Sinnott rated The Mind of Evil three and a half out of five stars, writing that it kept a good pace and had "all of the elements that made Pertwee's run so enjoyable". Actress Katy Manning has stated that this is her favourite story from her three years on the show.

Commercial releases

In print

The Mind of Evil

Author	Terrance Dicks
Cover artist	Andrew Skilleter
Series	Doctor Who book: Target novelisations
Release number	96
Publisher	Target Books
Publication date	11 July 1985
ISBN	0-426-20166-3

A novelisation of this serial, written by Terrance Dicks, was published by Target Books in March 1985.

Home media

The original soundtrack for this serial was released on CD in the UK in February 2009. The linking narration was provided by Richard Franklin.

For many years, this story was unique amongst the BBC's holdings of Pertwee-era serials in that the BBC, held no complete colour copies of any of its episodes. About four and a half minutes of colour footage from Episode Six existed on an off-air domestic NTSC Betamax recording. Because a full set of black-and-white 16mm film recordings existed, the story was released on VHS in this format, on 5 May 1998. The colour scenes, restored by combining the colour signal from the off-air recording and the geometry from the film recording, were included as a bonus extra after the story. Several colour clips from the story were included on the 2011 DVD release Day of the Daleks as part of the UNIT family history.

The serial was released on DVD on 3 June 2013. Episodes 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 were restored to colour via the chroma dot colour recovery technique used for other black-and-white Pertwee-era stories. The telerecording of episode 1 does not contain chroma dot information (this was filtered out at the time it was made), and was recoloured using colour referenced from the other restored episodes. Keyframes, including the first frame of a shot and every fifth frame thereafter (approximately 7,000 total) were hand coloured by Stuart Humphryes. Motion-estimation software was then used to interpolate the extrapolated colour from the key frames into the intervening frames.

External links

• The Mind of Evil at BBC Online
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• List of clips from missing Doctor Who episodes with information on clips from The Mind of Evil

Reviews

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Target novelisation

• On Target — The Mind of Evil