Classic Doctor Who 8x02 "The Mind of Evil" eps 5-6 full reaction
Added 2022-07-25 05:11:23 +0000 UTCNext up: "The Daemons"
Comments
Yeah, Yates, Benton, the Brig, etc are definitely more de facto companions of this era than 'bit players' (not just Jo or, previously, Liz). Which I love. The whole UNIT Family is one of my personal fave things about this era (even if I'm honestly not the most keen on the Third Doctor himself -- LOL). <3 P.S. It's honestly because of this close-knit era that the Tenth Doctor's later disdain for UNIT annoys me quite a bit (such as in S3's Sontaran 2-parter). Yes, I get they were going for this whole anti-gun/anti-soldier thing with him (which I could go on about forever being super-eye-roll-y for me), but he was UNIT's Chief Scientific Advisor back as Three and knew many of the soldiers personally back in the day, so he knows there's more nuance there and that they're not all 'bad guys'. Grr!
Nicole Mazza
2022-07-26 01:12:27 +0000 UTCI’ve watched this story several times now, and each time I appreciate it more and more. When I first saw it as a kid in the 70s I, like the Doctor, felt frustrated that we were still Earth-bound in the late 20th century. But on subsequent viewings I’ve come to appreciate the story and it’s various moving parts. It’s a complex plot, constantly shifting and adjusting with each new twist - never getting bogged down or needing padding to fill the 6 episodes. And the action sequences are great. The scene where the Doctor and Master work together to try to deal with the machine is a delight and shows just how close the two actually are, almost co-dependent on one another. By the way, a friendly warning that you should probably not refer to Captain Yates as a “bit player”. He, like others, is an integral part of UNIT operations (or the UNIT family, as we call them)😀. Also, you may not have noticed yet, especially as they had no scenes together in this story (but did in Terror of the Autons) but Jo always refers to the Brigadier and Sgt Benton by their ranks, while Captain Yates is always “Mike” (such as when he rescued her from the Master’s plastic doll). I’ll let that sink in for you to ponder….
Lloyd B
2022-07-25 22:15:45 +0000 UTCFor many years, "The Mind of Evil" held the record as the most expensive Doctor Who story ever made. The main reason, of course, was the big action sequence of UNIT storming the fortress at the end of Episode Five, which was so complex it took a day longer than had been planned and budgeted for to film. (I imagine they reused so much of it at the start of Episode Six in order to squeeze as much value out of the filming as possible.) Then there was the other major stunt sequence of the missile hijack in Episode Four, not to mention director Timothy Combe deciding at the last minute that he needed a helicopter to provide the Doctor and Jo with their escape from the explosion at the end of the story... Sadly, this budget blowout meant that Combe would never get to do another Doctor Who story. But there's no denying it looks superb, especially since the Royal Air Force (after it was pointed out to them that the Army had provided a platoon of troops to use as extras in "The Invasion" a couple of years previously) agreed to make a genuine ground-to-air missile available to the production, together with the personnel to handle it. Unfortunately, these soldiers turned up to the filming dressed in their military garb rather than looking like the Master's convicts, prompting the hasty addition of a line to Episode Five about the Master using "hired mercenaries with fake uniforms"... :-) I don't think you missed anything regarding the ending -- I think we're just supposed to assume that it was the proximity of the Master that caused the creature in the machine to produce all that foam and goo. This nameless creature is certainly one of the weirdest enemies the Doctor's ever faced -- it's intelligent, but it never speaks and we never really learn anything about it or even where it comes from. It remains impressively menacing throughout the story, thanks to simple but effective tricks like the wavy distortion of the picture whenever it teleports from place to place. This is something that would be trivial to do nowadays with video effects software, but back in 1970 the show had no facility for post-production effects at all. Instead, it was achieved live in the studio, by feeding a sine wave audio signal directly into the actual scanning coils of the cameras, thereby disturbing the stability of the picture being recorded. A small but ingenious example of the way the show during this period was continually pushing the envelope of what could be done with the technology available to it.
Steven Cooper
2022-07-25 14:15:23 +0000 UTC
