Timothy Combe, “Doctor Who: The Mind of Evil” (1971)
An enjoyable story, even if it is two separate stories mashed together and the seams joining them are all too evident, this serial from Season 8 of “Doctor Who” raises an interesting issue about how to deal with prisoners, especially recalcitrant and recidivist prisoners, and other marginal individuals who, of their own free will, refuse to conform to social dictates, even as their choice might violate others’ rights or even endanger lives. There seems to be influence from Stanley Kubrick’s film “A Clockwork Orange” and the Anthony Burgess novel of the same name, in positing right at the beginning of the serial a technology that is claimed by its maker to wipe out evil impulses and thoughts in people’s minds, in order to pacify them and turn them into “useful” members of society. In the context of “Doctor Who”, this technology starts acting up and goes completely out of control even for its creator – and no wonder, for within this technology exists an extraterrestrial parasite that preys on individuals’ minds and emotions, and is a danger not only to humans but also to the Doctor and his Time Lord species.
So the Doctor (Jon Pertwee) and his assistant Jo (Katy Manning) are watching a demonstration of this so-called Keller machine in a high-security prison at Stangmoor which promptly overloads and apparently burns out the brain of hapless human guinea pig Barnham (Neil McCarthy). Barnham is sent to sick bay and the Doctor’s curiosity about the machine is further aroused when two technicians die in separate incidents while near the machine: one is apparently bitten to death by rats and the other drowns – even though the prison is rodent-free and there are no pools or other major bodies of water in the prison premises. Further investigation by the Doctor – along with two close encounters with the machine in action that severely weaken the Doctor physically and mentally – reveals that the Keller machine was brought to Stangmoor by none other than the Master (Roger Delgado), pretending to be Emile Keller the scientist inventor, for the purpose of using the machine to recruit an army of prisoners to help him hijack a nerve gas missile and use it to disrupt a peace conference between China and the United States.
In the meantime, officers of UNIT (where the Doctor is the scientific advisor) have been trusted to provide security for the delegates attending the peace conference but one of the Chinese delegates, Captain Chin Lee (Pik-Sen Lim) appears to be doing all she can to interfere with the smooth and uneventful staging and running of the event. The Doctor ends up flitting back and forth between investigating the deaths and the Keller machine at Stangmoor Prison, and determining that Captain Chin Lee has been hypnotised by the Master who has put a transmitter on her so that her mind can channel the energy waves from the Keller machine against individual delegates to kill them by exposing them to their deepest fears and weaknesses. This means having to leave Jo at Stangmoor during an uprising in which the prisoners, led by the sadistic Mailer (William Marlowe), take over the prison and incarcerate Jo in a cell.
While all this is going on, the alien parasite in the Keller machine becomes more powerful each time it preys on someone’s mind and harvests the evil bounty there, to the extent that it can move the machine anywhere it pleases to pursue potential victims.
The plot with its two strands is quite involved and entertaining, and the action moves very briskly. The cast has plenty to do – even minor cast members play very significant roles in their respective subplots – and while the story seems to suddenly drop characters like Chin Lee halfway through, the pace is fast enough that viewers may not notice her and other characters dropping out almost as fast as they arrive. The very vagueness of the alien enemy – it’s not even named and all you see of it is a glowing green brain-like goo heaving up and down in its container – makes it all the more unnerving and alarming. The main source of tension comes from the Master’s nefarious plotting and his devious plans, the Doctor’s attempts to thwart the Master’s use of the missile, and interactions between these two Time Lords and whatever results from those encounters.
There are silly moments with the banter between the Doctor and his UNIT boss the Brigadier (Nicholas Courtney) and some scenes look very amateurish – Barnham’s death at the hands of the Master does not look too convincing – but generally the story is a fast-paced action thriller aimed at pleasing a wide audience. The commentary about the treatment of prisoners and the conditions in which they are jailed quickly falls away, as does also the political subplot.