OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 218
STORY NUMBER: 045
TRANSMITTED: 05 October 1968
WRITER: Peter Ling
DIRECTOR: David Maloney
SCRIPT EDITOR: Derrick Sherwin
PRODUCER: Peter Bryant
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who: The Mind Robber
The Doctor finds a sword at his feet. The text machine says he kills the monster but the Doctor remembers the legend of Perseus and shows Medusa a mirror. Jamie's presence is detected and he is found by Gulliver. Jamie hides from the white robots searching for him. The Doctor and Zoe find the castle but are confronted by the Karkus, a comic book hero from Zoe's time. Being sure he is fictional Zoe defeats him. Now in servitude to Zoe he helps the Time Travellers get to the castle. The Doctor pretends to be the Karkus to gain entry. They find Jamie & Gulliver. The machine reports the test on the Doctor has failed. He deduces that if they fell into the Master's trap they would become fiction. They are invited in to see the Master, an old bearded man in a control room. He was a writer of a boy's adventure strip who was kidnapped and brought to the land of fiction where he serves the intelligence controlling the region. He wishes the Doctor to take his place. The Doctor refuses. Zoe & Jamie are caught in a library by the white robots who trap them inside a giant book.
I can see that this story is perfectly well created but sorry folks, the latter episodes are increasingly not doing it for me. The style feels much more like one of the more experimental Hartnell stories: Celestial Toyroom springs to mind. I don't think it's made bad, I don't think they shouldn't have done it: it just doesn't tick the boxes for me.
Writing this episode is Peter Ling, the creator of Crossroads. On that program he worked with Derrick Sherwin, now the Doctor Who script editor, and Terrance Dicks, currently serving as his assistant. They used to get the train to Birmingham together for script meetings, became friends and Ling was asked to contribute to Doctor Who when Sherwin became script editor. He's not the only writer from that time on Crossroads to work on Doctor Who: The Crossroads Script Editor Don Houghton would later pen two Pertwee tales. Several of the current crop of Doctor Who writers picked up valuable experience writing for Soap Operas too.
The Karkus, introduced this episode, is played by Christopher Robbie. He will later play the Cyberleader in Revenge of the Cybermen and served as announcer on several different commercial television stations.
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